Thomas Mcguane: Nobody's Angel

The Bloody Marys were in a huge cut-glass bowl, which rested in a cattle-watering tank filled with ice. No one had fanned out far from this place and Patrick got a quick survey: a few people he already knew, Anna, who just winked, and a handsome young couple he’d never seen. The husband wore a good summer jacket and a pair of boots the height of his knee, outside his pants. An oilman, Patrick thought. Oilmen, whatever else they might wear, needed one outstanding sartorial detail to show that their oil was on ranches. And by God, if there was enough oil, they’d go ahead and put cows on those ranches and wear their boots like that. You wanted to be sure no one thought you were a damn parts salesman.

Patrick still had his bourbon and had planned a slow approach, but Anna swept him in, introducing him with the “Captain” prefix. Deke Patwell was deftly escorting an inheritrix from Seattle named Penny Asperson and interviewing an orthodontist — land speculator from Missoula via Cleveland named, believe it or not, something-or-other Lawless. All Patrick could remember was that last name. And there was the couple, sure enough oil: Claire Burnett and her husband, whose real name was John but who was already, in his thirties, called Tio, which is Mexican for uncle and is a rather flattering nickname for one who aspires to be a patrón. But Tio was vivid anyway, piercey-bright, oilman feisty, and his wife was a knockout. Patrick knew their name, a little bit, because of horses.

The conversation was lively already. A boy had been shot and killed on a ranch recently for trespassing. Claire and Tio looked baffled at this bit of local color. Deke Patwell slid comfortably into his local-expert mode and sternly explained that only the ranchers’ reputation for being trigger-happy kept them safe and their way of life intact. Then playfully he tugged at her sleeve and said, “Claire, you do horses so well. Let me and Tio do current events. Later you do house. Anything else is just five-o’clock news.”

“Where is the dead boy’s family?” Claire asked. Tio then scooped down into Bloody Marys. Deke caught his glance and they walked over under the cottonwoods. Claire turned to Patrick. Tio had bought Deke’s views.

“I’m not going to ask you what you think.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“People side up with Tio because they want his business.”

“I don’t want his business.”

“What are you captain of?”

“Tanks.”

“See, they know how shocking their thinking is. They just want it to set them apart. Has nothing to do with that boy— Tanks?”

Patrick tried to decide whether good country living, money, self-esteem or the kind of routine maintenance that begins with pumice-stoning the callouses of one’s feet and ends somewhere between moisture packs and myopic attention to individual split ends produced Claire’s rather beautiful physical effect. Claire said she didn’t know who meant what anymore. Baseball players had Daffy Duck haircuts sticking out from under their billed caps, rock ’n’ roll stars all wore sateen warm-up jackets like the baseball players’, and the President was passing out in a foot race while Russians installed nerve gas around ballistic-missile silos. So who could tell whether or not that little old editor was copping an attitude or whether Tio was just kicking back into his good-buddy act because he was in someone else’s state?

Patrick said, “I don’t know.”

She said, “What do you mean ‘I don’t know’?”

“I don’t know and I don’t care.”

“Let’s go to the house and refill your bourbon. I can see you casting a funny eye at those mixed drinks. Did you train a mare named Leafy?”

They started toward the house.

“Yes, I did.”

“What do you want for her?”

“Well, she’s just my horse.”

“I saw her at Odessa.”

“She was there.”

“Did you ever breed her?”

“No.”

They walked into the cool wood-chambered living room with the buffalo rugs and the Indian blankets and the peyote boxes and the beaded parfleches on the deeply oiled logs.

“ Would you ever breed her?”

“If she let me know she wanted to have a baby.”

“You ought to breed to our stud. I presume she’s cycling.”

Patrick just didn’t reply. He looked up from his freshly drawn glass of sour mash, a smile on his face that crossed all the silence of immediate conversational aftermath.

He took a long, kindly look at this young woman, thought of their banter, saw in her confidence that she enjoyed it, too, the way grade-schoolers like to slug each other out of sheer attraction. Then he wondered if he would find Tio less estimable the next time he saw him, which would be in a few moments, or if he would gather that Claire was just in a world of her own, set out upon one of the ineluctable trajectories of conflict that can be blamed upon something long ago, a book, a parent, an aging nun, a baton dropped in front of a sold-out stadium. I don’t know, he thought, and I don’t care. Yes, I care, but I won’t.

“Ever hear the joke about the escaped circus lion down in Texas? He nearly starved to death. Every time he growled at one of those Texans, it scared the shit out of him. And when he jumped on him, it knocked all the hot air out. So there was nothing left to eat.”

She said, “I’m from Oklahoma. My God, is that a joke?”

“Let’s go inside. I could interpret the wall hangings. They’re Northern Cheyenne.”

“Thanks,” she smiled, “but we done had Comanche down at home.” She dropped her chin and examined him.

He thought he could see perhaps the tiniest acquiescence, though not quite anything he could hold her to. He found her engaging and probably as strong as he was, that is to say, not particularly strong or, rather, strong in the wrong ways.

“We’re more fun than the luncheon guests,” said Claire bravely as she went into the hard glare over the lawn, gone in her bounding step toward the people at the tank. It could be said that Patrick’s mild stalling, giving Claire a lead, came from a very slight sly motive in him, one that he recognized and resolved to give a bit of thought to. The stalling left him among the mops in the front hall, hooks holding worn-out hats, irrigating boots, a pair of old dropshank spurs and a twelve-gauge: a basic tool kit.

Then when Patrick stepped onto the lawn, Tio was walking resolutely toward him, long-strided in his tall calfskin boots. What’s this? Well, for one thing, thought Patrick, it’s the first time I’ve seen eighteen-karat-gold oil-derrick blazer buttons.

“Patrick.”

“Tio.”

“They say you’re a horseman.”

“Something of one,” said Patrick, thinking, Your wife was too friendly. He was a little ahead of himself.

“Do you like good cow ponies?”

“Yes.” Were there people who didn’t?

Tio plunged his hands in his pockets, then leaned the full weight on his straightened arms, tilted slightly forward from the waist, weight in the pockets. Tell you what I’m gonna do. One knee moving rapidly inside its pant leg. “Claire say I got a stud?”

“Yes, she did.”

“Tell you much about the old pony?”

“No—”

“Say he was good?”

“She thought I ought to breed this cutting mare of mine to him.”

“Well, you should, old buddy. This pony’ll cut a cow, now. I mean the whole bottom drops out and he’s lookin up at them cattle. He traps his cattle and just showers on them.”

“Well, I’m gonna ride this mare another couple years yet. She’s my number-one deal.”

“ Plus , this pony comes right from the front of the book. Peppy San out of an own daughter of Gunsmoke. It idn’t any way he can get out of traffic fast enough to keep hisself from being a champion.”