fun. We was like animals livin in the woods, just tryin to survive.
Over the years, I got a few jobs through something called the Labor Force. You ever go down to the city and seen a buncha raggedy-lookin men crowded on the sidewalk in the early mornin, then you mighta seen a place like the Labor Force. I was one of them men, showin up in the mornin hopin to get a job doin work nobody else want to do—like pickin up trash, cleanin out a ole warehouse, or sweepin up horse manure after a stock show.
I remember one time they took us way on over to Dallas to clean out the Cowboys stadium. They even let me look at the game for a while.
I wanted to work a regular job, but I couldn’t read and couldn’t write. I didn’t look right neither ’cause I only had one set of clothes that was wore out all the time. And even if somebody was to look past all that, I didn’t have no paperwork like a Social Security card or a birth certificate.
At the Labor Force, you didn’t even have to tell em your name. Somebody just pull around in a truck and holler out somethin like, “We need ten men. Construction site needs cleanin.” And the first ten fellas to climb on the truck got the job.
At the end of the day, we’d get $25 cash money, minus the $3 the Labor Force done advanced you for your lunch. Then they charge you $2 for drivin you to your job. So at the end of the day, you’d get maybe $20, not even enough to rent a room. Now let me ask you somethin. What you gon’ do with $20 ’cept buy yourself somethin to eat and maybe a six-pack a’ some-thin to help you forget you gon’ sleep in a cardboard box again that night?
Sometimes it’s drinkin or druggin that lands a man on the streets. And if he ain’t drinkin or druggin already, most fellas like me start in once we get there. It ain’t to have fun. It’s to have less misery. To try and forget that no matter how many “partners in crime” we might hook up with on the street, we is still alone.
16
I ended my affair with the Beverly Hills painter only to begin a new one—this one with my wife. With counseling behind us, each of us moved several giant steps in the other’s direction. I kept both hands in the art business but traveled less and spent more time with Deborah, Carson, and Regan. I also began to take spiritual matters more seriously. Deborah, meanwhile, continued her volunteer work and her pursuit of God, but committed time to the things that interested me.
Chief among those became Rocky Top, the 350-acre ranch we bought in 1990. Perched on a three-hundred-foot mesa overlooking a shimmering arc of the Brazos River, the ranch house became a refuge for our family. We decorated it cowboy-style, from the buffalo head over the stone fireplace to the autographed his-and-hers boots from Roy Rogers and Dale Evans to the herd-sized trestle table we parked in the kitchen, big enough to seat fifteen hungry hands. So authentic and picturesque were the architecture and decor that style magazines photographed the house for feature stories, movie directors paid to use it as a set, and Neiman Marcus began shooting its Christmas catalogs there.
But for Deborah, the kids, and I, Rocky Top was a place to escape the clamor of the city. Bald eagles soared and dived above the Brazos, their high keen startling the deer that frequented the river’s edge. In a verdant pasture below the house, we kept twenty-eight longhorn cattle. (Every year, Deborah gave their babies terribly un-cowboyish names like Sophie and Sissy, and I let her.) And during the spring, lush thickets of bluebonnets covered the rolling chaparral like a violet quilt.
Carson and Regan were teenagers when we settled in at Rocky Top, and they spent their last few years before college importing carloads of friends, hunting, fishing, and exploring miles of winding trails on horseback.
At the ranch, Deborah and I cemented our relationship as best friends and ardent lovers, growing so close that we began to joke
Over the years, I got a few jobs through something called the Labor Force. You ever go down to the city and seen a buncha raggedy-lookin men crowded on the sidewalk in the early mornin, then you mighta seen a place like the Labor Force. I was one of them men, showin up in the mornin hopin to get a job doin work nobody else want to do—like pickin up trash, cleanin out a ole warehouse, or sweepin up horse manure after a stock show.
I remember one time they took us way on over to Dallas to clean out the Cowboys stadium. They even let me look at the game for a while.
I wanted to work a regular job, but I couldn’t read and couldn’t write. I didn’t look right neither ’cause I only had one set of clothes that was wore out all the time. And even if somebody was to look past all that, I didn’t have no paperwork like a Social Security card or a birth certificate.
At the Labor Force, you didn’t even have to tell em your name. Somebody just pull around in a truck and holler out somethin like, “We need ten men. Construction site needs cleanin.” And the first ten fellas to climb on the truck got the job.
At the end of the day, we’d get $25 cash money, minus the $3 the Labor Force done advanced you for your lunch. Then they charge you $2 for drivin you to your job. So at the end of the day, you’d get maybe $20, not even enough to rent a room. Now let me ask you somethin. What you gon’ do with $20 ’cept buy yourself somethin to eat and maybe a six-pack a’ some-thin to help you forget you gon’ sleep in a cardboard box again that night?
Sometimes it’s drinkin or druggin that lands a man on the streets. And if he ain’t drinkin or druggin already, most fellas like me start in once we get there. It ain’t to have fun. It’s to have less misery. To try and forget that no matter how many “partners in crime” we might hook up with on the street, we is still alone.
16
I ended my affair with the Beverly Hills painter only to begin a new one—this one with my wife. With counseling behind us, each of us moved several giant steps in the other’s direction. I kept both hands in the art business but traveled less and spent more time with Deborah, Carson, and Regan. I also began to take spiritual matters more seriously. Deborah, meanwhile, continued her volunteer work and her pursuit of God, but committed time to the things that interested me.
Chief among those became Rocky Top, the 350-acre ranch we bought in 1990. Perched on a three-hundred-foot mesa overlooking a shimmering arc of the Brazos River, the ranch house became a refuge for our family. We decorated it cowboy-style, from the buffalo head over the stone fireplace to the autographed his-and-hers boots from Roy Rogers and Dale Evans to the herd-sized trestle table we parked in the kitchen, big enough to seat fifteen hungry hands. So authentic and picturesque were the architecture and decor that style magazines photographed the house for feature stories, movie directors paid to use it as a set, and Neiman Marcus began shooting its Christmas catalogs there.
But for Deborah, the kids, and I, Rocky Top was a place to escape the clamor of the city. Bald eagles soared and dived above the Brazos, their high keen startling the deer that frequented the river’s edge. In a verdant pasture below the house, we kept twenty-eight longhorn cattle. (Every year, Deborah gave their babies terribly un-cowboyish names like Sophie and Sissy, and I let her.) And during the spring, lush thickets of bluebonnets covered the rolling chaparral like a violet quilt.
Carson and Regan were teenagers when we settled in at Rocky Top, and they spent their last few years before college importing carloads of friends, hunting, fishing, and exploring miles of winding trails on horseback.
At the ranch, Deborah and I cemented our relationship as best friends and ardent lovers, growing so close that we began to joke
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