In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Chapter One THE S C RUB 0 A K S looked like twisted wrought iron, and everybody's front yard had turned the color of a corn tortilla. It was October in that part of Texas. The north wind had already begun to sling carving knives at the city. even when preachers and doctors were outdoors. A north wind in Texas didn't care whose ass it stung just like a sad song didn't care whose hearl it broke. But this was only a criSp day. The sky was bluer Ihan a bathroom wall. As the days came and went for Juanita Hutchins, she called it a keeper. "I guess I'd choose it over glaucoma," was the way she actually put il. Juanita's optimism had a tendency to gct Oul of hand like that. Juanita saw the day through the big casement window in the bar of Herb's Cafe. She was charmed as usual by the panorama of Herb's asphah parking lot, a few of the compacts and pickups that rendezvoused there, a telephone pole, a store across the street with the absorbing name of WALLPA PER TO GO, Slick Henderson's Exxon station. and the side of a laundromat on which a clever old romantic had alerted the world to "Fuck Melissa Ann Webster." The truth is, Juanita saw the day as she worked behind the bar in Herb's Cafe, which was how it went, she said, if you were born under the sign of polyester. 8 PART ONE It was around th ree o'clock in the afternoon on that bright autumn Wednesday in Fort Worth. The luncheon for the South Side B & PW was over, but some of the Business and Professional Women were still around. They were drinking strawberry Dai'luiri5, discussing the Christmas trce skirts they were making out of feIt and sequins, and trying \0 think of something good to say about theiT dead husbands. A fresh balch of Daiquiris was blending. Juanita trifled with the dial of a Panasonk radio. It sat on a shelf near a photograph of her daughter, Candy, a ravishing girl in her twenties. The radio was usually tuned to stations programing Country & Western music. Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and Loretta Lynn were necessary to Juanita's work. So were Winstons and coffee-

Share