Thomas McGuane - Driving on the Rim

Our dialogue would grow less formal on her ensuing visits. Some of it was even lighthearted: she reminded me that when she’d first met me I was actually excited to run her hot dog stand. But the comfort was short-lived. I had noticed that as battery went on, the injuries seemed to have migrated to less obvious places, which in my mind aggravated the anger with cruelty. On one visit, Clarice came in almost cheerily and sat down. She had put on weight, though a shadow of former girlishness could still be discerned. I at first mistook it for flirtation, but it was just a part of her self that still survived. In showing me the bruising around her midriff, her modesty seemed touchingly out of place. Once again I made my pitch for counseling, rescue services, restraining orders — and got nowhere. Nevertheless, she continued coming for her injuries, which she showed me with a rueful smile. It was driving me crazy in an abnormal, disorienting way, as though I were falling in love with her. I wished I understood this wild and emotional feeling, which was in some part the wish to protect her, and in another, the queer intimacy engendered by examining and treating this parade of lacerations. There came a point at which I understood that I was not handling this as well as I should, that my rising emotions were inappropriate to the caring detachment proper to a good physician; I had known her as a youngster and she had met me in the twilight of my foolishness. I was losing my objectivity and feeling far too strongly about Clarice’s situation, into which, as she herself had pointed out, I had no business interfering; my job was to provide medical treatment, period. To the turbulence of my emotions, therefore, was added the indignity of rejected friendship. As to the possibility of these matters altering my life forever, the timing could not have been worse.

Clarice now worked at the county courthouse researching titles; she had been there since finishing her probation for something not major, shoplifting I think, making few friends among her coworkers, who found her girlishness unappealing. Clarice’s husband was probably a drug user of some sort, a man who also consoled himself by drinking, consoled himself for enduring a lousy life in a platinum mine south of Columbus in exchange for high pay. I tried to offer Clarice advice and understanding, all of which was smiled away. I had at that time in my life and career an inadequate idea of what my responsibilities were, and I saw so many people doing things that were not good for them that I had grown quite detached — or at least detached once I had dropped my formulaic, avuncular comments and called it a day. I got rid of the little moustache. My colleagues seemed to know what was going on; in fact, Clarice had seen some of them when she thought I knew too much about her situation. I will say on my behalf that their angry wishes for the husband were unlawful. Clarice’s worst physical problems were not visible as bruises would be but were the less apparent somewhat crippling effects of having limbs twisted. Physical therapy was out of the question because “he” wouldn’t pay for it and besides “it’s nothing I can’t handle.” My attempts to learn anything more just reinstated her sullenness and reminded me that I had gotten too close to her. I had adopted a pleading tone, which only made things worse. She ceased to seem like a friend or even a longtime patient. With a consummate lack of professionalism, I found that my feelings were hurt. I felt rejected.

“Do you have family in the area?”

“No.”

“Where do they live?”

“Harlowton.”

“That’s forty miles.”

“That’s what I said. I don’t have family in the area.”

“Are your parents living?”

“I don’t know.”

That, such as it was, was our last conversation.

Cody and Clarice lived in an old railroader’s house in a ravine crowded with such houses, a high-dollar muscle car in the driveway. I said, “Why the gun?” It was three o’clock in the morning. Cody was the one who had called me; he said there had been an unfortunate development. He sat on the edge of a well-worn brick-red sofa with protective plastic on its back and several cigarette burns on its arms. He wore acid-washed jeans, which were too small for him, and pushed a roll of fat up under his T-shirt. He was holding a cookie, which he slowly consumed. The pistol he dangled from one hand was chromium plated with a concealed hammer. From time to time, he slid a latch and the cylinder tumbled from the frame, bringing the cartridges and their primers into view. He turned the cylinder slowly with a finger from the other hand and seemed to be counting the bullets. “I told myself she didn’t make it I was going down the same road.” I didn’t say anything. He flipped the cylinder back into place and held the gun more firmly, against his thigh. “I don’t need to live and I got the grit to see I don’t.” I didn’t know why he needed to tell me this, and I took it that he was stalling. I wanted him to get on with it. “But,” he sighed, “it’s not easy. Deserving it don’t make it easier.” My silence seemed to make him indignant. Getting me to talk to him might have been his idea of a way back into the human race, but I meant to help as little as possible.

Cody rested the revolver in his lap and watched me try to save Clarice’s life, a task I had no chance of accomplishing: she was already dead. The poor girl had been dragged up into a chair beneath a lamp, twisted away to keep it from illuminating her battered face, her one arm thrown back as if she had made a last attempt to fling herself clear. There were no signs of the battery that I had not seen during her office visits, but these had been the last, either through accumulation or some cunningly acute new manner of blow. Nothing more could be done for her. I told him she was gone and he pulled the cigarette from behind his ear and lit it. He said, “I told her nobody can live on Chicken McNuggets and popcorn. It’s not like she wasn’t warned.”

“May I ask what you hit her with?”

“Thing over there. Whatever.” He had the cylinder out and was checking the chambers again; then he closed it. This examination of the weapon, the cigarette, something told me he was not going to do away with himself. He didn’t have the balls. What was odd, all this time later, was my ready access to a beautifully performed voice of compassion, one that I would have had a hard time calling up on Clarice’s behalf when she came to me and described in her baby voice what her problems were. I told Cody that no one could tell him what led him to do what he had done and that he owed himself enough understanding to uncover what broken part in him had made him kill his wife. His eyes filled with tears; he moved the cigarette to the other side of his mouth. I gratefully noted the beginnings of a snivel.

I sat in a chair, a spare that had been pulled over next to the television set, under which was a rack filled with back issues of TV Guide and a large can of Glade Floral air freshener. I could not easily look to my right, where Clarice’s corpse lay in its stupendous inertness. Her defeated excuses were too fresh in my mind to accept the impossibility of her ever stirring. I shook my head slightly and said to Cody once more that his wife was dead.

He said, “I told you what I’d do.”

“I know,” I said. “I guess I’m just waiting for you to do it.”

“Are you in a hurry?”

“I’ve got all the time in the world.”

“I mean, Doc, I know what I did. If I have to, I’ll do the time.”

“What time? You were going to kill yourself. Remember?”

“That’s right, I was, but this is my deal and I’ll do it when I’m good and ready.”

“Probably the surest thing would be to put that gun in your mouth.”