Thomas McGuane - Crow Fair - Stories

At last we landed, and I drove off. Ellie was having a lively chat with the ferryman, and she took her time getting back in the car. I stared straight through the windshield until she got around to it. When she climbed in, with a sort of bounce, she exclaimed, “He grew up on the neighbor’s place, the Showalters’. He’s a Showalter. Graduated from Winnett, where I went.”

“Ah, so.”

The ranch was no more than half an hour from the ferry. Ellie’s excitement grew along the route. Here is a sampler of her exclamations:

· “Look at all the antelope! There must be a hundred of them!”

· “Oh, I can smell the sage now!”

· “This road looks like a silver ribbon!”

· “Those are all red-tailed hawks, just riding that thermal!”

· “Larkspur!”

· “What a grass year! Can you imagine what Dad’s calves will look like?”

To this last, I said, “No.” I honestly thought she was getting manic as we approached the ranch. Ellie is an enthusiast, but this went well beyond her usual behavior. I don’t know if she detected my concern, but she seemed to catch herself and clam up; she was talking less, but I could still feel her glee from my position at the wheel. I wondered if the situation called for a pill.

I drove under the ranch gate, with its iron brand hanging overhead — two inverted V s, known in the graceful local vernacular as the squaw tits. Dad, as I had long felt obliged to call him, and his wife, Mom, stood at the edge of the yard, framed from behind by their bitter little clapboard house. Dad was in full regalia: Stetson hat, leather vest, cowboy boots, and — this was new — a six-gun. Mom was dressed more conventionally, except for the lace-up boots with her wash dress and the lunch pail she was holding. Believe me, it was Methuselah and his bride at the Grand Ole Opry.

There was something about their expressions that I didn’t like. It was my turn to keep busy as I tried to elicit signs of life from this tableau, which now included my somber wife. Dad helped me unload Ellie’s considerable luggage, and, once it was all out on the ground, Mom handed me the lunch pail. “What’s this?” I asked.

“Something to eat on the way home. A casserole.”

I turned to Ellie. Tears filled her eyes. I felt that this could have been handled in another way — without Dad’s hand on the gun and so forth. I think, at times like this, your first concern is to hang on to a shred of dignity. If I had a leg to stand on, it was that Ellie was upset and I was not. What kind of idiot puts a casserole in a lunch pail?

After I got back on the ferry, the thought that I was headed … home — well, I was not entirely comfortable with this thought, and I didn’t enjoy the ferryman staring at me, either, or asking if someone had shot my dog. I just stared out at the river, hardly a ripple in it, and miles to go before the next bend.

In the hotel mirror, Dave adjusted the Stetson he so disliked before pulling on the windbreaker with the cattle-vaccine logo. He was a moderately successful young man, one of many working for a syndicate of cattle geneticists in Oklahoma, employers he had never met. He had earned his credentials from an online agricultural portal, the way other people became ministers, and was astonishingly uneducated in every respect, though clever in keeping an eye out for opportunity. He had spent the night in Jordan at the Garfield, ideal for meeting his local ranch clients, and awoke early enough to be the first customer in the café, where, on the front step, an old dog slept with a canceled postage stamp stuck to his butt. By the time Dave had ordered breakfast, several ranchers had taken tables and were greeting him with a familiar wave. Then the man from Utah, whom he’d met at the hotel, the one who said he’d come to Jordan to see the comets, appeared in the doorway, looking around the room. He was small and intense, middle-aged in elastic-top pants and flashy sneakers. He caught the notice of several of the ranchers. Dave had asked the elderly desk clerk about the comets. The clerk said, “I don’t know what he’s talking about and I’ve lived here all my life. He doesn’t even have a car.” Though he’d already ordered, Dave pretended to study the menu to keep from being noticed, but it was too late: the man was looming over him, laughing so hard his eyes shrunk to points and his gums showing. “Don’t worry. I’ll get my own table,” he said, his fingers drumming the back of Dave’s chair. It gave Dave an odd sense of being assessed.

The door to the café kept clattering open and shut with annoying bells on a string. Dave enjoyed all the comradely greetings and gentle needling, and even felt connected to the scene, if loosely. Only this fellow, sitting alone, seemed entirely set apart. But he kept attracting glances from the other diners. The cook pushed plate after plate across his high counter as the waitress struggled to keep up. It was a lot to do, but it lent her star quality among the diners, who teased her with personal questions or air-pinched her bottom as she went past.

Dave kept on studying the menu to avoid the stranger’s gaze and then resorted to making notes about this and that on the pad from his shirt pocket.

The waitress, a yellow pencil stuck in her chignon, arrived with his bacon and eggs. Dave gave her a welcoming smile in the hope that when he looked that way again, the man would be gone. But there he was still, now giving Dave a facetious military salute, then holding his nose against some imaginary stink. The meaning of these gestures eluded Dave, who was disquieted by the suggestion that he and this stranger knew each other. He ate and went to the counter to pay, so quickly the waitress came out from the kitchen still wiping her hands on a dishcloth and said, “Everything okay, Dave?”

“Yes, very good, thanks.”

“Put it away in an awful hurry. Out to Larsen’s?”

“No, I was there yesterday. Bred heifers. They held everything back.”

“They’re big on next year. I wonder if it does them any good.”

“Well, they’re still in business, ain’t they? No, I’m headed for Jorgensen’s. Big day.”

Two of the ranchers, done eating, leaned in their chairs, their Stetsons back on their heads while they picked their teeth with the corners of the menus. As Dave pushed his wallet into his back pocket he realized he was being followed to the door. He didn’t turn until halfway across the parking lot. When he did, the gun was in his belly, and his new friend was in his face. “Ray. Where’s your ride?”

“You robbing me?”

“I just need a lift, amigo.”

Ray got in the front seat of Dave’s car, tucked the gun into his pants, and pulled his shirt over it, a blue terry-cloth shirt with a large breast pocket full of ballpoint pens. The top flap of the pocket liner was courtesy of “Powell Savings, Modesto, CA.”

“Nice car. What’re all the files in back?”

“Breeding records, cattle-breeding records.”

“Mind?” Without awaiting an answer, he picked up Dave’s cell phone and began tapping in a number. In a moment, his voice changed to an intimate murmur. “I’m here, or almost here,” he said, covering the mouthpiece as he pointed to the intersection: “Take that one right there.” Dave turned east at the intersection. “I got it wrote down someplace, east two hundred, north thirteen, but give it to me again, my angel. Or I can call you as we get closer … No cell service! Starting where? Never mind, a friend’s giving me a lift”—again he covered the mouthpiece—“your name?”