Read Online Nothing but Blue Skies by Thomas McGuane - Free Book Online
Authors: Thomas McGuane
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top of him. A long-ago day came back.
“It’s 1964 and news of Dad’s hole in one has just shot through town.”
“What are you saying?”
“I was just thinking back … It must be hell being a travel agent.”
“It’s not so bad. You get so you don’t want to go on a trip.”
“I got some slides from the Far North. Would you like to see them?”
Frank ran the projector. The air was warm and stale in his house. Lucy sat next to him in the dark while he listlessly clicked one snapshot after another of Eskimos passing the time on the banks of an arctic river, working on their Japanese ATVs and smoking cigarettes. They had a way of smoking that looked like they were eating the cigarettes. He had bought these souvenir slides hoping they would trigger reminiscences when he got home. The trouble was, they didn’t. They scarcely mitigated the effect of the humid old couch.
“I wonder if we’re missing something, giving up cigarettes,” said Lucy. She saw the deep satisfaction of the smoking Eskimos.
“I think we are.”
The last slide clicked through. The wall lit up with a white square. A car passed on Assiniboine Avenue and light wheeled on the ceiling and again it was so dark.
“It’s something how lonely life is,” said Lucy.
Man, thought Frank, she just chirped that out. He thought of her at work, helping people plan their trips. It had been outlandish of her to suggest his going to the Arctic, outlandish of him to accept. It had been a way of saying something they couldn’t say in any other way. He didn’t know if it had gotten through. It probably hadn’t. He hated travel. When he was away, he just thought about being the child of deeply unhappy people, something he forgot about when he was at work, never having such a thought. But that first airport and, wham, there he was alone with his people. Besides, he thought, it’s not true; they’re not deeply unhappy, they’re dead. The Eskimos were up there watching the river melt, go by, freeze, melt and go by, and it was simply very familiar. And Lucy went on sending people on vacations, drew herself up each morning to design a holiday, people of the worldstaring at each other, all somehow more real in brochure form, just as the solitude of the Eskimos came to him on his living room wall in the mustiness of his semi-absent housekeeping.
Lucy stood up in the square of light on the wall.
“Is this better?” she said.
He froze. “Are you going to do something?”
“Yes, I am.”
9
Frank watched the small television set atop the dresser while he shaved. A new “young country” singer was performing, his long curls falling out from beneath his ten-gallon hat. “Put a futon on your wish list,” he hog-called into the microphone while his hair fell over his harmonica rack, “I’m kicking you tonight!” Perhaps it was very good music. He simply didn’t know anymore. It could be great.
He turned off the television set. Then he sat down and thought about the previous night, the previous brief evening and its lovemaking, which might well have been less an episode of spontaneity than an unfolding of earlier matters, something fearful, a sort of cowering behind one’s loins for want of a better idea. Not like the old days of rear back and let it rip. In these times, there was a surfacing of themes, the collision of culture, a pilfering of one’s own existence to direct dial three abdominal nerves. Life itself, thought Frank wearily, and at these prices!
From his shower, Frank could see lights on in a few houses, but most of the roofs from his angle huddled in the dark of their trees, scarcely outlined by moonlight. He felt he was up alone with the news crews of New York.
He dressed and went outside. It had been a warm night and the air was filled with the smell of juniper and damp garden beds. Thesidewalk shone slightly, and as the road mounted the hill toward the south, the houses were raised in increasing angularity until they stood
“It’s 1964 and news of Dad’s hole in one has just shot through town.”
“What are you saying?”
“I was just thinking back … It must be hell being a travel agent.”
“It’s not so bad. You get so you don’t want to go on a trip.”
“I got some slides from the Far North. Would you like to see them?”
Frank ran the projector. The air was warm and stale in his house. Lucy sat next to him in the dark while he listlessly clicked one snapshot after another of Eskimos passing the time on the banks of an arctic river, working on their Japanese ATVs and smoking cigarettes. They had a way of smoking that looked like they were eating the cigarettes. He had bought these souvenir slides hoping they would trigger reminiscences when he got home. The trouble was, they didn’t. They scarcely mitigated the effect of the humid old couch.
“I wonder if we’re missing something, giving up cigarettes,” said Lucy. She saw the deep satisfaction of the smoking Eskimos.
“I think we are.”
The last slide clicked through. The wall lit up with a white square. A car passed on Assiniboine Avenue and light wheeled on the ceiling and again it was so dark.
“It’s something how lonely life is,” said Lucy.
Man, thought Frank, she just chirped that out. He thought of her at work, helping people plan their trips. It had been outlandish of her to suggest his going to the Arctic, outlandish of him to accept. It had been a way of saying something they couldn’t say in any other way. He didn’t know if it had gotten through. It probably hadn’t. He hated travel. When he was away, he just thought about being the child of deeply unhappy people, something he forgot about when he was at work, never having such a thought. But that first airport and, wham, there he was alone with his people. Besides, he thought, it’s not true; they’re not deeply unhappy, they’re dead. The Eskimos were up there watching the river melt, go by, freeze, melt and go by, and it was simply very familiar. And Lucy went on sending people on vacations, drew herself up each morning to design a holiday, people of the worldstaring at each other, all somehow more real in brochure form, just as the solitude of the Eskimos came to him on his living room wall in the mustiness of his semi-absent housekeeping.
Lucy stood up in the square of light on the wall.
“Is this better?” she said.
He froze. “Are you going to do something?”
“Yes, I am.”
9
Frank watched the small television set atop the dresser while he shaved. A new “young country” singer was performing, his long curls falling out from beneath his ten-gallon hat. “Put a futon on your wish list,” he hog-called into the microphone while his hair fell over his harmonica rack, “I’m kicking you tonight!” Perhaps it was very good music. He simply didn’t know anymore. It could be great.
He turned off the television set. Then he sat down and thought about the previous night, the previous brief evening and its lovemaking, which might well have been less an episode of spontaneity than an unfolding of earlier matters, something fearful, a sort of cowering behind one’s loins for want of a better idea. Not like the old days of rear back and let it rip. In these times, there was a surfacing of themes, the collision of culture, a pilfering of one’s own existence to direct dial three abdominal nerves. Life itself, thought Frank wearily, and at these prices!
From his shower, Frank could see lights on in a few houses, but most of the roofs from his angle huddled in the dark of their trees, scarcely outlined by moonlight. He felt he was up alone with the news crews of New York.
He dressed and went outside. It had been a warm night and the air was filled with the smell of juniper and damp garden beds. Thesidewalk shone slightly, and as the road mounted the hill toward the south, the houses were raised in increasing angularity until they stood
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