Free Nobody's Angel by Thomas Mcguane Page B

And in an instant the horse had struck him and had him on the ground, trying to kill him. Patrick cradled his head and rolled away, trying to get to his feet, the stallion pursuing him and striking down hardwith his front feet until Patrick was upright, hitting him in the face with his hat. Patrick stood him off long enough to seize the rake leaning up against the tack shed and hold the stud at bay. The horse had his ears pinned close to his head, nostrils flared, a look of homicidal mania that will sometimes seize a stallion. It was Patrick’s fault. He was in pain and he blamed himself. The horse’s ears came up and he began to graze: He had no recollection of the incident. Patrick picked up the lead shank and led him correctly to the barn, the horse snorting and side-passing the new shapes in its interior, until Patrick turned him into a box stall and left him.
    He hobbled toward the house, and Mary, who had heard or sensed something, came out. Patrick knew it was less than serious injury; but it hurt to breathe and he wanted to know why.
    “What in the world happened?”
    “New stud got me down.”
    “What’s wrong with your voice?”
    “Can’t get my breath. You take me to town?”
    Mary drove the Ford while Patrick scanned the road for potholes. She had some theory, some fatal Oriental notion, that this horse represented an intricate skein of influences which had already demonstrated itself to be against Patrick’s best interests. Patrick couldn’t help thinking that it was the horse Tio sent him.
    “Mary, you haven’t even seen the horse.”
    “That horse is employed by the forces of evil. You watch. The X-rays will show something broken.”
    Patrick sat on the bench outside the X-ray room, his green smock tied behind. Mary had gone on and on about the horse and its relationship to Patrick and the universe; and about how Patrick had to think about these things and not just go off and drive tanks or break any old horseor see the wrong people. Patrick sorted through his incomplete knowledge of the world’s religions and, as he awaited his X-rays, tried to think just what it was she was stuck on this time. He began with the East, but by the time the nurse called him, he had it figured out: Catholicism.
    The doctor, staring at the plates, said, “Four cracked ribs.”
    They taped Patrick and sent him home. In the car Mary said, “Now do you understand?”
    “No,” he said.
    “There-are-none-so-blind-as-those-who-will-not-see.”
    “Yeah, right.”
    Patrick, apart from hurting considerably, disliked the monotonous pattern he had long ago got into with Mary, bluntly resisting what he saw as signs of her irrationality. He had to think of another way, though the burdens of being an older brother impeded his sense. And something about his own past, the comfort of the Army, the happy solitude of bachelorhood, the easy rules of an unextended self—some of that came back with the simple pain, the need to hole up for a bit. For instance, a friendly hug would kill him.

14
     
    THE NORTHBRANCH SALOON IS A GRAND SPOT IN THE AFTERNOON , thought Patrick. There will be no one there, there will be the sauce in the bottles and that good jukebox. And he could start getting Claire off his mind and just sit at the bar and think about her;
then
go about his business without this distraction with her
off
his mind and hismind thereby liberated for more proper business. At this point he knew his father would have asked, “Like what?”
    “Hello, Dan,” he said to the bartender on duty. “George Dickel and ditch, if you would.” There was a TV on top of the double-door cooler. The host was getting ready to spin the roulette wheel. A couple from Oregon stared, frozen, at his hand. Patrick gripped his drink and looked up at the “North Dakota pool cue” overhead—it had a telescopic sight; he preferred it to the “North Dakota bowling ball,” which was simply a cinderblock. Claire puts her hands in her back pockets.