Thomas McGuane - Crow Fair - Stories

Jessica was taken aback by his soft voice and by his peculiar tidiness. She noticed a mule tied in the trees, plywood panniers lashed to its ribs. Looking back at the terrified wolf, which was trying now to fling itself away from the trap, she heard herself say, “I’d rather shoot you than that animal.”

“Oh? I don’t think you know how hard it is to pull a trigger,” the man said. “You have to feel pretty strongly about anything you kill. My old man used to tell me that you have to kill something every day, even if it’s a fly.”

He handed her the gun, and Jessica took it readily, surprised at how warm it was in her hand. She had a sense that some kind of power might shift to her, if she knew what to do with it.

“You obviously don’t read the papers,” she said. “People aren’t having any trouble pulling the trigger these days.”

“I’ll take it back now, thank you,” the man said patiently. “I need to go about my business, and it doesn’t look to me like you feel any big need to save this animal.” The wolf was on its belly now, staring at the trees, its trapped leg drawn out taut in front of it.

“I’m going to shoot you,” Jessica said.

She could almost see these words go out of her mouth.

“You think you’re going to shoot me.”

“I know I am.”

“Just wait until you try to turn him loose. That wolf isn’t going to be very nice to you.”

When the man seized the barrel of the gun, she felt as if she might fall, but she let him pull it away. Later, she felt that she hadn’t struggled hard enough. “You need to picture this thing a little better,” the man explained in his thoughtful voice. “I’m going to make a rug for my cabin out of his hide. I’m going to make jewelry out of his teeth and claws. I’m going to sell them on eBay.”

Jessica started to laugh miserably, and by the time the laughter got away from her the man had joined in, as though it were funny. The wolf was watching them, up on its haunches now. The man wiped his eyes. “Honest to gosh,” he said. “Where would we be without laughter?”

Maybe the laughter was an opening. Jessica tried to explain to the man that the wolf stood for everything she cared about, everything wild. But he laughed and said, “Honey, can’t you hear those chain saws coming?” Her confession had gotten her nowhere.

The wolf made no attempt to escape as the man walked over and killed it.

It was the only place you could get coffee at that hour — sunrise had barely lit the front of the building — and the customers were already lined up right to the door. The young woman at the cash register, too sleepy to interact with anyone, made change mechanically, while her colleague, a young man in a woolen skullcap, seemed to hang from the levers as he waited for the coffee to pour. Jessica kept her hands in the sleeves of her sweater as she awaited her turn behind four people staring absently at their phones. Once she had the coffee, she put a second paper cup around it, went out into the morning, and felt a minor wave of optimism, ascribable to either caffeine or the sunrise.

Customers emerging from the shop were quickly absorbed by the town. As Jessica walked to Cooper Park to watch the morning dogs, the sunlight caught her, and she blew silver steam from her mouth. She had still been able to see a few stars when she left home, but they were gone now. The diehard dog people were already at the park, with others trickling in from the old houses around the neighborhood. This was the world of the cherished mongrel — rescue dogs, shelter dogs, strays that had dodged euthanasia: a part border collie that made an exuberant entrance, then spun away from any dog that wanted to play, a dignified Labrador with its nose elevated, a greyhound missing a tail, a terrier that kept getting overrun by the others only to bounce up again in furious pursuit. They all froze in tableau at the call of a crow, a distant siren, or the arrival of another dog. The owners sat at the perimeter watching, as if at the theater. It occurred to Jessica that she might have been happier as a dog. Then again, she didn’t play well with others.

She had always had the stride of a country girl and felt that she had to cut through people to get anywhere. She walked at such a clip that someone asked, “Where’s the fire?” On her way to the university, she bumped into an unyielding clutch of trustafarians, gathered for the day’s recreation in front of Poor Richard’s and one called her a douche cannon. A woman swiped at her from behind with an umbrella. She stopped only to pet dogs or to sideslip between children. In a clear stretch, she tended to run. She seemed to be clashing with everything.

Walking was how she’d met Andy Clark, on the trail along Bozeman Creek. Later, it occurred to her that it was odd for someone to hike the way he did, with his hands in his pockets. Andy was thirty years old, looked about twenty, and was in no hurry. No hurry was Andy all over. He was good-natured and full of ideas, but Jessica suspected that there was something behind that — not concealed, necessarily, but hard to know, and possibly not all that interesting. Still, Andy’s boyish momentum and playfully forceful suggestions had made him good company at a time when she needed cheering up; and for a while, at least, he hadn’t gotten on her nerves. It was eventually reported to Jessica that, during the production of an independent film in the city the previous summer, Andy had hung around the actresses so much that he was referred to locally as “the sex Sherpa to the stars.” When Jessica brought this up, she was exasperated to see that it pleased him.

It was unclear whether Andy had a job, though he did have an office with a daybed for what he called “nooners.” Jessica didn’t learn this appalling term until she’d already experienced it, stumbling absently onto the daybed with him. Her previous affairs had been grueling, and she had promised herself not to do grueling ever again. She saw Andy, initially, as a kind of homeopathic remedy. But then something got under her skin. Maybe it was the karaoke machine in his bachelor apartment or his unpleasant cat or the Ping-Pong matches he pressured her into; the way he darted around in a crouch at his end of the table made it clear to her that she’d never sleep with him again.

This was something of a pattern with Jessica. Whatever interest she may have had or whatever not particularly spiritual need she felt impelled to satisfy was soon drowned by a tide of little things she would have preferred not to notice. By the time she encountered the wolf, she was sick of Andy. And that would have been that, if he hadn’t continued to pursue her and if she hadn’t had some creeping sadness to escape.

A few days after her hike to Cascade Creek, Andy invited Jessica to dinner at his father’s house, on a ridge high above the M north of the city. She went reluctantly. On the winding road there, a white-tailed buck trotted in front of the car, wearing its horns like a death sentence. Andy led Jessica with a slight pressure on her elbow through the front door to his waiting father, who seemed to have positioned himself well back from the door he’d just answered.

“Dad, please meet Jessica Ramirez,” he said. And, in a get-a-load-of-this tone, “She’s an astronomer.”

Mr. Clark was a tall, thin, sallow widower in an oversize cardigan, whose pockets had been stretched by his habit of plunging his fists into them. His upper lip seemed permanently drawn down, as if he were shaving under his nose. He led them to the living room in a house that appeared to be all windows. The mountains were just visible in the last of the sunset. Mr. Clark didn’t look back or speak a word in their direction, confident that they were following appropriately.