Thomas McGuane - Driving on the Rim

While Shirley drove Audra like a government mule, cooking, cleaning, polishing floors, washing windows from a ladder, cleaning eaves troughs, and ironing, Audra never lost her composure; only I knew how close to eruption her moods could be as she shoved me out of the way en route to the bathroom or pretended to spit in my face when I smiled at her. Karl only occasionally asked Audra to do something, and usually it was something quite small, like keeping an eye out for lost keys or glasses. If Shirley was present, Audra complied like a dutiful servant. If Shirley was not present, Audra let her joy at being of service to Karl shine in her eyes before purring, “Of course I find dose glasses. A lawyer must be able to see!” A pause before, a pause after. Then Karl, quietly, “Thank you, Audra.”

Early college days were really a delight for me, my first chance at disappearing into a crowd. In so many places I had grown up, especially in the rug-shampoo years, when we were pretty much transients, ignorance was its own reward and standing out in school was a sure way to get beaten up. But I’d heard John Wayne say, “Life is tough. Life is tougher if you’re stupid.” And I took the Duke’s words seriously, trying to be smart, haunting bookmobiles and the mildewed Carnegie libraries of the American West.

My clothing came principally from the Salvation Army store in town, no hardship implied: with a bit of imagination a person could dress well there and with great originality. I bought numerous Hawaiian shirts discarded by servicemen, bowling shirts and shoes, porkpie hats, and so on. This gave me a reputation on the tiny campus of a real sophisticate, a hipster even, my retro mishmash more mysterious than comprehensible. My great find at the Sally was a Chinese robe that had been dropped off by the family of a deceased Presbyterian missionary. It was a glorious blue silk garment with macramé buttons and a thin lining of down. Drawing upon my new reputation and the delightfully sordid memories of my late aunt out there in Idaho, I wore this on my first college date. It was a warm evening in early fall and I stood at the entrance to the girls’ dormitory barefoot in nothing but the luxurious blue robe and a distinctive porkpie hat with a varnished pheasant feather in its band. The girl, Nancy Bellwood of Owosso, Michigan, was slow adjusting to my appearance and my anxiety-driven shower of non sequiturs, but as her friends gathered and approved enthusiastically of my festive getup, Nancy’s zeal soon followed. It wasn’t long before we found ourselves by the small and slow woodland river that bounded our campus; turtles adorned the low limbs of trees overhanging the water, dragonflies sparkled, birdsong poured from the forest. I rested against the trunk of a great beech whose canopy scattered the evening light. Nancy had all but vanished under the robe and, to prolong my enjoyment, I concentrated on the little fuzzy balls on the back of her tennis socks. “Caramba!” she cried through the robe, reminding me that she was a Spanish major. As soon as it was over, I began thinking again of my studies. I loved to study. It used to be that when people asked me what I was interested in I would say, “Electricity!” Now I told them, “Science!” Ooh, la la!

I admired the Hansons’ home. So many houses in these small towns of the old Midwest were handsome. The towns themselves were beautiful and had been more so, said the locals, before the elms that once shaded them died of blight. Compared to the towns of the West they seemed remarkably wooded, sheltered really, and more contained than the sprawling towns I knew with only sagebrush to stop their spread. I saw photographs of this town before Dutch elm disease, and it looked like a huge green corsage set out in rolling farmland. The Hanson family had been in this house since 1841, and the attic held the Civil War uniforms of Hanson forebears, including the riddled one of a Hanson who died at Chickamauga, having served in a storied unit of Swedish immigrants. The spacious basement, now holding a stout coal-fired furnace, was said to have hidden escaped slaves. I particularly enjoyed the oak window seats with cushions fitted out into the bays that looked upon the small, well-tended backyard with its old roses and ancient black walnut tree. Here I sat with my schoolbooks, in my Chinese robe, entertaining unrealistic hopes for my future: my daydreaming, my fantasy life was still highly impractical.

The house was quite dark inside, enclosing, and had fireplaces in all the public rooms. A formal dining room opened onto an old utilitarian kitchen with a built-in gas range. The wood counters were worn to hollows, their edges held intact by steel bands and acorn-headed screws. It was a small space, and when I helped Shirley prepare meals there we rubbed against each other between stove and refrigerator with a steadily increasing frequency. The duration of these encounters was directly related to the complexity of the meals which were aimed at Karl Hanson’s enthusiastic palate; therefore we avoided the simple preparations and natural-food approaches advocated by Gloria Swanson, Hollywood vegetarian, resorting instead to complex glazes and various potted things, an elaborate cassoulet, and so forth. By the time Hanson complained of gout and a defiant waistband, Shirley and I were regularly dry-humping next to the counter that held the big chrome Mixmaster and Pyrex coffee machine.

In my second year, I started studying Spanish, abandoned the Chinese costume, and affected serapes. By now my reputation as a sort of Western hipster had vanished and I was viewed simply as a damn fool, a fool with snow falling on his serape four months a year and with mariachi 78s on an old brown record player.

I’d better note that my relationship with Shirley, while steamy, was inconclusive and passed as ironic household play — that is, on Shirley’s part. I seemed all too caught up in it, my experience having been confined to the pleasure my aunt Silbie dished out, and dished out directly. This was different. I resolved that some sort of legitimate barrier based in the marriage vows of the Hansons was going to require me to finish the work myself after one of Shirley’s humpfests.

Between astronomy and civics, an unscheduled two hours found me either at the library or back at the Hansons’ for an afternoon snack, usually prepared by Shirley. Since these were such obvious opportunities for hanky-panky, we made a point of avoiding it, and the result was that my snacks were often beautifully prepared little meals that sent me back to class content, and reconciled to my lost opportunities. Because I was so unassertive at these times, I blamed myself for awaiting Shirley’s initiative and wondered what might have happened if I’d just had the nerve to reach out and touch her. The chance that she would scream, “Get your hands off me!” just as Hanson popped in filled me with terror.

Today she served me a lovely little wedge of homemade shepherd’s pie and a green salad with walnuts and olives. She asked me, “Are you taking any history courses?” She had a beautiful smile on her pretty face, her auburn hair piled atop her head with a few strands tumbling over her forehead.

“I had American history last term.”

“That’s my favorite.”

“American?”

“Mm. Especially the Civil War.”

“That was good,” I said.

“The Revolutionary War, well, you see those paintings, they don’t really resemble us. But the Civil War, they had photos.”

“It makes it so much closer to our own time,” I said, fishing. I knew that I had sort of missed the point, so I added a few details about the incomprehensibility of the Revolutionary War period, Washington’s wig, knee socks, wooden teeth, three-cornered hats, the whole nine yards. “Plus, they didn’t free the slaves.”