Thomas McGuane - To Skin a Cat

From the window over the sink, he could see two irrigators cross the hillside carrying rolled-up dams on their shoulders; the ends of the fabric blew in the drying wind. One man had a shovel, and a small red heeler dog bounced behind them. Maybe Elizabeth and I can make something out of all this, he thought.

Bill made the sandwiches. News briefs from the theatersized screen threw parti-colored shadows around the trailer walls. Quarterlies piled by the recliner chair were wedged inside each other to mark the places Bill had left off. Elizabeth knocked on the door and came in. Bill was putting the lunch on the table. When she closed the door, the aluminum walls shook.

“How are you?”

“I’m great,” she said. She was a strong-featured brunette in her late twenties. Her hands were coarsened by outside work, but it made her more attractive. She was a widow.

She came for lunch fairly often and sat right down and began eating. She and Bill both liked ice water, and Bill put a chiming pitcher of it on the table. He gazed around at the condiments.

“What do you want?”

“Oh, darling,” he said.

“Come on.”

“Hot sauce.”

She reached him the Tabasco from behind the ice-water pitcher. They ate in relaxed silence. This is really nice, thought Bill. “I’m not getting anywhere with my brothers and it’s my fault,” he said.

“What are you trying to do?”

“I don’t know, make a contribution. I’m just not a team player, and it’s killing me.”

“Why is it killing you? You’re getting by.”

“It’s like not being able to get in the mood. I feel something is passing me up and I don’t know what it is. John and Walter are so vigorous compared to me. I see my vital interests drifting into growth areas. It’s platitudinous. I wish I could see myself as subsisting … tied to the land or some God damn thing.”

“You need to be more romantic.”

“I’m not romantic, am I?”

“Not about anything,” Elizabeth said. “It’s your highest limitation.”

“I know you’re right,” said Bill. “But God damn it, this is Big Sky country, this is the American West. It shouldn’t be a problem.”

“It’s a problem if you’re so defeated by it.”

Bill wished they could make love after lunch. All energy would pass to his abdominal nerves. But it was out of the question. Volition would fill the air. And it seemed he didn’t want that.

Bill and Elizabeth had a lot in common, not as much as Bill would wish, but many things: a love of reading, a wryness, superfluous lives on land that had gone up in value while losing its utility. It could seem to him that her bereavement was her real location. She sustained in her actual home the air of a life lived elsewhere just as Bill’s education had removed him. More than that, they faced lives that could be behind them. Bill thought that while it terrified him, it might well have consoled Elizabeth to know that the struggle for love and wholeness did not have to be gone through again. He even thought it was mean-spirited to view her beauty and merit as something wasted because it was not offered up to use. Still, all these considerations produced cloudiness and an irresolute foreground.

“I met a girl at that little gift shop who wanted to meet you. Karen. Said she could come out. I’m sure she’ll sleep with you.”

“I’ll have to look into it,” Bill said wanly. His brothers weren’t like this. They’d show merriment for Karen. They’d want to get them a little and not think it over. Bill reached across and took Elizabeth’s hand. It was strong. It weighed something. He wished she wouldn’t smile when she looked at him. She wasn’t pornographic. Sometimes when he went volitionless, her eyes glittered as though a little victory were at hand. What victory? Watching someone pull himself out of a hole?

A small cloudburst hit the trailer, the kind you can see all the way around in the mountains. Bill got up to look out. It hit so suddenly that the drops of water threw dust in the air. His two horses swiveled their butts into the wind, and their tails blew up along their flanks. Then it stopped and Bill opened the door to let the air, fragrant with cedar, fill the trailer. He sat down and refilled their ice water.

“Let’s do something this year. I feel my life is almost over,” Bill said.

“You always feel your life is almost over. What do you want to do?”

“I’d like to go to Monticello,” said Bill. But suddenly he could not understand why it had to be impossible for him and Elizabeth to be happy in an ordinary way. Then it subsided.

“Why don’t we make a real trip,” he said. “We’ll take the horses and go to Texas. That’ll get us south and sort of east. We’ll be almost there.”

“The Texans will be funny. We can go to the Alamo.”

“If it’s all right, I’d like to visit Bunker Hill.”

“Then let’s leave our horses at home.”

“I don’t feel like eating,” said Bill.

“I really can’t appeal to your needs, can I?” said Elizabeth.

But as the days went by, the trip did acquire some actuality. They bought a road atlas, even though Bill had often said the road atlas had ruined American life. But the road atlas made it clear that their trip was pretty much of a zigzag. Still, they spent frequent evenings in the trailer foreseeing the meaning of their destinations.

John and Walter asked if they could all have a drink at the hotel. When they got there, Bill was already seated next to the pensioners in the lobby. An old cowboy with a tray bolted to his electric wheelchair shot in and out of the bar delivering drinks. The three sat around a table that gave them some distance from others and moved their whiskey thoughtfully on coasters like Ouija styluses. John produced a sentimental appearance in his bow tie, his hair parted closer to the crown than was currently fashionable. Walter, astonished gull-wing eyebrows and dark jowls, looked the power broker he was with his wide tie and grim suit. They weren’t such bad fellows, Bill thought. They have the advantage of the here and now, and Bill was man enough not to blame his slipping gears on them.

“What’s the deal on the cows?” Walter asked.

“I’m going to can about thirty head.”

“How come?”

“Old, dry.”

“Ship all the steer calves?”

“I don’t think so,” Bill said. “The market’s not very good, but it has to get some better. Fifty-five counties in drought relief. A lot of cattle went through early. It’ll come back a little by fall. But I want to hold the heifers over and sell them as replacements. I don’t see two droughts in a row.”

“It could happen,” said John wisely. He reset his glasses with thumb and forefinger, then squeezed the wings of his nose.

“It could happen,” Bill repeated.

“What’ll you do after you ship? You going to feed them yourself?” Walter said with an ironic smile.

“No, Walter. I’m going to hire that out,” Bill almost shouted.

“Easy, big feller,” said Walter. “Be cool.”

“Refill?” asked John, holding his arm up. A little circular gesture told the old cowboy to scoot into the atmospheric lighting of the bar. John began to talk with his air of halting introspection. He was very likely to say something specious, but the appearance of its having been tugged from the depths of consideration made him difficult to contradict.

“Walt and I have been kind of forging ahead all year as though we had your proxy.”

“So you have,” Bill said. He gave a vast sigh.

“We take it that things can’t stagnate altogether and the day will come when you’ll want to take ahold, but that day is not here now.”

“That sort of describes it,” Bill said. “And it sort of doesn’t. I see the three of us as being fortunate, don’t you?”