Read Online Driving on the Rim by Thomas McGuane - Free Book Online Page A

Still, I remember the fear I felt whenever my mother caught me reading. “He’s got his nose in a book!” I would own thousands of books, but libraries were such a thrill that the hair on the back of my neck stood up upon entering one.
    Given that Dr. Olsson’s approval of me was so urgent, I don’t know what impelled me to take Pie hunting out of season. I am tempted to pause over this conundrum, because episodes of the most incredibly opaque motivation have punctuated my life. There are viruses supposed to hibernate at the base of the spine—the various strains of the herpes virus, for example—which plague us and other mammals and which surge forth at arbitrary moments to assert their dominion over our health. This was the only phenomenon I could compare to the disruptive irregularities that cropped up in my life.
    These were some of the things that inspired Farmer Lyles to forbid Pie and me from his acres on the grounds that I was “a disgrace” and moreover, “get out.” Only later did I remember Backseat Melissa Brown, by sour luck, his niece. This was a bad omen, compounded by my being no longer secure in Dr. Olsson’s converted hearse, for the driving of which I lacked permission; and my growing insecurity had made Pie restive, though she snuggled against my Winchester and her worries passed. It was necessary to find another place to hunt, and I was on a mission to prove to myself that all I had learned from Dr. Olsson about the hunting of partridges I was well able to perform without his oversight: the management of the hunting dog, the shooting, the preparation of the game (I already had a menu in mind), and a brief discourse on the rigors of the field.
    I decided that I would not chance an encounter with another disagreeable farmer, and I crossed the Yellowstone River above Convict Grade, driving east until the country looked big and empty—then, as now, my favorite landscape. Pie could feel the rising excitement, and whirling in the backseat, she made little cries and licked the side window. “Cool it, Pie,” I said sharply. Pie gasped and pretended to die by sinking onto her stomach and hiding her head between her paws. Ihad seen this before even under the firm hand of Dr. Olsson. I threw a piece of pig ear over my shoulder, but she ignored it. Soon, though, we found a small road headed north through hawthorn and chokecherry hills, about all that the hearse could handle, and when it ended after only a few hundred feet in a clearing under an old cottonwood, we stopped and I got out. On the ground before me was a small memorial, a slab of sandstone into which some bereft soul had scratched the word “Dad.”
    I carefully opened the rear door just enough to get my shotgun and held it crossways as I picked a direction of travel and went through a few surmises about the weather, which contained a delicate northerly breeze. A hint of moisture would help Pie with her job. I had just a few hours before sundown, and the unlikelihood of meeting the game warden was a great comfort.
    Pie jumped from the car and stopped. She moved only her head, assessing the air, her tail at an indifferent angle while she bethought herself. As Pie was the more experienced of us, I deferred to her and stood by as she considered her options. Once she came to a decision she was off like a shot, straight up the thread of water from a distant spring, winding through the chokecherry at such a clip that I was pressed to keep up.
    I struggled through the brush and slipped a single waxy red shell into the chamber and closed it, sliding the safety into position. When I looked up I felt a flash of fear to find Pie no longer visible, but soon she popped up on a hillside looking back at me and then resumed her hunt. I wished it wasn’t so late in the day: I was climbing as fast as I could, Pie was casting back and forth but outpacing me by degrees, and the declining sun was on its own schedule. It was not easy to keep these three