Thomas Mcguane - The Cadence of Grass

Evelyn stepped tentatively out onto a landing that she could not remember and that produced an unsettling blank in her memory, which must have begun in the snowfield. Never before had she “passed out,” and the very notion made her queasy; too many friends had awakened to find some lummox toiling away over their bodies. Nevertheless, she went down the stairs she must have gone up, and on a table at the bottom found a meal prepared for her of bread and eggs and a drink, a cold liquid which referred to oranges. Esther began putting food on the table, nothing that looked particularly familiar.

“I wonder,” Evelyn said, “—this is very nice, mm —if I could borrow the phone?”

Esther was frowning before she’d even heard the question.

“No phone,” she said firmly. Evelyn couldn’t tell whether that meant there was no phone or that she couldn’t use it. Esther then pointed to the meat that was part of the breakfast array with subdued glee. “Moose,” she said. Moose ’n’ eggs, thought Evelyn. I must pray for an airlift.

The room where Evelyn sat had on one side a small kitchen and, on the other, a passageway in whose yellow, angled glow appeared a large, strangely dressed and rather shambling man, with a kind of boardinghouse anonymity and hardly a glance her way. Perhaps he, too, was snowed in. While Evelyn contemplated these things, picked at her eggs and considered creative disposal of the moose, Esther set another place beside her with a comparable meal. When Evelyn raised an inquiring and smiling gaze, Esther spat out the words, “Our son Donald!”

Donald strode into the room, a great big man with a remarkably bushy gray beard and piercing black eyebrows. “Hullo!” he said, sitting down with such force that Evelyn was afraid his chair would break. Except that his hair was in curlers, he looked like any other rancher. Peering closely at his breakfast, he offered a great paw in Evelyn’s direction. “I apologize for appearing before you déshabillé . Normally I am zipped up in my coveralls by now and making myself useful to Papa. But we are snowed in. And this is the weekend, when I do as I please especially on these exciting Saturday nights! Chores done, cows are asleep, sheep askew and th—”

“Donald, that’ll do!” This rough voice came from the kitchen but did not belong to Esther. Donald’s face compressed and his eyes narrowed as he took this in with unyielding fatalism.

Evelyn craned to see where the voice came from. “Is it true we’re snowed in?”

“Boy howdy.”

“And the phone?”

“Not available at this time.”

“Oh,” said Evelyn. “And what are you building in the yard, a cabin?”

“That’s a bonfire for Grandpa.”

In the doorway appeared an older man with high cheekbones and small, close-set eyes, a coarse and energetic character who identified himself as Torvald Aadfield. Donald raised his dark eyebrows, darker than the wide fan of beard, and oddly peaked just over the bridge of his nose, giving the impression that he had never seen his father before or else had seen him but was struggling to remember anything specific about him. Mr. Aadland caught this and nodded privately, suggesting that Donald was grimly incorrigible.

“We’re snowed in,” he said.

“See?” said Donald.

“How’s the moose?” Torvald asked. “Very good for you. Prepared it myself. With a seven mag.”

“Walking food doesn’t have a long life around Dad,” Donald said.

“I remember the lean times,” his father said. “Montana’s a boom-and-bust economy. “

Evelyn swung her head from one speaker to another without making a contribution. Her feigned affability did little to conceal her discomfort.

“During one of those busts,” said Donald, “I went to San Francisco for a Mott the Hoople concert. Spent six hungry months in the Haight, then almost two years in a cross-dressers’ review, very big with the tourists in a tourist’s town. I dreamed of saving enough to buy my own ranch. I thought I could hoof my way into the cattle business!”

“You’re in the cattle business,” said Torvald.

“Yes,” sighed Donald, “but one that can never grow. I have happy memories of those days, the gorgeous outfits so full of meaning, staying up all night with my disturbed friends, racing to the sea in the foggy morning, lumbering along in our frocks and smelling like a gym, past the Penguin’s Prayer sculpture, breaking out on Ocean Beach at dawn to storm the surfers in their wetsuits. Do I miss those days? What do you think!” He looked at his father but continued speaking to Evelyn. “He buys cheap bulls, won’t fertilize, irrigates with a shovel and doesn’t sprinkle…. ” Donald was agitated. The plastic cylinders festooning his head knocked against one another.

Evelyn couldn’t make out whether this was some old routine between the two men or something specifically for her.

Donald now was storming around so that the noise of his sandals on the floor and against the furniture was a dismaying backdrop to his remarks. “He won’t take a cheap Farm Home Loan or sign up with the Great Plains Program.”

Torvald was shrinking with truculence and embarrassment.

“He won’t use gated pipe because he likes to see me out there dragging mud-covered canvas, soaking wet in a cold wind. He won’t buy a calf table when—”

“Donald’s a great roper,” his mother added. “We wouldn’t want to miss that—”

“He’s got Mom flanking calves like she was in a rodeo. And tonight , to save a few bucks, he’s gonna cremate my grandpa.”

The older people winced to have this stated so boldly.

It was a good while before Torvald spoke. “Snowed in, has to be done,” he said complacently. “Lady, I don’t know what your plan was out there in my pasture, but if them cows had come to their feed like always, I’d of never found you atall.”

“I’m very grateful. Really, there is a telephone, isn’t there?”

“Line’s down,” he barked, the last word on that subject.

“Home cremation’s illegal as hell,” Donald noted, “but like the man said, we’re snowed in and even minor calamity can help boom-and-busters economize. Lucky you weren’t on your feet when Dad found you. He might’ve had you popped for trespassing.”

“I am a strong proponent of private property rights,” Torvald said, and left the room at the sight of his wife passing the doorway, pointedly ignoring the activity in the dining room but shouting as she went, “Torvald, fill the bird feeder!”

“Donald,” he said, “we’ve got work to do.” He seemed mildly elated by this information and, rising from his chair, clapped his calloused hands together. The men left the table apparently without a thought of what Evelyn might do with herself, though it was obvious her job was to wait for the storm to pass. From a nearby room, old psychedelic music suddenly boomed. Mr. Aadfield passed the kitchen doorway, shaking his head contemptuously. Evelyn heard him go out, and shortly thereafter Donald appeared in insulated coveralls, a housebound Bohemian artifact transformed now into a rather conventional farmer. He had a war-surplus campaign coat over his arm and was gesturing for Evelyn to follow him quickly. As she crossed the kitchen behind him, he draped the coat over her shoulders and opened a narrow door into a cold storage room, reaching familiarly around the inside wall to turn on the light switch.

“You’re safe with me,” Donald said, leading her into a room piled high with crates and rough shelves that stored canned foods. “My wan and ambiguous sexuality wouldn’t offend a gnat. And I love having a houseguest.” He went straight to the far corner, where he began removing burlap feed sacks from something leaning there, something that proved to be a corpse, rigid from cold storage. Having revealed it, Donald stepped back and bent slightly forward, hands clasped together in fascination. “Grandpa,” he said, with purring delight.