The Sporting Club

by Thomas McGuane

  “I don’t see why that has to be ridiculous.”

  “It’s ridiculous because you’re childish.”

  “Am not.”

  “Are so.”

  Into Quinn’s head flashed a view of himself before an emergency meeting of the board. A lady from Flint who had formed a controlling coalition of minor stockholders was accusing him of childishness. “J’accuse!” she cried from under her net-covered birdscape hat. “J’accuse!” His father was among the figures at the meeting, fabulously corpulent, employing two chairs to keep his memorable behind off the boardroom floor. His refrain was “Flagrant neglect!” and it was sung counterpoint to “J’accuse!”

  “J’accuse!”

  “Flagrant neglect!”

  “J’accuse!”

  “Flagrant neglect!”

  His father was wearing a flat West Indian planter’s hat and smoked oval cigarettes in a burnished pewter holder. He sat next to the lady from Flint, in Quinn’s mind, and tormented Quinn until he no longer cultivated the fantasy. Instead, he worried about his absence and about the moist wads of business letters that seemed to pertain to small problems but which may have been the insinuations of vast financial cancers. Only gradually did his mind return to the party which had become quieter and less ridiculous than he had planned. In fact, he and Stanton were the only ridiculous elements in it. All around, darkness enclosed the screen wall, though the yellow interior light was happy and reassuring. Moths and flying beetles beat against the screens and bounced away to beat again in an irregular guitarlike sound. Quinn looked over at Stanton who had rested his chin on the piano, a cigarette in his lips that stretched out perpendicular to the piano’s surface. One of his hands, held invisible, pecked out “Clair de Lune” falteringly. He sang a few lines of the song around the wobbling cigarette, without lifting his head from the piano or removing the cigarette; and now he smiled out at his imaginary audience, his great teeth locking the long white cigarette horizontally. The glow of its end was reflected on the surface of the piano until the ash fell and obscured it.

  Quinn was touched from behind. He turned. It was Jack Olson more familiarly dressed in faded work clothes and loggers’ shoes. He confirmed his prediction about the fishing. Quinn put his drink down and looked around to see if he’d left anything. Olson checked again if Stanton were still coming and Quinn nodded and waved him over. Stanton advanced, placing one foot before the other. Quinn explained about the hatch and they agreed to change into waders and meet back of the main lodge.

  Fifteen minutes later, Quinn and Olson stood waiting for Stanton. Even on high ground the air was full of duns settling into the trees to oxidize and mature. Olson was switching his rod back and forth and shaking his head; angry, probably, asking himself why he had gotten involved. Olson was a serious sportsman, with rigid and admirable ideas of sporting demeanor. He managed the club, Quinn knew, to put himself onto its thousands of private acres which he had poached all through his youth and continued, more conveniently, to poach as a man.

  Quinn knew Olson’s study of problems natural to the taking of trout and bringing grouse to the gun had made him so knowing a woodsman that many of the members whose forebears had formed the association resented him. Quinn had more than once seen their reproachful glimpses of Olson’s old Heddon rod as they unloaded the two-hundred-dollar magic wands from fitted leather cases. They didn’t like the way he shot his brace of partridge out of their woods on his day off and they didn’t like the way he did it over a scruffy working Springer when all their professionally trained Llewellyns, Weimaraners, German Shorthairs, Labradors, Chesapeakes, Goldens and Wirehaired Pointing Griffins ran deer, flushed birds two miles from the gun or collapsed from overeating. During the annual meeting at the Book-Cadillac Hotel, there was always a discussion of whether or not to charge Olson dues. What sustained this annual joke was definitely not its humor; and there were members who weren’t trying to be funny and who regarded Olson as an impudent interloper.

  None of this quite got back to Olson. The membership well knew that any hint of it and he’d be gone. No one could replace him. His years of poaching on club property gave him knowledge of it all. He knew where salt licks had to go, what crop had to grow in the open valleys and when it had to be knocked down to make winter-feed for the game birds; he knew how to keep the lake from filling with weeds and reverting to swamp; he knew when herons and mergansers were glutting themselves with trout fry and had to be discreetly bumped off with his twenty-two Hornet; he understood completely how to intimidate professional poachers from the nearby towns who, if they found one chink in his mysterious armor, would run like locusts over the tote roads at night, shining deer with aircraft landing lights and spearing trout on the weed beds. A nest of eagles had been in use for a decade under his management, in spite of glory runs by members of local varsity clubs. The main lodge was calked and varnished at generous intervals; the Bug House screened and shingled. The lake maintained a good head of native-bred trout and the woods sang with life. All of this the Centennial Club got rather cheaply, considering. What they didn’t like was Olson’s primacy in the blood sports. They wanted to be the heroes and Olson made them look like buffoons when accident forced comparison. In short, they wanted to kill as he killed without the hard-earned ritual that made it sane. For Olson, hunting and fishing were forms of husbandry because he guaranteed the life of the country himself. When the members came swarming out of the woods with their guns and high-bred animals and empty hands to find Olson, with his unspeakable Springer spaniel at his feet, turning a pair of effortlessly collected grouse over a small bed of hardwood coals, or when they found him with a creel full of insect-fed trout and had to conceal the seven-inch mud-colored hatchery trout that looked more like a cheap cigar than a fish and that they had nearly smashed the two-hundred-dollar fly rod getting; when all that happened, they wanted to call the annual meeting right then and there and tell this interloper to get off the property before they got a cop. Then they remembered he was the manager and it became more complicated without changing its impulse.

  With no apologizing, Stanton said, “Lead me to fish.”

  “Let’s go,” Olson said shortly. They started down. All three men had flashlights and played them about the path at their feet that sloped down to one end of the woodcock marsh. The duns now seemed to hang in the air like gauze and Quinn continually brushed them away from his face and hair, squinting downward to the small disc of light that skimmed the path in front of him. Stanton hung back until Olson was well in front and whispered to Quinn, “Is Herr Olson impatient with me?”

  “I was impatient with you.”

  “Mister Quinn, I never wear my Bug House clothes to the river.” Quinn noticed Stanton’s multi-pocket vest and brush pants in the penumbra of his flashlight. They went on down as the angle of the path’s decline began to flatten out and they could feel the coolness of the low ground rising about their legs. Quinn heard Stanton behind him swear to himself bitterly. In front of them now, the river rattled in its hard bed. “Vernor,” said Olson at the bank, “why don’t you wade up to the rollway pool from here. Stay to this shore and you will have hard gravel all the way. When you can’t hear the river running so hard you’ll know you’re at the pool.”

  “I know where the pool is,” Stanton said.

  “Okay. What fly have you got on?”

  “Let me worry about that. Goodbye. I’ll meet you back here.” Stanton got in the river. The pines at the far side were completely black; the sky above lighter and the river below a sheen, also lighter. Stanton soon disappeared but they could hear him wading, a deeper note than the river made without him. Olson turned to Quinn. His green suit made everything but his face disappear. It seemed to float, rounder because his hair was thinning.

  “Why don’t you drop down a ways and fish the off bank back to here,” he said. “You know the river.”

  “Fine with me.”

  “I’ll fish below the creek outlet.”

>   “I think you’re giving me the break,” Quinn said.

  “Plenty of river for us all. Does Stanton know how to find that pool?”

  “I think so.”

  “He knows all the answers, doesn’t he?”

  “You must make allowances,” Quinn said.

  “Shit too,” said Olson. A sample of the talk that brought his name to the fore every year at the Book-Cadillac. “Anyway, catch a fish.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  Quinn got in the river and waded to the far bank where he knew the current had deposited enough gravel to leave a safe walking ledge. It was never comfortable wading at night though; he could see the water around his waist shine so that he knew where it was. But the sight of bottom that was so reassuring when wading in fast water was lost. As he waded, he switched out line from the end of his rod, working it gradually into the air. The big wind-resistant night fly was hard to move until he had thirty feet of line up and then it began to carry and hiss as it passed overhead. He began to fish automatically, taking his exercise, thinking. He was just beginning to be able to fish as he wanted to. It would always be a week until he could relax and bear down and fish with exactitude. But the hatch now was passing already. Too bad. Olson would feel responsible. The nighthawks that crossed back and forth above him were disappearing with the duns. Otherwise the spring uproar was at a peak, the forest as raucous as a one-man band. The river here was narrow with stable banks that let the trees grow close. Above his head they left a corridor of stars obscuring with streamers of cloud. Quinn knew Stanton was at the foot of his pool swearing and flogging water, wanting at any cost to come up with the best catch. Stanton was a competitive fisherman; that is, an odious apostate. He tried to beat fish out of the river. When successful, he challenged you with them. Olson who, as a fisherman, was his opposite number, fished deferentially and awaited his occasions. There were none of the streamside brawls between man and fish that grace the covers of the sporting periodicals. Olson had his unique alchemy and fished for sport. He kept only the fish he needed.

  The sky had grown heavy and Quinn stopped casting and reeled up. The air seemed dense and he stood where he was and waited in the steady rush of water. The first thunder came and a hot seam of lightning opened across the southwestern sky. He knew it was dangerous to be in the river and he turned to wade back. Grape-size drops of rain started to fall and take the sheen off the river. He was dry only a moment more and then he was soaked through to his underwear. His hair clung to his skull. Unnerving drops ran down from the base of his neck and the sky overhead kept fracturing with livid fissures of light. He had to be careful going downstream. The tendency to trip on obstructions was increased with the current behind. When he could see Olson silhouetted on the far bank, he crossed over. Olson gave him a hand and he clambered up. They sat down and watched the river for Stanton. Olson had no fish either. Both men watched the sky, hoping the lightning would stay to the south and that Stanton would know enough to hurry. They waited another twenty minutes until the storm was tossing the tops of the trees and lightning was forking skeins of white light in the sky, then flashing afterward, soundless, like the retina of a camera. Stanton appeared on the far side and began to wade carelessly across, not strategically, but walking across the stream until, fifteen feet from their bank, he went down. Olson skidded in and told Quinn to stay where he was. Quinn saw Stanton in the darkness, floundering and trying to get his feet under as Olson reached him. Their struggle made the water-reflected light shatter and curl away. They started again toward the bank, Stanton having maintained his fishing rod somehow; they went slowly and Quinn knew Stanton’s waders held a tremendous weight of water. When he got to the bank, Quinn took the rod from him. He could hear Stanton’s stertorous breathing. There was no hope of getting up the bank with the waders on and he had to shed them. Quinn helped him. Olson emptied the boots and flung them up on the bank and climbed out behind. “Give me some light, Jack,” Stanton gasped. Olson turned on his flashlight and Stanton pulled up a heavy brown trout from his creel. He held it under the jaws and tail so that the butter-colored belly hung in a curve and all of the black and orange spots showed. “Take that,” said Stanton with a wild and unexpected laugh. Olson was going.

  “I’ll see you boys in the morning,” he said. He started up the path and soon was invisible to them.

  “Is Olson miffed?” Stanton asked. “Or need I even ask?”

  “We were damned nervous about the lightning.”

  “He was patronizing me, old Quinn.”

  “I don’t think so. We were both pleased to see you picked up such a good fish.”

  “It is a good fish, isn’t it. I’m not sure I remember seeing you or Herr Olson with such a trout, for all the celebrated expertise.”

  “That’s right, Vernor. There has never been a fisherman like you.”

  They crossed the compound again. Quinn was determined to go back to his place, read and begin a program of avoiding Stanton. But there was still activity and the group had moved just outside the Bug House. Stanton and Quinn walked over. “Nice to see you,” said Scott. There was a clamor as Stanton strutted with his trout aloft like a bullfighter with the ears of a bull. They were all gathered around a barrel of oysters that Spengler had flown in from Delaware. There was a basket of thin-skinned, almost translucent limes. Quinn borrowed one of the irons and a plate, then pried open a half dozen of the chalky, small oysters, revealing interiors as smooth as the inside of a skull. He squeezed lime over all of them and, lifting them one by one, sipped off the juice and with the surreptitious aid of his forefinger slipped each oyster from its moorings and into his mouth. Then he began again with the iron. He joined Stanton, carrying six new oysters. Stanton was talking to Fortescue who was once president of the club. Quinn had a better chance to observe him than he had had during their discussion of horse at Ypres. Fortescue wore military twill pants and an English hacking jacket; he had the face of a crazy spaniel. Quinn moved in to listen. Stanton was telling Fortescue that Jack Olson was trying to take over the club and turn it into a private shooting preserve. Quinn said, “That’s not true.” Stanton went red.

  “Don’t interfere, James. I won’t pay dues to have him patronize me. He’s done it before and now I want him drummed out of the corps. If Herr Olson wants to undertake contests, he has to take his chances.”

  “Patronizing you is not the same as taking over the club. I don’t see why you equate them.”

  “Give him a step and he’ll outflank you,” said Fortescue. “It could be a feeler.” Fortescue turned his right hand at an oblique angle to illustrate the flanking maneuver. He illustrated its effectiveness by holding the other hand supinely in place and allowing the right hand to flank it repeatedly, piling up advantages.

  Quinn felt that something had to be said; but he knew he had sacrificed his position already by stringing along with the jokes that led up to this juncture. What made circumventing Stanton even trickier was the presence of some not quite visible plan which showed itself in Fortescue’s cooperation. Short of the pieties of woodland life to which the club subscribed so heartily, nothing pleased them more than internecine strife. Stanton knew how to manage this impulse. In the episode with Olson, Quinn saw the beginnings of something catastrophic.

  2

  Native Tendencies

  THE next day, after a flash of hatred had kept him awake through half the night, he settled into a state of contempt for Stanton’s motives. He spent the morning expecting him to come down and had prepared a speech, sharply reprehending and corrective; but Stanton never came at all and Quinn’s anger burned away, leaving him, by noontime, relaxed again and comfortable. After making himself a small meal, he decided he would take a long walk and went around the back of his house down the path with its coarse entanglement of peripheral vegetation. He came to a place where the path split up in six directions, scattering high and low through the woods. He halted, undecided, knowing what country each of these paths
ran to but unable to decide which to take. So he resorted to sinistrality, the art or practice of turning left.

  The first left turn took him below the cottage to a piece of rich bottom land so round and low and free of heavy trees that it must recently have been water. The path skirted the lower end, bearing toward the river, and forked. Quinn turned left. This new path wandered about forty feet and swung up, intersecting the other branch; at the intersection, Quinn turned left and was back on the original path that soared up a brush slope, then glided down the other side into a long frog-roaring oval of standing water with its lid of pads and algae. Quinn went left around the perimeter and crossing its lower end sank halfway to his knees in black stinking muck that launched a cloud of mosquitoes up around his head. He slashed away at them until he regained the path on the other side and climbed a short distance, still striking at the mosquitoes so ineffectively that he could see four of them standing cloudily in his forevision, on one side of his nose. At the end of the last ascent, he was in a close but breezy deciduous woods, strolling on the firm ground wind-freed of insects, when he was confronted by an especially pointless path that went off through heavier going to the left. He hesitated, then took it, following no more than a rod when it opened on the end of a long, hotly sunlit paddock; at one end of it, Janey lay naked on her back in the smoky spring sun, her breathing slumbrous and regular. Quinn’s eyes turned slowly, searching the clearing for Stanton; then his gaze settled upon her again lying in total female repose of lax unresisting limbs. She was below the level of breeze and not even her hair moved. The canyon of light above her was flaked and spinning with motes and insects, the trees too, everything, was in motion but her unmoving form stationed in his path as final as a landmine.

  Then Quinn saw how he must get out of there, tumescence and all. There would be no explaining should she awake and find him rooted to the spot like a thief-proof cemetery marker. The retreat alarmed him as much as anything, the fear of her looking up in time to see him scuttling bushward, his polychrome mental picture safely fixed. But he was back on the main path, trudging along toward his cottage again, the brief experiment with sinistrality finished.