Thomas McGuane - Nothing but Blue Skies

“I’m from Minnesota originally. There’s wolves there too.”

“I’m Frank and this is Phil. What’s your name?”

“Smokie. Watch out for that truck —”

“Sonofagun was halfway into my lane.”

“You were halfway into his lane,” said Phil. “That’s why he was blowing his horn.”

“Was I really? I’ll be darned.”

“Have you guys had a few?”

“We been fishing. It has the same effect on us.”

“So, where’s the fish?”

“We let them go,” said Frank, glancing into the back seat. Smokie had a rope of ash hair in a braid that hung over her shoulder. She was young.

“You let them go?”

“Yeah,” said Phil. “We train them so out-of-staters can’t catch them.”

“You’re a riot,” said Smokie.

Phil looked like he’d been slapped, if lightly. He stared straight through the windshield. The elevators appeared, then the stockyards, then the fast food and car lots, agricultural supplies and used furniture, pawn shop, video rental.

“God, this is getting built up,” said Phil. “I mean, where the hell’s the town? Used to be right over in here.”

The last thing Phil said that day was “Shit.” Frank had pulled up in front of his house and Phil thanked him for a great day, another great day on the stream; then Phil snagged his shirt getting out of the car and said his last word for the day. Smokie moved to the front seat. Frank glanced over at the front door of Phil’s house. Kathy was not there welcoming him home, glad to see him. Frank thought of the day she and the family doctor strode out of that modest doorway. It sharpened a pain inside him.

“Where can I drop you?” Frank asked.

“Anywhere around here is fine.”

“No, I’m happy to take you where you’re going.”

“I haven’t picked a spot, I guess.”

They drove on past the hospital and a light-truck repair place. The trees curved right overhead in the old neighborhood as they approached Main.

“Do you have a place to stay?”

“No.”

Frank turned his head to look. “You don’t?”

“Uh-uh.”

Frank thought for a long moment about his afternoon and looked at this fresh-faced, vital creature. “I know a spot you can stay,” he said and drove her back to Phil’s.

“Phil,” he said with a look, “I hate to impose, but Smokie needs a place to stay.” Frank thought Phil would be grateful, but he stood there and complained about what a mess the place was. Finally, he agreed that if Smokie walked around the block for half an hour first, she could stay on the couch. He was quite grouchy about that. Frank thought as he drove off, I’m so cynical I thought he’d take it as a favor.

Frank went straight to his breakfast meeting with Doctors Jensen, Popelko, Dumars and Frame in the dining room of the Dexter Hotel. They were his renters. He got there a few minutes late and the doctors were telling stories over their first cup of coffee. Dr. Popelko, an obstetrician who had taught his specialty, explained how he had tried to get his university to hire prostitutes. He chuckled, his little round face completely wrinkled, his bow tie bobbing and the shoulders of his loud plaid sport jacket shuddering. “How do you teach students to do a vaginal?” he bayed across the dining room. “It’s no different than learning to ride a horse. You need vaginas! Where are you going to get them? In the old days, we used poor people’s vaginas in exchange for medical treatment. Now everyone has insurance. The chancellor’s wife isn’t going to let you use her vagina, is she? The chairman of the English department is not liable to suggest that the medical students train on his daughter’s vagina. The only answer seemed to be prostitutes. But when I suggested this as a budget item to the university, I damn near lost my job. It made the papers and the born-agains were marching. I went into private practice. I had to!”

“Morning, Frank,” said Dr. Dumars. Frank carried his own coffee and roll and set it among the more complete breakfasts of the doctors. Dumars was an older doctor, close to retirement, and bore himself with the gravity old doctors sometimes had as a result of all they had seen. Jensen and Frame were young and ambitious, with huge split-level homes. Jensen, the seducer of Phil’s wife Kathy, had blond hair which he had arranged in pixieish bangs, a modern and alert young man with staring eyes. Frame was somber; the skin under his eyes was dark and his lower lip hung in a permanent pout. He was staring at Frank.

“Been fishing, Frank?” Jensen asked.

“Yeah, I went Saturday over on the Sixteen. It was pretty darn good,” Frank said. Jensen knew he fished with Phil. This was a way of taking Phil’s temperature at long range.

“Huh,” said Jensen, “we went to the Big Horn over the weekend. Sixteen-foot leaders. Antron emergers. Size twenty-two.”

“A little tough for me, sounds like.” Frame was still staring at Frank.

Jensen shrugged. “I wanted to get a couple of days in. There’s a marathon in Billings next weekend, then a prostate seminar in Sun Valley the following weekend, and so on, and there goes your life.”

Dr. Frame spoke abruptly. “Do you uhm know what?” He was trying to look right through Frank.

“I shudder to think.”

“The rent at the uhm clinic is too high.”

“No, it’s not,” said Frank.

“Too high, too low, it’s more than we’re uhm willing to pay.” Frame was teaching Frank the ABCs of running his building.

Frank sipped his coffee, peered over the top of the cup at the other doctors, who were not tipping their hands, letting Frame run point. Popelko had a purely inquiring look on his face; he wanted a factual outcome. Jensen was just being serious about whatever it was. No one was going to mediate on Frank’s behalf, that was clear. Frank said, “Why don’t you move out?”

“We haven’t paid last month’s rent.”

“I hadn’t noticed.”

“We just wanted to uhm send a signal.”

“I don’t understand signals. I understand English.”

“I tried English,” said Dr. Frame. “You didn’t seem to uhm understand.”

“I understood. I was short on information. I didn’t realize you hadn’t paid the rent last month. You’re evicted.”

At this the other doctors clamored. Dumars immediately pulled Jensen toward him by the coat and spoke into his ear. Frank stood up. The doctors were all trying to look like one unit, a little tribal dance group or something. Frank knew they didn’t want to move out; they just wanted to improve their deal. Frank read once that ninety percent of doctors went to medical school for business reasons. That made it easier for him to keep the rent where it ought to be than to imagine they were sheltering sick orphans.

“Get your stuff out. Or hand deliver last month’s rent. I’ll be able to give you the new figures for next month, if you decide to stay. I don’t see last month’s check in my office today, you’re going to have to work out of your upstairs bedrooms.”

Frank walked out into the street. The sunshine hit him. He could never think about property, or its problems, if the sun was in his face. A ranch couple walked by in matching denim; she had a dramatically tooled purse and he wore a bandanna. They were gazing around at the buildings and gesturing to each other with show-business savvy, projecting their feelings. What a big town this is! they seemed to say.

Frank turned and went back into the hotel, feeling his thoughts roll forward like a barrel going down a hill. The doctors were still at their table. Frank stood at its edge.

“That building is killing me,” he said. “Six percent of its capitalization before expenses. Why don’t you buy it? No, hold it, I know why. Because the return is so low. We’ll let Frank Copenhaver go on owning the sonofabitch. Let me tell you something: nobody’s getting such gentle rent treatment in this whole town. But don’t be greedy, don’t be greedy.”