Nobody's Angel

by Mcguane, Thomas

  They hurried up the walkway and went in through the kitchen. Patrick could smell the paint and turpentine from here; and as he went down the hallway, it got more intense. He expected for some reason that she would be in her room, and his grandfather, pressing behind him, seemed to agree. Patrick knocked and got no answer. So he opened the door. She wasn’t there. If it wasn’t for the fact that the paint was blue, the room would have looked like the scene of a massacre. A house-painter’s broad brush soaked blue paint into the bedclothes. The upended gallon can directed a slowly moving blue tongue under the dresser. There was no turpentine in sight. The curtains had begun to dry stickily, with a cheap surrealistic effect, around a window full of sky and clouds.

  They went back to the kitchen. But by that time the barn was already burning. It was visible from the kitchen, a steady horizontal pall moving downwind from between the logs. Patrick started for the doors. “Call the Fire Department! I’ll run to the barn.”

  Patrick sprinted around the bunkhouse to the barn. He climbed the wooden strakes into the haymow. Mary sat under the rafters. The hay was on fire and the wind blew through the separations in the logs, creating innumerable red fingers of fire that worked through the bales, collided and leaped up into longer-burning lines, a secretive, vascular fire.

  “We are without tents. We’ll do anything to stay warm. There are tracks in the drifts. We used to have a chairlift to get us down, but my mother interfered with the mechanism and confiscated my lift pass. She put rats in the last empty gondola.”

  “I’ll get you down,” said Patrick. “But we must go now. And stop talking like that.”

  “Yes,” said Mary. “We must think of the baby.”

  The volunteers arrived in a stocky yellow truck, threw the intake hose into the creek and doused the barn inside and out. Steam roared into the sky and cast shadows over the house like storm-driven clouds. The firemen were dressed in yellow slickers and had plexiglass shields in front of their faces. They guided the heavy canvas-covered hose inside their elbows and against their backs, like loafers leaning on a village fence. Only one man aimed the nozzle into the smoke and flames. Patrick thought that he could see in their expressions that this was an unnecessary fire. Perhaps it was his imagination.

  Afterward the phone rang; it was Deke Patwell, still somewhat blurred. The phone in Patrick’s hand felt like a blunt instrument.

  “Understand you’ve had a barn fire.”

  “That’s right, Deke.”

  “Any suspicion of foul play or is it all in the family?”

  “It’s all in the family,” said Patrick.

  “Hope like heck it stays out of the papers.”

  “Thank you, Deke. I’m one hundred percent certain that it will. You know what I mean, Deke? I’m really that sure.”

  It did seem, though, that Deke was intoning some small, minatory announcement and that it might have been better if Patrick hadn’t kicked him onto the sidewalk. But weren’t there a few things one was obliged to do? Perhaps he hadn’t paid enough attention to Mary over the years. He might have written more often. If he had, Patrick considered, the kick might have been vague or symbolic and not shooting some ass-pounding moron onto the sidewalk. And Mrs. Patwell pursuing the children like a wounded pelican—that, too, would have its consequences. The Patwells had the solidest marriage in Deadrock.

  10

  PATRICK STOOD AT THE COUNTER AT FARM NEEDS AND bought ten iodized-salt blocks, five hundred pounds of whole oats and a thin twenty-eight-foot lariat. Standing at the counter, he could stare across the street to the grain elevator, the railroad tracks; and coming out of the east, he saw the Burnetts’ car; and when it passed, he saw Claire at the wheel. He followed the car with his eyes and without moving his head.

  “Let me just take my slip,” he said to the salesman. “I’ll swing through for the oats in a bit.”

  He followed the car discreetly, thinking, She doesn’t know this truck anyway, left at Main, up a few blocks until she stopped. He parked in front of J. C. Penney’s; he saw her get out of her car and walk into the MyWay Cafe. Patrick slapped his pockets for change. The meter maid was two cars away. He had no coins and here she came.

  “I’m afraid I’m out of change.”

  “I’ll give you time,” she said.

  “That’s all right.”

  “My gosh, it’ll save you five dollars.” Her grab on the facts was evaporating. The meter itself seemed like a joke.

  “Write me up,” said Patrick, jauntily heading across the street, the meter maid staring at him with her pad of tickets. She began to write. She wrote hard and she wrote mean.

  Patrick sauntered along the MyWay front window; but then when he gave his eyes one cut to the interior, he found himself locked in gaze with Claire. He waved, then mimed may-I-join-you? As though talking to a lip reader. She just smiled. In we go, thought Patrick; my back is to the meter.

  The MyWay is sandwiched between the Wagon Wheel western store and Good Looks, ladies’ fashions. It’s kind of a shotgun arrangement, white inside with orange tables. It has a clock that reads twelve o’clock, three o’clock, 7-Up and nine o’clock. It has a reversible sign hanging in the door that says, OPEN, but from the customers’ view reads, SORRY, WE’RE CLOSED. It has candy in a display called Brach’s Candyland. It has a Safety and Protection on the Job poster, a dispenser for black hair-combs guaranteed for ten years and still only thirty cents. A huge box of S.O.S. says it will cut grease quicker. It’s an A.F. of L. union house and smoking is permitted. It seemed ready for a nuclear attack.

  Patrick stood next to the waitress while she finished telling Claire something. Claire cut her eyes over to him, smiled, then paid polite attention to the waitress.

  “My brother can lie his way out of anything,” she was saying, “but not me. I ain’t sayin I wasn’t in the wrong. My pickup was flat movin, comin around that old canyon. I’ll tell you. But this smoky says, ‘You wanta pull it over or drive fifty-five?’ I shoulda outrun his ass. Okey-doke, let me get this. How bout you?”

  “Black coffee,” said Patrick, and sat down.

  “How’re you-all?” Claire had eyes that shone.

  “Never better.”

  “Bite?”

  “No thanks. I came to town for grain.”

  “I was hoping you were following me.”

  “I’ll follow you next time I see you.” To the waitress: “Coffee is all.”

  “Where can you get something to eat in Deadrock?”

  “You’re eating now.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “You can feel it in your throat.”

  She chewed slowly and watched Patrick a moment before speaking again. He started to get jumpy.

  “May I share my impressions with you about Montana?”

  “Oh, but you can,” said Patrick in a tinny voice.

  “An area of high transience. But while folks are here, they are proud of it. I have seen no marches to the state flag yet, but I have noticed your extremely direct state motto: ‘Oro y Plata.’ I know that stands for gold and silver. It shows a real go-getter attitude.”

  “Is that good, Claire?”

  “Back where I come from, your shoe salesman strikes oil in the side lot and starts a ranch with headquarters in the Cayman Islands, then he buys a show horse, the bull that wins the Houston Fat Stock Show and a disco.”

  “Whoever did that?”

  “My father! I’m nouveau riche! We’re just not old family. The foundation for old families in Oklahoma is early-day stealing, before the advent of good records.”

  Patrick changed his mind and ordered pumpkin pie. He could see upper torsos passing the front window. He could see newspaper readers at other tables, revealing only their hands, which seized either end of the newsprint and stretched it to their eyes.

  “What got you to come to Montana?” Patrick was growing tired of hearing himself ask these sap questions. Still, he couldn’t break out of it. I’m no sap, he thought.r />
  “Tio sold the cabin cruiser. We had it in Corpus. It was to go to Padre Island. Padre Island is kind of a redneck Riviera. It has great birds. But Tio kept running aground. Tio has kind of a health problem. So when the Coast Guard said they wouldn’t rescue us anymore, Tio said, ‘That does it. I’ll spend my money in another area. The northern grasslands, for instance.’ ”

  “Has it been a good move?”

  “The jury is still out. Tio’s starved for conversation. Nobody does much oil here, not to mention cattle futures, row crops or running horses.”

  “Did Tio inherit his money?” I’ve had enough of Tio. Why am I asking this?

  “Let’s say he got it somehow. But he’s done right smart with what he got.” It was a hollow advertisement.

  “I see.”

  “And in some ways he’s a very private person. About the only way somebody’d get his telephone number at home is if one of his bird dogs run away and they got it off its collar.”

  Patrick moved upon the pie, ate half of it, swigged some coffee and asked (this will get her off balance), “When was the last time you blushed?” He blushed. Sapland.

  “At my wedding.” It didn’t get her off balance.

  “Really.”

  “Oklahoma girls are trained to pull off one of those in their lives. After that, they are never required to do it again.”

  “I blushed at my First Communion.”

  “Are you a Catholic?”

  “I consider myself one.”

  “You mean you aren’t practicing.”

  “That is correct.”

  “Then why do you consider yourself one?”

  “It makes me feel I’m just that much less of a white man.”

  “Aha!”

  Patrick managed to pay for the ice cream and walk Claire to her car. He held the door for her. She ducked in and, talking to him, made a blind reach for the climate control, then the sound system. Four speakers boom in Jamaican: “Natty don’t work for no CIA.” She grinned.

  “Amo shuffle on home,” she said. “Babylon by Cadillac.”

  “Can you give me a lift to my truck?”

  “Get on in.”

  The cool interior was wonderful, the simulated-walnut dashboard reassuring in that someone cared to keep up appearances. No high tech here, just plastic that ached for ancient hardwoods.

  “Take your first right.” They cruised up Main and turned. “Sure is nice and cool in here.”

  “I don’t imagine that’s much of a problem in Montana. What in the world do people do in the winter?”

  “Just hang around the salad bars. There’s nothing quite like Green Goddess at thirty below. Take another right.”

  Two more rights and they were back where they started, in front of Patrick’s truck. Patrick opened the door. “Thanks a lot.”

  “Sure enjoyed circling the block with you. And say, the conversation was great.”

  “Same to you goes double.”

  Claire smiled. “I like dragging Main in the heat of the day. Been crazy about it since I don’t know when.”

  “Good-bye.”

  “Good-bye.”

  Patrick thought, This is more horrible than a glint of bayonets in the concertina wire.

  11

  THE NEXT DAY, PATRICK THOUGHT THAT A GOOD MEAL MIGHT help Mary. His grandfather was bitching about the cuisine as well. So he drove to town for some supplies. He thought first about tea-smoked duck but remembered that all the ducks left in the freezer were green-winged teal—too small, really, for what he wanted. He recalled the advice of the master chef Paul Bocuse: Shop first, then decide what you’re going to make; attend to the seasons—no strawberries for Christmas dinner, no game for Easter.

  He entered the IGA store already primed, then excited once he had the shopping cart. He found black mushrooms, cloud ears and Szechwan peppers without a hitch. He was on a run. He found a fifty-pound bag of beautiful long-grain South Carolina rice effortlessly. The huge-cloved California garlics and fresh ginger set him on his heels; so that when he found the strong, perfect leeks bound together with paper-wrapped wire, smelled the earth in the darkened roots and felt their cool bulk against his hands, he knew the enemy had been driven from his fortification. Three fat chickens, small projectilelike cucumbers, fresh spinach to make streamers to mark the depth of his clear pork soup, a case of Great Falls Select from the cooler and yes, a bit of help to the truck would be nice. Put the leeks up front with me. I’m a captain, good-bye.

  The grandfather and Mary sat at the round kitchen table while Patrick worked. He boned and skinned the chicken, then sliced it all into uniform strips. He had first cooked on the lid of an old Maytag washing machine—a basic utensil in the mountains. But now he had a south San Francisco hard-steel wok, restaurant-sized.

  “What in hell you been doing to support yourself?” Grandfather asked Mary.

  “I worked for a veterinarian.”

  “What happened?”

  “I lost the job.”

  “For what?”

  “I was fired for taking animal tranquilizers.”

  “You what?”

  Patrick made a rectilinear pile of the chicken slivers. He mashed the garlic with his cleaver, removed the pale-varnish papery skins, then minced the peppers; the same with the ginger—both arrayed alongside the chicken. He broke up the serrano peppers and spilled the rattling minute seeds into the sink.

  “What else have you been doing, Mary?” asked Grandfather in a yelp. Granddad under stress always grew dog-like.

  “Well, let’s see. Got pregnant and, uh, went to Warm Springs. You know, the big nut house.”

  “Oh, well, great, Mary.”

  Using the cleaver, Patrick split the well-washed leeks into cool white-and-green lengths, dividing them on the steel. He could feel the animosity through his back.

  “I hear you’ve gone into the movies, Grandpa.”

  “I was just having a look around. Anyway, nobody knows where that damned movie went to. I certainly don’t, but I’m darned mad about it.”

  Patrick fired up the wok, the cooking shovel resting inside. He poured in the oil. In a moment numerous small bubbles migrated vertically through it.

  “Then I joined up with some communists from Canada.”

  Patrick turned from the stove. “Can it,” he said to Mary. “And you, shut up about the movies.”

  He dropped the garlic in, then the ginger, then the Szechwan peppers, then the serranos. They roared in the oil and cooked down gorgeously. Arrayed around the wok were leeks, chicken, yellow crookneck squash, soy sauce, rice wine, salt—everything jingbao, explosion-fried. He raced about setting the table, put the wok next to a six-pack and served with the cooking shovel.

  “Do I have to use chopsticks?” the grandfather wailed.

  “You better if you’re going to China.”

  “I’ll bring my own utensils. Say, who said I’m going to China?”

  “Use the chopsticks, Gramp. They won’t let you take silverware through the metal detector at the airport. Y’know, because of international terrorism.”

  “Tomorrow can we have chili?”

  “No, you’re having a can of tuna and your own can opener, you goddamned sonofabitch.”

  “I like water-packed tuna, but no oil for me, please.”

  “Eat what I made you.”

  Mary stared into her plate, held each piece up as though trying to see through it, then returned it to her plate. She went to the kitchen for a glass of water and was gone a little too long. Patrick returned to his own meal: She ought to be darling when she gets back.

  “Used to be a real stockman’s country,” said his grandfather, eating quite rapidly once he forgot the chili and tuna fish. “No one retained mineral rights in a ranch trade. No farm machinery.” Mary came back. “Strange people here and there. One man with a saddled horse tied under his bedroom window at all times. Southern man with his boys chained up at night. Irrigator from Norway hiding in a car body
from the hailstones. Me and old what’s-his-name buying hootch out back at the dances. Pretty schoolteacher used to ski to them dances, packing her gown. This Virginian used to do the nicest kind of logwork’d get tanked up and fight with a knife. Old Warren Butterfield killed him and buried him past the Devil’s Slide, only not too many people known that at that time and Warren’s at the rest home, fairly harmless I’d say. Virginian needed it, anyhow. I could show you the spot. Shot him with a deer rifle. Virginian couldn’t remember pulling the knife out on Warren at the dance. Warren told me that couple days later and he went up to shoot him, that Virginian couldn’t figure for the life of him why. It gave Warren second thoughts, but he let him have it. Everybody was pleased, big old violent cracker with protruding ears, ruining the dances. Nicest kind of logwork, though, used a froe, chopped at them timbers between his feet, looked like they’d been through the planer down to the mill. After that, everybody went to frame. No more Virginian.”

  Mary said, “Kill, shoot, whack, stab, chop.”

  “Well, that’s how it was.”

  Mary looked up past Patrick and said, “Who are you?” Patrick stared at her an instant and turned. It was Tio, standing in the doorway. He suspended his Stetson straw horizontal to his stomach.

  “Knocked, guess nobody heard me. I see you, Pat?”

  “Surely,” said Patrick, getting up and leaving his napkin and following Tio outside.

  “I’ll be listening to murder stories,” Mary said. Tio looked back, made a grimacing, uncomprehending smile, which she received blankly. “How y’all?” Tio tried.

  “Say, thanks for dinner,” bayed the grandfather. “And don’t forget: Water-packed, or n-o spells no!”

  Outside, Tio asked, “You cook, Pat?”

  “Yeah, sure do. I like it a lot.”

  “Make chili?”

  “Yup. My grandfather just requested it.”

  “Like a tejano or this northern stew-type deal?”

  “Tejano.”

  “I make Pedernales chili à la L.B.J. Crazy bout L.B.J. Eat that chili in homage, old buddy. Y’all through eatin, weren’t you?”

  “We were, actually.”