Nobody's Angel

4

PATRICK LEFT THE SIDEWALK THROUGH THE DOOR BETWEEN the two angled windows. It was cold, but when he hung his coat inside and glanced onto the street, it looked like summer. Purest optics. There was a stock truck parked at the hotel with two saddled horses in back facing opposite directions. Many saddle horses spend the day parked in front of a bar, heads hung in sleep. Can’t get good help anymore, Patrick thought. Even if you could, who wants to tell people what to do?

Two steps up at the poker table was an old man with a diamond willow cane pushing chips onto the green felt. There was a belton setter at his feet, two strangers and a girl dealing cards. Not strangers, but he couldn’t remember their names.

“Afternoon, Patrick,” said the old man, whose name was Carson. That was his first name.

One stranger said, “Hello, Captain”—Patrick had been in the Army — and the other said, “How’s the man?” Classmates with forgotten faces. But Patrick was rather graceful under these conditions, and by the time he’d gone through the room, the setter was asleep again, the players were smiling and the girl dealing was reading his name off the back of his belt.

The bar was nearly empty, populated solely by that handful of citizens who can drink in the face of sun blazing through the windows. Patrick ordered his whiskey, knocked it back and reconnoitered. Whiskey, he thought, head upstairs and do some good.

He called, “Thanks so much!” to the bar girl, put down his money and left. It was hard to leave a place where God was at bay.

He walked all the way to the foot of Main, straight toward the mountain range, crossed the little bridge over the clear overflow ditch and went into a prefabricated home without knocking. The windows were covered with shades, and once his eyes accustomed themselves to the poor light, he could see the prostitutes on the couch watching an intelligent interview show, the kind in which Mr. Interlocutor is plainly on amphetamines, while his subjects move in grotesque slow motion. They were dealing with the fetus’s right to life. On the panel were four abortionists, five anti-abortionists and a livid nun with the temper of an aging welterweight.

“Hello, girls.”

“Hello, Patrick.”

“No game on?”

“College basketball. We’re watching this fetus deal.”

“Anybody make a profit?”

“Loretta did.”

Loretta, a vital brunette with tangled hair and a strong, clean body, beamed. She said, “Trout fishermen. Doctors, I think. One had a penlight. He said he always checked for lesions. I said clap. He said among other things. I said four- to ten-day incubation. He says which book are you reading. I said I don’t read books, I watch TV. So he gets in there with this penlight. I could’ve swatted him.”

“Free checkup,” said Patrick. “Look at the good side of things.”

“Who’s winning?” Loretta asked. She came from Deadrock, looked like a nice farm girl.

Deirdre, from Great Falls, always literal, said, “The fetus.” This nun was packing the mail.

Patrick asked if they were betting. They said no. He said that as he was a Catholic, he would kick in the set if the fetus lost.

“There’s a Catholic,” said Tana as the camera isolated the apoplectic nun shouting the word “Sacred!”

“I’ve seen better ones,” said Patrick.

“Well, there’s one, is all,” she said doggedly.

Andrea, the young, bright blond, was from the High Line. She said, “I was with this rancher on his place. He wanted to go again. All the lights went out. I said that’s Rural Electrification for you. He said that’s Montana Power. I said well, I can’t see nothin. He said it’s hydroelectric. It comes off the grid, out of Columbia Falls. So I said what’s the deal? Do we go again? He said not if I can’t see. And just then, like God was on my side, the power came back on and I doubled down for fifty bucks. Thank you, Montana Power! Thank you, Columbia Falls!”

“Jesus,” Patrick said. “That nun is going to blow her stack.” He was staring at the screen.

“She’s no help to the fetus team,” said Loretta. The moderator kept saying, “Sister! Sister!” but nothing could slow her tirade, which continued to feature the word “Sacred!” repeated at very high volume.

“I’m glad I don’t have any money on this one,” said Patrick. Andrea got up and went to the kitchen to make iced tea. Loretta, from Deadrock, had gone to grammar school with Patrick, had been a medical secretary, then been not quite happy with that and tried prostitution, a respected job in Montana because of its long utility during the settlement of that region. Loretta’s rural good looks made her prosper, particularly among visiting sportsmen.

Deirdre, from Great Falls, said, “That nun could use some eye shadow.” Deirdre was best with closing-time stumblebums. Patrick asked Loretta if he could have a word with her privately.

The two went into the kitchen as Patrick fought back a little tingle. Loretta hiked herself up on the counter and Patrick sat in a ladder-back chair. There were coffee cans on a low shelf, each labeled with one of the girls’ names; and in front of every can was a kitchen timer. The cans held each night’s earnings and the clocks foiled dawdling or inappropriate enthusiasm.

“Loretta,” said Patrick. “You’re prettier than you were at homecoming.” Only an officer. She’d actually gone downhill.

“I’ve got a better life now. When did you get back?”

“Not too long ago. In the winter.”

“You home to stay?”

“Trying to be. It’ll depend on what I can get going. We’re still running pairs and I’ve got a few outside horses to break, if I can remember how. I guess my grandfather has just had to pick up whoever he could. So a lot of things have kind of gone downhill.”

“He had that one Indian for quite a while. Supposed to have been a good hand.”

“What Indian?”

“He was, you know, a friend of Mary’s, the way I had it.” Mary was Patrick’s sister.

“Well, Mary is why I’m here.”

“What’s the trouble?”

“No trouble. I just can’t find her. I mean, I thought you might know.”

“She got out of this work a long time ago, Pat. The Indian is the best way to find her I know. He was supposed to be real different. Used to shark pool at the Corral, just take everybody’s money and never say a word. You know, an Indian.”

“Well, I’m not going to go hunt her down or anything. But if you see her, tell her I’m home.”

“I sure will.”

“Boy, you look good, Loretta.”

“More!” She put on her “It Girl” smile and spun on her toes.

Patrick walked over to the can labeled “Loretta,” wound the clock in front of it and turned it loose real slow.

“Gives me a vicarious thrill,” he said. She waved as he went out the door into the sunlight that bounced from the high walls of granite around the town.