Thomas McGuane: Nothing but Blue Skies

“I hate it when all and sundry are so literal.”

“May I take you to dinner?” she asked.

“The hotel, if you can call it that, was out of hot water the last two days. I haven’t had a shower.”

“Will that prevent you from eating?”

“I guess not. All I’ve had is smoked almonds all day.”

Frank shoved his duffel into the back of Lucy’s gray Volvo and got in. The radio was still playing, a disc jockey crying, “Oh, no, not again!” They started toward Seventh. Frank could see the odd spook shapes of the cottonwoods toward the Bridger Range. The radio announced the coming appearance of a “gospel magician” at a gathering for teenagers. No wonder they stuffed themselves with drugs. Then the folks from Coca-Cola came on and said Coke has always been there for you, always at the heart of the things you do. They said that with Coke and days off, you’ll never be able to beat the feeling. Frank’s spirits sank slightly. The Civic Center, said the radio, was going to have professional wrestling, including a ten-man battle royal in a steel cage; afterward, Sir Lathrop versus The Animal.

“Well, how did you like the Arctic?”

“It was real different.”

She handed him her sunglasses. “Look at the clouds through these, they’re so vivid.” Frank put them on and in fact the clouds thickened up brightly, wet and full of color. With these enriching glasses clamped to his head, he felt a lewd stirring.

“And how have you been?” Frank asked, handing back the glasses. He really didn’t want to get into this.

“I get up in the morning. That’s half the battle.”

Traffic slowed down as an old lady in white headgear and black wraparound sunglasses crossed the road carrying a bag of clothes. She walked straight across through the cars without looking right or left. She reminded him of his mother, at her worst a decrepit scheming shadow who lived to interfere.

An old sedan passed, pulling a cage on wheels filled with white Muscovy ducks. The Volvo crossed Main and entered the parking lot of the Thai restaurant. Lucy got out. “Let’s play the hands we were dealt,” she said. “We will begin by eating.”

Frank looked around the dirty parking spaces under the trees and felt a wonderful lightness. “Remember Gram Parsons’s ‘Grievous Angel’?” he asked.

“Sort of.”

He sang: “ ‘Twenty thousand roads I went down, down, down, and they all led me straight back home to you.’ ”

“How extremely sweet!”

“This is a perfect time and place,” said Frank sincerely. They walked into the restaurant. It had that wonderful feeling of restaurants that had recently been houses: walls in the wrong places, the waitress emerging from what seemed to be a parlor, carrying a tray. The room was nearly full, with couples, families and even two cowboys who, Frank noticed with irritation, had not removed their hats.

“Hello, Frank,” said one of the cowboys.

“Hello,” said Frank, staring fixedly at the unremoved hat. Behind them came a great big man in overalls, freckled arms as big around as most people’s legs. Frank looked at him. “Hello, Paul.”

“Hello, Frank.”

“Lucy Dyer, this is Paul Smith.”

“How do, ma’am.”

“How do you do, Paul.”

“Frank,” said the immense man, his face creasing in two with a pained smile, his head settling down and driving out one more row of wrinkles around his sunburned neck. “I burned the feed bunks and farmed right up to the walls of the barn.”

“You’re better off,” said Frank. “You’re much better off, Paul.” It was nice to tell someone they were on the right track. It was nice to notice that people sought his approval in their business decisions. He decided not to tell Paul that he was even deeper into feeder cattle. With his current low spirits, he wondered why he had ever let that happen.

The waitress seated Lucy and Frank at a small table slap against the wall and handed them their menus. Ordinarily, Frank ordered Mongolian beef extra hot and kept washing it down with beer until he felt somewhat crazy.

“I nearly froze up there.”

Lucy stared at him. She said, “It was supposed to be a joke .”

“It wasn’t a joke to me.”

“I mean the travel arrangements.”

“I don’t have much of a sense of humor.”

“Here she is, let’s order,” Lucy said. “He doesn’t have much of a sense of humor,” she said to the waitress.

“You don’t need one for Mongolian beef,” Frank said.

The waitress was looking on to her next table. The two cowboys were staring past each other in silence, waiting for their litchi nut. Paul Smith, the farmer, was now at a table by himself, looking like a freckled mountain. Frank turned around: every time the kitchen door opened, the music of Neil Young poured out. Frank loved these sentimental tunes. “I’d cross a mountain for a heart of gold …”

He looked back and it wasn’t Gracie. It was Lucy. His face broke out with sweat. He was starting to go loose with panic.

“I gotta go.”

He stood up and abruptly went out the door.

“Do you have any idea where he was going?” Lucy asked Paul Smith. Smith looked embarrassed. He got redder. “I mean, what was that all about?”

In the parking lot Frank thought, I’m not gaining, I’m not getting anywhere. Lucy came out of the restaurant a minute later. She stopped in its lighted doorway and stared around at the cars parked under the trees. “There you are,” she said. She came over and gazed at him. Frank could just make out her face; she came up to about the middle of his chest and she was not looking at him. She took the edge of his shirt in her fingers. He smelled violets.

They crossed in front of the car and got in. As soon as she began to drive, he felt a tension in his legs from wishing to work the pedals himself. They drove out of the parking lot to Deadrock Street. Homebound traffic from the mall kept them tied up at the stop sign in silence.

Lucy pulled into the takeout line at McDonald’s and, seeing that it would be a wait, turned on the radio low, too low to really make out the music or the excited patter betweentimes.

“We’re down among them now,” said Frank, listlessly contemplating the menu painted on the side of the building. But when the food was handed to them in a bag, the car filled with the appealing trash aroma of fast food. He reached into the bag and felt the hot, salt-grainy ends of the french fries as they wheeled back onto Deadrock. It was wonderful to stare openmouthed into traffic with the radio muttering and the lousy food steaming on the seat between them. Splendid to take what you are given. He smiled, felt the happiness go over the top of him. A long-ago day came back.

“It’s 1964 and news of Dad’s hole in one has just shot through town.”

“What are you saying?”

“I was just thinking back … It must be hell being a travel agent.”

“It’s not so bad. You get so you don’t want to go on a trip.”

“I got some slides from the Far North. Would you like to see them?”

Frank ran the projector. The air was warm and stale in his house. Lucy sat next to him in the dark while he listlessly clicked one snapshot after another of Eskimos passing the time on the banks of an arctic river, working on their Japanese ATVs and smoking cigarettes. They had a way of smoking that looked like they were eating the cigarettes. He had bought these souvenir slides hoping they would trigger reminiscences when he got home. The trouble was, they didn’t. They scarcely mitigated the effect of the humid old couch.

“I wonder if we’re missing something, giving up cigarettes,” said Lucy. She saw the deep satisfaction of the smoking Eskimos.