Thomas McGuane - Crow Fair - Stories

That evening at the lake, we sat out on the weathered deck and watched the blue twilight dwindle until the broad silver of its surface was lit with stars. Perhaps, Adele glanced at me, or I at her, but some wordless signal passed between us, and we entered by the screen door, just a crack, so as to exclude the moths, and made for the bed, which proved a squeaking seismograph that registered the tiniest movement. Even reaching to turn off the lamp produced a cacophony. This bed was good for nothing, and so we dragged the mattress to the floor, where there were only our own sounds to contend with. I touched her with my fingertips.

“You’re tracing. You can’t remember me from one year to the next?”

“I like being reminded.”

“You’re looking for change.”

“Nope.”

In the morning, I caught several very small cutthroat trout from the dock, using a child’s rod found in the garage and worms from beneath the paving tiles that ran from the house to a tiny garden shed. Adele woke up to fried eggs, fresh trout fillets, and sourdough toast served in bed. This was all a bit easier for me, as I lived alone, while Adele was married, happily married, to a very nice guy about whom I should have felt some guilt except that he was known for straying himself and had caused Adele a bit of pain over this. I mean, you looked at these things and you could see possible retribution in every direction, if that’s what you wanted, but I didn’t. Besides, some of my pleasure consisted in just having company.

We read on the shore until late morning, when it was warm enough for a swim. That is, the air was warm enough: the lake is never warm, but we dove in naked, paddled for a very short time, floating on our backs and gazing up at the cheerful little clouds over the Mission Range, then clambered out into the warm air, and had dried off by the time we fell into sex on one of the Adirondack chairs at the bottom of our sunny ravine, the glare on the cottage windows suggesting a steady stare. When we stood up, we laughed at the sight of each other before Adele, glancing back at the chair, said, “Eww, I’ll get it.” That’s when I had the idea that ruined everything.

The cottage came with a battered aluminum boat, an old Evinrude motor on its transom and a litter of things strewn in its bottom, life jackets, a mushroom anchor and line, a net with a broken handle, a Maxwell House bailing can, one oar, and a sponge. I looked into the red gas can; it was full, and the fuel smelled fairly recent. “I say we make a run across the lake and have lunch in Big Fork.” In my defense, it was a perfect day for it, windless and sunny, the mountains to our east wonderfully green and regular. Summer traffic glinted from the highway for miles across the water and along the ripening cherry orchards.

The motor started on the first pull. Adele in her summer dress and white-framed sunglasses sat facing forward atop a life jacket, while I, with an arm behind me on the motor’s handle, maneuvered us out of our little bay into the open water. I tried to memorize the position of the cottage in the landscape so we could find our way home, knowing as I did it wouldn’t be long after lunch that we’d be longing to drag the sagging mattress onto the floor again. We tended to overdo these exertions in what time we had, even though, as Adele reminded me, it’s not something you could store for later. I supposed that was true, as there was nothing routine about each renewal of ardor, though we did get better at it every year. If we were not as attractive as we once had been, we had the advantage of knowing what we liked with greater certainty, even as it had grown more unmentionable in polite company.

The surface of the lake sparkled green, and its placidity belied the occasional squall that popped unexpected out of the mountains, drowning kokanee fishermen, whose bodies sank like stones in the cold water. Now it was as delightful as a rain forest on a sunny day. I gave the pressure bulb on the gas line an extra squeeze, and Adele, sensing my movement, turned to smile, then rolled her eyes heavenward in bliss over our surroundings. Leaving a bubble trail and a straight wake, the little Evinrude pushed us slowly to the other side.

“We’re a long way from shore. Want to fuck in the boat?”

“No, I want lunch.”

I resumed cruising speed, and in a short time we were at the dock south of the golf course. I tied up without interference from the marina staff, who may have been eating. We climbed from the boat, Adele straightened her dress as she looked around, and with my hand on the small of her back, I led her to a pathway along the Swan River, where youngsters were swimming off docks in front of well-kept cottages nearly lost in greenery. By now we were uncomfortably hungry and followed a boardwalk to the nearest restaurant, which looked popular, at least with locals. The obvious tourists were pouring into a bigger place across the street with water views and outside dining. Once seated, we were encouraged by the originality of what was on the blackboard menu. They seemed especially proud of something called MISSION RANGE BASIL TOMATO GREEN CHILE MEAT LOAF. That item ran the length of the board, unlike FRIED CHICKEN or SOUP OF THE DAY. We ordered it and received startlingly sincere congratulations from the waitress, a rawboned brunette with a cigarette behind her ear and a shamrock tattoo on her forearm. I was glad to get our orders in, because the restaurant was filling up, and already other couples were standing in front waiting for a table. Adele remarked that we became an ordinary couple once a year, the South African part of the year; when we relied on ordinary opportunity, we were just garden-variety adulterers. “There was a good bit of that at the design show, I think. Trade shows seem mostly for that. Couples just getting acquainted, regret in their faces. Getting out of town. Departing from duty for desire.”

“Sounds like a bus route,” I said.

“For some, it is a bus route.”

“We’re solitary travelers. Smartphones, a boat, meat loaf.”

With the dining room full, the noise picked up, and Adele and I drew closer. Our food arrived. My state was such that I could feel the least adjustment of her chair in my direction. Someone waiting outside for a table was smoking a cigarette, and our waitress closed the door in his face. Adele held a forkful of meat loaf in front of her and said, “Eat up, get the bill, and take me back to the cottage.” My heart raced at how effortlessly she could reduce all else to preliminaries.

A heavyset woman dining alone walked toward the cash register holding her bill like a specimen. She glanced our way, then glanced again, and then headed toward us. Adele didn’t see her coming until she was nearly at our table, by which time Adele went white and jumped to her feet, clutching her napkin in grotesque exuberance. “Esther!” It came out as little more than a croak at which she clutched her throat, as if to blame an unchewed bit of food for the strange sound. By the time I was on my feet, wiping my mouth, causing a shower of crumbs from my napkin, I knew I was hosed. Esther, Adele’s sister-in-law, a woman in late middle age, was possessed of a kind of authoritarian face, an effect unrelieved by her close-cropped yellowish hair and a red summer blazer. I was a “colleague” from Glendive.

“You didn’t go to South Africa with Marty?” Esther said.

“I was at a design show in Seattle. With Marty away, I thought I’d take a leisurely train ride here, grab something to eat, and rent a car to drive home. Walked in and here he was. Old Home Week.” I guessed that was me, though Adele was pointing in case there was doubt.

“Matching meat loaf!” I cried stupidly. Esther, evidently no fan of wordplay, gave me a bit of a look.