Nobody's Angel (3 page)

“More!” She put on her “It Girl” smile and spun on her toes.

Patrick walked over to the can labeled “Loretta,” wound the clock in front of it and turned it loose real slow.

“Gives me a vicarious thrill,” he said. She waved as he went out the door into the sunlight that bounced from the high walls of granite around the town.

5

PATRICK
WAS
TICKING
OFF
OBLIGATIONS
.
HE
WALKED
BACK
outside under the heartless blue sky. He was searching for his grandfather, who had left the ranch early that morning. Patrick feared a binge. But as he had just left the Army and was not yet used to being home, he was rather like someone out of stir, trying to establish a pattern in a new world. For example, this morning after feeding the horses, he had thought very seriously about moving to
Madrid. He had learned Spanish at the Monterey language school, but the Army made him a tank captain in Germany. Nonetheless, he often daydreamed of an ancient walk-up in Castile with a stone kitchen, a cook he could afford and a stream of interesting characters who could understand that what had begun as scholarship had precipitated him into cold-war mongery,
not
a desire to drive a bulletproof dump truck on the East German line. Patrick had read widely, could break horses and did not, as yet, live in Spain. In any case, he would never reveal his love for the tank. He was tall, single, had lost his father and looked after a grandfather who now drank too much. Patrick drank a little too much. His father had been a test pilot for Boeing. His mother remarried in California. Lately, Patrick was having trouble answering letters, especially the prying ones from the family about the finances of the ranch, which were precarious; and with each arrival of the mail it had become a real Mexican standoff between hiring a secretary and embarking for Castile.

Angled on the corner of Big Horn and Main was the Part-Time Bar, where Patrick went to have a George Dickel and water as a way of staking the place out for his grandfather. The Part-Time was an old-timers’ favorite. The homemade soup there took a little of the edge off the binges and sustained anyone hungry in search of company. This hunger struck at all hours.

Patrick walked in and it was busy. He surveyed the room; no sign of his grandfather. At the bar many aging backs hunched in concealment.

“Anybody seen the old man?”

About fifteen nopes.

Patrick got his whiskey at the bar, sat down in the row of older faces and thought: This is the kind of place that makes you want to grow old, just sit here and eavesdrop.

Down the bar:

“I was born in 1904.”

“Here?”

“Evidently.”

Cigarette smoke moved horizontally toward the
EXIT
-
TELEPHONE
-
REST
ROOM
sign.

Every time someone entered, “What d’ya know?” in a hearty voice; and the reply: “Not much.” The “o” in “know” carrying the drawn-out local dipthong.

Patrick sipped in deep contentment. Underneath the murmur of conversation and easy laughter was the continuous slap of plastic chips from the poker game in the corner.

An elderly man next to Patrick in a John B. Stetson hat and blue suspenders said, “Colder it gets, the more a guy’ll notice.” He stared fixedly at the commemorative bottles. A pretty girl in a blue sweater dealt poker and in a firm voice repeated the rules. The new players feared her.

“Fifty cents to a buck on the deal and before the flop. There’s a three-raise limit on each round, no cutting. Twenty bucks to buy in.”

The old man next to Patrick was adjusting his butt on the stool, improving his angle for a conversation. The bartender shot past to the glass-and-wood cooler that displayed five kinds of beer at knee level. Patrick tried to read the farm-auction poster from twenty feet; thought, Used to could do that.

A voice from the corner: “Can’t draw no goddamned clubs.”

The bartender collected more orders—Sunny Brook,
Cabin Still, Old Grand Dad, Canadian Mist, another George Dickel for Patrick.

“Hungry?”

“No,” said Patrick.

“We got three kinds of beef jerky—King B, Big Slim and Rawhide Ranch.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Plus beer nuts and smoked almonds.”

“Who shot that six-pointer?”

“I did, Pat. Right after Korea.”

The old man asked the bartender, “What bets’ve I got?”

“You got the Pirates and the Tigers.”

“Buck a square?”

“Yup.”

“What kind of cigars you got?”

“Everything from White Owl to R. G. Dun.”

“Gimme an R. G. Dun.”

Patrick thought that in a moment the old man would tell him where his grandfather was; he was warming up and didn’t want to be a squealer. Patrick pointed to a bottle of Hiram Walker chocolate-mint liqueur and asked, “Ever try that?”

“No.”

The old man knew Patrick knew. He was going to play it silent. Down the bar a heavy woman in her sixties squinted and started describing commemorative bottles in a lungful of Lucky Strike smoke: “Illinois Gladiola Festival, a ‘Ducks Unlimited,’ an Australian koala bear, Indian chief, Abraham Lincoln, the Kentucky Derby, Am Vets, a telephone—”

“Barkeep, what’s it say on that model train?”

“ ‘Jupiter.’ Says just ‘Jupiter.’ ”

“I don’t know what in the hell that means. Why don’t somebody scrape that junk down from offa there?”

The old man pivoted to Patrick. “Your grandfather is trying out for a movie.”

“He what?”

“Read the poster on the inside of the door.”

Patrick thought, The old bugger has scars, missing teeth and evidence of a broken nose. That is where we shall find him. One episode too many of Wagon Train, dog-food ads masquerading as life.

Rooms 115–17 were, respectively, reception, waiting room and Duxbury. There was a considerable lineup of the maimed. The worst was a five-year-old boy whose pet wildcat had recently clawed out his eyeball. He wore an oozing patch and steered his head around, trying to figure out what he was doing there. His mother, a telephone operator who moonlighted at the Tempo Supper Club, respected her son’s injury enough to bark “
No cuts!
” at Patrick when he tried to move up the line and look for his
grandfather. The mother indignantly steered the little boy forward by the arm, and Patrick sheepishly got at the end while the halt, lame and maimed glowered at him, thinking, It’s the bloody tank captain from the Heart Bar Ranch, trying to throw his weight around. But the sound of crutches and labored breathing grew behind him, and soon he stood at the desk of Marion Garland, who said, “What brings you to the geek show?”
Streets of Laredo
poured from a neighboring room.

“I’m looking for my grandfather—”

“What’s your grandfather’s name?”

“Frank Fitzpatrick.”

“Francis X?”

“Yes.”

“He’s with Mr. Duxbury now.”

“I’ll just go in and get him.”

“That’s not our procedure—”

“It is now.”

Patrick walked past her into Arnold Duxbury’s office. Duxbury was a youthful forty. Every single thing he had on was denim, including his boots, which Patrick did not think was possible; treated rubber, perhaps.

Francis X. Fitzpatrick was showing a mule kick by taking off his pants. Duxbury explained that that would be unnecessary, as we were dealing with family entertainment. The crooked upper thigh was the old man’s trump card and he wouldn’t take no for an answer. Finally Duxbury said, “Hey, relax, you’re in the movie.” The old man shot his sleeves confidently.

“On the basis of what?” he demanded.

“The nose and your age.”

“Well, write my name down.”

“I already did.”

“I’ll see you on the set,” said the old man, fastening his trousers. “Y’know what I mean? You better spelt my name correct.”

“Come on, Grandpa,” said Patrick. “I need you at the place. You mind?”

Duxbury and Garland signed up eighty-seven permanently injured Americans for
Hondo’s Last Move
and returned to Los Angeles. The film was already in trouble; the distributor was thinking of pulling out to do something more in the Space line, as Westerns were beginning to show signs of what he called in a
Variety
interview “metal fatigue.”

Nobody ever saw Duxbury and Garland again. As it turned out, Patrick’s grandfather would never quite get over it. His heart was on a movie poster, however close to the bottom. There were still small wings on his shoes.

6

PATRICK
GAVE
HIS
GRANDFATHER
A
GOOD
LEAD
,
THEN
GOT
IN
the Ford and started home. The yellow truck shot along the river road against the amphitheater in the Absaroka range between Case Creek and Sheep Creek. A summer storm hung in the deepest pass above the truck, and lightning volleyed in silence. Patrick glanced at his knuckles, looked up, dodged a pothole, admired a hawk circling in a thermal against the limited storm now evaporating like steam on glass. The truck sucked down into the creek
bottom. The storm dematerialized and left the hawk in empty blue.