Thomas Mcguane: Gallatin Canyon

It was a half-hour drive, and the serious ache and swelling commenced. He parked close to the emergency entrance, next to two old ambulances, and limped into the waiting room. The nurse, filling out forms, was a long time acknowledging him and when she did so it was by the mere raising of her head. When he explained what was wrong, she told him to have a seat. They must see a lot of snakebites, Briggs thought. The spot where he’d been bitten was now quite enlarged and had acquired a dusky cast that worried him.

Eventually, the nurse instructed him to fill out a form, which he did with growing awareness of the pain. Then she said, “I’ll take you to your room. You’ll be spending the night.” She turned and Briggs followed her down a brown corridor with the usual antiseptic smell and stainless-steel tables on wheels. She left him in the room. He propped one foot on the toe of the other to alleviate the rhythmic ache and found himself perspiring. He reached for the remote control, turned the TV on, and then turned it off immediately.

A few minutes later, Olivia entered in a nurse’s uniform. “Let’s get rid of those pants,” she said. As Briggs lay in his shorts, Olivia bent close over the wound and studied it in silence. “Right back,” she said, and left the room. When she returned a few minutes later, she had a metal tray with a syringe on it. “I don’t like this stuff,” she said, “but the poison has spread and we’ve got to use it. It will help with the pain. We’re talking pronto.” Briggs had planned a conversation designed to crack this mystery, but Olivia was leaning over him, studying his eyes as she pressed the hypodermic into him, and with the enveloping wave he was overcome. “Feels so good,” she said quietly. “Doesn’t it?” He nodded slowly, infinitely grateful for the bite of the rattlesnake. She held his face in her hands and gazed at him as he went under. “I just know it feels so good.”

When he awoke the next morning, he doubted everything he remembered. He checked his leg to see if he’d been bitten by a snake, and thank God he had. He noticed that the pain was gone. He rang the call button next to his bed. A nurse entered, a tall, peevish woman of fifty, carrying a copy of Field & Stream. “I’m better, and I’m going home.”

“Doctor will decide when you can go.”

With Briggs’s impatience growing, it was a blessing the doctor came soon. Close to retirement age, he was a well-groomed silver-haired man, exceedingly thin, in polished walking shoes, cuffed serge pants, and a sparkling white smock.

“How do you feel?”

“I feel fine, ready to go home. I suppose the nurse is off today.”

“What nurse?”

“The one who treated me last night.”

“I treated you last night. You were sound asleep, like you’d passed out. In any case, I couldn’t wake you: I went ahead and did what I thought best. I gave you a good slug of antivenin.”

“I clearly remember a woman coming in and treating me.”

“I hope she was pretty. It was a dream.”

“Let me ask you something. Is Dr. Halliday on duty today?”

The doctor looked startled and a little evasive. He said, “Dr. Halliday lost his license to practice a long time ago. Of course, we feel terrible about it. His daughter has stayed with us, and we hope that’s some help in a very regrettable situation.”

Briggs left the hospital in the same dirty clothes he’d worn to paint and clean his yard. He drove home, parked by the woodpile, and killed the snake with a hoe, then went up to the house to read his mail and check his phone messages. He felt an incongruous sadness about killing the snake, which had tried in vain to get away. The refrigerator was still well stocked, and he started a pot of spicy vegetable soup. He smelled mothballs and remembered the blankets he’d put in storage the day before.

On Wednesday, he took three shirts and a sport jacket to be dry-cleaned. He usually went to Arnold’s, where he had an account, but it was closed on Wednesdays so he drove a few extra miles and carried his things into Bright’s. The smell of cleaning fluid was a little stronger in Bright’s, and he wondered whether that meant they were more thorough or just harsher on the clothes. To the left of the long counter, a broad woman with her back to him operated the electrical revolving rack. She said, “Be just a sec,” and compared a slip with that on several garments going past. She found what she was looking for, a tuxedo, and took it down to hang on a rigid rack next to the cash register, before turning to Briggs: it was her, the woman who’d accosted him at the farmers’ market. She recognized him first and covered her mouth with her hands. “I wondered if I’d see you again. I so have to apologize to you! I completely and utterly thought you were someone else.”

“Don’t give it a thought,” Briggs said with reserve. He added, “I gather you took a number of other people for someone else.”

This puzzled her. “No, just you.”

“I was led to think otherwise. Guess it’s my turn to apologize.”

“Can we call it even-Steven?”

He hoped to have a chance to speak to Olivia about this. So, later in the fall, when he received an invitation to her wedding, his first thought was, Of course I’ll go.

In the receiving line, Olivia, jubilant and tipsy, hung around the neck of her new husband, a glass of champagne in her hand. The wedding party was clamorous, gathered under the old trees behind the house with the red shutters. The husband was a specimen of tidy manhood, with black, tightly clipped hair, blue eyes, and ears like little seashells; he wore a perfectly tailored dark summer suit and a colorful tie that spelled out the word Montana —not the state but Claude, the French couturier. Briggs wondered if he was wrong in thinking the groom wore eyeliner. Olivia touched the champagne glass to the tip of her nose and giggled when Briggs appeared. He knew right away that he wouldn’t be able to ask his questions. He pumped the husband’s hand and wished them all the luck in the world. He meant it, even though he felt the same queer longing on seeing Olivia. It was her husband’s turn to go for a ride.

During the ceremony, rain clouds had grumbled overhead and now the shower began. The wedding party rushed to the house with hilarity, and Briggs decided this would be a good time for him to leave, but Olivia detained him, resting her outspread fingers on his shirt while the rain fell on them both. She was remarkably heedless in her beautiful wedding gown, and Briggs caught sight of the groom’s face in the hall window. “You were so good to me that time and so patient with my father,” she said.

“Where is your father?”

“We got him out of here.” She was close to him as she spoke. He felt her breath on his face and his heart was racing. “I’m glad I had the chance to”—she smiled—“to give you a lift when you were in the hospital.”

The rain redoubled, sweeping down through the canopy of leaves, and they fled to the house, Olivia disappearing into the happy crowd. Briggs didn’t know quite what to do with himself. He made his way back to the kitchen where he’d dined with Dr. Halliday. It was empty. He went to the sink and ran the tap until the water was cold, filled a glass, and drank it down. The pandemonium outside elevated for an instant as the kitchen door opened behind him. When he put the glass down and turned around, he was looking into the face of the groom, aggressively close to his own. He stared at Briggs in silence. “I hope you understand that you will never put your nasty hands on her again,” he said. “Get over it.”

Briggs looked at this handsome well-cared-for man. “It will be hard to give up,” Briggs said.