Plant dead, wife gone, Michael still has his dog and his grandmother, and she can be counted on for words of encouragement, mail-order delicacies, and money. Now that they are alone together, he devotes most of his time to Silas, and takes better care of him than ever before. He gives Silas Milk-Bones so that his teeth will be clean. He always has good intentions, but before he knows it he has smoked some hash and put on “One Little Story that the Crow Told Me,” and there is Silas listening to the music, with his clean, white teeth bared.
Michael is living in a house that belongs to some friends named Prudence and Richard. They have gone to Manila. Michael doesn’t have to pay any rent — just the heat and electricity bills. Since he never turns a light on, the bill will be small. And on nights when he smokes hash he turns the heat down to fifty-five. He does this gradually — smoke for an hour, turn it from seventy to sixty-five; smoke another hour and put it down to fifty-five. Prudence, he discovers, is interested in acupuncture. There is a picture in one of her books of a man with his face contorted with agony, with a long, thin spike in his back. No. He must be imagining that. Usually Michael doesn’t look at the books that are lying around. He goes through Prudence’s and Richard’s bureau drawers. Richard wears size thirty-two Jockey shorts. Prudence has a little blue barrette for her hair. Michael has even unwrapped some of the food in the freezer. Fish. He thinks about defrosting it and eating it, but then he forgets. He usually eats two cans of Campbell’s Vegetarian Vegetable soup for lunch and four Chunky Pecan candy bars for dinner. If he is awake in time for breakfast, he smokes hash.
One evening, the phone rings. Silas gets there first, as usual, but he can’t answer it. Poor old Silas. Michael lets him out the door before he answers the phone. He notices that Ray has come calling. Ray is a female German shepherd, named by the next-door neighbor’s children. Silas tries to mount Ray.
“Richard?” says the voice on the telephone.
“Yeah. Hi,” Michael says.
“Is this Richard?”
“Right.”
“It doesn’t sound like you, Richard.”
“You sound funny, too. What’s new?”
“What? You really sound screwed up tonight, Richard.”
“Are you in a bad mood or something?” Michael counters.
“Well, I might be surprised that we haven’t talked for months, and I call and you just mutter.”
“It’s the connection.”
“Richard, this doesn’t sound like you.”
“This is Richard’s mother. I forgot to say that.”
“What are you so hostile about, Richard? Are you all right?”
“Of course I am.”
“O.K. This is weird. I called to find out what Prudence was going to do about California.”
“She’s going to go,” Michael says.
“You’re kidding me.”
“No.”
“Oh — I guess I picked the wrong time to call. Why don’t I call you back tomorrow?”
“O.K.,” Michael says. “Bye.”
Prudence left exact directions about how to take care of her plants. Michael has it down pretty well by now, but sometimes he just splashes some water on them. These plants moderately damp, those quite damp, some every third day — what does it matter? A few have died, but a few have new leaves. Sometimes Michael feels guilty and he hovers over them, wondering what you do for a plant that is supposed to be moderately dry but is soaking wet. In addition to watering the plants, he tries to do a few other things that will be appreciated. He has rubbed some oil into Prudence’s big iron frying pan and has let it sit on the stove. Once, Silas went out and rolled in cow dung and then came in and rolled on the kitchen floor, and Michael was very conscientious about washing that. The same day, he found some chalk in the kitchen cabinet and drew a hopscotch court on the floor and jumped around a little bit. Sometimes he squirts Silas with some of Prudence’s Réplique, just to make Silas mad. Silas is the kind of dog who would be offended if a homosexual approached him. Michael thinks of the dog as a displaced person. He is aware that he and the dog get into a lot of clichéd situations — man with dog curled at his side, sitting by fire; dog accepts food from man’s hand, licks hand when food is gone. Prudence was reluctant to let the big dog stay in the house. Silas won her over, though. Making fine use of another cliché at the time, Silas curled around her feet and beat his tail on the rug.
“Where’s Richard?” Sam asks.
“Richard and Prudence went to Manila.”
“Manila? Who are you?”
“I lost my job. I’m watching the house for them.”
“Lost your job—”
“Yeah. I don’t mind. Who wants to spend his life watching out that his machine doesn’t get him?”
“Where were you working?”
“Factory.”
Sam doesn’t have anything else to say. He was the man on the telephone, and he would like to know why Michael pretended to be Richard on the phone, but he sort of likes Michael and sees that it was a joke.
“That was pretty funny when we talked on the phone,” he says. “At least I’m glad to hear she’s not in California.”
“It’s not a bad place,” Michael says.
“She has a husband in California. She’s better off with Richard.”
“I see.”
“What do you do here?” Sam asks. “Just watch out for burglars?”
“Water the plants. Stuff like that.”
“You really got me good on the phone,” Sam says.
“Yeah. Not many people have called.”
“You have anything to drink here?” Sam asks.
“I drank all their liquor.”
“Like to go out for a beer?” Sam asks.
“Sure.”
Sam and Michael go to a bar Michael knows called Happy Jack’s. It’s a strange place, with “Heat Wave” on the jukebox, along with Tammy Wynette’s “Too Far Gone.”
“I wouldn’t mind passing an evening in the sweet arms of Tammy Wynette, even if she is a redneck,” Sam says.
The barmaid puts their empty beer bottles on her tray and walks away.
“She’s got big legs,” Michael says.
“But she’s got nice soft arms,” Sam says. “Like Tammy Wynette.”
As they talk, Tammy is singing about love and barrooms.
“What do you do?” Michael asks Sam.
“I’m a shoe salesman.”
“That doesn’t sound like much fun.”
“You didn’t ask me what I did for fun. You asked me what my job was.”
“What do you do for fun?” Michael asks.
“Listen to Tammy Wynette records,” Sam says.
“You think about Tammy Wynette a lot.”
“I once went out with a girl who looked like Tammy Wynette,” Sam says. “She wore a nice low-cut blouse, with white ruffles, and black high-heel shoes.”
Michael rubs his hand across his mouth.
“She had downy arms. You know what I mean. They weren’t really hairy,” Sam says.
“Excuse me,” Michael says.
In the bathroom, Michael hopes that Happy Jack isn’t drunk anywhere in the bar. When he gets drunk he likes to go into the bathroom and start fights. After a customer has had his face bashed in by Happy Jack, his partners usually explain to the customer that he is crazy. Today, nobody is in the bathroom except an old guy at the washbasin, who isn’t washing, though. He is standing there looking in the mirror. Then he sighs deeply.