The Sporting Club

by Thomas McGuane

  Each time Quinn, a kind of ghoul, sent up one of the rockets, he heard the roar of the horde from the woods toward the lake. By all signs, he was alone in the clearing. The sniveling, honking, fluting and licentious whimpering had stopped. The unmistakable odor of the fluids which excitation brings to the fore had blown away with the breeze of the North Woods and Quinn smelled only that breeze and the agreeable spice of burning rocket fuse. Another went up and showered pistachio green. The roar of the horde followed. Quinn liked this feeling of remote control. Another aloft and this one is … Pock! this one will just be the plain red. (Horde roars.) Now a multicolor followed by the straight exploder that you think leaves black light. A dimmer horde roaring. Quinn lights everything in sight and it is like D-Day. There is no response from the horde.

  Quinn circled the high ground, keeping on the far edge of this elevated contour, toward the lake. When he reached the point of its perimeter that was closest to the lake, he could see them below. The illusion was of something under water which made light. You could see a shape of light moving in the trees as through the broken surface of water, and the shape was a marine one, enlarged at one end and tapering like a shark. The light was yellow with a patina of white. It all moved with the muttering of a horde toward the lake bed.

  By traveling the downgrading edge of the ridge, Quinn was able to crosscut ahead of them and wait on the hard bed of the lake. He heard them approach now with a steady drone of voice that seemed pitched at some unnerving harmony and was punctuated with the regular tambourine crash of guns and equipment. The nearer they came, the more nervous it made Quinn, and in a moment he was back up on the slope of the ridge watching their progress below. As they came through the last trees at the edge of the lake bed, the broken sheen of lights appeared to be a swarm of fireflies. But when they moved into the open the light solidified into the single slender tapering shape again that undulated gently onto the floor of the lake.

  Quinn was filled with horror. He watched their progress. When they reached the far end of the lake, the light closed in upon itself to form a ball and stayed that way for ten minutes throbbing very slightly in the blackness. When it moved off into the trees to become a swarm again and disappear, it left a single still light behind. Quinn headed for it in trepidation.

  The expanse of the dry lake seemed endless and the thousands of fissures made his progress slow. As he approached the light, a darker shape like a huge blurred potato stood out beside it. He was hard put to distinguish it though, even standing before it. “Shit fire!” it said unconvincingly. It was Fortescue. He had been tarred and feathered. When Quinn asked, he said the Olives had gotten him. Fortescue sobbed and Quinn stared at him helplessly. The lamp threw a merciless light over him and he was unquestionably out for the duration. He was so heavily covered with tar that his limbs were indistinguishable; and out of the tar protruded a hundred thousand feathers, each with its own blue shadow. Fortescue’s eyes were barbarically fierce spots in the roughly fledged surface. And when he opened his mouth to talk, the unreflecting contrast of feathers made his tongue and the inside of his mouth gleam unnaturally red as though poor Fortescue had been interrupted feeding on a corpse.

  “Can you move?” Before he answered, the horde roared out louder than before for a long sustained moment and died away. “Can you walk?”

  “No, God damn it, no. Give me a hand though and see if I can stand.” Quinn took his thick roadlike arm and helped him to his feet. He stood in a stoop like a tremendous chicken and fell down again. “They laughed at me!” he bawled.

  “Well, you look funny you know—” Fortescue began to pull himself together abruptly.

  “Oh, but God damn it, Quinn, I’m going to die, it’s so hot in here. I can’t close my hands. If I blink, my whole scalp moves. I—” He began to cry slightly, then, with a heavy lateral movement, lurched over onto his stomach and sobbed like a child. Quinn felt tears start sympathetically to his own eyes and he laid his hand upon Fortescue’s back. The heavy, feathered surface flexed very slightly from the heaving underneath.

  “Did Earl do this to you himself?”

  “Yes.” A huge broken sigh expired. “But I don’t blame him. None of this could have been thought up without Stanton.”

  “You really blame him for all this—”

  “Certainly I do. Here I am crying in front of you. I don’t suppose … I mean you’d never…”

  “Not a word.”

  “These people have gone haywire tonight.”

  “I think so.”

  “The world isn’t like this, is it?”

  “I think it is.”

  “But Quinn, I’m an old man. It isn’t like this.”

  “Yes, but I think it is.” By this time, Quinn could see the light of the horde. It moved across the end of the lake toward the river. Once he had made certain that Fortescue would be all right and secure beside the lantern, he headed to intercept them.

  At a long clearing in the birches, he found them preparing to duel. They were counting already. Olive moved a step at a time with exact placement of foot while Stanton goose-stepped in mockery. The horde stood back and Quinn crowded in with them where he was assured of what he had already known: lead bullets. Quinn felt a complete and hopeless quietude, as though it were a natural phenomenon. He couldn’t resent what was happening because there was nothing for it, nothing; no flying tackles, nor interferences of authority, nor breakdowns, redemptions or recognitions; no dreams, plasma or miraculous interventions; it was object firing at object, and when that was done, one object would have ceased to operate due to mechanical failure brought about by the penetration of a lead bullet.

  At ten, Stanton spun, fired and missed. Quinn saw it. It was deliberate. He stood facing Olive with his chin on his chest, the weapon at his side. Olive held his gun with both hands for steadiness. He had as much time as he wanted and at twenty feet he could explode Stanton’s skull in a shower of meat and bone splinter. Quinn saw that Olive’s face was swollen with minor injuries but his eyes were open and intent. He raised the end of the gun and fired over Stanton’s head. “You bastard!” Stanton roared, as Olive flung the gun into the crowd, running. “Oh, my god, you bastard!” The crowd, now an insane heterogeny of Olive’s gang and the club, rushed around Quinn and past him and into the trees, the lights all around him and the sound of voiceless hurrying. Olive was not far in front of them. He was driving himself into a corner where the steep plateau met the river and they were after him, now that Stanton hadn’t done his work. Quinn kept up and dodged aside when an old white birch cracked and went down onto the sodden ground. He couldn’t see who was leading them and he knew the frontward edge of the horde was well ahead of him. Then they began to pile up in noisy confusion and, deep behind as he was, Quinn realized that they were confronting Earl Olive. Quinn pushed through to where he could see him. He found him, back to the river, transfixed by the beams of all their lights as though he were pierced by them. In his face was a look of transcendent terror and when it was shouted that he was unarmed, they rushed forward. Olive threw himself into the river. The horde rushed down the bank to stay alongside him and kept their lights on his head and the arms that beat the tortuous current around him. Below was a gravel bar and they raced down to it, filing noisily out onto its shallows. Olive floundered helplessly toward them, borne on the fast and gleaming tide. As he neared them, he began to bay that Stanton would make them pay; Stanton wouldn’t let anything happen to him, he bayed abjectly. They caught him at the bar and dragged him to land, all falling upon him, grabbing and punching at him. Quinn saw him go under them, only his feet showing, kicking and flailing the air like a baby’s. Quinn pushed his way in, found Scott striking at Olive with a heavy root. Quinn kicked Scott mightily in the groin and the crowd took no notice when he fell. One of the mercenaries had Olive by the ears and hair and was trying to drag him to his feet when Quinn nailed him and started beating into the crowd with his fists. They made short work of Quinn, and Scott ha
d the pleasure of tying him up.

  A minute later, hands tied in front of him, he was being pushed along beside Olive who was slung from a pole by his ankles and wrists. Olive suffered extremely. They had tied him with a striped silk necktie and Quinn had the impression he would be the centerpiece at a banquet. The blue cowboy shirt had pulled out of the top of his pants to reveal an expanse of flaccid white belly and the whole great torso swung from side to side with the motion of the carriers. Olive’s head hung down unexpectedly far as though his neck were too long. He talked brokenly and told Quinn what a letdown this was in his life. He was being treated like a dog. Stanton had treated him like the gent he was by shooting him in a proper duel. Now Quinn knew Stanton had gotten to him. Olive was a believer. He gazed, upside down and ahead, with numb sentimentality and contentment.

  They entered the compound, the men and women trudging, the children dancing out ahead with lanterns. They were brought up short. Sitting in the hole where the time capsule had been removed was Stanton. He had set up a tripod-mounted, air-cooled machine gun and he looked set on mayhem. He told them to free Olive, which they did. He and Olive bade goodbye from a distance and Olive leapt crowing into the absolute darkness. As a good measure, they freed Quinn too. Stanton told them to sit down. Anyone who moved, he promised, would be snuffed out. Quinn could see him shaking from here. He was altogether batty now and the machine gun was trained into their midst.

  After a couple of hours, they began to fall asleep. Quinn stayed awake for a while thinking that Janey was gone. He could see Stanton, eyes open as though blind, shaking at the grips of the machine gun: the poor man. In a while, Quinn dozed off fitfully. He woke up in the predawn morning and Stanton was still behind the gun like a zombie. He fell asleep again only to wake up a few minutes later to the terrible firing of the gun. Stanton had slumped into the pit and the blazing gun was shuddering with its bursts and explosions of fire. Everyone was bolt upright now as they watched Stanton struggle to train it on them. The belt of ammunition jerked beside the gun and ran into it with terrible slowness. Then Stanton vanished, slumped into the hole again; a long moment later, his hand appeared and hauled on the trigger and the gun raged into the trees over their heads. The belt of ammunition crept, then stopped. There was a long pause; Stanton crawled out of the hole, crazy and confused, and tried to operate the gun. Quinn walked over to him. It was the end.

  * * *

  The police, five of them, came up the main entrance the next day. Quinn, the only member there who saw nothing to hide or preserve, was cooperative. He answered all questions with an agreeable and efficient air. He watched the cops press around the photograph, making a blue shrine of their bodies. He felt this hermetic, outlandish thing punctured at last, a century of bad air expiring. The publicity and uproar that followed that year produced a decline in Quinn’s business. The feeling in Detroit was that he had sold his own kind down the river.

  Item: The following appeared in Judson and Judson, International Real Estate Brokers’ annual:

  Gentlemen’s sporting club with a past! Largest private holding in Northern Michigan! 29,000 acres first and second growth pine and many winding miles of trout teeming Pere Marquette River, both banks! See deer, bear, beavers, birds! Reportedly, small basin could be reestablished by construction of dam! Considerable stockpile of hand-adzed timber and period roofing material! A number of buildings provide convention and conference possibilities. Tempting subdivision potential in this water wonderland northwoods vacation paradise. Region beginning to show promising turnover in A-frame sports-chateau sites and holiday farmettes. Ready access via Highway 76 and nearby airfield which handles up to twin-engined craft. Price and brochure on request. Ask for “Club With A Past,” property #1980.

  A little thought would have saved the broker’s fee. Stanton bought the Centennial Club the day it was offered.

  He generously deeded Quinn’s house to him. They met the following January. Stanton fetched him at the front gate in the cutter between whose restored shafts was a beautiful Morgan gelding, fat as a pullet, and flecked with dark gray in its lighter gray coat. Stanton introduced the stableboy, a cultivated young man in an Icelandic sweater who said he would walk back. Stanton was thinner and Quinn wondered if he himself could have aged so. They rode silently under blankets as the horse picked its way down the path off the plateau and came beneath the ridge that was now a white bluff of snow onto the lake bed. Quinn stole a look at Stanton whose features had clarified impressively under madness and loss of weight. He seemed heroic and at one with his illusions. Stanton threw ripples down the reins and the gelding picked up its stride until the runners hissed and the wind lifted the long winter mane of the horse. Quinn watched him smile up into a sky of no stars whatsoever with a bearing of unspecific mastery. Quinn’s face tightened pleasantly under the cold sting of wind. Stark ridges of pine enclosed their circle of snow. “James, old pal,” Stanton said, “you have outlasted me. Learned persons have expressed doubt that I am ever coming back…” His voice trailed away content.

  When they got to the house, the stableboy was somehow waiting for them again with the butler, another keen young man with a clipboard and indeterminate crewcut. This one took their coats impatiently. They passed into the house, the young men sticking close to their elbows. Stanton stopped suddenly in the hallway and said to the two, “Stand back, you bastards, now. I need room to breathe.” They fell away a bit. Stanton started upstairs to change for dinner and the two, hovering under the moose head, watched him ascend. He caught Quinn’s eye with a smile and turned to them again. “Just because none of you can hit the bowl,” he pronounced, “you think everyone should walk barefoot in your pee. I don’t buy it.” He continued up the stairs and the two fluttered into his wake. When they were close, he turned and feinted at them; they fell back and Stanton went up laughing.

  Waiting for dinner, Quinn and Janey talked to each other with careful familial heartiness. She had pictures of a visit Stanton had made to Texas the previous year. One showed him standing in front of a parked car with a cloud of alkali dust still hanging in the air behind. The photograph caught him with a wide, blind smile on his face and a wax-paper cone of roses in his hand. The car nudges an adobe barbecue in the sun, miles from the champagne cellars of Waco. Another shows him with Mom and Dad in the hot fog of the mineral spring. They all three wave as if showing written messages on the palms of their hands.

  At dinner they had platters of partridge and wild rice, two bottles of cold Traminer. Stanton talked well when he remembered; he never faltered from forgetting but stopped cleanly and waited for Janey to cue him. Afterward, they went downstairs to the gallery. Stanton no longer had his pistols; but he had plywood cutouts that were much the same; and they paced off, turned and said “Bang, bang!” at each other soberly. Then someone invisible upstairs announced Stanton’s bedtime. Quinn went up then too; though it wasn’t until later, in bed and still awake in the big, strangely stilled house, that he felt each of their presences, compromised and happy, each asleep and dreaming, like bees in cells of honey.

  BOOKS BY Thomas McGuane

  Nothing But Blue Skies, 1992

  Keep the Change, 1989

  To Skin a Cat, 1985

  Something to Be Desired, 1983

  Nobody’s Angel, 1982

  An Outside Chance, 1980

  Panama, 1978

  Ninety-two in the Shade, 1973

  The Bushwhacked Piano, 1971

  The Sporting Club, 1969

  Thomas McGuane

  The Sporting Club

  Thomas McGuane is the author of several highly acclaimed novels, including The Bushwhacked Piano, which won the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Award of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters; Ninety-two in the Shade, which was nominated for the National Book Award; Panama; Nobody’s Angel; Something to Be Desired; Keep the Change; and Nothing But Blue Skies. He has also written To Skin a Cat, a collection of short stories; and An Outside Chance,
a collection of essays on sports. His books have been published in ten languages. He was born in Michigan and educated at Michigan State University, earned a Master of Fine Arts degree at the Yale School of Drama and was a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford. An ardent conservationist, he is a director of American Rivers and of the Craighead Wildlife-Wildlands Institute. He lives with his family in McLeod, Montana.

  FIRST VINTAGE CONTEMPORARIES EDITION, FEBRUARY 1996

  Copyright © 1968 by Thomas McGuane

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

  Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

  Originally published in the United States in hardcover by Simon and Schuster, New York, in 1968.

  This edition is published by arrangement with Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc., New York.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  McGuane, Thomas.

  The sporting club : a novel / by Thomas McGuane.

  — 1st Vintage contemporaries ed.

  p. cm. — (Vintage contemporaries)

  ISBN 0-679-75290-0

  1. Hunting and fishing clubs—Michigan—Upper Peninsula—Fiction. 2. Young men—Michigan—Upper Peninsula—Fiction. 3. Upper Peninsula (Mich.)—Fiction. I. Title.