Audio: Thomas McGuane reads.
The small-bore politics that I’ve been caught up in for the past thirty years has provided, beyond the usual attractions of graft and corruption, a vivid lesson in regional geography, as I’ve had to make sure my constituents would keep showing up to vote. Still, it had been a very long time since I’d last visited Prairiedale. Back then, the town was known as Wide Spot; it wouldn’t have had a name at all if it weren’t for the filling station there, and, had anyone thought about it, would have been called something more dignified, like Fort Lauderdale. In the old days, the Indians led their cattle to the freight yards many miles away on horseback; their wives awaited them in Model T Fords, pulled their saddles off the horses, and drove them back to the reservation. The horses turned up on the res within a week, grazing their way north on unfenced grass. But, when the Northern Pacific laid a spur from the east-west line to pick up cattle and grain, Wide Spot boomed, became the county seat. It got a courthouse, a sprawl of frame houses, a fire station in a quonset hut, a baseball diamond, and its unimaginative name.
Lately, the combination of agriculture and local mining had made Prairiedale a politically divided town. I decided to visit my half of the divide as part of my sweep—and just to feel the sweet ache of old days (mine) gone by. I’d been there in my youth, when I played keyboards for the Daft, during our short heyday as a regional band. Once the band decided to pack it in, we felt that Wide Spot would be the perfect place to celebrate the end of our inconsequential run. We were delighted to see the Rainbow Horizon Bar fill up with cowboys and country girls, but then, Wide Spot was the only place to go within a very large radius.
Now, when I drove into town, nothing had changed, except that—I was quick to notice—the old Rainbow Horizon Bar had become an appliance store and secondhand-clothing drop. There was a dog sleeping in the doorway that did not appear anxious to move.
The first side street in town seemed abandoned. There were small houses—possibly the homes of former laborers at the defunct talc mine nearby—but no sign of life, except for the crows pecking along the street and around the trunk of a sagging linden. I thought this street might have been where we’d bought that pot that gave us all a headache and a slight sense of dislocation. Its only value was that it entitled us to say that we were smoking pot. It stank up our van so badly that we threw away the tie-dyed curtains. Halfway down the street was a narrow three-story brick building, with a sewing-machine store on the first floor, probably an apartment on the second, with Tibetan prayer flags in the window; the third floor was filled to the ceiling with mattresses that pressed against its window. In front was a chopper bike with Sturgis stickers and expired New Mexico plates. Of the next seven houses, four appeared empty and one had broken windows. I was looking for the county chair of my party, who, the notes on my phone said, was one Cornel Bowen, an official with the savings and loan, which I could see at the end of the street.
In the great river of American politics, I am no more than an endangered snail darter, but like other politicians, big and small, I’m to some extent mortified to even have the job. Getting along by going along is what got us all here, but as my dad, an alcoholic dentist, used to say about staring into dirty mouths, “It’s a living.” The first political speech I ever gave, on the virtues of Westerners, up at Fort Peck, went over quite well with the crowd, though my cousin Earl came up to me afterward and said, “You sounded like ten pounds of shit in a six-pound sack.” I should have quit while I was ahead, but public respect trumps self-respect in my book.
A vulture standing amid the flowers in front of the savings and loan was undeterred by an irate employee shouting and waving a clipboard. Whoa, something new! I stepped in to flush the bird and found that it was dead and stuffed. Clipboard pressed to her hip, the woman cried, “Why would anyone do such a thing?” I said, “It’s a vulture. Do you know what vultures stand for?” I’m always saying the wrong things to women, or maybe it’s how I say them. She shot me an annoyed glance, and, as she started toward the front door of the building, I called out, “I’m looking for Cornel Bowen.” She gave me the same wintry smile my ex-wife used to save for quiet evenings by the fire.
“No longer with us. Goodbye. Take the bird with you.”
She shut the door before I could explain that I hadn’t put the dadgum vulture in the flowers. Then she popped back out. “I suppose you’re with the papers. This S. & L. doesn’t need your explanation of what vultures stand for. Bowen is at the courthouse treasurer’s office. Nobody here understands how he got from here to there. You can drop the bird off at his office with our compliments.”
Nothing bespeaks times gone by—good times that won’t come back—like courthouses in towns like this, all the slate, sandstone, granite, marble, copper, and nostalgic European architecture towering over a residual population without the wherewithal to fix the pipes. In the corridors, desks whose occupants never look up, a smell of mildew and old wood, ghosts at their rolltops—the pleasant melancholy that Civil War buffs must feel on the blood-soaked killing grounds.
Bowen didn’t acknowledge me. He looked like an aging surfer dude, or what I imagined an aging surfer dude might look like. He was tanned, handsome, and his gray hair had a hint of blond. He stared at his paperwork with parted lips and an air of despair befitting someone torn from better days.
“Cornel,” I said, after introducing myself, “I’m making my way around the state visiting all the good folks”—when you campaign in Montana, it’s “folks,” not “people” or “persons,” folks, folks, folks, and more folks—“all the good folks who supported me the last time, hoping that what I’ve accomplished will have them on board for the next cycle.”
“I didn’t support you.”
“Do what?”
“Nor would I.”
I examined my phone as though it might explain the mistaken entry in my notes. “I thought you were running for state auditor.”
“Not running for state auditor,” Cornel recited.
“Is that a real Rolex?”
“Oh, hell, no,” he said, as though I were an idiot.
“And you’re no longer at the savings and loan?”
“No!”
“Did you leave the stuffed vulture in the flowers?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
I smiled amiably at this disclaimer. “I have another reason for visiting Prairiedale. I once had a band, the Daft—”
“The what? A band? Here?”
What gave me the urge to paint a romantic picture of the old days in Wide Spot? I suppose I hoped he’d change his tune once he understood that I had local memories and a politician’s knack for filling the air with pleasant nattering. I told him how we’d toured around the state, knocking off Grand Funk Railroad, the Doobie Brothers, and forgotten hair bands, and how this had been our last stop. “We disbanded right here, Cornel. It wasn’t a great band, but we had a great singer, Micah Clardy, a great voice.” Cornel leaned forward at this. “And we knew that he deserved to be famous. Micah, he’s, like, ‘I’m going to L.A.,’ and he was perfect for that kind of crossover-country thing. Anyway, handsome guy, unbelievable pipes.”
“He’s still here.”
“Who’s still here?”
“Micah Clardy. I thought he was always here. Old Mr. Fixit.”
I wanted another town and accurate information. Bowen told me dismissively where to find Micah—in the house with the Tibetan prayer flags and the old chopper—and returned his dead stare to his papers. I didn’t need him anymore and left without a word. I looked forward to telling my old bandmate how our days on the road had helped launch my career. I was never important to the band—I could hardly play my fucking keyboards—and the ironic contrast could be fun, because now I was really going places.
Still, as I walked toward Micah’s apartment I felt fearful of seeing him again. He’d been a strict bandleader and had often hurt my feelings by singling out my incompetence. I considered skipping it and leaving town, heading to a more reliable stop on my campaign trail, but it would only be another prairie town, where the future of the post office was under review and the landowners lived elsewhere.
The rear tire of the chopper was flat. The Gazette was stuck between the screen and the door. I knocked and the door opened partially. I saw lips poking out of a goatee and heard a shout: “We don’t sell sewing machines anymore!” I said that I was there to see Micah Clardy. “Side entrance!” Slam. I made my way around the building into the alley and found the stairs to the second floor and the bright-blue paint of Micah’s door.
He was standing there, probably no more aged than me but exceptionally weathered. I told him who I was, but in question form, as though I weren’t sure. He squinted and said in the most measured way, “Holy shit,” then stepped away from the door and swung his arm back for me to enter.
I said, “Was I supposed to call?”
“Now or then?”
“That’s a great question! Ha-ha-ha!”
Micah laughed, too, and joined me inside. He hadn’t lost his lean, broad-shouldered look, though he now had a laborer’s hands. As before, he gave the impression of being well dressed, despite the stains on his painter’s pants and a worn snap-button shirt with the tails out.
He got us ice water and motioned me to a seat before making a practiced fall into an armchair. It was a cheerful room, bright clouds in the windows. After a long stretch to clink glasses, I looked up at a large black-and-white photograph of a beautiful woman, high cheekbones, dreamy smile, like Gene Tierney.
“Girlfriend?”
“Daughter.”
With effort, I took my eyes off the picture.
This was an all-purpose room: refrigerator, television, four-place dining table, a bookcase, yellow walls, a dog sleeping under the table, curtains tied back with bungee cord, and a hummingbird feeder. A peculiar row of stuffed animals lined the wall below the window: a duck, a badger, a raccoon, a heron. Micah noticed me looking at them. “Friend of mine closed up his taxidermy shop and went to work as a twelve-hour derrick hand on an oil rig. He gave those critters to me. There was also a vulture. I put it in front of the savings and loan.”
“They think Cornel Bowen put it there.”
“Oh, good. He’s a crook, but so is everyone else there.”
It struck me that a refrigerator and a television were rarely in a room together.
“So you’re still here,” I said.
“What did you do with the van?”
“It was up on blocks for years, then I gave it to my kid and it got, uh, forfeited.” I skipped all the hell I’d had with my kid and leaped forward to something more to my credit. “I suppose you know I’m in the legislature.”
“Really! What’re you going to do there?”
“As we meet the challenges ahead, I’d like to show our fellow-Montanans a better way to a sustainable future.” I held my hand before me as though showing the way to the future.
I already felt exposed when Micah burst into laughter. “Oh, cut it out! You’re breaking my balls!” I was shocked. I began again. “That’s the positive stuff. My home life never worked out. First wife was a paralegal named Sue who left me for an R.V. dealer. The second wife was a big-busted Broken Arrow buckle bunny. Bomb-grade sex drive, pour-in Wranglers. Her boyfriend lost everything at the bucking-horse sale and stranded her in the Range Riders Bar, where I was with a client. I was suing a Miles City L.L.C. over a grass-lease default on some rangeland between Hathaway and Rosebud. That marriage was longer than the first one by seven hundred and nineteen days and all I got was debt.” I thought this was a stylish summary, and it seemed to break the ice with Micah.
He went to the window and talked while he looked down into the street. “I was under that old music spell when my daughter was born—called her, uh, Maybellene. My dad, my uncles, all tradesmen, ladder racks on their trucks, chain-smokers, nights at the Legion. I didn’t want to go down that road. That last show we played was so great, hot girls and pissed-off cowboys. Rhonda and I locked ourselves in the van while you guys stood around. She was the daughter of the State Farm agent, drove a big white Ford Crown Vic with a police-car engine. I went to L.A. hoping to be somebody. Then Rhonda called to tell me she was pregnant. I’ve been here ever since.”
“Doing what?”
“Plumbing, roofing, a little electrical, exactly like my uncles. Rhonda died of cancer. Single dad for two years, then M.B. went to nursing school, got married, and moved to Lewistown, taught me to Skype. I’m sort of the mayor here. I get called that.”
“How about this—” I turned over a wastebasket and started thumping out a beat and doing my best to hum the opening chords of a G.F.R. song we’d played that last night. We tried to harmonize a few lines: “Take me down to the water, let me feel it run over me. Let me feel the pain and the coldness, the loneliness—”
Micah said, “Let’s not do this.”
I don’t know what I was thinking. I’d embarrassed us. I stood up, averted my face.
“So, I need to roll.” Micah followed me to the door. “Signs to hang.” I shrugged.
Micah said, “Maybe this time I’ll register.” It felt like he’d reached out to me, and I was touched.
A thunderstorm darkened the road toward Jordan and storm clouds soared to the east; the tires hissed. I was thinking of that Chuck Berry song, “Rain water blowin’ all under my hood, I knew that was doin’ my motor good.” At the wheel and with a back seat full of signs—I rarely saw myself so clearly and I can’t say I liked it.
I thought of Micah. He’d had the same detachment I remembered from our band days. But girls had always focussed on Micah, thanks to his good-looking rockabilly style, which went with his pompadour and his moves. I thought of Maybellene, whose entrancing picture was hanging so close behind Micah that I was able to shift my eyes to it easily, undetected and often. I remembered Rhonda, too. She’d hung around the stage that night and didn’t look like she knew what she was getting into. Country girl.
Lewistown was not on my tour, but that was where Maybellene lived. So what was wrong? There was no law against turning up.
I pressed on into the twilight, cell phone on my thigh as I scrolled through Lewistown telephone numbers. Since her listing included an address, the temptation to park across the street for a sustained look-see was compelling. The Missoula paper had described me as a “gentleman-politician,” which indicated that I was either a gentleman or had a private income. Since only the first could be true, I took it on myself to call instead. Maybellene answered suspiciously. I made my case: running for office, single, semi-acquaintance of her dad (wanted to avoid age bracket as long as possible), and in town for a meet and greet. I told her that if she felt like taking a leap of faith she might find I had plenty to offer.
“That’s exciting,” she said. “Can I think about it and call you back? I see your number.”
“Sure you can. I’m crossing my fingers!”
I pulled off into a strip mall. All the stores were closed, but I parked in front of the J. C. Penney, where there was good light. I read weather reports on my phone while I waited, just to keep my mind from bouncing around. At last, the phone rang and I left it in my lap for a bit to avoid seeming in a hurry. Then I answered in a low, modulated voice. No better way to spook women than by talking too fast.
“I just got a call from Maybellene. Says you called, says you’re in town.”
It was Micah.
“Well, sure, yes. More of a courtesy call than anything.”
“Tell you what. If you can stay there for a couple of hours I’ll come over and kill you.”
“No, no, I’m on my way, actually. Good one! And I know what this is really about.”
“Do you? And what is that?”
“You never wanted me in the band.” I felt a sense of exhausted relief at finally being able to say this.
“You delusional cocksucker. You’re a perfect politician.”
Something I could take as a compliment. Still, leading indicators were negative, and it was time to hit the road. I put up a few signs and was soon on my way to another town, always one more town. You never know what’s next, and that is why I can say with all honesty that I am not a depressed person. Unlike Mr. Fixit, I have a future and I don’t intend to fade. ♦
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