Free Bad Boy by Jim Thompson Page A

Texas air and trod the holy Texas soil.
    Texas, it appeared, had formed all but a minuscule part of the Confederacy, and as such had slapped the troops of Sherman silly and sent Grant’s groaning to their graves. Singlehanded—almost, anyway—it had thrashed the bully, North. Then, as a generous though intrinsically meaningless gesture, it had conceded defeat, thus ending the awful bloodshed and preserving the Union.
    Just as all Texas males were omnipotent, invincible and of irreproachable character, so were all Texas women superbly beautiful and utterly virginal. And woe to anyone who hinted the contrary. Being of an open mind (by my own admission), I was willing to concede that the Texas female was probably somewhat more personable than a Ubangi, but I would make no concessions on the second score. I delighted in pointing out the historic incompatibility of virginity with wife- and motherhood. Mock-innocent, I demanded that the peculiar Texas situation be explained to me. As a rule, my heretical quizzing was rewarded at this point with a punch in the nose; if not, I would extend the questioning into the sacrosanct realm of Texas sweethearts and sisters.
    That, invariably, would get me not one punch but a dozen.
    Anything that a Texan might be sensitive about or hold sacred, I jeered at. There was no trick too low for me if it would discomfit the Texans.
    I recall—and it makes me squirm to do it—the pleased astonishment of the coach when I applied for a place on the high-school track team. How unselfishly delighted he was that I was at last coming out of my shell. I recall his almost tearful joy as I skimmed tirelessly and swiftly around the track—a half mile, mile, mile-and-a-half, two miles. I was a natural-born two-miler, he declared—rangy, wiry, long legged. I was the best two-miler he had ever seen, and he hugged me ecstatically. The two-mile event was in the bag. If only he had a few more lads like me!
    It was a damned good thing for him that he didn’t have any more like me, for, while I represented our school in the intramural two-mile race, I did not run it.
    I trotted up in front of the grandstand, sat down in the middle of the track and lighted a cigarette.
    Only my tender years, I suspect, saved me from being lynched.

12
    I had not completely plumbed the abyss of ignominy when I came under the influence of a Boy Scout leader, and for a time my descent was checked. Then, suddenly and inexplicably, he became cool and critical, and I resumed my career of making everyone else as miserable as I was.
    Years later, when I was shaking out of the grandfather of all hangovers, Pop tried to get at the root of my trouble.
    “I just can’t understand it,” he complained. “I can’t see how it started. You were always such a bright, likeable, willing youngster. So well-balanced and adaptable.”
    “I was, huh?” I laughed hoarsely. “Well, well.”
    “Of course you were! Why, your scoutmaster made a special trip to my office to tell me about you. He said you were the finest boy in his troop.”
    “Don’t kid me,” I said. “That guy got me to liking him, then he turned on me and he never gave me a pleasant word from then on.”
    “Now, I wonder why he did that.” Pop frowned in honest puzzlement. “I believe I did tell him that praise could be very bad for a boy, and that I hoped you wouldn’t acquire a swelled head. But surely—”
    Well.
    I was easily the most unpopular student in school. Also, it goes without saying, I was the poorest student. I had read all the standard historians, Gibbon, Wells, even Herodotus, yet I could not—rather, would not—pass the Texas history courses. I had read a complete twelve-volume botanical encyclopedia, but I failed in botany. I had read Ibanez’s Mare Nostrum as well as some of Alarcon’s shorter plays in their original language, yet I failed in Spanish. I had sold fillers to the pulp periodicals and brief humorous squibs to such magazines as Judge ,