Thomas McGuane - Crow Fair - Stories

“I vaguely remember. As I recall, Esther was a hell of a cook. But repetitious.”

“Oh, you thought it was a big improvement. That’s another thing that may have gotten Mom, this big fuss over Audrey. Anyway, she left.”

“Where did she go?”

“Crow Fair,” I hissed.

“You heard this today? What did they do?”

“I’ll tell you what they did. They took two horses and went on a day’s ride up the Bighorn River and camped under the stars.”

“They camped under the stars.”

“They camped under the stars. They ate antelope. Mom said it tasted just like chicken.”

“It’s like you’re reading a fucking poem. Antelope doesn’t taste like chicken.”

“They swam in the Bighorn and gathered wild berries. He took her to the secret graves of the warriors. They dried their clothes on the willows.” Kurt winced, clutching a dental tool. “In two days, she was back at Dad’s bedside.”

Kurt said with feeling, “Our mother was a cheating housewife.”

I hoped my story provided a gentler interpretation of our mother and the choices she made. Of course I made the whole thing up. My only regret was some bucktoothed kid coming in and finding himself in the hands of an agitated orthodontist. But. It may have been a mistake. Kurt didn’t take it at all as I had intended. It made him see our dad as a victim. “He’s there recuperating from surgery eating that awful stuff Audrey kept making over and over.” Now Audrey was a bad cook. I thought it would be strategic to egg him on. Dishes we called shit-on-a-shingle and buffalo balls.

“Dad definitely was getting the short end of the stick. Mom out there in the tepee.” What tepee? I could see he was moving his allegiance to Dad. Soon I’d be an orphan.

Kurt had a big job and had all the time in the world to work through our family history. I was broke and out of work. Also, my phone had been turned off. I thought I knew why, but at first I was unwilling to borrow someone’s phone to find out. In the end I put on my game face, borrowed an office at my old bank for a morning, and, braving a gauntlet of smirks, arranged an interview at a bank in Miles City and put several hundred miles of prairie between Kurt and me.

It was my luck that the president of the bank in Miles City, who wore a cowboy hat at all times, regarded the president of the bank that fired me as a “pilgrim and a honyocker.” I didn’t entirely follow this but sensed it was in my favor; and indeed it was. I was offered the job on my word alone. In middle age, I had the chance to move away from home for the first time. I was terrified because it meant leaving Mother in Kurt’s hands. Soon I was at a very similar desk doing very similar things with the same clients but with more cowboy boots. I was clawing for volition and tried to develop a personal algorithm that would predict the date I would be fired all over again. I developed a garish fantasy life for what my last stop would be and came up with cleaning port-a-potties at Ozzfest.

Then Kurt called to tell me that he had instigated a forensic inquest into the finances of Ms. Lowler that revealed minor malfeasance, easily challenged. But Ms. Lowler wouldn’t stand for it and quit. I knew what was next: he was taking Mother to his home. “She gave so much, it’s time to give back.”

“She’ll be lucky to make it a month,” I said. I was paralyzed.

Kurt said, “Never be ruled by hatred.”

“And forfeit the merit badge?”

In the last five weeks of Mother’s life, I really should have been fired, but the staff at the Miles City bank was just fascinated by my torpor, wishing to see how far I might go toward complete ossification. In some way I was kind of fun for them. They were like happy children watching a frog.

I had the oddest feeling going to the funeral and at the funeral itself a kind of helium levitation. Kurt and his loudmouth wife, Beverly, were there gaping with fascination at the sight of me. I never spoke to them. There were lots of people there, lots of elderly people mostly, and some others, too. It was a crowd. It seemed like they were underwater, and I alone had a boat, such a nice little boat. I was pretty much sunning myself and the waves were gentle. Occasionally, I looked over the side. I was sailing away.

I rose rapidly at the bank, if you call five years rapid. I grew fond of Miles City and bought an old Queen Anne house on Pleasant Street. I loved banking so much — funneling the universal lubricant — and led our expansions to five midsize cities. Lately, I’ve been riding a carriage at the annual Bucking Horse Sale, waving to everyone like an old-timer, which I guess is what I’m getting to be.

Thomas McGuane lives in McLeod, Montana. He is the author of ten novels, three works of nonfiction, and two other collections of stories.