Read Online The Sporting Club by Thomas McGuane - Free Book Online Page B

left. This new path wandered about forty feet and swung up, intersecting the other branch; at the intersection, Quinn turned left and was back on the original path that soared up a brush slope, then glided down the other side into a long frog-roaring oval of standing water with its lid of pads and algae. Quinn went left around the perimeter and crossing its lower end sank halfway to his knees in black stinking muck that launched a cloud of mosquitoes up around his head. He slashed away at them until he regained the path on the other side and climbed a short distance, still striking at the mosquitoes so ineffectively that he could see four of them standing cloudily in his forevision, on one side of his nose. At the end of the last ascent, he was in a close but breezy deciduous woods, strolling on the firm ground wind-freed of insects, when he was confronted by an especially pointless path that went off through heavier going to the left. He hesitated, then took it, following no more than a rod when it opened on the end of a long, hotly sunlit paddock; at one end of it, Janey lay naked on her back in the smoky spring sun, her breathing slumbrous and regular. Quinn’s eyes turned slowly, searching the clearing for Stanton; then his gaze settled upon her again lying in total female repose of lax unresisting limbs. She was below the level of breeze and not even her hair moved. The canyon of light above her was flaked and spinning with motes and insects, the trees too, everything, was in motion but her unmoving form stationed in his path as final as a landmine.
    Then Quinn saw how he must get out of there, tumescence and all. There would be no explaining should she awake and find him rooted to the spot like a thief-proof cemetery marker. The retreat alarmed him as much as anything, the fear of her looking up in time to see him scuttling bushward, his polychrome mental picture safely fixed. But he was back on the main path, trudging along toward his cottage again, the brief experiment with sinistrality finished.
    For the next two hours, he tried to read Thackeray’s Pendennis, a volume from the sunbleached blue, uniform set that was the porch’s only decoration. Even the weevil tunnel that penetrated Chapter One sent his mind hurtling back to Janey’s bare-assed splendor.
    Stanton arrived shortly after four and sat lazily on one of the porch chairs. Quinn upended the book in his lap, looked over and tried to remember his speech of reprehension and correction. Stanton was bored and fidgeting. Plainly, the last thing in his mind was Olson. So Quinn brought it up, asking him if he still planned to go through with his plan to have Olson removed. “That’s what I plan all right,” said Stanton.
    â€œI don’t like it.”
    â€œDon’t you?” said Stanton, bored. He stared at the screens. “Tell me this, what were you doing spying on Janey?”
    â€œI wasn’t spying on Janey. You’ll have to make yourself clearer.”
    â€œShe was sunbathing in the woods. You found her. You must have been following.” Quinn’s heart pounded. He wondered if Stanton could see it. But how did Stanton know?
    â€œAll right. I stumbled on her out walking. And when I saw her, I turned around and went back the way I had come.”
    â€œThat’s not her version.”
    â€œWhat’s her version?”
    â€œShe says you stood there about four hours with your mouth open.”
    â€œI’m not even going to answer you.”
    Stanton laughed then.
    â€œI was kidding,” he said, “she told it to me just like you say. And now may I ask a question?”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œIsn’t she some piece of ass? Don’t answer that or I’ll break your neck.” He looked away with lazy, bored, intelligent eyes. “I have been figuring on exacting a price for this transgression.”
    This time Quinn watched the loading. The exquisite French pistols were to be