know that if he was going to manage in the world, he’d need all the anger he could keep hold of.
Joe found himself working faster and harder in the scullery of the Sunshine Cafeteria. There was a kind of fever in the way he loaded the dishes into the trays and threw the trays onto the conveyor belt. It was as if he had to feed just so many millions of dishes into the steaming jaws of that machine, and then it would be appeased and belch up enough money to …
He wasn’t certain what the money was for. He only knew he had to get some of it together in order to cause something to happen. He went about with the single eye of a man with a plan. But he didn’t quite know what the plan was.
Three mornings a week he spent in a gymnasium, where he performed strenuous exercises, punched a bag, and swam the length of the pool eight times. He watched his body acquire new strength and agility. He massaged his scalp and fooled with his hair a lot, and he became obsessed with the acquisition of a Western wardrobe, carrying with him night and day a feeling, a belief, that everything would change for the better when he had created himself in a certain new image. He knew what the image was, that of a cowboy, but he never did press himself too far on the question of how that image would make his life different. There is an Indian legend that at a certain time in the life of a young man he is given a dream in which he sees a mask, and when he awakens he must set to work carving a real mask in that dream image. This is the mask he must wear into battle in order to be victorious. It was as if Joe Buck had had such a dream, and his life was given over to the carving of the mask.
He wasted little time these days in longing for the company of others or in any kind of brooding. If he had no kin in the world, who was there to yearn for?
But he did do a lot of aimless wandering at night when he left the cafeteria. To Joe it was not aimless at all. Ask him what he was doing, and he would have brushed the question aside, as if his purpose were to be found somewhere deeper than questions and answers could penetrate. But he was clearly searching the town for something. He kept his eyes wide open and alert, scanning the nighttime streets of downtown Houston like a warrior scout. Very little of what he saw seemed worth remembering. Most of what passed his eye left no more of a mark on him than images leave on the face of a mirror.
But there were, from his many nights of wandering and looking, three pictures that had somehow fallen through to a level in him deeper than the surface, and these, in memory, showed themselves to him over and over again:
One was a cutout image of a young Hollywood actor floodlighted on top of a movie marquee. He stood there with his suntanned snarl in full color, two stories bigger than life, legs apart, pelvis thrust forward, and he was in the act of turning a big gun on you. The barrel of it was coming at you thick and gleaming, and it was about to go off.
The second article in this nighttime collection of images was a brief scene on a street corner. A long white convertible was stopped for a red light. The woman in the driver’s seat was looking at a tall, handsome young man in Western clothes standing at the curb. Her motor died under her. But she kept on looking at the young man. After a moment she said, “I can’t get it started without help.” And the young man said, “I’ll
bet
you can’t, honey.”
The third picture to remain in him from these walks was the only one he couldn’t enjoy looking at later. But whether or not he liked it, it was one of the three and would not be discarded. This was a large poster depicting that bearded young man in whose eyes resides all the sorrow of history. Above his head was a message attributed to him in a large Gothic typeface, and on the bottom of the poster, scrawled there in raspberry-colored lipstick, were the words FUCK THEE
Joe found himself working faster and harder in the scullery of the Sunshine Cafeteria. There was a kind of fever in the way he loaded the dishes into the trays and threw the trays onto the conveyor belt. It was as if he had to feed just so many millions of dishes into the steaming jaws of that machine, and then it would be appeased and belch up enough money to …
He wasn’t certain what the money was for. He only knew he had to get some of it together in order to cause something to happen. He went about with the single eye of a man with a plan. But he didn’t quite know what the plan was.
Three mornings a week he spent in a gymnasium, where he performed strenuous exercises, punched a bag, and swam the length of the pool eight times. He watched his body acquire new strength and agility. He massaged his scalp and fooled with his hair a lot, and he became obsessed with the acquisition of a Western wardrobe, carrying with him night and day a feeling, a belief, that everything would change for the better when he had created himself in a certain new image. He knew what the image was, that of a cowboy, but he never did press himself too far on the question of how that image would make his life different. There is an Indian legend that at a certain time in the life of a young man he is given a dream in which he sees a mask, and when he awakens he must set to work carving a real mask in that dream image. This is the mask he must wear into battle in order to be victorious. It was as if Joe Buck had had such a dream, and his life was given over to the carving of the mask.
He wasted little time these days in longing for the company of others or in any kind of brooding. If he had no kin in the world, who was there to yearn for?
But he did do a lot of aimless wandering at night when he left the cafeteria. To Joe it was not aimless at all. Ask him what he was doing, and he would have brushed the question aside, as if his purpose were to be found somewhere deeper than questions and answers could penetrate. But he was clearly searching the town for something. He kept his eyes wide open and alert, scanning the nighttime streets of downtown Houston like a warrior scout. Very little of what he saw seemed worth remembering. Most of what passed his eye left no more of a mark on him than images leave on the face of a mirror.
But there were, from his many nights of wandering and looking, three pictures that had somehow fallen through to a level in him deeper than the surface, and these, in memory, showed themselves to him over and over again:
One was a cutout image of a young Hollywood actor floodlighted on top of a movie marquee. He stood there with his suntanned snarl in full color, two stories bigger than life, legs apart, pelvis thrust forward, and he was in the act of turning a big gun on you. The barrel of it was coming at you thick and gleaming, and it was about to go off.
The second article in this nighttime collection of images was a brief scene on a street corner. A long white convertible was stopped for a red light. The woman in the driver’s seat was looking at a tall, handsome young man in Western clothes standing at the curb. Her motor died under her. But she kept on looking at the young man. After a moment she said, “I can’t get it started without help.” And the young man said, “I’ll
bet
you can’t, honey.”
The third picture to remain in him from these walks was the only one he couldn’t enjoy looking at later. But whether or not he liked it, it was one of the three and would not be discarded. This was a large poster depicting that bearded young man in whose eyes resides all the sorrow of history. Above his head was a message attributed to him in a large Gothic typeface, and on the bottom of the poster, scrawled there in raspberry-colored lipstick, were the words FUCK THEE
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