Thomas Mcguane - Gallatin Canyon

Homer could think of nothing to say. He would have had to care about the kitten to have been inspired to the right remark; Judy seemed to see through his dissembling. Besides, nothing was up to Judy’s profound statement, which hung in the air. “I wish we did,” he said, “it would be so much better. I don’t know why we don’t all go at the same time but we don’t, and we have to accept that.” That’s that, he thought, take it or leave it. Besides, something troubled him about Madeleine’s nod of agreement.

To make things worse, Madeleine’s eyes began to fill, and Homer wondered if it was over that brute Harry Hall and his size-thirteen oxblood saddle shoes, ungainly even in death. Homer could almost hear his booming voice: Come on in, Homer. You like gin? I’ve cornered the market!

Judy no longer cried, but she was very somber and far away. “Someone is responsible,” she said.

“God!” barked Homer with exasperation. “God is responsible!” This yard sale was about to kill him. “Madeleine, is there anything I can do to make you feel better?” he inquired coolly. She was touching each of the children unobtrusively. She didn’t know how to comfort them. He didn’t know how to comfort her.

“Let’s go to the living room. Maybe we can think better there.” The children followed Homer, who, aware of his waning desperation to make anyone happy, followed Madeleine. In the living room, he looked around briskly, as though trying to choose among several marvelous possibilities. “Here, come sit here,” he said, and indicated the bench in front of the old player piano. Judy’s grief kept her from seeing through his various efforts to entertain her. They obeyed with dull bafflement as he loaded a roll of music and started pumping the pedals. “Pretend you’re playing!” he called out, over the strains of “Ida Sweet as Apple Cider.” Looking at each other, the children put their hands on the keys, which snapped up and down all around their fingers as Judy took over the pumping and Jack howled like a dog; soon they were caught up in it.

Inexplicably, Madeleine began doing a graceful if somehow cynical foxtrot with an invisible partner. Homer stared at her, arms hanging at his sides. The noise was unbelievable. Into the space between Madeleine’s arms, Homer placed Harry Hall and his big belly.

Homer darted out the front door to the yard sale, where Cecile was persuading a pregnant teenager that the light-dark setting on the toaster still worked. Four or five others grazed among the offerings, concealing any interest they might have had, though a middle-aged man in baggy khakis and an Atlanta Braves hat was bent in absorption over a duck decoy lamp that had never been completed. “Dark Town Strutters’ Ball” poured from the house, stopped abruptly, then resumed with “I Want a Girl Just Like the Girl Who Married Dear Old Dad.” Homer could hear Madeleine joining in with a sharp, angry contralto. When the teenager replaced the toaster on the card table and wandered off, Homer said, “One of the kittens died.”

Staring at the unsold toaster, Cecile said, “You’re shitting me. When it rains, it pours. My God, what’s with the piano?” Holding a cigarette in the center of her teeth she blew smoke out of either side of her mouth.

“Go in and comfort Judy. I’ll try to sell something till you get back.”

“No reasonable offer refused.” At this two or three browsers cocked their heads, which Cecile noted. “Just kidding, of course.” She went inside and Homer surveyed the prospects, holding his lapels like an expectant haberdasher. No one met his eye and, instead of rubbing his hands together, he plunged them into his pockets and considered the weather: low clouds, no wind. The player piano stopped abruptly and the shoppers all looked up with the silence.

Homer went over to the man still examining the duck decoy lamp. “Why don’t you buy it? It’s beautifully made. It works. I can’t imagine any home that wouldn’t be improved by it.”

“I’m just trying to picture the sort of people who wanted this in the first place,” said the man. “This doesn’t look like a duck, it looks like a groundhog. I hate it. I really hate it.”

“The people who wanted it in the first place are my daughter and her husband,” said Homer.

“My condolences,” said the man, before he turned to go.

Homer stared hard and said, “Go fuck yourself.” He could hardly believe he’d said it. It was like a breath of spring, such vituperation.

“Get in line, Pops.”

Cecile returned and muttered, “Bugs Bunny on low. Usually holds them. Your friend is resting on the couch with a washcloth on her head. She looks like she’s on her last legs.” A very thin older man in a navy-blue jogging suit with a reflective stripe down the pant legs was interested in the NordicTrack. He had an upright potbelly, bags under his eyes, and a cigarette in his mouth that made him turn his head to one side to examine the distance meter on the machine. Homer watched Cecile approach within a foot of the prospect, but the man went about his examination without acknowledging her. He knelt to examine the bottom of the machine, then sat back on his haunches, removed the cigarette, and bethought himself. When he finally stood, he said something very brief to Cecile. She seized her head in both hands while he puffed and looked the other way. When she came back to Homer with some bills in her hand, she said, “I got creamed but it’s gone.” The new owner was trying out his new machine, the cigarette back in his mouth. A gust of wind showered Homer and his daughter with cottonwood leaves. Wild geese creaked above. Soon there’d be ice on the river.

“You seem to have gotten over the bottle collection,” said Homer. He saw the American flag go up a pole across the street, a hedge concealing whoever raised it.

“Guess again.”

“Why don’t you go and ask Dean to give them back?”

“That’s what he’s trying to accomplish. The whole issue has been over him having anything I need.”

“Does he?”

“Yeah, the bottles.” She stared hard at him. “I know exactly what you’re thinking, exactly. You’re thinking, How can anyone lose themselves in such trivia?”

“Nope.”

“Well, I’m not going to dignify this by fighting over it. But don’t you ever look down your nose at me. Just because things haven’t exactly worked out doesn’t make us white trash.”

“It’s beyond me why you’d have such a hateful thought. Your mother would have felt the same way, if you had ever deigned to share your thoughts with her.”

Homer had already decided that he would retrieve the bottles. By that time the sale would be over and the awful things would be part of the desolation of the living room again. When he asked his daughter why none of the other customers had mentioned the theft, she said, “The only one he had to fool was your friend, and I guess that wasn’t too hard.”

Homer just let it go. It was hopeless.

He went inside to check on Madeleine. Without removing her hand from over her eyes, she said, “I feel terrible for losing those horrible bottles,” and when he tried to speak, she waved him away. He went back outside and watched the tire kickers and the idly curious begin to drift away, leaving four who looked like real buyers. Out of the blue, he wanted to make a sale. Homer thought they were couples but, after considerable study, could not match them up. He became fixed on this task as a difficult crossword puzzle, but finally he sighed and gave up. He was wary of misreading anyone as he had the duck-lamp guy. He couldn’t believe the two redheads were together, because he’d never seen that before; which left the two short ones, and that pair seemed less unlikely. Their gazes crisscrossed like light beams, giving nothing away. Homer wondered whether they were like our ancestors, wary and footloose. The red-haired male took sudden notice of the American flag ripping away in the wind across the street, and Homer realized he was avoiding eye contact. No sale.