Crow Fair by Thomas McGuane Page B

sat with the bowl.
    “Did you put butter on this?”
    I felt the shift like a breath.
    “No.”
    Ann took a single piece of popcorn and raised it to her mouth.
    “So, how shall we leave it?”

The wind funneled down the river valley between the two mountain ranges, picking up speed where the interstate hit its first long straightaway in thirty miles. Clay’s car lot was right on the frontage road, where land was cheap and the wind made its uninterrupted rush whatever the season of the year. Before winter had quite arrived to thicken his blood, while the cattle trucks were still throwing up whirlwinds of cottonwood leaves, the wait between customers seemed endless. He couldn’t even listen to the radio anymore. In the snowy dead of winter it was easier somehow. Now, face close to the window, and one hand leaning against the recycled acoustic tile that lined the walls, he stared down at the roofs and hoods of used vehicles in search of a human form.
    When, just before lunch, a rancher came in about a five-year-old three-quarter-ton Dodge that Clay had sold him, Clay was glad even to receive a complaint. Barely over five feet tall in his canvas vest and railroad cap, the rancher held a pair of fencing pliers as an invitation to mayhem. He shouted, “It’s a lemon!” Clay, trying to lighten the mood, said, “The space shuttle was six billion, and it’s a lemon.” But he ended up getting sucked into a retroactive guarantee just to keep the guy’s business. With myluck, thought Clay, I’ll end up throwing a short block into it, or a rear end. Once the rancher, a friend of Clay’s father, had the repair deal in hand, he asked, “How’s the old man? Gonna pull through?”
    “He’s just about dead,” said Clay emphatically, and went back into the shack with its telephone, cash drawer, and long view of the vehicle lot. At the end of the frontage road, where it met Main Street, a newspaper tumbling through plastered itself against the boarded-up frozen-yogurt stand. The metal sign on wheels in front of the tire-repair shop was flapping back and forth. The Dodge pulled back onto the road and went by the shack. The rancher, barely able to see over the wheel, gave Clay a wave, and Clay smiled broadly saying, “Eat shit!” behind his teeth.
    It was really no longer a hospital, just a place providing emergency care until an ambulance or helicopter could take you to Billings. Three nurses and a doctor were on call. Clay got his father admitted there on the strength of being one of three ranchers who had founded the little hospital when it actually served the rural population then flourishing. It had the advantage of being close to home, with views that meant something to the old man, like the one of the big spring where they’d watered cattle for a century. There was not a lot to be done for him, at least not here. About all anyone could do was listen to his stories, and that seemed enough. Clay of course had heard them all, so there remained only to notice the thickening of detail with each retelling, assuming he could stand to hear his father express yet again his love for the life he’d lived while Clay pondered his own peaked existence at the lot. Should you interruptthe telling, the hard look would return, the face of a man who, throughout his life, had called all the shots that really mattered. Seeing his father in the bed, Clay could hardly help thinking about the ease that lay ahead for him and his sister, even as guilt tore at him. Times had changed all right, but that didn’t excuse much.
    Weekdays Clay listened for as long as he could; and on weekends his sister, Karen, came over from Powderville, sometimes with one of her kids. There were three boys, but two were too wild for that long a ride. Karen said that while she was gone they always got up to something obnoxious if their dad couldn’t find time to come in off the place and kick their asses.
    The hospital sat right in the middle of the old Matador