Nothing but Blue Skies

by Thomas McGuane

  “And what about Gracie? A wonderful girl. How did you spoil that, Frank? She was a big reason I was attracted to you. I had to find out. Ever since that Halloween we dressed up as a ménage à trois. But Gracie was my friend. There’s something about you but it may not be such a nice thing and no wonder she hit the road. No wonder! Yes, Frank, no wonder. And I want to tell you this: in your case, absence doesn’t make the heart grow fonder. Once a person gets away from you, for however short a time, that person asks themself, How, how did I do that?”

  “Soiled yourself with my love wand?”

  “Frank, please.”

  “I was only trying to make things lighter. Besides, I’ve bent over backwards. You sent me to the Arctic Circle, I went. Wasn’t that a living testimonial?”

  “You were just trying, you … it was awful. What an utterly artificial attempt to cast a romantic glow over things. All you ever did with any sincerity was fuck me, take me to the show and fuck me, take me to dinner, fuck me — in other words, fuck me fuck me fuck me!”

  Looking into the truck window in time to hear the end of this speech was Darryl Pullman. Lucy saw Frank’s glance, looked back at the window and moaned in loud despair. Frank slipped the truck in gear and moved out onto the street. “You can’t talk like that around a cowboy,” Frank said. “Not if you want to stay in one piece.” Darryl called to another cowboy standing in the doorway of the bar. The cowboy pointed to his own truck, a big green Dodge, and he and Darryl ran toward it. Frank turned sharply into an alley, came out its far end, went through a closed bank’s drive-up lane the wrong way, down another alley — all alleys he had played in as a child — and emerged in the middle of a Chevrolet used car lot. “Let me out here, Frank.”

  “You don’t want to get out. You want to see this thing through, Luce.”

  Frank watched the darkened street over the tops of the cars. It felt dangerous. Feeling the heat and smelling the perfume, he sensed that the feeling of danger was very close to the feeling of lewdness. Overpowering presences, riveted attention, a kind of desire. And no purpose, a wonderful freedom from purpose. He threaded his way among the vehicles of the car lot.

  There was Darryl and his friend in the Dodge, coming around the front of the railroad station. Frank cut his lights out and slumped in his seat. Lucy did the same, thrilling him with her complicity. He watched closely as the Dodge rolled by just beyond a row of used cars, its headlights splintering around their shapes. The two cowboys never looked his way, and when they had gone a block and a half east, Frank eased out and headed west. He reached down for the headlights as he was moving through the dark. He pulled the switch and heard a screech behind him. Looking into the rearview mirror, he saw the Dodge wheel in a semicircle, its lights jutting upward as the truck squatted with acceleration.

  “Oh shit, oh dear,” said Frank while Lucy covered her face.

  Out on the highway, they were able to maintain an even lead over the other vehicle, but they were going a hundred and Frank didn’t want to do that for long. “I don’t know if you remember Sterling Moss,” he said over the noise. “Great driver, but tore up every car he drove. Juan Fangio was even faster, but his cars never seemed to have even been driven. Something simpatico between Juan and machinery …”

  “Frank, please.”

  “I can’t stop now. Can you imagine what kind of mood those cowboys are in? I have no choice but to put it on them before they put it on me.” Suddenly, he didn’t seem to be moving at all. He watched the stars through the windshield and thought he simply liked Lucy. But the piercing beams behind him brought him back. Bold is best, he thought, then hit the brakes and managed to turn onto a gravel fork in the road. He turned off the lights again. “Frank!” Lucy cried. He could make out the road well enough, and he was sure that he was nearly impossible to see.

  He slid onto another fork that went into dense trees but he could still see lights behind him. In another mile, the road wound around to the north while climbing a washboard hill. They were now in a forest but had to go much slower. There was a logging road going deeper into the woods but he knew that Darryl would just assume he went up it, so he went on, passing another logging road, then another. He turned up this last one. It was muddy and he had to get out and lock the hubs so he could travel in four-wheel drive. When he got out of the truck, he could hear the Dodge laboring on the grade without being able to tell if they had found them. It sounded like they were about a half mile behind.

  Frank and Lucy’s truck was all over the road. The mud was getting deeper and the engine was over-revving as the wheels lost traction. The road was sufficiently crowned that it was all important that Frank keep from sliding off the top of it. The truck was swimming upward from side to side like a tired old salmon going up a river. Then it just wallowed off the crown and buried the hood in muck. Frank and Lucy found all their weight on their legs, as though they were standing under the dashboard. Frank tried the accelerator and the rear wheels became whirligigs of spraying mud. When he turned the engine off, he realized the radio was still on faintly and Merle Haggard was singing: “Not so long ago you held our baby’s bottle. Now the one you hold is of another kind.” He turned it off and sighed.

  Lucy said, “I can’t live like this.”

  “I know how you feel.”

  “No you don’t, you aimless bastard.”

  “You’re just trying to hurt me, Lucy.”

  The windshield was steamed over. She slapped at him while crying out in despair. Then she quit.

  “We can’t just wait here like sitting ducks,” he said. “The moon is shining. Let’s walk out of here.” He pushed open his door against the weight of gravity and looked down. “It’s a bit of a jump,” he said.

  “Don’t start talking like an Englishman!” Lucy cried. She seemed completely out of control. Frank took her arm and guided her to his side of the truck. When he jumped out and turned to help her, the seat was at the level of his chest. He held her hand. She looked all over for a place to land and then just made a wild jump that took Frank off his feet. He sank in the mud under her weight. He tried to make as little of it as possible because he sensed she was about to go mad. But his nostrils were plugged and the necessity of breathing made it impossible to put a completely good face on things.

  Instead of just wading out of the mud, Lucy kept trying to jump feet first like an immobilized kangaroo. Frank crawled toward her, determined to help. Lucy opened her mouth and began to howl like a forlorn dog. Frank kept saying, “I don’t blame you, I don’t blame you. How could I have done this to you?” She was flinging something at him, probably just more mud. Mud didn’t matter now. No matter how much of it, it was just theoretical. He well knew that he was stinking drunk, but he lacked any desire to resist its worst effects. He wished to be free of all conflict.

  Dry ground was only a couple of yards off and soon they were standing on it, kicking out first one foot, then the other, like old-timers recalling their days in the chorus line. Frank smiled broadly and pointed to the west. “Town is that way. And what a lovely night for a walk!” With a look of despair, Lucy trudged in the direction he was pointing, on the small marginal road that went off into the woods. There was a ribbon of stars overhead and Frank was hoping that his head would begin to clear. He took Lucy’s hand in his own and she sort of threw it off. He let it flop on his hip as though he weren’t doing anything with it anyway.

  It wasn’t long before they came to a clearing where several pieces of heavy equipment were parked, including a big articulated log skidder. Frank stopped and looked at it for a long moment. He knew the answer to his troubles lay in technology.

  “Lucy, if I can get that thing started, I can get our truck out of the mud in a heartbeat.”

  “Forget it.”

  “And accept defeat? Not this boy.”

  With the skills of his youth, Frank lay upside down under the dashboard of the skidder and cut the ignition wires with his pocketknife. Touching them together, he fe
lt the diesel lurch. He sat up, pushed in the fuel cut-off, set the throttle, crawled underneath again and hot-wired it. The diesel chugged steady, caught and ran. The hinged cap on the exhaust stack fluttered with pressure and neat puffs of smoke arose and disappeared against the starlight. He twisted the wires apart and let them hang.

  “Climb aboard,” Frank called. Lucy considered it, then struggled up beside him. They were far from the ground. The skidder seemed as big as a locomotive, with a powerful hydraulic forklift in front of it. When Frank put it in gear, steering by hitting first one wheel brake and then the other, the great machine crawled forward on a serpentine course, flattening everything in its way. Lucy seemed almost fascinated, though she must have known things were out of control. And Frank had fixed upon the bogged-down pickup truck as an emblem of everything preventing him going on with his life.

  He got the skidder turning off one way and couldn’t quite get it back on line until a blizzard of saplings went down before them, leaving the air filled with the rupture of small trunks and descending clouds of leaves. This grand machine made its own road, and with their seats high above the destruction, they could feel some of the detached power that intoxicates those at war with the earth. They were back on their road and could make out the strip of sky overhead, which was a better navigation tool than the dark road ahead of them.

  “Where do you suppose those fellows are?” Lucy asked over the engine noise.

  “Long gone.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “They’re back in town by now.”

  “To do what? Get the sheriff?”

  Frank felt a shiver go through himself. He didn’t want to think about implications. He still had a wonderful feeling of living in his own dream. Everything seemed loose and guileless and free. He thought about the rumble of the big diesel going up through Lucy’s butt, making her a real part of his assault on reason.

  “Sunup can’t be that far away,” said Lucy.

  “Oh, don’t say it,” he said, looking back to see if the long yellow shape of the skidder was following him, under control. I’m unbelievably good at this, he thought. He felt he made a handsome picture atop this ten-ton machine, throwing shadows of its combustion through his companion’s interior.

  He had a plan beyond simply keeping up appearances. He would ease the skidder up to the truck, place the forks underneath it, hydraulically lift the truck back onto the road and drive quietly back to town. He thought about explaining it to Lucy but realized she might not care. She was watching to see how this would turn out. To Frank, she had the detached clarity of real despair. She was a goner. Her head bobbed with the movement of the lurching machine. Her mouth hung open.

  He found the truck again without any trouble. He had to turn off the road to get sideways to it. The skidder crawled down off the crown like a big weasel. By flattening a wide swath of brush, Frank was able to get perpendicular to the pickup. He stopped a moment to experiment with the forklift. It was simple: a hydraulic valve lever raised and lowered it smoothly and powerfully. Now he eased forward to the truck. The forks were almost on a correct line to go underneath it, but the muddy bank stopped him several feet short. He backed up and tried it again. This time he might have been even shorter. Once more, and the same result: there was a slick berm that wouldn’t let him crawl up next to the truck.

  He was going to have to use some power. He backed up and revved the diesel. “What are you going to do?” asked Lucy sharply over the roar of the engine. Frank engaged the gearbox and they leapt forward, up over the berm, and speared the truck with the steel forks. “Oh, no,” Frank said. He took it out of gear. The forks were buried clear to the hilt in the lower part of the door. He was sure some lever would get him out of this. He yanked back on the hydraulics and the truck began to rise, streaming mud and water from its undercarriage. Lucy let out a noise of despair as it lifted over them. By the time the skidder stopped lifting the truck, it was possible to see the chassis, the muffler and exhaust pipe. Lucy was still letting out an awful noise.

  “This baby could end up in our laps,” Frank explained. He had to change the emphasis fast. He knelt on the floorboards and thrust his head up under Lucy’s dress. This usually gets them, he thought, and buried his face in her crotch. It was pure magic. Her dress seemed to light up around him. He could make out its flower pattern in a thrilling illumination. He could hear her voice, “Frank! Frank! Frank!” and felt her fingernails dig into his scalp. She wasn’t enjoying this. The thrashing got worse. Better have a look. He sat back on his haunches and threw the dress back over his head.

  They had him in their high beams, Sheriff Hykema, Darryl and Darryl’s friend from the bar. Frank looked around like a blind possum, trying to process all this information. Lucy was pushing her dress between her knees as she sat on the tractor seat of the skidder. High overhead, Darryl’s pickup dropped clods of watery mud onto the engine-heated hood of the skidder. Frank stood slowly, held his hands up and surrendered.

  It wasn’t until they reached town at sunrise, in all its harrowing colors, that Frank realized that Lucy too would be booked and jailed. Darryl followed them to town in his truck, which they had carried to dry ground with the skidder. When they reached the courthouse, Frank immediately began to bargain with Darryl. He would like to have kept this secret from the bland and somehow alarming sheriff, but it wasn’t possible. Darryl didn’t want to speak to him at all. Frank knew he’d have to go quickly to a viable offer. They wouldn’t even have had this moment if the sheriff had realized that a bargain was in the offing.

  They were sitting in a room where Frank remembered taking a written test for his driver’s license. There was still an eye chart on the wall.

  “Darryl, there’s no sense in my apologizing. Things just got away from us there, a man-versus-machine deal fueled by alcohol. I see this doesn’t strike you as funny. But … how many miles your outfit got on it?”

  “Sixty-one thou.”

  “You do take good care of it.”

  “I did.”

  Frank saw that he was touching a deep issue here. “Well, look here. Can’t I just take your truck and buy you a new one?”

  Darryl looked over, right into his eyes. Welcome to the twilight world of prostitution yawning before you, thought Frank.

  “New?”

  “New.”

  “And what do I have to do?”

  “Drop the charges, hoss.” Frank could see the clenched motion in the sheriff’s shoulders from his seat in back. Lucy just watched things going by. There was a long silence from Darryl, not a sound. The sheriff looked at Frank. Frank would think about that gaze for a long time. He seemed to be taking in the long way Frank had fallen.

  Lucy, Frank and Darryl got into Darryl’s truck. First, they went to Lucy’s house. She got out and in shame, rage or both, walked straight to her door without a word to either Frank or Darryl.

  “I think she’s sore,” said Frank. He was getting depressed.

  “Yeah.” Darryl looked depressed too. They sat for a moment in front of Lucy’s house, the truly ghastly colors of a new day rising behind the tall ash trees along the street, jerky bird movements among the branches.

  Darryl said, “I wonder if there’s anything we could have said.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. The whole thing is a bad deal.”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” said Frank.

  “Well, it wasn’t her fault.”

  “Let’s get you your new truck. Maybe if I take a good hammering on that I’ll feel a little better. I’m almost suicidal.”

  “You’re just sobering up.”

  “There are a couple of other things.”

  “They call it self-pity.”

  “Okay, Darryl, I’ve got it coming.”

  Darryl put it in gear and headed up the street to Frank’s house to get his checkbook. “I’ll just be a sec,” Frank said, and went in the house. He pulled out half the drawers in the kitchen befor
e he found what he was looking for. He could have waited a bit and stopped at the office, but he knew Eileen was so demoralized that his appearance would have put her away. He also knew he couldn’t bring himself to break in a new secretary. But now he had the checkbook and went back outside.

  Darryl was gone and a note fluttered on the sidewalk gate: “Forget it.”

  35

  He sat with his fishing tackle at the great corrugated base of a black cottonwood tree whose broad and leafy branches shaded an undercut run. He rolled over on his back and watched the big white clouds, barely moving toward the east, drifting on in a unit against the insistent deep blue of the sky. This seemed to him to be a grand and wholly acceptable arcade where his various sins were simply booths to be revisited with amusement. He wondered how Dante had failed to perfect one of his circles for the philandering sportsman: ravaged by his own hounds, flogged with his own fishing poles, dancing over his own buckshot. He joyously felt himself idling, an unreflective mood in which water was water, sky was sky, breeze was breeze. He knew it couldn’t last.

  He got up and strung his rod together and in a minute he was in the river with a box of flies in his shirt pocket. He could barely sense his business behind him, spinning toward failure. He didn’t even have waders but was comfortable in the summer flow. The river was low and the gravel bars were prominent. He moved along until he could find some fish feeding. There was nothing going on where he had slept, in the deep run, though surely there were fish there. Nothing in the sparkling tail-out below the next big pool. But in a slender side channel he saw a string of fish feeding on flying ants.

  Did he have a flying ant imitation in his fly box? He looked and yes, he did. He tied it on and made a very cautious presentation to the most downstream fish. The fish took in a silver swirl that faintly betrayed the colors of its flanks. Frank gave it some slack; the fish dropped back where it couldn’t scare its fellows and in a minute was in hand, an East Slope cutthroat, a rare bird on this river. He let that one go and eased up on the next and caught it, a little butterball brown trout that jumped four times. He hooked the next one; he could see it was a brown trout by the yellow flash as it took his fly down. A smart fish, it moved up through the others, scared them off, bolted and broke the fine leader.