The Good Brother

23

In September the fires were deemed the worst in thirty years. Camping in parks was suspended, Missoula filled with evacuated families, off-duty firefighters, and emergency volunteers. The Red Cross set up temporary housing in school gymnasiums. Gerard and Phil were promoted to driver, and Joe worked alone. He lost weight from missing meals, and his leg ached from saying in one position while driving.

One morning Joe hauled cases of dried military food to a new base deep in the Flathead Valley. Each crate was stamped MRE. The slanting sun lit the Mission Mountains as if the rock walls held shards of glass. Deer cropped grass in a meadow of oxeye and balsam root. Joe followed a crude map to the first turn. A ladder of freshly dozed switchbacks climbed upslope to a new camp high in the mountains. From the summit, fire was visible in the west. It made arcing lines of orange along the slopes, forming a border of green trees and blackened earth. Aircraft circled overhead, carrying fire retardant and men.

A single tent stood beside a mess trailer and mini-dozer. Joe opened the truck’s rear gate and waited for a crew to help him unload the crates of food. He stood in the sun, wearing a down vest over flannel shirt and long johns. He was eager for the day to end. Tomorrow was Abilene’s birthday, and Joe had bought a board game that he and Boyd had played as kids.

Four young men approached the truck. Joe knew they were fresh recruits by the enthusiasm in their stride. These men hadn’t learned to hoard their energy for the fire. They seemed vaguely familiar and Joe wondered if they lived in the Bitterroot.

“Shit fire and save matches,” said a man. “Now we got to work.”

“All right, boys,” said another, “let’s knock this out fast and loaf.”

“Let’s not and say we did.”

“By God, he’s so lazy he’d not hit a lick at a snake.”

Joe recoiled from the raucous twang of their voices. He knew instantly where they were from. He turned to climb in the cab, but the men were upon him.

“What the hell’s in this truck anyhow?”

“Ever you boys see food that looked like that?”

“I’d not eat that to save me from Horn-head’s Hades.”

“Nothing’ll save you, son. You’re plumb wicked. Satan’s got a special room just waiting on you.”

“By God, it’ll be warmer than that damn tent. I’m sleeping in the middle tonight.”

“Will you give favors?”

“What do you mean?”

“Shoot, last night Bobby here gave us a little brown-eye, didn’t you, Bobby.”

“Shut up, you heathen.”

Joe hurried across the hard earth to the base commander, who was muttering into his radio. Joe waited until he finished. Strips of mist twined among the boughs of tamarack.

“Brought a load of food,” Joe said.

“We need it. Threw twenty men in the fire last night. They’ll be hungry tomorrow.”

“Anything special you’re needing?”

“Yeah. Rain.”

Joe made his voice flat.

“Where’s that new crew from?”

“Kentucky.”

Joe stood without blinking for nearly a minute. The pounding of his head moved across his shoulders and down his spine. In as casual a fashion as possible, he walked to the edge of the clearing and entered the woods. He watched the men unload the truck. They worked without talking, moving as a team. When they completed the task, they squatted on their heels to rest.

Joe walked to the truck, careful to keep it between him and the crew. He climbed in the passenger side, slid across the bench seat, and started the engine. Its steady rumble calmed him. From the open window came a voice.

“Hey, buddy. You ain’t got any water, do ye? Ain’t a one of us had a thing to drink.”

Joe passed a canteen to the man, who showed it to the crew behind him. Another man approached the truck. Joe thought he was staring, but couldn’t be certain.

“Keep it,” Joe said.

“Thank ye. We’re kindly new here. What about blankets and such?”

“I don’t know.”

Joe put the truck in gear too fast and stalled the engine. He fumbled with the key. The second man joined the crew boss. He was staring at Joe and frowning. Joe eased the truck into reverse. The second man spoke.

“Hey,” he said. “Hey, you.”

Joe revved the engine and lifted his foot from the clutch. The truck jerked backwards in a spray of dirt. The two men cursed and jumped away as Joe spun the truck in a lumbering circle. He forced it into first gear and sped down the dirt lane.

Joe yanked the wheel into the first switchback and clipped a pine, shattering the headlight. At the bottom he veered off the road and scared an elk that plunged into cover. Joe jerked the steering wheel and bumped back into the road ruts, his head striking the roof of the cab. When he reached blacktop he pulled over, his bad leg throbbing. Nausea passed through his bowels and he leaned his head outside until the sensation passed. He tried to calm himself. The man probably wanted to know how to get cigarettes. Joe had been surprised by the number of firefighters who smoked.

He wiped his face with his sleeve and drove back to the warehouse in Missoula. He’d become lax. He should have watched the billboard at the Incident Command Post for evidence of a crew from Kentucky. He wondered if he was in danger. The best move was to quit, but he liked the job. More important, he liked himself for having a fob. He thought of his father continuing to go into the mines after being diagnosed with emphysema. That decision had turned Boyd against work for life.

He parked in the lot and turned in his keys. The boss accepted Joe’s resignation without comment. He drove through town to the interstate. At the last red light he headed east through Hellgate Canyon, where pioneers had suffered ambush by the hundreds.

He followed the Clark Fork’s gentle meandering until it reached the juncture of Rock Creek. Traffic was slowed by campers and trucks pulling enormous trailers. An RV crept around a tight curve, the face of its driver tense. A tiny slip of the wrist and the whole contraption would plunge into the creek. Beyond the tourist lodge were fewer cars, and Joe felt as if he were going home again.

An expensive truck with. Nevada plates sat before his cabin. Fishing gear lay strewn about the soft earth like a yard sale. Joe backtracked to Ty’s place. No one answered his knock. A silken light sifted through the juniper boughs, imbuing the air with a golden glow. After several minutes Ty approached the Jeep from, behind, holding a rifle loosely in his hands.

“Hey, brother,” Ty said. “I thought you’d be gone by now. How’s your leg?”

“Better. Stiffens up when I don’t work it.”

“That was some bad luck getting shot on Skalkaho like that.”

“I reckon,” Joe said.

They walked behind Ty’s cabin to a redwood table turned gray from sun and snow. The steady rush of Rock Creek came across the grass.

“I hear you’re a Fed after all,” Ty said.

“What?”

“Got your snout in the fire trough.”

“Not anymore. I just quit.”

“And came here on a social call.”

“Not exactly.”

Ty sat with one leg extended on the picnic table. He seemed content to remain there for hours. A wren called from the woods and another answered. Joe struggled against the urge to explain his situation. He wanted to tell Ty about Boyd and Rodale, his family and the garbage crew, Abigail, and Zephaniah. He wanted to confess.

“I need a gun,” he said.

“Talk to Owen.”

“If I ask him for help, he might get the wrong idea.”

“How’s that?”

“I’m not a Bill.”

“Me neither,” Ty said. “I don’t take sides.”

“I know you sell them guns.”

“In the eighteen hundreds, the French armed the Indians with rifles. The Indians lost, but at least they went down fighting. Then they got put in camps as bad as the Japanese in California.”

Joe wasn’t sure what Ty was talking about, but he believed him.

“Have you met Frank yet?” Ty said.

“When I got shot. And at a picnic.”

“Take it from me, Frank is a frigging lunatic. In my line you meet all sorts. Sociopath, gun fag, religious nut, even environmentalists want guns these days. And sometimes you meet a genuine psychopath. Frank is special, like Custer. He can’t wait to die in a blaze of glory. So watch your ass around him.”

“He doesn’t like anybody but white people.”

“You figured that out, huh.”

“I don’t understand it.”

“Let me tell you, brother. Hatred is the cheapest pleasure there is.”

“One man blamed everything on the Jews.”

“They’re like a broken record. I always tell them they’ve got things backwards. First of all, Jesus was a Jew. And second, the Jews didn’t kill him, the government did. The government bribed Judas, arrested Jesus, put him on trial, and executed him.”

“I never thought about it that way.”

“It’s hard to argue with since they’re against the whole alphabet soup.”

“What’s that?”

“CIA, FBI, ATF, NSA, IRS, UN, FEMA. There’s tons if you buy it.”

“What made them get that way?”

“The end of the Cold War.”

“You lost me.”

“During the fifties,” Ty said, “the government wanted everybody to be afraid of the Russians. That brought on a bunker mentality which led to people stockpiling arms and food. When the Cold War ended, all that paranoia lost its enemy. The Feds filled the gap. Then what happened at Waco and Ruby Ridge proved them right,”

“Proved what?”

“It proved that the government had turned on American citizens.”

“You don’t sound like you believe all that.”

“I’m not a fanatic.”

“Then why are you in it?”

“The first thing any fascist government does is disarm the people, then take away civil rights. If the Jews had guns, maybe the Holocaust wouldn’t have happened. If black South Africans had been armed, there’d be no apartheid.”

“You think guns keep peace?”

“Of course. That’s why our country doesn’t want anyone else to have nukes. Then the U.S. gets to tell the little countries how to act.”

Joe was wearied by Ty’s words, half of which he didn’t fully understand. The rest made sense to him. The hard part was trying to separate one from the other, and he wondered if Ty himself knew the difference.

“What I miss about Alaska,” Ty said, “nobody had time to worry about this kind of thing.”

“Why’d you go up there anyhow?”

“Same reason you came here.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t bullshit a bullshitter,” Ty said. “You’re on the run from something.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Show up in the fall with a bundle of cash. No friends or family around. Stay in your cabin all winter. It’s the same way I hit Alaska.”

“On the run?”

“Yeah. Ever hear of the Weathermen?”

“No,” Joe said.

“I didn’t think, so. It was a political group in the sixties. I had to leave the country in a big hurry and I went to Canada and just kept on going. Alaska gets so cold that car tires turn square, but it’s the most beautiful country I ever saw.”

“Then why stay in Montana?”

“It’s like Chicago all over again, brother. These people are as radical as the Black Panthers were. You know, a lot of people wrote them off for being racist, but they were feeding hungry children in the ghetto. Things aren’t as cut and dried as everybody would like.”

“What do you mean?”

“Radicals start change going. It was radicals who dressed up like Indians and threw tea in Boston Harbor. These people out here believe in a cause and I respect that.”

“I can’t figure what it is.”

“Freedom, brother. The only cause worth fighting for.”

“Freedom for what?”

“To live, man. To think. Thirty years ago, it was the Left calling for revolution. Now the hippies are the status quo, and the Right wants revolution,”

“What do you want, Ty?”

“I want the same thing I wanted thirty years ago,” he said. “The question is, what do you want?”

“I want a gun.”

“You’re in luck. Today, I got a real deal on a Chinese SKS. It’s the coming weapon, my friend. So cheap it’s practically disposable.”

“Something I can carry, Ty.”

“Big? Concealed? What?”

“I want one to keep hid, and it needs to put a man down to stay.”

“Snub-nose.38. An automatic is smaller and weighs less.”

“You got one?”

“Me, I take the Walther PPK, but this bunch of patriots out here will only shoot American-made, so that’s all I stock. The AK-47 is the finest weapon ever made. The revolutionary’s choice. That dog will hunt,”

“Pistol,” Joe said. “A simple goddam pistol.”

Joe followed Ty to his pickup. He dropped the gate and reached inside the topper, where several dozen automatic rifles lay beneath blankets. A two-tiered row of metal boxes held ammunition. He opened a case and passed Joe a shiny pistol. Joe released the clip. It was empty.

“That do for you?” Ty said.

“Figured it would be loaded.”

“What, you think I’m some kind of nut?”

Ty went inside his cabin and Joe felt as if he were watching the passage of wild weather. Ty returned with a duffel bag. Inside were four boxes of ammunition and two spare clips. Ty flicked the safety on and off, dislodged the clip, rammed it back, and showed Joe how to chamber a cartridge. He casually fired at a milk jug spindled on a sapling.

“Best target is a water balloon,” he said. “Fill them until they’re a little smaller than the human head. I know people in Texas who use a corpse. You get used to firing at a human, but there’s two problems.”

“What’s that?”

“Getting hold of a corpse, and getting rid of it later.”

He gave the pistol to Joe, who shot and missed the jug.

“Think of pointing your finger,” Ty said. “It’s pretty tricky with this short a barrel, though.”

“You hit it.”

“I’ve run thousands of rounds through every weapon you can name. Let me show you something.”

He reached in his back pocket for a bandanna and wrapped one corner around the grip of the pistol. He held it tightly with his right hand, lifted the opposite corner to his mouth, and clenched it between his teeth. He used his outstretched arm to aim the pistol, pushing it from his body while holding the cloth in his mouth. He squeezed the trigger. The stick holding the milk jug toppled.

Ty spat the bandanna from his mouth.

“Get it?” he said. “You’re giving yourself two points of support without a rest. Takes getting used to, but it’s good for a long shot. What you want to avoid is being stuck with a long shot. This baby’ll knock down anybody close. The ammo is expanding hollow point. Goes in like a marble, comes out like a softball.”

He clasped the duffel bag full of shells to his chest and looked at Joe for a long time before he spoke.

“Just remember what Lincoln said. ‘If you’re not for us, you’re against us.’ One day they’ll ask you that.”

“What about you?”

“I don’t live with them.”

Joe looked into the woods. He knew a deer trail that led to water. Last year he’d watched an eagle nest in the rock bluffs that rose like a wall beyond the creek. If he’d gone to Alaska, he’d have six months of darkness to conceal him. His leg would work right, and he wouldn’t need a gun.

Ty pushed the duffel bag into Joe’s hands.

“Here,” he said. “Get out of here.”

“What do I owe you?”

“Take it, take it. It’s a fire sale. You need a holster? Let me get you a holster.”

Ty reached inside his truck for a small nylon holster designed to fit against your lower back. He stuffed it in the duffel bag.

“Thanks,” Joe said.

“Forget it. I’m done here. It’s getting too hot.”

“The fires are pretty bad.”

“I mean law hot.”

Joe shrugged.

“Do me a favor,” Ty said, “and give Owen a message. Something I don’t want on the airwaves.”

“All right.”

“There’s a lot of traffic on Skalkaho Pass.”

“Probably fire crews.”

“There’s no fires around here, and I’m not going up there to find out who it is. My guess is the Feds. That’s the back way into the Bitterroot, Joe. This whole thing is about to blow up and I’m getting out. You should, too.”

“I don’t know where to go.”

“You could come with me.”

Joe looked at Ty for a long time, flattered that someone wanted his company, Boyd would have gone, but Joe decided to stay. He’d already left a place once. Now he had people to stay for.

“Thanks, Ty,” he said.

He walked swiftly to his Jeep, wanting to get away before he changed his mind. He backed out of the driveway and honked from the road. Ty lifted a clenched fist. Behind him the sun was fading in the west, striping the horizon with bands of scarlet ash.