Nobody's Angel Page 4

“What are you captain of?”

  “Tanks.”

  “See, they know how shocking their thinking is. They just want it to set them apart. Has nothing to do with that boy— Tanks?”

  Patrick tried to decide whether good country living, money, self-esteem or the kind of routine maintenance that begins with pumice-stoning the callouses of one’s feet and ends somewhere between moisture packs and myopic attention to individual split ends produced Claire’s rather beautiful physical effect. Claire said she didn’t know who meant what anymore. Baseball players had Daffy Duck haircuts sticking out from under their billed caps, rock ’n’ roll stars all wore sateen warm-up jackets like the baseball players’, and the President was passing out in a foot race while Russians installed nerve gas around ballistic-missile silos. So who could tell whether or not that little old editor was copping an attitude or whether Tio was just kicking back into his good-buddy act because he was in someone else’s state?

  Patrick said, “I don’t know.”

  She said, “What do you mean ‘I don’t know’?”

  “I don’t know and I don’t care.”

  “Let’s go to the house and refill your bourbon. I can see you casting a funny eye at those mixed drinks. Did you train a mare named Leafy?”

  They started toward the house.

  “Yes, I did.”

  “What do you want for her?”

  “Well, she’s just my horse.”

  “I saw her at Odessa.”

  “She was there.”

  “Did you ever breed her?”

  “No.”

  They walked into the cool wood-chambered living room with the buffalo rugs and the Indian blankets and the peyote boxes and the beaded parfleches on the deeply oiled logs.

  “Would you ever breed her?”

  “If she let me know she wanted to have a baby.”

  “You ought to breed to our stud. I presume she’s cycling.”

  Patrick just didn’t reply. He looked up from his freshly drawn glass of sour mash, a smile on his face that crossed all the silence of immediate conversational aftermath.

  He took a long, kindly look at this young woman, thought of their banter, saw in her confidence that she enjoyed it, too, the way grade-schoolers like to slug each other out of sheer attraction. Then he wondered if he would find Tio less estimable the next time he saw him, which would be in a few moments, or if he would gather that Claire was just in a world of her own, set out upon one of the ineluctable trajectories of conflict that can be blamed upon something long ago, a book, a parent, an aging nun, a baton dropped in front of a sold-out stadium. I don’t know, he thought, and I don’t care. Yes, I care, but I won’t.

  “Ever hear the joke about the escaped circus lion down in Texas? He nearly starved to death. Every time he growled at one of those Texans, it scared the shit out of him. And when he jumped on him, it knocked all the hot air out. So there was nothing left to eat.”

  She said, “I’m from Oklahoma. My God, is that a joke?”

  “Let’s go inside. I could interpret the wall hangings. They’re Northern Cheyenne.”

  “Thanks,” she smiled, “but we done had Comanche down at home.” She dropped her chin and examined him.

  He thought he could see perhaps the tiniest acquiescence, though not quite anything he could hold her to. He found her engaging and probably as strong as he was, that is to say, not particularly strong or, rather, strong in the wrong ways.

  “We’re more fun than the luncheon guests,” said Claire bravely as she went into the hard glare over the lawn, gone in her bounding step toward the people at the tank. It could be said that Patrick’s mild stalling, giving Claire a lead, came from a very slight sly motive in him, one that he recognized and resolved to give a bit of thought to. The stalling left him among the mops in the front hall, hooks holding worn-out hats, irrigating boots, a pair of old dropshank spurs and a twelve-gauge: a basic tool kit.

  Then when Patrick stepped onto the lawn, Tio was walking resolutely toward him, long-strided in his tall calfskin boots. What’s this? Well, for one thing, thought Patrick, it’s the first time I’ve seen eighteen-karat-gold oil-derrick blazer buttons.

  “Patrick.”

  “Tio.”

  “They say you’re a horseman.”

  “Something of one,” said Patrick, thinking, Your wife was too friendly. He was a little ahead of himself.

  “Do you like good cow ponies?”

  “Yes.” Were there people who didn’t?

  Tio plunged his hands in his pockets, then leaned the full weight on his straightened arms, tilted slightly forward from the waist, weight in the pockets. Tell you what I’m gonna do. One knee moving rapidly inside its pant leg. “Claire say I got a stud?”

  “Yes, she did.”

  “Tell you much about the old pony?”

  “No—”

  “Say he was good?”

  “She thought I ought to breed this cutting mare of mine to him.”

  “Well, you should, old buddy. This pony’ll cut a cow, now. I mean the whole bottom drops out and he’s lookin up at them cattle. He traps his cattle and just showers on them.”

  “Well, I’m gonna ride this mare another couple years yet. She’s my number-one deal.”

  “Plus, this pony comes right from the front of the book. Peppy San out of an own daughter of Gunsmoke. It idn’t any way he can get out of traffic fast enough to keep hisself from being a champion.”

  Patrick wasn’t much interested. He said, “Well, when I get something to breed, I’ll take a hard look at him.”

  “I want you to breed that old Leafy mare. This stud of mine is young and he needs mares like that to put them good kind of babies on that ground. You know how long Secretariat’s cannon bone is?”

  “Sure don’t.”

  “Nine inches. So’s this colt’s. That’s what makes an athlete. That’n a good mind. This colt’s got one of them, too. His name is American Express, but I call him Cunt because that’s all he has on his mind. He’s a stud horse, old Cunt is. But I’m like that. You were always lookin for a smoke, I’d call you Smoke.”

  “What d’you call Claire?”

  “Claire sixty percent of the time, and Shit when she don’t get it correct, which is right at forty.”

  Patrick thought, I wonder if they’ll ever teach him English. Maybe he doesn’t want to learn. Maybe you can’t be an old buddy and speak English. Patrick would rather hear a cat climbing a blackboard. And he didn’t like what Tio called his wife forty percent of the time. In fact, he just didn’t like Southwesterners. It wasn’t even cow country to Patrick. It was yearling country. There were no cowboys down there significantly. There were yearling boys and people who fixed windmills. After that, you put in dry wall on the fourteenth story of a condo in Midland, where some cattleman did it all on a piece of paper with a solid-gold ball-point pen and a WATS line: a downtown rancher, calling everything big he had little and old, and calling his wife shit; the first part of the West with gangrene. Dance the Cotton-Eyed Joe and sell it to the movies.

  Here came Jack Adams with another bourbon; probably spotted that look in Patrick’s eye and sought to throw fat on the fire. People often have this kind of fun with problem drinkers. But Patrick was determined to be somebody’s angel, and they wouldn’t catch him out today. Instead he started back to the company, excusing himself. Made a nice glide of it.

  Deke Patwell and Penny Asperson were passing a pair of binoculars back and forth, trying to find the property lines a thousand yards uphill. “Not strong enough,” said Deke, putting the glasses away. “We’d have to walk up there, and we know how we feel about that.” His mouth made a sharp downward curve.

  Anna said, “We use the National Forest anyway. So I don’t know what that property line’s supposed to mean.” She gave the Bloody Marys a thoughtful stir.

  “You will when the niggers start backpacking,” said Deke Patwell. “Oh God, that’s me being ironic.”

  “Ann
a’s the lucky type,” Patrick said. “She’ll get O. J. Simpson and an American Express card.”

  Claire said, “You sprinkle this much?”

  “After July,” Anna said. “It’s a luxury but we’ve got a good well. If it was Jack, we’d be waist-deep in sage and camass and just general prairie, and the ticks would be walking over us looking for a good home.”

  The buildings, which made something of a compound of the lawn, moved their long shadows, lengthening toward the blue sublight of the spruce trees; but the real advent of midafternoon was signaled when Deke Patwell passed out. Everyone gathered around him as his tall form lay crumpled in his oddly collegiate lawn-party clothes. He was only out for a moment, which was too bad, because he had grown strident with his drunkenness, especially as to his social theories. He had been drawing a bright picture of Jew-boy legions storming the capitol at Helena when his eyes went off at an angle and he buckled.

  Then he was trying to get up. He rolled mute, imploring eyes at the people surrounding him, threw up and inhaled half of it. It was like watching him drown. Jack bent over, stuck a hand in his mouth and said, “I’d say the Hebrews got the capitol dome.”

  Anna said to Jack firmly, “Go inside and warsh your hands.” Deke let go another volley and said he didn’t feel so good.

  Minor retribution crept into Patrick’s mind. He said, “Maybe a drink would perk you up.” Deke cast a vengeful glance up to him, said he would remember that, then tipped over onto one shoulder on the lawn and gave up. His plaid summer jacket was rolled around his shoulder blades, and a slab of prematurely marbled flesh stood out over his tooled belt.

  Patrick ambled toward the little creek that bordered one side of the lawn. Perfect wild chokecherries made a topiary line against the running water, which held small wild trout, long used to the lawn parties. But then Penny Asperson followed him, and when he looked back, he caught Claire’s observation of the pursuit. In his irritation he thought Penny was thundering toward him. There were yellow grosbeaks crawling on the chokecherry branches, more like little mammals than birds.

  “Bloody Deke,” said Penny. “If he’d had the gumption, we’d be up at the boundary. He’d be sober and the air would be full of smoldering glances.” Penny’s broad sides heaved with laughter. “Now look. And he smells.” Patrick wished to speak to her of carbohydrates and chewing each bite twenty-seven times. But she was, after all, a jolly girl.

  “The smell’s the worst of it,” Patrick said agreeably. “I thought Jack was courageous to free his tongue.”

  “It takes a man to do that.”

  “And Jack is a man,” said Patrick, a little tired of the silliness. A pale-blue moth caught one wing on the water and a cutthroat trout arose beneath it, drifted down-stream a few feet, sucked it in and left a spiraling ring to mark the end of the moth.

  “Did you forget your rod?” Penny winked.

  “Oh, what a naughty girl.”

  “Patrick.”

  “Penny. Let’s go back.”

  “I think we should,” said Penny Asperson. “Or we’ll start talk.” They walked back to the tank, Patrick doing all he could to control his gait, to keep from breaking into a little jog. Tio was talking firmly with Claire, knocking her lightly in the wishbone with his drink hand, for emphasis.

  As Patrick passed, Tio said, “Wait a sec, Captain. This goes for you.” Patrick joined them, trying to see just as much of Claire as he could with his peripheral vision. He wanted to put his hand on her skin. Tio went on in a vacuum.

  “I need to have this little old stallion in motion,” Tio said. “I travel too much to keep him galloped, and besides, I don’t like to ride a stud. Cousin Adams tells me you can make a nice bridle horse, and if you can get this horse handling like he ought to, that’d be better than me having to mess with him every time I get off the airplane. You’re in the horse business, aren’t you?”

  “Sure am,” said Patrick. Claire shifted her weight a little. “Can I change his nickname?” Claire reddened.

  “You can call him Fido’s Ass for all I care. Just get that handle on him. I’m going in to look at old Jack’s artifacts. Supposed to have a complete Indian mummy he found in the cliffs.” He strode toward the house in his tall calfskin boots. “We gone try and give that mummy a name.”

  Anna appeared in the door.

  “Patrick!” she called. “You’ve got to take Deke home. He’s spoiled a storm-pattern Navajo and now he’s just got to go home.”

  “Coming!” called Patrick, and Claire was halfway to the house—in effect, fleeing.

  Patrick undertook the loading of Deke Patwell. Anna apologized for making Patrick accept this onerous detail, adding that otherwise it would have to be Jack and it was sort of Jack’s party. They locked Deke’s door where he slumped, and turned the wind vane in his face. His lip slid against the glass.

  For the first couple of miles toward town, Deke tried slinging himself upright in a way that suggested he was about to make a speech. He slumped back and watched the hills fly by while the hard wind raveled his thin auburn hair.

  “I didn’t like your comment, buddy.”

  “What comment?” Patrick asked.

  “ ‘Have another drink, perk you up.’ I don’t like getting a raft of shit like that just because I want to cut loose on the weekend.” When he tried to spit through the wind vane, it came back in on him.

  “I probably shouldn’t have said it. It was a joke.”

  “It wasn’t funny.” They passed the corrals, scales and loading chutes of the local livestock association. There were a couple of horses and an Australian shepherd in one section, waiting for their owners to come and do something with them. Patrick let a little silence fall.

  “You come home,” Deke went on, “just pick up where you left off. Goddamned officer.”

  “Well, I wasn’t much of an officer.”

  Patrick was mostly successful in shutting Deke out of his mind, like listening to the same day’s news on the radio for the second time. They were driving along the switching yards, and probably because of Deke, he began to think of the old rummies who used to be such a part of a big yard like this. Electric engines, good security lights and cross-referenced welfare lists stole our bums, thought Patrick. When the American West dried up once and for all, those migrant birds, the saints of cheap Tokay, began to look bad to the downtown merchants, to the kayakers and trout fishermen, even to the longhairs with tepee poles on the tops of their Volkswagens, who thought the rummies were like the white men who had corrupted the Indians with whiskey in Bernard De Voto’s Across the Wide Missouri. Anyway, they were gone.

  Deke was still maneuvering for an insult; but they were nearly to his house now on Gallatin Street. Deke knew his time was running out, and Patrick was hurrying a little because he had begun to find himself paying a bit of attention, starting with a slurred polemic against his grandfather, which didn’t work because it listed things about the old man Patrick liked. They pulled in front of the brick house as Deke started in on Patrick’s sister again. And for the first time Patrick thought, This is going to be close. Deke Patwell must have thought so too, because he opened his door before announcing the following: “She’s immoral. And I have every reason to believe she uses drugs.” It was quite a delivery.

  Patrick kicked him through the open door onto the sidewalk. Deke’s head snapped down on the concrete but recovered, leaving him on all fours, blood in the corner of his mouth and vomit on his period costume. He kept printing the blood on the palm of his hand to be sure he’d been injured. Mrs. Patwell appeared in the door. The tableau was a basic stacked deck illustrating Patrick’s penchant for violence. “You’ll live to regret this,” she said with a compression between her eyes. Two children appeared on the sidewalk, and one of them, unable to make much of these grownups, could think of nothing more salutory than to sail his frisbee over the recumbent form of Deke, yelling, “Catch it, Mr. Patwell! Catch it!” It seemed appropriate to Mrs. Patwell to go after
the kids, who scattered into the wilderness of back lots and yard fences. She didn’t have their speed, their quickness. Patrick headed home. He felt quite giddy.

  9

  PATRICK WOUND ALONG TO THE EAST OF THE RIVER. IT BURST out blue in segments whenever a hay or grain field dropped away. Also, there were tall mountains and a blue sky. But they only go so far. Patrick would have liked a silent, reverent involving of himself with Claire. In another era he could have been her coachman. “Might I assist, Ma’moiselle?” She can’t help but notice how good he is with the horses. One must put aside one’s silk-bound missal and duck off into this grove of elms. The horses graze; the springs of the little coach can be heard for miles. Screeching like fruit bats.

  Patrick approached the ranch as though in an aircraft, sitting well back, making small adjustments of the wheel with outstretched arms as the buildings loomed, moving his head with a level rotary motion. We are making our approach. The stewardesses are seated in the little fold-down chairs. Claire is alone in first class; the surface of her gin and tonic tilts precisely with each directional adjustment. And now we are stopped and the dogs are gathering. Lilacs are reflected in the windows. Grandpa dashes to the truck. Must be with the ground crew, perhaps a baggage handler. That or a fucking woodpecker. Turn off the ignition. Engine diesels and quits. Opposite door flung open by Crew Chief Grandpa. This man is excited.

  “Your sister has gone mad!”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I smelt turpentine,” the old man roared. “I went down to her room and she was painting everything. She was painting curtains! I couldn’t get her to listen to me. She just talked on like I wasn’t there.” Patrick’s heart sank. “When I went back, she was gone.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “That’s it. I don’t know!”

  They were hurrying toward the house.

  “Why are we walking this way, then?”

  “Well, maybe she’s back in her room. Pat, what the hell’s the matter with her?”

  “I really don’t know.” He didn’t, either.