Thomas McGuane - The Sporting Club

“Not anything bad for you.”

“This has been a disappointment,” Stanton said. Quinn had forgotten what his serious voice was like. Free of irony, it seemed maybe less distinguished.

“We couldn’t keep up the old thing. That was insanity. If you don’t outgrow it, the world leaves you holding the bag.”

“That’s all very good, since you want to get philosophical, if the world is very good. But it’s not. It’s bad. However, with surprising common sense, the world is building the bombs it deserves, and until such a time as those bombs are used, I intend to treat it like the shit it is.” The speech fell from Stanton’s mouth phrase after phrase, in complete readiness. He meant it, evidently; but Quinn told him he didn’t. This seemed to irritate Stanton profoundly and he wouldn’t have said anything more, even if Scott hadn’t come up the lakeshore and tried to slip by in his characteristically abject fashion. He saw himself seen and said, “What’s that thing?”

“A one-horse open sleigh,” Stanton said. “What in the hell does it look like.”

“Oh, boy,” said Scott. “Oh, boy.” He disappeared up the path.

“I’ve got to be rough with these buggers,” Stanton said quite seriously. “Otherwise they run all over me and I have to drive them back with banknotes.”

“The thing is, Vernor, this shouldn’t have been a disappointment to you.”

“No, God damn it, I know that, I’m not a moron; but you’re sandbagging is the point. This time three years ago—”

“—We’d been jailed.”

“That’s right.” Stanton was downright truculent. Quinn started to make a speech about the life of work and its virtues and rewards; but it caught in his throat and left a vision of Detroit with its artifact buildings, one of which held his offices, slabs, markers, a poison sky and a river that stank and curled sipping at its perimeters — in fine, the last place in the world to send a friend or start a utopian colony. Unusable and contradictory thoughts filled Quinn’s mind with almost physical duress as though his poor head were a golf ball which, slashed open, shows its severed rubber filaments snapping and racing about in confusion. Stanton climbed down and went on with what he was saying. “I want pleasure, do you hear me? And not necessarily at the expense of others, smart ass. I can carry all expenses personally. But God damn it, if I want to pack my colon with beluga caviar I don’t want any cool, assessing stares from you. You helped get me into this a long time ago and now you don’t like the consequences because you change horses every time you get sick of one and call it growing up. The man of business. And don’t imagine I haven’t noticed the exchange of brain waves between you and Janey. I’m aware of these particular vapors—” he raised his wide hand quickly to prevent a reply. “Enough said. But I know you, Quinn. When you’ve got your nature up I wouldn’t walk past you with a roast suckling pig for fear you’d violate it.”

“Much less Janey,” Quinn said. Nothing came of it though. Stanton went up. Quinn remained on the cutter, the antagonistic talk leaving him ragged. But they were two temperaments and there was nothing new in it. When they were young, Quinn simply wanted to be a sportsman of gentlemanly cast and had modeled himself on the old trout fishermen of the Catskills and Adirondacks, Hewitt and Gordon and LaBranche, who wore plus fours and rode carriages to their stretches on the Esopus or Beaverkill. He had tried to include Stanton; but all Stanton’s heroes were Comanches and his sole pleasure was in raiding or terrorizing the cottages and their inhabitants. Quinn always ended putting his rod away and joining the reckless episodes, often finally leading them until it began to get out of hand and he and Stanton competed for the controls. It began when they were twelve or thirteen; it reached acute, maybe eloquent pitch in an end-over-end trip across a back country farm in an Oldsmobile Starfire, Quinn driving, Carl Perkins yelling “Honey don’t” all the way from East St. Louis, Missouri.

A man walked past him, along the shore of the lake, making maladroit casts with a stubby fishing rod into the water at his feet. He wore only a bathing suit, pulled over his stomach in front; when he passed, carrying all that weight on the balls of his feet, matched arcs of pink flesh writhed over his kidneys with each step. It was Congressman John Olds, R. Mich. He waved without looking or interrupting the darting of the lure at his feet. “Nice to see you,” Quinn called.

He sunned another hour, then started back through unlit woods to his house with its afternoon cap of light working its way across the front; by five it would slither off altogether and knot up in shadow at the north end, skate through the trees and disappear. Quinn thought about his conversation with Stanton and wondered how he could help him. Quinn was sentimental enough about their friendship as it had been. And though more had passed between them than he now cared to remember, their friendship seemed a necessary part of the future.

He heard a knocking at the door and went through the living room cautiously. He opened the door; it was Janey. She wanted Quinn to come over and try to console Stanton. He had been to see Olson and had come back despondent. He wouldn’t say what had happened. Would Quinn please come?

Stanton was sitting up. He had a tray of food beside him and a pile of books on the end table. Tears were streaming down his face which was otherwise slack and drunken. Quinn knew he would be throwing himself into it; Stanton regarded himself, when drunk, as a third person for whom he was not responsible. The sky was the limit.

“You didn’t mention the drinking,” Quinn said to Janey in a clear conversational voice.

“Never mind that!” Stanton called. “You don’t get off so easy!”

“What happened when you went to see Olson?”

“There was little fraternity or egality.”

“Okay—”

“Rather, mistreatment.”

“I’m going back.”

“Don’t! No fair—”

“This isn’t fun for us, Vernor. We’re all sober, you see.”

“I pay a handsome price for my small pleasures,” Stanton said slackly. “You can’t come in here with your prayerbook—”

“All right, I don’t have to—”

“May as well let him talk,” Janey said.

“Let the spoilt priest talk,” said Stanton. “Quinn, you’ve gone back on me. And Janey won’t let me marry her. She won’t do it. Commit any offense to nature. But simple Christian marriage? Not on your life.”

“I would marry you if you were human,” she said.

“Simple Christian marriage?” he asked. “Oh ho, no.”

“Listen,” Quinn started.

“Christian little ceremony?”

“Vernor—”

“Marriage?”

“Vernor—”

“Are you kidding? What? Her?” He clambered out from under the covers on all fours, wearing only his pajama top, his behind directed at the window. “God damn it, I want decent treatment around here! I want consideration and the rest of what was lost in the French Revolution! I want dreams, space, Listerine! I want … I want! GAAGH!” He flung himself over on his back, revealing a perfectly despicable and unwarranted erection; arms across his eyes, wallowing and blubbering spuriously. Janey backed away toward the door, wide-eyed. Suddenly she ran forward and began to hit Stanton on the chest. Stanton looked into the doorway at Quinn, his expression of hopeful surprise and wonder only occasionally flinching into a grimace. Finally, she stopped and went to the side of the room and slumped into a chair. “My!” said Stanton.

“I could have been a guide at the UN,” said Janey, agonized. Quinn continued to stare at Stanton. Behind this devilish picture of Stanton many pictures receded into memory, bright and framed like the windows of a train. Without knowing what he was doing, Quinn resolved to act. He went to see Olson.