Gallatin Canyon

by Thomas McGuane

  “So sorry to leave you standing there,” the man said when he returned, guiding Briggs forcefully into the house. “I’m Olin Halliday, Olivia’s father. Not too proud to eat in the kitchen, are you?” Briggs obediently followed Halliday through swinging doors. The kitchen met more than the ordinary domestic requirements, with a freestanding chopping block, a commercial-grade stove, and a double-doored freezer. Halliday pointed to a dripping bag suspended over a large mixing bowl. “Making cottage cheese. Not ready yet. I hope you like brisket. I like brisket way too well, and I never seem to get it quite like I want it, though this time I’m close. I try to smoke it long enough to start the neighbors complaining. Then I know I’m on the right track. Like everything else, you have to put in the time.”

  At last they were seated on stools at the chopping block. Halliday carved the brisket with a broad razor-sharp knife, which he wielded rapidly, each perfect slice just tipping over of its own weight as he started the next. Coleslaw, “my tomatoes,” beet greens, corn bread, and iced tea. “Should have beer but I can’t keep it in the house,” Halliday said. Then he began to eat with the absorption of a hungry man eating alone. Briggs waited a moment before following suit, the food so good it created an appetite.

  “As you have seen,” Halliday said, mouth still full, punctuating with his fork, “Olivia cannot drink. Cannot but does, and shouldn’t. She is the kind of alcoholic usually described as ‘hopeless,’ but of course she is not hopeless, and I’m not without hope. Are you?”

  “I hardly know Olivia.”

  “There’s a difference between taking responsibility, Mr. Briggs, and blaming yourself for everything. There should be a line between the two. Olivia does not see that line.”

  With every remark, Halliday scrutinized Briggs, and because of his sky blue eyes, his gaze may have seemed more penetrating than intended. Just then Olivia called down in a near screech, “Tell him what they did to me!” Halliday and Briggs looked at each other in silence, Briggs alarmed.

  He said, “What does she mean by that?”

  “It’s always something new,” Halliday said, looking away. “She has hung on to her job at the hospital. I’ve helped there; an argument can still be made that she’s viable.”

  “You tell him.”

  “I’m afraid this could go on. Have you had enough to eat?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t be worried; this is the best place she could be.”

  “I hope so.”

  “I’m her father, Mr. Briggs, and I’m a doctor.”

  Briggs felt no urgency to respond. After a moment had passed, he asked, “Where is Olivia’s mother?”

  “Olivia’s mother is no longer living. I delivered Olivia, and I adopted her. Olivia’s mother was not married.”

  “Has her mother been dead for a long time?”

  Halliday smiled cheerlessly. “She’s been dead almost since Olivia was born. She jumped off Carter’s Bridge and went all the way to North Dakota before what the fauna of the Great Plains had left of her was found. It was sad, it was unforeseen, and it was certainly not anybody’s fault, least of all Olivia’s, but Olivia doesn’t see it that way.”

  “What can you do to help someone get over that?”

  “Nothing that’s worked, as you can see. But now I’m going to try something new and, to tell the truth, I’m optimistic. Olivia is almost pathologically shy, and I’m persuaded that this is connected to the grudge she holds against herself. She is quite dependent upon me, especially financially, which has caused plenty of resentment. That’s my only lever but it’s a good one. Anyway, long story short, I am going to require Olivia to join Toastmasters International.”

  Halliday watched complacently as his new idea sank in. Briggs suspected that he wasn’t the first stranger on whom it had been floated. He began to wonder what other miracle cures Halliday might have attempted on the poor girl. “I don’t get it.”

  “You don’t have to get it. Olivia has to get it. I’m going to help Olivia ground herself. I want to revise her core values. You don’t know the boyfriends she’s had. I want her to learn to recognize and avoid losers. But she’s got to learn how to boldly share her message. She’s got to quit going off on tangents. I think if she looked within and learned the skills of public speaking that she would delight audiences with dynamic presentations by simply unleashing her inner self.”

  “I’ve never heard of anything this crazy.”

  “I take that as a compliment. It doesn’t bother me to be ahead of the crowd.”

  Briggs left immediately, making his exit as rude as possible. As soon as he was under way in his car he was aware of the smell of Olivia’s perfume, which was somehow more conspicuous in her absence. He hardly had a profound connection to her, but he could not get her out of his mind. For the first time his car actually did seem like a jalopy. Halliday had surely taken him for a loser.

  “I don’t have a garage,” he could have explained. “Why leave a good car sitting out in the weather?” This was the first of his imaginary dialogues with Olivia. One about drinking left him believing that she was possessed, an idea whose tawdry allure was obvious. He imagined a priestly intervention during which evil spirits were exorcised and Halliday, with his pop theories, stayed well to the rear. Briggs understood that these daydreams were meant to allay some heartache.

  Briggs spent most of September making repairs on his place, getting ready to go back to work. He repainted the shutters, a maddening job because of all the louvers. He set pack-rat traps and pruned the raspberry patch. He alphabetized his library, a recurrent task since he never put books back where they belonged. He changed the water filter in the basement and removed the ghastly mushrooms that had volunteered there. The lawn seemed to have stopped growing, so he put the mower in the garage. Next to the barn was a stack of old boards that had warped and rotted beyond use; he pulled the truck around in order to haul this trash to a safe place for burning. He was nearly finished when he reached for a heavy sheet of exterior plywood, which he had to raise on its edge to drag it to the truck. As he lifted it, he felt something like the blow of a stick against his leg. He raised the plywood higher and saw the coiled rattlesnake, dropped the plywood, and backed away with a chill. He drew up his pant leg and saw where the fangs had gone in and the slight reddening around the marks. He pulled off his work gloves and decided he’d take the back way to the hospital in his truck. He wondered how bad this was going to be.

  It was a half-hour drive, and the serious ache and swelling commenced. He parked close to the emergency entrance, next to two old ambulances, and limped into the waiting room. The nurse, filling out forms, was a long time acknowledging him and when she did so it was by the mere raising of her head. When he explained what was wrong, she told him to have a seat. They must see a lot of snakebites, Briggs thought. The spot where he’d been bitten was now quite enlarged and had acquired a dusky cast that worried him.

  Eventually, the nurse instructed him to fill out a form, which he did with growing awareness of the pain. Then she said, “I’ll take you to your room. You’ll be spending the night.” She turned and Briggs followed her down a brown corridor with the usual antiseptic smell and stainless-steel tables on wheels. She left him in the room. He propped one foot on the toe of the other to alleviate the rhythmic ache and found himself perspiring. He reached for the remote control, turned the TV on, and then turned it off immediately.

  A few minutes later, Olivia entered in a nurse’s uniform. “Let’s get rid of those pants,” she said. As Briggs lay in his shorts, Olivia bent close over the wound and studied it in silence. “Right back,” she said, and left the room. When she returned a few minutes later, she had a metal tray with a syringe on it. “I don’t like this stuff,” she said, “but the poison has spread and we’ve got to use it. It will help with the pain. We’re talking pronto.” Briggs had planned a conversation designed to crack this mystery, but Olivia was leaning over him, studying his eyes as she pressed the hypo
dermic into him, and with the enveloping wave he was overcome. “Feels so good,” she said quietly. “Doesn’t it?” He nodded slowly, infinitely grateful for the bite of the rattlesnake. She held his face in her hands and gazed at him as he went under. “I just know it feels so good.”

  When he awoke the next morning, he doubted everything he remembered. He checked his leg to see if he’d been bitten by a snake, and thank God he had. He noticed that the pain was gone. He rang the call button next to his bed. A nurse entered, a tall, peevish woman of fifty, carrying a copy of Field & Stream. “I’m better, and I’m going home.”

  “Doctor will decide when you can go.”

  With Briggs’s impatience growing, it was a blessing the doctor came soon. Close to retirement age, he was a well-groomed silver-haired man, exceedingly thin, in polished walking shoes, cuffed serge pants, and a sparkling white smock.

  “How do you feel?”

  “I feel fine, ready to go home. I suppose the nurse is off today.”

  “What nurse?”

  “The one who treated me last night.”

  “I treated you last night. You were sound asleep, like you’d passed out. In any case, I couldn’t wake you: I went ahead and did what I thought best. I gave you a good slug of antivenin.”

  “I clearly remember a woman coming in and treating me.”

  “I hope she was pretty. It was a dream.”

  “Let me ask you something. Is Dr. Halliday on duty today?”

  The doctor looked startled and a little evasive. He said, “Dr. Halliday lost his license to practice a long time ago. Of course, we feel terrible about it. His daughter has stayed with us, and we hope that’s some help in a very regrettable situation.”

  Briggs left the hospital in the same dirty clothes he’d worn to paint and clean his yard. He drove home, parked by the woodpile, and killed the snake with a hoe, then went up to the house to read his mail and check his phone messages. He felt an incongruous sadness about killing the snake, which had tried in vain to get away. The refrigerator was still well stocked, and he started a pot of spicy vegetable soup. He smelled mothballs and remembered the blankets he’d put in storage the day before.

  On Wednesday, he took three shirts and a sport jacket to be dry-cleaned. He usually went to Arnold’s, where he had an account, but it was closed on Wednesdays so he drove a few extra miles and carried his things into Bright’s. The smell of cleaning fluid was a little stronger in Bright’s, and he wondered whether that meant they were more thorough or just harsher on the clothes. To the left of the long counter, a broad woman with her back to him operated the electrical revolving rack. She said, “Be just a sec,” and compared a slip with that on several garments going past. She found what she was looking for, a tuxedo, and took it down to hang on a rigid rack next to the cash register, before turning to Briggs: it was her, the woman who’d accosted him at the farmers’ market. She recognized him first and covered her mouth with her hands. “I wondered if I’d see you again. I so have to apologize to you! I completely and utterly thought you were someone else.”

  “Don’t give it a thought,” Briggs said with reserve. He added, “I gather you took a number of other people for someone else.”

  This puzzled her. “No, just you.”

  “I was led to think otherwise. Guess it’s my turn to apologize.”

  “Can we call it even-Steven?”

  He hoped to have a chance to speak to Olivia about this. So, later in the fall, when he received an invitation to her wedding, his first thought was, Of course I’ll go.

  In the receiving line, Olivia, jubilant and tipsy, hung around the neck of her new husband, a glass of champagne in her hand. The wedding party was clamorous, gathered under the old trees behind the house with the red shutters. The husband was a specimen of tidy manhood, with black, tightly clipped hair, blue eyes, and ears like little seashells; he wore a perfectly tailored dark summer suit and a colorful tie that spelled out the word Montana—not the state but Claude, the French couturier. Briggs wondered if he was wrong in thinking the groom wore eyeliner. Olivia touched the champagne glass to the tip of her nose and giggled when Briggs appeared. He knew right away that he wouldn’t be able to ask his questions. He pumped the husband’s hand and wished them all the luck in the world. He meant it, even though he felt the same queer longing on seeing Olivia. It was her husband’s turn to go for a ride.

  During the ceremony, rain clouds had grumbled overhead and now the shower began. The wedding party rushed to the house with hilarity, and Briggs decided this would be a good time for him to leave, but Olivia detained him, resting her outspread fingers on his shirt while the rain fell on them both. She was remarkably heedless in her beautiful wedding gown, and Briggs caught sight of the groom’s face in the hall window. “You were so good to me that time and so patient with my father,” she said.

  “Where is your father?”

  “We got him out of here.” She was close to him as she spoke. He felt her breath on his face and his heart was racing. “I’m glad I had the chance to”—she smiled—“to give you a lift when you were in the hospital.”

  The rain redoubled, sweeping down through the canopy of leaves, and they fled to the house, Olivia disappearing into the happy crowd. Briggs didn’t know quite what to do with himself. He made his way back to the kitchen where he’d dined with Dr. Halliday. It was empty. He went to the sink and ran the tap until the water was cold, filled a glass, and drank it down. The pandemonium outside elevated for an instant as the kitchen door opened behind him. When he put the glass down and turned around, he was looking into the face of the groom, aggressively close to his own. He stared at Briggs in silence. “I hope you understand that you will never put your nasty hands on her again,” he said. “Get over it.”

  Briggs looked at this handsome well-cared-for man. “It will be hard to give up,” Briggs said.

  “But you will, won’t you?”

  “I suppose. It was so intense, the last time, in my car, the air bags deployed. But, yes, you have my word.”

  The groom reached out his hand and Briggs took it. The hand was so clammy that Briggs had an instant of sympathy. In the groom’s face nothing changed. “Have we got a deal?” the groom asked, and Briggs pretended to agonize over the decision. He let the conflicts play themselves out on his face, then heaved a great sigh.

  “We’ve got a deal,” he said, his voice resigned.

  As they strolled back to the party together, Briggs decided that spicing things up in this way was absolutely the last favor he would do for Olivia. He watched the groom go to her and whisper in her ear. Olivia looked over at Briggs, smiled at him sadly, he thought, and waved. Hello? Goodbye? He wasn’t sure.

  The rain had stopped, and something caused the wedding party to gravitate to the stately elm shading the lawn, its leaves just starting to change color. Briggs followed until he was part of the half circle of celebrants facing Olivia, who stood on a small dais, placed there, he supposed, for this purpose. “I’d like to propose a toast!” she called out, in a voice that carried remarkably. He barely heard her words but stared, spellbound, at her wide, confident smile, the steady movement of her head as she took in all the guests, and the hand gestures that would have been clear from the nearby mountains. Her voice rang out expressively, each syllable occupying its own time and space. At the end of her toast, she clasped her hands to her chest and bowed modestly to the admiring applause and, without looking, reached out a regal hand to her new husband.

  Cowboy

  The old feller made me go into the big house in my stocking feet. The old lady’s in a big chair next to the window. In fact, the whole room’s full of big chairs, but she’s only in one of them, though as big as she is she could of filled up several. The old man said, “I found this one in the loose-horse pen at the sale yard.”

  She says, “What’s he supposed to be?”

  He says, “Supposed to be a cowboy.”

  “What’s he doin in the loose hors
es?”

  I says, “I was lookin for one that would ride.”

  “You was in the wrong pen, son,” says the old man. “Them’s canners. They’re goin to France in cardboard boxes.”

  “Once they get a steel bolt in the head.” The big old gal in the chair laughed.

  Now I’m sore. “There’s five in there broke to death. I rode em with nothin but binder twine.”

  “It don’t make a shit,” says the old man. “Ever one of them is goin to France.”

  The old lady didn’t believe me. “How’d you get near them loose horses to ride?”

  “I went in there at night.”

  The old lady says, “You one crazy cowboy go in there in the dark. Them broncs kick your teeth down your throat. I suppose you tried bareback.”

  “Naw, I drug the saddle I usually ride at the Rose Bowl Parade.”

  “You got a horse for that?”

  “I got Trigger. We unstuffed him.”

  She turns to the old man. “He’s got a mouth on him. This much we know.”

  “Maybe he can tell us what good he is.”

  I says, “I’m a cowboy.”

  “You’re a outta work cowboy.”

  “It’s a dyin way of life.”

  “She’s about like me. She’s wondering if this ranch supposed to be some welfare agency for cowboys.”

  I’ve had enough. “You’re the dumb honyocker drove me out here.”

  I thought that was the end, but the old lady said, “Don’t get huffy. You got the job. You against conversation or somethin?”

  We get outside and the old sumbitch says, “You drawed lucky there, son. That last deal could of pissed her off.”

  “It didn’t make me no never mind if it did or didn’t.”

  “Anymore, she hasn’t been well. Used to she was sweet as pudding.”