THENEWYORKER,OCTOBER18, 2021 55
Birds dusted along the road, field spar-
rows, buntings; meadowlarks swayed atop
mullein stalks and sang. His father had
walked this road to his one-room school,
where bear cubs had tumbled from the
crab apples, and girls had ridden ornery
horses with lunch pails tied to saddle
horns. The library had consisted of Na-
tional Geographics, in which eighth-grade
boys had discovered the breasts of Afri-
can women until farmers cut out the pages.
No sense trying to catch a ride. Cary
had been walking for more than an hour,
past the abandoned school and its seat-
less swing set, when a German car shot
past with someone slumped in the pas-
senger seat. He turned his back to the
dust cloud.
The town was at the bottom of a hill:
a church tower, a root-beer stand, a stray
dog sleeping in the sun, newly planted
green ash trees along the first side street,
a truck selling Washington State peaches,
an unsanitary-looking hot-sheet motel,
four high-end sedans with out-of-town
plates parked in front. A bed-and-break-
fast in a narrow clapboard house looked
welcoming enough, and he booked a
room despite the shared toilet with an
invisible coughing lady beyond. The host-
ess’s bare feet stuck out from her floor-
length cotton dress; he tabulated her
piercings as he counted out cash for the
room. “Enjoy,” she said, a locution that
had always bothered him with its incom-
pleteness. “No suitcase?” She pulled on
a strand of her hair.
“In my car.”
“Where’s your car at?”
“I wish I knew.”
He let her quizzical expression hang
in the air without elaborating.
The cops had it locked up in a chained
impoundment lot. Two hundred and fifty
dollars. The officer at the desk was eat-
ing a yogurt and put the spoon into the
cup to take the money with his free hand.
Cary, on his way back to wash his face
and brush his teeth in the shared john,
stopped at the clinic, walked into the
emergency bay, and inquired about his
friend with the rattlesnake bite. Would
it be O.K. to make a quick visit, see if
the patient needed anything?
The landowner was far less chipper
now, in his room, the back of the bed
cranked up, ice water and green Jell-O at
his side. “Where’d you get the purple
arm?” Cary asked. The patient stared with
hot eyes but did not reply. He merely
rolled up his sleeve to show the fang marks.
“Thought I’d check in,” Cary said. “Got
the car back. Hey, keep your chin up!”
He found a streetside garden show
only two blocks from the B. and B., a
bank of annuals mostly, but the smell was
heavenly, combined with the elixir of old
evergreens on front lawns. A small white
house displayed a red liquid feeder whir-
ring with hummingbirds. He bought a
bottle of Grey Goose at the state liquor
store next to the Stockman’s Bank and
used it to lure the hostess to his room. It
went well, despite the old lady next door
trying to spoil things with her theatrical
coughing fits. “We’re so fucking drunk,”
the hostess slurred into the pillow. Cary
murmured, “Sure we are, but we got it
done.” He made certain that his misery
was undetectable. She sat straight up to
stare at him and ask if he was proud of
himself, but he was already hiding in sleep.
The last word he heard was “classic.”H
e returned the rental car to the Bill-
ings airport’s crowded lot. Park-
Assist kept him from making small er-
rors, the little backup TV a gift to the
hungover. Breakfast in Minneapolis re-
stored him, before he boarded the plane
for the last leg of his journey East, where
he collapsed in an exit row. He was
vaguely aware of the stewardess recitingthe safety rules for that row; when she
inquired whether he was willing to meet
those conditions, he lost his train of
thought and asked if there was a chart
he could point to. Note to self: move up
therapy session.
Exemplary snooze in his sweet little
apartment, with its comfy chairs and bed,
his favorite pictures, the view of a pleas-
ant park. Sometimes as he gazed at it,
he thought, No corporate ladder, no park
view. He stumbled on three friends at
his breakfast spot: Mary Lou, the doc-
tor, in a Cubs hat; Jack with that stun-
ner briefcase; Mimi, the physical thera-
pist and yoga girl with the American flag
in her tooth. He did his best to abet the
happy chatter as he took in the hum from
the sidewalk. “You’re glad to see me,
aren’t you?” he said. That stopped every-
thing. Why did he need to ask? He
pushed on with some details from the
American West, but his heart wasn’t in
it, and his news was insufficiently exotic
to change the table talk. These people
got around; they’d seen empty dirt roads.
At home, he looked at some drafts be-
fore heading to his office. The phone rang,
his ex-wife: “Shall I stop over?” What a
beautiful voice, he thought, what a beauti-
ful girl. Can’t I find the strength for this? “These endless software updates are killing your joie de vivre.”• •
NEWYORKER.COM
Thomas McGuane on the American West.