To Skin a Cat by Thomas McGuane

Author:Thomas McGuane [McGuane, Thomas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-8041-7347-6
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2014-09-02T16:00:00+00:00

They could set their clocks by the passing of Mrs. Callahan’s humped figure. “Hasn’t that thing healed yet?” yelled Rita from the doorway. They could just make out a streak of white against the viburnum.

“She’ll see you in court,” said David.

“Get off my case,” said Rita.

Rita was found guilty of aggravated assault and fined. The court attached David’s wages. Neville stopped by to pick up Rita wearing a smart Shetland, in lime. Rita went as she was. They were going to appeal. Rita’s father came by with a card table and a standing lamp and a hall tree. They sat on the front stoop and drank beer. “I think me and Rita got problems,” said David.

“Don’t come crying to me.”

They talked about farm price supports and the drought in eastern Montana. David could see the road like a band of silver. “What a mess this is, they all exclaimed,” said David sadly.

“You don’t sound so good yourself,” said Rita’s father.

The old rancher left a couple of hours before his daughter came home. When she returned, Rita put her foot through the screen. “God damn son of a bitch,” she said.

“Rita, what’s the matter?”

“I want a nice home, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Whether you care to put your shoulder to the wheel or not.” David thought she’d gotten this odd locution from Neville.

“But I’m actually paying for it,” said David.

“Boola,” said Rita, definitely from Neville.

At work, David tossed a fifty-pound block of iodized salt from the loading dock into the truck, and the rancher was out of the cab and in David’s face in one second. “That could have gone right through the bed, my friend.”

“I’m not your friend.”

“What? I need to talk to someone about you.”

At lunch the manager looked at David, exhaling cigarette smoke through his teeth. “I can’t wait until your honeymoon is over,” he said. “You ain’t worth a shit.”

“Fair enough.”

When he got home, Rita’s Runner-Up Miss Montana two-horse trailer was parked in front of the house. He undid his shirt and shook the loose hay out on the sidewalk. When he opened the door, it struck Rita’s suitcase. She skitted out of the way and buttoned her western blouse over her tanned bosom.

“What I bought you is,” she said, “a microwave.”

“For what?”

“For batching it.”

“For batching it? What is this?”

“And there’s a big stack of dinners in the Igloo. We go to Helena to appeal. The state supreme court. Neville says we’ll leave no stone unturned. We’re going to bomb that whore back to the ice age.”

“The ice age,” said David, like a student in English-as-a-foreign-language. He thought of Mrs. Callahan stooped under the weight of her neck brace. She was impossible but she was all alone, while Rita and Neville had not only their enthusiasm but their goal of ruining her. David made a mental note to call the computer technician school and the Navy recruiter. Too, if he got away from the grain elevator, he could quit snoose. You couldn’t dip and work on precision electronics at the same time.

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