Thomas McGuane - Crow Fair - Stories

“He’s just about dead,” said Clay emphatically, and went back into the shack with its telephone, cash drawer, and long view of the vehicle lot. At the end of the frontage road, where it met Main Street, a newspaper tumbling through plastered itself against the boarded-up frozen-yogurt stand. The metal sign on wheels in front of the tire-repair shop was flapping back and forth. The Dodge pulled back onto the road and went by the shack. The rancher, barely able to see over the wheel, gave Clay a wave, and Clay smiled broadly saying, “Eat shit!” behind his teeth.

It was really no longer a hospital, just a place providing emergency care until an ambulance or helicopter could take you to Billings. Three nurses and a doctor were on call. Clay got his father admitted there on the strength of being one of three ranchers who had founded the little hospital when it actually served the rural population then flourishing. It had the advantage of being close to home, with views that meant something to the old man, like the one of the big spring where they’d watered cattle for a century. There was not a lot to be done for him, at least not here. About all anyone could do was listen to his stories, and that seemed enough. Clay of course had heard them all, so there remained only to notice the thickening of detail with each retelling, assuming he could stand to hear his father express yet again his love for the life he’d lived while Clay pondered his own peaked existence at the lot. Should you interrupt the telling, the hard look would return, the face of a man who, throughout his life, had called all the shots that really mattered. Seeing his father in the bed, Clay could hardly help thinking about the ease that lay ahead for him and his sister, even as guilt tore at him. Times had changed all right, but that didn’t excuse much.

Weekdays Clay listened for as long as he could; and on weekends his sister, Karen, came over from Powderville, sometimes with one of her kids. There were three boys, but two were too wild for that long a ride. Karen said that while she was gone they always got up to something obnoxious if their dad couldn’t find time to come in off the place and kick their asses.

The hospital sat right in the middle of the old Matador pasture, where the longhorns coming up from Texas had recovered from the long trail. Clay’s great-grandfather had been one of the cowboys, and the story was that when they first arrived the Indian burials were still in the trees, and the ground was covered with stone tepee rings. A picture of that first roundup crew, with the reps from five outfits lined up in front on their horses, was Bill’s most cherished possession, and he fretted constantly about its safekeeping when he was gone. He seemed to feel that no one in his family cared anything about it. That was probably true. Either that or they were sick of hearing about it.

It had begun to rain, and with the rain came the smell of open country. Karen was supposed to have been there already, and Clay really wanted to get back to the lot. No matter how often intuition betrayed him, he could still convince himself that someone was going to come along and buy a car today. Apart from that he felt a little angry, but at what he wasn’t so sure, maybe everything.

“I don’t know what’s keeping her,” he said to his father.

“Probably had to wait for Lewis to get out of school or find someplace to stash them two other little shits.”

His father couldn’t see as far as the door. So when Karen appeared there, she was able to summon Clay discreetly. For a small brunette, in her jeans and boots and hoodie she could be as emphatic as a trooper telling you to pull over. She was proud to be married to a cowboy.

“I’ve got to take Lewis in for a shot. He got bit by a skunk and, now, the poor little guy is going to have to have that series. So you need to hold the fort.”

“My God, Karen, I can’t stay anymore. I’ve been here all morning.” He couldn’t say he’d been fucked over by that sawed-off rancher just half an hour past breakfast, because Karen had zero sympathy so far as his job was concerned.

Karen said, “You’re going to have to,” and just walked on out. By the time it had occurred to him to offer to take Lewis for the shot, his sister was gone and his father was awake. What good had it been, the old man herding thousands of cattle over all those years only to wind up with his arms like Popsicle sticks and pissing through a tube. Nothing to show for his trouble but stories his son would have to hear all over again, with no relief but the chance of picking up something new about Leo the Illegal or O.C. or Robert Wood or some horse plowed under way back when. Sometimes during these tales, Clay would think about pole dancers or money pouring out of a slot machine or some decent soul appreciating something he’d done, such as that time he acquired the nearly new fire engine the government had bought because the Indians on the Rez didn’t want it, since they already had a bunch just like it they hadn’t gotten around to wrecking. The town enjoyed a lot of use out of that engine, even though no one seemed to remember who found it for them, or even that day the big red beauty first rolled down the street, sirens blazing and blinding chrome all over it. So much for quiet acts of heroism. Maybe it was time to start drawing attention to himself. A Ford dealership in Great Falls was having a Christian fund-raiser with TV stars on Saturday, and something like that might well be in his future. Or just toot his own horn down at the chamber of commerce.

It was the last Mother’s Day before World War II. You and Karen was just little bitty. Your ma and me drove into the ranch yard, and Leo, the illegal who worked for me then ( Here we go , thinks Clay), said some old fellow had arrived about sundown on a wild horse and rolled out his bedroll under the loading chute, put his head on his saddle, and gone to sleep. I had this feeling that it was old Robert Wood, and sure enough it was. (Yep!) Of course I caught him before he fell asleep, just caught his eye to tell him I would see him in the a.m. I pretty much knew what he was after. (So do I.) He had a band of mares up on the mesa behind our mares, and they were running out with wild horses there. Folks from town had come out from time to time to chase them around, and they was absolutely wild. I had been hoping for the chance to gather them for Robert when we had enough hands, because it wasn’t going to be easy at all. (And what a bitch it would turn out to be.)

Clay’s only defense against these onslaughts was the things he couldn’t say aloud.

Several months before this, Robert went out into the sagebrush to catch his red roan stud, which was running with some draft horses by the springs. He came with nothing but a little pan of oats and a lariat. (Wait’ll you see how good this trick works.) Just as he got his stud caught, one of the draft horses bites the stud, and Robert gets hung up in the rope and dragged. Your uncle O. C. Drury was plowing up wheat stubble about two miles away and saw the dust cloud from where Robert was being hauled. At his age, Robert really never should have lived, but he did. He was in the hospital all winter.

I ran into him after he’d healed some, and he said to me in his kind of whiny voice, “Bill, I been laid up. Can you carry me to the place?” I went with him into his little shack of a cabin, and he stripped down to his long underwear. He pulled back the covers of his bed, and there was a great big nest of mice, just full of little pink babies. He carefully moved them to one side and got in next to them, pulled up the covers, and nodded thanks for the lift. (Set your watches for hantavirus.)

Gradually, I heard rumors that he was back at work pulling up his poor fence and halfway cowproofing it. He brought back his black baldies and his bulls. He was even seen crawling around the cockleburs packing a sprayer with a full tank and a rag tied across his face. He had always lived and worked alone and was still on the place where he was born. (Same dog bit me.)