Thomas McGuane: The Sporting Club

“Yes, yes, I remember. Would again too.”

“You would—?”

“Oh, sure.” Quinn was eager to get his own back. The welt on his chest, now the color of plum, reminded him. But when they were in the dueling gallery, his nerves came back with the sudden memory of his last experience. He didn’t want to be hit again. On the other hand, he wanted to stick Stanton if he possibly could. Then Stanton’s wife came down the stairs, three at a time and, out of breath, introduced herself as Janey. “How do you do?” said Quinn, pleased with her. She wasn’t what he expected. He expected something off Palm Beach with a lot of jaw, Jax slacks and attitudes. Instead, this girl had a fine, open-eyed ingenuousness that would have been poison to the kind of arm-pumping good sport Quinn had expected. Her mouth, by an almost invisible margin, did not close and its shape was clarified by the dark line. Her cheekbones were distinct, either broad or high, he wasn’t sure; his study was making her jumpy. Quinn could have followed her around admiring her for a long time before actually wanting to lay hands on her.

Stanton took down a new set of pistols. These were percussion guns of the nineteenth century, made in Charleston, South Carolina, and had not been fired before. Janey said it was too bad to shoot them after so many years; couldn’t they sword fight? Stanton looked over at her and went on loading the pistols. When he was finished, he presented Quinn with his choice. Janey counted this time, in Old Church Slavonic she called it, though Quinn suspected. Stanton said she could count to ten in nineteen major languages including Tel Aviv. It threw Quinn off. He at first thought it was funny in a nervous-making way. But by the time they got toward ten, he was fingering the trigger nervously, not knowing what number they were on and having to turn when the counting stopped to find Stanton already facing him. He fired a bad shot and at the same time received an indescribably painful hit in the center of his upper lip. Tears sprang to his eyes. Stanton smiled with the placidity of an Annunciation. Quinn handed him the discharged pistol with its sulphurous odor and hammer closed tight on the uselessly spent percussion cap, and went out of the house without a word.

By nightfall, the Stantons had lured him back for dinner. He swiftly drank too much and then finished half a pot of coffee to clear his head. His lip was swollen in a uniform protuberance so much like an auto bumper that Stanton giggled and held the sides of his seat.

“What about another chance?” Quinn said hotly.

“It wouldn’t be fair.”

“Let me judge.”

“Not a chance. I’ve come to think of you as a sitting duck.” Stanton’s mouth was poised, ready to start into laughter. Next to him the bride dusted her strawberries with sugar from a small silver spoon.

So Stanton had this minute victory of refusal. But Quinn felt that he had stymied him on the larger issue simply by refusing to play, to fall into the old habit of scheming against the other members of the club, to see what was funny about the sign hanging over the stairway. Quinn felt that for once he held a subtle advantage. Stanton spoke. “How is your business, may I be so bold to ask?” Was this a lead shot or just a question?

“It’s all right,” Quinn said, cards very close now, almost not sporting.

“You realize that I don’t work.”

“Yes, I do.”

Janey said, “It’s like having a child in the house.” Her voice was low and sweet. “He swarms.” She had some kind of accent.

“You do just fine with me, sugar.”

“I know I do, Vernor,” she explained. He wasn’t listening to her. “But you do seem to … swarm. ”

“Okay, Janey, time to hang up the jock,” Stanton said to Quinn.

“Vernor fails to work, you see.”

“Hang it up, Janey. Hang up the old jock.” Stanton was patient and instructive. Then he turned completely to Quinn in order to exaggerate what he pretended to ignore. “Well! You’ve done right smart since you took over that firetrap factory of yours, have you not?”

“I’ve done well.”

Janey flattered Quinn by looking at him with interest. She was so balanced and her gazing, slate eyes so serene that she made Stanton next to her look as overgrown as a Swiss Guard or an Alaskan vegetable; but, in fairness, he hadn’t found his brilliant and destructive pitch yet and Quinn himself was rancorous for having been shot in the lip. So the game had stalemated prematurely.

“But still the solution seemed to you to direct your attention to Papa’s company store.” This was unfair of Stanton; it had become impossible without any kind of refereeing. Quinn spoke slowly.

“The company store makes an excellent punching bag for my frustrations and it appears that I am to be frustrated. Every time I slug it, it gets more profitable.”

“What amazes me is your bravery, walking in cold.” Stanton was trying to make it up; but with Janey watching, Quinn liked this bit of characterization.

“I learned. I made a lot of mistakes.”

“Seems you learned all too well,” said Stanton. “You’re caught.” Smug, he sipped his brandy conclusively.

“I know I am. I want to be.” Quinn couldn’t beat him at wit; but he thought he had a chance on the honesty count.

“Is it very dull?” Janey asked.

“Hang it up,” said Stanton, deliberately misinterpreting. “You needle my friends and I’ll kick your ass.” She turned to him and Quinn studied her. She wasn’t there any more. Very discreetly, she had departed. But hadn’t Stanton been joking?

“Vernor’s inactivity makes his mind run wild,” she said from afar.

“Hang the sonofabitch up,” said Stanton, dropping ringed, ominous hands to the table. Quinn knew that she couldn’t be very safe around him. And because of that her remote backtalk had gallantry.

* * *

Saturday morning. Quinn walked to the main lodge for his breakfast. The midweek quiet was gone. Cars were parked under dusty pines and overdressed children in dresses and Eton suits circled the compound and ran in and out of the Bug House. The sun was high and lifted a square of hot light from the roof of the shed. The cars, too, even under their trees, were soaked with heat. Quinn walked through the kitchen entrance to the coolness of the dining rooms. He sat down at one of the linen-covered tables and surveyed. There was still the unnecessary number of china cabinets along the far wall. Overhead, the painted pressed-tin ceiling of nymphs and satyrs had the same prettiness and the same humorous light fixture bursting from one tin satyr groin. The walls were circled with pictures of early days, logging operations and sporting feats. Surmounting these were the stuffed trout and the stuffed heads of deer and bear; the multiplicity of unfocused glass eyes did as much as anything else to establish the mortuary atmosphere. On either side of the kitchen were two punt guns, poachers’ weapons that could bring down a flight of ducks with a shot. These were fired on the Fourth of July. The wall whose window overlooked the Pere Marquette river was bare and on it were printed two clear pentagrams of sunlight. The room smelled of cedar shavings like a schoolhouse and the distant sounds of children made the quiet emphatic.

He read his mail as he ate and came across a letter that caused him to let a forkful of egg cool in midair: Mary Beth had taken it upon herself to supply price quotations for a small die-cast part that the company made; the price she quoted for the finished part was somewhat less than half the manufacturing cost, and the company was therefore swamped with orders. Quinn managed to finish his breakfast anyway before calling the office and telling Mary Beth what his feelings were, generally, about what she had done. He left her on the phone laughing and crying and telling him, “I hate you I hate you I hate you.” Why me? Quinn inquired of himself.