Thomas Mcguane - Keep the Change

“That’s fine, I hate her,” said Joe experimentally.

“Now Joe,” Ivan said, “you’ve had a long drive.”

“You knew I wouldn’t stay,” Astrid said. “What’s this about, anyway? I don’t know. But I do know I’m getting out of here. And it’s a joke to claim you hate me.”

“The fucking Cuban geek,” Joe offered.

“Punch him in the nose, Ivan,” said Astrid.

“That will do,” Ivan said to Joe without emphasis.

“Take the dog with you,” said Joe to Astrid. “That’s the worst dog I ever saw. It’ll be perfect for your new home.”

“Okay, but don’t generalize about me. And what is this about a new home?”

“I used to like dogs,” Joe explained maladroitly.

“I had a lot to offer. I still do. Not for you, obviously. But who does? All I need to know is that it’s not me. And I loved you. So, good luck. Good luck with the place. All the luck in the world with the cows. Enjoy yourself with the land. Happy horses, Joe.”

“ I used to like women! ”

“I’m not like that dog, Joe,” Astrid said.

“Don’t jump to conclusions. I want you both out of here right away. I need a quiet place to sleep.”

“Joe, it’s late,” Ivan said. “You’re not in your right mind. As if you ever were, in fact.”

“This advisory role you cultivate, Ivan, is unwelcome just now. I dislike having my time wasted.”

“ You’re not that busy, ” sang Ivan. Joe sighed and looked at the floor. He wanted to collect his thoughts and he feared a false tone entering the proceedings. He wanted to leave off on a burnishing fury and empty out the house. It was hard to see that he’d had the intended effect; Ivan was scratching his back against the doorjamb. Astrid was smiling at a spot in midair. She was a fine girl. They had feared all along that they couldn’t survive a real test. It had been lovely, anyway. It was a provisional life.

While they packed Astrid’s things, Joe watched TV. As luck would have it, it was a feature on farm and ranch failures with music by Willie Nelson and John “Cougar” Mellencamp. He remembered leaving the deed in the truck. He might have left the windows open. Pack rats could get in and eat the deed. The wind could get the deed.

They came into the living room with their suitcases.

“This is pretty interesting. It’s about farm and ranch failure,” Joe said. “Can you go during the commercial?”

“No,” said Astrid, “we’re going now. Were you serious about that dog?”

“What next!” said Joe without taking his eyes off the screen.

“May I see you a moment, Joe?” Astrid stood in the doorway to their bedroom. Ivan studied the backs of his fingernails in the open front door, buffing them occasionally on his left coat-sleeve. Joe met Astrid in the bedroom and she shoved the door shut. She gave him a long look and took a deep breath.

“Let me tell you something, sport,” she began, “you don’t fool me with this tasteless display we’ve just witnessed.”

“I don’t.”

“No, you don’t.”

“What sort of display would have struck you as less tasteless?”

“A sincere remark or two about your plight. A word of hope that you’ll come to life soon. Your life.”

“All whoppers!”

“I’m just gonna step back, and let you choose.”

She went out the door. Joe followed her. Ivan was still in the same spot. When Joe went over, Ivan deployed his hand as a kind of handshake option, Joe’s choice. Joe shook.

Ivan and Astrid went into the night. He heard them call the dog and when he saw the lights wheel and go out, and he knew the dog was gone, he at last realized how blithely things were being taken away from him. He went to bed and contained himself as well as he could, but the pillowcase grew wet around his face.

His sleep produced the need for sleep, for rest, for deep restoration from this masquerade of sleep in which all the tainted follies had opportunity for festivity and parade. He had Astrid in his arms and his inability to distinguish love and hate no longer mattered because she wasn’t there in the light of day.

The cool spell passed and it was hot again. Joe was going to take a good long look at the white hills. He was going to start at the beginning. He got in the truck and drove toward the drought-ravaged expanses east of town where the road looked like a long rippled strip of gray taffy; on the farthest reaches of the road, looking as small as occasional flies, were the very few vehicles out today. Dust followed a tractor as an unsuccessful crop was plowed into the ground. Joe could picture the cavalry crossing here, following the Indians and their ghost dogs. Sheep were drifted off into the corners of pastures waiting for the cool of evening to feed. Ribbed cattle circled the tractor tires that held the salt. Old stock ponds looked like meteor craters and the weeds that came in with the highway gravel had blossomed to devour the pastures. It was neither summer nor fall. The sky was blue and the mountains lay on the horizon like a black saw. A white cloud stood off to one end of the mountains. In a small pasture, a solitary bull threw dust up under himself beneath the crooked arm of a defunct sprinkler. The thin green belt beneath the irrigation ditches contrasted immediately with the prickly pear desert that began inches above. The radio played “Black roses, white rhythm and blues.” Astrid used to say, “I thought Montana was so unlucky for you. I can’t understand why you want to go back.” And he had said with what seemed like prescience and laudable mental health, “Yes, but I’m not superstitious!” And she’d said, “Wait a minute. You were pretty clear on this. You said it was unlucky for you and it was unlucky for everybody else.”

Joe said, “That’s my home!”

He stopped the truck at the bottom of a long, open draw and walked for almost an hour. At the end of that walk, he reached the gloomy, ruined, enormous house that he had long ago visited with his father, the mansion of the Silver King, a piece of discarded property no longer even attached to a remembered name. It was a heap out in a pasture and if you had never been inside it the way Joe had and felt in the design of its chambers the anger and assertion of the Silver King himself, the mansion didn’t look good enough to shelter slaughter cattle until sale day. Grackles jumped and showered in the lee of its discolored walls and the palisade of poplars that led from the remains of the gate seemed like the work of a comedian.

Joe walked to the far side of the building and sat down close to the wall out of the wind. The mud swallows had built their nests solidly up under the eaves and wild roses were banked and tangled wherever corruption of the wall’s surface gave them a grip. Concentric circles in the stucco surrounded black dots where stray gunfire had intercepted the building, adding to the impression that it was a fortress. Joe thought about how his father’s bank had repossessed the property. His father was gone — even the bank was gone! He was going to go in.

A piece of car spring in the yard made a good pry bar, and Joe used it to get the plywood off one of the windows, leaving a black violated gap in the wall. He made a leap to the sill, teetering sorely on his stomach, then poured himself inside. He raised his eyes to the painting of the white hills.

Joe walked across the ringing flags to get a view of the picture. He could feel the stride the room induced and imagined the demands of spirit the Silver King made on everything. Such people, he thought, attacked death headlong with their insistence on comfort and social leverage. It was absolutely fascinating that it didn’t work.