I’ve Seen Texas Twice in Person and Once on FaceTime, and I’m Good Now
Miles Varana
I’m nine, and Texas is a John Ford epic.
A toy store in Austin: gallon-sized LEGO buckets and mildewy Sorry! boards. Geckos scurry across water-stained ceiling tiles like tiny cowboys on a dusty range. Adults huddle by a wall-mounted TV, talking of war. I dawdle by the glass vitrine where the bigger pocket knives are kept, doing my best to fill my eyes with doe-like yearning in the vain hope that my mom will forget her Draconian no-deadly-objects-in-the-hands-of-nine-year-olds policy. As usual, there’s no such luck to be had. Before long we’re back in our rented Civic, sliding up I-35, North over the river and past downtown’s collection of squat, carefree structures. We’re in Austin for a conference my mom was invited to speak at. Even at nine, I can tell it’s a funny town: old women in fatigues drum buckets in the streets, mushroom hearts and Mr. Rogers stretch lushly over exposed brick. On Congress Ave, piercings adorn the faces of two men in tasseled jackets who walk hand-in-hand. These men are not like my mother’s friends, the bespectacled, dog-walking gay couples of the upper Midwest. They are the rugged gays of the frontier. With their leather boots and fringe trim, I’m certain they are cowboys. Real life cowboys. After all, why not? Brokeback Mountain is in theaters, and although I’m not allowed to see it, I’ve pretty much figured out what it’s about. After a few days of big city blocks and hotel pools, we head West for Big Bend, the road a haze of dead ground and open sky. In the backseat I play with imaginary six-shooters and practice yodeling while my mom swears and rereads the map.
I’m 18, and Texas is slipping away from me.
FaceTime with Sadie: the picture lags on the pretty yellow ground by her truck. It’s winter break and we’re both home from Hawaii, where we go to school. She’s in central Texas and I’m in Wisconsin. We’re trying to make things work, but trying is hard: it’s been less than a month since I beat up the volunteer firefighter she was fucking in Hawaii. I was wearing a white shirt when I went after him at the smoke pit by the plumeria bushes. It’s important to never fight in a white shirt, because the sight of blood and the smell of plumeria flowers can leave a person shaken; more than the cops, more than the yelling crowd. She only fucked the firefighter because she walked in on me with another guy. I only beat up the firefighter because he said something about it. Sadie’s parents run a meth lab. She hates home, but she loves Texas. She loves the heat and scorpions and the cheery condescension of truck stop waitresses. She hates her mom, who’s shot at her twice while high. She loves the hard dirt and Dollar General. Her ex-fiance rode bulls in the county rodeo and tried to make it big on the PRCA circuit, but failed. He ended up joining the Army instead, just before I did, and left her for another woman. She still loves him. Her life is a Ripley’s Believe it or Not! of un-fun facts, and I am steadily being written into the latest chapter. I look at Texas on my screen. The dead grass by the truck, the T-Bell parking lot. Sadie’s voice comes through in bits and pieces, chopped up by some coil of damaged radio waves. I hear nothing but bitter, senseless vowels.
I’m 22, and Texas is filled with the young dead.
Fort Hood: home of the First Cavalry Division, wind sweeping over the dust tracts. The Army has me here on yet another opaque temporary assignment. I’ve been attached to a maintenance company responsible for maintaining the equipment that maintains the special vehicles sent out to retrieve and repair 72-ton M1 Abrams tanks, which frequently break down in the field as a result of improper maintenance. Nobody, myself included, knows what my purpose is here, so I sit behind a desk in a gasoline-reeking corner of the motor pool. I keep my laptop open and assume an expression of annoyance as a general deterrent to approach. Occasionally a tired-looking Lieutenant will come by with standard forms in need of signing, but otherwise I play Civilization V with the volume turned down low. The soldiers of the 602nd Support Maintenance Company, like me, are tragically bored. They’re fat and fail PT and regret joining the Army. They lovelessly marry Qdoba employees and pull handguns in the street. They go AWOL for weeks and end up jailed for whoring in El Paso or Shreveport. Sometimes they come by the desk, hands clasped shyly behind their backs, and ask what college is like.
Three weeks in the same hotel is too long. My bathtub fills with Lone Star empties and the staff is beginning to gossip. I know so because one morning at the continental breakfast buffet I hear them whispering my room number. 130. 130. Aimee, who works the front desk, has stopped appearing when I ring the bell each night at 2 with the armful of HotPockets I’ve selected for purchase from the lobby snack nook. I wake up every morning at 5, dry like a husk, and wheeze my way through PT. Afterwards I thank god for Pedialyte and hardboiled eggs.
On my second weekend at Fort Hood, I’ve had enough of it, and decide, fuck it, I’ll head to Austin. It’s a funny town: towering condos and gin yoga spots. Big money, sure, but there’s a madness that comes with growth: addicts shrieking at bus stops, food trucks robbed in broad daylight. I meet an old acquaintance from Hawaii for drinks on Rainey St. After I left Hawaii, he transferred to Oberlin, graduated, and came out of the closet. Go figure. Despite the boat shoes and suspenders he wears, I agree to go back to his place. Afterwards we drink too much of his bourbon. I wander from room to room looking at bookshelves and family pictures as he follows, pontificating about the nuances of his existence as a twenty-three-year-old working at a tech startup. In the living room, in a glass case above the mantle, there’s a replica of an old Henry rifle hanging up, the kind Custer’s doomed troops shot at Little Bighorn.
Pretty cool, huh, says the Oberlin grad. Do you want to see it? Do you want to see it?
Miles Varana’s work has appeared in Typehouse, The Penn Review, and Passages North. He has worked previously as a staff reader and managing editor at Hawai’i Pacific Review. Miles currently works for WKBT News in La Crosse, Wisconsin, where he does his best to be a good Millennial despite disliking tandem bike rides.
