The Good Brother

13

November descended over the valley with a harsh freeze. Every morning Joe woke to a dead fire and the desire to stay in bed. Scales of frost covered the interior windows. The stovepipe made an angle that should have been an elbow but more closely resembled a dog’s hind leg. Smoke leaked around loose rivets at each joint. He opened the door of the cabin and wondered if cold air entered or warm air left.

After a month of evenings alone, Joe drove to Missoula at dusk, where people in light jackets walked on clear sidewalks. The inversion that held bad air close to the earth also kept the temperature high.

He parked beside a sculpture of a mountain lion that resembled a giant pile of cement manure and walked around the corner to the Wolf. He stepped aside for an elderly man who staggered toward the door, holding each stool for balance. An Indian woman slept at the bar, wearing a faded jacket bearing the name of a tavern. Beside her slumped a skinny cowboy with a dog at his feet. The back of the cowboy’s neck was scarred. His huge ears had several holes in them, and Joe realized they’d been hit with a load of small buckshot.

“Dad was in a rocky place,” the man was saying to the bartender. “He jumped from one rock to another. The rock went. Killed him. Big rock. They’ll kill you.”

A raspy voice announced Keno numbers through a speaker that hissed and crackled like a green wood fire. The smell of spilt beer, fried food, and cigarettes clung to the room. Computerized slot machines jingled and hummed, occasionally emitting the electronic music that serenaded a winner. The players stared at the screens as if hypnotized. Beyond them hung a tarp that served as entrance to a strip club. An extremely fat biker checked IDs at the door. Crude tattoos covered his hands.

Joe walked past the tarp to the last chamber of the Wolfs warrens — the poker room. It had its own mini-bar and bathroom. A TV was mounted on the wall, tuned to a channel of perpetual sports and no sound. Ribbons of smoke twined overhead. Two players wore sunglasses and headphones, and Joe wondered if blotting the senses aided gambling or was the ultimate goal. Above the cashier’s cage hung a hand-printed sign that said, “Not even Mom gets credit.”

The cardroom manager limped to a chalkboard on the wall.

“You’re first up,” he said. “What’s your name?”

“Joe.”

He wrote Joe’s name on the board. The dealer wore a multicolored hat shaped like a bottle cap that looked like it clamped to his head. A ponytail hung down his back. He waved a bill and asked for twenty hard, thirty soft and the manager carried the bill to the cage for chips and change. Joe sat on a stool and opened a gambling magazine. He enjoyed seeing his name on the board and having people know it referred to him.

The Wolfs primary game was Texas Hold’em, played at ten-dollar limit. The dealer placed five community cards in the center of the table, to which each player added his two hole cards to make a standard poker hand. There were four betting rounds. Hold’em moved faster than most other games and could seat many players. Joe studied the competition as the dealer shuffled. There were a couple of rocks who only bet on winning hands, possessors of enormous patience. A woman sat at the table with her top two buttons loose. She flirted openly. Joe recognized her as a very good player, made better by men’s underestimation of her. If she was in a pot, Joe decided that he would simply fold.

Hanging from the walls were portraits in oil and Joe recognized one of the players, who was eating biscuits and gravy and using hand signals to indicate his action. He was tall and lean, with a drooping black mustache. His hands were big enough to conceal ten chips, which made it impossible to gauge his bet. A wall of chips was stacked in front of him.

The game continued with a steady rhythm of cards and chips, the passing of the button that marked the player’s force bet. After half an hour, a player pushed his chair from the table and stood. His face held no expression as he slipped on his jacket and turned away empty-handed. He headed for the strip club, as if the sight of nude flesh in dim light would compensate for bad cards in harsh light. Joe pretended to read the magazine. He was waiting for the manager to call his name because he wanted to develop the habit of responding to it.

“Seat open, Joe,” the man said.

Joe moved to the low table covered by scarred green felt and laid his money down. He belonged. After a few hands, it became apparent that everyone was after the endless cash supply of a man with powerful forearms and large fingers that covered his cards like piled lumber. He drank steadily, bet each hand, and didn’t seem, to mind losing. When it was his blind bet, a new dealer asked if he was taking points.

“What for?” the player said.

“Tournament. That’s how you qualify.”

“When is it?”

“Saturday.”

“I’ll be in Hawaii.”

“Think of me,” the dealer said.

“I will. I just got back from Alaska. Six months on a boat. I never want to see snow again.”

No face registered the news, but everyone knew that the man from Alaska had ended the fishing season with a wad of cash. With a mark like him at the table, the game became a contest to see who got more of his money. Players only left if they got broke and were unable to borrow a stake.

Two hours later, the fisherman departed cheerfully after dumping six hundred dollars into the game, the price of reassuring himself that strangers liked him. Joe had captured seventy dollars and considered cashing out. Instead, he loosened his play and chased poor hands. Within thirty minutes, he’d lost his winnings and was making a rebuy. He concentrated on getting even.

After an hour of folding bad cards, he won three pots in a row. He tipped the dealer and stacked his chips. He was on a rush and could feel the luck surrounding him. Other players sensed his power and threw away cards they’d normally play. He won two small pots simply by raising in good position. He was playing well because he truly didn’t care if he won or lost. He understood why Boyd had been such a consistent winner.

The dealer gave him pocket kings and he raised the limit before the flop. Four players called. The dealer flopped three cards simultaneously, a nine of hearts and an ace, deuce of clubs. Everyone checked to Joe and he bet out. Two players called and he put one on a club flush draw, the other on a pair of aces. The dealer burned a card and turned a king. With three kings, Joe checked, setting a trap. There was a bet and he raised, and a player re-raised. The third man called the bet and Joe considered folding. Three kings was a good hand but the action suggested higher cards against him. Joe made the final raise.

The river card was a nine of clubs. That gave the board two nines and three clubs with an ace and a king. Joe had a full house, kings over, against a certain flush and an unknown hand. He bet the limit, found a raise, and re-raised. The player raised back. Joe pushed the remainder of his stack to the middle, and the other two players called.

“Let’s see what we got,” the dealer said.

Joe hesitated before displaying his hand, in order not to appear overeager for the pot. He showed his cards and prepared an expression of sheepish good humor, as if he felt bad for possessing a hand of such strength. One player flashed his club flush and threw it in the muck. The other man flipped two aces, giving him a higher fall house than Joe’s. The dealer paused so everyone could see the outcome, then shoved the chips to the winner. Joe pushed his chair from the table. He had a headache and an urge for candy.

“Drawing dead, wasn’t I,” he said.

He walked through the cafe in a loser’s daze, reliving the hand. It made a good bad-beat story, but everyone had them, and no one wanted to hear another.

The bars had closed and people were staggering into the cafe. A trio of bleary-eyed students bumped against him and continued without apology. Joe stepped aside as a biker escorted one of the strippers to her car. In the bright fluorescence, she looked tired and lost. A young woman sat before a slot machine, pushing buttons in a daze. A scar cut her eyebrow in half. At her feet slept a baby in a car seat.

A waitress stood beside a table of fraternity cowboys from the university. She raised her voice and called to the cook behind the counter.

“He needs them,” she yelled. “We got one who needs them!”

The cook grinned at the waitress, who was grinning at her customers. Everyone seemed to be grinning but Joe, who was envious of a kid so much at home here that he could order brains and eggs for breakfast.

Outside, falling snow blurred the air. The lights of the city were softly diffused, casting a glow over the silent streets. Joe drove home, parked, and stepped into the harsh wind that sliced through his pants and numbed his legs. He recalled making a windbreak for his trailer at home. He had planted hybrid poplars that were guaranteed to grow six feet per year, the result of a special root grafted to each stem. He felt similar to those trees. Just as their alien roots had grown into the earth, he needed a past that led here.

In the cabin he built a fire as his father had taught him, tightly rolled paper on the bottom, kindling with air channels, two small logs over that, and a big log in the back. Making a fire was one of the few endeavors that he enjoyed. He went outside and stacked wood on his right arm against his chest. The smell of smoke hung in the air, held to the earth by snow. He remembered Boyd’s contempt for people who lived in a hollow rather than on a ridge. “House in a hollow makes weather follow,” he’d often said. Now Joe had become a lowly hollow-dweller, even though the hollow was fairly wide. This much open space in Kentucky would be the site of a town.

Light leaked through wall cracks like grain from a slashed feed sack. There were hills and trees and a creek, but none of it was his. He thought of his father’s log cabin and knew he’d never live in it. It was the only thing he’d ever truly wanted. He wanted to cry, but it was a distant sensation, like the first urges of hunger.

He packed the stove, knowing that the wood would burn to ash by morning. He slid into his sleeping bag. The bare walls seemed to contract and expand like a lung. He wanted some pictures and a radio. He wanted something to read.

In the morning, fog lay across the mountain peaks as if the trees were wrapped in gauze. He drove to Missoula, The Wolfs bar was already lined with drinkers and he vowed to stay out. He searched the junk shops until he found a clock-radio, a deck of cards, and a toaster. The book selection was mainly romance with a few cookbooks. Deep in a corner, beneath a brittle canvas tent, he discovered a milk crate filled with paperback westerns, a thick history of railroads, a computer guide, and an economics textbook. While carrying the crate through the store’s narrow aisles, his elbow brushed a pile of tri-folded pamphlets to the floor.

At the top of each in big letters were the words LIBERTY TEETH. Below was a quote from James Madison: “Americans have the right and advantage of being armed — unlike the citizens of other countries whose governments are afraid to trust people with arms.” At the bottom of the page was the phrase MONTANA FOR FREE AMERICANS ONLY.

Joe stacked the pamphlets on the counter, confused by their purpose, Kentucky was a gun culture, but he’d already seen more weapons in Montana than at home. It seemed odd for people here to be concerned about having enough guns, like a wheat farmer who worried about running out of seed.

He paid and walked to his Jeep. West of town he parked at a tire store, surprised by the line of people. There were three clerks, two men and a woman, and when it was Joe’s turn, the woman stepped forward. Her snap-front shirt was embroidered with roses.

“Busy, ain’t it,” he said.

“Weather does that.”

“Weather?”

“It’s snowing up high. Road to Lolo was a mess this morning. I passed two pileups on the way in.”

“Not too bad now, is it.”

“I’m not driving to work now, either.”

“I guess not,” Joe said. “I need four new tires.”

“Who doesn’t.” She laughed. “What are you driving?”

Joe gestured through the plate-glass window. He wasn’t sure what to call it — a Jeep or a Wagoneer, a car or a truck.

“That blue rig?” she said.

“Yup.”

“Will you be driving snow, gumbo, or highway?”

“I’m not exactly sure what gumbo is.”

“If you don’t know, you aren’t driving it. Snow or highway?”

“Just regular road, I reckon,”

She came around the counter and rolled two tires off a rack. He admired the ease with which she handled the heavy rims. He had never bought new tires before and she patiently explained variations in width, tread, and grip. After twenty minutes, he bought a set and waited in a small room while the mechanics switched the tires. Three other men were there.

“Snowing up high,” Joe said. “That Lolo road was a mess this morning,”

No one looked at him.

“Good for the tire business, I guess,” he said.

The man sitting directly across from Joe lowered his head in a single slow nod and looked away. In Kentucky the men would be hunched forward, discussing weather, dogs, and tobacco prices. These men maintained a studied effort to occupy their own space.

When a mechanic drove the Wagoneer to the lot, Joe returned to the office and settled his bill. A burly man in a short-brimmed pearl Stetson was talking to the same woman who’d helped Joe. The man became confused by the variety of options. It seemed to annoy him that a woman knew more than he did about truck tires. He raised his voice and spoke slowly to her, the same way people in Lexington had spoken to Virgil when they thought he was a dumb hillbilly.

The woman stepped backward and began to nod. A male clerk took over and the woman began anew with an Indian couple. They listened carefully and asked many of the same questions as Joe.

He paid cash and received his change. The woman in line behind him was nearly fifty, but was dressed like a college student. She reminded Joe of a woman from the hollows at home who’d moved to town and married a doctor.

“I feel sorry for that gal,” she said. “Don’t you?”

“Who,” Joe said.

“Her.” She gestured to the saleswoman talking to the Indian couple about tires. “It’s just a shame she has to spend her time educating those people.”

The man behind the counter gave Joe a receipt.

“They’re from deep on the Rez,” he said. “Probably the first time they bought new tires in their life.”

“I don’t guess they’ll pay with a credit card,” she said.

“We got all kinds of payment plans,” the clerk said. He tapped the bald spot on the back of his head. “See that? It’s from the tipi flap hitting the back of my head sneaking in and out at night.”

Joe looked from one to the other, unsure of what to say. They had taken him for a Montanan and he was pleased until he realized that their mistake was based on his skin. As he left, the saleswoman began to raise her voice and speak slowly to the Indians.

He drove to his cabin and spent the afternoon watching squirrels work like ants, dragging pine cones the size of their bodies to hideouts in the woods. Instead of dusk, the light simply ceased. He built a fire and stood in the middle of the room with a blanket over his shoulders. The radio emitted fuzzy static across the dial. He wished he could get religion. People at home took it up when they drank too much, got old, or were hunting a spouse, but Joe figured God wasn’t ready to hear from a murderer so soon. When the stovepipe glowed he lay on the couch. He nodded to the stuffed possum and closed his eyes. Sleep came easily, the sweetest of escapes.

The cold woke him at dawn. The plank floor chilled his feet through wool socks. In his long johns, Joe stepped to the porch for more wood and was transfixed by the sound of many geese. They flew overhead in long ragged lines, their cries braiding in a harmony that surrounded him like wind. As they followed the valley south, the air slowly stilled until silence returned. Stray light haloed the mountain peaks.

He made a fire, and when the stove was hot enough he boiled water for coffee. The radio still didn’t work. He started reading a paperback western but it opened with a man alone in a cabin, and he set the book aside. He wished he had photographs for his walls. Already the memory of his mother’s face was fading in his mind. He’d spent much of his life outside, and he wasn’t sure if walls kept him in, or the world out. People covered them with things, and he wondered if it was to hide what walls were — obstacles to light.

In the bathroom mirror he tried to find a sign of himself. The features were familiar. He had his father’s jaw and cowlick, but the face was no one he knew. A beard was growing. The deep-set eyes were the same, pale and squinty.

He went outside and sat on the stump. Mist turned the trees from green to gray. The most light was near the water, and the sound of Rock Creek carried easily over the snow. He rose and struggled through heavy brush to the water’s edge. At a sharp curve in the creek’s path he watched the water come out of a turn, race past him, and plunge into the next bend. It moved much faster than the Black-foot or the Clark Fork River, and was at certain points wider than either one. He couldn’t figure the difference between a creek and a river in Montana.

Motion in the landscape made him still, and he breathed through his mouth to reduce sound. Brush shook across the creek two hundred yards upwind of where he sat. A large white shape emerged tentatively from the woods of a narrow draw. Joe thought it was a deer covered with snow until he saw the short neck and the dark horns that curled from the heavy head. The ram stepped into the clearing and drank from the creek. Its fur was thick and shaggy. As abruptly as it appeared, the bighorn vanished into the woods. Joe watched until the brush stopped moving.

Beyond the water, green moss glittered on the granite bluffs. Joe spoke for the first time all day.

“My name is Joe Tiller and this is where I live.”

He repeated himself over and over. His voice mixed with the hum of the creek, and his words swept into the woods. When his throat ached from the cold he returned to the cabin and went to bed. The weight of blankets pressed against him as if nailing his body in place. He stared at the pine ceiling varnished to a gloss that caught light in the burrs of its knots.

This was not his world.