Free Ninety-Two in the Shade by Thomas McGuane Page A

golden light; and the ticket seller at the dirty-movie house graciously promises the drill sergeant “no less than twenty fuck scenes.” From a boat, Key West would seem to have shrunk once more unto the sea. And the few boats that have gone out to night drift for tarpon in the channels carry their red and green running lights through the blackness sweetly.
    Dinner would still be transpiring at his parents’ house, borne upon crazy accusations by his grandfather and Dada rebuttals by his father; his mother taking a view not less than Olympian of this particular, by now ancient, squabble.
    So Skelton slipped into their garage and got his fishing rod, walked half a block to the corner of Front Street to the Dos Amigos bar, had a single bourbon and water, shot one maladroit game of eight-ball with a counterrevolutionary Cuban shrimper who claimed to be able to navigate from here to the north coast of Haiti without chart or sounding because “I am a Key West captain”; then took up his rod and crossed Front Street at last light and walked down to the pocket beach that lay between the fabric factory and Tony’s restaurant.
    It was dark and warm as summer, and tarpon were assailing bait under the restaurant lights; there were maybe a couple of dozen fish striking the lit-up water and shrimp were clearing the water completely and kicking out into the darkness.
    Directly above the fish, on the corner of a balustrade, a man in a white dinner jacket was pressing at a girl in a gown, hauling her against the iron balcony, mashing into her with his face and holding his cocktail perfectly balanced out over the ocean without looking at it.
    â€œNatalie.”
    â€œGordon.”
    Skelton climbed out onto the transom of a half-beached skiff and chopped a cast right into the working bait from his lair in the darkness. He made one strip and came up tight on a tarpon. The heavy fish just held its own a moment, trying to think what had happened; then it vaulted high and terrific into the light, right up clear to where its gills rattled alongside the balustrade.
    Gordon spun; and Natalie dropped her jaw. Gordon glanced ornery into his empty glass, looked at Skelton’s line trailing into the darkness, and led “Nat” to an empty table inside, his moment quite gone.
    Skelton cupped the reel handles, broke the fish off, reeled up; and headed back to the house feeling an exquisite synthesis of spirit and place. His grandfather would possibly be there with his secretary, Bella Knowles, rotating her wry, discerning face and the spit curls that had adorned her temples for nearly forty years. Skelton wondered how many gallons of saliva that must have required.
    He walked in through the gate without knocking. At the end of the porch, he could see his grandfather without his secretary eating in the lighted breakfast room. His father was on the porch, beneath his netting; with the television shoved under one end. He pulled up an iron chair and sat next to his father, who in a moment glanced at Skelton and said, “Green Bay missed the extra point.” A few minutes later, he leaned forward and turned down the sound. “Green Bay has got great flankers,” he told his son. “But Jesus, Macarthur Lane is some running-back. He’s got these lateral moves right at the line of scrimmage that don’t seem physically possible. —Watch now: this close to the end zone, the linebackers will be keying off the running-backs.” Touchdown. The linebackers keyed off the running-backs; but the quarterback threw the ball.
    â€œI’ll be a sonofabitch,” said his father. He looked at his son. “Do me a favor.”
    â€œName it.”
    â€œGet off the violence. You’re too romantic to be any good at it. This bird Dance will eat you alive. He knows how to do violence and you’re a dilettante at it.”
    Skelton thought with some admiration that Dance’s trick had been a