Some Can Whistle Read online

  Praise for Some Can Whistle

  “The constant delight of each of McMurtry’s books is the characters—warm, gutsy, humorous people, Westerners either by birth or inclination, the kind of people you wish you could meet because you know you’d love ’em.”

  — Boston Herald

  “Larry McMurtry, who won a Pulitzer Prize for Lonesome Dove, again rides high. . . . McMurtry studs his picaresque novels with some of the least likely people ever brought to a page, pumping winning vitality into most of them. . . . Some Can Whistle ripples with simple ironies and comedic asides on modern life. . . . Its characters are affecting. And the hoops, swoops, and loops of its plot are fun.”

  — Newsday

  “A cast of quirky, yet realistic characters, of which the women are especially strong and memorable . . . moments of laugh-out-loud comedy, followed by scenes of pathos . . . Best of all, its prose is up to the author’s usual high standards, comfortable as a hammock on a lazy summer afternoon. The dialogue is especially tart and revealing, humorous without being jokey or self-conscious. . . . Some Can Whistle is a book of enormous charm and feeling. . . . McMurtry’s latest delivers its fair share of pleasures.”

  —San Francisco Chronicle

  “As in Terms of Endearment and Lonesome Dove, there is a sweet sadness that hovers like a dust cloud. . . . In Some Can Whistle, violence and black humor bump up against each other like cowboys in a roadhouse. . . . Mr. McMurtry remains a master at chronicling the joys and sorrows of family.”

  —The Atlanta Constitution

  “The love-hate interaction is as eloquently drawn as in Terms of Endearment. . . . Emotions erupt and broaden, and lives expand as the story narrows to its wrenching climax. . . . Some Can Whistle sings with poignancy.”

  —The Buffalo News

  “As tinged with tragedy as it is raucously comic . . . McMurtry brings his characters so clearly to life, paints them with such energy and insight . . . that one comes upon a character’s fate with a physical jolt to the heart. This is particularly true of Some Can Whistle. . . . The story . . . unfolds with force and emotional power, possessing the same allegiance to the truth of experience that we have grown accustomed to in the work of this wonderful storyteller. One doesn’t read McMurtry’s novels as much as one is lured by their deceptively simple magic into inhabiting them.”

  —The Washington Post

  “Some Can Whistle is the kind of inspired performance we’ve come to expect, as a matter of course, from Larry McMurtry. . . . If there is a writer in America who can tell a better story or create characters with more depth and resonance, a writer who disappoints less frequently, no one comes to mind. . . . Some Can Whistle is warm, rich, taut, compassionate, and it is thoroughly entertaining. It is Larry McMurtry doing what he seems to do so often and so effortlessly.”

  —Arizona Daily Star

  “In Some Can Whistle, McMurtry somehow inhabits both the city and the plain. . . . The novel succeeds in occupying both places. That is what gives it its uniquely amusing yet wistful flavor.”

  —The New York Times

  “A contemporary tour de farce . . . Some Can Whistle is a salaciously entertaining read, thanks in no small part to McMurtry’s scandalous observations about the Hollywood scene, and the equally scandalous wealth of semi-autobiographical detail. . . . McMurtry is a uniquely talented . . . writer.”

  —Vogue

  “The vivid and easy narrative flow and the handling of characters, theme, and structure that marked Lonesome Dove and Anything for Billy all return in Some Can Whistle. . . . McMurtry’s fiction has never been truer.”

  —San Antonio Express-News

  “Vintage McMurtry . . . in its familiar and outrageous characters, its sudden plot twists, and its mixture of broad and black comedy . . . Some Can Whistle is, finally, a deeply moving book as well.”

  —The Houston Post

  “Like most of McMurtry’s women characters, T.R. glows with toughness, independence, lust, and a strong will. . . . McMurtry makes his Texas characters and Texas places so quirky and real and unforgettable. . . . His characters not only grow on you; they also grow with you.”

  —St. Louis Post-Dispatch

  BY LARRY MC MURTRY

  Sin Killer

  Paradise

  Boone’s Lick

  Roads: Driving America’s Greatest Highways

  Still Wild: Short Fiction of the American West 1950 to the Present

  Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen

  Duane’s Depressed

  Crazy Horse

  Comanche Moon

  Dead Man’s Walk

  The Late Child

  Streets of Laredo

  The Evening Star

  Buffalo Girls

  Some Can Whistle

  Anything for Billy

  Film Flam: Essays on Hollywood

  Texasville

  Lonesome Dove

  The Desert Rose

  Cadillac Jack

  Somebody’s Darling

  Terms of Endearment

  All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers

  Moving On

  The Last Picture Show

  In a Narrow Grave: Essays on Texas

  Leaving Cheyenne

  Horseman, Pass By

  BY LARRY MC MURTRY AND DIANA OSSANA

  Pretty Boy Floyd

  Zeke and Ned

  SOME CAN

  WHISTLE

  Larry

  McMurtry

  Simon & Schuster Paperbacks

  Rockefeller Center

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1989 by Larry McMurtry All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  First Simon & Schuster paperback edition 2004

  SIMON & SCHUSTER PAPERBACKS and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, pleas contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-800-456-6798 or [email protected].

  Designed by Colin Joh

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

  McMurtry, Larry.

  Some can whistle : a novel / Larry McMurtry.

  p. cm.

  1. Thalia (Tex: Imaginary place)—Fiction. 2. Fathers and daughters—

  Fiction. 3. Television writers—Fiction. 4. Texas—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3563.A319 S58 1989

  813’.54–dc20 89-021665

  ISBN: 0-671-64267-7

  eISBN 978-1-4391-2988-3

  0-7432-3016-7 (Pbk.)

  For Jeanie

  ONE

  1

  “Mister Deck, are you my stinkin’ Daddy?” a youthful, female, furious voice said into the phone.

  I could not have been more startled if I had looked up into the blue Texas sky and seen a nuclear bomb on its way down. I was on my south patio, having breakfast with Godwin, watching the fine peachy light of an early summer morning spread over the prairies; I had assumed the call was from my agent, who was in Paris and would soon be swimming up the time zones, hoping to spawn a few deals.

  “I don’t think I stink,” I said politely. The remark caused Godwin to look up from his Cheerios.

  “Stinkin’s what I call it, never speaking to me in my whole life and leavin’ me down her
e with two babies, only gettin’ minimum wage,” the young voice said, even angrier. “I seen it in Parade that you’re the richest writer in the world. Is that the truth or is that a lie?”

  “I probably am among the richest but I’m not exactly a writer,” I said, even more politely.

  The profuse ambiguities of my career held no interest for the blazing young person on the other end of the phone.

  “I don’t give that much of a shit what you are exactly,” she said. “If you’re rich and I’m workin’ in this Mr. Burger supportin’ two babies, then I hope Jesus puts you right where you belong, which is in hell.”

  I heard the wail of an infant, and she hung up.

  2

  Godwin had been patiently watching his last six Cheerios float around in their milk. In his old age he had acquired mystic pretensions; he claimed to see things in the float patterns of Cheerios. Some days he would rattle off to Dallas in his ancient Volkswagen, where he would procure exotic milks (goat, camel—even, he claimed, yak) to float the Cheerios in.

  The phone rang again. The previous call had been so brief, violent, and surreal that I almost felt I had dreamed it. Here was another chance; the morning might yet veer onto a normal course. Probably my agent had just finished his lunch at one of the internationally prominent watering holes he favored, in which case he might now have our European syndication in his pocket.

  I picked up the phone a little gingerly under Godwin’s newly watchful eye.

  “This husband of mine’s got his creepy side,” Nema said. “On the other hand he’s already ready. That’s something, agreed?”

  “Agreed,” I intoned cautiously. Over the years I had learned to resist too-hasty agreement with Nema in her musing about her various husbands and even more various lovers. I was the scale she weighed them on, but often the scale took a lot of balancing. A given guy might tip up or down for an hour or more as Nema—a tiny, hyperenergetic redhead—moved small pros and cons onto the trays of the scale.

  “Even if we got divorced we could still fuck a good bit, I just wouldn’t have to let him use the kitchen,” Nema reasoned. “One of his creepiest habits is that he never cleans the blender.”

  “A bad sign,” I ventured. I was already wishing Nema would hang up and that my angry daughter—if it was my daughter—would call back.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Nema asked, annoyed. “You’re not paying a bit of attention.”

  People who think TV stars are insensitive bimbos should have the experience of a few years of phone calls from Nema Remington. Talking to her took concentration, even if she was just idly musing over whether to sign her guy-of-the-year for a second season before dispatching him to the minors, as it were.

  I had only uttered four words, but the fact that they had not exactly twanged with attentiveness registered in Nema’s brain as evidence of an alarming froideur.

  “Have you fallen in love or what, Danny?” she asked.

  “Of course not, calm down,” I said, “I think my daughter just called.”

  “Your daughter?” she said, surprised—and with reason; I had never seen my daughter and neither had any of my old friends.

  “Well, is she all right?” Nema asked. “Where is she?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “She got mad and hung up. Maybe I better get off this phone, in case she changes her mind and calls again.”

  “I hope she does, what a great thing for you,” Nema said. “Call me back later, I wanta know about this.”

  “I’ll call you back,” I promised.

  “Bye,” Nema said.

  3

  “As I was saying,” Godwin said.

  “You weren’t saying,” I countered. “You hadn’t uttered a syllable.”

  “Quite incorrect,” he insisted, concentrating his gaze on the Cheerios, which were still floating, though heavily milk-logged. “I was merely picking up the conversation where we left off yesterday. We were discussing the first sentences of novels, were we not?”

  “Godwin, my daughter just called!” I said. “Who cares about first sentences of novels? That was my daughter. Her voice sounded a lot like Sally’s.”

  Just saying the word “daughter” filled me with a kind of excitement I had not felt in years—perhaps had never felt. I tried to call up for comparison Sally’s voice, which I hadn’t heard for more than twenty years; I tried to recall some throb or timbre that might connect it with the blistering young tones I had just heard.

  The effort didn’t really succeed, but it was considerably more compelling than the petulant debate Godwin and I had been having for several weeks about what constituted a good first sentence for a novel.

  The debate had begun because—for the first time in many years—I had been trying to write a novel, and I was still hung up on the first sentence.

  “The point I have been patiently trying to make,” Godwin said impatiently, “is that you expect far too much of a first sentence. Think of it as analogous to a good country breakfast: what we want is something simple, but nourishing to the imagination. Hold the philosophy, hold the adjectives, just give us a plain subject and verb and perhaps a wholesome, nonfattening adverb or two.”

  “I hope the phone rings again soon,” I said. “I hope she calls back. I’m almost positive that was my daughter.”

  The phone did ring and I grabbed it, but once again it was a movie star, and not my daughter. Jeanie Vertus’s hopeful voice hit my ear.

  “Hi, this is Jeanie,” she said, as if I wouldn’t know. Two Oscars had not brought Jeanie much self-assurance.

  “Hey, aren’t you the girl with the funny last name?” I said. “What’s that last name again?”

  “You gave it to me, Danny—you know it,” Jeanie said, half reproachful, half abashed. I had found the name Des Vertus in a book on the history of the corset and persuaded Jeanie to use the Vertus part in a film I had produced. Up to then she had just been plain Jeanie Clark, a nice girl from Altadena, working mainly in commercials, touring companies, summer stock. The film was a modest hit, Jeanie got an Oscar nomination, and from then on she was Jeanie Vertus, though she never became comfortable with the implications of the name, virtue being the last thing Jeanie would have laid claim to.

  Though I often teased her about it, I thought the name was a stroke of genius—Jeanie’s own ambivalence toward it created an inner frisson that made her all the more appealing. It was in part her effort to grow into her own stage name that made Jeanie the great star she later became.

  “Is the sun shining there?” she asked. “It’s not peeping through in New York.”

  One of the many things we shared was a need for frequent sunlight.

  “Guess what—my daughter just called,” I said.

  “Is that why you sound happy?” Jeanie asked.

  “Do I sound happy?”

  “I’ve never heard such a sound in your voice, Danny,” she said. “It’s as good as the sun peeping through. What’s her name?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “She didn’t give me a chance to ask. But I’m hoping she’ll call back.”

  “I’m getting off this phone, just in case,” Jeanie said, hanging up.

  4

  At that point Gladys walked up to collect the breakfast dishes. Godwin had just opened his mouth to say something—no doubt he meant to expound on his theory of first sentences—but he noticed Gladys just in time and quickly shut up.

  Gladys and Godwin were the same size—small—and they both had white hair, but there the resemblance ended. Godwin was English, Gladys was Texan, and a lot of twain lay in between.

  “That phone’s been ringing off the hook. Are all your girlfriends pregnant or what?”

  She stood beside Godwin’s chair and counted the Cheerios floating in his milk.

  “Six again,” she said. “What’s so special about six? Are you into numerology or what?”

  Neither Godwin nor I uttered a sound. We both knew all too well that the ever voluble
Gladys was a veritable symphony of volubility at this hour of the day. The most casual word from either of us would unleash an uncheckable stream of speculation and commentary.

  “Have you wrote down the first sentence of your book yet?” Gladys asked, fixing me with a pale blue eye.

  “Yes, would you like to hear it?” I asked.

  Godwin groaned and buried his head in his hands.

  “Oh, shut up, Godwin!” I said. “My tongue gets tired of being held captive every morning.”

  Gladys pulled up a chair, made herself comfortable, and poured a half-inch layer of sugar on a grapefruit I’d neglected. She looked cheerful. Gladys knew perfectly well why Godwin and I clammed up when she came around. She knew we thought she talked too much.

  “Yes, and my ears will get tired of hearing what she says now,” Godwin remarked, with some bitterness.

  “I thought your hearing was shot anyway,” Gladys retorted. “You’re supposed to be deaf, so what’s it to you if a lonely old woman chatters at you in the morning? You ought to be grateful for the company. Reach me that spoon.”

  Godwin handed her a spoon, which was soon plowing through the sugary grapefruit.

  The phone rang again and I snatched it.

  “Will you accept a collect call from T.R.?” an operator asked.

  “From whom?” I asked, surprised.

  “From his daughter!” the hot young voice said at once.

  “Yes, yes,” I said, suddenly frantic. “Of course I accept. I accept.”

  “Go ahead, miss,” the operator said.

  “I ain’t talkin’ if you’re listenin’,” my daughter said to the operator. “This is private between me and my daddy.”

  Then she began to cry. Loud jerky sobs came through the phone, shocking me so that I promptly dropped the receiver, which bounced off the table and hit Gladys on the foot. Though I had spent years of my life listening to women cry into telephones, none of the weepers had been my daughter. I was completely undone—nor was the steely-nerved Gladys exactly a model of calm. She kicked the receiver two or three times before finally catching it and handing it back to me.