Thomas Mcguane: Nobody's Angel

The bartender collected more orders — Sunny Brook, Cabin Still, Old Grand Dad, Canadian Mist, another George Dickel for Patrick.

“Hungry?”

“No,” said Patrick.

“We got three kinds of beef jerky — King B, Big Slim and Rawhide Ranch.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Plus beer nuts and smoked almonds.”

“Who shot that six-pointer?”

“I did, Pat. Right after Korea.”

The old man asked the bartender, “What bets’ve I got?”

“You got the Pirates and the Tigers.”

“Buck a square?”

“Yup.”

“What kind of cigars you got?”

“Everything from White Owl to R. G. Dun.”

“Gimme an R. G. Dun.”

Patrick thought that in a moment the old man would tell him where his grandfather was; he was warming up and didn’t want to be a squealer. Patrick pointed to a bottle of Hiram Walker chocolate-mint liqueur and asked, “Ever try that?”

“No.”

The old man knew Patrick knew. He was going to play it silent. Down the bar a heavy woman in her sixties squinted and started describing commemorative bottles in a lungful of Lucky Strike smoke: “Illinois Gladiola Festival, a ‘Ducks Unlimited,’ an Australian koala bear, Indian chief, Abraham Lincoln, the Kentucky Derby, Am Vets, a telephone—”

“Barkeep, what’s it say on that model train?”

“ ‘Jupiter.’ Says just ‘Jupiter.’ ”

“I don’t know what in the hell that means. Why don’t somebody scrape that junk down from offa there?”

The old man pivoted to Patrick. “Your grandfather is trying out for a movie.”

“He what?”

“Read the poster on the inside of the door.”

CASTING CALL

for HONDO’S LAST MOVE, a feature film.

WANTED

Men, women and children for bit players, extras, et cetera.

ALSO NOTE

In order to reflect the hardships endured in the West in the 1880’s, we would especially welcome the physically eccentric, those with permanent physical injuries, such as scars, missing teeth, broken limbs, broken noses, missing limbs, etc.

CONTACT

Arnold Duxbury, Casting Coordinator, Room 115–17, Murray Hotel. Interviews commence daily at 10:00 A.M.

Patrick thought, The old bugger has scars, missing teeth and evidence of a broken nose. That is where we shall find him. One episode too many of Wagon Train, dog-food ads masquerading as life.

Rooms 115–17 were, respectively, reception, waiting room and Duxbury. There was a considerable lineup of the maimed. The worst was a five-year-old boy whose pet wildcat had recently clawed out his eyeball. He wore an oozing patch and steered his head around, trying to figure out what he was doing there. His mother, a telephone operator who moonlighted at the Tempo Supper Club, respected her son’s injury enough to bark “ No cuts! ” at Patrick when he tried to move up the line and look for his grandfather. The mother indignantly steered the little boy forward by the arm, and Patrick sheepishly got at the end while the halt, lame and maimed glowered at him, thinking, It’s the bloody tank captain from the Heart Bar Ranch, trying to throw his weight around. But the sound of crutches and labored breathing grew behind him, and soon he stood at the desk of Marion Garland, who said, “What brings you to the geek show?” Streets of Laredo poured from a neighboring room.

“I’m looking for my grandfather—”

“What’s your grandfather’s name?”

“Frank Fitzpatrick.”

“Francis X?”

“Yes.”

“He’s with Mr. Duxbury now.”

“I’ll just go in and get him.”

“That’s not our procedure—”

“It is now.”

Patrick walked past her into Arnold Duxbury’s office. Duxbury was a youthful forty. Every single thing he had on was denim, including his boots, which Patrick did not think was possible; treated rubber, perhaps.

Francis X. Fitzpatrick was showing a mule kick by taking off his pants. Duxbury explained that that would be unnecessary, as we were dealing with family entertainment. The crooked upper thigh was the old man’s trump card and he wouldn’t take no for an answer. Finally Duxbury said, “Hey, relax, you’re in the movie.” The old man shot his sleeves confidently.

“On the basis of what?” he demanded.

“The nose and your age.”

“Well, write my name down.”

“I already did.”

“I’ll see you on the set,” said the old man, fastening his trousers. “Y’know what I mean? You better spelt my name correct.”

“Come on, Grandpa,” said Patrick. “I need you at the place. You mind?”

Duxbury and Garland signed up eighty-seven permanently injured Americans for Hondo’s Last Move and returned to Los Angeles. The film was already in trouble; the distributor was thinking of pulling out to do something more in the Space line, as Westerns were beginning to show signs of what he called in a Variety interview “metal fatigue.”

Nobody ever saw Duxbury and Garland again. As it turned out, Patrick’s grandfather would never quite get over it. His heart was on a movie poster, however close to the bottom. There were still small wings on his shoes.

PATRICK GAVE HIS GRANDFATHER A GOOD LEAD, THEN GOT IN the Ford and started home. The yellow truck shot along the river road against the amphitheater in the Absaroka range between Case Creek and Sheep Creek. A summer storm hung in the deepest pass above the truck, and lightning volleyed in silence. Patrick glanced at his knuckles, looked up, dodged a pothole, admired a hawk circling in a thermal against the limited storm now evaporating like steam on glass. The truck sucked down into the creek bottom. The storm dematerialized and left the hawk in empty blue.

Patrick stopped at the calving shed a mile below the house and played Ornette Coleman on the machine, wondered why Ornette always had a white bass player and why he made you think so hard. Patrick decided that because Ornette was such a thorough master of bebop, he knew a white man could be expected to play melodic bass and not worry too much about time. Was Ornette as clever as the Yardbird? Why was there not a statue of Charlie Parker in Washington? When Patrick thought of Ornette Coleman running an elevator in Los Angeles with a roomful of scores and his mother sending him food from Texas, he developed grave doubts about the District of Columbia.

Patrick daydreamed on with unimpeded high energy. Lenin’s girl friend Inessa Armand died in 1920 of typhus in the North Caucasus. Patrick read that in a Mexican comic book while preparing for flight to Castile. He read that in the vague interior light of a high-speed American tank in Germany. He was a security measure. He liked whiskey. Most of the other security measures preferred pharmaceuticals. With their dilated pupils and langorous movements, they were there to help save the West from the East, should the occasion arise. Patrick felt they had already gone East. But then, he was a captain, and being an officer had slowly sunk against the grain until finally, strangely, he was actually an Army captain, if you could see around the matter of the Mexican comic books.

I will work the claybank mare. She has taken to running through the bridle. She does not fall off to the right as well as she does to the left. I want her to drag, lock down and turn around when she needs to. We are not trying to make trail horses. We are not leading a string of dudes to a photo view of Scissorbill Peak.

Next to the barn a cat ran through three shadows without touching the sunlight, then emerged triumphant in the glare, mouse crosswise in its hard domestic mouth. After a motionless instant the cat started toward the green lawn and the house, where, in front of the sink, it would leave the minute head and vermiculate insides of the mouse.