Thomas Mcguane - Nobody's Angel

Claire found him there, not before he had awakened but before he’d had time to reconstruct and too late for him to jump up and pretend to be doing anything else. Storewide gala on mortification of the flesh. Patrick was sick of it but couldn’t think what there was to be done.

“I wanted to see if you were all right.”

“Of course I’m all right.”

“I see.”

He sat up and gazed around the corral: horses, poles, the crowding evergreen slope; how absurd, the sort of thing to give you the sweats. Claire’s hands seemed to plunge deeper into the pockets of her blue dress. Beautiful as usual, thought Patrick angrily. In the meanwhile I’ve become a laugh.

“What are you doing today?” she asked tentatively. It was as if they were starting all over again.

“Reading a book.”

“What book?”

“It’s called The Life of Marion Easterly and it’s by all three Brontë sisters.”

He thought, I shall not be tempted by any of this. I prefer the concerned breathing of my horse upon my much-abused head in the night — though Claire would have seen to it that I went to the cabin. On the other hand, waking up and seeing there was nothing to eat, I would have gone on my own.

Creeping in was a new light-heartedness. Patrick ruefully considered that Claire might get away with this one. Just as well head indoors, then, and tidy up.

The broad-bottomed tin kettle sent clouds of steam into the room, and the stout wood stove beat gentle heat against Patrick’s bare knees. There will be shaving; there will be brighter eyes. The wandering part in his hair would be rediscovered and traced to the crown of his scalp. Teeth only the madmen at Ipana could dream of. A nice shirt from the clutches of the Armed Forces in Europe. But it was pathetic.

Soon, however, they were shouting.

“Tio seems very used to your indiscretions.”

“He’s not.”

“It seems he is.”

“Shall I just go, Patrick?”

Now he was sorry, at first because of his shouting. Then he remembered her shouting and he was less sorry. Besides, the way moods swept back and forth over lovers like tide seemed now to Patrick a humiliating process. I love you I hate you I’ll kill you I can’t live without you blah blah blah. This last thought took him to the final button of his shirt. He dropped his hands to his sides, watched the steam carry to the door past Claire and believed he felt like the Ancient Mariner at an abandoned bus stop. Then Claire stirred together some breakfast — a rather scientific attempt, he thought, to raise his blood sugar, going to Jerusalem with a Bible and a soil-test kit. I should start shouting the moment I’ve eaten my breakfast. I mean shouting.

“Can we ride again?”

“Let’s load up and get the fuck out of here.”

“This has been so lovely out here. Are we about to be actual?”

“We’ll quit while we’re ahead. I’ve got things that have to be done.” What if she asked for examples? Change the cat’s whisker on Grandpa’s crystal set? Milk the elk?

Leafy kept testing the floor of the trailer with her forefoot, then finally loaded up. Delicate as she seemed to Patrick, the trailer set down on its springs. Panniers, lash ropes, spoilable food, all were piled in the truck.

And now a simple dialogue between the two engine exhausts, G clef by Patrick, revving a bit between ratios as he swung about and headed the rig down the mountain, manifold resonating in the gee-haw of faded romance. One of the West’s last and smallest wagon trains, he thought; an observation that exhilarated by its brief coldness and necessary stupidity. The two vehicles separated and headed into the distance.

But by the time he reached the ranch, the phone was ringing and she was asking without any introduction, “What can I do? What am I supposed to do?”

“I don’t know.”

“But you just don’t do anything you please. Do you?”

“Of course not.”

“That’s all I wanted to know.”

She rung off and left Patrick even less enlightened. He decided that it was partly the phone’s fault; that even notepaper was inadequate to such an enigma. He played bebop and cooked Chinese food. It seemed the only answer. He wouldn’t see love to its senescence without a middle period.

Then she called again. He was eating a trout, curry and rice invention wrapped in won ton skins and playing the Jazz Messengers so loud he almost didn’t hear the phone ring.

“Tio’s home. But he’s so demoralized, it’s not like him.”

“I don’t know what to say to you.”

“I wanted to talk to somebody. He’s a sick dog.”

“There are bigger things than pairing off,” said Patrick.

“Like what?”

“Life and death.”

“Take the easy ones, cowboy.”

“Well, I asked you to leave with me.”

“That’s another one. You’re going downhill. People promise people, Patrick. How is it with you — strand people with all your speeches? Some of us still own up to the ones we made on homecoming day, for crying out loud.”

“That bad?”

“That bad.”

“Well, I’m getting off before you ruin my dinner.” And he did.

Then, to make up for it a little, he took Tio’s stud out to ride in what light was left. His food had begun to digest, and the smell of the horse was obviated by the smell of hoisin sauce and curry. They went up the road, the stud spooking about in the shadows but advancing into new darkness with the pressure on his sides. A partridge dusting in the pale light went off at an angle, and the stud watched bug-eyed, side-passing through the spot in the road just vacated by the bird. My God, what a stupid bastard, thought Patrick. He once had a farrier who claimed that the two most ignorant things a man could do were to refuse to cut a stallion and to turn down a drink of whiskey. Then Tio’s stallion gave out a terrific scream as if to tell any mares in earshot that he feared no bird. As for Patrick, his love of Claire kept him, with some struggle, from acknowledging that the thoroughly faulty Tio was coming to seem human. It wouldn’t do.

And anyway, it wouldn’t last; that is, it didn’t. Coming back down the road in nearly complete darkness, past one small ranch with its generator thumping in the cow barn, Patrick found it necessary to two-hand the horse once more, like a colt; his muscles felt short and bunched. If he could have gotten his head down, he would have bucked.

He took the saddle off, hung the bridle and closed the stud up when Tio materialized from the next, empty, stall; he must have been sitting on the feed bunk.

“How’d my stud go?”

“He went all right. We didn’t do much.”

“I’ve got a gun.”

“Oh, great.”

“You can’t see it, can you?”

“No. Are you going to threaten me?”

“ I don’t know what I’m going to do! Been made to feel pretty poorly about myself and that leads direct to your doorstep.”

“May I sit down?”

Tio nodded affirmative, but with a crazy, loose-necked gesture. Patrick sat on the bench next to his forge, hiking up on his hands and swinging back onto it. Unconsciously, he looked about at the things with handles: chisels, screwdrivers, hammers.

“Are you drunk, Tio?”

“No.”

“What’s the deal?”

“You tell me.”

“I don’t know what it is.”

“Except it ain’t right.”

“I guess not.”

“We go’ make it right.”

Patrick sighed. “Okay.” He guessed he wanted it made right; and he could find nothing actual in this suggestion of gunplay. He didn’t think Tio could, either. At the same time, he didn’t want to be some dim, surprised bozo who couldn’t read the cards and got shot.