Nothing but Blue Skies

by Thomas McGuane

  This was a high-spirited crowd, though. People stood up in their seats to call across to neighbors. There were hundreds of cowboy hats and gimme caps like Frank’s that formed a rich carpet sweeping toward the stage. Frank knew many hardworking ranchers and farmers, but he saw none of them tonight. Overhead projected a steel frame that suspended the lights for the stage, empty now except for a piano and a standing microphone before the curtain. For almost twenty minutes, nothing happened except people looking for their seats. Frank surmised that some subtle change in the lights, some infinitesimal fading or brightening, which caused rock-and-roll audiences to explode like plankton, must have occurred because the audience began to stamp its feet and shout. The noise increased like a volcano. Frank felt fear, felt it in gusts as something rolled over him that he did not quite understand. Could these people really be from around here?

  The slit in the curtain opened as in giving birth, and out trotted not only Lane Lawlor but Frank’s own child Holly. She twirled in her white cowgirl boots and ten-gallon hat. A roar went forth from the audience. Frank had no idea Lane was so popular. Where have I been? he asked himself as the crowd around him began to flow upward into a standing ovation. Frank stood too. He didn’t have the nerve to leave his arms at his sides. Instead, he raised his hands and held them, palms in proximity as if clapping. Lane patted the air in downward motions of his arms to ask shyly for quiet. The fact that he was a big clumsy man seemed to help him. For a moment the audience was having none of it. They defied his request and cheered louder. He let his arms hang at his sides and dropped his chin modestly. At length, the noise subsided and everyone settled into their chairs. Holly darted everywhere, keeping the energy high. To Frank, she seemed to be having a fit.

  As Lane moved to the microphone and made a few practiced adjustments, Holly softly played “The Streets of Laredo” behind him on the piano. She faded out as he began to speak. Very quietly he said, “Montana is not a zoo.” The audience boomed its response. Frank looked around in alarm. One large man behind him was pulling his mouth apart by the corners and emitting a terrifying whistle. There were numerous gimme caps flung into the air, though as of yet none of the more expensive cowboy hats.

  About six rows over, Frank spotted Sheriff Hykema. Lane muttered away as if talking to himself, about how it was not our obligation to provide comfortable housing for animals that had lost the talent for survival in our modern world. “Hey,” he said, “if you can’t hack it, here’s the door!” This produced general, respectful applause. Then Lane stepped back from the microphone and, profiling himself to the audience, tossed his head back and howled like a wolf. They knew what he meant by that! A roar of laughter blended imperceptibly with more applause. “Fern-feelin’ prairie fairies gonna getcha!” he said, then joined their good-natured laughter, tried to get serious and dropped his forehead to the microphone helplessly. He lifted his head and aimed his mouth at the ceiling and called out, “God, can you tell me, ’cause no one down here can: why do these out-of-staters want us to have a system in Montana which has failed in Russia?” The pandemonium produced by this question was slow in subsiding. “And as far as the federal government goes, there’s more gunfire in a Washington, D.C., playground on a good day than there was in a month in Dodge City in eighteen hunnert and seventy-five!”

  “Yeah!” they shouted back at him.

  “Read your history!”

  “Yeah!”

  “Listen to your conscience!”

  “Yeah!”

  “Let me make it simple for them sonsofbitches: we’re the good people; they’re the bad people!”

  “That’s right!”

  “I wanta tell you. The cold, cool waters of the West are flowing from her wounds. They are leaving Montana while I’m talking to you. What wouldn’t I give to dam the smallest one, that creek a little child jumps across. If you are unlucky enough to run into someone who wants those rivers flowing elsewhere”— here Lane took a suspenseful pause —“gut-shoot them at the border.” A roar went up. Holly struck thunderous chords on the piano. “Gut-shoot them at the border!” Another roar, another howl from the piano. “Gut-shoot them at the border!”

  Some crazed-looking woman was climbing up over the front of the stage. She struggled to her feet. “Hey, lady, the evening is still young,” Lane sang into the PA system. He inverted his palms near his face like Jack Benny. The audience laughed out a kind of encouragement. The crazy woman staggered for balance across the stage while Lane backed away in mock terror. Then Frank saw: it was Gracie! Was she in on this too? Gracie strode across the stage to the piano and yanked Holly to her feet. A sound from the indignant crowd swept forward.

  Frank stood up. Holly was struggling with her mother under the cones of light from the overhead grid. Lane was doing a ringside commentary: “You’ve got to choose sometime, Holly … Folks, I’d like you to meet Gracie Copenhaver, owner-operator of the now defunct left-wing hot-tubbers’ hangout Amazing Grease. Remember, the Constitution guarantees your rights even when a parent tries to abrogate them. Folks, what’s happening to my piano player? Looks like Mama’s in a world of hurt. You call that an excuse? Holly, you’re younger and stronger. You have the Bill of Rights on your side! You have the Fifth Amendment! Don’t let your mother drag you down into the kind of life she has created for herself!”

  Frank was on his feet, shoving people out from in front of him. One rancher seized his arm and Frank knocked it loose, hard. He climbed up and over the stage’s apron, gripping the nonskid carpeting on the stage, the shadow of the microphone across his back. As soon as he had his feet under him, he dove straight into the middle of Lane Lawlor, pummeling him as they went down. The sound from the crowd was like that from a provoked animal. It rolled over Frank like a gust or an ocean wave. That was all he saw. In the flooding darkness, he remembered the long-ago trip to Utah when he’d argued with Gracie and Holly played dead in the pool. They were together again. “Holly!” he called into the mountain of denim. “Gracie!”

  49

  He felt his lips. They had become objective facts, cracked and swollen. He made a squeamish perusal of his head with his fingertips: nothing really horrible, no stitches, but a dull ache at the very back of his head, a traditional boot target.

  There was a breakfast tray beside him. Who brought it? It looked wonderful. He thought, Some nice person brought me my breakfast. He felt love just sort of leaving him and going into space. There was the Journal rolled up beside it. How good. There were three codeine tablets with water; someone had anticipated his present headache. He swallowed them. And now for the world.

  The news of the world was full of failure and miscues. Ford was recalling 641,562 Aerostar minivans. Currency traders were dumping the pound. Japanese trust banks’ pretax profits plunged. The criminal investigation of Salomon Brothers continued. Bond prices slipped again. The usual remedies for jump-starting the economy were not succeeding. I know why, thought Frank. It’s because we’re disheartened. We bought all the stuff, we shit in the nest, we don’t believe in anything. How dare you jump-start us with reduced interest rates! We’re the folks who butt-fucked the goose that laid the golden egg! We can no longer be jump-started!

  There was a strong tread on the stairs. “Mr. Copenhaver?” came a voice in the pause between audible steps.

  “Yes, who is it?”

  “It’s Brad Taylor, Mr. Copenhaver. I’m with Security Merchant Bank.” There was no further sound.

  “That’s my bank,” Frank called back suspiciously. And this, he thought, was what was known in my father’s day as a young whippersnapper.

  “I have Dr. Jensen down here with me. Who would you like to see first?”

  “How the hell should I know? I don’t know why I would need a doctor and I don’t know who you are.”

  There was a pause.

  “Dr. Jensen said I should go ahead. May I come up?”

  “Come on.”

  Brad Taylor stood in the doorway with a file folder
in one arm, dressed in a gray suit with a silver-and-red-striped tie and his hair combed so that it fell to one side. “How do you do, Mr. Copenhaver.”

  “How do you do.”

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Fine, considering I received the combined weight of two hundred corn-fed farmers and ranchers united in the service of world fascism. How old are you?”

  “Twenty-four.”

  “Your whole life ahead of you. What an appalling prospect.”

  “Thank you.”

  This one was in a fog, thought Frank. “Ordinarily, I deal with George Carnahan. I’ve seen him in a few tight spots over the years, and given what a spineless puke he is, I take it you’re bringing me bad news.”

  “I’m afraid I am.”

  “I see you’re a shy boy.”

  “I’m nervous.”

  “Don’t be. This isn’t your fault.”

  “I know. Still, I hate to be in on this kind of thing.”

  “What kind of thing?” asked Frank, his suspicions further aroused. You run with the pack for years, then one day you note a circling tendency and find yourself in the center.

  “Well, there was a tremendous shortfall on those cattle we floated. And we’ve seen the clinic and the condition it’s fallen into. We’ve been very troubled —”

  “Don’t be. The Japs just bought a painting for six million. At least somebody’s gonna eat these critters. It’s more than just blue sky.”

  “But is it?”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “We’re concerned with the reaction of our examiners.”

  “Piss on ’em. Besides, that’s banker double-talk. This imaginary figure called the examiner. The most ordinary people reject this bullshit. Banking is nothing but a pyramid scheme. You’re an apprentice swindler. George Carnahan is a more polished swindler. That’s why he’s not here today. Brad, it’s a bleak thing that an attractive young man like you should already be making references to the examiners.”

  Brad Taylor looked completely dazed. He held up the file folder and said, “Why don’t I leave these for you to go through. George thought it was only fair, given the long relationship we’ve enjoyed with you, to let you know the remedies we’re seeking to cover our losses on the cattle.”

  “You going to try to take the clinic?”

  “I’m afraid we are.”

  “I’m afraid you aren’t.”

  “We’d let you try to sell it, but our position takes all there is.”

  “What about this house?”

  Brad nodded.

  Frank told him, “Over my dead body. This motherfucker has been the site of my hopes, dreams and failures ever since that day in October long ago when I gave up being a hippie and set out to make a fortune. I brought this house back into our family. Tell you what, explain to George I’ve got several show pigs over in Reed Point. They need a new home. We’re deep discounting them all and several of them kiss pretty good by George’s standards. Tell him I said so. Take the file folder with you and goodbye.”

  Frank rolled over and waited for the exit steps of the young man and the sound of Dr. Jensen’s ascent. I require that these rich scenes occur in my own unencumbered home, Frank mused, with its deed in the cupboard. Here I have farted, cooked, dealt and procreated coequally, enriching its thousandfold oak boards with my own life. If there are to be dramatic scenes of my decline, let them take place in this fine Montana home.

  Now comes before us Dr. Jensen, wishing to know if Frank is comfortable. Frank said that he was, and asked if the doctor had examined him before he regained consciousness. The doctor said that he had, and concluded that Frank suffered a concussion. Frank thanked this young doctor for making a house call while still in his spandex bicycling shorts. The doctor said that he was welcome. He said this idly because he was checking out the house, taking in the oak floors, the depth of crown molding, the swirling shapes of the staircase, the fancifully paned windows, the ice-cream, deep, hand-troweled, perfect plaster with its frieze of tangled roses ’round the top. Frank gazed at him, seeing right into this, and thought, In a moment he will pant like a coyote hazing jackrabbits into traffic on the interstate.

  Dr. Jensen took Frank’s wrist between his thumb and forefinger, raised his arm to drop his sleeve away from his watch, then studied its dial. “What’s the fate of our old clinic?”

  “Why do you ask?” Frank said. “You’re not there anymore.” He smelled something.

  “Er, well, because this could be a good time to open communications again. Various efforts at resettlement in other spaces have been less than perfect.”

  “So, you guys might want back in?”

  “Might.”

  “Gets pretty dicey when you can’t co-op the electronics and stuff.” Frank figured out the smell, an old college favorite, a men’s cologne called Canoe.

  “Absolutely.”

  “Well, you’re too goddamn late. I’m selling it to a Wop for a noodle factory.”

  As Frank said these things, he wondered whether he meant any of it or if a desire for a dark-sided fulfillment at the expense of his adversaries had given him a lingo of revenge that he donned like a disguise. He hoped this wouldn’t be the birth of a new, obnoxious Frank Copenhaver, but in his present wooze, he wasn’t sure. He just felt that, out here alone, he had to fight his battles stylishly because in his failing greed there was an errant valor in complicating the lives of well-paid white people.

  “Phil tells me you made off with his wife for good.”

  “I’m afraid she got a taste of the good life and kept on rolling. Got her a car dealership in Great Falls.”

  “So the pressure is off everybody.”

  Dr. Jensen smiled at him mildly. Not patronizingly. To him, Frank seemed to be a lawn ornament, perhaps, or a float in a small-town parade. He was reaching Frank a piece of paper, which Frank perceived, with a bit of cynical closure, as a bill. But it was a citation for disorderly conduct from Sheriff Hykema.

  “I asked him not to wake you up,” said Dr. Jensen.

  Frank fell asleep again after the doctor had gone, and thought he was dreaming when George Carnahan stood at the foot of his bed and said, “How dare you talk to my impressionable young associate as you have.” Frank flowed along with the dream, enveloped in its unfolding. “How dare you take any position other than that we have treated you with inordinate flexibility and kindness, unwavering Christianity and goodheartedness, in your many years of reckless wheeling and dealing. For reasons none of us can understand, you have ceased entirely paying attention to business. Several of my older colleagues have suggested that you have reverted to being the fog-bound hippie we remember you to have been, as though it were some sort of debility that must one day surface. And finally, how dare you call me a spineless puke and a pig-kissing swindler. I am your old friend and business acquaintance who hates to bring you bad news. If in avoiding doing that personally I sidestepped a painful moment, so be it. And now I would like you to examine these.” By now Frank’s eyes were open and he knew it wasn’t a dream.

  “George, get my glasses off the mantel.”

  George brought Frank his reading glasses and Frank examined a stack of identical checks on which someone had signed his name and wrote “1st payment,” “2nd payment,” down to, ten months later, “last payment.” The funds were used to buy a small filling station. Frank looked up at George and studied him in his checked tweed jacket. George had loose jowls and a tiny, disapproving mouth.

  “Who owns the filling station, George?”

  “I’m afraid it’s Eileen.”

  “What do you know about that?”

  “I’m waiting to hear.”

  “Do you know this station?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is it a good one?” Frank asked.

  “I’m afraid it is. Out on an empty stretch of road toward Whitehall. I mean, there’s about one living in it, but it’s doing eighteen percent, pretax. She runs it tight as b
ark on a tree and makes damn sure she preserves her margins.”

  “I taught her to speak and now she curses me.”

  “She will when you turn her in.”

  “Who said I was turning her in? Did I say to you, George, that I was turning in my old secretary?”

  “Frank, you’re not yourself. This head thing. At your worst, you’d always have been able to spot someone bending over backward to save you.”

  “Unlike others in the business community, I’ve taken a pause to relocate some meaning.”

  “You took a pause when Gracie left, Frank, and now your pause is jammed. When I get back to the bank, the VPs are going to be on me like flies on shit. They’re gonna ask me. And what am I gonna answer? I’m gonna answer, It’s irreversible.”

  “You can read about it in the papers, George. Consumer pessimism is on the upswing. Besides, I am not going broke. I’m just relinquishing day-to-day responsibilities.”

  George had had enough. He left. Frank rolled up in the covers, forming a tube with just his face sticking out. He looked out at the big blue sky. It made a pleasant abdication to think of himself as an atom compared to outer space. He had a sense no one was buying his reevaluation of his life. Soon it would be time for him to ask if he was buying it himself.

  50

  “You’ll have to sit up.” He opened his eyes and there was Lucy with his dinner on a tray. He was woozy from codeine but glad to see her. She was wearing a pure white linen blouse and skirt. It seemed a miracle to find the only person he knew who lived in this peculiar zone.

  “It’s like being in the hospital,” he said with a puzzled smile. He hoped he would seem to be referring to something far larger.

  “You might as well be in the hospital.”

  “Where’s your nurse’s costume?”

  “Very funny.” She pinched his cheek. “Very funny.”

  She put the tray on his lap. It looked appetizing: a breast of chicken encrusted with some herbs, butter beans, half a roasted yam, a little salad, quite nice indeed.