This is The Writer's Voice, new fiction from The New Yorker.

I'm Deborah Treasman, fiction editor at The New Yorker.

On this episode of The Writer's Voice, we'll hear Thomas McGuane read his story, Wide Spot,

from the September 23rd, 2019 issue of the magazine.

McGuane has published 14 books of fiction, including the story collection Scallotone from the September 23rd, 2019 issue of the magazine.

McGuane has published 14 books of fiction,

including the story collection's Gallatin Canyon,

Crow Fair, and cloudbursts, which came out last year.

Now here's Thomas McGuane.

Wide spot. The small bore politics that I've been caught up in for the past 30 years has provided

beyond the usual attractions of grafted corruption, a vivid lesson in regional geography,

as I've had to make sure my constituents would keep showing up to vote. Still, it had been a very

long time since I last visited Prairiedale. Back then, the town was known as Wide Spot. It wouldn't have

had a name at all if it weren't for the filling station there, and had anyone thought about it,

would have been called something more dignified like

Fort Lauderdale. In the old days, the Indians led their cattle to the freight yards, many

miles away on horseback. Their wives awaited them in Model T. Fords, pulled their saddles off the

horses, and drove them back to the reservation.

The horses turned up on the res within a week,

grazing their way north on unfenced grass.

But when the northern Pacific laid a spur from the east-west line to pick up cattle and grain,

wide spot boomed, became the county seat.

...