Thomas Mcguane: Nobody's Angel

“Free checkup,” said Patrick. “Look at the good side of things.”

“Who’s winning?” Loretta asked. She came from Deadrock, looked like a nice farm girl.

Deirdre, from Great Falls, always literal, said, “The fetus.” This nun was packing the mail.

Patrick asked if they were betting. They said no. He said that as he was a Catholic, he would kick in the set if the fetus lost.

“There’s a Catholic,” said Tana as the camera isolated the apoplectic nun shouting the word “ Sacred! ”

“I’ve seen better ones,” said Patrick.

“Well, there’s one, is all,” she said doggedly.

Andrea, the young, bright blond, was from the High Line. She said, “I was with this rancher on his place. He wanted to go again. All the lights went out. I said that’s Rural Electrification for you. He said that’s Montana Power. I said well, I can’t see nothin. He said it’s hydroelectric. It comes off the grid, out of Columbia Falls. So I said what’s the deal? Do we go again? He said not if I can’t see. And just then, like God was on my side, the power came back on and I doubled down for fifty bucks. Thank you, Montana Power! Thank you, Columbia Falls!”

“Jesus,” Patrick said. “That nun is going to blow her stack.” He was staring at the screen.

“She’s no help to the fetus team,” said Loretta. The moderator kept saying, “ Sister! Sister! ” but nothing could slow her tirade, which continued to feature the word “ Sacred! ” repeated at very high volume.

“I’m glad I don’t have any money on this one,” said Patrick. Andrea got up and went to the kitchen to make iced tea. Loretta, from Deadrock, had gone to grammar school with Patrick, had been a medical secretary, then been not quite happy with that and tried prostitution, a respected job in Montana because of its long utility during the settlement of that region. Loretta’s rural good looks made her prosper, particularly among visiting sportsmen.

Deirdre, from Great Falls, said, “That nun could use some eye shadow.” Deirdre was best with closing-time stumblebums. Patrick asked Loretta if he could have a word with her privately.

The two went into the kitchen as Patrick fought back a little tingle. Loretta hiked herself up on the counter and Patrick sat in a ladder-back chair. There were coffee cans on a low shelf, each labeled with one of the girls’ names; and in front of every can was a kitchen timer. The cans held each night’s earnings and the clocks foiled dawdling or inappropriate enthusiasm.

“Loretta,” said Patrick. “You’re prettier than you were at homecoming.” Only an officer. She’d actually gone downhill.

“I’ve got a better life now. When did you get back?”

“Not too long ago. In the winter.”

“You home to stay?”

“Trying to be. It’ll depend on what I can get going. We’re still running pairs and I’ve got a few outside horses to break, if I can remember how. I guess my grandfather has just had to pick up whoever he could. So a lot of things have kind of gone downhill.”

“He had that one Indian for quite a while. Supposed to have been a good hand.”

“What Indian?”

“He was, you know, a friend of Mary’s, the way I had it.” Mary was Patrick’s sister.

“Well, Mary is why I’m here.”

“What’s the trouble?”

“No trouble. I just can’t find her. I mean, I thought you might know.”

“She got out of this work a long time ago, Pat. The Indian is the best way to find her I know. He was supposed to be real different. Used to shark pool at the Corral, just take everybody’s money and never say a word. You know, an Indian. ”

“Well, I’m not going to go hunt her down or anything. But if you see her, tell her I’m home.”

“I sure will.”

“Boy, you look good, Loretta.”

“More!” She put on her “It Girl” smile and spun on her toes.

Patrick walked over to the can labeled “Loretta,” wound the clock in front of it and turned it loose real slow.

“Gives me a vicarious thrill,” he said. She waved as he went out the door into the sunlight that bounced from the high walls of granite around the town.

PATRICK WAS TICKING OFF OBLIGATIONS. HE WALKED BACK outside under the heartless blue sky. He was searching for his grandfather, who had left the ranch early that morning. Patrick feared a binge. But as he had just left the Army and was not yet used to being home, he was rather like someone out of stir, trying to establish a pattern in a new world. For example, this morning after feeding the horses, he had thought very seriously about moving to Madrid. He had learned Spanish at the Monterey language school, but the Army made him a tank captain in Germany. Nonetheless, he often daydreamed of an ancient walk-up in Castile with a stone kitchen, a cook he could afford and a stream of interesting characters who could understand that what had begun as scholarship had precipitated him into cold-war mongery, not a desire to drive a bulletproof dump truck on the East German line. Patrick had read widely, could break horses and did not, as yet, live in Spain. In any case, he would never reveal his love for the tank. He was tall, single, had lost his father and looked after a grandfather who now drank too much. Patrick drank a little too much. His father had been a test pilot for Boeing. His mother remarried in California. Lately, Patrick was having trouble answering letters, especially the prying ones from the family about the finances of the ranch, which were precarious; and with each arrival of the mail it had become a real Mexican standoff between hiring a secretary and embarking for Castile.

Angled on the corner of Big Horn and Main was the Part-Time Bar, where Patrick went to have a George Dickel and water as a way of staking the place out for his grandfather. The Part-Time was an old-timers’ favorite. The homemade soup there took a little of the edge off the binges and sustained anyone hungry in search of company. This hunger struck at all hours.

Patrick walked in and it was busy. He surveyed the room; no sign of his grandfather. At the bar many aging backs hunched in concealment.

“Anybody seen the old man?”

About fifteen nopes.

Patrick got his whiskey at the bar, sat down in the row of older faces and thought: This is the kind of place that makes you want to grow old, just sit here and eavesdrop.

Down the bar:

“I was born in 1904.”

“Here?”

“Evidently.”

Cigarette smoke moved horizontally toward the EXIT-TELEPHONE-REST ROOM sign.

Every time someone entered, “What d’ya know?” in a hearty voice; and the reply: “Not much.” The “o” in “know” carrying the drawn-out local dipthong.

Patrick sipped in deep contentment. Underneath the murmur of conversation and easy laughter was the continuous slap of plastic chips from the poker game in the corner.

An elderly man next to Patrick in a John B. Stetson hat and blue suspenders said, “Colder it gets, the more a guy’ll notice.” He stared fixedly at the commemorative bottles. A pretty girl in a blue sweater dealt poker and in a firm voice repeated the rules. The new players feared her.

“Fifty cents to a buck on the deal and before the flop. There’s a three-raise limit on each round, no cutting. Twenty bucks to buy in.”

The old man next to Patrick was adjusting his butt on the stool, improving his angle for a conversation. The bartender shot past to the glass-and-wood cooler that displayed five kinds of beer at knee level. Patrick tried to read the farm-auction poster from twenty feet; thought, Used to could do that.

A voice from the corner: “Can’t draw no goddamned clubs.”