Not Here You Don’t by Thomas McGuane, 2021
The magic trick:
Layering in two fundamental contrasts in the story
I’ve really been loving these recent McGuane stories.
This one recalls John Updike’s “The Other Side Of The Street.” Both stories find our protagonists returning to their childhood homes to tie up loose ends following the death of parents.
McGuane here does an interesting thing with contrast. First, he uses time. The protagonist shares his family history, presenting the homesteading west of generations ago next to the modern day west he finds in the story.
That seems like the story’s main point. But not quite. There’s still a little more text to go. The closer paragraphs add a new contrast: that of the protagonist’s life now with some kind of office career in New York City set against the rough-and-tumble west of rattlesnakes and “no trespassing” signs. He’s living very differently from the way the men in his family had for decades prior. For good and bad, I guess.
And that’s quite a trick on McGuane’s part.
The selection:
Once, these prairies had been full of life and hope. The signs were everywhere: abandoned homes, disused windmills, straggling remnants of apple orchards, the dry ditches of hand-dug irrigation projects, a cracked school bell, the piston from an old sheep-shearing engine. Where had everyone gone? It was a melancholy picture, but maybe it shouldn’t have been. Perhaps everyone had gone on to better things. Cary knew enough of the local families to know that things weren’t so bad; some had got decidedly more comfortable, while claiming glory from the struggles of their forebears. Where the first foothills broke toward the Yellowstone, a big new house had gone up. It had the quality of being in motion, as though it were headed somewhere. It had displaced a hired man’s shack, a windmill, a cattle scale, and had substituted hydrangeas and lawn.
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