Lone Creek

2

A mile farther on, the hay fields gave way to timber. I started to glimpse the sparkle of Lone Creek, draining down from the continental divide to the Missouri River. Even in dry years, it always flowed swift and cool. If you followed it upstream, you came to a little waterfall that spilled into a swimming hole. I'd hung out there a lot as a kid, but I hadn't been back since the summer I turned fourteen-almost twenty-five years, now that I thought about it. A quarter of a century, one-third of a good long life, ago.

I'd worked on this ranch that summer, for the first and last time until now. My family weren't the social equals of big landowners like the Pettyjohns-my father was an ironworker, my mother a schoolteacher, and we lived in a modest house in nearby Helena-but my dad had gotten to be pretty good friends with the clan's head, Reuben Pettyjohn, with the common bond that they'd both fought in Korea. We were welcome on the ranch, and I came out here every chance I got, to fish or wander in the woods. The men finally decided that they might as well put me to use.

That same summer, a girl named Celia Thayer had come to live with us. She'd grown up near my family's hardscrabble old homestead near the Tobacco Root range, which my father's brother was still working. She was usually around, hanging out with my cousins, when we went to visit.

Celia was a year and some older than me, just turning sixteen then. Supposedly, her parents decided that she'd benefit from living in Helena-it was the state capital, and with a population of about thirty thousand, one of the few places in Montana that could be called a city. But I eventually figured out that she was already too much to handle for those people from an older world, living in the middle of nowhere. My older sisters were gone, one married and one in college, so we had room. Celia's folks worked out a deal with mine to board her at our house while she finished high school.

She was glad to leave her bleak home behind, except that she was crazy about horses, and already an expert rider. So my dad arranged for her to work on the Pettyjohn Ranch along with me that summer, helping in the stables. She could ride to her heart's content and make some money, too.

I was a typical gawky, terminally shy boy of that age. The issue of girls was just starting to appear as a haze on the horizon of my life, portending the coming storm. Celia fascinated me, but what I felt was more like worship than desire. Even as a little girl, she'd been the bright light in any group, pretty and compelling. At sixteen, she was flowering, with a tough, sultry beauty and a ken that sometimes seemed much older. I was bewildered, humbled, and scared by her.

But what drew me to her most powerfully was my belief that there was a special intimacy between us-that some deep part of her was lonely, wistful, and hurt, and that she showed it only to me. Maybe I only imagined it. I sure learned the hard way that when she did, she could be like a cat offering its belly for petting, then sinking its fangs into your hand when you tried.

While Celia worked with the ranch's horses, I started on the haying crew, two months of killing labor from dawn to dusk. But things relaxed after the first cut was in, and I went to taking care of general chores. Nobody cared if I sneaked away for a swim at the waterfall, so I did it almost every day. Sometimes Celia would come along.

One particular afternoon, I went there alone. I hadn't seen her earlier, and it never occurred to me that she might show up. I was lazing in the stream, not paying attention to anything, and all of a sudden, she came walking into sight. When she was with me I always swam in my jeans, but when she wasn't, I went in bare, and I'd left my clothes on the rocky bank; I hollered at her to turn around until I could get covered.

Instead, she beamed that smile at me and said, "Lighten up, we're practically family." She'd always brought a swimsuit before, but not this time. She peeled off her own clothes and stepped in.

There was no way I could get out of the water after that. I stayed crouched to my chin while she splashed and pranced and tiptoed on the stones like a tightrope walker. She kept talking all along like things were the same as always, just us being kids and goofing around. But I knew that she was doing this on purpose. It was like she was using me as some kind of test, and she was pleased at the result.

I had plenty of other memories of Celia. A lot of them were painful, and I'd done a good job of burying them. But seeing Laurie Balcomb on that horse-if Celia had lived, she'd look just about like Laurie now.