Nothing but Blue Skies

by Thomas McGuane

  “Antoine,” came the voice of Mrs. Bouget.

  “Yes, Maman,” said Mr. Bouget, facing down the stairs with his thumbs in his ears and his fingers wiggling madly. “Here I come.”

  All the lights were out and the house was silent. It was a still night outside and Frank could hear fish jumping in the bayou. Many songs have fish jumping in the bayou, he thought. Frank loved to fish so much that even their sounds in the dark made his heart pound. By rolling onto his stomach, Frank could gaze out his window to the dim yellow light at the end of the pier and see the whirling moths that attracted the fish, the moist air, the light and water running together.

  He awoke from a deep sleep. Something was happening inside his stomach. He rested his right hand on his swollen middle and looked at his watch on his left wrist: almost three in the morning. Years later, when Gracie left, he still had the watch but could no longer read the dial. He’d been asleep for over four hours and his stomach was getting ready to explode. He was thoroughly sober now and had a mild headache. He was going to have to relieve himself fairly quickly. The house was dark and for the life of him he couldn’t remember where the bathroom was. He had great misgivings about going downstairs into the darkened house anyway. This family didn’t know him well enough for him to go prowling at three A.M. One of these goofy Cajuns is liable to blow my ass off, he thought in his new hangover.

  Then it was upon him. He jumped from the bed with only moments to spare. Unable to come to a decision, he threw off the shorts he had been sleeping in. He looked frantically around the room. He had but one choice. He thrust himself backward through the window, hanging on to the frame with both hands, and let loose. There was a prolonged stormy moment, and then it was over. He wiped himself with his shorts and then threw them as far as he could from the window.

  He found he could sleep again. When he awoke in the morning, he immediately remembered what had happened and felt anxious and miserable. He got dressed and went downstairs for breakfast. The family was already eating, more or less in silence, and they scarcely greeted him. Remembering the high spirits of the previous night, the heavy eating, their enthusiasm over the slide show, he just took it to be a spell of recovery. Still, he tried to remember if he had said something awkward. His feeling of unease was exaggerated by his hangover.

  When breakfast was finished, Gracie announced she was taking him back to Thibodaux so that he could be on his way. He escaped into his plan for work. He was supposed to meet a colleague in Nacogdoches, Texas, in another day anyway; and it was easier to think about that than this lack of friendliness and silence, especially from Fatso, who had been so voluble.

  Nevertheless, Mr. and Mrs. Bouget got to their feet to see Frank off. Gracie walked out with him to the front yard. She bade her parents goodbye and got in to drive. Frank opened the door on the passenger’s side, and turning to get in and to thank the Bougets, or even amusingly say “au revoir,” he chanced to see the streak down the front of the house under the upstairs window, the shorts dangling from a tree branch. A mop and pail rested next to the wall. But Frank thought that he would say goodbye as simply and quickly as possible and use his limited French on another occasion.

  3

  Frank sat in the bleachers at the sale yard reading the Wall Street Journal and ignoring a bunch of black baldie heifers being steered under the auctioneer’s gavel. Bush’s heartbeat was back to normal, Croats attacked soldiers at Split and high winds diverted the space shuttle Discovery from California to Kennedy Space Center. It’s a bitch. Desperate new immigrants. Seventy-two percent of 3,500 police officers polled at John Jay College of Criminal Justice said they wear bulletproof vests. Image of Dan Quayle remains “bumbling.” Worker stress was climbing toward widespread burnout and Japanese auto towers were under construction in Detroit. Out at the ranch the sage buttercups were blooming, supplying the blue grouse with spring forage; and the great horned owl had a nestful of gold-eyed downy young. And this just in — a point of pride for all Americans — the first AIDS patient, it would seem, was a Frenchman identified by the initials LAI, placing the American HTLV-IIIB in the situation of being little more than a “contaminant” of LAI. In landing the Sony account, the Burnett advertising firm announced it wanted to “communicate not only our products, but the lifestyles and emotions that surround us as a company.” What sincerity there is out there in the business community, thought Frank, what personnel and marketing resources. Burnett claimed that its paternalistic and excellence-oriented approach to business helped land the thirty-five-million-dollar deal, that and changing the slogan “It’s a Sony” to “Be Sony.” Jesus fucking Christ.

  Frank looked up. They were bidding on a group of steers. He raised his hand at seventy-eight dollars a hundredweight and went back out at eighty-six. Then immediately he thought, I should have bought them; it was scarcely a highly leveraged transaction for the dumb shit in the overalls who got them at eighty-eight. Bush’s heartbeat back to normal and the dollar up. How could you sleep knowing that? Home oxygen tanks all the rage among the elite of polluted Mexico City. Fuck. I can’t look at this.

  This had been the year for Deadrock to lose its accustomed obscurity. It broke several winter weather records and got on national weather reports between the T-shirts, the giant cookies, the fire hall restorations and the jokes. Then in March, the weirdest of all months in the Rocky Mountains, a hijacker brought his shiny 747 to rest at the airport north of town. He didn’t trivialize his visit with negotiations or threats but simply refueled, resumed his voyage into the West, then over the Pacific where he jumped from the airplane without a comment or statement or, more to the point, a parachute: a Caucasian male around forty. The stewardesses liked him so much, and said so on TV, that the mayor of Deadrock told the press it was a shame to lose a fellow who was “more sensitive than a five-dollar rubber.” The plane went back to Seattle, but the big silver outlaw bird had brushed this small city with the wings of immortality.

  There was plenty to be interested in but, living alone, Frank had found it hard to be interested in anything. He had set so many things in motion in his business that he could tap into that as he wished. He had several income properties scattered around the town, including the very remunerative clinic. He dabbled in yearling cattle and even owned a set of royally bred show pigs, though he never found time to go see them. The farmer who managed them, Jerry Drivjnicki, had sent him several postcards asking when he was coming to see the pigs.

  He had a daughter, Holly, in college at Missoula and they went on liking each other tremendously; but the oddness of his house without Gracie made it a strangely formal place for them to spend time together. They did go fishing, but the season for that was closed eight months of the year, which left restaurants. He knew that Holly and Gracie often spoke, but Holly found it best not to discuss those conversations, a numbing artifice.

  He’d had the Millmans over for drinks and it was a waste of time for everybody. Sandy Millman came in her hair all droopy with mousse, far too young for her. Frank could remember when Sandy was the young professionals’ town pump, famed for love noises few had ever heard. Darryl Millman had come to town clearly on a large private income and opened a ski shop; and Sandy clamped on to him. Between the all-nighters and the recreational drugs, Sandy was able to slide Darryl straight to the altar, where his wealthy, lewd face was seen to say all the things that conveyed not only hopes of a happy life but fifty percent of his fortune to Sandy.

  But Darryl was on a back-to-the-earth mission and put everything he had into a huge grain farm. He spent most of his time in his Beechcraft, meeting farm managers and going to agricultural seminars. It seemed a long way from the sap who supplied all the cocaine in the waning days of the seventies.

  Frank had seen more of them since Gracie’s departure because Gracie had barred them from Amazing Grease for attracting narco types, and then from the house itself for “character flaws.” This was after several bitter remarks exchanged between Gracie and Sandy,
Gracie getting the worst of a series of inquiries about what “she had ever done.” Finally, the argument appeared to drift away when Gracie said, “All right, Sandy, let’s hear these famous noises that have taken you so far.”

  A moment passed and Sandy spoke in a bell-like contralto: “Thanks for having us over. We see so little of each other. Next time, let’s not let it be so long. Good night!” There was not a trace of irony in her voice. It was wonderfully disconcerting and its effect lingered for a long time. They never saw the Millmans socially after that.

  Once Gracie was gone, Sandy seemed determined that she never come back. She introduced Frank to out-of-town women — wanton lawyers, nervous potters, divorcées of unrelenting ferocity. Frank made no effort to get around. He didn’t have to.

  But Frank’s loneliness had begun to take some peculiar forms.

  4

  Frank stretched out on the broad-branched old apple tree with his back to the smooth, cool trunk. Within the canopy of leaves and remaining blossoms of spring he was engulfed in an even deeper darkness than that provided by this still, moonless night. Better yet, he was able to dreamily observe his travel agent, Lucy Dyer, whose office was just down the hall from his and who was one of Gracie’s oldest friends, remove the last of her clothes and stand transfixed in front of the shuddering blue-gray light of the television. She dug her fingers into her scalp and pushed them up through her hair, loosening and letting it fall in a wonderful declaration of day’s end. Frank sighed in his tree and rested his head against the trunk. This was serene.

  Many times Lucy and her current beau had dined with Frank and Gracie, and sometimes Lucy came by herself. One wonderful Halloween, Frank, Gracie and Lucy had gone trick-or-treating together. Now her figure swam with the reflected light of world events on the ten o’clock news. When her window finally went dark, Frank slid slowly to the ground in an excited yet peaceful mood and walked through the sounds of the warm night across the subdivision to the railroad tracks, which he followed until the tall mountains behind the town could be made out against the starlight. To the west a faint flickering of lights arose from the interstate, and to the east the distant sound of trucks beginning the pull into the canyon had a kind of cheerfulness.

  When he walked into the house, his phone was ringing. He ran to answer. It was Holly. Whenever he heard her voice, he felt something change inside himself: an indifference to time, for one thing, a floaty focus.

  “Dad? I’m joining a sorority.” Holly was a sophomore.

  “You are?”

  “Aren’t you glad?”

  “Well, yes, I guess I am. I just thought you were down on sororities.”

  “That was before. This is now.”

  “Well, yes, I am glad, especially if this means you won’t be living in an apartment.” She knew that was what he felt. He was nervous about her unguarded life at college. Something had gone amiss with men, and the weak ones were dangerous.

  “That’s not what it means.”

  “Oh, I was hoping it did. Well, did you join one in particular?”

  She told him which one it was. He didn’t know one from another. He vaguely used to comprehend all that Greek stuff, with its comic rituals as a precursor to the characters on little motor scooters wearing fezzes. He wished she would be living in a solid building filled with women.

  “Actually, Hol, you know what? This is great.” He was determined to be enthusiastic. “How can I celebrate this appropriately?” He was into this one and it showed.

  “Why don’t you come up when I get settled in?”

  “I’d love to. Just give me the nod and I’m on my way.”

  “Yes, that’s what we’ll do. And now I’m headed for the library. Love you, bye.”

  Maybe he had become too dependent on Holly, but she didn’t mind, or didn’t let him know she minded. He didn’t think so, but there may well have been an element of kindness.

  For a while he couldn’t quite think of his work in an orderly way. If he couldn’t see how to get insanely rich or change the world in one or two days, he hardly wanted to go to work at all. Finally, he began to take it seriously again. His work had a fairly large value to him viewed purely as routine. At forty-four (his friends had made him a cake, a corona of birthday candles and a chocolate pistol with the red number 44), he couldn’t make out whether he was young or old, and for many reasons he didn’t want to find out through the women in his life. After Gracie left, Frank detected that most people found him a little eerie. He could make them laugh, yet they always felt scrutinized. Some people could stand that and some couldn’t. Examination was his disease. He often saw it in the faces of the people he cared for the most. Some of his adversaries in business saw him as a person of subdued and calculating malice. Frank was kind of proud of that. It was too bad when people he cared about felt eroded by his attention. But Holly wasn’t one of them.

  5

  On Tuesday afternoon he drove to Harlowton for lunch with Bob Cheney, who managed the JA ranch. The JA was a pioneer cattle ranch that once belonged to the Melwood family; Mrs. Melwood, the widow of the last rancher in the family, left it to the Salvation Army and Bob Cheney managed it for them. Frank met Cheney at the Graves Hotel, waiting for him a short time on its veranda and staring out at the clouds over the prairie. They were as white as shaving cream. Cheney arrived in a truck filled with fencing materials and salt blocks, and parked right in front of the hotel. They went inside and ordered lunch.

  “How long has it been since you had yearlings on us, Frank?”

  “Long time ago. ’Eighty-one, anyway. Are you going to have any room for me this year?”

  “I don’t quite know yet. How many head?”

  “I’ll have to see where the market is, where the bank is.”

  “I don’t think I’ll be able to tend them. I’m short a man this season. I could find you a fellow, if you want to pay him.”

  “That could work. Do you think you’ll have room for three hundred head of steers?”

  “I might,” said Bob. Their lunch arrived and he smiled up at the waitress. Bob had a thin mouth, sharp nose and chin. He looked like an English pirate. “Did you bring your clubs, Frank?”

  “You know, I didn’t. I have to go straight from you back to town.”

  “What a shame. Can’t even make nine holes?”

  “I can’t,” Frank said. “And you know what else? I haven’t played since the year I last had cattle on you. I just kind of pulled my business life over my head and that was that.”

  Some war was on the radio and the café was quieter than usual. Conversations murmured on about the eroding price supports for grain, the cattle feeder monopolies, baseball.

  “Your boy still at the college?” Frank asked.

  “Getting ready to graduate.”

  “Is he going to come back to the ranch?”

  “I don’t think so.” Bob smiled, shrugged.

  You didn’t work your way up in ranching. You might get the job but the owner was always someone else. Frank saw a man appear in the doorway with his dog. The continuity was going out of ranching, and Frank felt sorry for the people who had seen so much in it and couldn’t go on with that, in their families or in any other way.

  The waitress announced, “No dogs.”

  “No dogs?” the man in the doorway said.

  “No dogs.” She bent behind the counter and emerged with a large beef bone. “Take him outside and give him that.”

  The man took the bone and went out. He was back in a moment without the dog. “I gave him the bone,” he said. He had a pushed-in upper lip and gray-black crinkled hair that grew well down on his forehead.

  “Yeah, good. You going to have lunch?” the waitress asked.

  “I might just have a cup of coffee while she’s working on that bone.”

  “Yeah, that’d be fine,” she said.

  “Where’d that great bone come from?”

  “Today’s soup.”

  “Oh, sure. Well
, she’ll appreciate it.”

  Frank’s father used to eat here regularly when he had an interest in the hardware store and then an insurance agency that later moved to Grass Range, where it was absorbed by an office in Lewistown. Then he had a ranch at Straw, west of Eddie’s Corner, and it was easy to use the Lewistown office for the ranch business. The ranch, as far as he was concerned, was just another file at the Lewistown office. Payroll, government programs, expenses, everything was just that one file, ran almost a thousand mother cows. Bob Cheney started at the Straw place when he was a young cowboy, later went to work on the JA for Mrs. Melwood and then the Salvation Army. All the same job except the Salvation Army didn’t speculate but ran it as a conservative cow-calf place and in good years leased some grass. And it was good grass: buffalo grass and some bluestem.

  Bob and Frank had always gotten along, once even worked together, so Frank got the first call on the grass. It wasn’t insider trading; he paid the going rate, but it was an awfully good grass deal. Frank thought he could make some money on it, a little anyway. He did these yearling deals only when he thought he was having a good year. You took out a big loan and bet it on one throw of the dice. He liked being in business with people like Bob Cheney, liked talking to them.

  “When’s your girl finish school?” Bob asked.

  “Two more years.”

  “She’s at Missoula?”

  “At Missoula.”