Thomas Mcguane - The Cadence of Grass

“Those sound like club rules. I hope I’m not oppressing you.”

“Oh, not at all, it’s like being tucked in. Apart from the indication that I need help in performing these obvious things.” As a kind of internal joke, she was pretending to address all of her remarks to a cigar-store Indian.

“Nat—”

“But my worst trait — let’s go right to my worst trait — is the mistaken belief that I can influence events way more than I really can.” She could actually picture the Indian now, ruddy hand clutched around wooden cigars.

Stuart lifted a floorboard and looked down at the heads of the keel bolts. “Is this about Paul?” If the bolts pulled through neglected, rotten wood, the keel would plummet to the bottom and the force of the sail would capsize the boat, with the possibility of Natalie trailing bubbles from her lungs all the way to the bottom.

“Of course it is. I can see right away that Evelyn’s going to forgive him, and it’s just no good.”

“But you’re not Evelyn.”

“I don’t need to be. I’m the only one in this family who is consistently on to Paul. Not even you see him as he is.” This, given the liberties she still permitted Paul, gave her a special tingle.

“It’s not that, Nat. It’s just that we spend so much time thinking about him. I’m not fooled by Paul; I’m indifferent to him. You have to accept things about people you don’t like or there’d be no one to talk to.” Stuart had a bit of trouble understanding why he was delivering such a mendacious gloss on his actual dislike of Paul Crusoe. He’d have to go into that at a later date. Perhaps it was simply his instinct to hold large issues at bay while he enjoyed his small pleasures, like sailing and refinishing furniture. Besides, Natalie tired him with the acuteness of her observations. He once told her that she should be like a good skier and, instead of fighting every turn of the hill, give some time to gliding. But Natalie was not a skier and despised all figures of speech based on sport. “Have you ever actually seen a cigar-store Indian?” she inquired. He had no idea how to field this non sequitur.

It was as though this hearty, uncomplicated man (attributes Natalie associated with victims) was drawn only to her big dark eyes, her pretty, worried face, her slight figure devoid of muscle tone.

Stuart didn’t concern himself too much with the testiness of Natalie’s relations with Paul. It was his observation that often women who experienced fits of inexplicable resentment toward other men had actually been to bed with them. Paul was so extraordinarily swift to seduce or corrupt women that the whole process was rendered negligible. A friend of Stuart’s had seen Paul entering the Super 8 Motel with his cold-sober probation officer, if that could be believed, the very night of Whitelaw’s funeral. Furthermore, Evelyn had told Natalie that Paul had asked her to meet him there and she had declined. The very notion made both sisters indignant, for different reasons, but Stuart was astounded that his brother-in-law would go to such lengths to economize on a room deposit. In this, Stuart was obtuse.

The sun in the cockpit was so comfortable that what they intended to be a moment of sunbathing turned into a serious nap. The aspens in the draw that led to the lake, old stream courses that once fed a live river, were turning a yellow patchwork among the cedars and red bursts among the serviceberries, plum thickets and chokecherries. Natalie was first to awaken and was startled by the grass shore so close to them. Winter is coming, she thought. She touched Stuart to rouse him.

“We must’ve needed that,” he said as he looked first at the beach, then up the column of the mast to the windex pointing into the light breeze coming down the hills.

“What’s going to become of the bottling plant?”

“Oh, good God.” Stuart held the cap of her knee delicately between thumb and forefinger. “Let’s walk on the beach,” he said. Natalie took this suggestion in as though it contained a hidden catch.

“Will we need sunblock?”

He took out the plastic tube and gently applied sunblock to Natalie’s upturned face, then put some on his own. Natalie raised her eyes to an airliner high above them. She seemed suspicious of that too. “Where’s that thing going?”

Stuart said, “Are you hungry?”

“What’s in there?”

“Sandwiches and stuff.”

“What kind of sandwiches?”

“Are you okay?”

“I’m a little sad. But I’m fine.”

They took a walk. From the uplands, they could look back down at their boat rocking gently in the clear water, shelving steep over cold stones, the sun standing around the sleek shapes of the outlined deck. The next range of hills took them out of sight of the water, but the bowl of wild lupine, asters and phlox still surviving the late season seemed like a lake. They could sit on tussocks of bluestem and watch the wild deer grazing beyond the curve of sky. To the west were the Elkhorn Mountains, whose foothills sheltered ancient hunting parties returning from a broad valley that was now a lake. Natalie said, “He stole the best years of my sister’s life. There are people who just use others up. Life is short, and I can’t just stand by.”

“You’re going to have to,” said Stuart, getting an odd feeling in the pit of his stomach. There was something entirely too avid about Natalie’s concern.

She caught the shortness of his reply and fell silent, looking gloomily out upon the natural world. What use was it?

Stuart began to unpack their lunch. As he looked at the meal he had made, he felt hurt. He didn’t really know why. Natalie gave him a hug, then sat back and gazed at him.

“Well,” he said, “I hope you have an appetite.”

“What’s the matter?”

“I don’t know.”

“Tell me.”

He didn’t want it pulled out of him, but he couldn’t help himself. “Maybe… maybe it’s that we spend our whole time analyzing everyone else’s lives. It doesn’t leave much room for our own.” Natalie was not at all affected by this remark. It may have been that this wasn’t really what was bothering Stuart, but it kept them quiet. So they ate their lunches and watched the clouds build up toward Helena. Summer was gone.

They made love on an arrangement of their clothes. It was meant to happen in a slow, afternoonish way, but an unforeseen urgency arose from somewhere and they spent themselves abruptly. He wondered who on earth he was thinking of. But it had a good effect in restoring Natalie’s spirits. She said, “There’s no real reason for us to get dressed. We can keep walking without our clothes. It’s warm.”

“It’s a public place.”

“So, where’s the public?”

“They’re here in spirit.”

“I’m not bothered by the spirit of the public seeing my naked buns. It’s only the public in person that’s a problem.”

“Natalie, just get dressed.”

“I’m clogged.”

“Aw gee, Nat—”

“Stuart, Stuart.”

“Stuart who loves you.”

“Yes, I believe that. I always have, and shouldn’t that be enough? Shouldn’t it be plenty?”

“It should be all we ever need, Nat. But we just think too damn much.”

“You mean I think too damn much, and I disagree. You heap simple feller, Stuart.” The cigar-store Indian had reappeared; she would have to get a grip on herself.

Stuart knew that this was headed straight to some version of the one-thing-led-to-another speech, in which from the moment they fell in love, they’d followed their weaknesses until they lived under the oligarchy of the bottling plant; and in which they’d failed to find the strength to resist the temptations thrown their way by Whitelaw.