Cloudbursts

by Thomas McGuane

  When Szabo repeated this to Melinda and saw her wide eyes, he just shrugged and shook his head. Maybe to change the subject, she asked after David, and Szabo told her that he would soon be coming home.

  STARS

  Only the very treetops caught the first light as Jessica started up Cascade Creek, a sparkling crevice in a vast bed of spruce needles. As she walked, the light descended the trunks and ignited balsamic forest odors, awakening the birds and making it easy to find stepping-stones to cross the narrow creek. She’d found this trail on a Forest Service map; the contour lines had suggested a climb she could manage, and by scrutinizing images on Google Earth she had seen the small watershed open into what looked like a meadow or a strip of saturated ground. Jays were foraging in the hawthorns and, as day emerged, the hurrying clouds signaled fast-changing weather. Jessica’s pack held a spare down vest, a windbreaker, and an apple.

  She came to a spot where the creek fell through a tangle of evergreen roots to form a plunge pool. Sitting for a moment, she followed the movement of bubbles into its crystalline depths, lost in her thoughts, free of history. Time was not the same dimension here that it was in the rest of her life, and floating like this was something to be savored. The bubbles in the plunge pool reminded her of the stars she had fallen in love with so long ago, years before she became an astronomer and began to spend her days analyzing solar data from the Yohkoh satellite or the RHESSI spectroscopic imager. The stars were no longer a mystery to her; these bubbles would have to do.

  After the plunge pool, the trail became steeper, and it pleased Jessica to feel her attention shift to her aching calves. She surprised a hawk on a low branch, not a soaring hawk but one that flashed through trees and seemed to take her with it. As she followed its search for an opening wide enough to ascend through, she saw a bright, grassy area ahead, a gap of light in the evergreens. She would explore there, then retrace her steps down the creek.

  Once she’d reached the edge of the meadow, she stopped, unable at first to understand what she was seeing: two figures, proximate and mutually wary, one circling the other. Without moving, she grasped that a man, pistol dangling from one hand, was contemplating a wolf he had trapped; and the wolf, its foreleg secured in the jaws of a trap, was watching the man as he looked for a shot. Then the wolf turned and faced the forest in what seemed a despairing gesture. Jessica began to shout, running toward the man. She called, “You’re not going to do that!”

  The man turned, startled. “I sure am,” he said gently. He was of an indeterminate age, tall and bareheaded in a canvas coat. His lace-up boots had undershot heels. A hat lay on the ground by his foot; his face was slick with sweat. “If this isn’t something you’d like to watch, you might just want to be elsewhere.”

  Jessica was taken aback by his soft voice and by his peculiar tidiness. She noticed a mule tied in the trees, plywood panniers lashed to its ribs. Looking back at the terrified wolf, which was trying now to fling itself away from the trap, she heard herself say, “I’d rather shoot you than that animal.”

  “Oh? I don’t think you know how hard it is to pull a trigger,” the man said. “You have to feel pretty strongly about anything you kill. My old man used to tell me that you have to kill something every day, even if it’s a fly, or you lose the knack.”

  He handed her the gun, and Jessica took it readily, surprised at how warm it was in her hand. She had a sense that some kind of power might shift to her, if she knew what to do with it.

  “You obviously don’t read the papers,” she said. “People aren’t having any trouble pulling the trigger these days.”

  “I’ll take it back now, thank you,” the man said patiently. “I need to go about my business, and it doesn’t look to me like you feel any big need to save this animal.” The wolf was on its belly now, staring at the trees, its trapped leg drawn out taut in front of it.

  “I’m going to shoot you,” Jessica said.

  She could almost see these words go out of her mouth.

  “You think you’re going to shoot me.”

  “I know I am.”

  “Just wait until you try to turn him loose. That wolf isn’t going to be very nice to you.”

  When the man seized the barrel of the gun, she felt as if she might fall, but she let him pull it away. Later, she felt that she hadn’t struggled hard enough. “You need to picture this thing a little better,” the man explained in his thoughtful voice. “I’m going to make a rug for my cabin out of his hide. I’m going to make jewelry out of his teeth and claws. I’m going to sell them on eBay.”

  Jessica started to laugh miserably, and by the time the laughter got away from her the man had joined in, as though it were funny. The wolf was watching them, up on its haunches now. The man wiped his eyes. “Honest to gosh,” he said. “Where would we be without laughter?”

  Maybe the laughter was an opening. Jessica tried to explain to the man that the wolf stood for everything she cared about, everything wild. But he laughed and said, “Honey, can’t you hear those chain saws coming?” Her confession had gotten her nowhere.

  The wolf made no attempt to escape as the man walked over and killed it.

  * * *

  —

  It was the only place you could get coffee at that hour—sunrise had barely lit the front of the building—and the customers were already lined up right to the door. The young woman at the cash register, too sleepy to interact with anyone, made change mechanically, while her colleague, a young man in a woolen skullcap, seemed to hang from the levers as he waited for the coffee to pour. Jessica kept her hands in the sleeves of her sweater as she awaited her turn behind four people staring absently at their phones. Once she had the coffee, she put a second paper cup around it, went out into the morning, and felt a minor wave of optimism, ascribable to either caffeine or the sunrise.

  Customers emerging from the shop were quickly absorbed by the town. As Jessica walked to Cooper Park to watch the morning dogs, the sunlight caught her, and she blew silver steam from her mouth. She had still been able to see a few stars when she left home, but they were gone now. The diehard dog people were already at the park, with others trickling in from the old houses around the neighborhood. This was the world of the cherished mongrel—rescue dogs, shelter dogs, strays that had dodged euthanasia: a part border collie that made an exuberant entrance, then spun away from any dog that wanted to play, a dignified Labrador with its nose elevated, a greyhound missing a tail, a terrier that kept getting overrun by the others only to bounce up again in furious pursuit. They all froze in tableau at the call of a crow, a distant siren, or the arrival of another dog. The owners sat at the perimeter watching, as if at the theater. It occurred to Jessica that she might have been happier as a dog. Then again, she didn’t play well with others.

  She had always had the stride of a country girl and felt that she had to cut through people to get anywhere. She walked at such a clip that someone asked, “Where’s the fire?” On her way to the university, she bumped into an unyielding clutch of trustafarians, gathered for the day’s recreation in front of Poor Richard’s, and one called her a douche cannon. A woman swiped at her from behind with an umbrella. She stopped only to pet dogs or to sideslip between children. In a clear stretch, she tended to run. She seemed to be clashing with everything.

  Walking was how she’d met Andy Clark, on the trail along Bozeman Creek. Later, it occurred to her that it was odd for someone to hike the way he did, with his hands in his pockets. Andy was thirty years old, looked about twenty, and was in no hurry. No hurry was Andy all over. He was good-natured and full of ideas, but Jessica suspected that there was something behind that—not concealed, necessarily, but hard to know, and possibly not all that interesting. Still, Andy’s boyish momentum and playfully forceful suggestions had made him good company at a time when she needed cheering up; and for a while, at least, he hadn’t gotten on her nerves. It was eventually reported to Jessica that, during the production of an independent film in
the city the previous summer, Andy had hung around the actresses so much that he was referred to locally as “the sex Sherpa to the stars.” When Jessica brought this up, she was exasperated to see that it pleased him.

  It was unclear whether Andy had a job, though he did have an office with a daybed for what he called “nooners.” Jessica didn’t learn this appalling term until she’d already experienced it, stumbling absently onto the daybed with him. Her previous affairs had been grueling, and she had promised herself not to do grueling ever again. She saw Andy, initially, as a kind of homeopathic remedy. But then something got under her skin. Maybe it was the karaoke machine in his bachelor apartment or his unpleasant cat or the Ping-Pong matches he pressured her into; the way he darted around in a crouch at his end of the table made it clear to her that she’d never sleep with him again.

  This was something of a pattern with Jessica. Whatever interest she may have had or whatever not particularly spiritual need she felt impelled to satisfy was soon drowned by a tide of little things she would have preferred not to notice. By the time she encountered the wolf, she was sick of Andy. And that would have been that, if he hadn’t continued to pursue her and if she hadn’t had some creeping sadness to escape.

  A few days after her hike to Cascade Creek, Andy invited Jessica to dinner at his father’s house, on a ridge high above the M north of the city. She went reluctantly. On the winding road there, a white-tailed buck trotted in front of the car, wearing its horns like a death sentence. Andy led Jessica with a slight pressure on her elbow through the front door to his waiting father, who seemed to have positioned himself well back from the door he’d just answered.

  “Dad, please meet Jessica Ramirez,” he said. And, in a get-a-load-of-this tone, “She’s an astronomer!”

  Mr. Clark was a tall, thin, sallow widower in an oversize cardigan, whose pockets had been stretched by his habit of plunging his fists into them. His upper lip seemed permanently drawn down, as if he were shaving under his nose. He led them to the living room in a house that appeared to be all windows. The mountains were just visible in the last of the sunset. Mr. Clark didn’t look back or speak a word in their direction, confident that they were following appropriately.

  In the living room, which had an adjoining bar, Mr. Clark made them drinks with a perfunctory “I hope that suits you.” Jessica sniffed hers, and Andy’s father aimed a hard, questioning beam at her. “Okay?”

  Jessica said, “No top brands?”

  My God, she thought, what is the matter with me?

  Mr. Clark turned his querying look on his son, who glanced away, and by some unspoken accord the three headed over to the picture window. It was dark now, and only the lights of the city were visible. Jessica felt as if she were hovering among the constellations, and that lifted her spirits. The way that geologists are liberated in time, she thought, astronomers are freed by space. Mr. Clark touched her glass with his. He wore a piece of eight on a chain around his neck. “Well, stargazer, what’s happening in the firmament today?”

  “Nothing new,” she said. “Some seasonal star clusters and nebulae. Are you interested?”

  Mr. Clark said, “I’m afraid I miss out on all that. I’m a day guy or I’m in bed. Trout fishing is my thing. I have a collection of bamboo rods, by all the great makers. Would you like to see them?”

  “No.”

  Mr. Clark turned abruptly and left the room. Andy gazed after him thoughtfully, before saying, “He’s not coming back.”

  “Seriously? Because I didn’t want to see his fishing poles?” Andy let a censorious silence fill the air. It worked. She briefly thought of ways to make amends, but it was too late now to pour love on the fishing poles.

  Andy didn’t speak as they made their way back down the winding road where they’d seen the deer. Finally, he asked, “What would you like me to do, Jessica?”

  “Drop me off,” she said.

  * * *

  —

  Jessica’s closest friend at the university was Dr. Tsieu, a fellow astronomer, barely five feet tall in generous shoes. When Dr. Tsieu’s baby boy was born, Jessica was nearly the first to the maternity ward; Dr. Tsieu seemed too small to have accomplished such a thing. When Jessica got to her lab, Dr. Tsieu asked her out to lunch, but she said that she wanted to go for a walk, that she needed the exercise—which she did after a morning in front of her computer screen. But her walk up and down Olive Street and around the post office was so restless and agitated that it didn’t provide relief from anything. Of course, she could not possibly have pulled the trigger. Why even go over it in her mind? Why? Why again? And what on earth had made her so sullen with Andy’s father and his blasted fishing poles? She deliberated over this transgression as though it had the same importance as her failure to shoot that man. She wondered if she was just too inflexible. In time, would she become one more peevish old spinster in the hideous rest home behind the Walmart?

  She drove to the mall and, without more of a plan than getting through the lunch hour, wandered into a shoe store. A lone customer stood at the display rack turning the shoes over, one after another, to look at their soles. Jessica recalled the proverb “Hell is a stylish shoe.” A salesman greeted her at the door, a young man with a shaved head and a black turtleneck. Too intimate from the start, he held each selection so close to her face that she had to lean back to get a better look. She felt his breath as he pressed some studded, sparkly sneakers on her. Jessica found it fascinating that he thought she would want these, or the next pair he held up—stiletto-heeled jobs that seemed lewd, as did his smirk. The salesman didn’t conceal his disappointment when she bought a pair of marked-down Vera Wang flats. She bought them because they seemed so pedestrian. Men preferred women teetering, so she chose to walk like a Neanderthal.

  Traffic was thick on North Seventh, and she timed the lights wrong. Glancing at her watch, she failed to notice one turn green and heard a loud horn blast. In the mirror, she saw a cowgirl in a pickup truck giving her the finger. When she moved forward, the truck tailgated her, inches away. Jessica peered sharply into the rearview mirror, stabbed at the brakes, and the truck plowed into her. The two vehicles pulled to the side of the road.

  The door of the truck burst open, and the cowgirl came wheeling toward Jessica’s car. Jessica was on the phone calmly telling the secretary at her department the reason for her delay. She rolled the window down slightly and addressed the raging cowgirl. “Let’s wait for the police. Do you have insurance?”

  The police arrived in a pageantry of flashing lights—a single officer, who got out and chatted familiarly with the cowgirl as she held her thick braid with both hands. Isn’t it nice that they’re friends? Jessica thought. There was no denying her malice, no matter how she tried to stand apart from it. Then the officer came over to Jessica’s car, hardly needing to duck in order to peer into her window. “What’d you do that for?” he barked. Jessica contemplated her steering wheel. “You caused that accident by braking suddenly!”

  “You know the law. She rear-ended me.”

  “Don’t you lecture me, lady,” he shouted.

  Jessica gave him time to settle down before raising her eyes to his and asking, “What is this really about, Officer? Is it because you’re short?”

  * * *

  —

  The next day, Jessica was silent at the department meeting but asked Dr. Tsieu, the only other woman in their group, to stay afterward. Dr. Tsieu tilted her head, hands laced over her stomach, always keen to listen. Jessica said, “I’m going to take a leave.”

  “And?” Dr. Tsieu hardly seemed surprised.

  “I’m losing my marbles.”

  “Anger or disgust?” Dr. Tsieu asked. “Despair, malaise, detachment, loss of purpose?”

  She’s trying to cheer me up, Jessica thought, complying with a grin that felt idiotic.

  “It’s à la carte.”

  There was an anger specialist right there in town, and Jessica arranged to see him, since an
ger was at least one component of what she was experiencing, and she was unaware of a therapist who specialized in disgust or any of the other things on Dr. Tsieu’s list. A friendly giant, the therapist was dressed like an outdoorsman, in Pendleton items that were far too warm for his office. Jessica had never had counseling before and was startled to find the man so interactive. She made a summary of her concerns, and he mugged through every one of them. It seemed that he intended to cure her through his facial expressions. The prickly feeling of confinement she had in his office, the colorized photograph of his wife and children, the diplomas, the complimentary pharmaceutical notepad, and his gooberish attempts to forecast calm all convinced her that this wasn’t going to work. At the end of the session, he asked her to see the receptionist, but she went sightless through the lobby.

  She decided to stick to walking. If that didn’t work, she would turn herself over to some program. There were now customized rehabilitation programs that combined therapy with kayaking, weight loss, and makeovers. It was part of her problem, she thought, that she could foresee a stream of self-evident lectures and desolating group sessions with people who knew why they were angry or disgusted, while her disappointment seemed to be rooted in humanity in general. In college, she had read Faulkner’s Nobel Prize speech, in which he asserted that mankind would not only endure but prevail; these days, she thought that this was the most depressing thing she’d ever come across. She no longer had any idea why she had become an astronomer. Had she expected to live in space?