Thomas McGuane - Ninety-Two in the Shade

They started back. They were halfway across Waltz Key Basin before they talked again. Dance said, “Look here, I know it wasn’t much of a joke.”

“You’re right.”

“Not that it excuses what you done.”

“Yeah well.”

“And you cannot guide. I gave my word.”

“Well, I am going to guide.”

“You are not.”

Skelton nodded that he was, as pleasant as he could.

Two spotted rays shot out in front of the boat and coursed away on spotted wings, their white ventrals showing in their hurry: then vanished in the glare. The water was still and glassy, green over the turtle-grass bottom. There were birds everywhere now, soaring out before them — the cormorants that rested on stakes and mangroves to dry out their wings, the anhingas, gulls, frigate birds, and pelicans, the wading herons and cranes of every variation of slate, whites upon whites, emblematic black chevrons or stripes, wings finished in a taper or left rough-ended. They threaded the keys amid this aerial display over uncounted fish coursing the tidal basin, over a bottom itself home to a million kinds of animal, that walked, stalked, and scuttled by every tropism from heat to light, and lived in intermeshing layers, layer upon layer, that passed through each other like light and never touched.

A jet passed over and Skelton looked up for it; every year you had to look farther ahead of the sound. The plane made a beautiful silver line.

* * *

Thomas Skelton felt that simple survival at one level and the prevention of psychotic lesions based upon empirical observation of the republic depended upon his being able to get out on the ocean. Solitary floating as the tide carried him off the seaward shelf was in one sense sociopathic conduct for him; not infrequently such simplicity was one of three options; the others being berserking and smoking dope all the livelong day.

Notwithstanding the shriveling of the earth before its most singular product, Skelton’s reflex to be a practicing Christian remained. His skill in sidestepping confrontation, his largest capability, left him — faith, hope, and charity — largely untried. Somewhere, he knew that. It had taken a quarter of a century to produce the combination for him: access to the space of ocean (and the mode of livelihood that would make that access constant) and an unformed vision of how he ought to live on earth with others.

So he told Nichol Dance, “I am going to guide.”

But today, by the time he got to Searstown, he was looking around at the human surge and thinking how attractive it must be to go shopping at the Annual White Sales without anyone offering to murder you over the percales, or to spew your guts across the Dansk Mug Set. Even the shapely teeny-bopper whom he had zero chance of having, looked in at the new Sugarcane Harris albums without the air of impending murder for anyone, much less herself.

And how shall I accept my own death? A forefinger in the entrance hole while a billion protozoa redistribute my chemical components from behind where the bullet exits and kills an innocent pelican whitening a speedboat nearby.

Miranda, said Skelton to himself at Searstown, I’d feel a lot better if I could do a little barking. Imagine: The course of the bullet; its “entry” is immediately to the left of the sternum, where in its passage it disrupts the heart’s determined flutter as to cause not quite immediate death. He knows what it is. There is the majesty of that surprise. His conviction that the chance against his living again is infinity minus one saves him from complete regret. Skelton’s eyes, which always had a bright and fluid life, become on this sunny day quickly dry; and a place where the small insects of the empty beach can walk without … struggling for purchase. Gradually, his eyes become a popular trysting spot for breeding beach bugs; and by the magic geometry of mitosis, each eyeball is soon transformed into a thriving community with roots in, on the one hand, the first aeons of earth time; and, on the other, the weirdest reaches of the evolutionary space-future in which, feasibly, the products of Skelton’s eyeballs might be colonizing planets of their own for reasons of civilization. By the same token, his prostate might get to the White House.

Skelton was modifying his fuselage, and shopping in the Sears hardware store for tools and parts. He bought a Craftsman variable-speed drill with a firm money-back guarantee. The magic of the electric drill was that it allowed you to take the oddly shaped hole of an electrical outlet and by running its force through a black cord and a silvery mechanism cause holes at the other end, of any size you liked.

Would Dance regret his deed? Would he look again at that delirious passage by which what is quick and numinous becomes meat, and say: Phooey? Or would he, like the television commentators before every event, “never cease to be amazed”?

The hardware department with its bins of galvanized nails, black bolts, and chromium-plated screws, its bright power tools, was presided over by six clerks in green smocks who soared among its counters, from time to time regrouping at the cash register to clinch a sale or take a quick pull of coffee from a translucent white coffee cup. Skelton knew that — embroiled as he was as a customer — hardware, generally speaking, was bad for the world.

It was among the glues, directly behind the epoxy display, to be precise, that he knew it was time to go and see why his father was asking Miranda for a date. The two-part epoxy was best for maximum adhesion between clean flat surfaces. The one-part “mock” epoxies were “just the thing,” a lady clerk volunteered, for simple household repairs, including china, furniture, butter churns, ice skates, and simple treadle assemblies.

Sweet Jesus, thought Skelton, not in the least taking the Name in vain, death is in my lane tromping the passing gear.

“Ma’am,” he said to the lady clerk, whose beveled white hairdo strove implacable against air and light, “have you got time to join me in a smoke? I uh won’t lay a hand on you.”

She broke into laughter. Here is where Skelton could serve humanity in its gloomy mission.

“Okay.”

They stood outside in the mall by speeding machines and parked-auto clusters. Skelton didn’t smoke tobacco. This might be tough.

“I forgot my cigarettes.”

“Have one of mine, hon.” She held out a pack and he took one. A granny shot past baying on a go-cart. The gramp ran behind. He had just jerked the starter, and Gran shot off like Puffed Rice from a cannon. Now it looked like she would beat him to Akron.

“So!” said Skelton. “You smoke Luckies!”

“Two packs a day and I’ve tried them all.”

Skelton used to smoke. He had something to say here.

“I like Camels myself.”

“Well, they’re a rich-type cigarette like Luckies. But Camels have I don’t know too deep a taste for me. But I hate Chesterfields!”

“Me too! They’re so harsh!”

“Harsh isn’t the word. — Have you ever smoked filters?”

“Benson and Hedges!”

“Aha!”

“Parliaments!”

“Me too! Couldn’t taste a thing! — I don’t know,” she said, “for me it’s L.S.M.F.T., Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco.”

Skelton pulled her into his arms. His eyes were moist. “Do you want a light?” she asked. Skelton couldn’t look her in the eye.

“I really don’t smoke any more.”

* * *

Let us make barking up the wrong tree a way of life.

“Your father,” said his mother, “has not returned at all. He is rapidly approaching the time when he will not be allowed to return.”

“Why?”

“The minute I tell, you’ll say it’s bourgeois.”