Cloudbursts

by Thomas McGuane

  CANYON FERRY

  John’s wife, Linda, hadn’t remarried, but she was in a stable relationship with a reliable man, while John, laid off from the newspaper a year by then, was living alone in a way to suggest he always would—all of which made visitations a study in contrasts for their son, Ethan. John could have found another newspaper job—downsizing had only marginally trumped his proficiency—but it would have meant moving away, in preference to which he stayed in town and taught welding, his former hobby, to nontraditional students at the college. And two days a week, he met with the former host of a TV “blooper” show, helping him write his memoirs, an entirely lugubrious tale of imagined suffering. The ex-host was determined for posterity to know that belying those forty years of guffawing at the pratfalls of others, he had known real anguish and been misunderstood from the day he was born in the back of a taxi, his first recollection the foldout ashtray on the back of the driver’s seat.

  It might have seemed that Linda and her Lucifer—actually his name was Lucius, only John called him that—would supply at least a semblance of family life, while John the bachelor, led by his tuning fork into the hungry thickets of the town, would struggle to make time for Ethan. In actuality, Linda and Lucius found their bliss as two purposeful suits, both on the way up. It made John feel that his marriage of almost ten years had served as Linda’s think tank for an eventual assault on the future, an unkind and somewhat-unwarranted version of facts, because she’d always said she wanted to work. She was pretty, and her life with John was meager, while Lucius was a rising star in banking, land, cattle, natural gas, and hydropower. John would learn only long after it mattered that the two had been exhausting their erotic urgency over four vigorous years of infidelity prior to the separation, which left John struggling to catch up in one sad purlieu after another, and feeling as a father nihilistic and unworthy. The three women he bedded during the proceedings were impossible to avoid, and when he ran into them, whether at the post office, the bank, or the Safeway, he just apologized. But each of these was a single unmarried woman and John was attractive, so they hardly knew how to take his contrition. If John had learned anything, it was that, once the threshold of venery was crossed, and all the furies unleashed, the aisles of the Safeway were no longer safe. A baffled if indignant former paramour in Cereals could loom with ominous incomprehension.

  For the regular handoff, John appeared at Linda’s new house with its wonderful view of the snowy massif of the Bridger Ridge. The moment was rarely less than painful despite that it had gone on for more than a year. This time, Ethan was already dressed in a red snowsuit and an insulated hat slightly too big for him. Linda hugged herself against the cold. It was easier all around to meet her ex-husband on the front step than have him come inside. Ethan’s arms hung at his sides, and he glanced at his mother several times; she responded by resting a hand on his head. Ethan peered out from beneath that shelter while John stared at Linda with hopeless longing.

  “I’ll have him back by supper.” He didn’t want to say he’d have him “home” by supper but should have known that the struggle with that terminology was long lost.

  “Perfect. You guys will have fun. Right, Ethan?” Ethan nodded grimly. His mother laughed at his posturing. “He’ll be fine once you get going.” Reflexively she touched her lips with her forefinger, which she then touched to Ethan’s, then to John’s.

  John led Ethan by the hand to the car. He turned to give Linda a wave, but she was already gone behind the door. It was too cold for ceremonial lingering, though Ethan, too, stared at the door before getting into John’s car with a boost.

  “Do you want to take off your snowsuit?”

  “No.”

  “Do you want to unzip it?”

  “No. I want to listen to the radio.”

  “Can we just talk a little bit?”

  “Okay.”

  It was quiet before John, his voice thick with emotion, spoke. “Do you like doing stuff with me?”

  “It’s okay.”

  “Because today we’re going fishing.”

  Ethan looked startled and scrutinized his father with interest. He said, “But everything is frozen.” They were following a Brink’s truck changing lanes without signaling.

  “We’re going ice fishing. You drill a hole in the ice and drop your line through.”

  “Are there fish under there?”

  “We’re going to find out.”

  Canyon Ferry Lake, an impoundment of the Missouri River, spread before them as a vast sheet of ice that ended at a seam of open water, perhaps the old river. John parked across the ice from Confederate Gulch at the “silos,” the tall brick towers for storing grain. The Big Belt Mountains rose against a blue sky marbled with cirrus clouds streaming toward them from the Gate of the Mountains. Ethan, suddenly excited, ran around the car helping John with their gear. An iron spud for making a hole in the ice stuck out of the trunk. Ethan tried to carry it, but it was too heavy. John had spent a bewildering hour at Sportsman’s Warehouse and come away with only the minimal kit but all that he could understand. He could have spent a fortune on a gas-powered ice auger, heated shelter, and underwater cameras attached to TV monitors, which, said the salesman, would set him up “good as the next guy.” But John settled for a box of assorted hooks and jigs, the spud, and a skimmer to clear slush from the hole.

  Ethan carried these things while John toted a coffee can of night crawlers, two plastic buckets to sit on, and the iron spud. They headed out onto the ice, and John was immediately struck by a complete lack of topographic clues as to where to spud a hole; the fish could be anywhere in such a featureless and white expanse.

  One other human was visible, pulling a black plastic sled heaped with all the things that John had seen at the store. Holding Ethan’s hand, John waited for him on the near-shore ice. He stopped him to ask a few questions and show the man his gear.

  “You got another tip-up?”

  “Nope.”

  “You got just one?”

  “Yes, that’s right.” He didn’t want this guy giving Ethan the idea they weren’t adequately equipped.

  “Ooooohkay…,” said the fisherman, then suddenly, “Don’t touch them fish, son.” Ethan’s hand recoiled from the man’s bucket, and he looked at his father. “Why don’t you go right there where I was at,” the fisherman said. “I augured nine holes in a row. Counting from this side, hole number five was where most of the fish were. Put your tip-up there, but if I was you I wouldn’t stay long. The wind comes up in about an hour, and it’s a dad-gum typhoon. Black clouds come up past them hills right over there. When they do, you need to be long gone.”

  The fisherman continued on with his sled, his ice crampons allowing him a full and crunching stride, while John and Ethan slipped and skidded out onto the lake halfway to the thin black line of open water before they found the nine precise holes made by the fisherman’s power auger. Together, they counted off until they reached number 5, and there they set down their buckets and gear. The holes had already begun to fill in, but John had acquired that skimmer, with which he quickly scooped out the slush to reveal the surprisingly mysterious black surface of the deep water.

  He put out a bucket for Ethan to sit on, round and red as an apple in his puffy snowsuit, while his father fiddled with the tip-up rig until he understood how to bend the springy wire with the tiny flag into its notch and lowered the line adorned with a sparkling green jig and baited with a twisting night crawler. It seemed he was unspooling line forever before he reached bottom. He spread the braces across the span of hole and arranged the wire and flag that would spring up when they had a bite. Inverting his white bucket, he sat down opposite Ethan and waited with his hands stuffed up opposing sleeves.

  “How long will this take?” asked Ethan.

  “I wish I knew, Ethan.”

  “Is fishing always like this?”

  “I guess you could say it’s different every time.”

  Ethan thought
for moment. “I wish fishing would hurry up.”

  “Are you warm enough in that thing?”

  “It’s boiling in here.”

  “How about your feet.”

  “They’re boiling, too.”

  John, who could have used another layer of clothes himself, stood from time to time to bounce on the balls of his feet and clap his mittens together, at which sight Ethan nearly laughed himself off his pail. When John sat down again, he gazed around the shore, off toward the mountains; every now and then the light caught a car on the road to Helena, a quick flash, but otherwise the lake and its surroundings seemed completely desolate.

  “What do you call Lucius?”

  “I don’t know.”

  You could call him Lucifer, thought John. Lucius, as John saw it, had tempted away his lively but somewhat-flaky wife and turned her into a career woman fit to stand beside him at the Consumer Electronics Association. They hadn’t come out as a couple for a whole week before she was talking about the glass ceiling. Lucius was fifteen years older than Linda, who, though contented with the relationship, had shown no interest in becoming his fourth wife, something Lucius expected to happen sooner or later, as indeed it did. Lucius would tell his friends that the wedding was to be small and intimate; he wouldn’t be inviting them this time. They’d slap him on the back and offer to come to the next one. This, with Linda on his arm. She seemed to take it in stride. Her eyes had by now opened to a much-larger world, if weekly trips through airport security were a gateway to such a thing. She must have thought so, because in an unguarded moment after she’d remarried, she called John a bump on a log. He felt betrayed. He’d always thought he’d been doing fine right up until his paper was restructured. But greater than his hurt was his worry about what place there would be for Ethan in Linda’s new life.

  The small red flag popped up, and Ethan was so startled he tumbled from his pail. John was able to lift him to his feet by a handful of snowsuit at his back. He set the tip-up to one side and felt the tautness on the line slowly traveling from the spool. He gave the line to Ethan who grasped it in both hands and smiled in amazement to feel the life in it. At John’s direction he pulled fist over fist, the loose line falling behind him until with a heave the fish flew out of the hole into the air then bounced around on the ice. John held the fish, a yellow perch, close to Ethan who stared at its keen eye. “Throw him back?”

  “Yes, please, back in the hole,” said Ethan. John unhooked the perch and slipped it back in. Ethan leaned close and peered into the blackness. “He’s gone.”

  John reset the tip-up and noticed that Ethan was more concentrated on its operation now that he had seen it work. He asked a few questions after he thought about the fish and its friends and what there was to eat down there. Then he said his feet were cold.

  “Mine, too. Let’s jump up and down.” The two hopped around the fishing hole, and then Ethan fell on his back laughing until John picked him up by the front of his red one-piece like a suitcase. “Put your mittens on.”

  “Okay.”

  “And tell me if you get too cold.”

  “Oh-oh-kay.”

  “Are you cold now?”

  “Okay.”

  “Ethan, be serious, are you cold?”

  “No-kay. What is that?”

  “What is what?”

  “That black thing.”

  To the northwest, a storm cloud was climbing fast, dark and full of turbulence. John glanced at their fishing rig hoping the flag would pop up soon; he could see Ethan was eager for another fish. But then the wind was upon them, picking up with startling speed, sweeping shards of ice toward the seam of open water with an unremitting tinkle.

  “Ethan, I think we should reel this thing up. This weather is—I don’t know what this weather is doing.”

  John bent over the hole in the ice and was carefully spooling in the line, when he saw the little flag flutter in the corner of his eye. Just then a fish grabbed the bait and began pulling the line again. “Uh-oh, Ethan, we’ve got another one,” he said as the wind rose to a screech. “I’m going to have to break it off. I hope that’s okay—” No answer. “Okay, Ethan? Ethan, okay if we just let it go?”

  John looked up and saw the boy forty feet away, tumbling like a leaf in the wind. He dropped the fishing line and stood, barely able to keep his own balance. Ice particles chimed in the air accompanying Ethan’s jubilant laughter. John made for him, the wind pushing him forward, and each time Ethan got to his feet, crouching arms held apart for balance, he tumbled forward and skidded some more. John hurried but Ethan kept sliding faster. The black cloud roared like an engine overhead bringing a whirl of heavier snow that made Ethan harder to see as he slid yelling joyfully toward the open water. Trying to overtake him, John fell again and again, now with only the sound of laughter to guide him. He no longer knew where the water was, whether it was even in the general direction in which he was stumbling. He fell and crawled until he became aware of the stickiness of blood on his hands. Certain he had lost his way he stopped to listen, straining to distinguish any sound in the din of the storm. He had no idea which way he should go. Every impulse to move was canceled as soon as it arose.

  The cloud passed overhead to the south and the Missouri River valley. The wind died as the remaining snow was sifted onto the ice, slowly unveiling a blue sky. Some forty feet away Ethan was clear as day in his red snowsuit. He was sitting crossed-legged next to the open water. “Daddy! Let’s fish here!” As they crossed the ice toward the car, John saw his son look back toward the black line of water, and he knew he was troubled.

  Linda met them at the door. Lucius was out. Ethan jumped into her arms, and John handed her the bundled snowsuit. “Mom, we had so much fun! We caught a fish and went sliding, with Daddy trying to catch me!” But looking back at his father in confusion, he seemed about to cry.

  Linda asked, “Where was this?”

  “Over toward Helena.”

  “A pond?”

  “Not really.”

  “Oh, well, never mind. It sounds like a great place.”

  “I’ll take you sometime.”

  Linda smiled, looked into his eyes, and gently rapped his chest with her knuckles. “Time to move on, Johnny, you know?”

  John glanced away, pretending to look for Ethan. “Where’d he go?”

  * * *

  —

  Hoagy Brown, the TV host, had lost interest in his memoirs. He let John see the sex and fart bloopers that could not be broadcast; but after the sufferings of his deprived childhood had been recounted in full, he found he hardly cared about revisiting his later life, his several wives or his son, a La Jolla realtor. To John he seemed tired of living, having used up all the Schadenfreude that had propelled an illustrious career. He still had a dirty mind, though that too was fading, or perhaps he noticed John’s lack of enthusiasm for his tales of conquest among women, most of whom were, even by Hoagy’s account, dead anyway.

  John didn’t expect to be paid now that he was leaving the project, and Hoagy never offered it. Instead, he followed John to his car and said, “You’re brushing me off, aren’t you?”

  “Not in the least, Hoagy, but I don’t think at this late stage I have much to offer you.”

  “What late stage? I’m just getting started.”

  By then it was his time to have Ethan with him again, and he was excited about his plan for a hot-air-balloon ride, arranged and paid for at a popular “balloon ranch” in the foothills south of town. He paused before knocking on the door, a great oaken thing with a letter slot. On last year’s Christmas card it had been adorned with a splendid wreath, in front of which Linda and Lucius beamed, with Ethan in the foreground between them in a little blazer and bow tie. John had felt some incomprehension at the assertive formality of this scene and wondered what it was about the heavy front door that even now made him feel affronted.

  He knocked, and Lucius answered. “Oh, John, what a pleasure. Let me get Ethan. Ethan!
It’s Dad, get your things!”

  Lucius ducked out of the doorway with a small, self-effacing bob that nevertheless left John waiting on the step looking into the hall. There he remained for a long time, his impulse to shut the door against the draft suppressed at the thought of again facing the letter slot and the expanse of varnished wood.

  At length Lucius reappeared, wearing a frown of concern. He faced John silently in his cardigan, one arm clasped across his waist, the other holding his chin in deep thought. “I gather, John, that last week’s experience at Canyon Ferry was pretty darn frightening for Ethan. Is that how you understand it, Linda?”

  Linda answered from someplace inside. “It is.”

  “Linda’s trying to watch Mary Tyler Moore,” Lucius explained. “Some classic episode.”

  “And, what, Linda?” John called to her.

  “And he doesn’t want to go with you,” came Linda’s voice in reply. “Do you mind? Why prolong this?”

  “May I speak to Ethan?”

  “If that’s what you require. Ethan, come speak to your father!”

  Lucius seemed to be twisting with discomfort. He looked straight overhead and called out, “Please, Ethan, right now.”

  Linda said, “Sorry about not coming to the door, John, but I’m not decent.”

  Ethan appeared in flannel pajamas, a bathrobe, and rabbit slippers, head hung and glancing offstage in the direction of his mother. Lucius rested a hand on his head. John said in a voice of ghastly jocularity “What d’you say, Ethan? Aren’t we going to have our day together? I’ve planned something you’ll really like.”

  Ethan said, “I don’t want to go with you.”

  John was amazed at his directness.

  * * *

  —

  John got interviews at several papers. His record was good, and the owners all apologized for the pay. Three of the seven made the same remark: “It’s a living.” And so without great conviction, John found himself in charge of the news in Palmyra, North Dakota, which served an area identical in size to the principality of Liechtenstein, or so the Herald’s owner liked to say. Over the course of many years, John learned all there was to know about Palmyra, and almost nothing of the place he’d left, except that Linda had died, that Ethan had finished college and lived in Fresno, at least according to the last update he’d received quite some time ago. John assumed he was still around there somewhere—Ethan, that is. Lucifer could be anywhere.