Ten years from now, maybe.
When the people who are making pictures for that little box are squeezed and hungry for space.
Sell it then."
"What will we do with it in the meantime?
Let it rot while we pay taxes on it?"
"No," I said. "Turn it into a rental studio like the old Goldwyn lot.
If we break even or lose a little, I won't complain."
He stared at me. "You really mean it?"
"I mean it," I said, looking away from him up at the roof over the stages.
For the first time, I really saw it.
It was black and ugly with tar.
"Mac, see that roof?" He turned and looked, squinting against the setting sun. "Before you do anything else," I said softly, "have them paint it white."
I pulled my head back into the car.
Nevada looked at me strangely. His voice was almost sad.
"Nothing's changed, has it, Junior?"
"No," I said wearily. "Nothing's changed."
8.
I sat on the porch, squinting out into the afternoon sun.
Nevada came out of the house behind me and dropped into a chair.
He pulled a plug out of his pocket and biting off a hunk, put the plug back.
Then from his other pocket, he took a piece of wood and a penknife and began to whittle.
I looked at him.
He was wearing a pair of faded blue levis.
A sweat-stained old buckskin shirt, that had seen better days, clung to his deep chest and broad shoulders and he had a red-and-white kerchief tied around his neck to catch the perspiration.
Except for his white hair, he looked as I always remembered him when I was a boy, his hands quick and brown and strong.
He looked up at me out of his light eyes.
"Two lost arts," he said.
"What?"
"Chewin' an' whittlin'," he said.
I didn't answer.
He looked down at the piece of wood in his hands.
"Many's the evenin' I spent on the porch with your pa, chewin' an' whittlin'."
"Yeah?"
He turned and let fly a stream of tobacco juice over the porch rail into the dust below. He turned back to me.
"I recall one night," he said.
"Your pa an' me, we were settin' here, just like now.
It'd been a real bitcheroo of a day. One of them scorchers that make your balls feel like they're drownin' in their own sweat.
Suddenly he looks up at me an' says,
'Nevada, anything should happen to me, you look after my boy, hear?
Jonas is a good boy.
Sometimes his ass gets too much for his britches but he's a good boy an' he's got the makin's in him to be a better man than his daddy, someday.
I love that boy, Nevada.
He's all I got.' "
"He never told me that," I said, looking at Nevada. "Not ever. Not once!"
Nevada's eyes flashed up at me.
"Men like your daddy ain't given much to talkin' about things like that."
I laughed.
"He not only didn't talk it," I said. "He never showed it.
He was always chewing on my ass for one thing or another."
Nevada's eyes bore straight into mine.