Nobody's Angel Read Online Free Page B

for about a month. I was in Grassrange and Moccasin for quite a while, but I
will
not talk about that.”
    “What’d you think of the Texans?”
    “They’re like Australians. They’re great, actually, aslong as they don’t talk about Texas. Can we fix up my room like it was?”
    “It hasn’t changed.”
    “Is the blue reading lamp still there?”
    “Yup.”
    “Bulb work?”
    “At last examination.”
    “Any rules?”
    “As a matter of fact, yes,” said Patrick. “We do not allow Negro field chants after three in the morning.”
    “There’s always something,” said Mary as they turned up the road that carried them to the ranch and the hills. The wild roses shelved green in the bends, and the demarcation of light and shadow on the dust seemed artificial. Patrick looked over at Mary. She was staring up the road toward the ranch and her eyes were not right. He had certainly made his little joke knowing that she would not look right when he turned, in the hopes of deflecting that moment. Patrick didn’t know what he saw in her face—it was pale—but forced to name it, he would have called it terror. Well, fuck it: Basically the whole thing was terrifying.
    “I could use your help in gentling some of the yearlings,” he said, but he got no reply. The air rushed in the wind vanes.
    “Mary, remember the jet that crashed last winter up in the Absarokas?”
    “Yes …” She stared at the ranch yard as Patrick glided toward the turnaround at the barn.
    “Well, I found it with my binoculars. I could see a wing sticking out of the snow, just the tip. It’s behind Monitor Peak. I went up there.”
    She coddled her satchel. “One book I wouldn’t take to a desert island is a family album.”
    “Now, what’s that supposed to mean?” he asked.
    Mary turned and looked full at him. “It means,” she said, “that Daddy’s not in that plane.”

8
     
    ON SUNDAY , PATRICK WAS INVITED TO THE Z 6 FOR LUNCHEON , and for some reason he went. This required a long drive nearly to McRae, where, past the West Stoney River, the Z6 road angled into sweeping foothills. The hills were dry and blue-green with sagebrush, here and there illuminated by small bands of liquid-moving antelope as easy-traveling as sun through windy clouds. The land here seemed the result of an immense and all-eradicating flood, which left rims and ridges as evidence of ancient cresting seas.
    The Z6 was what remained of an old English-based land-and-cattle company, the kind that once flourished on the northern grassland, with headquarters in London and Edinburgh; but it had shrunk to the absentee ownership of American cousins, a few of whom contrived to audit its profits and losses from New York City. In July and August the American cousins bought Stetsons and headed west, clogging first-class on a big jet. One cousin, though, Jack Adams, nearing sixty, had been on the ranch most of his life. A good operator, he was a rowdy frequenter of the Montana Club in Helena and a high-speed evader of radar traps. A lot of the people came because of him; but in general they were just day drinkers gathered on a hard green lawn under the inhuman blue sky. Things would grow less intelligent as the day wore on.
    Jack came out to meet Patrick as he pulled his truck alongside the cars in a small turnaround facing the lawn and the fine old log buildings, which looked low, solid, somehow refined with their cedar roofs and wood smelling of linseed oil. Patrick admired him because Jack was a cowboy and a gentleman, and so he was pleased that Jack came out carrying him a glass of bourbon, knowing it was Patrick’s favorite drink, but knowing also that Patrick, like himself, would drink anything and that, strictly speaking, neither of them drank for fun.
    “I hoped you’d come,” said Jack. “Anna’s made a few gallons of real good Marys, full of nutrition. I thought a little of this with water would help graduate you into nutrition.”
    “Thank you, sir,”