Free The Sporting Club by Thomas McGuane Page B

encroachment upon the lands of people whose antecedents had been expelled from the original grounds. He walked in the deep weeds toward the house, with meadowlarks and the small June grasshoppers showering around him. He could see the barn now. In this country unpainted wood weathered almost black. The barn doors had collapsed forward and lay out flat from the entrance which from this distance was only an oblong hole of darkness; swallows poured from it incessantly like smoke. The front door was unlocked and he went in. Shattered glass in quantity and empty sky-filled window frames; nests were cemented into every crevice. The frequent entrances and exits of the birds were like the pluckings of a stretched rubber band. In the kitchen was an infantryman’s jacket with a long column of World War Two duty stripes of the European theater. He went outside. In the southwest corner was a wasp’s nest the size of a medicine ball; under its entrance five or six wasps hung as if in suspension. He wondered if the name of the former tenant would mean anything to him. When farmers hereabout went broke, the club served as a way station where, badly paid, they awaited jobs in Detroit. A long list of names came to Quinn’s mind. Half of the surnames were Olson and the bulk of these were related by marriage to the other half. Quinn wondered if Olson would end up in Detroit.
    *   *   *
    He woke up late the next morning, stiff from his hike; and because Stanton jumped into his head first off, he decided his holiday was in full decline. He slashed out from under the covers, got to his feet and, looking down at his white thin nude self, said, “I am Spider.” It would be hard to say what he meant exactly. He hunted in his suitcase, stirring its contents like a stew, for his bathing suit, and found it but could not find his supporter. So he put on his suit without it and then found it impossible to accustom his parts to any one side of the cold, hard, dividing crotch. He cried, “No starch I said!” and reheated some coffee. While drinking it, he sought his bath clogs. They were gone too. He breathed through his teeth. These bath clogs had been his friends. In the end, he was obliged to put on hiking shoes without socks. They seemed odd. He found a towel without any trouble and headed for the lake.
    The lake was blue and still and empty save for a single, double-ended rowboat, apparently adrift. Three men stood out at the end of the canoe dock, looking at the empty boat. They turned to look at Quinn as he arrived in his bathing suit, ready for a swim. His great shoes were loud on the hollow dock. They were Fortescue, the military man, Spengler, the historian, and Scott, the sometime investigator of seventeenth-century topics. “Wind get the boat?” Quinn asked.
    â€œNo,” Spengler said, “Stanton.”
    â€œStanton—?”
    â€œHe’s skin-diving,” said Scott in his sneeping Ohio voice. “Troubling the trout, disturbing the redds.” He waited futilely for someone to ask him what redds were.
    â€œWhat’s he after?”
    â€œTreasure.” Suddenly, timorous Spengler burst out: “His jokes and his money and his—” There was a great moist gasp beneath their feet like the sighing of a dugong and then somber and hollow and unmistakably Stanton the voice came, “God’s wounds!” Silence again. Spengler was sleekit, timorous. Off the end of the dock, in the undisturbed water, and only barely visible against the dark bottom, a wobbly, undulant anthropoid form shot away and disappeared in the depths.
    â€œWhat more do we require?” sneeped Scott to Spengler, turning then to Fortescue. He emphasized the significance of his question by letting his mouth drop open and shifting his jaw to one side. “What more?” He had short teeth and he wrinkled his nose.
    â€œHe’s pressing all right,” said Fortescue,