Nothing but Blue Skies

by Thomas McGuane

  “Okay. But Gracie’s okay. That guy’s probably got a lot of money. I know money isn’t everything …”

  “He’s a sharp one, that Ed. He knows how to make it. Do you know what his big trick was?”

  “I hadn’t really heard. I suppose Gracie told you.”

  “She did and she wasn’t happy. He used to be a dealer of Indian artifacts but he got crossways with the law. I guess he married one of his wealthy customers but she was in a bad car wreck. Now he buys life insurance policies from people who have been diagnosed with AIDS. He cashes them out at a discount. He says that gives them money for medicine, which he knows won’t work, and it allows them to buy a little dignity, which it may. That’s quite an idea, isn’t it, Frank?”

  “Quite an idea,” Frank said numbly.

  “He still sort of has this wife, but she throwed him out on account of the wreck. He was sad about that because she was sure enough well fixed. So, have I helped you?”

  “Thank you, Junie-friend. You’ve helped me.”

  “For what it’s worth, I never heard Gracie say she was in love with him.”

  Frank got up and went downstairs with June. He washed the dishes and she dried. Then they went out into the front yard and raised the American flag. He smiled up at it in his bathrobe as the cool mountain wind made it crack over the busy street. He arranged to have Darryl’s truck repaired, and June said she’d find Darryl and set it up. Aspirin was helping his discomfort and he was building confidence. The sunlight angled against the sides of houses along the street. A man with a huge pockmarked nose led a pair of straining Irish setters, one from each hand, up the hill. He had his billed cap on backward as though anticipating a sled ride. Frank commented on June’s beautiful yellow Buick in his driveway, its eventful curves shadowed by the dark arms of the old maple.

  There seemed to be a slight visual vibration over everything. He thought of what June had said about the West. He knew Gracie used to feel that way too. The tone of the West had been set by the failure of the homesteads, not by the heroic cattle drives. The tone was in its bitter politics. But that wasn’t the whole story. He knew it was a good place. He knew Gracie had been coming to see that. There was something in its altitude and dryness and distances that he couldn’t have lived without; and it was a good time to remember that. When he was walking in the hills and could see sundown begin about forty miles away, or smell running water in the bottom of a sagebrush ravine, or watch the harriers cup themselves to the curve of earth and slash through clouds of meadowlarks, he felt that thankfulness. It was always a starting point. He went to the mirror and watched himself say, “I love it here.”

  37

  Monday morning in the American West. J. P. Morgan was pissing off the securities firms by expanding its underwriting. Now I’m happy again, thought Frank. Dog eat dog. Stock prices higher, bonds surge, NASDAQ sets record for third day. Nervous investors looking for strong earnings records. John Deere is laying people off. Restructuring charges were producing a quarterly loss for United Technologies. Not a word about chickens.

  On the hope that there is synergy even in failure, Frank had invited Orville Conway of Wilsall, Montana, to his office for a meeting. He had read over the weekend, between morose fits of bathrobe living, that Montana’s ninth-biggest chicken farmer was facing bankruptcy. Frank thought this could be the missing portion of the synergy he dreamed of for his old hotel. Orville Conway’s defeat implied that the seven-month winter canceled certain business opportunities. It was especially poignant in the case of Orville Conway, who was widely admired as a modern and skillful practitioner in the industrial multiplication of chickens. The very word “failure” made Frank reach out to Orville, and so he called him and told him he had an idea.

  Orville got right past Eileen and presented himself in Frank’s doorway. He had a rawboned, rural face with deep-set eyes and prominent enough teeth that it was quite a struggle for him to keep them covered with his lips. He also had a fashionably blow-dried hairdo that formed a kind of pouf just over his forehead, covered half his ears and came down over the collar of his buck-stitched blue western sport coat. The possibility of failure hung over Orville Conway like a soggy, impermeable cloud of desperation and defiance. Frank stood briskly and came out from behind his desk, thrusting his hand into Orville’s big, work-hardened mitt. The weight and toughness of that hand in the context of the sartorial fancy and mushroom cloud of impending doom touched Frank. He could see that, imperiled as his own business life was, he had more edge left than Orville Conway. Still, they shared the prospects of financial desolation, and that was inspiring.

  “Please sit down, Orville.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Can I have Eileen bring you some coffee.”

  “I’m all coffeed out,” said Orville. Frank picked up the phone and asked Eileen to hold his calls.

  “Orville, I learned about some of your business problems in the paper,” Frank said, and Orville reddened right out to his ears. Frank had not seen such shame in a grown man before.

  “We’re talking about restructuring some debt,” Orville murmured.

  “That just slows things down, gives the bank a deeper choke hold on you.” Frank was instantly dizzied by his wrath against banks.

  There was a sustained quiet as Orville Conway took his time evaluating the moment. “I don’t have a lot of choices. It’s all I’ve ever done. This was my shot and I took it. I don’t have a lot of information about other businesses. I got a wife and kids at home. And we done pretty good all along there, considering. It’s not an excuse to talk about changing times. I’m way too far from the transportation. The bank’s got a pretty good lien on the place. I done this all on the home place and it’s about two thousand feet higher than here and it is just too darn cold. I already starved out there once, in the cow business. Feed costs are high, but really, it’s bein’ high and cold and too far from things. I hate like heck to go under and I’m not going to let it happen if I don’t have to. I feel kind of bad about, you know, whoever might have been looking for me to go ahead and make it come out right.”

  Frank was thinking, This could be the birth of a new chicken kingdom. He felt a slight buzz, a familiar surge edging on gooseflesh. He and Orville were going to kick ass, Conway and Copenhaver (C & C), people ingesting chicken like bats in a cloud of houseflies.

  “Orville, I have an idea.”

  Orville didn’t look very hopeful. He had seen some heavy weather. Frank was moved by him and took a moment to reconsider; his own back was against the wall and he wanted to be sure he wasn’t simply transferring some bad luck. He didn’t think he was. Shooting fish in a barrel was not necessarily a universal business image either.

  “Orville, do you own the property on which you raise chickens?”

  “I have a large mortgage.”

  “So you are faced with a bank wishing to foreclose while there is something left.”

  “That’s true.”

  “I am in a similar situation with a property I own here in town, a clinic. It is substantially leveraged. I have failed to get along with my tenants and they have moved out. I am trying to buy some time before the bank comes in, but I may not succeed.”

  “Sounds like we’re in the same boat.”

  “Not entirely. I also own the Kid Royale Hotel on Main Street, which as you may know is a famous building from the Territorial era. It was the biggest hotel on the Montana frontier but I have never been able to do anything with it because the cost of renovating it would be prohibitive. Back in the seventies when I acquired it, there was a lot of money for that sort of thing, federal grants, floating around. But we never got it. Those funds were all spent back east, pilgrim stuff, whatever, the Civil War.”

  All through this summation, Orville developed a series of nervous and possibly impatient gestures: knitting and reknitting his fingers, biting the back of his right thumbnail, darting his eyes to the window and recrossing his legs. Frank could feel the pressure o
f the needy chickens. Finally, Orville spoke.

  “I know that they have been real successful in the East and Midwest raising chickens in old hotels. But Mr. Copenhaver, I have to be honest. I can’t afford to rent your hotel from you.”

  “I don’t want you to. I just want you to move in. We’ll joint venture. If this makes the difference for your business and moves it back into profitability, we will commence the payment of a lease at that time. But my part wouldn’t kick in until you were in the black again.”

  Orville didn’t have to think very long. “You want me to draw something up?”

  “That’d be fine. I know we can find fair numbers. The main thing is, I own this building outright. Let the bank take back your chicken ranch. Let ’em raise a few eggs themselves. They’re all talking about going back to basics. They can start with chickens.”

  “The cocksuckers,” said Orville rather surprisingly.

  “Exactly.” Frank hesitated only a moment trying to imagine whether he meant the bankers or the chickens. Once again, Frank shook the powerful hand of Orville Conway. There was a very definite feeling about Orville, that he knew what he was looking at when he was looking at you. And this was the first little bit of accustomed movement Frank had felt in a long while. But he couldn’t always expect June to come around and get him going.

  38

  Frank walked home from the office. He passed the irregular colonnades of Schwedler’s maples — a fashionable tree of the twenties — the cotoneaster hedges, the American lindens and, around the bases of the turn-of-the-century homes, the bridal wreath spirea. The street in front of his house was a marvel of retained atmosphere, the permanence of settlers’ hopes, a perfect scene for the freewheeling newspaper boy coming along now, underhanding the evening paper onto lawns; the blue sports car whining along one gear too low; the plumbing truck with galvanized pipe lashed to its roof rack; and the black Saab that swung, like a wingless airplane, around the corner and parked in Frank’s driveway. Frank stopped to watch. He was far enough away that he could easily duck an unwelcome visit. Schoolchildren were starting to appear on the far side of the street, coats tied around their waists, carrying bookbags, walking backward to talk to those walking frontward.

  It was Edward Ballantine. Frank took this anonymous moment to size him up. Ballantine was wearing a topcoat over blue jeans and NBA-style high tops. He had on a pair of orange reflective mountaineering glasses, and to hold them a leather thong that hung partway down his back. He removed the glasses and dropped them to his chest while he looked over the doorway. He seemed pretty confident as he stepped up on the porch to knock on Frank’s door. Frank walked as quietly as he could without seeming furtive, and crossed the street.

  “May I help you?”

  “Oh, Frank, hi,” said Ballantine. He had a facial trait that Frank identified as vaguely out-of-town and which consisted of animating his eyes while leaving his lower face in a noncommittal state. An insincere approach, Frank concluded, allowing for sudden mood shifts depending on the politics of the moment. He thrust out his hand for a handshake, and without looking at it Frank declined to take it. “May we go inside and have a word?” Ballantine asked, starting to throttle down the tone, utilizing the deftly shifted expression toward coolness.

  “No,” said Frank, “we may not.” Frank recalled that Ballantine had already quizzed his accountant about the state of his finances.

  “Am I to understand that you will not speak to me?”

  “Not at all. You just need to do it here on the sidewalk. That’s my home. You know, a man’s home is his castle.”

  “I think there are still some issues of joint tenancy there, Frank, with Gracie.”

  “Could be, but for now possession is nine tenths of the law. And is that why you’re here, to discuss Gracie’s divorce settlement with me?”

  “No, I —”

  “Because that’s really not your job, is it, Edward? Though my accountant informs me you’ve been sniffing around.”

  “If you’ll give me a chance to talk, I’ll tell you why I’m here.”

  “It really is none of your business. I’m sure you can understand that, can’t you, Edward? It’s not a big concept. If it is to you, just let me know how far you got with it and I’ll try to help you with the rest.”

  “Frank.”

  “?”

  “Shut up.”

  Frank felt a violent impulse sweep through him, but it passed. Then Edward said, “I think you’re at the point where you might think of looking at your own life to find out what happened to your marriage. I mean, your wife wasn’t stolen by the Comanches or something. She pretty much shot out of here.”

  “She did, didn’t she.”

  “She sure did.”

  “Well, I’d sure like to see her.”

  “Just stop at the house. That’s why I came by. I wanted you to know where you could find us.”

  “Where’s the house?”

  “One Twenty-one Third.”

  “Let me think about it first. But maybe I’ll stop over.”

  “Nice place,” said Edward. He lifted his hand toward Frank’s house, let it fall.

  Frank wondered why he had bothered. “You want to buy it?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “That was sort of part of the fantasy at one time, that house.”

  “So I’ve heard,” said Edward.

  “I thought maybe it would be better if you and Gracie had it —”

  “It’s best if you see her.”

  “— than if I go on rattling around in it. I’d be happier in a hotel, frankly.”

  “I thought you owned a hotel.”

  “Yeah, but it’s for chickens.”

  Edward gave him a puzzled look, then reminded Frank that he ought to speak to Gracie. Edward turned to go to his Saab. Frank could see that it was hard to know how to make the proper exit, and in fact, he himself turned fairly woodenly to go to his house. He heard the little aircraft whir of Edward’s car, got the mail from his mailbox and went inside.

  He put a Lean Cuisine in the microwave and turned it on. He switched on the radio, always set on the oldies station, and found, to his satisfaction, a Youngbloods retrospective in progress. The crooner Jesse Colin Young seemed to speak directly to him from the darkness while he opened his mail. What’s this? Eastman Kodak was going to buy the rest of Amerilite Diagnostics Ltd.? I didn’t even fucking see that coming! Weren’t these the pukes that said, ‘Keep it simple, stupid’? Frank hated the sense that if he took his eyes off these birds for so much as a day, they pulled something on him.

  The phone rang.

  “Mr. Copenhaver?”

  “Yes?”

  “This is Gladys Pankov from the city planning office. I also represent the Preservation League in my capacity as planner and secretary.”

  “Right?”

  “I was wondering — is this possible? — if you could clarify something for me about the Kid Royale Hotel. We had hoped that some program for its restoration were in place. But we’ve just received the oddest notice at the planning office.”

  “Okay, now I’m with you. My mind was elsewhere. Kodak is on some kind of acquisitions tear. Now, yeah, okay, uh … no, that’s no longer the plan.”

  “It’s not?”

  Frank thought he knew what was coming. “Are you calling to tell me that exciting new grants are now available for this kind of work?”

  “No, actually, I was running down a rumor.”

  “It’s going to be a chicken ranch,” said Frank sharply.

  “Yes, that was it. Well, just a couple of questions, then. Did you know that one of the rooms was the suite of William Tecumseh Sherman?”

  “Sure, the guy that killed all the Indians. That’s a big room all right, hold a lot of chickens.”

  “Calamity Jane, Buffalo Bill stayed there, George Armstrong Custer, three of the original Vigilantes —”

  “If I’m not mistaken,” Frank interrupted, “they’r
e all dead. So, there’s plenty of room for the chickens. Look, I hate to be short with you, but I’m nuking a cannelloni.” He got off the phone and felt his scalp. He thought about Gracie. It would be tempting to rage against women. Endless destruction around the world. Back to Helen, Cleopatra, Lady Macbeth. Mad scientists. He investigated his paper. Poinsettia white flies devastate two agricultural counties in California. Is it men who are so crazy about poinsettias that they want to mail them to friends in California? Blaming the victims? The victims are lovely California vegetables with lethal bugs lodged in their vitals. They and their consumers, people from — one of Frank’s favorite phrases — all walks of life.

  That night when he lay down, instead of thinking about his loneliness or $$nence of certain foreclosures, he thought about the gap between short-term and long-term interest rates, the yields on two-year Treasury notes. Frank Copenhaver was sinking into a chicken-driven destiny. If he could just get back on his feet, he was going wide open into biotech firms. Their names helped him drift off: Regeneron, MedImmune, Genentech, Alkermes, Glycomed, Isis …

  39

  Mike was there at daybreak. He brought Frank his paper and some breakfast from Hardee’s in a nice white bag with a hot slick spot on its side. Frank was still in the shower, letting the hot water stream against the stiff back of his neck while he made several plans for the day. He could see out the window the swimming shapes of cars in the street, and when he finished his shower, he rubbed a small circle in the steam and looked below the house to see who was parked there. It was Mike’s Country Squire. For some reason, looking out over the town from this perspective, he thought how much more interesting it would be if they were involved in a war here — tanks in the streets, partisans lobbing grenades into cellars or, best of all, the lust to wipe everything out and start over again. This need for a war was pretty basic, he suspected. His lousy little town had never had one. The closest it had come to a siege of Vicksburg were a few slapping matches around election time.