Nobody's Angel

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.

Marion was living with a Lutheran clergyman on Custer Street. They had a white marriage and a view of the mountains. An irrigation overflow babbled through the childless lawn. Or, rather, a trout-filled brook. Anyway, babbled.

“Heck,” said Patrick. “You’re only a hop, skip and a jump away from Loretta’s place.”

“I know, but I’d be afraid those little dickenses would … ensnare me!”

“You could be right.” Patrick had made a big Dagwood sandwich. He was trying to eat this three-decker in the fetal position without getting mayonnaise on the bed.

He told Marion that he was in love. He told her that his lady was married to a man of the oil. He mentioned that they had gone all the way and that he thought that the man of oil knew this. Marion raised her hands to the sides of her face, pretty as a picture. “Oh, oh,” she exclaimed. “I fear very much for you at the hands of this person of oil.”

In the afternoon Patrick expelled two West Coast coyote hunters from the ranch. They had started out on the Mojave, hoping to set a record that would make one of the gun magazines. They were, respectively, a Sheetrocker and a Perfataper. They had been taking amphetamines for four days and had nearly filled their powerful Land Cruiser with dead coyotes. The Sheetrocker did most of the driving, while the Perfataper stood through a “shooting station,” which was kind of a sun roof. He had a two-sixty-four magnum and his best lick was blasting. They were four pelts shy of the record and were just working their way east, broadcasting the squeals of dying rabbits from speakers mounted behind the grill. They hadn’t had a good day since the Wasatch range in Utah. They were losing weight, running out of money and pills. The Sheetrocker said that he just wanted to touch one off. And the Perfataper said not just one; we’re taking a hard run at the statistics.

“Well, your dead-rabbit record is scaring my horses.”

“So?”

“And you’re on my land.”

“So?”

Patrick thought about mayhem; but again, that could cheat him of Claire. He directed the coyote hunters up to Tio’s ranch. The yellow Land Cruiser rolled off and in a moment began spitefully broadcasting the deathsqueals of the rabbits again.

Patrick wondered why he had sent them to Tio’s ranch. It was not to create further trouble, certainly. Searching his mind, he decided that it became impossible to call over there again; and just maybe he could elicit some response with these yo-yos in the Jap land-gobbler.

Very generously, Catches had had the film developed of the cat stalking moths in Grassrange. In most of them the cat was a light-struck incubus figure, the light something like a separate galaxy, and the moths strangely technological creatures, as aerodynamic and systems-ridden as ICBMs. Patrick thought this was a lovely gift and hoped that the wherewithal had come from the night of Loretta, Deirdre and Tana. The letter said, “What are you doing?”

Patrick decided that in the Castilian walk-up he could go native. He would wear his hair swept back from the forehead and hold his black tobacco cigarette out at the ends of his fingertips. He would bring the pimentos back in the oiled paper, the anchovies and the terribly young lamb. He’d go to the odd mass or two, not in preparation, as he might now in the remorseless West; but in the healthy, ghoulish attendance of Spain, to stare at the wooden blood and pus of the old Stations of the Cross. He could have fun there and not have foreboding. He could have the time of his life making smart salads by the stone sink. It could be tops in mindless. He could duck the English secretaries like the plague, as each had already been hopelessly wounded by her own London travel agent. In any case, his crude post-coital bathrobe slopping about was sure to cause no harm to anyone; and the question of smelly imbroglios starring oil-minded Southwesterners could not happen to him, stainless in Madrid, with day help. The black olives in the salad would have wrinkles like the faces of men who have lived a long time, innocent of violence.

“What have you done!”

“Oh dear.”

“I have narrowly escaped with my life!”

“I see it now. I said the wrong thing.” Patrick was thinking of his conversation with Tio.

“You sure did.”

“Give me the headlines.”

“Well, they rolled in and shot everything that moved. They’re in the living room now, knocking back Turkey and getting too close to Tio for comfort.”

“Wait a minute. What are you talking about?”

“The coyote hunters.”

“Have you talked to Tio?”

“Not yet. But he’s crazy about them. He’s in there yelling First Amendment and States’ Rights. They’re real drunk and it’s getting crude.”

“You haven’t talked to him …”

“I talked to him right up till the coyote hunters and that was all she wrote. He said he might make a trip today in the helicopter. But if he didn’t, I’d of wished he had.”

“Did you know that Tio and I spoke?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“I’m not sure what was said. But I think we agreed you and I were sleeping together and we wouldn’t talk about it.”

“Do you really think that?” Claire asked in an exhalation of terror.

“I’m afraid I do.”

“I better start running, then. I better clear out.”

She rang off in panic. Had Patrick endangered her? He thought to himself, I’d better not have. That would have been well beyond the jaggedness-of-the-everyday.

Something was making him feel that he had touched something he didn’t completely understand. He had once, washing dishes, reached deep into the suds and been flattened by electrical shock. The root system of the China willow had carried a power line into the septic tank. From Patrick’s point of view, the tree had nearly electrocuted him. It took a plumber and an electrician to explain the occasion. Patrick said, “I was only washing dishes.”

The plumber said, “When lightning flew out your ass.”

Something about Tio was like washing those dishes.