Duane's Depressed by Larry McMurtry Read Free Book Online

look crazy to me,” Willy said.
    “It’s not polite to say ‘shut up’ to a person,” Bubbles informed her brother.
    Rag emitted a sound that was somewhere between a laugh and a bellow.
    “Polite. I ain’t seen much of that since I took this job,” she said. Rag’s main problem as a gourmet cook was that she was almost too short to see over the stove.
    “You could try setting an example,” Duane told her. “Be a role model, you know? Someone the kids could look up to.”
    “They only look up to me while I’m cooking,” Rag said. “They know that if it weren’t for me they’d starve. But once that food’s on the table it’s dog-eat-dog.”
    “What makes you think I’m crazy, honey?” Duane asked, sitting down by Bubbles.
    “Because you walked,” Bubbles said. Personally she didn’t see anything wrong with Pa-Pa taking a walk, but her grandmother was in her room sobbing so there must be a bad element to it that no one had explained to her.
    “Grandma’s cryin’,” she said.
    “That’s too bad, unless they’re crocodile tears,” Duane said, easing off his new walking shoes. They were first-rate walking shoes, but, even so, his feet had not quite been ready to do twelve miles. They hurt.
    “It’s hormones,” Rag volunteered. “You taking it into your head to go walking around all day has set off a hormone storm. There’s no telling where this will end.”
    “Hormone storms are just part of life,” Duane said, massaging his left foot.
    “Female life, you mean,” Rag said. “Males only got one hormoneto worry about and once it’s dribbled out that’s the end of that story.”
    “What story, Raggedy?” Willy asked. Rag was always making remarks like that and then never explaining them.
    “Never mind, it’s a song you’ll be singing soon enough,” Rag told him.
    “I thought you said it was a story,” Willy reminded her. “Now you say it’s a song.”
    “Grandma’s cryin’,” Bubbles said again, in case her grandfather had somehow missed this vital piece of information.
    “Well, maybe she just needs to cry,” Duane said. “Let’s eat supper.”
    He was determined not to let Karla overdramatize his decision to become a walker. He knew she would immediately try to enlist the kids and the grandkids in her effort to get him back in the cab of a pickup, but he meant to meet whatever campaign she launched with reasonableness and calm. He would explain that walking was a particularly good exercise for a man his age—it was something that would help keep him in good health. He didn’t intend to let Karla stampede the household into believing that the simple act of walking was tantamount to insanity—though he had no doubt she would do just that and had probably already started.
    “Don’t you even care that Grandma’s cryin’?” Bubbles asked. She was extremely curious about her grandpa and her grandma. If her grandpa really didn’t even care that her grandma was crying, then that was a significant clue.
    “Oh sure, I care a bunch,” Duane said, easing off the other shoe and massaging the other sore foot.
    “Then why don’t you go kiss her and make her well?” Bubbles asked.
    “I doubt she wants me to kiss her, honey,” Duane said.
    “That’s right, she don’t,” Karla said, marching into the room with Baby Paul in her arms—he was Nellie’s youngest, seven months old, almost. Baby Paul grinned at the sight of his grandfather, exposing his new tooth. He loved his grandfather and held out his arms, indicating that he would welcome a transfer, butKarla walked him around Duane and popped him into his high chair so briskly that his happy look turned to one of dismay.
    “Sit there and deal with it,” Karla told him, when he looked as if he might cry.
    “Mean,” Little Bascom said, to the table at large.
    “No comments out of you, unless you want me to spank your little butt,” Karla said.
    “My tasty gourmet food is almost ready,” Rag informed them