Thomas McGuane - Panama

When I met my grandfather for the last time, he was riding an old singlefoot horse and carried his cane in a saddle scabbard. He looked at me for a long time, standing before him in my corduroys, T-shirt, and red tennis shoes; and said, “Oh, what’s the use?”

* * *

Marcelline popped in.

“Two dudes outside want to know if you’ll back them in the far-out tie-tack business.”

“No.”

She stepped outside and called, “No.”

Then she came back in and rubbed up against me.

“Got time to feed it in?” she asked.

“No.”

“Want to rob a crypt with my honey and me?”

“No, sir.”

“He had to leave New Orleans. They used smear tactics against him.”

“The term ‘grave robber’ doesn’t sit well with people.”

“They could of said ‘breaking and entering.’ If a person busts into a store front, they say ‘B and E,’ not store-front robbery. They called him a grave robber so it would go harder on him. He had to jump bail, no ifs, ands, or buts about it.”

“I see your point,” I said wanly.

“Anyhow, we located this crypt has this lieutenant from the pirate squadron in it, hundreds of years old. It could be damn near anything in there. We’ll be in the cemetery tonight.”

She darted through the wall into the blinding light.

I felt I had got used to Marcelline. She seemed like a moron. I’m sure she’s not. At this point, time had had that effect. I don’t like anything time does, so I’m not sure why I’m buying this. But she did seem quite the little moron.

I waited until Marcelline was clear, then I went outside and got almost nine dollars from the wishing well. I don’t know who got the impostor’s silver dollars. I pushed my hands into my pockets and looked up the street at the cars under the palms, the lawns against the shattered sidewalk.

When Jesse James rode the trolley in St. Joseph, they could smell gunpowder in his clothing. I started crying again for the first time since the monkey bars.

* * *

On January 13, 1975, I got up from dinner at a small private bistro, popular with the professional psychodrama folks, called Fuck You. I am absolutely sure that I had a wonderful meal but ten minutes after I got up from the table I couldn’t remember what I ate.

I had been dining with Jean-Luc Godard, who was a little down on his heels and looking for a new slant, in other words, me. He said, “It is simple, Chet. We return to Fuck You and ask the maitre d’.” He couldn’t remember what I ate either.

I said, “Nuts to that, Jean. I will just have to eat again. And in case you remember what I ate, I’d rather you didn’t say.”

“But aren’t you full?”

“That’s going to have to be my tough luck.”

I had another large and this time disgusting meal at Luchow’s, including a ghastly platter of Black Forest mushrooms. All the while a hideous Bavarian orchestra in lederhosen blared at my table. Imagine my discomfort!

But: it kept happening for years to come, sometimes three meals in a row. Eventually it culminated in a very unfortunate episode with the mayor of New York.

* * *

Catherine said, “This business about Jesse James, I wish you’d stop. It makes my skin crawl.”

“Why?”

“He’s deader than a doornail.”

“Wait a minute.”

“Dead. And you know something? Nobody else has these troubles we do. I don’t like this. I don’t believe we ever needed your fame. I don’t think I ever had to leave South Carolina—”

“We sought to be illustrious.”

“I want to be happy.”

“You said that.”

“I want to be happy.”

“Catherine—”

“I want to be happy.”

“Jesse James was happy.”

“He was trigger-happy.”

“That’s happy.”

“I just want to be happy.”

“Catherine, come on now.”

“Make me happy.” She was starting to sob.

“How?”

“Do it. Stay out of Panama. Please let us be happy.”

“Happiness is just a guy named Joe,” I said to lighten the atmosphere.

“Well then,” she said through her teeth. “You and Joe stay the fuck out of Panama.”

I stole a look at her through my terror of her authority, and through this vivid teeth-clenched fury, her face, lit by street lamps shining through the leaves of dead palms, seemed transcendent and fine, like the face of a legendary princess killed by lightning. I was lucky to have been in her life.

“Do I have to listen to this,” I said gingerly and she slapped my face, one ringing blow, then idly stirred yet another piña colada while watching a little sloop look for a place to anchor. For all I knew, she could have been Jesse, a token of his power to inhabit my loved ones at will.

I HAD JUST RUN a lemon rind around the inside of my coffee cup, and I was staring at the awakening rummies on the icehouse loading dock, when Don sat down.

I said, “Beat it, Peewee.”

“Just doing my job.”

He was dressed in a suit this time, with the kind of three-button jacket and ill-fitting pants that used to be high with academics from nice families, so that a college kid could look up and say to himself, That’s no smart-ass big-city Jew, that’s people.

“I want my breakfast,” I said. “I don’t want to hear I molested an infant in Spokane at 3 a.m. when I thought I was sleeping.”

“No, but you refused to speak to your father when he called.”

“How would you know that if it were true?”

“Lineman’s phone. Got alligator clips and I just plug into your wire.”

“Uh huh.”

“You told your father he had a wrong number.”

“Shut up! He’s dead!”

The fry cook turned around and stared but kept on scraping.

“And you bounced a check for five hundred thousand dollars.”

I got up. “I don’t need this.”

“You wrote a sixty-thousand-dollar check for a conch house on Caroline. That bounced.”

“Check please.”

The waitress quickly reached me a ticket. I slapped my empty pockets in panic. She couldn’t keep her eyes off me.

“I got it,” said Don and tossed the thirty cents onto the counter. “And that might be the last I can do for your memory. — I’m heading for the pay window.”

* * *

Running on Dey Street, I slide on casuarina seeds and lose a shoe and bang my head and make blood where the cobbles come from under the tar. An old lady leans out from the balcony of the octagonal house, glances at the welding shop, jets snuff into the trees, and says, “You all right?”

There is a trigger that makes the day begin and all life end and it breaks like a glass rod. It lies at the middle of everything that breathes or dreams. It will bend and break, and when it breaks it is night.

I look up to tell her that I have hurt my head but noises even I can’t make out pour from my mouth.

Two of them make a chair of their arms and they put me under the flashing light. One says his eyes are points and the other says Nylon’s gone to appreciate this. I feel sleep coming but I’m not crying and it’s okay because for once I’m not afraid of the ghosts.

* * *

“Jim,” I said to my brother, “do me a favor. Show me how you died.”

“What do you mean? You say Daddy’s dead.”

“He died in the Boston subway fire.”

“ I died the day of the Boston subway fire. You just slipped him in there too.”

“Tell me.”

“Not if you say Daddy is dead.”

“Okay he’s not dead.”

“Say he’s alive.”

“I can’t.”

“Say it.”

I said it and started to choke. Someone I couldn’t see ran a finger into my mouth and pulled my tongue free. I vomited and for a moment lost Jim in the sailing shapes. But that lifted and it was sunny and he was there with the innocence I never had, still in his face; all the trust that let him be murdered by his life without humiliation.