Panama

by Thomas McGuane

  “What do they want from you?” asked Catherine.

  “I don’t know. But my job is to make them think they’re going to get it.”

  She looked at me; you know how—long and assessing, ending with a sudden grin. I want to isolate this, the sudden smile, emerging as it does in Catherine as—what?—well, as a sunburst, from deep thought. Similarly, when after puzzling over some confusion, Catherine says no, it is as sudden and fatal as the sunburst smile. It is over. Do you see? Over.

  Then we went and hung around the Richmond–San Rafael bridge. I stared ruefully at Alcatraz while Catherine wrote our names on the abutment, in a heart, with a chalky stone, scratching away and talking about the South and the poor complexions of San Francisco while I, as usual, talked about the dead and near-dead. Catherine, strong and living, had thrown herself at my feet. I couldn’t shut up.

  I had at that time a bodyguard who had had a distinguished career as a U.S. Marshal in Portland and Northern California. His name was Roy Jay Llewelyn and he had survived many shootouts in Federal Service. He had also sent many people to Alcatraz, and as Catherine and I played, he gazed serenely at its impregnable shape.

  Roy knew many other hired guns in the area, some U.S. Marshals, and they were a little society of men who showed each other their bullet holes. Later, when Marcelline spoke of triggermen, I thought of Roy.

  Roy took Catherine and me to the dump at south San Francisco. The triggermen were there, car lights trained on a hill of rubbish, shooting rats. On the hoods of their cars were supertuned Pachmayr combat pistols. The hill was ignited like a movie screen, and back in the dark, the cigarettes of gunslingers glowed over the sound of AM car radios. Now and then, a voice: “There’s a damn goblin, Roy.” A rat would creep through the glare of illegal hot car lights—quartz iodide shimmer on wet fur—and Roy Jay Llewelyn would drop into position and let the goblin have it. As night sank in, hungry rats threw caution to the winds while Catherine and I crawled into the back seat of Roy’s triple-tone Oldsmobile. Gently, I undressed Catherine for the first time while the younger gun hands crowded around Roy. We made love for a long while as the automatics popped and rat parts flew among the rubbish. San Francisco then had been an earlier song, a song of Alcatraz, pet stores, Japanese-Croatian restaurants, gunmen, and rat gore. Love affairs have begun more prettily; but that was the only one we got. I was a star and couldn’t just walk around.

  Catherine had been living for a year and a half on three Maxwell House coffee cans of inherited jewelry. She was so frugal then that there were, when I met her, still two cans left, including the one that contained her great-aunt Catherine’s emerald bracelet, bought for her by her husband when he commanded a ship for the Navy in China.

  I swept Catherine off her feet to the Sherry-Netherland Hotel, years before rich rock-and-roll fascists took it over. At that time, it was a hotel where the staff specialized in memorizing faces just to tell you how good it was to see you again.

  I was making a tremendous living demonstrating, with the aplomb of a Fuller Brush salesman, all the nightmares, all the loathsome, toppling states of mind, all the evil things that go on behind closed eyes. When I crawled out of the elephant’s ass, it was widely felt I’d gone too far; and when I puked on the mayor, that was it, I was through. I went home to Key West and voted for Carter.

  We set a room service record.

  I would send out for little things. A single pack of Salem Longs. Trifles. We had much sex, even while on the phone; or during Ed McMahon dog-food commercials, where a spaniel would choose between two bowls. When Catherine took her chair into the bathroom to play with the taps, I knew we’d been in the hotel too long. The message light was flashing on the phone. There were huge blue grapes soaking the morning New York Times. I called to check out. News of what I’d done to—or, I should say, on—the mayor had hit the hotel. The staff stared at me. I said the mayor would soon be writing spy novels in prison like other government felons; but I had little conviction. They didn’t like me and they didn’t think I was funny.

  At La Guardia, I wore dark glasses and ate about a pound of Oreo cookies, after which I could have really nailed the mayor, but I thought, “Why cry over spilt milk?”

  Nighttime 707 Commuter to Miami: little reading lights ignited the disembodied arms in rows in front of me, arms which listlessly flipped airline magazines, or held cigarettes to stream smoke into the cones of light now and then swept aside by the air current behind a hurrying stewardess. All of us passengers were torn from our origins. Red and green lights shimmered on riveted aluminum wings and beneath us my little America, my baby madhouse, deployed towns and farms and cities against the icy ruinous transept of time and the awful thing which awaits it.

  Catherine and I swallowed cocktails from the cart, though we seldom had the correct change and drew ugly glances from the stewardesses. I felt that my hands and feet were swelling up and that the pilot had falsified the cabin pressure. I felt too that having to go up and down the aisle at night, to put up with incorrect change and the flight crew’s demand for snacks, was infuriating the stewardesses and that any minute an atrocity directed at the sheeplike passengers with their magazines could break out. Catherine and I were in tough shape mentally; and we had started to fear the stewardesses. As though to throw fat on the fire, they began to gather in the tail of the plane, to ignore the call buttons and to block the toilet. My stomach was full of butterflies and when I saw an old man gesture helplessly to a stewardess as she shot to the tail, I felt I had to do something for us all. I unfastened my seat belt, catching Catherine’s alarmed glance, and started aft. I thought as I glided above the passengers that I saw their hopes of something better winging to me.

  The stewardesses glowered toward my approach. They were in a little group. There were sandwich wrappers and styrofoam. An aluminum door was ajar behind them and toilet light flooded forth. They had more food than we did. They seemed to glance at one blonde, a Grace Kelly type with a Bic crossways in her tunic. I was afraid.

  When I reached them, I said, “There’s an old man who needs a glass of water. Can you help?”

  The blonde stared through me. Then she reached up and touched a switch. Over three hundred passengers, RETURN TO SEAT appeared in lights.

  “Hit it,” said the blonde.

  “I wonder if I—”

  “Can’t you read?”

  “The old man needs—”

  “I don’t care what he needs. We are entering turbulence. Return to your seat and extinguish all smoking materials.” Then she added something which signaled the beginning of my understanding that the end of my glory was at hand. “You rotten pervert,” she said. “Blowing your cookies all over the mayor of New York.”

  * * *

  Zut alors! I am in arrears with everyone; else why are they all explaining the sky is blue or yesterday I ate breakfast twice? Why? Someone said, “Two plus two equals four is a piece of insolence.” And these simpletons think I shall accept their reports at face value! Not possible; a thousand times no.

  I’m not complaining. If people accept me as I am, that is, fallen from a high place, and don’t assume that I am in despair and require that actuality be described to me, why then a happy liaison of spirits is always a possibility. But not if we are doing ABCs on the state of reality.

  Enough of this. The marriage of my aunt, Roxanna Hunnicutt, impends. I must touch base with the orchestra.

  But before I do, I would like to note that I, screw loose and fancy free, know certain things, that I am crazy like a fox. I know that Jesse robbed and killed and that he was lonely. I know he was left behind, left for dead. But I know he rose again from the dead. At the same time as these issues ring, I know that I must touch base with the orchestra.

  As to this orchestra, I am an admirer; at the same time, I know better. I came of age like everyone else, wearing out copies of Tupelo Honey, feeling richly gloomy. Now in Los Angeles, Jackson Browne and the Eagles nurse everybody’s bruises, an
d Mick Jagger, the tired old hag, says the Rolling Stones are the best punk band in the world. It’s desperate. I prefer Jorge Cruz playing for endless Cuban weddings in Key West, the only city in America where you can buy novelty condoms in the municipal airport, and where the star of The Dog Ate The Part We Didn’t Like can have a little peace.

  The first thing Jorge said was, “I wait and I wait and you never get back to me.”

  “I had an egg on my head.”

  “I wait and I wait.”

  “Egg.”

  “I see the egg in the paper. I see your discharge from Florida Keys Memorial. Still I wait.”

  “Will you play for our family?”

  “On one condition.”

  “Which is?”

  “That the weeds are cut down at the Casa Marina so that my orchestra is not driven crazy with chiggers.”

  “It’s a deal.”

  “You hurt my feelings when you didn’t call. I thought it was my music.”

  “I neglected you. Accept my apologies.”

  “But I will, of course.”

  I let go of Jorge’s handlebars. He rolled up Lopez Lane and disappeared behind a car body. The haze from City Electric brought its air of extraordinary romance. Each filling station seemed like a cheerful island with the bright pumps standing bravely in the tropical smoke. Through the open doorways of old homes came the anomalous ring of cash registers or piping television serials. I was transfixed by a beauty beyond the hideous. My heart was a song. Nothing hugs the road like a garbage truck.

  I am enclosed in here, in my reflecto Ray-Bans. Look at me and what do you see? Yourself.

  Peavey is in his office. I’m relieved that he’s out of Roxy’s Florida room with that girl, though I see her behind the water cooler, huge bubbles rising through her visage. She’s changing a column of those little one-swallow paper cups. She looks up at me and for an instant a bubble enlarges her left eye to the size of a melon.

  I wave and she turns to Peavey, who’s turned to me.

  “Counselor,” I say.

  “Chet.”

  “What’s the word?”

  “Beats me, Bubba.”

  “The hell you say.” I grin.

  “What can I do you for?”

  “I got Jorge Cruz lined up.”

  “Fabulous.”

  “Tell you though, the guy laid a condition on me. He wants the weeds down.”

  “We’ll get them down but not because he said so.”

  “Who do I call?”

  “Southernmost Lawn. They got a big Weed Eater, go right through that junk. Got four Bahamians with grass whips. Put the place right in shape.”

  “There are a lot of cats in that deep grass,” I say, starting to lose it already. Peavey fixes me and raises a Benson and Hedges to his lips.

  “Well, they’re going to have to get out.”

  “That’s the heck of it,” I say. Peavey knows I’m going down for the count. Might just as well face that.

  “You seen that boat off White Street pier?”

  I start around the desk and he says, “Get out.”

  “Relax,” I tell him. “This is no clambake and you are among friends.”

  I left Peavey balling the jack with bubblehead and all the lights on his phone shining like a southern constellation.

  * * *

  I stopped to see my uncle Pat. He used to be in American Intelligence and he has a tremendous amount of stuff from the Germans, including a phonograph and a stack of Nazi 78’s, which he often plays while working. Pat’s practice has gotten to where there’s no need of an office. He works on the dining-room table listening to Nazi songs—he’s not a Nazi—adding codicils and revising bills of grievance which he sometimes circulates free of charge. I told him two o’clock Sunday; no dresses. Pat wasn’t making any promises. Also, and I can’t be emphatic enough about this, he’s no Nazi.

  * * *

  And then—then!—it was raining. Rain in Cayo Hueso can be a rare thing, as you streak over the cracked sidewalk under the awning of trees, a curtain of translucent rain, the endless hiss of traffic. The watery green leaves turn up and the dust on the Spanish limes rinses down till their dark, vivid forms stand out in their own clouds of green. I step to the left and the cloud water, the ocean rain, goes straight to my skin and I picture that my own form is as vivid in this fatigue shirt and jeans and Sonia sandals as a Spanish lime tree, soaking energy from the rain and getting ready to drop seeds on those roofs until everyone inside is crazy from not sleeping. Rain is one thing that will make you feel you can go on.

  * * *

  Roxy is being fitted, standing on the aqua carpet with bright veins in her bare feet. A girl sits cross-legged on the floor, pins in her mouth, and says, “Iv vat about vight for lengf?”

  “Just right. I want only the ends of my slippers peeping out. I have stringy calves, which do not go with my pot belly.” I think I’m the only one who sees Roxy as a comedian. Remember, she’d already died once. It fascinates me.

  “O Miff Hunnicutt!”

  Looking at Roxy, I felt a tingle of family comfort. You become a soft warm object and the brain slowly shapes itself to the facts. For a blessed moment, you are totally lacking in views.

  When the little girl headed out, Roxy said she was a bit peckish and would I be a dear and take the Imperial and get us a couple of Big Macs? Pour quoi non, I chuckled. I headed for Roosevelt Boulevard. I never object to making a burger run. In Baby America, a fellow wants to know his fast-food inside and out. I bought Roxy and me two mid-range burgers and one large fries, with napkins and ketchup-paks to go.

  And Roxy sure had eyes for the little dickens, sinking her teeth through the cheese shields with sudden fury, cupping her left hand underneath for drippings. Holding our hamburgers, we were both living in the present.

  She was sitting in the green silk chair, threads poignantly snagged by cats over the years, as though by design.

  “Tracked Ruiz down.”

  “Oh?”

  “Hand-lining grunts for Petronia Street.”

  “I thought so,” I said.

  “He had a heck of a deal here. Could’ve been a sinecure. But he couldn’t keep his hands off my grapefruits.”

  “Seemed like there was enough to go around,” I said.

  “Criminals don’t think that way,” said Roxy.

  “No,” I crooned with boredom. “I don’t suppose.”

  “Peavey and I don’t plan on children.”

  I thought, I wonder if this is hilarious.

  “Fine with me.”

  “He felt you might think we were going to soak up your inheritance with babies. Have no fear. Anyway, most of it is going to that Jerry Lewis disease.”

  “Muscular dystrophy?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s fine.”

  “Otherwise it ends up in the hands of dope peddlers, dishonest professional athletes, and corrupt disc jockeys.”

  “Really!”

  “I think so, don’t you?”

  “I imagine I do.”

  “As to the wedding, I’ll be there,” she assured me.

  “Me too.”

  “Pat wants to be maid-of-honor.”

  “I told him no dresses.”

  “I asked that you not interfere. He’s having a dreadful time with his practice and there’s little enough for him that brings any pleasure. Besides, she’s already started by now.”

  “Who?”

  “The seamstress, the seamstress who just left here.”

  “What about her?”

  “She’s fitting Pat.”

  “He’ll never wear it. World War II and life in our family have ruined his nerve.”

  “Now, I am contributing to the bar three cases of my precious absinthe that Pat brought back from France when he was with Intelligence. It’s for the family and you’ll have to ask for it. Watch it. I have seen people get very ugly on absinthe. I have seen them be unkind to household pets and behave in every
respect as though they hadn’t all their buttons.”

  “Yes…”

  “As you once did for a living? It’s disturbing that you were in such demand.”

  “The theory was that I was a visionary and that I was certainly playing with a full deck.”

  “I’ll just bet.”

  “Roxy, please, if you would.”

  “The other day your father told me he thought it was all a really good gag—”

  I gave her the blankest of blank stares. Roxy stared back.

  “Oh, that’s right, you’ve decided he doesn’t exist. In the father and son game, I guess that’s the best stunt of all. Well, let me tell you something, you prize boob, the world is full of things that are not awaiting your description. And your father is one of them.”

  I felt panic.

  “You and Peavey deserve each other for the aimless cruelties you commit, you evil shitsucker. I ought to kill you.”

  I bounded out.

  * * *

  When I left Roxy’s, I promptly met the writer. He was looking at me and simultaneously pressing thumb and forefinger into his eyes.

  “I thought you were going home,” I said. I needed to know someone had one to go to.

  “It’s a matter of composure. It’s like walking out of a bar after you’ve lost a fight. I’ll go when I’m ready.”

  We strolled past La Lechonería toward the synagogue. He knew all the little streets and stared up and down with sad affection.

  “I want to show you something,” he said and took me down a sandy lane that passed through an open field to the sea. Even I didn’t know it went to the sea. We pushed through litter and saw grass until the edge of the water; where I saw something which I took for a bad sign: six dead greyhounds rolled in the wash, eyes swollen shut with sea water.

  “Losers from the track,” he said. “I’m getting off the rock. I love the rock but it’s a bad rock.”

  “Good luck.”

  “On what?”

  “On getting shut of this place.”

  “Thanks. I’m going to need it.”

  * * *

  Don and I walked downtown. Each time I go there something has changed. Today an old family jewelry store had become a moped rental drop; a small bookstore was a taco stand; and where Hart Crane and Stephen Crane had momentarily coexisted on a mildewed shelf was now an electric griddle warming a stack of pre-fab tortillas. From the gas dock I could see the flames from the Navy dump, burning at the base of a steeply leaning column of black smoke. When you sail around Fleming Key, passing downwind of the dump, the boat fills suddenly and magically with flies, millions of them, it seems, for when the fire is out, they fill the air downwind like a cloud. “You see,” I said to Don. “I’m capable of noticing and remembering.”