Thomas Mcguane - Nobody's Angel

“She’s just not for sale. But I appreciate it.”

“How’s she bred?” Claire asked.

“Rey Jay.”

“That can’t hurt.”

“The only way blood like that can hurt you is if you don’t have it.”

You had to reach through to get the butt chain, past the dust curtain and the levered doors. Through the interstices of a green satiny blanket, the horse’s color could be seen: black and a mile deep. Looked to be fifteen hands. Squeezing his butt back till the chain indented a couple inches: a bronco. She said, “This colt can look at a cow.” She said “cow” Southwestern style: “kyao.”

“I believe I’ll unload him, then, and put a saddle on him and put him before a very kyao.”

She said, “If he don’t lock down, give him back.” Patrick thought: I won’t give him back if all he can do is pull a cart.

The stud unloaded himself very carefully, turned slowly around on the halter rope and looked at Patrick. A good-looking horse with his eyes in the corners of his head where they’re supposed to be; keen ears and vividly alert.

Claire looked at her watch. “Y’know what? I’m going to just let you go on and try the horse. If I don’t get back, Tio’s going to pitch a good one.”

“Well, call me up and I’ll tell you how we got along.” A rather testy formality had set in. The electric door at closing time.

She scribbled the accountants’ address in Tulsa for training bills and then she was gone, the clatter of the empty trailer going downhill behind the silent anthracite machine to the great space toward town. Patrick tried to conclude something from the aforegoing, rather cool, rather unencouraging conversation, then suddenly grew irritated with himself, thinking, What business is this of mine? I’m just riding a horse for a prosperous couple from Oklahoma. Nobody else even knows I’m out of the Army. I shall do as instructed and bill the accountants in Tulsa.

Patrick absentmindedly led the horse toward the barn, trailing him at the end of the lead shank, the horse behind and not visible to him. And in an instant the horse had struck him and had him on the ground, trying to kill him. Patrick cradled his head and rolled away, trying to get to his feet, the stallion pursuing him and striking down hard with his front feet until Patrick was upright, hitting him in the face with his hat. Patrick stood him off long enough to seize the rake leaning up against the tack shed and hold the stud at bay. The horse had his ears pinned close to his head, nostrils flared, a look of homicidal mania that will sometimes seize a stallion. It was Patrick’s fault. He was in pain and he blamed himself. The horse’s ears came up and he began to graze: He had no recollection of the incident. Patrick picked up the lead shank and led him correctly to the barn, the horse snorting and side-passing the new shapes in its interior, until Patrick turned him into a box stall and left him.

He hobbled toward the house, and Mary, who had heard or sensed something, came out. Patrick knew it was less than serious injury; but it hurt to breathe and he wanted to know why.

“What in the world happened?”

“New stud got me down.”

“What’s wrong with your voice?”

“Can’t get my breath. You take me to town?”

Mary drove the Ford while Patrick scanned the road for potholes. She had some theory, some fatal Oriental notion, that this horse represented an intricate skein of influences which had already demonstrated itself to be against Patrick’s best interests. Patrick couldn’t help thinking that it was the horse Tio sent him.

“Mary, you haven’t even seen the horse.”

“That horse is employed by the forces of evil. You watch. The X-rays will show something broken.”

Patrick sat on the bench outside the X-ray room, his green smock tied behind. Mary had gone on and on about the horse and its relationship to Patrick and the universe; and about how Patrick had to think about these things and not just go off and drive tanks or break any old horse or see the wrong people. Patrick sorted through his incomplete knowledge of the world’s religions and, as he awaited his X-rays, tried to think just what it was she was stuck on this time. He began with the East, but by the time the nurse called him, he had it figured out: Catholicism.

The doctor, staring at the plates, said, “Four cracked ribs.”

They taped Patrick and sent him home. In the car Mary said, “Now do you understand?”

“No,” he said.

“There-are-none-so-blind-as-those-who-will-not-see.”

“Yeah, right.”

Patrick, apart from hurting considerably, disliked the monotonous pattern he had long ago got into with Mary, bluntly resisting what he saw as signs of her irrationality. He had to think of another way, though the burdens of being an older brother impeded his sense. And something about his own past, the comfort of the Army, the happy solitude of bachelorhood, the easy rules of an unextended self — some of that came back with the simple pain, the need to hole up for a bit. For instance, a friendly hug would kill him.

THE NORTHBRANCH SALOON IS A GRAND SPOT IN THE AFTERNOON, thought Patrick. There will be no one there, there will be the sauce in the bottles and that good jukebox. And he could start getting Claire off his mind and just sit at the bar and think about her; then go about his business without this distraction with her off his mind and his mind thereby liberated for more proper business. At this point he knew his father would have asked, “Like what?”

“Hello, Dan,” he said to the bartender on duty. “George Dickel and ditch, if you would.” There was a TV on top of the double-door cooler. The host was getting ready to spin the roulette wheel. A couple from Oregon stared, frozen, at his hand. Patrick gripped his drink and looked up at the “North Dakota pool cue” overhead — it had a telescopic sight; he preferred it to the “North Dakota bowling ball,” which was simply a cinderblock. Claire puts her hands in her back pockets. Around the top of the bar are boards with names and brands on them. American Fork Ranch, Two Dot, Montana. There’s a machine that will play draw poker against you. Hay Hook Ranch. Raw Deal Ranch. Bob Shiplet, Shields Route, Livingston, Montana. Clayton Brothers, Bozeman, Montana. I also don’t think she is being accorded treatment commensurate with her quality by that Okie hubby. And what’s that ailment he’s supposed to have?

She could be the queen of Deadrock, like Calamity Jane, an early Deadrock great. She could be Calamity Claire. Maybe not such a good idea. Maybe bad. There were three views of the original Calamity on the north wall. In one she is dressed as an Army scout. In another she leans on a rifle and wears a fedora on the back of her head. The last is an artist’s rendering on the cover of a dime novel, a Victorian heroine of the kind Patrick was crazy about.

DEADWOOD DICK ON DECK,

OR

CALAMITY JANE, THE HEROINE

OF WHOOP-UP

Oh me oh my. “Make that a double, Dan.” Dan moves past the cross-buck saw, the set of Longhorns, the old-time handcuffs, the horse hobbles, singletrees, ox yokes and buffalo skulls; and fetches the big bourbon. I thought whoop-up meant to get sick to your stomach. Patrick declines to order a Red Baron pizza. He looks out on the empty dance floor, the drums and amplifier, wagon wheels overhead with little flame-shaped light bulbs. Romance. Lost in the crowd, we dance the Cotton-Eyed Joe. Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys. Hear that, Mamas? Don’t let the sonofabitch happen. Lost souls on the big sky. Hell in a hand basket.

Ease past the L. A. Huffman photos of the old chiefs toward that jukebox, now. Get something played, vow not to stay here too long and fall down. No sick-dog stuff.