Thomas Mcguane - Nobody's Angel

“Punching cows.”

“Where’s this at?”

“Different places. Roundup, Ekalaka, Grassrange, Sumatra. Different reservations. Up on Rocky Boy.”

“I’m hardly ever horseback,” the grandfather said angrily. “Time was, irrigated ground was considered modern.”

Patrick walked in. He was carrying a small valise. His grandfather went to the window.

“Are we ever going to eat?”

“I don’t want to.”

“Catches, what about you?”

“I stopped in town and got a hamburger.”

“You know what I can’t remember?” asked Patrick. “Whose idea was it we talk?”

“I don’t know,” said Catches. “Doesn’t matter. What d’you got in the sack?”

“Whiskey. Number-one kind of bourbon.”

“Okay,” said Catches.

“That way we’ve got a shot at some actuality, medicine man. I mean, this isn’t going to be the sweat lodge.”

“You’re not gonna do your well-known mean-drunk thing, are you?” asked Catches. Patrick gave him a long look.

“All it is, is for loosening tongues and to make sure we don’t have any mystical ceremonies.”

Catches put his hat on and walked over to the sink. He twisted the faucet, cupped his hand under the stream, drank, turned off the water and wiped his face. “No more cracks. I tried to save her too.”

Patrick sat down. “Save her from what?”

“You people and her own thoughts.”

“I don’t want to talk about this,” said the grandfather.

“Stay where you are,” Patrick ordered. “Have a seat, Catches.” Catches drew a chair with the same fatal gesture he extended to the hat. Now the hat was foursquare on his head and he was looking at the whiskey Patrick unloaded on the table. The yellow electrical light contained the three of them in the dying day. Catches couldn’t keep his eye off the bag. Patrick filled a jug with cold water and set three glasses on the table. He filled the glasses nearly full with whiskey. “The ditch is in the jug, boys. We’re all throwed into this mess. So make yourself brave.”

Catches tilted the whiskey back to his face and, pausing very momentarily, produced a wicked little knife from its leather encasement, a narrow blade with dark, oxidized steel, a maple handle with stars and silver faces. He didn’t seem to mean much by the gesture.

“Is that anything special to you?” Patrick asked. His grandfather got up and walked out. “Spooked the old boy. Well, is it?” They could hear the grandfather slamming doors down the hallway.

“Just a little knife. I cut binder twine with it.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Do you think you helped Mary an awful lot, being an Army officer who kind of looked down on her no matter how much she thought of you?”

They drank another glass of whiskey before Patrick answered: “Is that what happened?”

“You didn’t save her. I am saying that.”

“Maybe you should have saved her,” said Patrick. “And I didn’t look down on her. I neglected her. It’s different.”

“You didn’t do jack shit.”

“This is a pretty state of affairs,” said Patrick. “Who’s to pour our whiskey?”

“I’ll do it.” Catches refilled the glasses.

“I have something you can take to the powwows,” Patrick said. “You’ll be the talk of the town.” He left the room for a moment.

It was the sheet Mary had painted of herself and the baby. He draped it over the shoulders of David Catches.

“This was Mary’s way of saying, ‘Adiós, amigos.’ I want you to have it for whatever gala occasions you chaps have down on the reservation, social events that inevitably produce the Budweiser flu and well-known Cheyenne jalopy crashes. Having said that, we will now drink heap more deathbed whiskey. You didn’t take care of her.”

“What care could you take of her? She was a grown woman.” Catches stopped. “Besides, we are now to the place where one of us is inclined to kill the other.”

Patrick moved very slightly in his chair.

“On the basis of what?”

“On the basis of two men revenging themselves upon each other for what they haven’t done themselves. Boy, I don’t know what that means.”

“You came close.”

“I know,” said Catches, “but I fell on my ass.”

“More sourmash for my lieutenants,” said Patrick. “Away with the offending mystery.”

“As you wish.”

“Catches, are you an educated man?”

“I certainly am. Let’s drink at high speed.”

“Okay.”

“We have a shot at murder tonight. I’ll wear this sheet to remind me of your insult.”

“I think that would be appropriate.”

“What do you have for a weapon?”

“I have my skinning knife,” said Patrick.

“Get it,” said Catches.

“I am in considerable pain.” Patrick found his skinning knife in the hallway. It had a deeply curved blade and a worn birch handle.

“Not a bad knife,” said Catches.

“It is designed,” said Patrick, “for disheartening an aborigine.”

“But what’s at issue?”

“Oh, dear. The noble savage displays his vocabulary. At issue, let me see. At issue is whether you caused Mary despair.”

“I thought it was like flu.”

Patrick stared at this arrogant Indian whose infuriatingly expressive hat drew a jaunty line above his eyes.

“What do you think about us getting drunk?” Patrick asked.

Catches said, “A warning has come to me that there is no escape.”

“I’ve had no such warnings. Everyone hears footsteps. But no sacred eagles bearing messages.”

“How much of that is there left?”

“Another bottle.”

“Brought out this sheet, did you?”

“How do you like the fit?”

“A little long in the back.”

Patrick asked, “Do we each have a fair chance?”

“Depends,” said the Indian. “But not if it’s up to me.”

“Last Indian I remember making the papers was a Northern Cheyenne named Paul Bad Horse who killed that supermarket clerk, cold blood, for what was in the till. Paul wasn’t charging the cavalry. Paul got our clerk in the back of the head.”

“Stop this small stuff.” They topped off water glasses with brown whiskey. Patrick thought, This Cheyenne is going to buckle under the sourmash. He thinks he’s got something for me to buckle under; but it’s going to be a cold day in hell. I’m going to ice this redskin.

“See, where you’re just exactly one pickle short of a full jar, Tank Captain, is that you think you’re going to come to me as my equal in matters concerning Mary. Besides, you are less educated a man than me.”

“She’s dead and we’re not.”

“Neither of us is wily,” said Catches. “Neither of us is getting paid to do this— Give me a refill … thanks. But if it went just right, one is prepared to kill the other. We should have a complete agreement about that.”

“I think that’s real fucking boring and obvious.”

“I can’t help that.”

“We can’t bring Mary back.”

“No, we can’t,” Catches began, tears gleaming down his face.

Patrick’s grandfather appeared in the kitchen doorway dressed in his long johns. He was in a red-faced rage.

“I’d like you two to go. All right? Go away. Go to the barn. Go anywhere. Go away. I’ve listened to as much of this as I will. It’s terrible. It’s terrible what you both say, pouring that out. But on this place the answer is no. Take it away, take it to such-and-such a place, but get it out of here.”

The two younger men went outside. It was a cold night and the stars crowded down upon them, the buildings of the ranchstead scarcely visible in their light. Patrick was utterly lacking in anger. All he wanted to say was the right thing. “Don’t know just where to go here. David, you bring the bottle?”