Thomas McGuane: Nothing but Blue Skies

A moment passed and Sandy spoke in a bell-like contralto: “Thanks for having us over. We see so little of each other. Next time, let’s not let it be so long. Good night!” There was not a trace of irony in her voice. It was wonderfully disconcerting and its effect lingered for a long time. They never saw the Millmans socially after that.

Once Gracie was gone, Sandy seemed determined that she never come back. She introduced Frank to out-of-town women — wanton lawyers, nervous potters, divorcées of unrelenting ferocity. Frank made no effort to get around. He didn’t have to.

But Frank’s loneliness had begun to take some peculiar forms.

Frank stretched out on the broad-branched old apple tree with his back to the smooth, cool trunk. Within the canopy of leaves and remaining blossoms of spring he was engulfed in an even deeper darkness than that provided by this still, moonless night. Better yet, he was able to dreamily observe his travel agent, Lucy Dyer, whose office was just down the hall from his and who was one of Gracie’s oldest friends, remove the last of her clothes and stand transfixed in front of the shuddering blue-gray light of the television. She dug her fingers into her scalp and pushed them up through her hair, loosening and letting it fall in a wonderful declaration of day’s end. Frank sighed in his tree and rested his head against the trunk. This was serene.

Many times Lucy and her current beau had dined with Frank and Gracie, and sometimes Lucy came by herself. One wonderful Halloween, Frank, Gracie and Lucy had gone trick-or-treating together. Now her figure swam with the reflected light of world events on the ten o’clock news. When her window finally went dark, Frank slid slowly to the ground in an excited yet peaceful mood and walked through the sounds of the warm night across the subdivision to the railroad tracks, which he followed until the tall mountains behind the town could be made out against the starlight. To the west a faint flickering of lights arose from the interstate, and to the east the distant sound of trucks beginning the pull into the canyon had a kind of cheerfulness.

When he walked into the house, his phone was ringing. He ran to answer. It was Holly. Whenever he heard her voice, he felt something change inside himself: an indifference to time, for one thing, a floaty focus.

“Dad? I’m joining a sorority.” Holly was a sophomore.

“You are?”

“Aren’t you glad?”

“Well, yes, I guess I am. I just thought you were down on sororities.”

“That was before. This is now.”

“Well, yes, I am glad, especially if this means you won’t be living in an apartment.” She knew that was what he felt. He was nervous about her unguarded life at college. Something had gone amiss with men, and the weak ones were dangerous.

“That’s not what it means.”

“Oh, I was hoping it did. Well, did you join one in particular?”

She told him which one it was. He didn’t know one from another. He vaguely used to comprehend all that Greek stuff, with its comic rituals as a precursor to the characters on little motor scooters wearing fezzes. He wished she would be living in a solid building filled with women.

“Actually, Hol, you know what? This is great.” He was determined to be enthusiastic. “How can I celebrate this appropriately?” He was into this one and it showed.

“Why don’t you come up when I get settled in?”

“I’d love to. Just give me the nod and I’m on my way.”

“Yes, that’s what we’ll do. And now I’m headed for the library. Love you, bye.”

Maybe he had become too dependent on Holly, but she didn’t mind, or didn’t let him know she minded. He didn’t think so, but there may well have been an element of kindness.

For a while he couldn’t quite think of his work in an orderly way. If he couldn’t see how to get insanely rich or change the world in one or two days, he hardly wanted to go to work at all. Finally, he began to take it seriously again. His work had a fairly large value to him viewed purely as routine. At forty-four (his friends had made him a cake, a corona of birthday candles and a chocolate pistol with the red number 44), he couldn’t make out whether he was young or old, and for many reasons he didn’t want to find out through the women in his life. After Gracie left, Frank detected that most people found him a little eerie. He could make them laugh, yet they always felt scrutinized. Some people could stand that and some couldn’t. Examination was his disease. He often saw it in the faces of the people he cared for the most. Some of his adversaries in business saw him as a person of subdued and calculating malice. Frank was kind of proud of that. It was too bad when people he cared about felt eroded by his attention. But Holly wasn’t one of them.

On Tuesday afternoon he drove to Harlowton for lunch with Bob Cheney, who managed the JA ranch. The JA was a pioneer cattle ranch that once belonged to the Melwood family; Mrs. Melwood, the widow of the last rancher in the family, left it to the Salvation Army and Bob Cheney managed it for them. Frank met Cheney at the Graves Hotel, waiting for him a short time on its veranda and staring out at the clouds over the prairie. They were as white as shaving cream. Cheney arrived in a truck filled with fencing materials and salt blocks, and parked right in front of the hotel. They went inside and ordered lunch.

“How long has it been since you had yearlings on us, Frank?”

“Long time ago. ’Eighty-one, anyway. Are you going to have any room for me this year?”

“I don’t quite know yet. How many head?”

“I’ll have to see where the market is, where the bank is.”

“I don’t think I’ll be able to tend them. I’m short a man this season. I could find you a fellow, if you want to pay him.”

“That could work. Do you think you’ll have room for three hundred head of steers?”

“I might,” said Bob. Their lunch arrived and he smiled up at the waitress. Bob had a thin mouth, sharp nose and chin. He looked like an English pirate. “Did you bring your clubs, Frank?”

“You know, I didn’t. I have to go straight from you back to town.”

“What a shame. Can’t even make nine holes?”

“I can’t,” Frank said. “And you know what else? I haven’t played since the year I last had cattle on you. I just kind of pulled my business life over my head and that was that.”

Some war was on the radio and the café was quieter than usual. Conversations murmured on about the eroding price supports for grain, the cattle feeder monopolies, baseball.

“Your boy still at the college?” Frank asked.

“Getting ready to graduate.”

“Is he going to come back to the ranch?”

“I don’t think so.” Bob smiled, shrugged.

You didn’t work your way up in ranching. You might get the job but the owner was always someone else. Frank saw a man appear in the doorway with his dog. The continuity was going out of ranching, and Frank felt sorry for the people who had seen so much in it and couldn’t go on with that, in their families or in any other way.

The waitress announced, “No dogs.”

“No dogs?” the man in the doorway said.

“No dogs.” She bent behind the counter and emerged with a large beef bone. “Take him outside and give him that.”

The man took the bone and went out. He was back in a moment without the dog. “I gave him the bone,” he said. He had a pushed-in upper lip and gray-black crinkled hair that grew well down on his forehead.

“Yeah, good. You going to have lunch?” the waitress asked.

“I might just have a cup of coffee while she’s working on that bone.”