Thomas McGuane - The Sporting Club

“What more do we require?” sneeped Scott to Spengler, turning then to Fortescue. He emphasized the significance of his question by letting his mouth drop open and shifting his jaw to one side. “What more?” He had short teeth and he wrinkled his nose.

“He’s pressing all right,” said Fortescue, principally to Quinn. Quinn looked up wordlessly at this collector of military miniatures.

“He’s not all bad,” Quinn said, stringing along.

“We know that,” Scott said correctively, cocking his jaw again as though now to receive a blow, squinting. “We also know that he wishes to destroy our club and that for which it stands.”

“What are you getting at?” Quinn wanted his swim.

“What we’re getting at,” Fortescue began firmly, then came to so helpless a halt that Spengler had to recover.

“The point is we want to fire Olson but we want to know if that is part of Stanton’s plan to destroy our club—”

“—and that for which it stands,” Scott added.

“Why don’t you really outfox him,” said Quinn, “and keep Olson on.”

“Don’t give us that,” said Scott’s averted face, “we’re on to it.” At that moment, Stanton appeared in the anchored boat, head thrown back, one arm crooked behind his head, a grotesquely muscled merman, the sun standing in the water around him like blossoms, glittering and collecting toward the shore where it cooled and disappeared.

“There he is again,” Spengler cried as though he’d wanted to grab a harpoon and jump into a whaleboat. His eyes were wide and his light hair swam nervously in the wind.

“The point is,” Scott thrust in suddenly, another of his academic surprise strategies, “that you seem to have a modicum of sense even if your confrere doesn’t. You’re the only possible mediator and we figure you’re essentially on our team.”

“Oh, no,” Quinn said, “that’s completely wrong. I’m afraid you misjudge me.” Fortescue laughed his sanguine nobleman’s war laugh.

“We’ve been outflanked,” he said.

“Somewhat,” Quinn said, “in any case.”

“You’re playing it real wrong,” Spengler insisted.

“Oh, no,” Quinn said in surprise. “You’ve got it all mixed up again. I’m not playing anything. I’m on vacation.”

“So are we!” enthused Fortescue, playing the good old sport. But in his eyes, so much like those of an unsuccessful spaniel, was something furtive. From the boat came the sound of Stanton imitating an air-raid siren. They all looked over. What appeared to be the head of an enormous pink baby was rising over the gunwale — Stanton’s naked buttocks. Each of them, for his own reasons, was stunned by this gratuity. Quinn, sharply resisting his first impulse, admired Stanton’s expertise in showing only his ass from such a lowslung craft. Nothing could have been more singular than the marionette-like rising of this fleshy dome from the rocking stage of the boat. But Quinn’s memory was taking over.

“Jeepers Christmas,” Spengler said. The others were talking and going off; Quinn didn’t hear them. History had crowded his skull that instant and he could have cried. He sat down and dangled now shoeless feet in the chill water and watched trout fry dart through the flat green weed as Stanton coursed toward him on sharp strokes of the oars, his cathedral back making regular hydraulic movements forward and back. Presently, he was beside the dock, the double-ender still as though it had never moved.

“What are you doing?” Quinn had collected himself.

“Seeking treasure.”

“You horrified them.”

“Child’s play. Get in. I found a wreck. Help me raise it and we split the take.” Quinn climbed aboard and sat in one end. The boat settled unevenly; Stanton was in the middle seat. As he began to row toward the middle of the lake, Quinn felt the boat lift slightly with each stroke. A wake of bubbles poured from the stem and Quinn imagined he was an officer in a blue tricorn, a brass telescope clapped shut in his lap, rowed to a defeated vessel by a piratic mate; then distant cannon reports over a steamy green sea. Stanton swung the boat around a floating Clorox bottle, tethered at its handle by an anchor line. He uncoiled a rope from under the seat and tied one end to the bow cleat, then without putting on the aqualung or even the mask, dove over the side with one end of the rope into the clear water that allowed his progress to be followed into a bluish, bubbled distance where he shrank from sight. He was gone a full minute before he rocketed into view and blew free of the surface. “The bends!” He rolled over the side. He sat down, took a hold of the rope and pulled it taut. Quinn got his hands on it too and they began to haul. At first, the boat heaved over but Quinn moved to the high side and they hauled more slowly until gradually Quinn began to feel something give and then let go altogether as they pulled, becoming only weight to be raised; they lifted hand over hand, no more than thirty feet of hard finished rope when Stanton said it was enough and took two turns around the oar lock. “Move carefully now and have a look.”

Quinn leaned over the side and saw, about eight feet below them, suspended in the clear and dimensionless water, a sleigh, a single-horse cutter, as delicate as a scroll, hanging by the thin rope tied between the high curling runners. Stanton said that he had had to leave the horse behind, the skeleton that is, of a small horse, all four legs fallen directly beneath and pointing behind, the skull stretched forward like an arrowhead, as though the horse had been drawing the sleigh. They towed the sleigh behind and the rope rubbed and ground upon the stern with unseen motions. When they got to shore, they beached the rowboat, waded out, untied the sleigh and, carrying it between them, brought it ashore, upright and streaming with water, to set it high in the sunlight and on the grass. It was perfect. It might have been put to use. Then Stanton sat upon its narrow seat and it slung a little with his weight. Quinn carefully got on beside him.

“This rather redeems me as a treasure hunter, what?” asked Stanton.

“How do you mean?”

“The Mormon boat I told you about was raised a century ago, a few hours after it sank.”

“By who?”

“By its crew.”

“What will you do with this?”

“Buy a horse for it. Run wild like some intolerably picturesque Ukrainian. You’re invited. Bring sable coat.”

“I won’t be there at all.”

“Probably not.” He got to his feet. “More’s the pity. Now I have an appointment with Herr Olson as per your suggestion.”

“Do the right thing.”

“I have my own ideas about what that is.”

“You’re hedging,” said Quinn, seeing too late that the fears of Fortescue, Spengler and Scott might have been justified.

“I’m not hedging. I am not a germ. I am not a coward. I have every intention of comporting myself as a gentleman.”

“Never mind the medieval stuff. Do the right thing.”

“What is this? What are you, a Dominican friar?”

“You’re hedging,” Quinn interrupted; but Stanton went right on; he would not be dissuaded.

“We get all the correction and fun-spoiling from you but where is the fucking benediction? Where is it?”

“I don’t know what I’ve done with it.”

“No—”

“But I have it somewhere.”

“You do not. You’re in the service of my enemies, trying to spoil my innocent pleasures.”

“Innocent pleasures.”

“They are. I haven’t nosed around your domestic arrangements the way you have mine. And I’ll bet mine are comparatively innocent. I have a feeling you’ve got closets full of whips and black capes, all the deviationist impedimenta.” Quinn didn’t answer. He reached and touched one of the runners sweeping up in front of them; the runners pressed below into the heavy June grass that swept up the hill to the black trees, beyond which Quinn’s house stood barely invisible. “What are you doing to me, Quinn?” Stanton wouldn’t look at him.