Thomas McGuane - Driving on the Rim

I was rescued from my life on the margins not just by our burgeoning VFW social normalcy but by the friendship of Throckmorton, the only boy in our class who, though popular, seemed sufficiently immune to peer pressure to anoint me a friend. He was a striking olive-skinned, round-faced boy with a jet-black Mohawk who loved the outdoors and feeling up girls, a pastime I learned from him once I’d achieved a minimal social aptitude. It still surprised me that the girls’ permission to feel them up so readily represented the general opinion of the whole class. Throckmorton and I were entirely focused on breasts, of which we were connoisseurs, commenting on their apparently limitless attributes. This was my first real vocabulary challenge.

Throckmorton and I spent our free time out of doors, in the sagebrush hills north of town with our small falcon, Speed — a kestrel we had taken from its nest, raised, and taught to hunt grasshoppers and mice. Speed rode the handlebars. We fished in the small snowmelt streams we could reach by bicycle. At a cabin far from town, we often observed a border collie on a chain, unsheltered in all weathers. We stole this dog too and named him Pal, lied to our parents about where we found him. Pal lived out his life, alternating between our houses. Throckmorton’s parents said my parents overfed Pal, and my parents said that Throckmorton’s parents spoiled Pal by never asking him to do anything. Pal’s training consisted of “sit” and “shake.”

Throckmorton played football. He was a gritty defensive lineman, the position most suitable for his thick frame, and always had a bloody nose or mouth, which he held aloft as he jogged to the sidelines for treatment. Throckmorton claimed that football enabled one to see more breasts than any other sport. That seemed to be the case, though I counted on baseball’s superior elegance to serve this end in the long run. Throckmorton thought this was a trifling idea and asserted that women were drawn to violence.

One day when we were hunting grasshoppers in a big alfalfa field, Speed flew away for good. “Ungrateful bird,” said Throckmorton, but his eyes were filled with tears. Mine too. We were about to start high school. Afterwards, Throckmorton and I saw less of each other, though we were still good friends. He dated one cheerleader after another; and as he was now a big aggressive brute and I knew his vividly carnal imagination, I rather felt sorry for these girls he described as “squealing like pigs.”

“Jury selection will be a breeze. I’ve been down the list, bunch of good folk from the tax rolls. I’ll let Numb Nuts fuck around with the jury pool, toss in a few peremptory challenges to make it look like he’s in charge, and then I’ll nip in and winnow those who’ve got it in for doctors. You’re well liked. An admired practitioner. Eccentricities forgiven. Giving freaks a pass is the oldest tradition in Montana. And you, my friend, are a blue-ribbon, bull-goose freak.”

“Don’t get complacent, pardner, I’d like to go back to work.” I wish he hadn’t brought up my trade. I missed it tremendously. Numerous fresh faces walking into my office with their problems, too beautiful, too stirring for words. My mother’s rearing suddenly surfaced as I asked God to let me work.

“I’ll go through them very carefully. The judge has already indicated that the jurors need not be death-qualified. So there’s little for you to sweat beyond the Big House.”

I didn’t like this, joke or not. I feared confinement more than mortality. It was curious that I didn’t seem to fear it more than indelible guiltiness, which felt more like a recurrent cancer in remission. But I could be guilty and still work, whereas I couldn’t work in the Big House.

“Why in God’s name don’t you smoke cigars?” He held up a handful. “Mexican maduro number 3 ring. So darn good.”

“I’ve tried them.”

“You haven’t tried them enough. I wish you’d get off this austerity stuff. You’re missing out altogether unless you’re angling for canonization. You’re not taking your own pills, are you?”

“Don’t be silly.”

“I need something to sleep.”

“We’ll talk about it.”

“It’s got to knock me on my ass. No pussyfooting around. Brandy and cigars before bedtime, it takes a Class Three narcotic or you’re counting sheep. Plus, I have worries. I’m not austere. I spend money, I travel, I have a mistress.”

“What say you hold off on the foreseeable heart attack until my trial is over?”

“Plus, something to perk up the love machine?”

“Tons of stuff out there. It all works so long as you feel pretty with a beet-red face.”

“Would you mind if we got off this for a moment and focused on your trial?”

This was classic Throckmorton, one of the most doubt-free people I had ever known. I wished it had rubbed off on me.

The Stands family moved to town my sophomore year when Mr. Stands was transferred by the railroad from Forsyth. They were Crow, real name Stands Ahead, and their daughter, their only child, Debbie, my girlfriend all through high school, raised my prestige — though not with everybody, as there was a residue of prejudice toward Indians and a few thugs began calling me “Chief”—since Debbie was the best-looking girl in school. The family was probably what inclined me to intern at the Indian Health Service, but more important, Debbie taught me how to study. I spent three years believing that our destinies would forever be intertwined; the very chastity of our relationship, excepting only limited familiarity with her breasts, seemed to elevate our love to a mythic plane. Then I went to college in the Midwest, where my gruesome immaturity returned like a virus dormant in my spine, and Debbie married a classmate at Missoula. I still heard from her at Christmas. The family picture on her card, husband and two children, gave me a pang. Her father, Austin Stands Ahead as he latterly styled himself, was my patient until dying of congestive heart failure. He kept me up on Debbie, and I concealed my pain with a congratulatory smile as he detailed her accomplishments: she was a state legislator. I met Debbie once at a high school reunion and with a trembling face. Thereafter, I avoided such things. Years later, I thought to relent, but even if Debbie had grown big, fat, and old I was afraid it wouldn’t matter.

I seemed to be a bachelor. For years I wondered whenever the phone rang late at night if it might be Debbie. It never was. I realized now that it never would be. There were quite a few things like that.

“Did that fellow ever bring you an airplane?”

“Womack. Yes, a while back actually.”

“To start crop dusting again?”

“This is a different kind of plane. Takes off and lands on small runways. And it can carry quite a load.”

“To do what?”

“Oh, there’s always a call for a plane like that.”

“Mining equipment, I suppose.”

“Sure.”

“So, where is Womack now?”

“He got a room.”

“Where did he get a room?”

“One of those little towns. Over near Rapelje, I think, somewhere in the Golden Triangle.”

“And he looks after the plane?”

“What is this, Twenty Questions?”

So, later, Jinx came over, after doing her grocery shopping, and brought me a few treats, including a pint of Cherry Garcia, a little wedge of artisanal cheddar, and a bottle of Pouilly-Fumé, which I offered to drink with her, but she wouldn’t consider it as she meant to spend her evening reviewing cases. But we did have a cocktail, despite my being briefly low-spirited and envious that she would be working. I hadn’t had a drink in a week, and just one was enough to produce a wave of warmth generally, but especially toward my friend Jinx. Therefore I regaled her with an overly detailed account of my infatuation with Jocelyn, including hints of its erotic aura. It was a masterpiece of thoughtlessness, but Jinx bore it with her usual grace and composure, questioning me attentively about something I cared about, and only because I cared about it. I glimpsed that people at work, like Jinx, must look across a great divide at people like me, atwitter over their love lives, or even people like Jocelyn, trying to think what their airplane is good for. That was hardly an account of the facts, but Jinx’s world could not be called dull just for its steadiness. Adding to the picture, I years ago met Jinx’s parents: what a surprise, a retired car salesman with a highly visible gold tooth married to an aging but still painted party girl. Though it took thirty years, they finally drank themselves to death in the St. Louis apartment building where Jinx had grown up and launched herself into a real life of real work. I specifically recall the days she took off from the clinic, one year apart, to bury her mother and father and how downcast she was to lose two people who seemed spectacularly negligible to anyone who had ever met them. They had named her after Jinx Falkenburg, whom I could not recall. Jinx remarked ruefully that she was a “sweater girl.”