Nothing but Blue Skies

12

Saturday morning, first light, a silvery gleam along the ridge of the Lutheran church. The few cars reflected the sleepiness of their drivers as they eased up Assiniboine Avenue. Frank cleaned up the mess he had made, got the drink glasses out of their crevices in the living room, scraped the solidified mass out of the bottom of the wok with his cooking shovel under a stream of hot water and opened all the windows to let in the day.

He gathered up his rod, his fishing vest and waders, and drove over past Connolly Park where some children were already kicking a soccer ball back and forth between them. He stopped a few blocks beyond, where a street ended in a view of the stockyards, got out and knocked on the door. It opened and Phil Page came out carrying his tackle. Page was tall and thin with a long black beard that came down to his chest. Almost all that revealed expression were his eyes, which were detached and suspicious. Frank and Phil had played on the same baseball team in high school. Phil was a first baseman, and Frank always thought he had the right sort of detachment for that position, a driftiness in responding to the facts, a kind of lag timing peculiar to first basemen.

“Hi, Frank.”

“Phil. We’ll go in my car.”

Phil put his tackle in the back seat of Frank’s car and got in.

Phil Page was a brakeman on the railroad. Their friendship, which went back a quarter of a century, had been revitalized by troubles with their marriages. It was just like being back on the baseball team together. Phil usually fished with him on the weekends, but only if they made what he called a reasonable start.

“How’s the railroad life?”

“Rolling.”

“Making any money?”

“A little.”

“Where are we going?”

“Let’s go way the shit up the Sixteen,” said Phil. “I’m in a brook trout state of mind.”

They stopped at a twenty-four-hour convenience store to get some lunch supplies. The woman at the cash register was watching television so intently that Frank was able to slit the plastic wrap on a porn magazine and get a glimpse of the photographs, one after the other; it was like a seafood catalogue. Hard to maintain fascination in the face of that. The vagina was a splendid thing, but viewed as a monument it was entirely terrifying. The tiny, out-of-focus heads in the shadows behind those colossal, multicolor Mount Rushmore — sized cunts made Frank sorry he had looked. He wondered if these young women were discovered at soda fountains the way they used to discover Hollywood movie stars.

Phil came around the corner. “Man cannot live by bread alone,” he said, then held up a jar. “He must have peanut butter.” Phil displayed the two described items. “What else?”

“Two six-packs.”

The country opened up quickly as they came down out of the Bridger Range going east toward the route of the old electric railroad. Blue skies, white flatiron clouds, sagebrush and grass, rhythmic hills betraying sea-floor origins, a sinewy black road that lifted on occasion to afford a glimpse of sparkling watercourses in the willows, cows of different colors but the same expression, doe-eyed calves, hawks contouring an air cushion on the surface of the land, the golden skeletons of tumbleweed blown into the fence corners, pictures of politicians on the telephone poles grinning insincerely into the vast space, and gophers running, heads down for speed or heads up to alertly observe themselves being run over.

A truck went by with a pair of scowling ranchers in front.

“I wonder if their mothers tie weights in the corners of their mouths,” Phil said. “You know, kinda like the Watusis do to their ears and lips. I bet that’s the case, the mama rancher hangs weights in the corner of baby’s mouth. Then the little boy baby gets a little cowboy hat and little boots with little spurs and weights for his mouth. Next they give the little shit a little lariat and stick a pair of steer horns on a hay bale. Most generally, the little shit is called Boyd, and in ten or twenty years’ time Boyd’s getting drunk and beating cows with his stock whip, abusing his old lady and stubbing out cigarettes in front of the TV.”

“During this entire time,” said Frank, “your railroader is mostly in church or tending his kitchen garden or cuddling a litter of rabbits to help them through a blue norther. He’s a man of few words but they are always the same words: ‘The Railroad Built Montana.’ ”

“Turn left,” said Phil. “Asshole.”

The road took them off into a prairie with brilliant pale stands of bear grass and, below, a spring surrounded by aspens. A quarter mile beyond the spring a long slough solidified into a shining expanse of canary grass, deep green and dense. The Sixteen River meandered between parallel bands of willows, a true sagebrush trout stream heading west to rattlesnake canyons and the wide Missouri.

They stood beside the car, rigging up their rods and tying on flies. “Attractor patterns today,” said Phil. “And death to all streamside entomologists.”

“D’accord, sport. I’m putting on a royal Wulff tied with me own pinkies.”

“I long to feel that creek push in on my waders.”

“I long to hear the Pflueger opera as I drag the first hog to the gravel.”

“I doubt there’s any hogs up here. Not enough water.”

Frank suddenly thought about Boyd Jarrell. Boyd hated people who fished, although he spent plenty of time watching television or sitting in bars. Sometimes after he’d been in a bar for two days and spent every cent he’d made that week, Boyd would tell people, “I’ve lived next to these cricks all my life, but I’ve never had time to fish.”

“Walk down about half a mile and I’ll fish behind you,” Phil said. “We can hopscotch.” He was pulling on his beard and looking through the willows into a small pool. “I can see about nineteen of the fuckers from here,” he said in an enraptured voice. “Time to rip some lips.”

Frank started along the stream bank at a brisk walk. A covey of partridges took to the air in an ivory rush, brown terrestrial birds against the blue of outer space. After a bit he looked back and watched the heron-like figure of Phil Page forming a bow of line in midair over the stream, a slight breeze lifting his black beard from his chest. A meadowlark stood atop a Canadian thistle and poured out its song, barely pausing as Frank passed by. The prairie grass rolled away to the north. About halfway to the horizon, a sandstone seam made a long wavering line in the silvery grass. The sun dilated toward noon and Frank felt breathless to be in this very spot.

The line straightened and fell, and the bright speck of fly soared on the current. It lifted into the air again, then returned to teeter along the quick water on its hackles until it disappeared down a small suction hole, and the trout was tight, vaulting high over the water again and again. The rod made a live arc in Frank’s hand, and in a minute the fish splashed in the shallows at his feet. He grasped the fly and the trout wriggled free. Frank let out a deep sigh and looked down the meander of wild water; it spiraled away forever.

He could see Phil fishing behind him, hovering on the stream bank and probing with his fly line like an insect. Every so often his rod tightened in a bow and Phil scrambled down the bank to grab a trout. Frank caught three in a row from a flowing pool. Miles and hours went by and it was time for lunch. Frank stretched out on the stream bank, his fly rod crossed on his chest, the sun warm on his face, and waited for Phil to catch up. Ants were crawling on his forehead. He was drifting off, thinking how easy friendship could be.

“Good grief,” Frank said and sat up. “I’m suddenly starving.”

“I’m afraid we’re talking PB and J here, sport.”

“That’ll do just fine.”

“Doesn’t really go with beer, but who really gives two shits what goes with beer when you got beer?”

“Not me,” said Frank, pulling the top and smelling the spray of hops on his face. “Oh, boy.”

“The little creek’s hotter than a two-dollar pistol today.”

“I lost count.”

“So did I.”

They ate and watched the stream as though something very important could happen there at any moment. Some jelly leaked into the palm of Frank’s hand and he licked it out. A band of antelope drifted over the top of the sandstone seam and began to graze toward the west. The clouds climbed like a low ladder toward the west and a darker blue.

“You been going out?”

“Some,” said Frank. “No one special.” He thought about it: was that true?

“Anyone I know?”

“You know Lucy Dyer?”

“Wasn’t Jerry Caldwell fucking her?”

“I really don’t know.”

“I’m pretty sure she was fucking Jerry. This’d be a year or so ago. But what’s the difference? The only thing that’ll stop them from fucking the mailman is AIDS. My old lady’s probably fucking somebody right now. Who gives a shit.” He pulled his beard straight down while he thought. “It’s inflation. The consumer is king.”

Frank thought of saying something but he didn’t. He just tried to watch the country. Phil soon went on to something else: out-of-staters. Seems every time Phil tried to go downtown, he had to plow through out-of-staters to get anywhere he was going. Things, no matter how you looked at them and as more time went by, were a bitch. Phil had set his face.

“How can you tell they’re out-of-staters?” Frank asked.

“Shit, you just look at them. For one thing, the motherfuckers take little tiny steps.”

“Oh.”

“And they’re dressed for an Everest assault. I don’t have to tell you that there’s a world of difference between Deadrock and Mount Everest. The cocksuckers will come into the Dexter, read the menu and leave, go down the street to O’Nolan’s, read the menu, leave, then drive out to Wendy’s, tie up everyone in the drive-up line, customizing their goddamn burger order, hold this, hold that. I hate to see it, man. I wish they’d go back to where they came from.”

“I can remember when you were an easygoing first baseman.”

“Yeah, well, I wised up. I’ve got plenty of anger in me now and it gets my ass out of bed in the morning. That’s the only way you get anything done. This country was built by pissed-off people.”

“Maybe that’s what I need,” Frank mused. “I don’t know, I just get sad. When you get comfortable you tend to brood on your losses. Hunger produces optimism. You’re on the move and that big Dagwood sandwich is just around the bend.”

“Well, I hope I catch up with it. Them boys at Rail Link busted my union and cut me to the bone.”

Frank felt the quiet that ensued, two men on a riverbank, didn’t used to be here and someday would be gone. Just now their lives seemed so important. Frank had made a killing in real estate; Phil would never be out of debt. Both of them loners, by choice or not. Brief stories of local life. Frank felt it made sense to think of it this way.

Through the afternoon, Phil fished on ahead. A breeze came up, and casting the pale fly line was not quite the pleasure it had been earlier in the day. The small clouds that rode the westerly cast racing shadows on the ground. Trout kept coming to the fly. The riverbank curved like the rim of a bowl. It was taller than Frank was on its outside edge and its face was speckled with the borings of swallows who came and went incessantly. There were small groups of ducks occasionally floating toward him, and when they struck an invisible boundary, they took flight and wheeled to the east. A small island divided the river and balanced the two halves of water in an even flow across a pure white bar of gravel.

Frank noticed the great length of Phil’s shadow on the ground as he walked toward him. Moths arose in clouds from the prairie and nighthawks began to soar in the violet light. The day of fishing was over. They broke down their tackle, got in the car and started along the empty road toward home.

“That was all right,” said Frank.

“I guess it was.”

“I really stop thinking about everything else when I fish. I think about how to catch a fish, period.”

On state and local news, Mr. Medicine Horse, a prominent chief in the sun dance ceremony, was running for sheriff of Hardin, promising to join his opponent, Mr. Rogers, in avoiding undue mudslinging.

“Good luck, Mr. Medicine Horse,” said Phil to the road ahead.

“If he didn’t learn mudslinging at Crow Agency, he better study it now before it’s too late.”

“So, what’s happening with your ranch?” Phil asked as they bent around toward the south.

“It’s ruining my life. I fired Boyd Jarrell.”

“It’s about time.”

“Well, he had his merits. Hard worker, good cowboy. This was the usual deal, he was hunting for a quit and he found one.”

Phil looked out the window rigidly. “I thought he needed to be elsewhere a long time ago.”

Frank drove and thought for a moment. “I’m surprised you feel one way or another about him.”

“I have to be honest, Frank. He spent all his free time running you down. I told him I didn’t appreciate it. He said it was a free country. I thought he was no good.”

It was absolutely silent in the car except for the hiss of wind around the doors. Frank felt something in his stomach. “I didn’t know that was the case, Phil.” Frank realized he had been naïve in thinking his problems with Boyd had been between them.

“That was the case.”

Frank kept driving. He was no longer thinking about Boyd; he was thinking about Gracie. The last time the ranch had meant anything to him was when Gracie kept Archie, her little paint gelding, out there. One spring he just disappeared. Frank was later told on pretty good authority that a rancher up the road had shot him to make a bear bait. After that, Gracie didn’t want to go out there anymore. Frank couldn’t help his silence. He wanted to say something to make Phil feel better, but he couldn’t speak.

“I shouldn’t have said anything, Frank,” said Phil.

“Actually, I started thinking back … about Gracie.”

“That’s good. I didn’t think you were that worried about what anybody said.”

Frank waved the whole thing away. The silence resumed and it was oppressive. “Yup, old Gracie.” Phil writhed around in his seat, trying to watch out the window. He fooled with the radio, then turned it off again and took a great sigh. He dropped his fist to his knee.

“Okay, me and Kathy, we’re married like twenty years. It’s not perfect but it’s okay. The day we get the news Denny Washington’s gonna bust the union, I take off a half day and head for the house. I walk in. I hear it in the back room. I have to see with my own eyes: Kathy’s fuckin’ our family doctor. You know him, an asshole backpacker in your clinic, Dr. Jensen. And I can see he’s trained her in a couple deals I’d never found out about. I go out and sit in the hall. I sit there and think: A, do I shoot them? B, do I divorce her? C, do I shoot myself? I’m going round and round. The doctor walks by. Kathy walks by. And that’s it. Life goes on. End of story.” Phil went back to gazing out the window and they rode the car together as if it were a time machine.

“I appreciate that, Phil.”

“I guess that if we didn’t have trout fishing, there’d be nothing you could really call pure in our lives at all.”

Frank stared at the road ahead, filling with joy at this inane but life-restoring thought. “I do like to feel one pull,” he said.

“Yes!” Phil shouted and pounded the dashboard.

“Yes!” shouted Frank, and they both pounded happily on the dashboard. “Trout!” The volume knob fell off the radio. Phil dove down to look for it, muttering “Fuckin’ douche bag” as he searched.

A few miles down the road, Frank drove past a hitchhiker sitting atop a backpack with a thumb out.

“That was a girl,” said Phil. Frank hit the brakes and backed up a quarter of a mile. The girl stood up and looked in the car. She had a sweater tied around her waist and sunglasses held by a bright pink strip around the back of her head. She evaluated Frank and Phil and got in.

Frank said, “You want to get up here in front?”

“No, back seat’s fine.”

Phil caught Frank’s eye. “Let me get that pack for you,” he said, and wrestled it into the car. As she clambered in behind the tilted front seat, Phil mouthed the words “Not bad” so that Frank could see. She had a strong fresh smell of woodsmoke.

“How far you going?” Frank asked.

“Deadrock.”

“Where you coming from?”

“The Highwood Mountains.”

“The Highwoods!” said Phil.

“What were you doing in the Highwoods?” Frank asked. She was watching the roadside go past.

“I was trying to see a wolf.”

“A wolf!” said Phil. “There’s no wolves in the Highwoods.”

“Maybe there is and maybe there isn’t,” said the girl.

“Are you an out-of-stater?” asked Phil.

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“Just wondering.”

“I’m from Minnesota originally. There’s wolves there too.”

“I’m Frank and this is Phil. What’s your name?”

“Smokie. Watch out for that truck —”

“Sonofagun was halfway into my lane.”

“You were halfway into his lane,” said Phil. “That’s why he was blowing his horn.”

“Was I really? I’ll be darned.”

“Have you guys had a few?”

“We been fishing. It has the same effect on us.”

“So, where’s the fish?”

“We let them go,” said Frank, glancing into the back seat. Smokie had a rope of ash hair in a braid that hung over her shoulder. She was young.

“You let them go?”

“Yeah,” said Phil. “We train them so out-of-staters can’t catch them.”

“You’re a riot,” said Smokie.

Phil looked like he’d been slapped, if lightly. He stared straight through the windshield. The elevators appeared, then the stockyards, then the fast food and car lots, agricultural supplies and used furniture, pawn shop, video rental.

“God, this is getting built up,” said Phil. “I mean, where the hell’s the town? Used to be right over in here.”

The last thing Phil said that day was “Shit.” Frank had pulled up in front of his house and Phil thanked him for a great day, another great day on the stream; then Phil snagged his shirt getting out of the car and said his last word for the day. Smokie moved to the front seat. Frank glanced over at the front door of Phil’s house. Kathy was not there welcoming him home, glad to see him. Frank thought of the day she and the family doctor strode out of that modest doorway. It sharpened a pain inside him.

“Where can I drop you?” Frank asked.

“Anywhere around here is fine.”

“No, I’m happy to take you where you’re going.”

“I haven’t picked a spot, I guess.”

They drove on past the hospital and a light-truck repair place. The trees curved right overhead in the old neighborhood as they approached Main.

“Do you have a place to stay?”

“No.”

Frank turned his head to look. “You don’t?”

“Uh-uh.”

Frank thought for a long moment about his afternoon and looked at this fresh-faced, vital creature. “I know a spot you can stay,” he said and drove her back to Phil’s.

“Phil,” he said with a look, “I hate to impose, but Smokie needs a place to stay.” Frank thought Phil would be grateful, but he stood there and complained about what a mess the place was. Finally, he agreed that if Smokie walked around the block for half an hour first, she could stay on the couch. He was quite grouchy about that. Frank thought as he drove off, I’m so cynical I thought he’d take it as a favor.