Cowboy

Another sign that I am retiring from the summer season, or at least accepting its curtain call, is that I start paying attention to the apples in the produce section of the grocery store, rather than the watermelons. I bought some golden crisps this morning and they were so delicious. Very crispy. If I had to describe each season with a foodie adjective, it would be that summer is juicy, autumn is crispy, winter is savory, and spring is sweet.

Whatever the season though, it is always the right time for a good story. Let's talk stories, old western stories, which I don't usually dabble in too much. Perhaps I am being unfair in not giving them too much of a chance, but most of it has to do with the fact that there are references to things that I don’t understand because I didn’t grow up on a ranch, and a sort of vernacular that trips me up when I try to get through the language to the story line. However! I listened to a great story today written by Thomas McGuane, called ‘Cowboy’, which was read by Sam Lipstye on then New Yorker’s Fiction podcast (yes, another podcast endorsement), and truly appreciated it for all that it did to my sensibilities.

The tone of the story is seemingly deadpan but it somehow comes off the page very lyrically, and for me, the narrative and characters are faint and etched lightly against the more sturdy, robust, and beautiful wood that is the language. I listened to this story two times. The first time I didn’t even pay attention to the story line, or try to make sense of what was actually happening. I just let the roll and weave of the sentences wash over me like music. It was incredibly soothing. Phrases like, ‘buffalo wallows’, ‘I’d been rustling my own grub’, ‘on account of they having a fire’, and lots of ‘son o’ bitches.’ Also, sentences like,‘I had rustled some yearlings, alright, but that’s not what I went up for,’ and “I was the weed.” And then there's this description, ‘The old fellow had several peculiarities to him. Most of which I’ve forgotten. He was one of the few fellows I’d ever heard of who would actually jump up and down on his hat if he got mad enough. You could imagine what his hat looked like.’

Then I listened to it a second time and let myself be carried on the backs of each of the sentences into the scenes that the author described. Come to think of it, getting involved in the story felt a lot like being on a slow horseback ride. Like a lazy and meandering crawl through the scenery, which let’s you see everything clearly, but you find that you also are being moved up and down on the back of the horse, falling into a rhythm that becomes both comforting and monumental. Monumental, of course, because you are aware that there is a 2000 pound animal underneath you. Yep, exactly like that. It is mesmerizing and I am so tickled by how I felt so closely held by this story, because it’s a genre and a setting that I usually find remote. Would it be going too far to say the story read like a story in a foreign language that I was surprised to find I understood?

It’s so true, what Sam Lipstye says about McGuane before he read the story, ‘Like all good fiction writers, he teaches you how to read the story as the story proceeds.’