Thomas Mcguane - Nobody's Angel

Patwell called out, “What took you so long?”

Patrick just strolled around the receptionist into Patwell’s office. He felt cold and peaceful.

“You want to close that door, Pat?”

“Not really, Deke. I just came by to find out why you wanted to talk about us in public like that.”

“I run a newspaper and I thought you deserved it.”

“Is that how it goes in editing? You give what you think people deserve?” He seemed to be helping Deke with his explanation.

“Yeah, that’s pretty much how I feel. It’s an old-fashioned newspaper.”

“I feel you deserve that, you cuntful of cold piss,” said Patrick, caning Patwell across the face. It took Patwell off his chair. “Get up,” said Patrick. “Get back to your chair quickly. If I begin flailing your bottom with this thing, I’ll lose my self-control.” There was a livid mark across Patwell’s face as he scuttled to his swivel chair. “Now,” said Patrick, “that was meant to correct your attitude. You have hurt my feelings with your filthy fish-wrapper and you have hurt my grandfather, who is an old man. Do you follow me so far?” Patwell nodded hurriedly. Patrick wondered how many fingers in the outer office were dialing the police. “People just kind of live their lives, Deke. Y’know, they’re not out there just as cannon fodder for boys with newspapers.” Patwell nodded furiously. Patrick stared at him, feeling Patwell turn into an object again, one that had managed to besmirch his dead sister, and he could feel the crazy coursing of blood that he knew, unchecked, could turn him into a murderer. But then the police arrived, among them the chief of police, who demanded an explanation, and handled his gun.

“Deke wanted me to act out the Ronald Colman part from The Prisoner of Zenda. Isn’t that so, Deke?”

The chief of police turned eyes of patented seriousness to the editor. “Do I arrest him?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because he’ll be put in jail.”

“He’s been before.”

“When he gets out he’ll kill me.”

So something, after all, got through. Patrick just departed; when he passed through the large room with numerous brave-dialing employees, he said, “When this doesn’t make tonight’s newspaper, you’ll know what kind of outfit you work for.” They wrote that down, too; they were untouchable.

The cop caught up with him outside. “What else you have in mind for the day?”

“What’s it to you?” Patrick asked, about a half-inch from the chief’s face. It was turning into a Western.

“I don’t know. You’re still packing that cane and you aren’t limping.” The chief meshed both hands behind his head, thrusting forward an impervious abdomen.

“Don’t let that throw you,” said Patrick. Then he withdrew its inner slide. “See? You can measure your horse. This would be a Shetland pony and this —this would be Man o’ War!”

“Well, thanks for the explanation, cousin.”

“Anytime.”

“I hope you don’t need no help of any particular kind in the future.”

Patrick smiled. “Not a chance. Not unless my car doesn’t start or something. I might borrow your jumper cables.”

The impact of Catches’ love of Mary was driving him in circles. Even after Mary’s death, it meant more than anything he had. Patrick was closest to it with Claire, and that was not very close.

AT ONE END OF THE GRANARY WAS AN OPEN SHED WITH BIG tools hanging on its walls, truck-sized lug wrenches, a scythe for the beggar’s-lice that grew tall around the buildings and got into the horses’ manes. There were also old irons for brands that the ranch owned, ones they quit using when they finally got a single-iron brand. There was a stout railroad vise, and Patrick’s grandfather had been at it all morning, making a skinning knife out of a broken rasp.

“I’m going to kill me one more bugling bull, skin him with this and move to town.”

“That’s your plan, huh?” Patrick was kneeling on the ground, crimping copper rivets that had gone loose in the rigging of his pack saddles. That morning there had been a stinging fall breeze, and gear needed going through if he would make it to the hills before winter. “Got a spot picked out in town?”

“Those apartments across from the library.”

“Sounds awful nice,” said Patrick. “This has sure gotten to be a can of worms.” Patrick wondered what he meant by that. The place wasn’t at fault, but maybe something about it had begun to smell.

“That’s what any ranch is, and this is a good one. It’s got two hundred fifty miner’s inches of first-right deeded water, plus a big flood right and the adjudication — y’know, if a guy cared to irrigate.”

“I’ll wait for some farmer to chase that water. My horses would rather be on prairie grass any day than wallowing around in alfalfa.” They were starting in again.

“Well, I’ll kill the one bull. Then look out town, here I come. After that, you can irrigate, not irrigate or piss up a rope.”

“And you can be a star at the lending library.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Patrick worked away on the pack rigging, oiled the straps, coiled his lash ropes and canvas manties. It seemed crazy on a cool day, the two men polishing away on things they needed in order to get out, to go into the hills, to disappear. And yet Patrick didn’t really want to disappear. All recent losses drove him to thinking of Claire. And he had no sense she did the same. Living on the ranch, which from his tank had seemed a series of bright ceremonies, was now more like entrapment in a motel on the interstate. Nor was he filled with a sense he could do something about it. It had stopped meaning anything.

CLAIRE CAME TO THE SIDE DOOR AT PATRICK’S KNOCK, AND HE was astonished to see how genuinely stricken she seemed. “Patrick, I haven’t any idea what to say to you.”

“It’s all over. There isn’t anything to say.” Then he added, with ungodly bitterness, “The angels came and took her away.”

He walked into the house and got his own coffee as though he lived there. Claire circled the kitchen in a preoccupied way, knocking cupboard doors shut. Patrick felt somehow choky when he looked over at her, so extraordinarily pretty in a yellow wash dress that seemed to belong to another time, like some unused memento of the dust bowl, something a girl driven off her bridal farm in Oklahoma and since gone on to old age in some anonymous California valley might have saved.

But the daughter of a desperate man of 1932 might well have worn such a yellow dress on a pretty day like today or worn it in hopes of seeing someone she loved. What if that turned out to be me? Well, a person could work at it. And then what? Then-what equals implications and I don’t know what they are. I’m getting to know very damned little.

“When do you suppose Tio will come back?”

“It’s a mystery.”

“You still haven’t talked to him?”

“No, and I’ve tried to. He showed up in Tulsa for a short time and now he’s gone from there.”

“Does this make you nervous?”

“Yes.”

“Me too. But I’m not sure why.”

“If you knew Tio better, you’d know why.”

“I would?”

“You certainly would.”

The phone rang and Claire got up from the table in her yellow dress to answer it. She answered twice and put the phone down. “Whoever it was hung up,” she said, trying not to let that seem significant.

Suddenly she grinned. “Can you press your weight?” she asked.

“No.”

“I can. One fourteen.” Patrick thought about a hundred and fourteen pounds in a yellow wash dress.