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29 Wacko E ven I was anxious to get back on the road. The following day we said goodbye to Marsha, and set out for Waco. By early March the Texas highways were ablaze with wildflowers: bluebonnet, larkspur, Indian paintbrush, black-eyed Susan, bull thistle. “Names alone tell a story,” Dep mused, sitting on a suitcase in the warm sun, watching me polish my thumb yet again. It was only a short jog to Waco, where the promise of money and safe haven awaited us. LaNelle was a college friend of Margery’s whom we’d met on Old Black Dirt Road. At one time a psychological researcher, lately she’d acquired a law degree to practice alongside her attorney husband. Johnny was easygoing and preppy in crisp white shirts. He and LaNelle were in the midst of restoring their ornate Victorian mansion. As luck would have it, they needed a carpenter. LaNelle put us up in a back bedroom and bath on the second floor. The single twin bed sat high off the ground in an antique wooden frame. The ancient wallpaper was adorned with faded rows of red-coated soldiers that marched with fife-and-drum when we turned out the light. Down the hall was another bedroom with dizzying paisley walls reminiscent of the Mill. But without a doubt the mansion’s most memorable feature was a curving cherry staircase with a flat banister, perfect for sliding down. Soon after we arrived, Dep began to build a flight of new stairs in the old barn behind the house, while I worked outside in the shade, caning four dining chairs that had belonged to Johnny’s grandmother. LaNelle brought us lunchtime sacks of cheeseburgers and French fries. She wore her brilliance like a jaunty sun hat, another quotable character we wanted to follow around, recording her quirks and fabulous tales. Our favorite was the one we were living firsthand. 116 Wacko | 117 In a tumbledown shed in the corner of the yard lived two aging turkeys, Bach and Gobble. Former research subjects of LaNelle’s, the birds were a domestic breed, the kind that usually ends up young and fat on somebody’s Thanksgiving platter. Having escaped the fate of their peers, they were still laying eggs in old age—even more remarkable since Bach had begun life as Gobble’s son. Bred to produce desirable white meat, domestic turkeys are genetically engineered to develop well-formed breasts, and the females tend to lay prodigious amounts of eggs. Bach’s breasts grew so large, he decided he was female and started laying eggs at the rate of his/her mother. Now their old bodies were running out of calcium, and the eggs were coming out already cracked, so to speak—shell-less blobs of yoke and mucous lying in the nest. We accompanied LaNelle to the local Purina factory where she had more calcium added to their feed. Soon Bach and Gobble were laying eggs in shells. They were delicious, by the way—the eggs, not the birds. Waco was a respite from our new sense of dislocation. We’d been lucky so far: every time we free-fell, a net had appeared to catch us. Depty felt at home in Texas; his cowboy hat and boots were the norm here. Marsha came down to visit several times during our two-month stay. She and Dep knew some of the local musicians; at night they would gather in a back sitting-room. Dep got a lot of composing done in those weeks, trying out melodies and lyrics on whoever assembled in LaNelle’s high-ceilinged parlor. Texas was already casting its rough-and-tumble spell. He’d begun a song about a woman who dealt cards in a saloon: It was June or September Don’t rightly remember The first time I laid eyes on you It was June or September Seattle or Denver First time I laid eyes on you Like us, LaNelle and Johnny were fans of Kinky Friedman, a ribald, Jewish, Texas songwriter. Dep and I especially loved his tune, “They Ain’t Making Jews Like Jesus Any More.” Kinky seemed to epitomize Austin’s irreverent energy, a spirit so like Depty Dawg’s we were certain he’d be a hit. We grew eager and impatient, time to make the future present. Just before setting out for Austin at the end of April, we got the news: Basil had been born at last to...

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