Thomas McGuane - Driving on the Rim

I had to hand it to my colleagues: we all learned to look forward to these meetings, which we viewed with barely suppressed hilarity. Over time, Wilmot delivered sermons based on a loose group he called “the founding fathers,” whose nature became more Nietzschean with every meeting. Our clinic did have problems, mostly financial, and these drove the looniness of our board with unfailing regularity. The rodeo clown blamed everything on falling cattle prices, out-of-staters, and ethanol. The car salesman saw the Japanese titrating unhappiness into the American economy. In this context, the housewife seemed quite sensible, seeing men behind everything. The dentist played his cards close to the chest and cringed when we congratulated him on avoiding weekend emergencies. In reply, he pantomimed his golf swing.

Dr. McAllister said, “Thank God they’re clueless.”

I retrieved with wan hope the sheaf of bills in my mailbox and met my old nurse Scarlett as she walked home with a rake she had just purchased jauntily balanced over her shoulder. I did not feel whimsical or ironic but meant to speed her into my home. I said, “Put down that rake.”

“My goodness,” said Scarlett, switching the rake from one shoulder to the other, “you’re leading an exciting life.” She wore a tattered, man’s crewneck sweater, cranberry red, with her wristwatch over one sleeve, and open-back clogs that revealed her pretty ankles. I don’t think I’d ever seen her out of her nurse’s uniform. She looked far better this way.

“Yuh,” said I dully, “I am.”

“Is all this true?”

“No,” I said, but the ambivalence came spearing back.

“Are they letting you work?”

“Er, not really.”

“Bummer. So what do you do?”

“Well, I’ve been catching up on my thinking. Can you come in?”

“Ho, ho, ho. The answer is ‘no.’ ”

As though this reply was of the greatest indifference to me, I said, “Well, then, let me just stroll along with you, if that’s all right.”

“You know, it’s not all right. I realize you’re innocent until proven guilty, but I don’t need a lot of people watching me socialize with you.”

“I understand.”

“Probably you don’t, but that’s just how it is.” She went on her way, the rake over her shoulder. Without looking back, she said, “Call me if you’re acquitted.”

I doubt that Jinx was being formal with me so much as practical. I must not have been ready for practicality. I asked her, “Do you have a minute to talk about this?”

“Talk about what?”

“Oh, come on. I’m in trouble.”

“Sure, I’ll talk about it. What do you want to talk about?”

“I want to know if you had a hand in it.”

“Why would I have had a hand in it?”

“You tell me.”

“I think it’s more important that you think about what you have done and what should be done to you as a consequence. I’m not asking you to tell me: that’s between you and your god.”

“Excellent. We spend a lot of time together. We’ll work it out.”

“When you do, get some advice about operating on a somewhat different plane. Neither I nor anyone else in town can figure out where the hell you’re coming from.” I found this tone of Jinx’s alarming: she had never talked to me like this.

I think that medical school, where I found myself by way of a painless knack for academics and some democratic scheme by which poor boys from hick towns received modest preference, was where I first felt the gust of fear that if I didn’t straighten out and fly right I might well end up a flop and an idiot. Therefore, I got my head down and my butt up, and bent to the work at hand. As a consequence, I had few personal memories of medical school, which had all the charm of a Soviet assembly line. If we drank, it was in pursuit of oblivion; if we fornicated, it was to relieve discomfort. At length, we found without jubilation that we were doctors. I lurched home to celebrate and did my best to enjoy the gruesome party my parents had arranged in my honor.

There was much alcohol. My father had set up a huge barbecue pit in the backyard, and some animal was turning on a spit. A few of the fancier folk in town were back there quietly disputing what sort of beast it might be. A sober and extraordinarily energetic knot of Pentecostal boors organized square dancing for themselves — no one else seemed to feel welcome to participate — and an authoritarian lout in blue coveralls called out the moves to the blank-faced revelers. They had brought their own tape deck and speakers, and it was only when Mayor Kavanagh with his 1890s moustache told them to “turn that goddamn thing off” before jerking the cord out himself that we were able to resume speaking in normal tones. Thereafter, the fundamentalists kept to themselves and watched the party warily. My mother, for all the strangeness of her thinking, was a lively and sociable person; I don’t know how she had tolerated these people for so many years. I guess it just goes to the genuineness of her convictions.

My father stood on a chair and tapped his glass with a spoon. I realized with dread that he was about to make a speech. The gist was that he was a nobody, my mother was a nobody, and I was a great man, a doctor. It went over like a lead balloon. My mother was furious. People stared at my father in dismay. He began to sob. I took him by the elbow and helped him down from the chair. To ease the crisis, I said a few formulaic words about how I stood humbly in the shadow of their sacrifices. The guests absorbed this with varying degrees of relief, all except Tessa, who covered her mouth in helpless laughter. At any rate, the moment had come and gone. We went to the dead animal turning on the spit.

Fate headed me to Tessa. She uncovered her mouth and said, “I couldn’t help it.” I knew it was funny but thought indignation fitted the situation better. Her hand went back over her mouth. I told her, “Those are my parents.” She snorted through her nose and said she was sorry.

I may have only on the occasion of that barbecue really noticed what a dump my folks’ place was. I had never been there before in a coat and tie. All those people standing around with beers and other drinks to welcome me home, including the usual suspects — Mrs. Voorheis who owned the secondhand store on the frontage road; an alcoholic horseshoer named Hooty Cox who was there for the drinks; Don Funk who ran a pawn operation out of his house; Elvin Bird in Ground who was a Crow Indian diesel mechanic; Sister Calista from the Catholic grade school who never missed a party with spicy food; cabinetmaker Cal Schreiner and wife; Conoco station owner Bus Clancy, a widower, and his two grown daughters; big-game outfitter Riley Cash in full cowboy regalia and trailing moustache; our two most popular backhoe operators, Jack and Jerry; renowned snowmobile mechanic Tim Varian, soon to be punched by Hooty Cox, himself to be swiftly subdued by Don Funk while Elvin Bird in Ground rudely ogled Bus Clancy’s two large daughters — as well as the medical staff of the clinic to which I would be attached, the small group of doctors who stood to one side and smiled… faintly. My mother and father wore themselves out in solicitous darting between the two groups. I thought the senior internist, Dr. Laird McAllister, was a little abrupt in declining the plate of food my mother brought him, raising the palm of his hand in her direction and saying, “No way!” Under the single shade tree stood the two old brothers Eggs and Bugs Ackley, wheat farmers from the Cottonwood Bench, in matching red-white-and-blue suspenders. Their real names were Elvin and Darwin Farquahar. Long ago, because of their enthusiastic manner of affirmation—“Exactly!” and “But exactly” oddly pronounced — they came to be know as Eggs and Bugs Ackley. I drifted into my accustomed out-of-body state, absentmindedly popping the unfamiliar necktie between thumb and forefinger and musing that the life ahead might prove complicated. The mild malaise I experienced I trained upon the rusty Ford Fairlane on blocks that defined the backyard and which I employed as an object of meditation while I allowed the various waves of my story to wash over me.