The narrow, shoulderless road dipped and wound around the base of the mountain, through groves of stunted, twisted aspens, their trunks a dizzying maze of paper-white bark and black lines. Once David saw a dark shape that might have been a bear, but judging by the occasional splatters of manure on the highway, it was more likely a cow.
A valley opened to their left, and Mary turned again, onto a highway that skirted an earthen dam and then crawled above the long, narrow, man-made lake beyond. At the gates marking the Glacier National Park boundary, she stopped and held up a tribal ID. The ranger inside the toll booth waved them on through.
“One of the benefits of being Blackfeet,” she said. “Free pass to the park.”
“Handy,” David said. “You come up here a lot?”
“As much as we can, but it never seems like enough.”
The highway circled the head of the lake and then tunneled into stands of towering pines. The grass beneath was sprinkled with wildflowers––white, yellow, some kind of bluebells. David could only put a name to the flame-red Indian paintbrushes.
And there was water. Everywhere. Trickling down every rock face, splashing down every gully, fed by the melting snow. Once again, David’s chest ached at the contrast between this and the scorched earth back home.
They crossed a river, climbed a set of hairpin curves, and topped a rise to reveal a view that made David’s breath catch. The sapphire-blue lake below was roughly circular, framed by sheer-rock peaks. One mountain thrust out into the middle, a towering pyramid carved by the park’s namesake glaciers, backed by palisades of rock crowned with stubborn fingers of rock yet to be toppled by the unrelenting assault of the elements.
David caught a whiff of woodsmoke, saw it curling up from the trees in what a sign declared to be the campground. Beside the lake, another chalet-style log building served as the camp store. People strolled along the road between store and campground in pairs and families, licking ice cream cones, slurping drinks, settling in for the evening.
Mary chose the parking lot along the shore. A dock stretched into the water, and as David watched, a low-slung wooden tour boat pulled alongside and tied up to unload passengers. Nearby, rental canoes and rowboats were upended on the rocky beach. Far out on the lake, a pair of kayaks cruised across the gentle chop, reduced to neon-yellow dots by the mass of the mountain behind them.
“This is amazing.” David gawked like all the rest of the tourists as he stepped out of the pickup. The narrow strip of beach stretched off in either direction—along the tree line to their left and past the camp store on the right—nearly to the base of yet another mountain where the lake narrowed, funneling into a small river.
“I’d expect a Colorado boy would get his fill of mountains,” Mary said.
He shook his head. “I’m a flatlander. Pure prairie out where we live. We were lucky if we visited the mountains two or three times a year growing up. And now…” He shrugged. “I pass through a lot of scenery. Don’t get to stop much.”
“You could make a point.”
“It’s hard when you’re hauling horses. They aren’t real popular in the campgrounds.”
“Hadn’t thought of that.” She stared out over the water. “Still, I bet you see some amazing places, even passing through. I’ve never been outside of Montana much.”
“Except Afghanistan?”
Her mouth curled down at the corner. “Not exactly a scenic tour.”
“What’s it like?”
“Hot. Dirty. And it smells.” She wrinkled her nose, skimmed a hand over her nape. “My hair was long when I was deployed. After two weeks of grit and sweat, I was in the base barber shop having it cut off. Never got around to growing it out again.”
David squinted, tried to imagine her hair long. Picturing her in camouflage and size four Army boots was easy. And oddly sexy. He’d never considered macho women his type. “I bet it looks better now. Short hair suits you.”
“Thanks.” She flushed slightly but didn’t glance in his direction, ignoring what might have been an attempt at flirting.
He hadn’t meant it that way—he didn’t think—so he followed her lead and pretended he’d kept the observation to himself. “Why did you join the army?”
“College tuition, mostly.”
The obvious answer. Which led to the obvious question. “Were you scared when you got deployed?”
“I wasn’t thrilled.” She tilted her head back, staring up at the mountaintop as it shredded a wispy cloud. “I tried to go into it with a positive attitude. Told myself it would make me smarter. Stronger.”
“Did it?”
“I guess. It’s just…it’s different than you expect. Not all in a bad way. I might’ve signed on for another stint in the National Guard, but Kylan—” She tossed a look over her shoulder. “Someone probably told you by now about his mother.”
David nodded. “How long will she be…gone?”
“Forever if she keeps it up.” Mary’s jaw went tight, her voice sour. “She was on probation for possession when she got busted for dealing. Then she got more time tacked on for assaulting her cellmate and again for possession inside.”
David whistled. “Does she want to be locked up the rest of her life?”
“Like the posters say, there’s a reason they call it dope. And she’s just plain mean. Takes after her dad.” Mary started for the beach, deserted in favor of campsites and cookouts.
David grabbed the bag of food and followed. “She’s older than you?”
“Seven years.” Mary picked up a flat rock, skipped it thirty yards out across the waves with a flick of her arm. “Her dad is a snake when he’s sober, downright scary when he’s drunk. My mom was only with him a few months, and he never wanted anything to do with Lori. Didn’t matter, though. The mean was bred right into her.”
“You aren’t close?”
She snorted. “Not even a little.”
“So why’d you take Kylan in?”
“He’s family,” she said as if that explained everything.
“What about your mother?”
“She’s got health problems.” Mary flicked another rock out over the water, watched it skip. “There was no way she could take on a twelve-year-old boy, and Kylan isn’t exactly low maintenance, growing up the way he did.”
“Is he the reason you went into special ed?”
Mary froze in the act of picking up another rock and slowly straightened. “Why do you say that?”
“My cousin, the one who owns Frosty, has Down syndrome. You learn to see the signs.”
She tossed the rock, watched it disappear, then glanced over her shoulder. “I can see why Frosty’s not for sale. They don’t take goodbyes very well, these kids.”
David ducked his head, guilt grinding like broken glass in his gut.
Mary jammed her hands into the center pocket of her sweatshirt. “That was a cheap shot. I didn’t mean it to be. I was talking about the kids I teach, not Kylan.” She dragged in a deep breath, let it out slowly. “Officially, he’s been diagnosed with fetal alcohol syndrome, but Lori never met a high she didn’t like and saw no reason being pregnant should ruin her fun. It’s a wonder the poor kid survived, let alone being reasonably functional.”
David shifted the bag of sandwiches to his left hand, picked up a rock, curled his fingers around the smooth, water-worn shape. “If you’re trying to make me feel better, it’s not working.”
“I wasn’t… I didn’t mean…” She cursed and kicked a rock. “You asked. I answered.”
“That wasn’t a play for sympathy?”
Her chin shot up. “The last thing Kylan needs is pity. People feel sorry for you, it’s the same as saying you’re weak. You’ve got no control.”
“Does he?”
“Yes!” The word hissed out. She stood arrow straight, her stance defying all that mountains’ majesty at her back to overshadow her. “He’s impulsive and sometimes he flies off the handle, but he’d never hurt a fly.”
“You trust him and Starr together?” David asked. “He’s damn near a full-grown man.”
Her mouth twisted into a tight smile. “I’ve lectured him into the ground about using condoms, and Starr’s grandmother marches her down to the clinic every three months for birth-control shots. Says she refuses to be a great-grandmother before she turns forty-five, and she’s not raising another grandbaby.”
Mary picked up another rock, sent it skipping across the waves. “Starr is a smart girl. If I could just get her to believe…” She rolled her shoulders, as if trying to shed the frustration. “She sees her mother and her grandmother scraping by, watches her friends get pregnant on purpose because in some warped way it makes them feel loved and important, and she thinks that’s the best she can expect.”
“She’s got you for a role model.”
“I don’t count.” She waved a hand in front of her face. “I don’t look Indian. People off the reservation don’t treat me the way they treat someone who looks like Starr.”
“And she figures that made it easy for you to go to college?”
“Easier.” Mary stood her ground as a rogue wave sloshed right up to the toes of her running shoes. “First thing I did was learn to talk like the white girls so I could blend. Starr doesn’t have that option.”
David wanted to argue, but who was he to say? He’d never been a minority. He turned the rock in his hand one more time, then reared back and threw it as far as he could out into the turquoise water.
“I appreciate you taking the time to work with the boys today,” she said. “It’s good for them to spend time with someone like you.”
“Like me?” David echoed.
“You have a dream, and you stick with it. You have no idea what it means to a kid like Sam to have a man he admires look him in the eye and say he doesn’t have to let other people tell him who he’s gonna be.”
“I wasn’t trying to preach.”
“That makes it even better.” Her smile caught him off guard and sent a pulse of warmth through him like a stray beam of sunshine breaking through the clouds, and just as fleeting. “These kids see so much failure. People who give up or never even try. It’s contagious. But so is success, so we try to expose them to it on a regular basis.”
Success? She must be thinking of someone else. “I haven’t exactly set the world on fire.”
“You bought that jacket at the Salvation Army?” She cocked her head toward the pickup, where they’d left their coats.
“No.” He gave a stiff shrug. “I qualified for the National Finals once. Big deal.”
“Yeah. It is. Ask all the guys who’ve been busting their butts for years and haven’t made it.”
He shrugged again, uncomfortable with her implied compliment. “I just gave the boys a few roping tips.”
“Not just that. You gave them your time. Not because you were paid to or had to, but because they asked. That means a lot.”
“I couldn’t just walk away.”
“Sure you could. People do it all the time.”
He met her gaze, held it. “Not me.”
She studied him for a moment, that little pucker in her forehead again, as if she couldn’t decide if he was for real. Then she waved at a pile of logs that had washed up on the beach, stacked at angles like straws tossed down by a massive hand. “Take the sandwiches down there. I’ll run into the store and grab something to drink.”
“Only if you let me buy.”
He dug a five-dollar bill from his pocket, surprised when she took it without protest. Once again, he couldn’t help watching as she walked away, her butt twitching with each purposeful stride. Yep, it would fit right in the palm of his hand.
And damn it all, he had to stop taking measurements.