Nobody's Angel (26 page)

She hung up.

Well, she’s alive and in good voice, I would say. The snow kept falling. The bunkhouse looked increasingly like some bit of Holland ceramic, its hard angles sentimental in the white down-floating crystal. Who could be against that? Patrick was slightly against it because he had to shoe Harry Truman. But Harry was a good horse, a big strong roan with just a touch of mustang jugheadedness, but strong in all quarters and surefooted to the last degree. Shoeing him, feeling the smart horse balance on three legs, as opposed to him hanging all over you like a less bright horse, Patrick felt that he could entrust him with his grandfather to the farthest, stormiest ridge.

Peculiarly, his love of the disagreeable old man emerged in the task. He used a hoof gauge to shorten the angle of the horse’s front feet, so that they would break over easier, make the horse handier. He rasped everything off to the gauge and pared out the inside of the hoof, tapering his strokes to the contours of the frog, sensing with his knife the extraordinary blood-pumping dome beneath. He shod with Diamond oughts all the way around, calks at heel and toe. And when he walked him on his lead shank, the horse traveled out balanced and square. Patrick’s back was sore, but he knew his grandfather could
fork old Truman without concern now and spend his whole mind on the Absaroka he loved.

In Patrick’s life, at times of crisis, he had sometimes wished to throw up and go to sleep. He had often wondered about this; but as he was one who despised psychiatry, no easy explanations were available to him. He thought he felt a little queasy as he dialed Claire.

“How are you?”

“Fine. Now can you talk?”

“Yes.”

“I want to throw up and go to sleep.”

“What?”

“It’s snowing.”

“But what did you just say?”

“I”—clears throat—“you.”

“You what me?”

“Nothing.”

“Hey, buddy, you’re a phone crank.”

“Just wanted to call.”

“The telephone is an instrument which can be abused.”

“Well, here’s me.”

“Come on, Patrick.” Then she just said, “Patrick.”

“I don’t know. Took Grandpa to town. I’m just feeling, uh, weird.”

“Why?”

“
Why!
The answer is …”

“The answer is what, Patrick?”

“Stress-related. I fear purgatory at the very least.”

“But what
is
it?”

“I’m looking for a reason.”

“I’m looking for a reason too.”

“How did Tio take to the wall of hookers?”

“Not at all.”

“
What?
Incidentally, where is he?”

“Right outside this window. He’s trying to read my lips. He’s shoveling the walk. No. Where was I? Oh, right, he wouldn’t have anything to do with them. He stayed upstairs and watched Johnny Carson.
They
made quiche Lorraine and
I
had to clean up the mess.”

“Well, I really never saw why we were bringing your husband three hookers.”

“And it bothers you …”

“I think so.”

“It bothers you in a way you can’t quite put your finger on?”

“That’s it,” he said.

“I can answer that for you. Despite that it was a gesture which I thought would best help him to see how I thought he was treating me, the main thing you’re worried about was whether or not it indicated some lingering passion between Tio and me.”

“The crowd jumped to its feet as his teeth soared into deep left.”

“What?”

“It’s fair.”

“What’ve you been smoking, son?”

“I ain’t smokin. I can barely get out of my own tracks. My foot is stuck in the spittoon. I can no longer sneak up. They can hear the spittoon ringing from a mile out. By the time I get there, all that’s left is tracks. And you can’t smoke tracks.”

Thus another one seemed drain-bound.

In the beginning was sadness; immediately after that was sadness-for-no-reason; and beyond that was the turf of those for whom the day-to-day propositions for going on at all seemed not at all to the point. Patrick, the tank
man, took the middle ground: He didn’t know why he felt as he did.

Why do I feel as I do?

She hung up on him. A dangerous lip-reader was shoveling her walk.

37

Heart Bar

Monday

Dear Mother,

Well, things are still in kind of a wreck around here. I have not been feeling entirely right about my behavior and I think that Dale was correct in saying that that rests upon my shoulders. Still, with us, all was not as it should have been. And I can’t help but think that Mary paid the biggest part of the price. I’m not saying anybody killed her. But couldn’t we have done a better job? I mean, it was quite hard to find anybody to talk to around here. It still is. Grandpa is about as chatty and agreeable as ever.

I don’t know what Mary had. I had Marion Easterly but she was invisible. Afterwards I had soccer and my tank. But these things don’t add up always. I met Mary’s close friend of the Cheyenne persuasion and I couldn’t help but thinking he had done rather more for her than her family.

He met her in a whorehouse where she had a job.

Also, I don’t think Dad’s airplane stunts, including the whopper in the end, were that funny.

I’ve been thinking about throwing in with more oil-type people, one in particular, as this high lonesome plays out right after its use in calendar photos, funnies and radio serials. I’ve met a nice girl.

I’ve found a lovely flat for the Granddad. There’s a sign-language study center next door and a monorail to the emergency room. His movie hopes run higher than ever. I’ve persuaded him of the need of a regular physical, as well as a long hard look at the daily stool. I think he’s listening up pretty fair.

Well, this is no more than an apologetic valentine to you and Dale. Tell Andrew that I feel very strongly that he will never find an arrowhead.

Think of us!

Love,

Captain Fitzpatrick

38

“
TIO
?”
PATRICK
HELD
THE
PHONE
SLIGHTLY
AWAY
FROM
HIS
head.

“How’s Patrick?”

“I’m fine.”

“What can I do you for?”

“You know when we talked earlier?”

“Yes,” said Tio. “Sure do. But we finished that conversation.”

“Well, not entirely.”

“Yeah, we did. Now, don’t y’all be stupid. I’ve got to ease up on this beast with my rocks and sling. So don’t go to jumping me out with some Yankee love of truth. Guy in my position needs to exact some teeny form of retribution without resorting to a bunch of bald statements and unusual self-righteous Yankee speeches, calling me up in the middle of the day with y’mouth hanging open, this man-to-man
horseshit, which you have my invitation to give back to the Army.”

“I can’t understand this.”

“Myself!”

“How does it turn out?”

“You just shake and it’s snake eyes time after time. They’re loaded.”

“Meaning what?”

“You never answered me about Claire.”

Patrick was not used to this form of evangelical yammering, if indeed anyone was. The best gloss of Tio’s speech he could come up with went: There are things one doesn’t say; in which case, they had just had a rather traditional moment together, man-to-man, in vacant splendor.

39

IN
TIMES
OF
GREAT
TRIBULATION
,
A
VISIT
TO
MARION
Easterly often seemed important. Mary claimed that Marion had been his greatest love, that no one would ever equal her in Patrick’s eyes. But Patrick was sure that they had been apart long enough now, that the Miss Palm side of Marion had sufficiently diminished and that his new and real love for Claire was deep enough that a chat with Marion wouldn’t do all that much harm.