YOU LOOK FUNNY IN this rich man’s car,” said Madelaine. “Too bad about the old police car.”
“Yah,” said Du Pré, “well, it was gone when I checked and Bart got me home, you know. Then he buys me this thing, I don’t want it but maybe I will not hurt his feelings.”
“How much this cost?” asked Maria.
“I don’t know,” said Du Pré. “I think maybe I buy some penny loafers, drive with them on.”
“You better be gone now,” said Madelaine. “The train is on time you bet.”
Maria was off to her summer tutorial before entering college. She had told Bart that she wanted to take the train because she had never been out of Montana and she wanted to see the Midwest. Ride the train through New York and on to Massachusetts.
“Bye, Madelaine,” said Maria, leaning over and looking across Du Pré, who was giving Madelaine’s hand a squeeze.
“Oh, yah,” said Madelaine. “I forgot, I got to talk to you a minute, Du Pré, won’t take long. Leave this silly thing running and you come here a minute.”
Du Pré got out and he walked to the back of the Rover. Madelaine grabbed his left ear and pulled hard so the ear was down near her mouth.
“I gon’ tell you something,” she said. “You pay attention some, yes? You go that damn Washington-deecee. You go play little boy, them canoe up in Canada. You come back. You want to know what happen you are gone?”
“Ah,” said Du Pré. “Let go my ear, please.”
“Fuck your please,” said Madelaine. “I hold on to your ear so you will listen. Now you go off, I get ver’ horny you know. It is a sin I know but I get horny and I like to screw and this one, God can keep his opinions himself. Ver’ horny. I think about your nice dick and I miss it.”
She gave Du Pré’s ear a twist.
“Hey!” said Du Pré, “that hurt!”
“Good,” said Madelaine. “I want you remember this. So you are gone, Du Pré and I am ver’ lonely and I miss you a lot and I love you and I will not fuck nobody else ‘cause of that. So where that leave me?”
“I am paying attention,” said Du Pré. “Now let go my ear or I stomp on your arch there, your foot.”
Madelaine let go of his ear.
“Where that leave me is this,” said Madelaine. “I go to Cooper and I go the grocery store and I pick the potatoes over and I find a couple right ones and I come back home and I carve a dick out of them, pretty much like yours. I know your dick pretty good, and I put a nice head on it and everything. Works pretty good you know, but it don’t smell right and of course you are not there to tell me funny stories. Breathe in my ear.”
Du Pré nodded.
“That Potato Dick best on the second day, it is having some give to it a little, second day is the best, third day it is not smelling so good and out it goes, I got to carve another one.”
“Okay,” said Du Pré. “I find this bastard I stay here in Montana for a long time. “
“You don’t belong any other place,” said Madelaine. “I worry about you, you come back you got a bad look in your eye.”
“Okay,” said Du Pré.
“Okay,” said Madelaine. “I love you but you are an asshole.”
“Okay,” said Du Pré.
“Go on now,” said Madelaine.
Du Pré got back in the Rover. The rear of it was stacked with Maria’s luggage. A lot of her other stuff had already been shipped by parcel carrier.
He turned the Rover around and drove off toward the county road, which would take them north and west so Maria could catch the train in Malta. The southern train through Billings had been shoved off the tracks, long time ago, real stupid thing to do.
“I will miss you, Jacqueline, everybody a lot,” said Maria, “I will miss this. I will get very homesick. Real different place, isn’t it?”
“Oh, yeah,” said Du Pré.
“It is very nice of that Bart do this for me,” said Maria. “I won’t let him down.”
“He wanted to do too much for you,” said Du Pré. “But this is good. Now when you get there, you please remember who you are, who your people are now.”
“Yes, Papa,” said Maria.
“Us Métis we here before anybody,” said Du Pré, “long time before that Champlain. We come here a long time gone,” said Du Pré, “to be free. We are here before that Champlain, before them Vikings, too, probably, long time before that Columbus.”
“Why?” asked Maria.
“Get away them tax people, them priests,” said Du Pré. “They always come along, though.”
They rounded the western edge of the Wolf Mountains and looked out on the high rolling plains, big and tough and open. The highway went on straight to the west, miles ahead, they would crest a long grade and see another rising and the horizon twenty miles away.
Red cedars in the draws and clinging to the rocks, cattle grazing, the quick flash of white from the rumps of antelope headed for safety. Buzzards circled over north, lowering down on a dead animal out of sight in the folded land.
“I got to go,” said Maria, “but I know I will sometimes be on my bed back there crying. It is different, huh? Everything close together and a lot of people.”
“Oh, yes,” said Du Pré. “Every breath of air been used five, six times before you get it.”
“Oh, Papa.”
“Pretty dangerous, too, you be careful where you go. It is not like here, someone watching you all the time.”
“I like that,” said Maria. “You know here I get in trouble because I am standing next to a guy drinking beer, I got to go talk to that puke Bucky Dassault, there.”
“Well,” said Du Pré, “not any fun but you don’t do it again.”
“I don’t get caught again?” said Maria.
I cannot ask no more, Du Pré thought, my beautiful young daughter here is going off to that fancy school and she will come back to visit sure enough but I won’t see her again. This is pretty bad, I got a lump in my throat like the one the day I drop her off at her first kindergarten school.
She run home from that. I ask her, you scared, she say, no, I am some bored. She already knew how to read. I take her back she bite that little Gary Klein so they have to send her home. I give up, send her to the first grade. The next year.
I am all my life being a father cutting deals with my daughters. They always win. I am glad they like me all right, they didn’t I would be long dead.
My wife died such a long time ago, but I can see her in their faces and I had my great luck, Madelaine.
I don’t understand any of my women.
They passed several cattle herds being moved down the verge of the road, to new pastures. The cowboys waved and the heeler dogs scuttled round, nipping at the hooves of the laggards, barking and jumping.
One of them gave Du Pré and Maria the finger.
“Why he do that, Papa?” asked Maria.
“Oh,” said Du Pré, “it is this dumb silly Rover that Bart bought for me, it looks like a car those flatlanders with a lot of money buy, move here, screw everything up. We lucky he don’t shoot at us.”
“All changing,” said Maria.
“Always does,” said Du Pré.
“I wonder what will be left when I come back,” said Maria.
“Land, it always stays the same,” said Du Pré. “Not much that we can do about it, bad as we get. But the people on it and their hearts, they change a lot, this is a bad time, now.”
They drove a while, silent. Magpies lifted up from the carcasses of squashed rabbits and then settled when the Rover passed. Once a huge porcupine stopped them dead in the road, the ancient animal waddling across the asphalt. He was headed for the trees down by a little pond below the road grade.
They passed through a cut in the yellow-gray limestone, the bed of the sea which had run from the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic Ocean so long ago, and now was mountains, some rising even beneath the plains.
There was a flat pan of sagebrush and scrubgrass ahead. The road ran straight as a taut string.
There were four animals on the right side of the road, each about a hundred yards apart from the others. One two three four.
Coyotes.
“Damn,” said Maria, “I have never seen that in the daylight for sure!”
Du Pré slowed. They passed the first coyote and as soon as they did the animal turned and trotted out of sight. So did the next three.
“Benetsee, “said Du Pré, “I think he say so long to you.”
“Ah,” said Maria. “But I will be back.”
He knows more than you, my child, thought Du Pré, you will visit but you will never return.
They got to the train station a couple hours later. The train was on time and Du Pré loaded Maria up and he kissed her and it pulled away, Maria waving till Du Pré couldn’t see her any more.
He drove back home.
He stopped in Cooper and bought Madelaine three big very long potatoes.