Giant by Edna Ferber Page A

she called back to Bick. “What must Coronado think! Except for a few liquor spotson the carpet and cigarette burns on the wood everything has stood up wonderfully this past year. I hope Hernando de Soto has done as well for the King and Queen.”
    “You were all right on the plane. You promised me you would be and you were.” He stood in the great doorway in shirt and shorts and bedroom slippers, a costume becoming only to males of twenty and those in the men’s underwear advertisements. “I know you didn’t want to come but we had to and you damn well know why. Even if millions are dross to you. I don’t bother you with business affairs but you had to know that and now I’m telling you again…. And where’s Luz I’d like to know! And Jordy and Juana. Why couldn’t they come with us the way other people’s kids would! No, Luz had to fly her own, and Jordan and Juana had to drive. And now where are they! And you stand there and talk about the climate of Pennsylvania and Meissen and Coronado and what’s the opposite of lebensraum. And spots on the carpet.”
    She went to him, she had to stand on tiptoe, tall though she was.
    “If you don’t mind the cold cream I can stand the shaving soap.” She kissed him not at all gingerly. “No soap there, at least.”
    “You hate the whole thing, don’t you? As much as ever. That’s why you talk like a—like a——”
    “Like one of those women in the Marquand novels you don’t read. Very quippy. Don’t worry about the children. They’ll make the dinner. Their behavior is odd but their manners are beautiful.”
    “Like their mother, wouldn’t you say?”
    “That’s right, amigo. We’d better dress. Entacucharse, eh?”
    “Now listen, Leslie. It’s bad enough having Luz talking pachuco. Where do you hear it? The boys on our place don’t talk like that.”
    “Oh, yes they do. The young ones. The kids in the garage. And on the street corners in Benedict. Just today in the kitchen that young Domingo Quiroz, Ezequiel’s grandson, was looking at a leaky pipe that needed welding. He said, ‘La paipa está likeando hay que hueldearla.’ That’s the sort of Spanish the kids are speaking.”
    “Entacucharse, eh? Dress to kill. Well, I haven’t a zoot suit, have I?”
    “I had Eusebio pack your white dinner clothes and black cummerbund and I’ve even ordered a deep red carnation for your buttonhole—probably the only red carnation in Texas. You’ll be smart as paint.”
    He glanced down at himself, he contracted his stomach muscles sharply. “Riding does it. Everybody else lolling around in cars all the time. Even the vaqueros ride herd in jeeps half the time.”
    “Just remember to tuck in like that when you wrap your lithe frame into your cummerbund or you’ll never make the first button. Look. We’ll have to dress.”
    Here in southern Texas as in the tropics, there was little lingering twilight. It was glaring daylight, it was dark.
    “Where’re those damned kids!”
    “Luz is probably out at the airfield chumming with the mechanics. Perhaps Jordy and Juana decided not to come. And even if they did, you know they’re driving. That takes——”
    “Thanks. I know how long it takes. I’m kind of from Texas too, remember?”
    He was like that now. On the defensive, moody.
    “Yes, dear. Get into our clothes and then we’d better give our Noah’s Ark a roll call. Shall we go as we came out—you with the King and Queen and I with—doesn’t it sound silly!”
    Hermoso’s old airport, so soon to be discarded, seemed a dim and dated thing huddling shabbily, wistfully, outside the glow and sparkle of the Jett Rink palace. Planes were coming and going on the old strip. Against the solid fences that separated the two fields were massed thousands of townspeople staring, staring, their white faces almost luminous in the reflected light. They talked and milled and shoved and drank Coca-Cola and the small children chased each other round and about