Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Master's Theses Graduate School 2002 Advent Gregory Baxter Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_theses Part of the Creative Writing Commons Recommended Citation Baxter, Gregory, "Advent" (2002). LSU Master's Theses. 947. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_theses/947 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Master's Theses by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ADVENT A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts in The Department of English by Gregory W. Baxter B.A., University of Texas, 1996 M.A., University of Sussex, 1997 May 2002 TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT....................................................................................................................................iii PART ONE ......................................................................................................................................1 PART TWO ...................................................................................................................................72 PART THREE..................................................................................................................................122 VITA ...............................................................................................................................................167 ii ABSTRACT The novel follows the lives of a family in a Texas tourist town after a stranger’s arrival. iii PART ONE We saw the rescue party boxed in by the aftermath of a small altercation on the road. Deke was driving the truck, George, with a strange three-legged dog on his lap, sat beside him, and a handful of men George knew were squatting in the bed. It was late afternoon, just before dusk, and they looked miserable and tired. They had hurried getting organized, and now this. A tourist bus had tried to turn around in the middle of the too-narrow road, and reversed into a brand-new Volvo. The crash hadn’t left a mark, nothing, but the owner of the car, a silver-haired elegant woman, was livid and kept threatening the bus driver, a diminutive bald man with glasses. Because the accident had stopped traffic, people wandered into the street to mingle. Like it was a party. Tourists on foot, tourists on dude-ranch horses, and locals trying to sell cheap merchandise filled the street. The men were stuck behind this mess for twenty minutes, not able to reverse through the bodies and traffic jammed behind them. During that time, somebody asked George where they were going, and he said the dog had found something. Did the dog tell you? George didn’t answer. Well, how’s he going to lead you from inside the truck? George said they’d either figure it out or they wouldn’t, but the dog seemed frantic enough to try. It was trying to leap out of his lap. Deke raised his eyes when George made this argument, and the men in the back laughed a little thoughtlessly, knowing George’s history with rescue parties, and shrugged. Traffic cleared, and somehow that dog led them, barking toward the right directions, whining at the wrong, into the countryside, down one road and up another, passing cattle, passing old cars and trucks rusting in the dim but violet sun of that September. They came to a hill where the road stopped, turning either left or right, but the dog didn’t bark at anything but straight ahead. It must be this hill, said George. Deke took them as high as they could get, until they had to hike the rest. Except for Deke, who stayed, slouched, and turned up the radio. They all took flashlights, the beams of which scattered against the trees. The dog was right. It led them up a narrow path, bordered on 1 each side by succulents and small bushes, until even the men could smell the scent they were approaching, which was very sweet at first, but as it lingered in their noses it grew sour. A man, sweating and gray and afflicted, lying beside a tree, was what the dog had brought them for. They caught him all at once with the flashlights. His leg was foul, cut by something, and everyone winced when they saw it. It was dark evening then, and by the time they’d fixed a makeshift splint to his leg, lifted him up, carried him back to the truck, and got moving, it was night. They were gathered around him in the bed, posing their faces to the wind to avoid the stench. A while later, when the truck turned onto the big road toward San Antonio and the air cooled, the men in the back folded their arms. There were four lanes instead of two, and the dividing lines were bright and the surface smooth. Around them, lights in the hills flickered. The sky went from moon-gray to artificial violet, city-over-the-hill lit. A car passed going the other direction, and another. The rescue party watched restlessly ahead of them. Then the truck came around one long dipping bend finally, and at the foot of it a gas station, then a traffic light. They went under a bridge and the whole city burst forth after. At the hospital, George told Deke to get more cigarettes. Why don’t we just leave him? asked Deke. George looked at his son-in-law. We brought him down here, he said. We might as well see if he’ll make it. Deke turned and walking back to the truck said, Whatever, into the wind, quiet enough so no one would hear though everyone did. The swagger that his legs made made George sick. Feet wide in circle swing, heel scraping pavement. When Deke got in the truck, he looked at the men standing around like bored schoolboys and yelled, Somebody want to come with me? The men who had come along with George were all George’s age, or near it, except for one, a man named Kyle, Deke’s age, maybe thirty-five, who said he’d go, and hurried over to the truck. Kyle wore an old baseball cap and looked horrendous in it. No one ever said so since his crimped red hair was worse. He had some freckles on his arms and his skin sagged flabbily at his chest and waist. George and the others turned back around to the hospital, which showered them in dim red light. Deke’s truck squealed out of the lot, and the others retreated to the grass. The men forgot the dog had come along, and one of them tripped over it, yelled and kicked its ribs hard enough to knock it over. It was your damn fault, said George. It’s late and I’m ready to go. Me too, said another. All right, said George. When Deke gets back we’ll go. Everyone’s hopes sunk when George said that, since they knew Deke and knew Deke didn’t care, and since the bars were still open and presumably there were women there who wanted company. And their hopes sunk further when George dug through his pack and pulled out a single cigarette, saying, This is it. It was midnight then. And down the road, maybe four or five miles, Deke did have his arms around some beautiful woman, ordering her drinks and speaking into her neck, while Kyle sat at the bar wondering if they ought to go back soon, but dying himself to speak to the woman. Kyle would 2 turn to Deke and say, Listen, I ought to walk back, though Deke would just say, Good idea, and he would slump back to his beer. He had never meant to actually go but only to get the woman’s attention. The woman’s eyes were sleepy, and her head sank and bobbed. She wore a black top and gray skirt and a gold bracelet with diamonds in it, and it was impossible to say how she could’ve started talking to Deke in his jeans and t-shirt except for all her martinis and maybe curiosity, since under his rags Deke was statue-handsome, with black hair and dark skin and brown, Labradorlike eyes. She asked Deke’s name a dozen times and once or twice Deke told her, but got tired and had her guess it eventually. She would smile and her eyelids would seem to lift though it was instead her whole head that rose, and she would ask, You married? Then her head would fall on Deke’s shoulder. On and on it went with Deke and the woman, and his hand going up her bare leg wasn’t being stopped. Kyle was watching them intensely, but embarrassed and trying to hold in his stomach, and Deke saw this and winked at him, and introduced him at last, saying to the woman, Meet my buddy Kyle. He likes you too. She said, noticing how Kyle’s cheeks bunched under his tiny eyes and his ears under the hat, You married? You like him? asked Deke. The woman laughed. Is he married? And finally it occurred to Deke. Hey, he asked the woman, are you married? to which she rolled her eyes and smiled and didn’t answer. Hell, said Deke, we’re all married. I bet you drive a truck, said the woman, and the cigarette she had lit but hadn’t smoked burned down at last to the filter and went out. She lit another and put it in the ashtray. I want to see it. It was past one by then. The three of them walked out with a bottle of vodka and the woman walked by a Mercedes and kicked a fender with the toe of her expensive black shoes, and then dropped a set of keys beside a tire.