Gallatin Canyon (29 page)
Authors: Thomas Mcguane
I had an urgent feeling that took a long time to turn into words. “Did I do that?”
She shook her head, and I pulled out onto the highway, my own headlights on once more. I drove in an odd, measured way, as if bound for an undesired destination, pulled along by something outside myself, thinking: liquidation. We could see where he’d gone through the guardrail. We pulled over and got out. Any hope we might have had for the driver—and we shall be a long time determining if we had any—was gone the minute we looked down from the riverbank. The car was submerged, its lights still burning freakishly, illuminating a bulge of crystalline water, a boulder in the exuberance of a mountain watershed. Presently, the lights sank into blackness, and only the silver sheen of river in starlight remained.
Louise cried, “I wish I could feel something!” And when I reached to comfort her she shoved me away. I had no choice but to climb back up to the roadway.
After that, I could encounter Louise only by telephone. I told her he had a record as long as your arm. “It’s not enough!” she said. I called later to say that he was of German and Italian extraction. That proved equally unsatisfactory, and when I called to inform her that he hailed from Wisconsin she just hung up on me, this time for good.
FIRST VINTAGE CONTEMPORARIES EDITION, JUNE 2007
Copyright © 2006 by Thomas McGuane
Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks and Vintage Contemporaries is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
“Cowboy,” “Gallatin Canyon,” “Ice,” “Old Friends,” and “Vicious Circle” previously appeared in
The New Yorker
.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows:
McGuane, Thomas.
Gallatin Canyon / Thomas McGuane.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Contents: Vicious circle—Cowboy—Ice—Old friends—North coast—The zombie—
Miracle boy—Aliens—The refugee—Gallatin Canyon.
1. West (U.S.)—Social life and customs—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3563.A3114G35 2006
813’.54—dc22
2005044680
eISBN : 978-0-307-42599-7
v1.0