Montana Noir

Red, White, and Butte by David Abrams

Butte

Marlowe was dead and that was fine by me.

The two of us had gone off to war together, but only one had returned with his jaw still attached to his face, able to describe what he’d seen. Which was also fine by me since I was the one telling the war stories.

Marlowe lay in pieces in a coffin at Duggan-Dolan Mortuary in Butte, waiting for the official start of his hero’s welcome: a parade, lying in state for two days under the courthouse rotunda, and a picnic complete with a huckleberry pie bake-off, a three-legged race, and earnest old men in combat ball caps passing around a boot to raise money for a new veterans home. Next to Evel Knievel Days, everyone said it would be the highlight of Butte’s summer.

The rest of us got a limp salute from our commander and a three-inch stack of discharge paperwork, but Marlowe would have a big to-do — the kind of fuss showered on the dead after they can no longer appreciate it: red-white-and-blue bunting along Granite Street, his widow the grand marshal of the parade, Republican senators inserting Marlowe into their campaign speeches, and Democrats a little more reservedly acknowledging the Butte native’s service and the terrible cost of war.

Montanans love their hometown heroes. Dead or living, soldiers like Marlowe are praised with words that bloom like fireworks and boom like parade drums from their speakers’ throats.

But I knew the truth: Private Chandler Marlowe had died a coward in Iraq. Just before the bomb did its work, Rayburn told me, he’d seen the damp piss stain on Marlowe’s BDUs and the terrified crumple on his face when he heard the click under the sole of his boot. Those are Rayburn’s words — terrified crumple — not mine.

Rayburn and the rest of the squad were just back from Salman Pak, still juiced up by all they’d seen: the blood-scorched crater, the three Iraqis zip-tied and facedown on the sidewalk, Marlowe’s lone boot in the middle of the street. Rayburn and the others were upset. Where we came from, Marlowe had the reputation of being as tough as the hard rock walls of a mine. He’d quarterbacked Butte Central all the way to State, despite his daddy’s drinking and his uncle’s notorious stint at Deer Lodge that ended with the upthrust of a shiv.

That afternoon in Iraq, Rayburn and company punched the marble walls in the old palace where we’d set up our barracks. “One more week!” they cried. “There’s one more week left on the clock and then we’re out of here. Why wasn’t the dumbass more careful and watching where he walked?”

They paced and growled and yelled. “Stupid Marlowe! What was he doing out there anyway? Wasn’t this supposed to be his day off?”

Me, I just lay on my cot with the latest issue of Maxim — I’d been fondling the Girl Next Door’s boobs with my thumb before the interruption — and let the news settle in. Marlowe dead. Me still alive. Funny how it all worked out.

None of the others asked why I’d been back here while Marlowe had been out there on that street and I didn’t volunteer an explanation.

After our National Guard unit got to Iraq eleven months earlier, we’d quickly learned that luck, not muscle or willpower, would be what got us through to the other side of the deployment. That “Butte Tough” mentality Marlowe and a few others from the Mining City carried around like a chip on their shoulders lasted two weeks, until the first car bomb took one of us — Noonan, I think it was. After that, none of us were tougher than any other.

Jesus, the things we saw. Wounds the length of a body that blackened the skin. Children flung to the sky by bombs. Men turned inside out. Sights we couldn’t unsee. Blood pictures stuck in our heads. The things we’d carry forever.

Now, two weeks after putting the war in my rearview mirror, I was still dealing with it, but at least I had a distraction, a new mission. I was returning to my hometown to get a woman.

A decade before Iraq, I’d left Butte after saying good riddance to a needy, clingy girl who thought three fucks and a wake-up were grounds for marriage. For a few years, I drifted here and there around the state picking up odd jobs before deciding to join the Montana National Guard. I’d been putting it off since 9/11, but after I got fired from a hateful job I was about to quit anyway, I figured it was time to grab patriotism by the balls. I landed in a unit full of computer nerds, gun enthusiasts, overweight fathers too devoted to their daughters, and a boisterous cluster of Butte natives, Marlowe the loudest of them all.

I didn’t recognize the younger ones — I was well out of high school before they got their first pimples — but Marlowe and I had some history. I had a year and thirty pounds on him, but that skinny little bitch had still managed to kick my ass on the football field. Every practice we came at each other like rutting bull elk. I hit hard and broke his nose — head-butting all the way through his helmet — but a month later, he dislocated my jaw. Ever since that day, when I’m really pissed off, I click when I talk, thanks to Marlowe.

Our state championship year, when the whole city was painted Bulldog purple, Marlowe had his photo on the front of the sports section four times, while I only got two mentions on C3. Butte lifted Marlowe to its shoulders and carried him all the way to a banquet at the Civic Center — a softer prelude to what he was about to get this red-white-and-blue week in June. He was no genius, but he got a full-ride scholarship to Montana State, while I was voted Most Likely to Succeed.

Success to me was getting the hell out of the Mining City three months after graduation. I left it and that whiny cheerleader behind me for good. Or so I thought. Butte, pitted and tunneled to within an inch of its life, was dead to me. But then I joined the Guard and had to deal with Butte Rats like Marlowe, Noonan, and Rayburn, and I realized, with a sinking heart, the gutted city would always be with me.

I kept a low profile, did my work, and weaseled out of invitations for Sunday-night drinks with the other NCOs. I couldn’t give two shits about the boys from Butte.

And then came the day in Baghdad when Marlowe got that letter from home and started passing around the photo of his wife.

As I drove down off Homestake Pass at sunset, Butte drowsed under a bloodpool sky. The uptown streets, soaked in red evening light, were empty. I was unsurprised to see little had changed. There were a few more casinos and a new Walgreens, but other than that it was still the same sleepy place. I’d lived here long enough to know that, apart from the nightly drunk-stumble and vomit-cough at the Party Palace, nothing much happened around the old mining town. It was always naptime in Butte.

I came around a downhill bend in the interstate, the view of the city opened up, and there it was: the Berkeley Pit. The gouge of earth glowed orange in the late light. It was the oozing wound of the city, both its pride and shame. Work at the open-pit mine had stopped decades ago when the owners moved on to more mineral-rich pastures down in Chile. Once the underground pumps were shut off at the Butte mine, the pit began to fill with water laced with arsenic, sulfuric acid, and eleven other essential vitamins and minerals. One day, the water would reach the lip of the pit and breech the banks, flooding the downslope homes, drowning them in poison. Until then, the people of Butte went about their business, trying to pretend the pit wasn’t there — like a man with an eye patch insisting he could see just fine.

I was back in town for an undetermined amount of time. My job, if I could get it, was Widow Comforter. The usual: nods of sympathetic grief, hand pats, lies about the deceased, a suggestion of drinks at the Silver Dollar, a little snuggle later on. If I could get it.

I planned to get it.

She sat on a rock beside Georgetown Lake: arms behind her, head tilted, breasts tickling the sky, sun washing all the color from her hair. Right away I could tell two things: she wasn’t wearing a bra, and it was cold outside when the photo was taken. At first I thought Marlowe had snipped a photo from a magazine and was trying to pass a supermodel off as his girlfriend — or wife, if he was to be believed.

But then I recognized the waterline of the lake, just downslope from a tavern on the way to Phillipsburg where I’d had more than a few drinks on more than one occasion. I might have even sat on that same rock myself once, beer-stunned and singing ballads to the wheeling stars.

I didn’t get a good look the first time Marlowe passed her around, but when the photo came to me again, I held it longer and gave it a good stare. She was vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place her until Marlowe said, “You don’t recognize her, Franklin?”

“I do, but I don’t.”

“That’s Chloe.”

“Chloe?”

“Lockmer. Remember?”

Now I did. I grinned and shook my head. Chloe Lockmer, the titless wisp of a girl who ghosted through the halls of Butte Central — a freshman when I was a senior. How had she turned into this? This was a grown woman full of sugar and spice and everything vice.

The way she had her head tipped back, sitting on that rock, I took it as an invitation.

I pulled off the interstate at the first Butte exit, drove up Harrison Avenue, and headed straight for the Finlen where I booked a room for a week. I figured I’d get the job done in seven days. If God could do it, why couldn’t I? Then again, He never had to deal with zippers on grieving widows’ blue jeans.

I needed a little alcohol to loosen the rust on my gears, so I asked the desk clerk for the best place.

“You might try the distillery.”

“Distillery? Butte has one of those now?”

“Had it for a couple of years. Their booze is smooth and gets the job done quick.”

He wasn’t kidding. Two minutes after taking a stool at the Headframe, I was halfway to numb. Go a year without booze in a combat zone and your tolerance gets pretty low.

I held up my tumbler, looked through the generous two fingers of amber, and ordered another. I asked the girl behind the bar, “What do you put in this?”

“The Neversweat? The blood of virgins and a few drops of Novocaine.”

“Funny lady. Don’t quit your day job.”

“I don’t plan on it. Where else could I meet fascinating people like you?” She was wiping the bar with a rag and when she leaned over, there was plenty of agreeable movement inside her T-shirt. I could see all the way to Thursday from where I sat.

“You lived in Butte long?”

“Long enough,” she said. “I’m about ready to leave this dump.”

“I hear you.”

“What about you? Just passing through?”

“Sort of.” I was still reluctant to show my Butte roots. Five hours in town and I hadn’t seen any familiar faces. Fine by me. “I’m here for the Marlowe Memorial Madness, or whatever the hell they’re calling it.”

The girl snorted. “Red, White, and Butte Days.”

I made a gagging sound.

“Exactly,” she said with a laugh. She’d finished wiping, but still hung around at my end of the bar.

“You knew him?”

“Who, the war hero? Never met him. What about you? You a friend of his, or are you just one of those whaddayacallits — Rolling Thunder guys who go around protecting military funerals with baseball bats?”

“Do I look like one of those kind of guys?”

“I guess not,” she said. “So, friend of the family?”

“Not really. Like I said, just passing through.” I wondered if she noticed how I tap-danced my way around her questions.

A guy with a heavy, skunk-smelling coat came in and planted himself at the other end of the bar. My girl moved away to help him, leaving me to wonder what kind of weirdo wears a parka in June.

I finished my whiskey and called her back for another.

“Rules of the house — I can only give you two drinks per visit.”

“Oh,” I said. “What if I was to step outside for a minute, then come back in?”

She looked to her left. She looked to her right. Then she smiled. “I’d say I never met you before in my life.”

I went out and came back and she set up another pour.

She was nice, so I figured I’d proceed with my fishing expedition: “You know the widow?”

“Whose widow?”

“The war hero. Marlowe. He left a girl back home, didn’t he?”

“Sure, Chloe. I know of her, but I don’t know her know her. Rumor has it she runs with a different crowd.”

“What kind of crowd?”

“Funny you should ask. See that guy down there?” She tipped her head toward Mr. Skunk Parka.

“Yeah.”

“That kind of crowd.”

“Who is he?”

The barmaid leaned closer. Now I could see all the way to Sunday. “I forget his name. Brian something. But I know what he does.”

“And what’s that?”

“He deals.”

“Blackjack? Texas Hold’em?”

“Funny man. You should hold onto your day job.”

“I plan on it.” Widow Specialist, I thought to myself. “Never mind. I knew what you meant.” I leaned in and whispered, “He’s into methametics.”

“One plus two equals you’re right.”

“Interesting,” I said. “I’ll bet Marlowe had no idea he was going to come home to a skinny skank covered in sores.”

“I thought you said you didn’t know him.”

“I never said that. I said I wasn’t a friend of the family.” Not yet, I thought.

“But you knew him?”

I grinned. “In bits and pieces.”

“Well, the dude sure has a reputation around here.”

“Like what?”

“To hear folks talk, that guy is everything right about the war. He could do no wrong. Cut him, he bleeds stars and stripes. That kind of thing.”

“Hoopla-worthy.”

“Apparently.”

“And now his wife is mayor of Skankville.”

“Well, I don’t know.” She scrunched her face. “I’m just repeating what I’ve heard here and there. You know how the truth gets watered down the more it’s repeated.”

“Yeah. So they say.”

“One thing’s for sure. If she is using, she hasn’t lost her looks. I mean, she was good enough to be on the front page of the paper yesterday. Smiling and shit. What kind of widow goes around smiling?”

Maybe the kind with insurance money. My plan was looking better and better by the minute.

I was about to say something else — better yet, I was about to drop something on the floor she’d have to pick up — but Mr. Skunk Parka interrupted by calling her down to his end again. Not to get another drink, but to pay his bill.

What kind of man walks away before his limit of whiskey smooth as this? The kind who has other people to deal with. Literally.

I finished my drink because I had another idea percolating. With regret, I’d have to leave the barmaid and her fabulous T-shirt, but I knew my thirst would bring me back to the Headframe before too long.

Marlowe and I had chased the terrorist into an abandoned warehouse and now I stood over him with my rifle. Its muzzle pressed against his forehead like a cold kiss. Rules of engagement said this guy was a suspected terrorist, but I had no doubt in my mind.

Marlowe wore out the warehouse floor with his pacing.

“This is wrong,” he said. “This is wrong, Franklin.”

“Shut up, Marlowe. We got him dead to rights. Nobody goes around with a washing-machine timer in one hand and a Nokia in their other when they’re just out for an evening stroll.”

“We should wait for the MPs. ISP at the very least.” There was something in Marlowe’s voice that almost sounded like a sob.

“Shit, Marlowe. Our MPs couldn’t navigate their way out of their own mother’s cunt even if they had a compass and a flashlight and a GPS. As for the Iraqi police—”

At my feet, the guy was waving his hands and starting to make too much noise. Like screaming and begging-for-mercy kind of noise.

I made sure he got quieter before he could get louder.

“Shit, shit, SHIT! Look what you did, Franklin! Look at what you went and did.”

“I’m looking, Marlowe, and it looks okay to me. But if you don’t shut up, I’ll be forced to make it a two-fer tonight. And I don’t really want to do that, my friend.”

In response, Marlowe went fifty shades of pale, then brought up that afternoon’s MRE all over the warehouse floor.

When he had coughed his way out of it, I said, “If you’re through, hand me that washing-machine timer so I can put it back in this butt-fuck’s hand.”

“You’re a goddamn criminal, Franklin. Before long, you’ll be a regular butt-fucker yourself at Leavenworth. That’s what I think.”

It didn’t matter what Marlowe thought or who he tattled to because two days later he’d been divided a dozen different ways into the wind.

Now everyone wanted their own piece of Marlowe: claiming his legacy, his fortune — his sun-washed blond wife with legs up to here and breasts out to there, according to the photo Marlowe had tucked inside his helmet. The helmet and the snapshot of Chloe sitting leg-cocked on a lakeside boulder were the only things to survive the bomb blast intact. I carried that picture in my pocket now. The left edge was charred, burning away the tips of her bare feet, but the rest of the girl still had all that glorious flesh packed around her bones. Her head was tipped back — any farther and her hair would take a dip in the lake — and she looked through the camera as if to say, Come get me.

I followed the skunky smell up Montana Street. It was full dark now and Butte’s old headframes, the hundred-foot iron skeletons that had once lowered miners into the earth on cables, glowed red against the sky. Civic-minded do-gooders installed lights on the headframes years ago as a way to remind the city of its heritage — even if the past was not just dead but rotting in this place. What was once Butte’s pride now stunk like Brian’s coat.

Someone had to stop this guy from spreading his stink all over town and onto nice, pretty girls like Chloe.

As I walked, leaning into the slope of the Richest Hill on Earth, I kept thinking about how the army’s engineers swept Baghdad’s streets with heavy machinery — armored vehicles they called “Buffaloes.” They rode their Buffaloes, sniffed out bombs buried by the side of the road, and disarmed the explosives before we followed in our thinner-skinned Humvees.

That’s what I’d be doing now here in Butte. Making life easier for Chloe. Clearing the obstacles off her highway to happiness.

When Brian wobbled into the Party Palace, I hesitated. The Neversweat whiskey had me pretty loose already. I didn’t want to go any further and have my limbs fall out of my joints.

I found a patio table on the sidewalk with an empty beer bottle. I sat and pretended I was nursing that bottle back to health.

Thirty minutes passed. A group of bikers came out for a cigarette, telling jokes punctuated by smoker’s coughs. They were too into themselves, preening with their bandannas and leather chaps, to pay any attention to me.

Another hour passed.

A dog trotted past and lifted his leg on the table next to me. The man and woman sitting there did not appreciate that.

A fire truck, followed by a police car, screamed down Park Street.

I had time to examine the sidewalk in front of the Party Palace. I’m no engineer, but I determined the pavement there was a good inch higher than the surrounding concrete, built up by a decade’s worth of vomit from drunk miners and bikers with smoker’s coughs.

A woman with a ruined face and too-short shorts came out, put her arm around me, and slurred her undying, unconditional love. I led her over to the nearest lamppost where she professed the same type of affection.

Another twenty minutes passed.

My man finally came out of the swinging door, stumbled, and ran to catch up with his body before he fell onto the vomit-paved sidewalk. He pivoted and announced to the now-closed door, “I’mallright.”

As he walked past me, he weaved off course and bumped into my table. I was there to catch him by the elbow and said, “Whoa there, Brian.”

He raised his head and looked at me with alarm and puzzlement, then said, “Byron, I’mmmByron.”

“That’s what I said, Byron.”

“Allright then.”

“You should be more careful.”

He took back his elbow and said, with sudden clarity, “Thank you, I will.” He bowed, turned, and continued to walk up the sidewalk toward the dark mouth of an alley. He lowered his zipper as he walked — clearly a man on a mission.

“Yo, Byron. Wait up.”

He swivel-wobbled again. “Whut?”

“I want to have a little talk with you.”

“Whutabout?”

“Chloe.”

“Who?”

“You know a girl by the name of Chloe, right?”

“Whut of it?” His hand was still down his pants.

“You know where I can find her?”

“Mebbe I do, mebbe I don’t.” He turned and resumed his stutter-walk to the alley.

“Maybe you’ll tell me now, huh?” I called after him.

“Mebbe I will, mebbe I won’t.” He went around the corner and less than ten seconds later, a trickle of piss carrying a load of alley-dust reached the sidewalk.

I picked up my empty beer bottle by the neck and followed him into the alley to get some information. I was betting mebbe he’d tell me.

Two minutes later, I was back out of the alley with no beer bottle. But I had an address.

Behind me, a trickle of blood joined its fluid brothers Piss and Puke on the sidewalk.

Before I removed his teeth, Byron had given me an address that sent me north, up the hill to Walkerville. He said Chloe’s sister Jacinda lived up there and maybe she’d know where to find the girl — a girl, by the way, he swears he never did methametics with. I didn’t believe him when he said this, and I only half-believed him when he gave me the sister’s address.

There was a good chance I’d find plenty of wild geese but no Chloe. After all, this was the city’s rough neighborhood, the kind of place where good intentions go bad. I went anyway — drawn by the beacon of sun-washed hair.

The hair and the breasts and the legs were just part of it, though. This girl was starting to get under my skin. I needed to see her in person to find out a few things for myself. Like, if I pressed a gun barrel to her forehead, would she beg for her life, or would she tell me to go fuck myself?

After two hours of wandering Walkerville’s maze of streets and asking three guys in wifebeaters working on a gutted Ford in their front yard if they knew someone named Chloe — or Jacinda or Byron, even — and getting a wrench thrown in the general direction of my head, and deciding retreat was the better part of valor, and rib-kicking a dog who got in my way, and wandering in the dark, and squinting at unlit porches, and not finding even one goddamn trace of 1321 Transit Street, I turned back.

Ask anyone in Bravo Company and they’ll tell you I don’t even know how to spell the word surrender, but I’ll admit Walkerville defeated me that night.

I made my way back down the hill to the Finlen, consoling myself with one thought: Marlowe’s welcome-home parade was tomorrow and I was sure to find Chloe riding in the grand marshal’s car. I would catch her as she floated like a blond goddess, waving to all the little people who lined the streets cheering for her dead husband. I would grab her, pull her to me, and find my future somewhere in her eyes. Yes, that was my plan.

I woke to the sound of a firing squad.

Rifle shots cracked the air and brought me out of a swamp of bad dreams. I lifted my head and looked at the clock beside my bed at the Finlen. 10:32.

Another round of gunshots echoed through the empty brick canyons of the city. I tumbled from bed and crouched on the floor, panting. Then I remembered I was in Butte, not Baghdad, and I had a mission this morning.

I dressed quickly, sloppily, and raced down the Finlen’s stairwell. When I came out onto the street, I heard the amplified voices of city officials, one after the other stepping to the microphone and extolling the virtues of the brave and selfless Chandler Marlowe. Those lies only made me run faster up East Broadway.

I followed the off-key blats of the high school band warming up and, turning onto Granite Street, found myself surrounded by big men zipping around in tiny cars. They wore maroon fezzes on top of their heads and big Shriner grins on their faces. Cowboys on horses clopped up the street behind me. I stepped to the side, walking in the gutter as stooped veterans marched past, struggling to stay in step as they recalled their drill-and-ceremony training from fifty years ago. Four of those wrinkled warriors had buckets of candy. Every half block, they reached in and tossed taffy to the kids along the parade route.

I dashed alongside the parade until I saw it gleaming ahead of me: a white 196 °Cadillac convertible, the fins above its taillights sharp and polished. It crawled along the stained and potholed street like it was visiting from another world, carrying a diplomat from a faraway planet.

She sat on top of the car’s trunk, slender legs dangling into the backseat. She had one hand propped behind her while the other cut the air with nonstop waves. The hand gently turned back and forth to the crowd with just the right balance of grief and greeting: Yes, I’m a widow, but I thank you for this honor.

I stopped to catch my breath, hands on my knees. The Richest Hill on Earth was proving hard to climb.

“There she goes.”

“She can keep on going and not stop until she gets to Missoula for all I care.”

I half-turned to my right. Two women who looked like they lived on a daily diet of Pork Chop John’s watched the Caddy roll down the street.

“Poor gal,” the first woman said. “All that trouble with her sister and that drug money.”

“Poor nothing,” the second lady said. “That family made their bed.”

“Well... that one there’s got a nice bed now.” She snorted a laugh. “Mattress stuffed with all that insurance money from the army. I say good for her, shaking loose of her druggy sister.”

The second lady looked sharp in my direction. “Do I know you?”

“No, I guess you don’t,” I said. Answering the beckon of Chloe’s cupped palm, I started forward. I could almost hear the crisp scrunch of all those hundred-dollar bills as the two of us rolled across that mattress — a clean Chloe, not a vacant-eyed skank like I’d been led to believe. Things just kept getting better and better.

But then three men stepped from the crowd and blocked my way: Byron and two guys who looked like they got their full money’s worth from their gym memberships. Byron’s head was swaddled in a bandage. It clamped his head together and would have been perfectly white if it weren’t for three brownish-red stains that bloomed like flowers along his jawline.

I heard Byron mumble-yell something approximating, “That’s him!” and then they were rushing me.

Once upon a time, I’d soared down the field at Naranche Stadium to cheers of hundreds, carrying the ball to victory. I was older and a little slower now, but I gave it my all, dancing and dodging those three dudes on Granite Street.

I had a convertible to catch and when I reached it, I would touch Chloe on the elbow and make her turn to face me. I wasn’t sure what I would say, but I knew what I wouldn’t say. I wouldn’t tell Chloe the truth of what went down in Baghdad that day, how her husband was supposed to be off-duty that afternoon, how I hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before, how I made a deal with Marlowe to take my shift on that patrol, and how he looked at me dead in the eye and said, “Sure, I’ll swap with you. But it’ll cost you.”

I knew what his price was: a demand that I confess to the MPs I’d shot an unarmed civilian the day before. If I could just get Marlowe out of the way for a little bit, off the base and out on patrol for one afternoon, maybe I’d have some time to think this situation through and see my way clear to the end.

So I begged him to swap with me.

No, I wouldn’t tell Chloe all this. I’d just let her go on thinking her husband died a hero’s death, earning his medals without so much as a piss stain on his pants. I’d let Chloe enjoy this parade and cheer this evening’s fireworks because after this, she’d have a new man to think about, and she would be worth my coming back to Butte.

As three men roared at my back, I ran to catch the white convertible. I was almost there. I reached out to touch the taillight.

Then the driver stepped on the gas, the white convertible pulled away with my Chloe, my waving Chloe, as the parade crowd cheered and clapped, and I heard footsteps charging closer behind me.

Constellations by Caroline Patterson

Helena

“I’m sure she’s a lovely girl,” Mrs. Neal said as she peered over the scarred wooden desk at Peg Thompson. Mrs. Neal’s face was lined, her bosom wrinkled with cleavage that dove into folds of gray flesh and undergarments, the thought of which made Elizabeth vaguely sick. She wondered why Mrs. Neal held her playing cards fanned out in front of her, why the lights weren’t turned on, why the halls of the Helena YWCA were empty. Addressing the shriveled woman next to her, Mrs. Neal added, “Lillian and I just love the young ladies, don’t we?”

Peg studied the two women. “Elizabeth gets straight A’s. Her father’s a lawyer in Missoula, her mother’s on the symphony committee, and Elizabeth plays the piano. Mozart.”

Moe-zart? Elizabeth winced.

Mrs. Neal set down her cards and struggled to her feet. “All the way from Missoula,” she told Lillian. “A college town.”

Peg lifted her chin and straightened her shoulders. “I was elected delegate to the constitutional convention. Elizabeth is my page.”

“How educational.” The YWCA director studied Elizabeth’s shirtdress as it rode up her thighs.

“We’re making a new constitution,” Peg continued. “And this one is going to be written by the people, not the Anaconda Company.”

“We the people,” Mrs. Neal said. “Indeed.”

“Elizabeth will be working hard and her mother wants her in bed by ten.”

“I can put myself to bed,” Elizabeth said. “I am sixteen.”

“We understand about young ladies.” Mrs. Neal looked from Peg to Elizabeth to Lillian. “I’ve been in charge here for thirty years, and Lillian’s been here for seventeen. We can just tell by looking at this young lady that she is simply a lovely girl.”

Elizabeth was sure she’d be murdered there.

“This will be the experience of a lifetime,” Peg had said as they drove to Helena through a canyon lined with cottonwoods and threaded by the Little Blackfoot River. She glanced over at Elizabeth in the passenger seat. “You’ll see how a constitution is built.”

Elizabeth studied Peg’s red hair, pug nose, and cat’s-eye glasses. She didn’t approve of Peg. Even though Elizabeth was a tomboy, she had strict standards for grown-up women: they should clean house, bake delicious meals, tuck their feet in at their ankles, and be quiet. Peg’s house was a jumble of political posters and wobbly stacks of magazines and newspapers. Her standard contribution to the Methodist Church potluck was beans and weenies. When she and her husband played bridge with Elizabeth’s parents, Peg ignored Elizabeth’s mother’s attempts to discuss hairstyles and hemlines, turning the conversation to the Domino Theory. Nevertheless, when Peg said she was abandoning her son and husband to six weeks of hot dogs and dirty laundry to “cook up a constitution,” and asked Elizabeth to be a page, Elizabeth was thrilled.

She would be 114 miles away from her parents. She would be on her own for an entire week. And she planned to have sex.

It was 1972. It was time.

Everyone who was anyone was doing it. There was woozy, sex-oiled music on the radio with lyrics about kissing and free love and opening your mind. She didn’t have a partner, but that was irrelevant. Sex was the key that would unlock the door between her and the great throng of human life. She’d had the standard boyfriend experiences: going-steady rings wrapped in yarn, movie theater make-out sessions. She’d even examined her vagina with a hand mirror as Our Bodies, Our Selves instructed, but she thought it was a hideous, drippy piece of flesh, disfigured by masturbation. This was different.

She wanted shock, a bolt of pure pleasure to blast her out of her paralysis. Paralysis stemming from bridge nights, when the Thompsons came over and as the adults studied their cards, Peg’s son crept upstairs, opened the door, unzipped his pants, and shoved her hand onto the thick, knobbed head of his penis, the bumpy swollen shaft, moving it up and down until he ran to the bathroom next door where she could hear his grunting release.

“We’re making history, Elizabeth!” Peg said as they drove past beaver slides, large contraptions farmers used to stack hay, and pastures of dreamy cattle with newborn calves curled in small bundles of black or brown, their mothers licking their coats. “Aren’t you excited?”

“I can’t wait,” Elizabeth replied, thinking of an empty room and some boy she would meet, the image of his face blurred and indistinct. She looked out the windshield at the larch logs, round and raw, on the truck ahead of them as it roared through a mud puddle and fanned dirty water over the side of the road.

The room at the Y was the color of canned salmon. The bed frame was iron. There was a window, a rickety chest of drawers, and a closet with a pipe to hang clothes on. Elizabeth stacked her underwear in a drawer lined with newspaper and set her patent-leather loafers on the closet floor. She hung her dresses hemmed to four inches above the knee — as specified by the Dress Code for Pages — on the pipe, grimacing at the scratchy ping! of wire hangers against the metal. She set her cherished Yardley Slicker lipstick, paid for with weeks of babysitting, on the dresser.

She stood at the window and looked out past the filmy curtains, the kind her father called Band-Aids, as the cathedral tower in the distance rang the hours with slow, dolorous chimes. Behind that was another sound: skittering footsteps somewhere in the YWCA.

She opened the door to walk to the bathroom and in the dim hall came face to face with Lillian dressed in a nubby, stained robe, holding a dented pie tin.

“My God!” Elizabeth’s heart banged against her chest. “You scared me. I didn’t realize you were here.”

Lillian looked at Elizabeth like she’d never seen her before and hurried down the hall as if she were being chased.

From the direction of the old woman’s room, Elizabeth smelled the tang of cat piss. She put her coat on and locked the door behind her. As she walked down the hallway, she heard tinny music from a distant radio and the thud of her footsteps on the floorboards.

Outside, she took gulps of cool air until her heart settled, until she felt the quiet of the streets enter her. She felt close to the great, mummified heart of Helena. There was something ghostlike about the town, with echoes of its former glory days when rich people built mansions here to have a presence in state government. She imagined parties spilling onto elegant porches, waiting carriages, women in muffs, piano music slicing the frosty night. Her parents, who loved turn-of-the-century novels, longed for that world, not the one her father cursed each night on television.

She felt lonely as she walked, but lonely in a new way; not the weak, piercing abandonment of the playground, but the loneliness of dark streets, of looking in at lighted windows, of watching trees toss their armloads of leaves in the wind, a loneliness pure and singular and strong.

As she headed down the hill into the Gulch, she walked past bars named the Gold Dust, the Claim Jumper, and the Mint, where men peered at her through open doors with vague curiosity. She saw herself through their eyes: an unaccompanied girl walking the street at dusk, no doubt on her way to ballet or piano lessons, a girl with family connections, a girl who meant trouble.

How would she make this happen? She wasn’t old enough to walk into a bar. Would she stand at the door until someone suitable came out, and then just ask him point blank, Hey, mister, want to have sex?

The thought was erotic and terrifying.

When she imagined having sex, she pictured herself and her lover wearing wool sweaters and making snowmen, walking in leaves and crying a lot because they were so in love.

She headed back to the Y, down sidewalks lined with dirt-crusted snow. As she pushed open the heavy door, a voice said: “Where have you been?”

When her eyes adjusted to the dark, she saw the large shoulders of Mrs. Neal rising above the sofa.

“For a walk,” Elizabeth said.

With a grunt, Mrs. Neal heaved herself up. “Let’s keep our breaths of fresh air to the daytime, shall we, dear? Walking at night is not something ladies do.”

At the Hen Haus, Peg gave her name to the receptionist and steered Elizabeth to a flank of green leather chairs. The beauty parlor was a riot of pink sinks and blue and green curlers, the air an overripe tang of hairspray, shampoo, and perming solution.

Peg patted Elizabeth’s knee. “This is nice. It’s like having a pretend daughter.”

Her ears buzzing with the patter and slice of women’s voices and scissors, Elizabeth didn’t know how to respond. She felt suddenly superior to Peg, with her creepy son and her husband who hid behind a newspaper wall. Maybe Peg was lonely. Maybe her politicking was just a way to escape.

Elizabeth startled herself by asking, “Did you want a daughter?”

“I lost twin girls.” Peg flipped the pages of Screen Star then turned a pained smile on Elizabeth, leaning in so close that Elizabeth could see the large pores on her nose and the reddened tear duct in her left eye. “Some things just aren’t meant to be.”

The words were right there on Elizabeth’s lips: Your son. Made me. Touch him. She saw him standing by her bedside, pants pooling at his knees. “Did you know?” she blurted.

“Know what?” Peg asked.

Elizabeth’s face felt numb. The room receded.

“What?”

“I want to go on a protest march.” Those words seemed to arrive in her mouth on their own. The creak of his foot on the stairs, the triangle of light widening across her bed.

“Against the war?” Peg stiffened. “With hippies? Honey, they’re killing Communists over there.”

“I don’t believe in the war.” Elizabeth hated Peg’s glasses, the cat’s-eye shape, the thick lenses, the way her eyes seemed magnified and blind at the same time. She thought of telling those glasses about the boy and how they’d shatter, shards flying in a million directions.

Peg stood when the hairdresser called her name. She patted Elizabeth’s leg. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell your parents.”

A thin blade of nervousness propelled Elizabeth through the Capitol rotunda where, as people moved about, talking, their voices grew whispery and ancient. She met the other pages — she and the boy from Dawson County were the only ones who didn’t live on a ranch. The pages tried not to stare at one another as the legislative coordinator explained their duties: fetching newspapers, copies of amendments, cigarettes, and coffee, gallons of coffee.

In the assembly hall, pages sat in black mahogany chairs facing the one hundred delegates, who were seated alphabetically to encourage fraternization. A lighted board featured their names. When a delegate pushed a button at his or her desk, the corresponding number lit up on the board, and the pages went quickly to help.

There was a comfortable, early morning ease about the room. Aides handed out papers while the delegates milled about, chatting, drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes, or tipping back in their chairs behind newspapers. Elizabeth only half-listened, absorbed in the smell of cigarette smoke, the red swirled carpeting, the long windows, and the huge painting by Charles Russell of Lewis and Clark meeting the Flathead Indians.

There was a dark, Serbian delegate from Anaconda with slicked-back hair and a pinstriped suit. The oldest delegate was an elfin librarian from the University of Montana who was rumored to have an encyclopedic memory; the youngest was a graduate student with frosted hair and a Southern accent. Peg was an anomaly: the housewife with shooting-star veins was a Missoula Republican who hailed from Butte and hated the company. Handsome research analysts scurried about, with their array of sideburns — neat college-boy sideburns, curly mutton-chop sideburns, and narrow Elvis Presley sideburns — handing out research ranging from Supreme Court rulings to Montana statutes to copies of Plato’s Republic.

President Graybill pounded his gavel to open the session and announced the date: Tuesday, February 29, 1972. The members of the Natural Resource Committee walked to the podium, where they stood and congratulated one another on having created one of the strongest environmental-resources amendments ever written.

The delegate from Glendive, the committee chair, tapped the microphone. She had a mane of wild black hair held back from her drawn-in face with barrettes. “We have failed this state,” she said. “The amendment that this committee is so busy congratulating themselves about is weak, watered down, and basically useless.”

The other committee members looked shocked.

“We are facing a future of strip-mining. This committee has failed to defend Montana’s right to a clean and healthful environment. They voted it down in committee, folks. And now they are congratulating themselves on what a fine job they’ve done. Let me ask you this: Will you be proud that you failed to support Montana’s right to a clean and healthful environment? Will we still be congratulating ourselves after we’ve destroyed our land and air and rivers?”

She started crying. The room erupted. President Graybill pounded his gavel and shouted for order. Peg and several others rushed over to comfort her.

The page next to Elizabeth handed her a note that read:

That night, as they ate cabbage and corned beef in Dorothy’s Cafe, Peg told Elizabeth that her father left the house each morning before dawn to work in Butte’s Alice Mine.

“He took an elevator 5,000 feet into the earth,” she said. “Can you imagine? Rock walls, just a candle for light, coming up once a day for lunch, and then going back into the dirt and the dark again? The horses that worked down there went blind. That’s what that woman is fighting against with clean and healthful.”

Elizabeth looked at her stringy corned beef. If horses went blind, wouldn’t people, too? “It seems like they would have just killed themselves.”

“I can’t believe you said that.” There was an edge to Peg’s voice. “They didn’t kill themselves because it was a sin. They had families and they were tough.”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Elizabeth said, stung.

Peg’s smile looked like a grimace. “I know you didn’t, honey. But think about what you say.”

As they walked outside, Elizabeth wished she were anywhere but here, on this brick sidewalk, making torturous small talk. She thought about Patrick and the way his hair curled over his collar, the way his nose tipped up slightly at the end.

“My father was killed in a mine explosion,” Peg said as they continued down the deserted street. “He left my mother to raise seven children. That’s why, when Mr. Thompson asked me to marry him, I told him, I’ll marry you if you don’t work for the Anaconda Company! You know what he said?”

“What?” Elizabeth couldn’t imagine Mr. Thompson having the nerve to ask Peg out for coffee.

“He said: Let’s take the next bus to Missoula! And we did!” She held her arms open, her purse hanging from one of them like an ornament.

“That’s a nice story,” Elizabeth said, wondering why grown-ups assumed younger people were interested in old folks’ origin stories. She followed Peg down the narrow streets of Last Chance Gulch. They stopped in front of a store called Mr. Dash’s Haberdashery, looking in at the window display.

“Funny beings, men are,” said Peg.

Hilarious, Elizabeth thought, wondering exactly how many steps lay between her and the Y.

Four mannequins stood in a shaft of light from the streetlamps, dressed in suit coats and sweater vests, in dress shirts and ties, headless and waiting.

The next day, the Anaconda delegate tried modifying the natural resources amendment so the state of Montana could preserve a clean and healthful environment as a public trust.

The delegate spoke for an hour about trusts and how environmentalists were trying to take over public lands for the government. This was socialism, he explained.

The room grew hot.

Peg stood up and turned to the delegates. “We all know who this delegate is really representing — right, folks? It’s a company named for a snake. The company created our first constitution, and if you wonder how people felt about it, think about what they called it: the copper collar.”

Her opposing delegate rose and began reading the Magna Carta.

Elizabeth jumped up to answer bell number 46.

This delegate was from Poplar. “Jesus H. Christ,” he said. “Nobody told us the Anaconda Company was going to filibuster this. We’re gonna be here till next goddamn Christmas.” He told her the last page he had was from Missoula. “Kid was a hippie, but you know what? He was the smartest page I ever had.”

Elizabeth resolved to be smarter. “What can I get you?”

“The paper,” he said, and handed her a dime.

She headed down to the newspaper machines in the basement. She put in the dime, pulled up the glass box, and took out a newspaper.

When she returned, the same delegate was talking about how his grandfather had taken the train to Yellowstone and toured the park in a buckboard and how, with these socialist ideas of a clean and healthful environment, everybody would be suing the state.

She handed the newspaper to the Poplar delegate and he scowled at her. “Oh for God’s sake, girl. This is yesterday’s.”

Elizabeth’s eyes teared.

“Forget it,” he said.

Peg stood up. “Delegate Burns, is it in the public trust for the company not to pay taxes?”

“That is public trust,” Burns said. “And my grandfather, when he came to homestead—”

A Billings delegate interrupted him: “I’m a simple man, but I know this. We’ve got the Beartooth Mountains over there, highest in Montana, and I’ve been in them many times. We’ve got five mining companies that want to take those mountains, rip them wide open, and dig a pit five miles long and three miles wide. And once they’ve dug that pit and taken the soil out of there and polluted the river down below it, it’s not going to be there anymore. And we won’t be able to put it back.”

The amendment failed, 58 to 36.

The graduate student in a lime-green miniskirt shot up, her eyes blazing. “Mr. Chairman, I’d like to introduce a new amendment, guaranteeing Montanans’ right to a high-quality environment which is clean, healthful, and pleasant, for the protection and enjoyment of its people and the protection of its natural beauty and natural resources, including wildlife and vegetation.”

The Anaconda delegate shook his head. “Those words — healthful, high-quality, pleasant, and reasonable — are too metaphysical.”

“I’d like to point out that in the Bill of Rights, we have metaphysical terms such as liberty, freedom, and inalienable rights.” Her voice was as direct as a bullet. “But we have no trouble determining what they mean.”

The amendment was defeated, 51 to 43.

As Elizabeth walked from the Capitol down Montana Avenue, white clouds moved across the blue highway of sky and shadows pooled under the ash trees. She liked the momentum of moving downhill with the sun on her face and the snow-covered Sleeping Giant Mountain dozing on the horizon in front of her.

A pickup truck pulled up next to her. The driver leaned over and rolled down the passenger window. “Wanna ride?”

Patrick, wearing mirrored aviator sunglasses. Her breath caught in her throat as she stepped up into the cab.

At a drive-in, they ordered root beers and hamburgers from a carhop in a short skirt and ski parka, who skated with their orders back to the window, past heaps of sooty snow.

Patrick pushed his sunglasses up on top of his head and looked over at Elizabeth. His eyes were green flecked with brown.

The cab felt very close.

They talked. Patrick explained that he was a junior at Dawson County High School. He ran track, played trumpet, and had collected the autographs of almost all one hundred delegates. He had an older brother who was serving in an artillery unit in Vietnam. Then he leaned over and sang, badly: “Do you want to go to San Francisco?”

She almost laughed.

“I want to get out of here so bad,” he said, his eyes shining. “I need to see something besides goddamn cowboys. Rolling Stones. Cream. Jimi Hendrix. How ’bout you?”

“’Frisco for sure,” Elizabeth replied, though in truth that city’s flower-child scene scared her. “I want a yellow Karmann Ghia and a dog named Spud.” She paused, tilted her head, and looked at him. “And I want to have sex.”

He flushed and reared back. “You want to what?”

When she didn’t answer, he reached out for her.

She pressed herself against the door. “No! Not like that. This is a project.”

“What do you mean, a project?” He settled back behind the steering wheel.

“Eat your cheeseburger,” she said.

He studied Elizabeth, his hair falling across his face. “You’re an odd one.”

The two of them sat in a companionable silence, watching cars spin down the highway, drinking the sweet root beer and eating greasy hamburgers, watching a dog pick its way across the parking lot, nose down and looking for scraps.

As she crumpled up their hamburger wrappers, Patrick put his hand over hers and asked, “Are you serious?”

“About what?” she said, although she knew fully well what he was asking about.

He shook his head and started the pickup. Seeing her squinting in the light, he took off his sunglasses and handed them to her. “You can have these if you want.”

She took them, glimpsing her oblong reflection in the mirrored lenses, the way her face looked wide and egg-like, pink and contorted, all eyes and nose, and wavering.

During the afternoon break in the next day’s session, Elizabeth was getting a drink at the water fountain when she felt a tap on her shoulder.

“Follow me,” Patrick said.

They walked to the base of the rotunda. When Patrick was sure no one was looking, he grabbed her hand and led her to a small door. He opened it and led her inside. A sudden dusty quiet enveloped them.

They stood in a tiny closet where a narrow iron ladder rose up into the shadows.

“What are we doing?” Elizabeth was afraid a bat would fly out from somewhere and tangle itself in her hair.

Patrick began to climb the metal rungs. “Trust me.”

Elizabeth followed him, hand over hand, foot over foot. Her dress ballooned out and she worried that if someone opened the door they’d see her underwear.

As they climbed up into the shadows, shoes scraping iron, she stopped caring. In the cool, quiet shaft, Elizabeth thought she heard the flutter of birds. Finally, the curved underside of the rotunda appeared.

“Where are we?” Her voice sounded hollow.

“You’ll see.”

“It’s cold.”

When Patrick reached the top rung, he took a flashlight out of his pocket. He shined the circle of light on the wall. “Look.”

Above his head, on the narrow curved ceiling of the rotunda, were hundreds of signatures scrawled in marker, charcoal, and what looked like candle smoke. Some were large and loopy, some small and precise, some blurred, some feathery, others delicate as lace. The two of them clung there, sheltered by the names’ ghostly constellation.

Patrick climbed down over the top of her, pressing her into the iron ladder. She turned her head to him. They kissed. His lips were cool and soft.

Molly Stensrud, 1895. Joseph McKinsey, 1923. Hope Smith, 1911. Kilroy Was Here, 1941. Class of 1964 Rules.

That night, Patrick scaled the porch support to the balcony as Elizabeth waited in her room with the lights off.

She eased open the window, holding her breath at the scrape of wood against wood. “Hey, Romeo,” she whispered.

He crept under Elizabeth’s window, balanced himself on the clinker brick, and put his hands on the windowsill. Then he was inside. He seemed so tall in the cramped room.

Patrick looked at the rickety dresser and the iron bed. “So this is where you stay? What a dump.”

“It’s my dump,” Elizabeth said, irritated. “And keep your voice down. There’s someone next door.”

Patrick’s hands dangled at his sides like rope. His face was smudged. “What do we do now?”

“We kiss.”

He grabbed her waist. They sat on the bed and kissed. They lay on the bed and kissed. Each time they shifted position, the bed creaked. The walls and door were so thin they barely seemed to exist. In the hall, a door opened and footsteps shuffled down the threadbare carpet runner. Elizabeth and Patrick kissed as pipes groaned and water turned on and off.

Maybe she didn’t want to join the big chorus. She glimpsed the two of them in the speckled mirror over the dresser, tangled together on the lime-green bed: his brown hair, her red hair, his arms, her arms. She felt his smooth stomach and muscled shoulders and she felt her breasts swell and heard the women in her head saying, Chippie, slut, whore.

Patrick slipped his hands under her shirt. He unsnapped her bra and cupped her breasts in his hands. Electricity shot through her.

Hmmmm, the voices said.

“You’re lovely,” Patrick said.

Elizabeth took off her shirt and bra. In the mirror, she saw her pink-nippled breasts, her long hair and round face, Patrick sitting next to her with his long legs dangling. Her stomach grew cold.

“Are you still okay with this?” he said.

“Yes,” Elizabeth whispered.

“What about...?”

Reaching under the pillow, she pulled out the rubber she’d stolen from her father.

Patrick took off his shirt and she ran her hand through his chest hair. His nipples were brown, his chest lightly freckled. He had a scar on his abdomen.

“Appendicitis,” he said when she touched it. “I was ten.”

You will always regret it, said the voices in her head.

She put her hand on his stomach. His finger teased her nipple until it was hard.

“What are you smiling about?” he said, pulling her down on his chest. Their skin warmed together.

She shook her head. “Nothing.”

There was the awkwardness of Patrick turning away from her, struggling with the condom.

He stroked Elizabeth’s back, pulled her to him, and mounted her, and the aunts and mothers in her head resumed that odd, Hmmm.

Then Elizabeth split in two: the Elizabeth on the bed who felt the lushness of Patrick entering her, slowly, the slight pain, then the warmth of him filling her; and the Elizabeth who hovered above herself, watching, listening to her murmurs in counterpoint to the rattle of the bed.

They woke up in a tangle of covers, sheets, and clothes. The window was still dark.

“Oh my God,” Patrick said, “are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” She wasn’t. She was shaky and upset. She wanted to be alone.

She got up to wash the blood from between her legs. As she crossed the room, she caught sight of herself in the mirror and stopped to see if she looked different. She didn’t, but she felt different, like one of those pod people who hatched into perfect but emotionless replicas of themselves.

It was the new version of her that slipped on Patrick’s shirt, buttoning it halfway. She opened the door, stepped out into the hall, and came face to face with Lillian.

The old woman was returning from the bathroom with her bent aluminum pie pan dripping with water, trembling in her unsteady hands. Her eyes registered the man’s shirt and glanced through the doorway before Elizabeth could pull it shut.

“You scared me,” said Elizabeth. “Are you feeding your cat?”

“I have no cat,” Lillian nearly spit. In her worn-thin nightgown, Lillian appeared even older, her back humped, her hair hanging in white wisps about her shoulders. Looking into her dark, empty eyes, Elizabeth wondered if she was demented.

“I guess we both have secrets,” Elizabeth said.

The woman’s mouth cracked open but no sound came out — a thin line of spittle stretched from one lip to the next. She pressed her lips back together and hurried down the hall, her footsteps scratching like paws.

Shit, thought Elizabeth.

She used the bathroom and returned to bed, trying to concentrate on Patrick’s smooth skin, the brush of his hair across her face, his smell of sweat and soap. The words fouled this earth flashed across her brain and then she was lost, remembering the warmth of him entering her. She wanted to stay inside herself, on this bed, in this room, but she rose up and out of herself. Hearing the voices and their deep, guttural Hmmmmm, she imagined the mouths of mothers and grandmothers opening and closing like fish out of water until they lost the ability to breathe. Elizabeth imagined the sound of a clear, single note that seemed to arrive from a distant galaxy.

Blood dripped into a pad between Elizabeth’s legs as she sat with the other pages at the front of the room. Patrick was just three seats away from her, his hair brushing his collar.

The delegates were discussing wording for a clean and healthful environment, which had come up for a third and final vote. It was late in the day, late in the convention. Everyone was rushed and frenzied by the sense that this moment in history was winding down. The air was thick with cigarette smoke.

A Missoula delegate with sideburns stood to read his revision of the amendment: “The state of Montana and each person must maintain and enhance a clean and healthful environment in the state for the enjoyment and protection of present and future generations.”

“Oh Lord,” another delegate sighed. “Haven’t we been through this?”

A buzzer buzzed. Elizabeth got up to answer it.

“Coffee,” Peg said. “We’re gonna be here awhile. You all right? You look tired.”

“Just that time of the month,” Elizabeth lied, her stomach knotting.

Peg patted her hand. “Oh, hon, I’m so sorry.”

The click of Elizabeth’s shoes on black-and-white tiles hammered into her brain as she walked to the coffee stand. Through an opened window in the rotunda, she saw wet snow falling and smelled the sweetness of budding cottonwoods. It surprised her that outside the riot of her body and the chaos in the rotunda, there were still seasons.

She delivered the coffee and returned to her black mahogany chair.

After hours of wrangling, a young delegate rose, cleared his throat, and said to the assembly: “When you go home, and a voter asks you what you did for the environment, what are you going to say? That we’re all for clean and healthful, but we don’t want to use the words in our constitution?”

The amendment passed, 68 to 26.

The next day was Saturday, her day to ride home with Peg. When Elizabeth walked downstairs to go to breakfast, Mrs. Neal and Lillian were waiting at the desk like clerks at a hotel. Lillian had taken some care with her appearance and was wearing a blue polka-dotted dress.

“Why, you are just the person we’re looking for,” said Mrs. Neal in a saccharine voice.

Elizabeth went numb.

“Why don’t you sit down?”

It wasn’t a question. She lowered herself on the doily- covered chair in the front room.

A door opened and Peg walked in. She nodded curtly at the two older women, two small red circles burning in her cheeks.

Elizabeth began to shake.

“Let’s leave these Missoula people alone, Lillian,” Mrs. Neal said.

The woman in the polka-dotted dress seemed reluctant to leave. She opened her mouth and Elizabeth pictured the thin strand of saliva that had spanned her lips that night in the hall.

Lillian said: “Some people seem to just think they’re above the rules. Awful high and mighty.”

Mrs. Neal shut the door behind them before Elizabeth could respond.

Peg turned on her. “I’m so mad I could spit. How could you do this to yourself? To your parents? To me?”

Elizabeth stared at her hands. She tested the nubby brown brocade fabric of the chair. She would forever think of shame as having exactly this texture.

“Why would you, a good girl, a straight-A student with everything to lose, risk it all for a night in the sack?”

Elizabeth lifted her head and stared at Peg. Over the noise in her head — chippie, slut, whore — and despite the way her face seemed frozen, she forced the words out: “Because I chose to.”

“You chose to?”

She nodded, gripping the armrest to keep from shaking.

“For the love of God, why?”

“Your son.”

“My son?” Peg was genuinely puzzled. Elizabeth saw where the woman’s lipstick was smeared, the gray roots at her scalp, and the white hairs Elizabeth’s mother called goat hairs growing from her chin. “Why are you bringing my son into this?”

“Your son made me touch him. While you and my parents played bridge, he snuck upstairs and unzipped his pants. He made me touch him. Over and over. And I hated it. Hated it. Hated it!”

Peg crumpled in the chair, her head in her hands, her back heaving.

When Peg came back a few hours later, she was wearing sunglasses that didn’t hide how much she’d been crying. Elizabeth felt strangely dry-eyed, but she slipped on the sunglasses Patrick had given her before she got into the car. They muted the day’s brightness but brought out other colors, subtle greens and browns.

The only sound on the ride back to Missoula was the tires crackling across the pavement as Peg piloted the car. Elizabeth saw that they were both driving away from who they had been, driving away from what the state had been, toward what it could become.

At MacDonald Pass, both of them were silent as the road snaked down through the mountains to the wide oxbows of the Clark Fork River. As the old car wound through the valley, the Garnet Mountains folded in on themselves like the Y of a woman’s body, their round flanks split by a coulee — a French word meaning to flow — the land bending toward water. Years later, Elizabeth would learn to love those broad flanks, the undulating plains of flesh, and the Y of a woman’s body, her body, with its mysteries, its givings and takings, but on that drive, she had to content herself with a weak spring sunlight warming her face and hands and the knowledge that, at least for now, they had crossed the Continental Divide and she was halfway home.

Ace in the Hole by Eric Heidle

Great Falls

Civic-pride billboards and the drab county jail swept past the chilly Greyhound’s windows as it dropped down the hill into the night of Great Falls. Through frosted glass, Chance watched the town pull him in as the Missouri passed below, the bus thrumming over dark water and skiffs of ice. Beyond the bridge he saw the OK Tire sign was gone; its cinder-block building was now something new.

The bus pulled a lazy turn toward downtown, rolling through blocks of low brick warehouses before banking hard into the alley behind the depot. It settled with a hiss in the garage as the passengers roused and began filing off.

The snap of deep cold hit him at the door. The driver’s breath huffed with each suitcase he tossed from the coach’s gut. Chance only had his green duffel. He split off from the line shuffling into the warmly lit lobby. Ducking under the half-open bay door at the front of the garage, he stepped onto the street and walked toward Central Avenue.

He went into the first bar he found, easing past a gleaming line of poker machines gaily draining the life from their patrons. Finding a stool, Chance slid a twenty across the bar. The man behind it inclined his chin and Chance replied, “Whatever ditch.” When the drink came he held the brimming glass of whiskey and “ditch” water to his lips, toasted his reflection and a town he’d found a little less OK, and enjoyed a first delicious violation of parole.

Chance and his father leaned against opposite sides of the truck bed, resting on grimy forearms. The shop was quiet. It was Sunday and the town was in church.

“Battery’s fucked,” his father said. “Put the trickle charger on it but in this cold it probably won’t hold.”

The pickup, a great square International, had been Chance’s since high school. It was brutish and lovely and filled with garbage from the glory days. The engine idled, exhaling a fragrant plume of exhaust.

“I’d have picked you up at the station. Or Deer Lodge, for that matter.”

“I know. Thanks.”

“You ever hear from your mom over there?”

“Not once.”

“Too bad. So you know, I put the place up last fall. Sold it to Charlie Carter.”

Chance looked up, surprised for the first time. “Why?”

His dad glanced off toward the light. “No point keeping it since your grandma died. Charlie could use the pasture and I could use the pocket money. Kept the buildings, though. House is yours to stay in if you like.”

“Thanks. I might, for a bit.”

“Good. I threw something in the cab for you. Your granddad’s wool coat. Winter’s been a bitch.” He gave the truck an approving nod. “Come see me about a job in a couple days.”

“Sounds good.”

His dad drummed the heel of his hand against a rusty quarter panel. “Well. Let ’er rip.”

Chance drove the rifle-shot length of Tenth Avenue South under a cold overcast sky. The engine pulled grandly and he allowed himself a vision of swerving the steering wheel, plowing through burger chains and payday loan shacks, feeling their matchstick frames explode against the truck’s hungry grille. Goodbye, strip mall. Goodbye, Target. Sayonara, Tokyo Massage. He pulled off when he reached the east end of town with nothing but icy stubble fields and the towers of the air base beyond. The truck idled and the cab heater muttered its low sigh. He reached across the bench seat to a buffalo-plaid Pendleton he recalled his grandfather wearing at the ranch. He pulled it on and it fit, a bit snug but warm.

Sitting back, he felt a lump against his spine. Reaching into the coat’s rear game pocket, he found an envelope with CHANCE scrawled in pencil by his father’s crude hand. Inside was three thousand dollars.

The mermaid traced a slow, liquid curl through the turquoise pane of water, revealing a pleasantly bare midriff as she rolled into a sinewy loop. Her metallic tail chased behind, drawing gorgeous curlicues with each wondrous pelvic kick.

Chance lifted his drink and followed her silvery shape as she swam to the glass separating the bar back from the motel’s indoor pool. She gave him a bubbly grin from behind blue swim goggles.

“She’ll do,” said the big Indian sitting next to him at the bar, swiping the screen of his phone and sipping a High Life.

“But will she do me?” Chance added, just to be polite.

“Only if you’re lucky.” He offered a paw. “Amos.”

“Chance.” They shook.

“Lucky Chance. How could you lose?” Amos fished some bills from his Seahawks jacket and waved the barmaid over. “Another one for my lucky friend. Me too.”

Chance thanked him and they sat in blue vinyl chairs watching the mermaid flit in and out of view. Behind them a crowd of college kids and ranchers sipped Windex-tinted drinks beneath the bamboo-thatched ceiling as a small old woman at the organ crooned a gravelly “Mack the Knife.” Amos took a pull from his beer and stood, waggling the phone. “Have to check my stock portfolio.” He clapped Chance on the back and faded into the crowd.

Chance sampled his drink. A second mermaid had entered the pool and she entwined with the first, forging a heavenly double helix suspended in chlorine. He ran his eyes along her shape and realized that he knew her. Amy. They’d dated in school. He raised his drink, tilted the glass in a toast.

From behind the glass she threw a sidelong smirk, cocked a finger at him, and fired. Then she went up for air.

Chance grinned and watched her tail slip up out of sight.

“She’s easy on the eyes.”

Chance turned to find Amos’s chair filled by a fit-looking man his own age wearing a bright yellow down jacket. His short black hair had a touch of gray at the temples.

“Hello, Matt.”

“Hello, Chance... Out already. Good behavior?”

“Good enough.”

“Glad to have you back.” Matt set his whiskey on the bar.

“You follow me from my dad’s?”

“More or less. Thought we should chat, since you’re a free man.”

“I’m not sure how free, but okay.”

Matt centered his drink between index fingers. “Lots of free time, at any rate. Enough time to work off some debt.” Matt looked at him for the first time.

“Sure,” Chance said from behind his glass. “Just not sure how.”

“I have a few ideas.”

“I can’t make any runs into Canada, if that’s what you have in mind.”

“Fucking A, you can’t. Legal or otherwise.”

“Well?”

Matt drained his drink. “Be creative. Rob a bank.”

“Great.” Chance turned in his chair. “I’ll sling all the weed you can give me but I need to keep a low profile.”

“That’s not going to work. Town’s too small. And it would take a lifetime to earn off that much.” Matt stood. “Walk me out.”

They came out into the second-floor parking lot, ringed by motel rooms on all sides. The moon was up and gleaming through an iridescent layer of cloud. Matt fumbled with his keychain and a red Suburban yawned to life in the parking lot.

“Matt, I don’t have that kind of money, and I’m never going to have it without selling dope. Plain and simple.”

“Join the club. I’m already losing my ass to medical marijuana. Anyone with a card can run out to a trailer house in Vaughn and buy in broad daylight. I need to be retired in five years. I need that money.”

“What can I do? I got caught.”

“Not my problem. You gave a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of weed swimming lessons, not me. Fuck you. Find it.”

“Fuck you, too. Maybe I can ask your mom the fucking cash fairy for it.”

If it hadn’t been for the drinks, he might have caught Matt swinging. The punch hit his gut through the heavy coat and he was going backward and Matt was on top of him, throwing right after right into Chance’s nose. Matt was still fond of his class ring. The sound of Matt yelling, getting fainter. Something red going all over Matt’s bright yellow jacket.

“Lucky.”

There was a circle of light but a shape loomed in and eclipsed it. Something was spinning and he discovered it was the world.

“Hey, Lucky. You still alive?”

“Amos,” he croaked, remembering. He sort of sat up.

“Easy, Lucky.” Amos helped him stand, then held his arm while Chance leaned over to vomit. When he was finished he tried to lay down for a nap, but Amos pulled him upright. “Not a good idea. You look like you got beat up by five Indians, and three of them was my cousins.”

“Oh my God!” Behind them the door to the motel held the silhouette of a woman, a hand to her mouth. “I’m calling the cops.”

Amos let go of Chance’s arm and raised his palms. “No, no. I just found him.”

From the ground, Chance put up a hand. “He’s okay. He’s Amos. Amos, Amy.”

Amy held her phone, ready to dial. Her hair wasn’t quite dry from the pool. A halo of steam framed her face in the yellow courtyard light. Chance thought she looked pretty good, but he could really use a nap.

Amos and Amy each took an arm and lifted Chance to his feet. He pointed toward the International and they dragged him over, sitting him in the passenger side. Amy probed his nose with a finger and winced. “You need to go to the ER.”

“No ER. No police. Just give me a second.”

Amos and Amy shared a glance. Amos shrugged. “Your call, Lucky.”

Chance tried to fish the keys from his jeans but razors shaved his fingertips. “I think my hands are frostbit.”

Amos shook his head. “I’m not gettin’ ’em.”

Amy shot him a look and sighed. She reached in Chance’s pocket, pulled out the keys, then walked around to the driver’s side. “Guess I’m driving.”

She got in and turned the key: nothing. “It’s dead. When was the last time you drove this thing much?”

“Five years,” Chance groaned.

“That sounds about right.” She slid the vehicle into neutral. “Amos, can you help me push it?”

Amos and Amy leaned into the front grille and got the truck backed into the center of the courtyard.

Amos touched her arm. “You get in and I’ll push you down the ramp. Get him to the ER. Nice to meet you, Amy.”

“You too. Take care.” She hopped in and slammed the door. From the far edge of the cab Chance mumbled, “It’s a stick.”

“I know, genius. That’s why this shit will work.” Amos put his shoulder against the tailgate and the truck inched forward, tires crunching in dry snow. The wheels cleared the edge of the parking ramp and took off.

Amy waited till the bottom of the ramp before popping the clutch. The engine caught and roared to life.

Chance sat up as she turned onto the street. “Really. I’m okay. Not my first fight.”

“Sure looks like it was. Did you even land a punch?” She pulled over and let the truck idle.

“Don’t recall. But, hey. Amy, how you been? You still married?”

“I’m going to make a judgment call here. You probably aren’t going to die at this point, and I’m guessing this has something to do with your time in prison. So I’m going to let you drive yourself home if you can. I’m not going to be involved in whatever this is. But you have to call me when you get there, so I know you made it.”

She scribbled a number on a card from her wallet and tucked it into the dash. “Can you drive home?”

He slid over as she stepped out onto the street. “I’ll be fine. But can we go for a beer sometime?”

“A convicted felon with shitty friends, a shitty truck, and a broken nose,” she purred. “Mmm... tell me more.” But she pecked his bruised cheek before closing the door.

He awoke the next afternoon in the farmhouse’s back bedroom. His nose had bled through the sheets, but he could smell the sawdust-and-baby-powder scent of the house. He got up and made coffee to the ticking of the old mantel clock in the front room. The house was cool but not cold and it looked like his father had left everything in place. Hopefully.

Back in his room, he reached under the bed: the box was still there. He tipped it open and drew out the .357, worn but clean. He broke it open and loaded five rounds, leaving the one on the chamber empty. The gun barely fit in the inside pocket of the Pendleton coat.

Driving out from the old place, he topped the rise leading to the county road.

A tan military-spec Humvee sat parked at the pullout along the square chain-link enclosure where giant signs read, WARNING: USE OF DEADLY FORCE AUTHORIZED, in red. The missile silo had been on their ground since his grandfather’s time. Joking about the sale, Chance’s dad had called it a pot-sweetener for Charlie Carter: “Property includes one Minuteman III missile, well-maintained, never fired.” Now Chance drove past the Humvee and lifted a few fingers off the wheel. The nineteen-year-old airman in the rig gave a curt nod from behind wraparound shades.

Chance drove around town. He had a pint of Jim Beam from the state liquor store between his legs. He let the truck take him wherever. He rolled to a stop in front of the high school, then eased out the clutch and pulled away. He turned onto Central headed for downtown.

The line of stone storefronts leered from either side, the pulled-molar gaps where businesses used to be. It was nearing five o’clock and the cold blue light of evening was settling in. Passing the burned-out drugstore he saw a friendly shape at the curb: Amos. Catching sight of the International, a big grin spread over the Indian’s face and he put up a burly set of dukes. Chance slowed to lift the pint in salute, but Amos crossed behind him with a wave and was gone.

The engine coughed. He’d go for a new Diehard in the morning and firm up an exit strategy while bolting it in. He saw the card wedged in the seam of the dash and ran his thumb across Amy’s delicate number before flicking it over. The front read, BLACK EAGLE COMMUNITY CENTER, above a dated line cut of the building. Chance tucked it back in the dash and spun the wheel with his palm.

He passed along the riverfront park and its hollow band shell covered in snow. He’d kissed a girl there once, in summertime. A thin sheen of ice lay over the duck pond and the truck guided him under the low rail bridge onto the drive along the river. On the far shore rose the great chrome mass of the refinery, a glittering cathedral of plumbing and sodium light. He should’ve turned at 9th Street but he knew he’d have to do it sometime. The truck knew it too, and slowly it pulled him back to the scene of the crime.

It had been this time of day but with the balm of a fine June evening. He’d dropped into town on the far side of the river, coming from Havre and Canada beyond. Having walked a heavy backpack through a sympathetic farmer’s field, he’d passed a concrete pylon marking the border and over to his waiting rental. The drive was a couple hours. The slopes of the Bears Paws waxed and waned as he sipped a Coke behind the wheel, one arm propped on the open window.

Something went haywire at the edge of Great Falls. Whether he’d been informed on, he still didn’t know. But down the hill toward the river a deputy’s lights were in his mirror and the backpack was propped against the passenger seat.

He’d pulled over, counting the officer’s steps toward his window. He saw the man unsnap his holster. That was enough for Chance. He stood on the accelerator, watching the scrambling deputy recede in his mirror as the rental shot through the night.

Chance pushed the engine hard but the traffic light was red on the 15th Street bridge. He saw another sheriff’s rig coming at him.

Braking to a halt, he’d run the pack to the bridge’s east rail. He tore open its flap and hurled compact green bales over the side. The last had taken flight before the deputy’s brakes howled. Chance watched the bundles tumble toward the water below. They smacked into the face of the Missouri, rolling off toward the hungry turbines at the dam.

All but one. The last bale, thrown just a little short, landed with a dusty puff atop a piling below his feet and settled to rest. Another three inches and it would have floated to Fort Benton. Three inches short and he’d gone to jail.

Now Chance crossed the bridge slowly, easing past the point where the chase and life had stopped. Ice jammed up against the Black Eagle Dam. He turned off the bridge at the south end of Black Eagle, toward the absence in the sky where the giant smelter stack should be. His grandfather had worked in its furnace as a blacksmith in the war, forging one link in a great chain bringing bright nuggets of copper from the bleeding earth of Butte to Nazi brainpans in France.

At the edge of the hill, the community center lay squat above a mostly empty lot overlooking the river and lights of Great Falls. Chance goosed the throttle to give the battery some juice, then switched it off.

Double doors opened on a hall lined with faces of men his granddad had known. Built by the Anaconda Company as a place these boys could drink and fight respectably, it opened on one side to a bowling alley. Chance peered through the door and saw knots of rowdy, pretty women whooping it up on the lanes. League night. He went the other way into the bar and pulled out some money. The place was vacant except for the haggard gamblers growing roots at their machines. Amy was tending bar.

She sidled toward him, drawing a pilsner glass from the rack and filling it with beer. She wore jeans and a black T-shirt and arrived with a quiet grace to set the glass by his hand.

“Joe Frazier. Still alive?”

“More or less.” He hoisted the glass. “Thanks for helping me out.”

Her naked left hand rested on the flat bar. “You see the doctor yet?”

“I’ll be fine. You work here too, huh?”

“Mermaiding doesn’t pay the bills.”

“Yeah. So what happened to Billy?”

“He went to drill for oil in North Dakota. Wasn’t all he wound up drilling.” She threw a wan grin and looked him up and down. Her gaze stopped at his side. “Naughty, naughty.”

Chance touched the pistol’s checkered grip and realized the gun was peeking out of his coat pocket. “Yeah, well. I’m not going another round like last night.”

Amy shrugged and shied away from the bar, sweeping its top with a rag. Chance sipped his beer and slid off the stool to find a poker machine. He fed a twenty into the slot and got three of a kind his first hand. He fooled with the notion of going on a run, cashing out at eight hundred to parlay into a big stake to pay off the debt. Maybe go to Vegas and hit a streak. Maybe just go.

He tapped the buttons for a while, earning a few dollars in the pale glow of the machine. He reached for his beer and found a fresh glass in its place, turned to see Amy retreating to greet new arrivals. The place was starting to fill. He settled back in to earn his way to freedom.

Chance sat in the truck, his breath frosting the glass. The outside of the windshield was layered with a rime of ice. He dug the pint from below the seat. Took a shallow pull. Tried the key. Nothing.

He opened the door to go back in and saw Matt standing there with his hands in the pockets of his yellow jacket. “Hello, Chance.”

“Matt.”

“Sit back and take it easy. I just want to talk.” Matt glanced toward the community center. “Mermaid hunting again?”

“Gambling my way to glory.” Chance felt his pistol against his ribs and wondered if there was one in Matt’s hand.

“Two days, Chance. Whatever you’re drinking on now, you’re going to piss it away. The sooner you sober up and get me my money, the sooner I won’t have to come back.”

“It’s a down economy, Matt. Smelter’s a bit slow.” Thumbing the air behind him where the stack used to be, he took a pull from the bottle.

“I’m done threatening you, Chance. I won’t do it again.” Matt turned toward his running rig. “Two days.”

Chance toasted him with the pint as he left. He sat back and stared at the bar’s fuzzy light leaking through the windshield. Dropped the bottle and went back in.

He worked through the buzz of the crowd to the bar and propped himself against it. The whiskey was taking hold and the throb in his nose faded out. Amy appeared from the back and placed a coaster in front of him.

“I thought you took off.”

“Battery shit itself again.”

“Bummer. You just can’t seem to catch a break, now, can you, cowboy?”

“Not so far.”

She glanced at the clock. “I get off in half an hour. Sit right here and when I’m done, I’ll be happy to jump you.”

“What’s wrong with your face?”

Chance opened his eyes. A small boy stood in front of him, staring. Chance sat up on the couch. “Hi.”

“Hi.” The boy didn’t blink. “Did you get hit?”

“Did I ever.” He stretched and looked around. It was a tiny living room, blank except for photos on the wall. He caught his reflection in the TV’s curved screen.

“Did you hit him back?”

“Not yet. Where’s your mom?”

The boy pointed at the closed bedroom door.

“Gotcha.” Chance stood, wobbling a bit. He’d slept in his clothes. “What’s your name?”

“Alex.”

“Chance.” He put out his hand. The boy shook it solemnly.

They sat at the kitchen counter eating Cap’n Crunch. The boy watched him and didn’t say anything. Chance heard the bedroom door open and Amy say, “Good morning.”

“We’re just having some chow here. Need a bowl?”

Amy was dressed in a long T-shirt and shorts. She stood with a hand on the counter, regarding the two boys. She glanced out the window. “You remember getting here? You were pretty drunk.”

“Yeah. Sorry about that.” Chance stole a look at Alex, who grinned through a mouthful of Crunch.

“I just didn’t want you leaving town like that.” She folded her arms and stared into the sunlight.

She drove him to Black Eagle to pick up his truck. They put jumper cables on it and sat in her idling car. Snow fell against the windshield.

“So what’s your plan?” She fiddled with a loose bit of trim on the dash.

“I don’t know. I can’t stay here if I want to keep breathing.”

“What’s your dad say?”

“As little as possible. Wants me to work for him at the shop.”

“I always liked him.”

“Swing by and say hello. I’m heading there now.”

“Nah, I have to pick up Alex in a bit. Say hi, though.”

“I will. He’s a cute kid.”

“Yeah.”

Chance stepped into the snow and fired up the truck. He pulled off the cables and leaned into her window. “Well, I guess that’s it.”

She stared. “Yeah, that’s it.” Then her hand was around his neck, pulling his mouth to hers. It was the first warmth he’d felt since he’d been home.

Chance pulled up on the office side of the shop. The Open sign wasn’t on yet, so he unlocked the door. He flicked on lights as he worked his way into the shop.

His father lay facedown on the floor in a mirror-dark pool that wasn’t oil. Chance knelt and felt his father’s neck: cold. His eyes were half open and the wound at the temple had congealed to the concrete. Chance sat down, and then eased onto his side to gaze into his father’s eyes. The dead man’s mouth looked like it was preparing to say something.

Chance kept his fingers on the wheel as he drove past the missile silo. The gun was in his hand when he reached the farmhouse. He parked in the yard and slid out of the truck, the pistol hanging at his side. Chance walked the perimeter of the house before going in.

No one was there. He set the .357 by the sink. A blinking light caught the corner of his eye: the ancient answering machine his grandmother would not give up. He walked over and pressed Play.

“Chance, it’s your dad. You remember that spot at the farm you used to hide as a kid? I put something in there for safekeeping. If you don’t hear from me for a few days, go check on it. No big deal but I thought you should know just in case. Talk to you soon, pard.”

He rewound the tape and pressed Play again, hearing his father’s voice. He rewound it again and understood — why his dad had sold the ground around him, and what was now hidden in the secret place.

He slid to the floor against the pine paneling. Some time went by. The mantel clock ticked. And he remembered hiding in the little place his dad had built for Ranger.

Chance walked to the side of the barn and it was there in an overgrowth of weeds. The little swinging door was rotting at the bottom, but painted red it blended with the shape of the barn. He pushed the door open and crawled inside.

Ranger had loved this spot in winter, and in the remains of the straw Chance’s father had put there he could still see where the dog had dug in against the cold. In the farthest corner sat a five-gallon bucket of feed.

Chance dragged it out by its handle and pried off the lid. The bucket was full of money.

He sat drinking coffee at the kitchen table that night with the pistol near his hand and a single small light that would not be seen from the road. He wrote slowly on a yellow pad, working on a draft he’d started several times.

When dawn came, he sealed the pages in two envelopes. Then he took the gun and walked to the barn.

The truck started grudgingly, warmed in the sheltered space. He drove it onto the road. More snow would soon fall under the gray pall of sky. At the county road ran a line of mailboxes. He placed the letters in his grandfather’s and put up its flag.

The town wavered on the horizon, a gray line in the air. Great Falls, his town, the place he was from. He’d never left here, really, and now he never would. The five-gallon bucket guaranteed that. He took another look and got back in the truck.

Matt’s phone buzzed and he glanced at the number. “Hello, Chance.”

“I have your money. You can come get it. You know where I’m at.”

“Better if I pick the spot, Chance.”

“We’re doing this now or I’m gone. Come get your money.”

“Okay.” Matt ended the call and turned to his brother. “Let’s go get him.”

On the far end of the line, Chance opened the pistol and loaded the sixth round.

The red Suburban cut through a light snow. Matt and his brother Donnie rode in front, two men with rifles behind them. Matt’s yellow jacket was stained with Chance’s blood despite a hard cleaning. He drove calmly, gazing ahead. The day had turned warmer despite the snow; a Chinook wind was on the way.

They turned off the county road toward the farmhouse. Matt spotted the truck parked in the yard by the house. He stopped at the cattle guard and took a hard look. Nothing moving.

They drove in and parked. The four men got out and walked toward the house. Matt called Chance’s name.

“I’m here,” he said from behind them. He stood in the barn door and they saw his leveled pistol.

Matt stopped. “I just want the money, Chance. Then we’re square.”

“Is that what you told my dad?” He walked forward.

Matt hesitated. “He offered to pay me a couple months ago. When I went to collect he flew off the handle. That wasn’t part of the plan.”

“You forgot to mention that tidbit to me.”

“It happened after I saw you last night. I figured you’d disappear.”

“I’m here.”

Chance cocked the pistol and watched the men slowly spread out in front of him.

Two days later, after she’d seen the news, a hand-addressed letter arrived.

Matt spoke: “Chance, put that money in my hands right now or I swear I’ll blow your new girlfriend’s brains out.”

Chance aimed the muzzle of the gun at Matt’s chest. “I’m not fucking around.”

Matt grinned and Chance caught Donnie opening his coat. Chance fired in warning but the back of Donnie’s head came open and dusted the snow red. The other men scattered as Donnie fell. Chance backpedaled across the yard, putting the Suburban between him and them. He fired two rounds into the tires on his side, then ran straight for his truck.

He reached the cab and turned the key without hope, but the engine caught, and he hit the gas. One of Matt’s men raised his weapon and fired, putting a line of holes in the International’s side. Chance shot his gun dry through the side window as he tore out of the yard.

If they killed him, she was dead. If they got past him, she was dead. He had to stop them. But the pain in his ribs was suddenly very sharp and he felt a smear of blood spreading from his side.

The truck lurched and a plume of dark smoke boiled from the hood. Neither of them had long. In the mirror, the hobbled Suburban rolled slowly toward him. They couldn’t get far — but far enough to reach him. He had to stop them here.

Chance played his last card. He put the wheel hard over and the International roared off the road and toward the silo’s fence. It struck the chain link and went through, dragging fence and DEADLY FORCE signs and tumbleweeds through the gravel compound. He pulled a tight turn, mowing through antennas and sensors before the truck rocked to a stop against the squat blast door.

Chance coughed up some blood. He upended the pistol and thumbed the cylinder release. The spent casings dropped in slow motion, the last, the empty cartridge pinging off the wheel as it fell. He fished live rounds from the coat’s pocket and reloaded with a shaky hand.

He leaned against the door and fell to the earth. Rolling onto his front, he saw the Suburban stop below, tires gone on his side. He crawled beneath the truck and set the pistol in both hands.

The men in the rig paused, deciding. In minutes helicopters would appear over the rise. Men in Humvees with guns drawn would sweep in to kill anything that moved. They were caught one way or another. They might as well shoot Chance first.

He saw them coming now. Eighty feet maybe, yellow jacket in the middle. He thought he heard the thump of rotors. He could feel his heart beating against the earth his grandfather had once run through with steel blades. The men were coming as three. Chance just needed to kill one.