Thomas Mcguane - Nobody's Angel

He started upstairs; and by the landing he could see Tio’s boots, toes down over the top step. Patrick thought, He’s dead. He climbed the rest of the way, and as he moved around Tio’s rumpled body, the body moved, the head turned up for a look. “Fitzpatrick.”

“What’s the problem here, Tio?”

“Had some bounty-hunter friends on a visit. God-amighty, did I sleep here?”

“Evidently you did.”

Tio struggled into a kneeling position and let his head hang for a long moment. “Godamighty. Last thing I remember, we was trying to get them coyotes skinned. We was a little far gone.” Tio got up. “I was shooting at something in the fireplace. I guess they panicked. Up till then, our plan was to hunt you down like an animal. Which is all you are. Then I had kind of a fit and they run off on me.”

Tio wandered toward the bathroom and closed the door. Patrick expected him to emerge with a gun. He looked around the room for the weapon Tio had mentioned and didn’t see it. He began to be sure that it was in the bathroom. Then he heard the shower running. In the eerie situation it sounded like some kind of weather behind the closed bathroom door, like a distant storm that ended suddenly. Patrick then thought of Claire, on the chance his minutes were numbered.

The bathroom door swung open. Tio, wrapped in a towel, was drawing broad stripes through the shaving cream on his face. Still standing at the top of the stairs, Patrick could hear the sleepy drone of the flies downstairs. Tio spoke to him, shaving accurately and without a mirror.

“Eat up with the dumb ass,” he said, grimly.

“Looks like it.”

“ What … in the fuck are you doing here?”

This sent Patrick spinning: Was it to lay claim to the first thing he seemed prepared to fight for since coming home? Was it to bring to closure a mystery he couldn’t bear in all the tranquility of the cabin? He really didn’t know; but he understood that those were the questions.

“Well, Claire got kind of frightened by your guests.”

“That’s not it,” said Tio, leaning over the sink and scrubbing vigorously at his teeth. I’ve got it, thought Patrick, I’ll tell Claire I shot him. No, Christ, that’s hysterical. Tio stood and turned toward him. “You could drive to my house, but you couldn’t tell me the truth. Pitiful. I’m supposed to need professional supervision, but you’re pitiful.” He threw the towel behind and wandered naked to the closet, where he took the utmost care in picking his wardrobe for the day: Levis, a green chambray shirt and his tall boots. The buckle on his belt had the cat-track brand overlaid on it in gold. It was Claire’s family brand. Patrick was relieved he’d gotten his clothes on. And he was still thinking about being called pitiful. He felt his blood rise.

“I love Claire,” he said.

“Oh, I bet you do.”

“That doesn’t seem important to you?”

“I’d hate to see you get her killed. That’s important to me. I’m crazy about the girl.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Well, you say you’re in love with her. How would you like some clown putting her life in question?”

“I wouldn’t.”

“Well, as the lady’s husband, I’m here to tell you that that is exactly what you’re doing. Nothing will happen to you. You’re not important enough and nobody is going to make you important enough. Otherwise this little turn with Claire would look like it meant something, and it don’t. It’s just a momentary case of the dumb ass. Basically, we’re up north on vacation and maybe it got a little rowdy. Oklahoma can be brutal hot in the summertime. But it’s starting to cool off now. It’s time Claire and me headed home. So you fetch her. Tio’s gonna carry her back to where being with her people makes her feel bulletproof again.”

Patrick started down the stairs ahead of Tio, and just as they moved to the level of the flies, he heard a sudden noise behind him, one that revealed the fear within himself, and the gasped word “Fitzpatrick.” Patrick turned and saw Tio half-seated, half-sprawled on the steps above him. He was changing color quickly and had lost control of his body. A stain spread at his crotch and Patrick could see in his struggling eyes that he now could no longer speak. Patrick remembered Claire’s words: “I’m the doctor and Tio is the patient and you are a cruel outsider.” Was this it?

Tio was lighter than Patrick had expected. He carried him to the truck in the crazy daylight and felt the gusts of Tio’s malady. Then, on the drive to the hospital, Tio twisted up against his door and his teeth began rattling against the window. Patrick pulled him upright and kept on driving.

They wheeled Tio through emergency. The doctor on call said they’d had him once before, explaining this while he tapped the nail of his forefinger on the crystal of his wristwatch. He held the watch to his ear and directed Patrick to the lobby to check Tio in. Tio glided off, wheeled by an orderly, his tall boots immobilized by a retaining strap. His face was locked in some terrible rictus, but his eyes blazed toward Patrick; Patrick would never forget their blaze.

Patrick checked him in, writing Claire’s name under “Next of Kin” and his own on the bottom line.

ON THE WAY BACK TO SILVER STAKE CREEK, PATRICK STOPPED at his ranch and put the stock rack on his truck. He loaded Leafy and Box L, saddles, picket ropes and a hundred pounds of sweet feed. He went inside to see how his grandfather was doing and found the place in good order. He discovered the old man in the living room watching Houston play Denver.

“Hey, Grandpa, I’m running—”

“Where?”

“I’m spending time with a real great lady.”

“I’m glad to hear that.”

“But look, I want to make early elk with you. So will you do me a favor? Will you buy us our groceries? I’ll be back to get us packed in four or five days.”

“What do you want to eat?”

“You decide. And get me a box of 270’s. Hundred thirty grain.”

“How long you plan to stay with this young lady?”

“I told you, four or five days. Nothing is forever.”

Then he headed south. He could see Leafy’s mane streaming in the rear-view mirror, Box L turning his forehead into it. Sixty-mile-an-hour horses with a highway unraveling behind them.

The mountains paralleled the valley and the snowy peaks were extending with fall to the valley floor. Patrick wondered seriously if this country had ever been meant to be lived in. Right now he could only imagine small hot spots of survival, winter seemed so imminent. He could imagine lying in bed with Claire and he could imagine seeing after his grandfather on the ranch and diligently looking after his warm animals so that the cold didn’t sweep them away. But the country lacked the detailed human regimen he imagined he could find in his Castilian walk-up, daily human rituals of coffee, cigarettes, wine, newspapers. The Deadrock region was just exactly the dumb fucking dehumanized photogenic district that would require a bunch of American reformed Protestants to invent. His mood had begun to show.

Patrick was getting sour; he was getting ready to cheat. He drove up into the brush once more. There was still some smoke at the head of the chimney; so he’d done that right. He unloaded Leafy, then Box L. He drove picket pins out in the meadow and hobbled them so they wouldn’t cross lines.

And then he went inside. Claire had taken down the Hudson Bay and was curled, undressed, in front of the wood stove.

“Tell me,” she said.

“He’s gone.”

“Gone? Gone where?”

“It said Tulsa.”

“ What said Tulsa?”