He was, they say, a ladies’ man who had his way with the waitresses at his bar, and when they got pregnant, he got rid of them. He was a bootlegger and a gambler, a scion of the richest family in tiny Elmendorf, about fifteen miles southeast of downtown San Antonio. He looks like, on this day or one like it, he could get his girlfriend drunk, entice her to look off into the distance, shoot her in the head, bury her in the sand, and then return home to his bar, his waitresses, and his alligators. If, however, you’ve heard the legend of Joe Ball, his close-cropped hair and cramped face make him appear sordid, murderous. If you didn’t know Joe Ball’s history, you might think he was just another old-time party boy, a genteel William Faulkner look-alike whooping it up. He’s handsome in a roguish way and looks at the camera with either a squint or a sneer-it’s hard to tell which. He’s standing barefoot in white sand next to weedy brush, like the kind that grows in the dunes along the Texas coast.
His right hand grips an open whiskey bottle at his belly, as if between sips, and his left holds what appears to be a pair of binoculars. IN THE PHOTOGRAPH JOE BALL pauses on a beach, wearing one of those old-fashioned bathing suits.
0 kommentar(er)
