Nobody's Angel

28

BOTH PATRICK’S DESIRE FOR PRIVACY AND HIS MISTAKES IN human judgment sprang from the same vague feeling that things were very sad. This feeling had predated the death of his sister by some time. Still, he had not always felt this way. Now he did seem to always feel this way. And so he tried to stay on the ranch or make some blind attempt to get rid of the feeling that everything was sad-for-no-reason. The latter seemed to fail with absolute regularity; whereas staying on the ranch and working would just do. And he still thought Claire could change it all. Sometimes he felt that she had to. It made him uncomfortable.

Patrick got up suddenly, feeling he wasn’t reacting appropriately to anything, that he wasn’t doing any good. He heard the spring creak on the kitchen door and wondered who had come in. He shot the front of his shirt into his trousers with his hands, wobbled his head about and acted in general like someone trying to renew his concentration. This was getting to be a quieter house and the steps in the hallway, now plainly his grandfather’s, were clear; but Patrick thought they were slow, and when the door opened, revealing Patrick standing in no particular place in the room and his grandfather exactly in the doorway with a newspaper, Patrick knew there was something not right. “Have you read this?” his grandfather asked, revealing little in his face to give away what was to be seen. Patrick started to read, then sat down. The newspaper had reported the funeral on the first page in unbelievable detail, including Patrick’s rash remarks. The tone was unmistakably satirical and in the patented style of Deke Patwell. Basically it took the position that Patrick and Mary, long a local variety act, had pressed on amusingly after death.

“What did we do to them?” asked his grandfather. “I don’t know.”

“Patwell wrote that.”

“Oh, I know.”

“Where’re you going, Pat?”

“To see Patwell.”

“I think you better. I think this has to be fixed.”

Strangely enough, nearly his first thought was, If they send me to jail, I’ll never see Claire again. And finally, the almost infernal concentration of anger, the numb and almost stupid feeling in the front of the brain. His grandfather came down the front hall and gave Patrick a revolver.

“I don’t want that,” Patrick said.

“You ought to take something.”

“I’m taking me, Grandpa.”

“I think you ought to shoot the sonofabitch until you get tired of it.”

“Well, I’m going to go down there and that’s about all I know about it.”

Patrick left the house and went to the barn and got an English blackthorn cane that had an ingenious ruler which slid out to measure the height of horses in hands.

The appointment desk lay in the eyeline of Patwell’s open door, so that Patwell, sighting over the blue-washed Deadrock crone at the phone bank, could see Patrick had arrived. There were about ten reporters and secretaries in a large blond room without a view and a wilderness of baked-enamel office equipment in soothing gray. Patrick stared back at the faces and was refueled in his anger to know that these were the typists and copy editors and that they possessed a little glee that didn’t belong to them.

Patwell called out, “What took you so long?”

Patrick just strolled around the receptionist into Patwell’s office. He felt cold and peaceful.

“You want to close that door, Pat?”

“Not really, Deke. I just came by to find out why you wanted to talk about us in public like that.”

“I run a newspaper and I thought you deserved it.”

“Is that how it goes in editing? You give what you think people deserve?” He seemed to be helping Deke with his explanation.

“Yeah, that’s pretty much how I feel. It’s an old-fashioned newspaper.”

“I feel you deserve that, you cuntful of cold piss,” said Patrick, caning Patwell across the face. It took Patwell off his chair. “Get up,” said Patrick. “Get back to your chair quickly. If I begin flailing your bottom with this thing, I’ll lose my self-control.” There was a livid mark across Patwell’s face as he scuttled to his swivel chair. “Now,” said Patrick, “that was meant to correct your attitude. You have hurt my feelings with your filthy fish-wrapper and you have hurt my grandfather, who is an old man. Do you follow me so far?” Patwell nodded hurriedly. Patrick wondered how many fingers in the outer office were dialing the police. “People just kind of live their lives, Deke. Y’know, they’re not out there just as cannon fodder for boys with newspapers.” Patwell nodded furiously. Patrick stared at him, feeling Patwell turn into an object again, one that had managed to besmirch his dead sister, and he could feel the crazy coursing of blood that he knew, unchecked, could turn him into a murderer. But then the police arrived, among them the chief of police, who demanded an explanation, and handled his gun.

“Deke wanted me to act out the Ronald Colman part from The Prisoner of Zenda. Isn’t that so, Deke?”

The chief of police turned eyes of patented seriousness to the editor. “Do I arrest him?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because he’ll be put in jail.”

“He’s been before.”

“When he gets out he’ll kill me.”

So something, after all, got through. Patrick just departed; when he passed through the large room with numerous brave-dialing employees, he said, “When this doesn’t make tonight’s newspaper, you’ll know what kind of outfit you work for.” They wrote that down, too; they were untouchable.

The cop caught up with him outside. “What else you have in mind for the day?”

“What’s it to you?” Patrick asked, about a half-inch from the chief’s face. It was turning into a Western.

“I don’t know. You’re still packing that cane and you aren’t limping.” The chief meshed both hands behind his head, thrusting forward an impervious abdomen.

“Don’t let that throw you,” said Patrick. Then he withdrew its inner slide. “See? You can measure your horse. This would be a Shetland pony and this—this would be Man o’ War!”

“Well, thanks for the explanation, cousin.”

“Anytime.”

“I hope you don’t need no help of any particular kind in the future.”

Patrick smiled. “Not a chance. Not unless my car doesn’t start or something. I might borrow your jumper cables.”

The impact of Catches’ love of Mary was driving him in circles. Even after Mary’s death, it meant more than anything he had. Patrick was closest to it with Claire, and that was not very close.