Thomas McGuane - The Bushwacked Piano

On that appointed day, Payne watched Main Street from the crack of dawn. And at the crack of dusk, the great Dodge appeared, blocking the end of North Main and browsing up the center line with the head of the immortal fatty craning around the inside.

Payne jumped up from his seat in front of the Peterson Dewing building and ran alongside the vehicle. They shook hands through its window and Payne rode on its step while Clovis hunted a forty-foot parking spot.

They camped that night on Bangtail Creek, leaving the Dodge behemoth on the highway. They schemed like Arabs until the morning and rose at first light. Payne built a fire in a small wheelbarrow he found; and in the morning chill, they moved the wheelbarrow around to keep in the sun. They warmed their hands and planned it all.

There was time to go over it later; but, perhaps, Payne began to see as he had not seen before that in certain important ways his own life, like Clovis’, was not funny; or only limitedly so, like cakewalking into a barrage; or better, one of Clovis’ horrific signs, the Uncle Sam, for instance, shriveled, asking for a pick-me-up. Payne’s indirection took him strangely, as though he were coming down with it, feckless flu. The headlong approach of C. J. Clovis made him, in his vigor and arrogance, the stick in the candy apple of America; it filled Payne with the joy of knowing that expressways are inhabited by artful dodgers, highhanded intuitive anarchists who don’t get counted but believe in their vast collective heart that the U.S.A. is a floating crap game of strangling spiritual credit. Write that down.

Clovis saw quite another thing in Payne.

C. J. Clovis stood on a bench in Sacajawea Park at Livingston, Montana, haranguing an audience composed of cranks and drifters not unlike himself, on the subject of bat towers. Bats in Clovis’ description were tiny angels bent on the common weal, who flittered decoratively through the evening sky ridding the atmosphere of the mosquito. Now the mosquito to Clovis was a simple pus-filled syringe with wings. Was that what you wanted your air filled with? If so, never mind bat towers. If not, contact Savonarola Batworks, Incorporated, poste restante, Livingston, Montana.

“Dear Governor Wallace,” wrote Ann to the famous Alabaman. “As an American artist, I would like to offer my condolences for your deceased wife. Rest assured that your darling Lurleen awaits you in Hillbilly Heaven. Sincerely yours, Ann Fitzgerald.” Ann was constantly ready to lace into rednecks and right-wingers.

The clear shadow advanced across the parquet floor of her bedroom. She had been in the room since dawn making marks on the floor, every hour on the hour, numbering the shadow’s progress to indicate the time. An imperfect plan, she thought, but I’ll always be able to glance at it in August and know quelle heure est-il . I never come except in August. She sings “Stars Fell on Alabama” in a quiet, pretty voice. Her attitude toward Governor Wallace begins to soften.

Her thoughts of Payne are sporadic and persistent; there has been a pattern. Thoughts of love upon waking in the morning. Thoughts of deprivation then fulfillment on the great unwobbling pivot just before lunch. In the late afternoon, she often thinks of him with anger. Why does he act like that? In the light of the present household tensions, which are terrifically nonspecific, Montana itself begins to pall and subsequently the West, America and so on. As the features of the world recede, Payne is left high and dry like a shipwreck in a drained reservoir. Ann longs to move longingly among his waterlogged timbers, carrying the key to his sea chest. Angelfish, Beau Gregories, tautogs, lantern fish, sergeant majors, morays, bullheads, barracudas, groupers, tunas, flounders, skates, rays, sea robins, balao and narwhals gasp on waterless decks as Ann runs through Payne’s bulkheads.

Payne walked across the town to the railroad station where he had left the car. The wagon remained at Bangtail Creek; he hoped not very seriously that it hadn’t been vandalized. Underneath the trees on the long lawn beside the station, Pullman porters took the air, chatting with each other and with conductors over the noise of steel-wheeled wagons trucking luggage into the station. Payne wanted to ride the Northern Pacific to Seattle, sitting with Ann in the observation car; perhaps jotting in a pigskin diary: My Trip .

I sometimes see myself, thought Payne, in other terms than standing on the parapets with my cape flying; but not all that often.

Payne did not carry a pistol and tried not to limp.

Payne watched Clovis eat. Clovis was a nibbler; not the kind that doesn’t like to eat but the kind who tantalizes himself and makes the food last. Between nips, Clovis described the deal he’d made to build a bat installation in the top stage of an abandoned granary. Payne was to do the building by way of preparing himself for larger projects. It was to be called either a “Bathaus,” a “Batrium” or a “Battery”; but, in no case, a “Bat Tower”; the latter being reserved for the all-out projects of Clovis’ dreams.

The bat installation was being constructed for a prosperous rancher/wheat farmer whose wife liked to shell peas outside in the evening. She was allergic to 6-12 and Off.

“What if these towers draw vampires?” Payne inquired without getting an answer. Clovis nipped and nibbled, occasionally touching the merest tip of his tongue to a morsel and re-examining it before popping the whole item down his gullet.

Payne watched him. He was draped over his bones. The appliance was the only thing that seemed alive. A morbid air radiated from the man, a certain total mortality that made Payne think rather desperately of Ann.

“What are you gulping for?” Payne asked Clovis, who was swallowing air.

“I am filling my air sac.”

“Why?”

“Oh, because despair is my constant companion, I guess.”

Payne thought: what?

“I didn’t see any mention of it in the Yellow Pages.”

“What’s in them Yellow Pages is between me and the phone company,” said Clovis.

“Okay.”

“So don’t throw the Yellow Pages in my face.”

“And those loony signs you had signed your name to in that alleyway off Gratiot Avenue.”

“Yeah, what’s wrong with them?”

“They’re unpatriotic!”

In a single violent motion, Clovis pulled the little pistol from the back of his waist band. Payne snatched it away and shot holes in the tires of the Hudson Hornet. “You want to hurt me?” he said. “There! Now my Hornet won’t go any place!” His voice broke.

“I didn’t mean a thing …” Clovis was upset now.

“You didn’t? You pulled that pistol!” Payne’s throat ached and seized. He thought he was going crazy. Bangtail Creek beside them roared like an airplane. Mayflies and caddises hatched from its surface and floated toward the stars. Two hundred yards above, it formed its first pool where a coyote made rings in the water around his nose.

The noise of the creek had prevented this small member of the dog family from hearing the argument.

Later, they went over to the Dodge Motor Home and watched Johnny Carson. Ed McMahon infuriated Clovis and he yelled at the television. The guests were Kate Smith, Dale Evans, Oscar Levant, Zsa Zsa Gabor and Norman Mailer, the artist. Johnny smiled with his eyes but not his mouth; and did all these great deadpan things. The big thing was that his outfit really suited him to a “T.” Then they watched the Late Show: Diamondhead ; beautiful Hawaii, very complicated, very paradoxical. They actually had cowboys. But what held your interest was this unique racial deal which was dramatized by Yvette Mimieux falling in love with a native who was darkskinned. It occurred to Clovis that since the Johnny Carson show was taped, it was possible Johnny and his guests were home watching the Late Show too.