Thomas McGuane - Panama

She showed me Roxy’s wedding invitations. The party at the Casa Marina was mentioned. I stared at the raised engraving and felt the weight in my pocket. “What’s that noise?” I said.

“The trash collector.”

“Jesus, it seems right in the room.”

“Give me the gun.”

“It’s mine.”

“Give it to me.”

I handed it over.

“Let me ask you something. Would you consider seeing a psychiatrist?”

“Not at all.”

“Why?”

“They are disease profiteers.”

“You need help.”

“I’m doing fine.”

“As what?”

“An angler on the sea of God’s mysteries.”

Catherine fed the dog, turning the can in a patented opener while Deirdre ran around on her hind legs like an exotic dancer. More and more, the gentle movements of the sea had come to sound like hoofbeats. I touched my compress and licked the beak hole in my forefinger. There was a chameleon on the screen puffing his vermilion throat against the wire.

Then Catherine found my rosary in the margarine tub: “What the fuck is this?”

“Only at night.”

“What?”

“For sleepless nights. Beads, vodka, and walking the dog.”

“Have you gone down to the pier?”

“No.”

“Your father’s boat is anchored there.”

“Here we go.”

“Here you go. You ought to have a look. Lot of money in snack-food packaging, by all appearances.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because that is how the boat was paid for and it’s about a city block long. Look and see.”

I thought that I would try to detail as much of this vapid lie as I could. I laid my plans as I slept on the sea-grass rug. When I awoke, Catherine was gone. There was a salad made for me in the icebox and a loaf of Cuban bread.

I put on my bathing suit and walked along the beach toward the pier. I made my way around a restaurant whose tables stood empty, legs plunged in sand, unused paper napkins fluttering in an ocean breeze. I had to wade around a piney promontory before I could see the boat. She was anchored about a quarter mile offshore, bow to the southeast trades. This was not the first time I’d been beset by impostors.

I could tell she was white though it was dark, and the portholes glowed warmly. I slipped into the water and began to swim. I don’t know how long it took. I was not in the best of shape and I was exhausted by the curious morning running across our island town. But I got to the boat, touching its towering bow and holding myself for a rest. Then I let the tide carry me along the hull, through the panels of yellow light, my fingertips gliding over the rough barnacles at the waterline. From somewhere above the rail, I could hear Jesse’s voice; he spoke angrily of the eating habits of Americans, claiming they never knew what they wanted. I knew what I wanted.

When I got to the stern, I knew for the first time how deep Catherine’s scheming against my sanity had become. Above my head, in enormous brass letters, it said: S.S. SNACK. And directly over the transom, the man I’d first thought I’d heard speaking stood. It was the old man on No Name Key whom I had discovered arranging Catherine’s hair on the mud. He had the cane from my grandfather’s scabbard and he worked it between his two hands as he stared down, down, at me, suspended in a warm ocean. I released my hold on the rudder and let the tide carry me into darkness.

I STAYED IN BED a very long time. I was not alone. I was very thirsty and drank glass after glass of flat Key West tap water. Thanks to Don. Don filled the glasses from a yellow plastic pitcher as he told me where I had been and what I had been doing. Then an ice cube jammed the spigot and Don, while trying to refill my glass, slopped about a half quart through the top of one of his mesh two-tones.

“That’s the first thing you’ve done for which you should have been paid,” I said aggressively. “Now let me tell you something. I don’t care what I’ve been doing or whether it was right or wrong because it will all come out in the wash—” Don opened his wallet and let the credit cards plummet from his hand in their accordion plastic enclosure.

“Take these. You’re broke. You can ruin my credit. My signature is easy to forge. But take these and use up my money until you’re satisfied I’m not in it for the money.”

“What are you in it for?”

“Memory. It’s the only thing that keeps us from being murderers.”

“Well, I don’t have one.”

“I want to rebuild it.”

“I don’t want it back.”

“You must have it back.”

“Oh, no you don’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“Telling me god damn you that I can’t proceed without knowing where I’ve been. Don’t pull that old malarkey on me. Where you from anyway? Penciltucky? You god damn spy. Here I am to start with, half frozen, from trying to pay a god damned visit to a very important American citizen—”

“Who’s that?”

“Who’s what?”

“This very important American citizen.”

“C’mon. You know who it is.”

“I want to see if you have the balls to tell me.”

“I can tell you.”

“Well, tell me.”

“Who I went to see?”

“Yeah, who.”

“Jesse James.”

“Jesse James has been dead for a century, mister. He was shot by Bob Ford whilst attempting to hang a picture.”

“Never happened.”

“I’m telling you—”

I had to shout. “Bob Ford never got it done.” I calmed myself. “A picture of what?” I then asked.

“What d’you mean?”

“Jesse James was hanging a picture of what?”

“A landscape. Let’s say a landacape of Missouri.”

“Which would be what?” Jesse owned one picture: a photograph of his horse, Stonewall Jackson.

“Thickets.”

“Thickets.” I thought that this was a paltry fabrication.

“You heard me.”

“Well, I say he never got shot by Bob Ford.”

“You want to get smacked? Do you know how ugly it is not to give in to someone trying to save you?”

“No.” I saw the skinny detective would hit me. He wasn’t man enough for some red-blooded despair.

Jesse, forgive them, for they know not what they do.

* * *

I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned my first meeting with Catherine. Do I start on this because the end is in sight? I couldn’t face that; and, in fact, a certain giddy courage accompanies my ever raising the question at all. I don’t think I could survive with less than the hope of a long life under American skies, with Catherine. At the same time, I know that it’s been one crisis after another. But, what of it. We met in a San Francisco pet shop where I had boarded my toucan. The toucan had been mistakenly sold; and since the store smelled of monkey droppings, I accused the manager of incompetence. Catherine watched from a distance, and when our exchange became rather cruel, she began releasing animals; first the gerbils, and working her way up to the primates. She hated meanness and by the time she had averted what had every chance of becoming an ugly fight, there were a number of fanciful creatures, tropical and otherwise, running out the door to disappear among the busy feet of pedestrians. “This,” thought I to myself, “is my kind of girl.”

There were bills to be paid, after which we adjourned to a Japanese-style restaurant which served Serbo-Croatian food in addition to raw fish and a startling marshmallow salad that was absolutely gratis to anyone who came through the door and braved the wilderness of bentwood coat racks in the foyer. Even there, I was not oblivious to certain family glories of mine, the sound of horses in the underbrush — perhaps “thickets” is not the wrong word — gunpowder in percussion Colts, tired men in their hangouts, haunted Missouri barns.