Free Nothing but Blue Skies by Thomas McGuane Page B

you’?”
    “No, you’re close. She said, ‘Eat shit.’ And she called me a ‘spastic morphodite.’ Ever hear that one before?”
    “I have to admit, that’s a new one on me.”
    “This would be a half-man, half-woman and very uncoordinated.”
    “Huh, real circus stuff.”
    “Yeah. And I don’t want anymore. I’m a businessman, an ordinary businessman, and I want to keep it that way.”
    “Why don’t you sell it? I really don’t care, Frank. Marny would like a place we could take the kids picnicking when they get older, but there’ll always be somewhere we can go.”
    “I’m going to get it out of my life whether we sell it or not. I would sell it, but I’m a sentimental asshole and it’s ruining my life. I can’t put anything behind me. I’m an asshole. I’m an asshole.”
    “I agree with your evaluation,” Mike said.
    “We never lived there, for God sakes.”
    “Yeah, but Dad grew up there.”
    “He hated it, Mom hated it.”
    “It doesn’t matter. That was long ago. Now it’s the ‘old home place,’ Frank. I don’t know why you keep applying these truth tests. It doesn’t matter what really happened. It only matters what people think is true, and Mom and Dad thought they spent the happiest years of their life there. It’s true they argued for thirty years, but I’ll tell you this much, it wasn’t an old folks’ home. It had that much going for it.”
    Frank didn’t want this to be the last word, but nothing came to him and he had to let it stand.

10
    The Fourth of July. Few people knew the country had not always been an independent nation. Most citizens took it as a day in honor of the invention of the firecracker, and towns like Deadrock bloomed with smoke and noise and pastel streamers of light on the evening sky. This year, what no one expected was that the hundreds of Indians who lived away from their reservations, on small plots or in tenements or in streets and alleys, would march on this quiet city with its sturdy buildings, broad central avenue and flowery neighborhoods, and ask for their land back. It ruined the Fourth of July. Indian ragamuffins, crones, wolfish men, pregnant women, fancy dancers and boys dressed as prairie chickens carried hand-lettered signs or simply chanted, “You know it’s not yours, give it back!” Finally, the police frightened them off with flashing lights and uniformed appearances. The Indians dispersed. Some were seen at their jobs in town the next day. Like a dream without an obvious explanation, the event went unmentioned. It was pushed out of the newspapers by perestroika.
    As soon as the bank opened after the holiday, Frank went to the drive-through window for some cash. Whenever he felt bleak, and for whatever reason, he always made sure he had cash. The teller looked at him from a high window and talked to him over a loudspeaker next to the vacuum delivery box. He sent his checkup to her in a tube, and when she looked at it, she asked him if he had a dog. He’d had, in fact, a beautiful border collie named Scott, but Boyd Jarrell’s predecessor, a little Oklahoma cowboy with a huge ring of keys on his belt, ran over Scott trying to drive and light a cigarette at the same time. When Frank asked him how he had run over his dog, the Oklahoman said, “Dog ain’t got no business under a tire.” Frank brought Scott’s body into town and buried him next to the raspberry canes behind the house, and felt very sad for a long time. He still felt sad. So he said to the teller, “Yes, I have a dog, a beautiful border collie named Scott, black, brown and white.” When the teller sent Frank’s money, she also sent a package of dog biscuits down through the vacuum tube.
    “What’s your name?” Frank said with moistening eyes. He couldn’t see her, far off in her high window.
    “Joanie.”
    “Thank you, Joanie.”
    He now felt closer to Joanie than to any other woman in his life. When he got to the office, clutching his dog biscuits, he