Nobody's Angel

11

THE NEXT DAY, PATRICK THOUGHT THAT A GOOD MEAL MIGHT help Mary. His grandfather was bitching about the cuisine as well. So he drove to town for some supplies. He thought first about tea-smoked duck but remembered that all the ducks left in the freezer were green-winged teal — too small, really, for what he wanted. He recalled the advice of the master chef Paul Bocuse: Shop first, then decide what you’re going to make; attend to the seasons — no strawberries for Christmas dinner, no game for Easter.

He entered the IGA store already primed, then excited once he had the shopping cart. He found black mushrooms, cloud ears and Szechwan peppers without a hitch. He was on a run. He found a fifty-pound bag of beautiful long-grain South Carolina rice effortlessly. The huge-cloved California garlics and fresh ginger set him on his heels; so that when he found the strong, perfect leeks bound together with paper-wrapped wire, smelled the earth in the darkened roots and felt their cool bulk against his hands, he knew the enemy had been driven from his fortification. Three fat chickens, small projectilelike cucumbers, fresh spinach to make streamers to mark the depth of his clear pork soup, a case of Great Falls Select from the cooler and yes, a bit of help to the truck would be nice. Put the leeks up front with me. I’m a captain, good-bye.

The grandfather and Mary sat at the round kitchen table while Patrick worked. He boned and skinned the chicken, then sliced it all into uniform strips. He had first cooked on the lid of an old Maytag washing machine — a basic utensil in the mountains. But now he had a south San Francisco hard-steel wok, restaurant-sized.

“What in hell you been doing to support yourself?” Grandfather asked Mary.

“I worked for a veterinarian.”

“What happened?”

“I lost the job.”

“For what?”

“I was fired for taking animal tranquilizers.”

“You what?”

Patrick made a rectilinear pile of the chicken slivers. He mashed the garlic with his cleaver, removed the pale-varnish papery skins, then minced the peppers; the same with the ginger — both arrayed alongside the chicken. He broke up the serrano peppers and spilled the rattling minute seeds into the sink.

“What else have you been doing, Mary?” asked Grandfather in a yelp. Granddad under stress always grew dog-like.

“Well, let’s see. Got pregnant and, uh, went to Warm Springs. You know, the big nut house.”

“Oh, well, great, Mary.”

Using the cleaver, Patrick split the well-washed leeks into cool white-and-green lengths, dividing them on the steel. He could feel the animosity through his back.

“I hear you’ve gone into the movies, Grandpa.”

“I was just having a look around. Anyway, nobody knows where that damned movie went to. I certainly don’t, but I’m darned mad about it.”

Patrick fired up the wok, the cooking shovel resting inside. He poured in the oil. In a moment numerous small bubbles migrated vertically through it.

“Then I joined up with some communists from Canada.”

Patrick turned from the stove. “Can it,” he said to Mary. “And you, shut up about the movies.”

He dropped the garlic in, then the ginger, then the Szechwan peppers, then the serranos. They roared in the oil and cooked down gorgeously. Arrayed around the wok were leeks, chicken, yellow crookneck squash, soy sauce, rice wine, salt — everything jingbao, explosion-fried. He raced about setting the table, put the wok next to a six-pack and served with the cooking shovel.

“Do I have to use chopsticks?” the grandfather wailed.

“You better if you’re going to China.”

“I’ll bring my own utensils. Say, who said I’m going to China?”

“Use the chopsticks, Gramp. They won’t let you take silverware through the metal detector at the airport. Y’know, because of international terrorism.”

“Tomorrow can we have chili?”

“No, you’re having a can of tuna and your own can opener, you goddamned sonofabitch.”

“I like water-packed tuna, but no oil for me, please.”

“Eat what I made you.”

Mary stared into her plate, held each piece up as though trying to see through it, then returned it to her plate. She went to the kitchen for a glass of water and was gone a little too long. Patrick returned to his own meal: She ought to be darling when she gets back.

“Used to be a real stockman’s country,” said his grandfather, eating quite rapidly once he forgot the chili and tuna fish. “No one retained mineral rights in a ranch trade. No farm machinery.” Mary came back. “Strange people here and there. One man with a saddled horse tied under his bedroom window at all times. Southern man with his boys chained up at night. Irrigator from Norway hiding in a car body from the hailstones. Me and old what’s-his-name buying hootch out back at the dances. Pretty schoolteacher used to ski to them dances, packing her gown. This Virginian used to do the nicest kind of logwork’d get tanked up and fight with a knife. Old Warren Butterfield killed him and buried him past the Devil’s Slide, only not too many people known that at that time and Warren’s at the rest home, fairly harmless I’d say. Virginian needed it, anyhow. I could show you the spot. Shot him with a deer rifle. Virginian couldn’t remember pulling the knife out on Warren at the dance. Warren told me that couple days later and he went up to shoot him, that Virginian couldn’t figure for the life of him why. It gave Warren second thoughts, but he let him have it. Everybody was pleased, big old violent cracker with protruding ears, ruining the dances. Nicest kind of logwork, though, used a froe, chopped at them timbers between his feet, looked like they’d been through the planer down to the mill. After that, everybody went to frame. No more Virginian.”

Mary said, “Kill, shoot, whack, stab, chop.”

“Well, that’s how it was.”

Mary looked up past Patrick and said, “Who are you?” Patrick stared at her an instant and turned. It was Tio, standing in the doorway. He suspended his Stetson straw horizontal to his stomach.

“Knocked, guess nobody heard me. I see you, Pat?”

“Surely,” said Patrick, getting up and leaving his napkin and following Tio outside.

“I’ll be listening to murder stories,” Mary said. Tio looked back, made a grimacing, uncomprehending smile, which she received blankly. “How y’all?” Tio tried.

“Say, thanks for dinner,” bayed the grandfather. “And don’t forget: Water-packed, or n-o spells no!”

Outside, Tio asked, “You cook, Pat?”

“Yeah, sure do. I like it a lot.”

“Make chili?”

“Yup. My grandfather just requested it.”

“Like a tejano or this northern stew-type deal?”

“Tejano.”

“I make Pedernales chili à la L.B.J. Crazy bout L.B.J. Eat that chili in homage, old buddy. Y’all through eatin, weren’t you?”

“We were, actually.”

“What’n the hell was that?”

“Chinese food.”

“Old boys have got more oil than anybody thinks.”

“Who’s this?”

“Chinese. We sit here?”

“Sure, this’d be fine.” They sat on the wood rack where water had once sluiced to cool milkcans not that long ago, before the supermarket. Patrick could see the big anthracite Cadillac nosed up to the straw stack.

“It’s a hell of a picturesque deal out here,” said Tio, looking all around. “Has to be an escape. About a month of this, though, I’d start missing my wells and my travel agent, in that order. Getting to where I can’t hardly stand a vacation. The same time I’m looking to farm everything out. Supposed to be delegating. But delegating for what? Got everything a guy’d ever need. We knocked off work and redid an old sugar refinery down in the islands, then moved to Saint-Barts. Every time we went down to dinner, we’d be lined up behind these Kuwait sand niggers waying three different currencies at the waiter. Me, I took the old lady and went back to Tulsa, got her a little hidey-hole and a bunch of charge accounts, and threw her to fortune. I’m not saying I farmed that out. But I figured this: If nature’s going to run its course, an intelligent man best stand back from his television set. Well, nothing happened. By the time I got a hundred million in help on a little offshore daydream of mine, she’d bought maybe two dresses and was back breaking colts like somebody supposed to call you sir. Still now, Pat, my conscience is a-nagging at me all the while. Hell, look at you. ‘What’s the point of all this falderal,’ ole Pat is asking hisself.”

“You read my mind.” Patrick thought, I must have a stupid, vacant face for people to run on at me like this. I must have big jug-handle ears.

“Well, the point is, good buddy, I took my chances. And there wasn’t any chances. Old Shit is bulletproof. You could drop her anywhere and she’d land on her feet. Plunk. She could run a ranch while Tio saw to his oil and radio stations and stayed out on that road to where his nature could take its little course. If you had enough Catholic churches up in this country, I could put her on a few sections with half a dozen top kind of wetbacks. They’re like Brahman cattle — it takes quite a little to hold them, and it’s them churches that’ll do it. And really, a guy’d rather leave his wife with them than white trash. See, a Mexican will know where he idn’t posed to mess, where your white trash might have him some delusions of grandeur. Some of them been President.”

“Are you telling me she’s not going back to Tulsa with you?” Patrick needed a translator.

“I’m just saying I’m gonna be traveling all summer. Look, we don’t have children. We can’t have them. At first, I took it like a man. I said it’s all my fault. I’ve got an undiagnosed situation with my nerves that could be passed on. I was set to send her to California to one of these Nobel prize — winner sperm banks. Then we found it was her. Some kind of lady’s plumbing problem that’s to where you can’t just go on in and fix it. Then my doctor at home told me the nerves was nothing to worry about. It was iron-poor, tired blood.”

“I don’t quite see what this has to—”

“Lookit here. I’m not saying Tio’s going to do no replacing. But here’s this fortune settin in Tulsa getting bigger daily. Where’s Tio’s son and heir? How’s this dynasty supposed to happen? Well, maybe it doesn’t happen. But a realistic Tio is a Tio who keeps his buns in circulation in case something magic comes out of the woodwork; and you can’t be haulin your old lady on trips like that. She don’t haul good to start with.”

Patrick thought hard to understand why this warranted calling him away from dinner. “Did you want me to help out in some way?”

“Truthfully, she’s gonna have to have someone around. You’ve both got interests in common with these fool nags. Plus I’ll back every horse prospect y’all might unearth. But I just want you to be kind of a big brother to the little gal. Old Jack Adams tells me you’re solider than a pre-Roosevelt dollar and you’d be the guy, especially if you watched your drinking. She’s gonna need company and it’s almost never gonna be me.”

“How in the world could you ever arrange a thing like that?” Patrick used the word “arrange” on purpose.

“I just did! Trust Tio’s fine Italian hand. Movin people from one place to another has always been my best lick.”

Patrick hoped that it would work. He badly wanted just to be around Claire. But he said, “I’m already somebody’s brother. And I’ve never really understood the job.”

“You can take the weight, Pat. You’ve got fabulous shoulders. Big old, strong old … tank captain!”

“Well, she’s a fine lady. If she wants anything at all, she’s sure welcome to come by.” Patrick reflected that he had to be at the dentist by nine.

“Any horses you particularly like I could pick up for you?”

“No thanks.”

“One thing I guess I better say. Big thing from my point of view, and hell, I’m a hunch player or half them wells’d still be just a star in Daddy’s eye. Big thing is, I know you’re cowboy enough to keep it in your pants.” Tio raised his hands against any further words. “That says it all.”