November 22, 2009
UTNE READER

Quitters' Paradise

(Page 7 of 7)

September/October 1996
Robert Draper, Texas Monthly (www.texasmonthly.com) 
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Nowadays he makes dinosaurs for Big Al's miniature golf course and busts of the Virgin Mary to sell across the border. The savage beast is soothed. 'I got the monkey off my back,' he says proudly, though, he confesses, 'Three weeks ago I nearly beat up a guy. He showed up from out of state, and immediately he starts hassling me. I told him to stay away, but he wouldn't.'

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Spider takes a gulp of his Budweiser, then says, 'But I held back. And eventually somebody else beat him up pretty good, and he split. See, because I waited, now it ain't on my conscience. I feel at peace.'

The cackle that follows suggests 'Stay tuned.' But no one is worried about Spider anymore. He has his first home, his first mailbox in 20 years, and though all those years of marginal living trigger the occasional compulsion to withdraw (he sometimes sleeps in the cave on his property), Spider is usually among the first to claim a spot on the trading company porch every afternoon. In Terlingua, he has at last found a place where he belongs.

Part of Utne Reader cover story, September/October 1996.

Photographs by James Evans of Terlingua available in print magazine only.

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