Thomas Mcguane: Gallatin Canyon

Briggs made sure the coast was clear for assisting her to the house. Olivia had lost some ground since they set out, and it seemed unlikely that she would be able to walk safely. A man in bicycle shorts went by, leading a Newfoundland; there was a Rollerblader, a very old and slow woman pulling a wagon of groceries, a FedEx man delivering to the house next door, and then it was time to rouse Olivia all over again and go for it. “I’m so sorry,” she said, as he steadied her beside the car. “I see the jalopy held up better than I thought it would. Shouldn’t have said what I said. ‘Never ridicule what you don’t understand,’ my father told me.”

Briggs reached for the door but it opened before he touched it, and a severe-looking older man in a starched white shirt appeared. He had a high domed forehead and piercing blue eyes. He inspected Briggs and, speaking to him but looking at Olivia, who stood with her head hanging, said, “We’re at it again, I see.” Briggs helped her into the front hall and passed her arm to the man he guessed was her father, expecting to retreat to his car, but then the man closed the door behind the three of them and said, “Wait here,” with what, in other circumstances, might have seemed an intolerably brusque tone. Briggs stood in the hallway as Olivia went off without a word, climbing the stairs with the aid of her father. He could make out the corner of a dining-room table, a section of transom window, dark wainscoting, old family photographs on either side of the stairway.

“So sorry to leave you standing there,” the man said when he returned, guiding Briggs forcefully into the house. “I’m Olin Halliday, Olivia’s father. Not too proud to eat in the kitchen, are you?” Briggs obediently followed Halliday through swinging doors. The kitchen met more than the ordinary domestic requirements, with a freestanding chopping block, a commercial-grade stove, and a double-doored freezer. Halliday pointed to a dripping bag suspended over a large mixing bowl. “Making cottage cheese. Not ready yet. I hope you like brisket. I like brisket way too well, and I never seem to get it quite like I want it, though this time I’m close. I try to smoke it long enough to start the neighbors complaining. Then I know I’m on the right track. Like everything else, you have to put in the time.”

At last they were seated on stools at the chopping block. Halliday carved the brisket with a broad razor-sharp knife, which he wielded rapidly, each perfect slice just tipping over of its own weight as he started the next. Coleslaw, “my tomatoes,” beet greens, corn bread, and iced tea. “Should have beer but I can’t keep it in the house,” Halliday said. Then he began to eat with the absorption of a hungry man eating alone. Briggs waited a moment before following suit, the food so good it created an appetite.

“As you have seen,” Halliday said, mouth still full, punctuating with his fork, “Olivia cannot drink. Cannot but does, and shouldn’t. She is the kind of alcoholic usually described as ‘hopeless,’ but of course she is not hopeless, and I’m not without hope. Are you?”

“I hardly know Olivia.”

“There’s a difference between taking responsibility, Mr. Briggs, and blaming yourself for everything. There should be a line between the two. Olivia does not see that line.”

With every remark, Halliday scrutinized Briggs, and because of his sky blue eyes, his gaze may have seemed more penetrating than intended. Just then Olivia called down in a near screech, “Tell him what they did to me!” Halliday and Briggs looked at each other in silence, Briggs alarmed.

He said, “What does she mean by that?”

“It’s always something new,” Halliday said, looking away. “She has hung on to her job at the hospital. I’ve helped there; an argument can still be made that she’s viable.”

“You tell him.”

“I’m afraid this could go on. Have you had enough to eat?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t be worried; this is the best place she could be.”

“I hope so.”

“I’m her father, Mr. Briggs, and I’m a doctor.”

Briggs felt no urgency to respond. After a moment had passed, he asked, “Where is Olivia’s mother?”

“Olivia’s mother is no longer living. I delivered Olivia, and I adopted her. Olivia’s mother was not married.”

“Has her mother been dead for a long time?”

Halliday smiled cheerlessly. “She’s been dead almost since Olivia was born. She jumped off Carter’s Bridge and went all the way to North Dakota before what the fauna of the Great Plains had left of her was found. It was sad, it was unforeseen, and it was certainly not anybody’s fault, least of all Olivia’s, but Olivia doesn’t see it that way.”

“What can you do to help someone get over that?”

“Nothing that’s worked, as you can see. But now I’m going to try something new and, to tell the truth, I’m optimistic. Olivia is almost pathologically shy, and I’m persuaded that this is connected to the grudge she holds against herself. She is quite dependent upon me, especially financially, which has caused plenty of resentment. That’s my only lever but it’s a good one. Anyway, long story short, I am going to require Olivia to join Toastmasters International.”

Halliday watched complacently as his new idea sank in. Briggs suspected that he wasn’t the first stranger on whom it had been floated. He began to wonder what other miracle cures Halliday might have attempted on the poor girl. “I don’t get it.”

“You don’t have to get it. Olivia has to get it. I’m going to help Olivia ground herself. I want to revise her core values. You don’t know the boyfriends she’s had. I want her to learn to recognize and avoid losers. But she’s got to learn how to boldly share her message. She’s got to quit going off on tangents. I think if she looked within and learned the skills of public speaking that she would delight audiences with dynamic presentations by simply unleashing her inner self.”

“I’ve never heard of anything this crazy.”

“I take that as a compliment. It doesn’t bother me to be ahead of the crowd.”

Briggs left immediately, making his exit as rude as possible. As soon as he was under way in his car he was aware of the smell of Olivia’s perfume, which was somehow more conspicuous in her absence. He hardly had a profound connection to her, but he could not get her out of his mind. For the first time his car actually did seem like a jalopy. Halliday had surely taken him for a loser.

“I don’t have a garage,” he could have explained. “Why leave a good car sitting out in the weather?” This was the first of his imaginary dialogues with Olivia. One about drinking left him believing that she was possessed, an idea whose tawdry allure was obvious. He imagined a priestly intervention during which evil spirits were exorcised and Halliday, with his pop theories, stayed well to the rear. Briggs understood that these daydreams were meant to allay some heartache.

Briggs spent most of September making repairs on his place, getting ready to go back to work. He repainted the shutters, a maddening job because of all the louvers. He set pack-rat traps and pruned the raspberry patch. He alphabetized his library, a recurrent task since he never put books back where they belonged. He changed the water filter in the basement and removed the ghastly mushrooms that had volunteered there. The lawn seemed to have stopped growing, so he put the mower in the garage. Next to the barn was a stack of old boards that had warped and rotted beyond use; he pulled the truck around in order to haul this trash to a safe place for burning. He was nearly finished when he reached for a heavy sheet of exterior plywood, which he had to raise on its edge to drag it to the truck. As he lifted it, he felt something like the blow of a stick against his leg. He raised the plywood higher and saw the coiled rattlesnake, dropped the plywood, and backed away with a chill. He drew up his pant leg and saw where the fangs had gone in and the slight reddening around the marks. He pulled off his work gloves and decided he’d take the back way to the hospital in his truck. He wondered how bad this was going to be.