Thomas McGuane - Nothing but Blue Skies

He slid onto another fork that went into dense trees but he could still see lights behind him. In another mile, the road wound around to the north while climbing a washboard hill. They were now in a forest but had to go much slower. There was a logging road going deeper into the woods but he knew that Darryl would just assume he went up it, so he went on, passing another logging road, then another. He turned up this last one. It was muddy and he had to get out and lock the hubs so he could travel in four-wheel drive. When he got out of the truck, he could hear the Dodge laboring on the grade without being able to tell if they had found them. It sounded like they were about a half mile behind.

Frank and Lucy’s truck was all over the road. The mud was getting deeper and the engine was over-revving as the wheels lost traction. The road was sufficiently crowned that it was all important that Frank keep from sliding off the top of it. The truck was swimming upward from side to side like a tired old salmon going up a river. Then it just wallowed off the crown and buried the hood in muck. Frank and Lucy found all their weight on their legs, as though they were standing under the dashboard. Frank tried the accelerator and the rear wheels became whirligigs of spraying mud. When he turned the engine off, he realized the radio was still on faintly and Merle Haggard was singing: “Not so long ago you held our baby’s bottle. Now the one you hold is of another kind.” He turned it off and sighed.

Lucy said, “I can’t live like this.”

“I know how you feel.”

“No you don’t, you aimless bastard.”

“You’re just trying to hurt me, Lucy.”

The windshield was steamed over. She slapped at him while crying out in despair. Then she quit.

“We can’t just wait here like sitting ducks,” he said. “The moon is shining. Let’s walk out of here.” He pushed open his door against the weight of gravity and looked down. “It’s a bit of a jump,” he said.

“Don’t start talking like an Englishman!” Lucy cried. She seemed completely out of control. Frank took her arm and guided her to his side of the truck. When he jumped out and turned to help her, the seat was at the level of his chest. He held her hand. She looked all over for a place to land and then just made a wild jump that took Frank off his feet. He sank in the mud under her weight. He tried to make as little of it as possible because he sensed she was about to go mad. But his nostrils were plugged and the necessity of breathing made it impossible to put a completely good face on things.

Instead of just wading out of the mud, Lucy kept trying to jump feet first like an immobilized kangaroo. Frank crawled toward her, determined to help. Lucy opened her mouth and began to howl like a forlorn dog. Frank kept saying, “I don’t blame you, I don’t blame you. How could I have done this to you?” She was flinging something at him, probably just more mud. Mud didn’t matter now. No matter how much of it, it was just theoretical. He well knew that he was stinking drunk, but he lacked any desire to resist its worst effects. He wished to be free of all conflict.

Dry ground was only a couple of yards off and soon they were standing on it, kicking out first one foot, then the other, like old-timers recalling their days in the chorus line. Frank smiled broadly and pointed to the west. “Town is that way. And what a lovely night for a walk!” With a look of despair, Lucy trudged in the direction he was pointing, on the small marginal road that went off into the woods. There was a ribbon of stars overhead and Frank was hoping that his head would begin to clear. He took Lucy’s hand in his own and she sort of threw it off. He let it flop on his hip as though he weren’t doing anything with it anyway.

It wasn’t long before they came to a clearing where several pieces of heavy equipment were parked, including a big articulated log skidder. Frank stopped and looked at it for a long moment. He knew the answer to his troubles lay in technology.

“Lucy, if I can get that thing started, I can get our truck out of the mud in a heartbeat.”

“Forget it.”

“And accept defeat? Not this boy.”

With the skills of his youth, Frank lay upside down under the dashboard of the skidder and cut the ignition wires with his pocketknife. Touching them together, he felt the diesel lurch. He sat up, pushed in the fuel cut-off, set the throttle, crawled underneath again and hot-wired it. The diesel chugged steady, caught and ran. The hinged cap on the exhaust stack fluttered with pressure and neat puffs of smoke arose and disappeared against the starlight. He twisted the wires apart and let them hang.

“Climb aboard,” Frank called. Lucy considered it, then struggled up beside him. They were far from the ground. The skidder seemed as big as a locomotive, with a powerful hydraulic forklift in front of it. When Frank put it in gear, steering by hitting first one wheel brake and then the other, the great machine crawled forward on a serpentine course, flattening everything in its way. Lucy seemed almost fascinated, though she must have known things were out of control. And Frank had fixed upon the bogged-down pickup truck as an emblem of everything preventing him going on with his life.

He got the skidder turning off one way and couldn’t quite get it back on line until a blizzard of saplings went down before them, leaving the air filled with the rupture of small trunks and descending clouds of leaves. This grand machine made its own road, and with their seats high above the destruction, they could feel some of the detached power that intoxicates those at war with the earth. They were back on their road and could make out the strip of sky overhead, which was a better navigation tool than the dark road ahead of them.

“Where do you suppose those fellows are?” Lucy asked over the engine noise.

“Long gone.”

“Are you sure?”

“They’re back in town by now.”

“To do what? Get the sheriff?”

Frank felt a shiver go through himself. He didn’t want to think about implications. He still had a wonderful feeling of living in his own dream. Everything seemed loose and guileless and free. He thought about the rumble of the big diesel going up through Lucy’s butt, making her a real part of his assault on reason.

“Sunup can’t be that far away,” said Lucy.

“Oh, don’t say it,” he said, looking back to see if the long yellow shape of the skidder was following him, under control. I’m unbelievably good at this, he thought. He felt he made a handsome picture atop this ten-ton machine, throwing shadows of its combustion through his companion’s interior.

He had a plan beyond simply keeping up appearances. He would ease the skidder up to the truck, place the forks underneath it, hydraulically lift the truck back onto the road and drive quietly back to town. He thought about explaining it to Lucy but realized she might not care. She was watching to see how this would turn out. To Frank, she had the detached clarity of real despair. She was a goner. Her head bobbed with the movement of the lurching machine. Her mouth hung open.

He found the truck again without any trouble. He had to turn off the road to get sideways to it. The skidder crawled down off the crown like a big weasel. By flattening a wide swath of brush, Frank was able to get perpendicular to the pickup. He stopped a moment to experiment with the forklift. It was simple: a hydraulic valve lever raised and lowered it smoothly and powerfully. Now he eased forward to the truck. The forks were almost on a correct line to go underneath it, but the muddy bank stopped him several feet short. He backed up and tried it again. This time he might have been even shorter. Once more, and the same result: there was a slick berm that wouldn’t let him crawl up next to the truck.