Thomas McGuane - Driving on the Rim

There were times when I felt a sourceless smile forming on my lips, and these times could last for weeks. I mention this only because it is this faint, amiable smile that has always involuntarily formed when I was about to say or do something with a high element of risk. Why the fleeting glimpses of my own automobile in the dark should produce this rictus is no clearer to me than the elation I felt years ago during the tango fiasco. I suppose going over Niagara Falls in a barrel had some of this mysterious glory — the slap of river on the staves, the magnificent silence as the barrel falls through air, the prospect of catastrophe with its great plunging sound, the final gurgle inaudible to the many spectators, the honeyed ease beyond.

It crossed a few hundred yards away, and then crossed again. I waited several minutes, my eyes riveted on the empty intersection. Here it came: she was driving in circles or around a block, a block of interest, an air of waiting. The next time it went through, I hurried to the corner where she had passed and leaned against the trunk of a splendid amur maple, an ancient thing from the day of the horse; indeed, I rather formed my body to it until I felt myself becoming part of its deep shadow. I opened my mouth to soften the sound of my breathing and felt a zephyr in the branches scatter dark camouflage overhead. Just then I spotted a garbage can, still on the sidewalk from the last collection. I rushed out and rolled it into the intersection, then retreated to my maple.

As I waited, I thought of tomorrow’s patients. What had happened to me today? I desperately wanted to see my patients. Harelipped Eleanor with repetitive stress injuries from her three decades of washing dishes at an interstate truck stop: I may have given her too many cortisone shots, but what relief they provided! Onetime jockey Dan Devlin, a near midget, had a tiny nursery that produced nice perennials — emphysema. A couple of pre-football physicals and then lunch. Couldn’t remember the p.m. sched.

Here came my car. Proximity had not dispelled its lightless mystery, its frictionless deathship glide. I watched it slow down as if it were driving itself, approach the garbage can, and stop. I waited until I heard the creak of the driver’s door, then moved quickly to the passenger’s side and let myself in. The noise of rolling the can out of the way must have muffled my entrance because Clarice climbed behind the wheel and shut her door. It was a moment before she saw me in the shadows and screamed. Seeing who it was, she calmed down and told me I could keep all the hot dog money and wouldn’t have to pay for any I’d eaten. I think that when I heard the indignation while turgidly explaining that I was capable of paying for my own hot dogs, I realized who I was for the first time — a feckless professional drawn from absurdity to absurdity by bad impulses. I thought of the small red tugboats that towed the great liners into port, the solitary tugboat skipper, the ship filled with a thousand voices.

Nevertheless — I love this — all had been set in motion. Clarice said, “I just needed a ride. I didn’t know the other girl would quit. I was enjoying my freedom while you sold the hot dogs. You went for it! Do you think I’m a grifter? What do you do for a living?”

“I’m a private detective.”

“Really! Well, I hope you don’t charge people. You’re not a private detective, are you? What are you? You look like a lawyer. Maybe you are. Or a senator.”

I had a burst of near candor: “I’m a house painter.” This reply swept me with happiness. The once dreaded color wheel appeared before me like a galaxy of cheerful stars.

She said, “You’re not going to ask me to do anything, are you?”

“Hardly.” I really surprised myself. Maybe I wasn’t so bad after all.

I drove Clarice to her house. It saddened me to see so inventive a young woman walk into such a shack. I could only think of what I might have felt dropping her off had I managed to exploit her imagined debt. She didn’t see the nobility. I could tell by the way she looked at me and shook her head that she thought I was a sucker. In a way, she was right. I do know that by the time I got home, there was something about myself, based on this extremely foolish episode, that I was sick of.

I would be embarrassed by my private detective charade when, three years later, Clarice appeared in my office as a patient. I remembered my lie immediately and took it as a benchmark of what I hoped I had left behind. Deluded again. Clarice had grown up, was out of trouble and holding a good job. I first hoped she wouldn’t recognize me, but I realized as she studied me with surprise what folly that was: still, the discovery of my real identity seemed to humanize me in her eyes. She looked back on our episode of the hot dog stand with humor and affection, and I found myself caring for Clarice in the way I wished I cared for everybody. I was about to comment that she had finally grown up when she said more or less the same thing to me.

Clarice came to me only occasionally, for allergies at first. When she married, she began to see me more frequently, initially for chronic indigestion and then for various other stress-related ailments, hives and insomnia mostly. She moved around various county situations, and her husband had a dangerous job in a mine that paid quite well, so I didn’t think financial issues were driving her problems. But she was a worried young woman and not candid with me about her marriage. We had become good acquaintances, which was not ideal for objectivity, necessarily, or candor. Worrying about her felt inappropriately parental.

I was told early in the days of my practice that the battered housewife was the bread and butter of the general practitioner. While this may have been an overstatement — sports physicals, pointless reassurances for things caused by viruses, and flock shooting generalized pain were more remunerative — it was disturbing how many women came to me with injuries that did not match the explanations. Clarice appeared the morning after our four-day rodeo with the customary facial contusions and a nosebleed that wouldn’t stop. A nosebleed that won’t stop is a serious problem, and a CBC indicated she had lost quite a bit of blood. This necessitated a very discomforting procedure after chemical cold packs and pressure had failed to stop the flow. The abrasions to Clarice’s face made clear the sort of injuries that had led to the bleeding, which she ascribed to the dry mountain air. She was very uneasy about my moving her head around to get a better view of the nasal vestibule, as though flinching from the possibility of further blows. I was able to identify several bleeding sites with the speculum, one requiring cauterization. This, while not pleasant, obviated packing the nasal passages with cotton, which required twisting the material into place at the cost of considerable patient suffering.

I asked who abused her and got a remarkably philosophical reply made more dramatic by the condition of her face. She seemed ashamed of what had happened and may have explained her hostility to me whom she’d known for a long time. She said, “It’s not abuse if you saw it coming.”

“Are you saying you had it coming?”

“No, I said I saw it coming.”

“And you didn’t get out of the way.”

“Right.”

“And since you didn’t get out of the way you share responsibility for what happened to you?”

“Right.”

I said, “I don’t get it.”

She said, “You don’t have to get it. It’s not your life.”

“Clarice! I don’t believe this! I’m trying to help.”

She began to cry. What was most painful was the thought that when I had first known her, when she had problems with the law and was just another reckless girl having not yet learned to conform and lead a regular life, she would have never put up with this. I had the fleeting idea that her problems arose from being domesticated and that she had been safe as a wild girl but was endangered as a wife.