TO AUGUST, THE FACT that he was born in the Midwest was starting to lose its importance. At some point, the place you’re from takes on an abstract quality. Maybe those were the formative years, but they seem less and less real. He’d always heard that the human body is 70 percent water. When he looked at his hand, he couldn’t see evidence of that any more than he could consider his childhood and determine what effect it had on the current shape of his life.
Whenever his father called, he made sure to let August know that if he didn’t go to college he’d need to be finding a job, and that he had plenty of work for him if he decided to come back. He never came right out and said that he was struggling to get everything done around the place, but August could tell that he wanted him to think that was the case.
Of course, August knew his father wasn’t all alone back there. Once when he called, August heard a woman’s voice in the background. It was almost ten at night, and he could picture his father sitting in the kitchen, the old yellow phone’s cord stretched all the way over to the table. He could picture the room exactly. What he couldn’t picture was the woman. It wasn’t Lisa, or at least it didn’t sound like her. He heard her speak briefly in the background. She’d said, Babe, do you want it with butter, or plain? August considered himself an adult, basically, and it didn’t bother him too much. But still, his father had a woman he’d never met making him his popcorn, calling him babe.
August was starting to think people were inscrutable at heart. He hadn’t forgiven his mother for running Julie off, but eventually they reached a sort of uneasy truce that allowed them to live together. It was easy to think that, because they birth you, you get some sort of access to their inner life. If anything, August thought the opposite was more true. He’d spent nine months next to her heart, and now it seemed like she was going to live the rest of her life with a faint air of embarrassment, covering her tracks, worried about what he might have heard in there.
August was still fighting with her about college. At this point, continuing with school seemed like handing his mother a victory in the ill-defined battle they’d been engaged in since Julie left. She’d called the Montana State registrar and was furious when they told her no application had been filed under his name. He’d instead decided that he wanted to be a wildlands firefighter or possibly go work in the Wyoming oil fields, like Gaskill’s older brother, who’d returned to town with a brand-new truck. Said he was going back and could get August on.
This was two years after 9/11 and the military recruiters still came to August’s high school at least once a week, smelling blood. As a senior August could sign up for the National Guard and they’d give him four thousand dollars just as soon as he passed the test. Put your time in, they’d say, just a few years, and then when you get out we’ll pay for your school. You want to go to college, son, don’t you? Of course you do. But how are you going to pay for that? You’re an upstanding young man, I can tell. You expect your parents to foot the bill? Are you going to take out loans?
August saw through that whole game pretty quickly. Probably thanks to his mother, he had to admit. She still spent weekends with Art, but on weeknights she made August watch Bill O’Reilly with her. She’d sit on the couch, smoking, emitting a small noise of disgust with each drag. When the show was over, she’d switch off the TV, mix herself a drink, and tune in the radio to the NPR station out of Billings. They’d sit in silence and listen to the BBC World News. She never said anything, allowing him to formulate his own opinions.
August didn’t figure that there was much formulating in him at all until Ramsay got blown up. He had four younger brothers. His mother weighed three hundred pounds and hardly ever left the house. His old man drove long-haul trucks, only came home every couple of weeks. Ramsay had been smart enough to go to college anywhere, for free, probably, but he had to do the weekly grocery shopping for his mom, had to clean up after his brothers. In other words, he wasn’t listening to BBC World News on NPR. He’d taken the four thousand dollars. He’d come back from that first deployment with burns over 70 percent of his body and died at a military hospital somewhere in Texas. August still couldn’t quite figure out what exact part of a National Guardsman’s duty involved riding in a Hummer in Afghanistan. The brochures the recruiting officers gave out showed smiling young men and women in fatigues handing one another sandbags while flood-stricken locals stood by, gratitude written all over their faces.
After Ramsay, everything seemed desperate somehow. It was as if August and all the guys he knew had caught something. One of their own would never be coming back, and that first encounter with the enemy, that taste of mortality, had left everyone a bit unhinged.
August never really knew June that well, but she seemed to exist on some higher plane than everyone else in school. Maybe she wasn’t a knockout beauty—she didn’t have one of those austere faces that you see in magazines. She was, however, extraordinarily cute. Small, blond, upturned nose, huge blue eyes. And her voice: not high and girly like you might think from looking at her. It was kind of raspy, soft, but rough somehow. Like she got her full-grown woman’s voice early. She was smart, too, but different from Ramsay, in that she took it seriously. She was valedictorian, and everyone knew that was going to be the case from about the second day of freshman year.
She might have been small, but she was immaculately formed. She was on the volleyball team, and they wore those spandex shorts. August remembered seeing an unusual number of local guys around for home games, dudes who couldn’t tell you the difference between a set and a spike. They ate popcorn and made jokes about the kneepads while watching June flip her long hair out of her face brusquely and squat low, swaying side to side a little, waiting for the serve.
At the end of their senior year, she got accepted into Brown. No one was completely sure where Brown was, but there was the general sense that it was prestigious. Most people who were going to college were heading to the state schools in Bozeman or Missoula. But June, she was going to Brown. At one point August looked it up. Rhode Island. A state hardly even as big as Sweet Grass County. She never made a big deal out of it, but it was one of those things that took her out of the town’s stratosphere, placed her in slightly more rarified air.
People used to call him Augie, but as of late he’d been discouraging it, because he thought it sounded like something you might name a small puppy that will grow up to be a useless dog. His mother still called him Augie. His father had always called him August. In a roundabout way, his name was the way he finally met June.
As far as he knew, he’d been in school for two years before she knew he existed. He was walking back to the locker room from football practice, and she was in her car about to leave. She had a red Mazda Miata. Her dad was part owner of a car dealership in Billings and got it for her on her sixteenth birthday. She had the window down, and when August walked by she whistled to get his attention.
“Hey,” she said. “August, right? Too bad your name’s not July.” These were literally the first words she’d ever spoken to him.
“Yeah?” he said. “Why?”
“Then maybe I’d let you come after me.”
And then she drove off, a little blond girl in a little red car, hair whipping out the window, laughing hysterically.
No one would say that June was a complete good girl. There were rumors. Her parents were strict Catholics, and, of course, she was saving herself for marriage. But she had the Catholic knack for finding loopholes.
“She gives blow jobs,” Gaskill said once while he and August were drinking warm beer, stolen from Old Man Gaskill, sitting on his dropped tailgate by the river. “I’ve confirmed it.”
“Yeah, who says?”
“My cousin goes to school down at MSU. I guess she’s been around a little bit down there. College dudes. They don’t put up with that I’m-waiting-for-marriage bullshit. You know what else I heard?”
“What?”
“Just because the front door is locked doesn’t mean the back door isn’t wide open.”
“No way.”
“Seriously. I heard that. She’s still a virgin, though, technically. It doesn’t count.”
“Oh, come on.”
“No shit.”
August didn’t believe him, not really, but still. He’d see her—walking the halls, her girlfriends around her like a protective shell, or at volleyball practice when he was heading out to the football field—and he’d wonder.
What happened was, they had a party for Ramsay. On a weekend, not long after graduation, they draped his casket with the flag and lowered his remains into the ground, and that night there was a bonfire by the river. Gaskill’s dad worked for the phone company and always had chunks of telephone pole lying around. Telephone poles soaked in creosote—there was not much better for building a monumental bonfire. They made a scaffold of poles that was fifteen feet high, and the whole time they worked they didn’t once mention Ramsay. August didn’t know what the other guys were thinking. Personally, he was trying to remember the last thing he’d ever said to Ramsay, but he couldn’t. For some reason August thought that maybe if he could just remember the final words to ever pass between them, he’d be better able to classify what Ramsay’s death meant. Because, as it was, he didn’t know what to think.
He wasn’t going around saying that Ramsay had been his best friend or anything like that—unlike some other people. After this whole thing, he’d have to say that nothing increased your popularity like dying. What did he know about Ramsay, really, when it came down to it? He was a tall, skinny kid. So pale his nickname had been Casper. He’d been on the football team, a mediocre wideout. He’d run track, too, and had been better at that. The truth was, Ramsay and August had just hung out together occasionally. It might have been easier if they had been close; at least then August wouldn’t have had to wonder how much grief was enough.
At the time, their telephone-pole monument seemed like an appropriate act of memorial to their friend. Everyone agreed that Ramsay had always loved setting shit on fire. They waited till dark, doused it with gasoline, and then torched it. The blaze came up taller than the cottonwoods, and people couldn’t stand within twenty feet of the thing without the heat curling their hair. Flames licked at the treetops, toxic clouds of creosote smoke shifted and pulsed—it was magnificent.
Everyone came. Kids no one even knew were there. It was the only party August could remember from that summer where the cops didn’t show up to harass them. It was like the town itself had decided to let the kids get Ramsay out of their systems the only way they knew how. And they did some of that, August figured, but mostly everyone just got drunk as monkeys.
Veldtkamp was back from summer practices in Missoula—he’d gotten a full-ride scholarship to U of M. He was staggering around with a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, shouting, “Calvin Ramsay was an American hero.” Trying to fight several people who didn’t display what he thought was a proper level of enthusiastic agreement.
Richards burned the shit out of himself trying to jump over the flames shooting from a fallen pole, and some guys had to tackle him to put out the fire that blossomed on his shirt.
It was sometime during this that June showed up. She was with a guy no one recognized. He was older, midtwenties at least. He had a faint look of disdain on his face and refused to shotgun a beer, and it wasn’t long before the taillights of his car were seen fading down the river road.
But June stayed. She was wearing a dress and her bare legs were tan, red-brown in the firelight. August watched her standing there with some of her girlfriends. They were all laughing and talking loud, everyone was; the fire burned with a low roar that people had to shout over to be heard. But even so, it seemed that June was overdoing it somehow. Her laughs were the loudest, lasted the longest.
“What the fuck?” he heard her say once, her head thrown back and her eyes half-closed, an incredulous look. “I mean, really, what the fuck?”
A few guys had gone in on a half gallon of Southern Comfort one hundred proof. They filled a cooler with ice and dumped in the whiskey and mixed in a few cans of pineapple juice. Gaskill stole his mother’s turkey baster, and he and August walked around the party with the cooler, offering up shots.
They got to June’s group, and the girls tilted their heads back one after another so Eddy could shoot a turkey baster’s worth of the booze down their throats. Laughing, coughing, swearing. Everyone sticky with pineapple juice. When it was June’s turn, she said, “For Ramsay,” the way everyone had been doing all night long. For Ramsay, for Ramsay, for Ramsay. It was a mantra, a chant, a motto, a rallying cry, a failed attempt to raise the dead. August had taken the baster from Gaskill so he could do June, and she tilted her head back and he could see the cords of her throat work as he squeezed the bulb. Her head was at his shoulder, her hair full of static, reaching out, clinging to the hair on his arm.
When it was done she wiped at her mouth with the back of her hand. “One more,” she said, smiling, juice glistening on her chin.
There was drunkenness, screaming, laughing, dancing. Dust rose and swirled in angry red columns across the fire. In the general devolution that followed, August saw June kiss one of her girlfriends, on the lips, while everyone watched. Then a while later she kissed Veldtkamp, then Richards, then Gaskill, and then Veldtkamp again. By now her girlfriends had faded away. She was sitting on the ground, laughing maybe, or crying. No, definitely laughing. And then Veldtkamp had her over his shoulder, and she was giggling, and then she was limp, her hair almost dragging into the dirt.
The fire was at the back now. They were underneath the cottonwoods, the soft midnight sounds that cicadas make. August could smell the river moving out in the darkness, damp and black. Veldtkamp had lifted June and just started walking, and a few guys were following, and then he swore and dropped her. August could see a yellow line of her vomit trailing down his back. He took off his shirt and threw it into the bushes.
She was sitting, legs spread, her hair in her eyes. Her dress was pushed all the way up on her thighs, one of the straps fallen off her shoulder. The guys all stood around her. August was there, too. She was making a noise, moving a little, scooting, maybe trying to get up. Veldtkamp knelt next to her, bare chested, weight-room-inflated muscles popping out all over the place. He pulled the top of her dress down and exposed her breasts. There was nervous laughter.
“Holy shit,” someone said.
June made no move to cover herself. She wiped at her mouth with the inside of her elbow, said something unintelligible. Veldtkamp was still crouching next to her. His hand was up under her dress, moving between her thighs, and she groaned and slumped so she was leaning back on her elbows. And then Veldtkamp was standing unsteadily. Looking around as if noticing the spectators for the first time. He weaved a little and fumbled with his zipper.
“Well? How about it? For our boy Ramsay,” he said.
For Ramsay. Someone else said it, and then someone after that. Jostling. Laughter. August was at the back but eventually he was at the front. The group had shifted to circle her and everyone who was there was there all the way. June in the dirt. Swaying on hands and knees, back arched with a moan, eyes closed, cheek pressed to the leaves. When it was August’s turn, June had gone silent; no longer able to maintain hands and knees she slumped to her side. She’d vomited again and he could smell it on his hands, and at this he faltered.
“Looks like Augie’s got himself a case of the whiskey dick,” someone said. August wiped his palms on his jeans and finally June rolled onto her back and spit, badly, so most of it glistened down her chin and neck. She opened her eyes and looked at him. She laughed. And then her whole body convulsed in a dry heave. August broke away, hobbling at first, hitching his pants, running headlong into the dark, the cottonwood branches clutching at him. He ran until he tripped and fell. He was far out, away from the party that was all but done anyway. He couldn’t hear voices. He could see the vague outlines of the trees, and he could still see the fire.
For some reason, lying there was where it came to him. The last thing he’d ever said to Ramsay. It had been after that float trip. They’d come back to town and stopped for burgers at Mark’s In and Out. They were sitting at a picnic table outside bullshitting, as usual, but Ramsay wasn’t really talking. He was tapping his fork on the table, staring at it. Someone threw an empty fry container at him to get him to stop, and he kind of shook his head and came to. Up until this point everyone had been talking about girls or football or something. But Ramsay looked around, his hand still rapping his fork on the table like he couldn’t stop himself.
“If you could do this an infinite number of times,” he said, “eventually it would fall right through to the other side. We learned about it in physics last year. I was just thinking about it for some reason.”
Everyone was looking at him, wondering what in the hell he was talking about.
“Yeah,” he said, dropping the fork. “It has to do with the vibration of particles. Everything vibrates, and if all the particles making up this fork were to zig when the particles of the table were zagging, bam. Fork right through table.”
“Oh, bullshit,” August had said. “No way. What keeps us from falling right through the earth?”
Then Ramsay lowered his sunglasses and looked over the rims. “It’s theoretical, dumbass.” And then he looked over August’s shoulder. “Speaking of ass,” he said. And everyone turned to watch Ms. Moore, the new gym teacher, jogging down the sidewalk in her yoga pants, headphones on. After that they went their separate ways. Ramsay walked off down the street, out of Montana, and, after a certain length of time, onto an IED.
That was what it was, and there’d never be a chance for revision. The permanent stupidity of this made August’s eyes water. From where he’d fallen he watched as the scaffold of telephone poles collapsed, sending a billowing cloud of sparks two stories high.
The morning after the party, August and a few of the guys went for breakfast. They sat in the truck-stop diner, hungover, eating biscuits and gravy. Not talking, other than to ask for the salt or pepper or butter, and even this was oddly formal. Some of the guys had known one another since birth practically, and this morning they ate like strangers.
“That damn Southern Comfort,” someone said. “I feel like shit.” Everyone groaned, as if that was the real source of the problem. There was a Billings Gazette in the booth, and August flipped through it. On the second page was a picture of June’s father. He had just been indicted for allegedly embezzling close to half a million dollars from his partner in the car dealership. He passed it around.
“Jesus,” he said. “No wonder she got so wasted last night. She must have just found out about it.”
Everyone nodded, shook their heads. It all kind of made sense.
August didn’t see June again for the rest of that summer. No one did, really. He got a job out at the Heart K Ranch, doing grunt work around the place. A lot of fencing. He’d set out on the four-wheeler and be gone all day, twisting broken wire back together, resetting posts. He was still living at home but was hardly there. Most of the time he’d get done working and crash on a cot in the back of the tack room.
His mother had been bringing Art around more often. August had the general sense that she was trying to press the three of them into some sort of familial unit. She had Art over for dinner frequently and she always invited August to stay, but he’d make up excuses to be gone. Sometimes, seeing Art’s car in the driveway, August would just turn around and go back to the Heart K—lie down on his cot and breathe in the smell of leather and horse sweat leaking from the saddles.
August called his father to tell him that he’d found a job.
“It’s been a hot one, this summer,” his father said. “We had a week straight of midnineties. You been getting that out there?”
“Not that bad. People are worried about how dry it is, though. Feels like the whole place could go up in smoke at any minute. The place I’m working has me cutting brush away from the buildings, cutting the tall grass. We’ve got hoses ready in case we have to wet down the roofs. There’s a lot of outbuildings, though. It’s a pretty big spread.”
“Oh yeah? A spread. Sounds better than a little old farm.”
“It’s different out here.”
“I wouldn’t know. It might not be a spread, but you’ve got a place back here. Seems ridiculous to be working for another man when you could be part owner of something that’s rightfully yours. Am I that bad?”
August wanted to tell him about the silent presence of the mountains, about going out to work every day under a great blue shifting tarp of sky. Instead, he told his father he had a girlfriend. It seemed like something he’d be more likely to understand.
“Well, shit,” he said, his voice changing. “Why didn’t you just say so? I guess I’m not surprised. You have yourself a little cowgirl?”
“Something like that.”
“What’s her name?”
“June.”
He laughed. “Well, if you get married and have a few girls you can name them April, May, and July and you’ll have all the pleasant months covered.”
“I don’t think that’s going to happen anytime soon.”
“Well, be smart. That’s all I’m going to say. And you could come back for a visit, you know? I’ll send you money for a plane ticket this fall. We could go hunting. Maybe Thanksgiving?”
August told him sure, and when he hung up he realized he hadn’t really asked his father anything about him. This was a relatively new thing, the knowledge that his father was something other than just his father. He had a separate life, a unique existence, one that August might inquire about. He couldn’t say for sure what had done it but there had been a shift, and for the first time August knew he would never go back to stay.
August kept busy at the ranch and didn’t see his old crew too much, but even so, he couldn’t help but hear things. Toward September, word was that June had just resurfaced. August saw her once. He was driving through town and she was walking into the movie theater, with Veldtkamp of all people. He couldn’t believe it. He braked so hard the car behind him almost hit his bumper. He saw her for only a second, and she was turning away. Veldtkamp had his hand on her waist.
August found out later that they were dating. He also heard that Veldtkamp had fought and successfully beat up every other guy that had been there that night. And that he was looking for August.
In a small town a person could run for only so long. August knew that if Veldtkamp was dead set on it, he’d catch him eventually. If it was just a matter of taking a minor ass-beating, August might have come out some night when there was a party. Let him puff and blow for a bit in front of everyone; take a few shots before the guys dragged him off. It would be worth it to just have the whole thing finished. The problem was that August was the last one. Once Veldtkamp settled with August, possibly he’d be able to put it to rest in his mind. This was what bothered August the most. The fact that, after punching him out, Veldtkamp might just be able to forget about the whole thing.
Veldtkamp was saying August wouldn’t even come into town because he was so scared. August didn’t try to explain himself. Even to Gaskill, who tried to give August some boxing pointers that he’d learned from his dad, who’d won a Golden Gloves tournament in Helena twenty-some years ago. “Just jab with the left,” he said. “Jab-jab-jab, to set up the distance, and drop the right. That’s the finisher.”
“All right, Tyson,” August said. “Is that what you did when he called you out?”
“Tried. He just body-slammed me. You can’t let it ruin your life, man. Take a couple swings. Maybe you’ll get a black eye. It’s not that big of a deal.”
The day August found the buffalo jump was the same one that Veldtkamp finally caught up to him. He’d been out on the backside of Baldy, riding the fence line, when he came across it. No one on the ranch ever told him it was there. He felt like, at the very least, he’d rediscovered it for his generation, and that gave him some sort of ownership. Just from walking around he could get a pretty good sense of how it worked. They had rocks and sticks and stuff piled up so it was like a funnel. This was what caught August’s attention at first. It was all still there—two parallel lines of stones and bleached-out juniper stumps, tightening in, narrower and narrower the closer you got to the lip. The Crow would get up there on top of the butte and hide under buffalo skins, waiting to chase the herd over the edge.
August parked his four-wheeler and scrambled around the sagebrush to the steep face of the butte. The buffalo bones were thick, sun-bleached white. He could see butcher marks on some of them, the places where the knife had scraped the flesh loose. There were scapulae as big as shovel blades, ribs like scattered parentheses. Mostly, though, just countless unidentifiable broken bits and pieces. He kicked his way through the rubble on his way up to the top, a hollow clacking sound, bone against bone, grinding under his boots, the sound of it rising up against the face of the cliff, magnifying somehow, until it seemed that the buffalo had risen, were coming down the hill again, a skeleton herd racing toward doom with the wind whistling through the empty sockets of their skulls.
When he got all the way up to where it was grassy and flat, he sat with his legs kicking over the edge, looking down at the white jumble of old buffalo parts below him. It was like death’s own mosaic down there. He squinted for a long time, trying to find a pattern in all the nonsense. He thought that if he could just see June and talk to her. If he could just ask her something. He’d say, Did you used to have a yellow one-piece swimsuit? Did you ever do flips off the railroad trestle into the river? Did your hair ever come down to your lower back, and did you wear it in a braid? Do you know that I saw you and I’m sorry?
He made up his mind right then that he was going to leave. It was hard to explain, but he got a real strong feeling that he’d just stumbled onto the last thing in this country worth discovering, and he might stay around for the rest of his life and he wouldn’t happen upon anything even half as good.
The sun was setting by the time he made it back to the pole barn at the ranch. He parked the four-wheeler and threw his gear into the truck. It was a decent enough evening to part ways with the Heart K, he thought. The sky, like a tangerine had split and was leaking all over it; the windmill clattering in the breeze, a couple of the horses rolling in the dust of the corral. He’d be happy to find another job like it, exactly the same, just somewhere else.
Veldtkamp was waiting for August at the end of the ranch driveway. His Camaro was parked next to the cattle guard. A purple Camaro. Rear-wheel drive in a state where the snow was ass-deep by Thanksgiving. He was out leaning against the door and straightened up at the sight of August’s truck. When August rolled to a stop he was at the window.
“Get out so we can talk,” he said.
“I guess we can talk just like this.”
“You holier-than-thou little shit. Just because you ran off doesn’t mean you’re above it all.”
“It was your idea.”
“Get out.”
“I’m not getting out.”
Veldtkamp started to try to drag August from the truck. His hands found August’s shoulder and the collar of his jacket. August pulled away just enough that Veldtkamp’s head was almost inside the cab of the truck, and then he punched the gas. For a moment Veldtkamp was clutching August’s arm, and then his feet got tangled and he went down and there was a thump, the back of the truck jumping like August had hit a pothole, except it wasn’t a pothole, because Veldtkamp screamed. August didn’t look in the rearview. He went home to pack a bag.
When August came down the stairs from his room, his mother was sitting at the kitchen table. She’d made him a sandwich. It was there on the table, chips, a pickle, the whole nine yards. August was itching to be gone. He could still feel that thump—could hear Veldtkamp scream. His leg for sure. Maybe his knee. He’d been one of the first guys to be decent to August when he’d moved to town. They used to go out at lunch and throw the football around. Veldtkamp had earned that full ride.
August put his bag down and sat. His boot was tapping on the floor. He’d make it stop and then it would start again without him even realizing it.
“Are you going somewhere?”
He’d planned on telling her that he was just taking some clothes and stuff over to the ranch. But he’d never lied much to his mom. “I guess so,” he said.
“Are you going back to be with your dad?”
August could see how much it took for her to ask this question. “Nah. I think I’m going in the other direction.”
“Okay. Because I’d understand if you wanted to do that. I’m not saying you shouldn’t.”
“It’s fine, Mom. I’m not going back there.”
“What about school this fall?”
“I don’t think it’s for me.”
“So you’ve thought about it, really thought about it?”
“I have. Seems like something people do to put off actually doing something.”
“And that’s your conclusion?”
“For now.”
“Eat your sandwich before the mustard makes the bread soggy.”
August did, and she sat watching him, smoking. When he got up to leave she went to the fridge, came back with a grocery bag full of individually foil-wrapped sandwiches. She must have heard him packing and known all along he was leaving. She’d used up a whole loaf of bread. She gave them to him with a hug. “Goddamn it, Augie,” she said. “You had better remember to call your mother.”
After two cold, monotonous months on a rig outside of Casper, August quit without giving notice. Forfeited a small amount of due pay. Just drove. For a while he found temporary work on a ranch near Buffalo. It was a small place at the foot of the Bighorns. The foreman had broken his leg in a car accident, and he needed help getting things done. It was midwinter now, short days, the wind punching sharp and metallic from the high country. In the mornings August took the tractor out to spread last summer’s alfalfa hay in long rows on the wind-scoured winter pasture. The cattle gathering to feed, the gray fog of the tractor’s exhaust, the gray fog of the cattle’s breath, the gray fog strung along the cottonwoods that hid the river. In a sophomore English class he’d taken at Park High, Mrs. Defrain was always going on about the objective correlative. As far as he could tell, it was just a fancy-sounding name for a trick writers used to portray a mood in their characters. August was starting to think that whoever was penning his life’s plot needed to experiment with a different tactic. Maybe some magical realism. June sprouting the wings of a dove, flying low to him so her feathers ruffled his hair. Maybe Julie rising from the ashes of a cold, dead fire to roll with him in snow that melted under the heat of their conjoined bodies, the sun finally rising, the water flowing warm as blood, yet barely able to slake the ravenous thirst of the flowering love trees that were taking root, growing, blossoming, enveloping them.
When the ranch foreman had mended enough to climb up on the tractor, August collected his pay and headed back to his mother’s for the holidays. He kept to himself. Slept late and ate too much, spent the afternoons scanning the classifieds. Not long after the new year, he drove north toward Great Falls, passing through all the dead and dying little towns—Clyde Park, Wilsall, Ringling. Towns in the sense that the signs proclaiming their existence were still standing, if nothing much else. Shells of crumbling houses, train depots, grain elevators with pigeons wheeling from under the eaves.
In the back of his truck August had two duffel bags full of clothes, and on the seat next to him he had another sack of foil-wrapped sandwiches from his mother. Ham and cheese and raw onion on wheat with Dijon. He’d eaten two of them already and drained a thermos of coffee. Willie Nelson on the radio coming slightly scratchy from a Billings station.
He had the directions to the Virostok Ranch written down and he read them just to hear the sound out loud. “On 89, head north to 294, then take 294 until you get to Martinsdale. In Martinsdale, hang a left at the blinking light and go five miles until you see the turnoff for Old Smith Road. Go right on Old Smith Road. It turns to gravel in a mile, and then after that go eight more miles. Crest a big hill, and just after, hang a left at the Virostok Angus sign. Head on up to the main house.”
Nearly twenty miles out of town on dirt roads. And Martinsdale, the nearest town, wasn’t much of a town to begin with. He tried to sing along with Willie but his voice cracked like always, and so he unwrapped another sandwich, wishing he had more coffee.
The Virostok ranch house was tucked back into a small depression in the hills. A white two-story Victorian with a wraparound porch, one winter away from needing a new coat of paint. Off to the side of the house there was a pole barn and a corral with a big chestnut gelding standing swaybacked in the weak sun. There was an older Subaru wagon in the driveway. An unstacked pile of firewood with a splitting maul stuck in a big cottonwood round. August parked next to the Subaru and got out, stretching. Smoke was rising from the chimney of the house in a gray pillar. There was no doorbell, so August stood on the slightly warped boards of the porch and knocked. He could hear music coming from inside. It was faint, but it sounded like rap, lots of bass.
After another few knocks the door opened and a woman stepped out onto the porch. She was wearing workout clothes—black leggings and a purple tank top. Her sandy-blond hair was held back by a headband. She had wide hips, a small bust, almost no taper at the waist—a sturdy keg of a woman, approaching forty years old by the looks of it, with a fine layer of sweat on her bare arms, droplets clinging to downy hairs on her upper lip.
“Oh, hey,” she said. “Sorry. I was on the elliptical and didn’t hear you at first.” She held out her hand. “I’m Kim, Ancient’s fiancée. He had to go to the hardware store but he told me the new hand might be pulling in soon. August, right?”
“Yep.”
“You find the place all right?”
“No problems. Easy enough.”
“Where you from, August?”
“I drove up from Livingston. That’s where I’ve been living for a few years. But I’m from Michigan, originally.”
“Oh, Livingston’s a nice little town. I almost moved down there years ago to get my master’s at MSU. That place is crazy about fishing. It’s amazing how people travel from all over the world to go to Yellowstone to catch a dinky trout and put it back. You like fishing?”
“It’s okay. I go sometimes.”
She laughed. “Well, we got the Musselshell up here. In the spring it’s a muddy mess, in the summer it’s pretty much dry, in the winter it’s frozen. Someone told me there’s fish in it, but I’m not sure how.”
“Probably some catfish, at least. A catfish can pretty much live in anything.”
Kim was looking past August, and he could see the distance her eyes traveled, over his shoulder, over the brown fields, out to the low mountain range to the south.
“I guess if you don’t have a little catfish in you you’re bound for misery up here,” she said, shaking her head. “Let me get my boots on and I’ll walk you over to your room.” She went back inside and reemerged in rubber muck boots and a down jacket. August got his bags from the truck and followed her across the yard to the pole barn. In the back there was an apartment with a couple of small windows, a patio made of flat cement pavers, and a gas grill.
She flicked on the fluorescent lights. There was a bunk bed along one wall. Concrete floors with an assortment of carpet remnants for rugs. A sink and a small set of cupboards. A two-burner hot plate and a half-sized refrigerator/freezer. There was a round table with a single chair. The walls were fresh white, unadorned except for a calendar from Western LP Gas, from last year, and a framed cross-stitch that read IF YOU’RE NOT GOD OR GEORGE STRAIT, TAKE YOUR BOOTS OFF!
“No frills,” Kim said. “But it’s comfortable enough. Feel free to do whatever you want to make it yours. Paint, or get a couch, or hang stuff up, or whatever.”
August dropped his two duffels. “I’m not too picky. Looks fine to me as is,” he said.
“No TV,” she said. “I’m not sure if Ancient told you that when you talked to him.”
“I’ll survive.”
“I guess you and Ancient will hit it off, then. He doesn’t care about TV one way or another. His idea of entertainment is changing the oil on a tractor. He wanted me to get you started on that pile of firewood out front. I told him that you’d probably want to take a little rest and relax when you got here, but he said it wasn’t like you’d caught a red-eye from Tokyo. Working for him can be a real treat,” she said. “You’ll find that out, I imagine.”
“He’s paying me to work,” August said. “I’ve got nothing else to do. Where does he want it stacked?”
“There’s a spot around the side of the house, a lean-to with a concrete pad. You’ll see it. There’s a wheelbarrow there, too.”
“Okay, I’ll just get my stuff straightened out and I’ll get to it.”
“Well, there’s no hurry, I’m sure. Oh, and I’ll be making some dinner tonight. Why don’t you come up to the house around six? Usually you’ll be on your own for food, and God knows you’ll be happy enough to get a break from Ancient’s cantankerous ass, but since it’s your first day I thought it would be nice to have a little get-to-know-you meal. Pork chops and green beans, salad and some cornbread.”
“Sounds good. Thank you.”
“All right then, I’ll leave you to it. Going to get my butt back on the elliptical.” She paused with her hand on the doorknob and didn’t say anything for a moment. “You got a girlfriend back home?”
“Nope. Haven’t found the time recently.”
“I doubt you’ll find many alluring prospects up here. Does Livingston still have all the trains coming through? I remember how loud that was. They’d blow their horn three times at the crossing, and it was enough to rattle your fillings if you happened to be standing out on the street.”
“Yeah, that’s still going on. More than ever. They got coal trains heading to Portland now. Seems like a constant stream of them.”
“That must be pretty special.”
“You get used to it.”
“Well, that’s how it is up here, too. Except for it’s not trains, it’s silence. I’ve been up here for a year now, and it’s like the Grand Central Station of silence. I’m sure I’ll get used to it at some point, but I’m still waiting.”
When Kim left, August unpacked his jeans and shirts and refolded them into the dresser drawers. He hung his lined Carhartt jacket on the rack next to the door and dug through the smaller pockets of his duffel for his deerskin work gloves. He sat on the bottom bunk for a moment and then leaned back, fingers laced behind his head. He was over six feet tall and several inches of him hung over the foot of the bed, but the mattress was firm and felt new. The top blanket was wool, a diamond Indian-style pattern on it. There were two pillows. They were crisp and felt new as well. He heaved to his feet, and before heading out the door, he took down the UNLESS YOU’RE GOD OR GEORGE cross-stitch and slid it under the bottom bunk. He put the outdated Western LP Gas calendar in the trash. The walls were blank now save for the two nails. He went out and got to work.
The logs were already cut to stove length; they just needed to be split. It was pine of some kind, straight grained and sticky with pitch. They were quick to cleave, flying apart with a satisfying crack at the head of the maul. August fell into an easy rhythm, warming a little with the exertion, rolling the sleeves of his flannel up over his elbows.
He split two wheelbarrows full and carted them over to the lean-to. He made square end-stacks and then started filling in between them. He’d worked his way through half the woodpile when a flatbed Ford pulled in and parked next to the Subaru. The man who got out wore jeans and a fleece-lined jean jacket, a silk scarf knotted up at his throat and a battered wool Stormy Kromer hat. He was younger than August had imagined he would be—midthirties at the oldest. August took off his gloves and leaned the maul against his knee.
“Unless you’re the firewood fairy, I’m going to guess that you’re August?” August nodded, and they shook hands. “I’m Ancient Virostok,” the man said. “Welcome aboard the good ship Virostok. As of this moment we’re managing to stay above water.” Ancient regarded the pile of split wood and nudged a piece with his boot. “Looks like Kim got you lined out on the firewood. I appreciate you getting right to it.”
August shrugged. “I’ve never minded splitting firewood.”
“I hear you there. That’s a task that I almost hate to delegate. You know what they say about splitting firewood?”
“Maybe.”
“It warms you twice.”
“My old man always says that.”
“Sounds like an intelligent person. You told me when we talked on the phone, you’re originally from the Midwest somewhere, right? Wisconsin?”
“Michigan. Pretty much the same.”
“Your old man’s got a little spread back there, you said?”
“Farm. He does dairy.”
“I hope you don’t think it’s me prying, but I’m just curious. Seems funny to work on another man’s place when you got one in the family. You and the old man at odds?”
“Some. I don’t much like dairy. And I like it out here.” August gestured vaguely behind him at the hills. “Sun comes out more.” He nodded at the woodpile. “We don’t burn pine back there. It’s all oak and maple. Hardwood. Crooked grain. Hard on tools.”
“I’ve never been to Michigan. Been to Minnesota one time, though.” Ancient took his cap off, scratched his scalp, and then settled it back down firmly. “Rochester, Minnesota. Wasn’t there long enough to really give me the lay of the land, though.”
“What were you doing down there?”
“Mayo Clinic. Took my dad a couple years ago. The fact that he wasn’t the one who hired you will tell you all you need to know about how that whole deal turned out.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
“Well, we were on the outs a lot. But I never did go off to work anywhere else, though I definitely thought about it. Three generations of Virostoks, right here. My mom named me Ancient because when I came out in the hospital my face was all scrunched up and small. She said I looked one hundred years old as a baby. Now I suppose I look about thirty-five, and I only feel like I’m one hundred.”
August didn’t say anything and leaned on the ax handle.
Ancient crossed his arms over his chest and said, “We’re running three hundred head, give or take. One thousand deeded acres. Access to another five hundred of BLM, and we just picked up another piece, I’m happy to say. Decent grass and we got it pretty cheap. We’ve got water rights on the Musselshell and the North Fork and two good wells. We’ve had half a dozen serious offers to sell in the past few years, but I told them all thanks but no thanks, and that’s how it will be until it hurts too bad to get out of bed. My dad was a mean old son of a bitch but fair and hardworking, and that’s who I model myself after. I’m not saying all this to brag myself and the place up, just want you to have a sense of who and what you’re working for, that’s all.”
August nodded. “Sounds good.”
“I guess I told you most of that on the phone, didn’t I?” Ancient said.
“Pretty much.”
“Something tells me you just want to get back to work and don’t want to hear a bunch of rambling from me.”
August shrugged.
“Kim’s always telling me that I repeat myself. I’ve spent a fair amount of time alone, and so when I talk I’m not always as concerned about my audience as I should be. Kim tells me that, too. You got a lady friend back home, August?”
“Haven’t had time recently.”
“Jesus Christ. At your age I didn’t have time for much else.”
August put his gloves back on and hefted the maul. “I’ve been working a lot.”
“I guess you and I will get along, then,” Ancient said. “I’ll let you get back to it. Dinner in an hour.”
Dinner was dry pork chops, dry cornbread, mushy canned green beans. They sat at the rectangular dining room table, Kim and Ancient across from August. There was no music or TV, and the sound of cutlery on plates was very much in the room.
“This is a delicious meal,” August said. “Thanks, Kim.”
“Oh, sure,” she said. “Glad to do it. I came to cooking late in life. Up until recently I just really couldn’t be bothered. I was addicted to those Healthy Choice microwave meals. Busy with work, busy with school. Food was just kind of a means to an end. Being up here with Ancient, though, I’ve had more time. And it’s more fun to cook for an appreciative audience. Ancient is so hungry by dinner I could probably serve him shit on a shingle and he’d love it.”
Ancient shrugged and smiled. He’d picked up his chop and was gnawing the meat from the bone.
“God, Ancient,” Kim said, laughing. “You’re a savage.”
“In Asia, if you don’t belch after your meal you’re considered a rude dinner guest,” Ancient said, putting the bone down and wiping his mouth with his napkin.
“So?” Kim said.
“So, it’s a similar concept. I’m trying to get every scrap of meat off this thing, and you should take it as a compliment.” Ancient smiled and winked at August. “And you know what they say—the sweetest meat is closest to the bone.”
“Oh, really? Is that what they say?”
“Sure, but I’ve always been a more-cushion-for-the-pushin’ sort of guy.”
“Keep digging yourself in, pal. How about we change the subject? August, what sort of things do you like to do in your free time?”
August was trying to cut the remaining meat from the pork chop bone, but the knife wasn’t sharp enough and the pork chop kept sliding on his plate. “Oh, you know,” he said. “Stuff with my friends. We do a lot of driving around.”
“Fishing?” Kim said. “Didn’t you say you like fishing?”
“Sure. I like to go fishing sometimes.”
“I remember when I had time to go fishing,” Ancient said. “Nineteen eighty-nine, I think it was.”
“Oh, bull crap, Ancient. I bet you could never sit still long enough to fish in the first place, no matter what. I love you, but patient you ain’t.”
“I have patience,” Ancient said. “Just not a leisurely sort of patience, is all. Anyway, fishing is for people who don’t have to work.”
“Well, maybe I should take it up, then,” Kim said, putting her fork into a pile of disintegrating green beans, tightening her mouth—not quite a frown, but a tightening nonetheless.
“You said you went for a master’s degree?” August said.
“Almost. I was going to, but ended up not.”
“For what?”
“Education. I’m a teacher. But not currently. I was teaching high school English in Boise before I came here. I still love it. I love the kids. It’s just the parents.”
“You should hear the shit she had to put up with from these parents,” Ancient said. “It would boggle your mind. It’s no wonder kids in Asia do better on all the tests and things. Their parents aren’t coming into the school to whine to the principal if little Junior gets a bad grade. When I was a kid, ol’ Mr. Rodabaugh would lay into you with a yardstick if you weren’t acting right. I guarantee every D I got in math I damn well earned.”
“Who wants dessert?” Kim said, rolling her eyes. “I’ve got a frozen chocolate cream pie. It’s store-bought but it should still be pretty good.”
August was in the Two Dot Bar, waiting on his hamburger. The bartender was a large older woman wearing a Montana State Bobcats sweatshirt and a baseball cap emblazoned with a rhinestone cross. “Whatcha drinking?” she said, putting a napkin down.
“Bud,” he said.
“I don’t recognize you,” she said. “You old enough?”
August looked around the empty place and put his wallet on the bar. “I’m old enough,” he said.
“Bottle or draft, then?”
“Bottle.”
There was a single small TV hanging over the backbar, a basketball game on. San Antonio playing L.A. August drank his beer and watched without much interest. From where he sat he could see into the kitchen, the large, stained, apron-covered gut of the cook leaning against the grill. There was a blast of cold air at his back as the door opened and closed and a man walked in. August watched in the cracked mirror as he crossed the room and pulled up a stool at the other end of the bar. He was stocky, with a thick black beard, a red silk scarf, and a wide flat-brimmed vaquero hat.
The bartender sighed. “Timmy,” she said. “Coors?” The man nodded, and when she put the bottle in front of him he drank half of it in one long pull and then belched. He took his hat off and set it on the stool next to him, rubbing his scalp, his thick black hair sticking up in greasy spikes. August’s burger came out, and the bartender slid it over. One skinny patty, a whitish piece of iceberg lettuce, some onion, and a pale-pink tomato surrounded by a pile of soggy French fries. August doused the burger with mustard and salted the fries liberally. He could feel the man at the end of the bar looking at him as he started to eat.
“You’re pretty brave,” the man said.
August dunked a fry in ketchup. “Yeah? Why’s that?”
The man jerked his head at the kitchen. “I heard the county health inspector went back there once. No one’s heard from him since.”
“Oh, shut up, Timmy,” the bartender said. She waved her hand at him and slid August another beer. “Don’t listen to that idiot. He’s been coming in here since he was about sixteen, driving me crazy.”
“It’s because I love you, Theresa. I kid because I love you. But I’m serious about that food.” He shook his head and pointed his beer at the burger. “Here we are, surrounded by prime beef and homegrown potatoes, and Theresa still gets the frozen patties from Sysco. The fries they poop out into a mold from processed potato goop.”
“Maybe you should start a restaurant, then, hotshot,” the bartender said.
“Maybe I will. This would be a good place to start one. And a bar, too.” He wagged his empty Coors. “How’s that burger, man? Be honest.”
“Timmy, let the guy eat in peace.”
“I’m just asking.”
“It’s okay,” August said. “I was hungry. Better than I’d make at home, that’s for sure.”
“What an endorsement. I’d like you to envision a thick quarter-pound patty. Fresh, never frozen. Grass-fed beef from prime Angus that were born and raised happy their whole life, just down the road from here on the Duncan Hanging R Ranch.”
“I never knew a cow that seemed super happy,” August said.
“I beg to differ. Because my family and I raise them, and I know them all intimately. Well, maybe not intimately, but enough to know that there’s not a sad one in the whole bunch.” The man slid over a few stools and reached out his hand for a shake. “Tim Duncan,” he said. “Glad to meet you.” The man’s hand was hanging there between them, and eventually August put down his burger, wiped his fingers on his napkin, and shook. “I’m August,” he said.
“You’re Virostok’s new guy right? I recognize your truck. Our place is just on the other side of the river. Well, used to be some on your side of the river, too, but that’s a whole different story. Anyway. I’ve seen you driving around. How’s that miserable cocksucker Ancient?”
“He seems all right. I haven’t been up here too long. Ancient and I get along fine. It’s work.”
“We all go way back. It’s been Duncans and Virostoks up here since the beginning of time, practically. Ancient’s old man was a stand-up character for sure.” Tim rose abruptly, and his stool skated loudly on the floor tiles. He jammed his hat back on his head and said, “That’s it. I can’t stand it, you, a newcomer to the valley, sitting here eating beef-flavored soybean-cardboard in this tomb that Theresa calls a bar. As your neighbor I’m insisting that you ride with me down to Martinsdale, where there are several fine establishments that treat their valued customers to Duncan beef and where there may even be members of the opposite sex under sixty. No offense, Theresa.”
“Go to hell, Timmy. You’re obnoxious. I’m not going to buy your overpriced beef. And you piss me off, so it’s on principle now.”
“I’m not giving up on you, Theresa. I’ll see you next week.”
“I sincerely hope not.”
August was bringing his half-finished burger up to his mouth for a bite when Tim reached over and plucked it from his hands. He leaned over the bar and dropped it in the garbage. “There. It’s where it belongs now.” He threw a twenty on the bar and said, “Come on, August. It’s Friday night. The bright lights and fleshpots of Martinsdale await.” He headed out the door without looking back. August pushed his plate across the bar and stood up. He shrugged. “Sorry,” he said. The bartender waved him away, shaking her head.
In the parking lot, Tim’s diesel was running, the exhaust pooling white and thick in the cold. August got in and Tim handed him a beer from the half-empty twelve-pack on the floorboard, and then they were spinning in a circle, snow and gravel flying from beneath the truck tires, squealing out onto the pavement toward Martinsdale.
At the Mint Bar they each got a shot of Jim Beam with a PBR back, and before long, large plates with thick-cut golden fries falling off the edges were pushed across the bar at them. The burgers were massive, the meat perfectly cooked, the center a delicious medium pink. When August bit into his, the juice ran down his chin.
“Eh?” Tim said, punching him on the shoulder. “How about that for a burger? I don’t even need to tell you I told you so, because you know it already. That’s correctly done right there.”
“That’s your happy beef, huh?”
“Damn straight. Every place around here besides the Dippy Whip and Theresa’s Two Dot Bar buy their beef from us. I gave up on the Dippy Whip; they’re corporate. Theresa is just old and crotchety. I also think that her and my old man had some sort of falling-out way back in prehistoric times, and she hasn’t gotten over it. I’m still working on her, though.”
“I saw that.”
“She’s been on the verge of going under for years. I’m not too worried about it either way. I just like giving her shit.” Tim looked around. There were three men sitting on padded high-back chairs playing video keno. A few more at a table in the rear playing poker. “Pretty dead in here,” he said.
“Is it ever not dead?” August said.
“Fourth of July gets pretty rowdy. Rodeo is in town then. Sometimes random nights this time of year girls from Bozeman or Great Falls wander in on their way to the hot springs. That can be fun.”
“Hot springs?”
“You haven’t been? Shit, that’s what we should do after this. Probably be a bikini or two at the very least. You got a girlfriend, August?”
“Haven’t had the time for it lately.”
Tim took a pull from his beer and laughed. “Time? Time has nothing to do with it up here. You could have all the time in the world and it wouldn’t make two shits of a difference. Unless you mean time enough to go somewhere else, like Austin, Texas. You ever make it down there?”
“Nope.”
“Let me tell you, it’s a world apart. I went a couple times to visit my older brother, Weston. He was going to school down there. I was just a little guy then, and the girls were all into him because he was a roper and could play the guitar, too. They didn’t give me the time of day. But I never saw so many boots and skirts. Bikinis on the lawn. Legs for days. Something like that ruins your sense of reality.” Tim shook his head. “Mantana—where the men are men, and so are the women.”
“And the sheep are nervous. I’ve heard that one before,” August said.
“Yeah, well, it applies.”
“Maybe you should go to school down there, with your brother, in Austin. You could be a ladies’ man.”
Tim crumpled his napkin and pushed his empty plate away. He drained his beer and belched long and loud so that even the keno players looked up from their blinking machines. “Can’t do that, because my brother Wes was driving to San Antonio from a little rodeo outside of some town called Bandera and a van load of illegals crossed the center line. They had a head-on collision and he died. The guy driving fell asleep, apparently. He died, too. Three or four other wetbacks survived. It was like a clown car full of them, I guess.”
“That’s tough. I’m sorry.”
“It about derailed my dad. He started applying for paperwork to go be a border patrol agent. He hates Mexicans more than any man alive. He says we should just shoot them when they try to cross. Let them fuck up their own country.”
August made rings on his napkin with his beer, scraped the PBR label with his thumbnail.
“I’m not saying that I say that. That’s just what he says. You know what I say?”
“What?”
“Life’s a bitch and then you die.”
“I’ve definitely heard that.”
“You’ve heard all of them, haven’t you?”
August shrugged. A TV above the bar was showing the same basketball game he’d been half watching before. “Speaking of San Antonio,” he said, nodding up at the TV. “Did you know there’s a basketball player on the Spurs that’s got your name? Tim Duncan. He just made both his free throws there.”
“I was named after him.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, my dad was hoping I’d come out tall and black and be really good at dribbling.”
“Something tells me you were a disappointment.”
Tim laughed. “My grandfather’s name was Timothy. My dad’s name is Timothy. I’m Timothy. No one gives a damn about basketball. You about done with that beer? Let’s get the hell out of here. Watching dudes play video poker depresses me.”
The moon was up, and the steam coming off the hot springs roiled alabaster against the black hills. There was a small hotel there, and Tim and August went in to pay their four dollars and get towels. August didn’t have trunks, and so for another two dollars he rented a pair from the front desk.
Tim had filled a plastic garbage bag with snow from the parking lot to make a cooler for their beer. August slid into the hot spring gingerly, the water stinging his cold feet and legs. The pool was concrete, lined with thick cedar log slabs. The wood was furred and slick with a thin layer of algae, and the water smelled of sulfur. August floated on his back with his beer propped on his chest and considered the stars appearing and disappearing in the wash of steam passing over like clouds. He had never been in water like this. He rubbed his fingers together, and it was as if he could feel the mineral content, silky and viscous, more watery, somehow, than just plain water.
“What do you think?” Tim said. “They say it has medicinal properties. There’s old Swedes up here that drink the stuff and swear it’s the fountain of youth.”
“You ever drink it?”
“No way. Smelling it is bad enough.”
“That’s what I was thinking. Rotten eggs.”
“I do think there’s something to it, though. Everyone up here soaks this time of year. It does something for your bones. Even my old man, a guy who doesn’t believe in anything, still comes here a couple times a week while it’s cold.”
There were other people sitting at the far end of the pool, August realized. He caught small snatches of conversation, could just barely make out whites of eyes and teeth across the expanse of steaming water. “What do you mean your old man doesn’t believe in anything?”
“Oh, you know, isn’t your old man that way? Seems like dads just get to a certain point and it’s like they’re incapable of believing in a single goddamn thing unless they came up with it themselves.”
“Ha,” August said, sipping his beer, now rapidly warming and taking on a slightly sulfurous tinge. “I thought that was just mine.”
“Nah, it’s universal. For example, I wanted to go into the marines. I was going to do my years and then hire on with one of those government military contracting companies and make bank doing security and stuff. A guy I went to school with did that and now he’s loaded. He goes over to Iraq for a couple months at a time and guards a pump station or something, works out a lot, and makes six digits. His wife has fake boobs, and he’s got two Harleys.”
“I highly doubt that is as fun as it sounds.”
Tim heaved himself out onto the side of the pool, and white wings of steam rose from his shoulders. “You think this is fun? Mucking around in the cow shit in the same crap town I’ve lived in for twenty-two years? I realize you’re new, but come on. This place isn’t that great.”
“Better than getting shot at.”
“Is it? I mean really? It comes down to risk versus reward, man.”
August shook his head and back-paddled so he was leaning against the pool wall. “I had a friend that joined the National Guard after school. They sent him over there and he got blown up. He just wanted to get his college paid for.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“It would be one thing if it was something I believed in, fighting Nazis, or whatever. I mean, what is terrorism? Who is terrorism? Your six-figure salary is the only honest reason to do it, in my mind, and it’s not enough for me.” August raised his arms from the water, cupping each palm and letting streams of it run through. “Plus, I like it out here. Better than Michigan. You don’t even know that you’ve got it pretty good.”
“That’s what everyone who isn’t from Montana says about Montana. If you’re from here and not into the big-money shit like skiing and fly-fishing, it’s a suckhole.”
“Then go drive to Austin if it’s so great. You have a truck and free will, right?”
Tim crunched his empty beer can on the pool side and tossed it in the trash bag, fishing out another while he was at it. “Unfortunately, it’s not that easy,” he said. “I’m stuck. After my brother’s deal, no way. It’s me and the old man and my younger brother, and just between me and you, my younger brother is not meant to fit in around here. He’s fifteen and about two years from taking off and never coming back.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s got half his head with long hair and the other half shaved. He wore eye makeup and a pink dress, like a tutu kind of thing with ruffles, to prom. They didn’t want to let him in to the dance, but he threatened to sue and the superintendent backed down. My old man used to beat his ass so bad. Hasn’t done it in a while, and it never really made much of a difference anyway. That kid gives so few fucks it’s almost scary. Looks like a fairy most of the time, but everyone in his class at school is scared of him. No one even picks on him as far as I know. It’s like he’s transcended it somehow. He and I can’t even speak the same language. Only one he ever listened to was Weston. Him and Weston were the same in some ways. Weston was a three-dimensional person, and so is Avery. A lot of people you meet are only two-dimensional but both my brothers are three-dimensional, just in real different ways.”
“He wore a tutu?”
“With ripped black stockings. And that’s basically why I’m stuck here. Blah blah. Sob story, cue the tiny violins. I’ve been scoping it out, and there’s not one single bikini in this place, is there?”
“Doesn’t look like it. Just us and those guys over there. Why are they all wearing those T-shirts?”
“Hoots,” Tim said, lowering his voice. “Hutterites. You know about the Hoots?”
“A little. Kind of like Amish, right?”
“Yeah. They’re an interesting crew for sure. Some of their women are decent-looking. Those little bonnet things they wear do it for me.”
“Jesus.”
“I’m serious. You never see them at the hot spring, though, unfortunately. Something to do with their religion. Only the men can come here, and even they have to cover up with those T-shirts. Things would be more interesting around here, though, if there were a bunch of hot-to-trot Hoot girls splashing around.”
“You are insane.”
“You think I’m kidding? Those girls all grow up on the farm. They’ve been seeing cows and pigs and horses and chickens getting it on from a young age, and so they’re not prudes like most city girls you run into. They tend to be a little thicker on average, but that’s because they’re real healthy and have appetites, unlike skinny models who just want to be looked at but not touched.”
“Have you ever even spoken to a Hutterite woman?”
“Not much. I tend to just admire from afar. It’s hard to get through the force field of elders, but there is a way.”
“Yeah?”
Tim lowered his voice further and slid a little closer. “Sometimes they look for studs.”
“Studs?”
“Studs. The perils of inbreeding are real, pal. Sometimes they find dudes from outside the colony to do the deed with some of their unattached women.”
“Oh, fuck you.”
“I’m not even joking a little bit. My brother Wes and one of his friends did it the summer before they went off to college. That’s the only reason I know about it. My brother’s friend Cale got to know some of the old Hutterite boys somehow, and one day he went out there to go antelope hunting and they brought him up to the house and fed him a bunch of rhubarb wine, and over the course of the evening the Hoots told him that if he’d come back with proof of a clean VD check then he could do some good bucking. That’s what they call it. How’d you like to come down to the colony and do some good bucking, young man?”
August looked across the pool at the hulking shapes of large Hutterite men sitting on the hot-spring bench, intermittently visible in the steam, sopping black T-shirts plastered to rounded bellies. “You are so full of shit.”
“Look at me, I’m not joking. Cale told the Hoots that he had a friend that might be down, too, and the Hoots said the more the merrier. Now, Cale and my brother were always messing with each other, pulling jokes and stuff. So the way my brother told it is that Cale went to the clinic, got tested. Then made a copy, did a little work with some Wite-Out, and forged one for Wes. Cale took Wes to the bar, bought him a few beers, drove around a little, and then headed down to the colony.
“Cale had the whole thing set up, of course. The Hoots were ready for them, and they had a bunch of wine. The women made a big feast. They had some live Hoot music, not sure what that sounds like, really, but there was some dancing. The girls were out in the mix. I guess there were three or four that were looking for seed.”
August threw his empty beer can so it bounced off Tim’s head. “Seed, my ass. You’re ridiculous.”
“Let me finish—this is all a true story. So one of the Hoot elders asks to see the paperwork, and Cale whips out the test reports, and at this point my brother is kind of like, Huh? He’s got a Hoot gal sitting next to him, rubbing his shoulder, pouring him wine. Cale is like, Yep, happy early b-day, son. I told them you’re the biggest stud around. At first, Wes says, No way, and Cale has to talk some sense into him. They’re in this room full of huge Hoot dudes. Probably some of them aren’t super happy about what was about to go down, because these are girls they’ve grown up with, and they have to just sit there while the elders let these outsiders dip their wicks. Tensions were high, that’s what I’m saying. Wes is saying, No fucking way, man. And Cale turns to the elder and says that his friend is having some second thoughts about procreation and maybe needs some persuasion. The Hoot elder says, We can offer a side of beef, a whole full-size butchered hog, or a fifteen-year-old Ford F-150 that still runs okay but probably will need a new transmission soon. The Hoots pretty much only bargain. They’re not big on actually buying things with money.”
Tim reached into the trash bag, came up with another beer, cracked it, and took a long drink. “So, Wes has been on the rhubarb wine heavily at this point and knows that Cale is going to give him endless amounts of shit about this if he backs down. Also, Wes was always up for stuff. You couldn’t hardly ever out-weird him. That was one of his dimensions. So, he grabs one of the eligible bachelorettes and takes her for a spin around the dance floor. Apparently Hoot women don’t get to drink too much, but in this situation they’re all knocking back the rhubarb hooch and Wes said she was downright aggressive. Took him by the hand. Dragged him into this little room they had set up off the back of the place.
“Okay, now, this is the part where I knew it was all truth when Wes told me. I mean, at first I was skeptical, too, but then he got to this part and I knew he hadn’t made it up. The Hoot gal pulls him into the bedroom and he sits on the edge of the bed. She sits next to him and then she reaches under the bed and pulls out a big white sheet. She says, I’m supposed to put this over my top to cover myself from you. Okay, Wes says. We don’t have to do a damn thing if you don’t want to. The girl looked at Wes, looked at the sheet, and then laughed. She threw the sheet on the floor and pulled the dress over her head and that was that.”
“So, why exactly did that make you know he wasn’t lying?”
“Okay, well, Wes had this real funny thing—he liked women to have a lot of hair down there, like a real big bush.”
“Weird.”
“I know. It was his thing. I have no idea why. Anyway, he told me that he was kind of disappointed because this Hoot girl was completely shaved! Can you believe that? He said, after, they got to talking a little and he asked her about it, kind of teasing. And she got shy and said she’d heard that men outside the colony liked it bald and so she’d done it that morning, and Wes said he had to laugh at the irony of it all.”
“So that’s why you’re convinced he wasn’t bullshitting you?”
“Pretty much—it’s just too strange of a detail for him to make up. Also, when he talked about it, he got kind of serious. I mean, he would be joking about Cale setting him up and all of that, but when we got to that end part of the story he was serious. Wes didn’t take much serious, but he said that the Hoot gal was nicer and funnier than pretty much any girl he’d known, and I think he kind of regretted the whole thing. He came at me with this story out of nowhere, too. It wasn’t like he was looking for a way to fuck with me. We were just driving somewhere and he came out with it like it was bothering him. He also said that after it was over she said that she was supposed to lay on her back and put her knees up to her chin and wait for thirty minutes, but instead of doing that she just went to the bathroom and got dressed and said she’d let the chips fall where they would. And, there’s one more reason I know it’s true.”
“Yeah?”
“He showed up one day with a whole butchered hog. Told our parents that he’d helped the Hoots put up a bunch of hay over the weekend and that’s how they’d paid him. I know for a fact that my brother Weston never helped no Hoots with no hay. He hated doing hay more than anything. Always got all sneezy and itchy.”
“That’s quite a story.”
“For a fact. How about you?”
“What about me?”
“The wick, son. Have you ever dipped the wick?”
“Oh, Jesus, who cares?”
“Well, have you?”
“Yes. I’ve dipped.”
“I don’t believe you. What was her name?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“That’s because, like as not, she’s a figment. No shame in it, pal. Maybe we can go down to Billings one of these weekends and shed you of the great weight of your virginity. That’s why you’re so serious, I bet. You dip the wick and all your troubles melt away and you’re reborn a man.”
“That hasn’t been my experience.”
“I’m serious. There’s a reason why men have been fighting and dying for it since the beginning of time. Okay, I can tell you’re getting embarrassed. We’re about out of beer, and soaking in a hot tub with nothing but dudes depresses me. Let’s get the hell out of here.”
Near midnight now, snow starting to fall, the wind punching it sideways across the shafts of Tim’s headlights. The Qwikstop was still open, and they pulled in for more beer. August stayed in the truck, and Tim came running back with a case and a foil package of Backwoods. He handed August a beer and a cigar. He pulled his hat a little lower down on his head, lit his Backwoods, clenched it between his teeth, and tossed August the lighter. He cracked his beer and raised it toward August. “Here’s to Clint Eastwood,” he said, dropping the truck into gear and roaring out of the parking lot. Everything silent under the snow. No signs of life on the streets of Martinsdale. No footprints on the sidewalks. No TVs glowing blue through living room windows. Tim barreled through the single red light. “Welcome to the great Western apocalypse,” he said.
August blew a line of smoke out the slightly opened window. “I was thinking about your brother and the Hutterite girl,” he said.
“Oh yeah? You thinking about going down to the colony and signing up for some good bucking?”
“Not really. I was thinking that the Hutterites wouldn’t have just given your brother that butchered hog for no reason.”
“I know. That’s what I was saying. I’m not bullshitting you about the story.”
“No. I mean the Hutterites wouldn’t give your brother a hog unless he fulfilled his end of the bargain, see what I’m saying?”
“I know, man. He did it, I’m sure of it.”
“Tim, what I’m saying is that unless he actually knocked her up, there’s no way they’d just give him a hog. They weren’t bargaining with him about the sex. It’s clearly about the sperm to them. Same as when you have an AI guy come and do your heifers. They wouldn’t come through with the hog unless it took, and she got pregnant. You probably have a nephew or a niece out there. That’s what I’m saying. Uncle Timmy.”
Tim nodded, sucked deep so his cigar cherry glowed angry. He exhaled through his nose and said, “Yeah, I’ve considered it. A little. The kid would be two or three years old now. Half-Hoot, half-Duncan. I mean, half-Hoot, sure. But half-Duncan, too. I’ve been thinking, maybe soon it’ll be time to swoop in. Get the kid back into the fold of his family. Kid needs its mom up until a certain point. But a Duncan living like a Hoot? If my old man knew he would rupture.” Tim drank, tipped his ash into an empty can in the cup holder. He hunched down a little in his seat to get a better look outside. “What a night,” he said. “What a mystery. Ever think about it? How the blackest sky can make the whitest snow?”
“Huh?” August said.
“Let’s go get him. Tonight.”
“Him?”
“My brother’s son. I guess it could be a daughter, but I feel that it’s a son. Tonight’s the night. I’m glad you brought it up. Suddenly I feel ready.” Tim was driving on the river road now, the Musselshell out there somewhere, cracked and frozen under a crooked line of midnight trees. It was snowing harder now, so that it seemed to come from the earth as much as the air, an upwelling of particles, white sky, white ground, headlights breaking against a swirling white wall, the truck plunging.
“I wasn’t suggesting anything,” August said.
“No, you said it yourself. He got the hog because it took. And pretty soon now my father’s grandson is going to be speaking German and wearing pilgrim clothes. Ain’t happening. For so long, I’ve been the only one that knows, and now you know, and here we are together, on our way, taking action.” The truck fishtailed slightly around a corner and Tim howled, pushing the button to lower both of their windows. He crammed his hat down against the rush of air, snow coming in, dusting their coats, sticking in eyebrows and eyelashes, snow behind the windshield and outside it, no separation from the gusts. They were in the blizzard’s belly now, a part of it, no longer just traveling through.
“Maybe you want to slow down,” August said.
Tim didn’t turn to look at him. Eyes lost in the whitewash, the barest hint of dark that implied the road’s shoulder. “Like I haven’t driven this exact way every day of my life,” he said. “All roads lead to the one you’re on at any given moment. Right? Isn’t that the saying?”
“I’m not totally sure on that.”
“Oh, you haven’t heard that one? Thought you’d heard them all.”
Without slowing, Tim jerked the wheel to the left and they bounced over a cattle guard and down a rutted, snow-covered drive. There were vapor lights, downcast and glowing green, barely illuminating the shapes of outbuildings. They were approaching the colony, the truck lurching, Tim punching the gas to make the diesel rev. Long, dark dormitory buildings loomed ahead and Tim slowed the truck and let it idle. The headlights were blazing into a lace-curtained window. Someone’s kitchen, maybe. Tim lit another Backwoods and sucked deep, his cheeks caving. He wedged the cigar in the corner of his mouth. “Hang on, kid,” he said, then cranked the wheel, laid on the horn, and popped the clutch. The truck, light in the back, did a fast donut, tires burning through the snow, headlights whipping around. Doors and windows, a child’s swing set, a pump house, a basketball hoop. August was clinging to the oh-shit handle with everything he had, snow in his face, the smell of rubber melting against the frozen ground. Tim kept it hammered wide open, horn blaring, windows and doors, the swing set, the pump house, the basketball hoop. Lights were coming on in the dorms, and still they were spinning. The windows the doors the swing set the pump house the basketball hoop a dark figure holding something, backlit in a doorway.
“Gun!” August yelled. “Guy’s got a gun.”
Tim’s jaw was tight. He slowed, straightening the wheel, plowing them through a drift up and onto the driveway, the lights of the colony behind them now, fading, as they crashed over the cattle guard and hit the river road.
“Holy shit,” August said, punching at Tim’s leg. “That was crazy. They probably have no idea what just happened. That dude had a shotgun, I swear. I didn’t know Hutterites even had guns. I didn’t know they played basketball, either.”
Tim was driving slowly now. He rolled the windows up and cranked the heater. “Any more beer left?” he said. After a while he parked at a turnoff overlooking the river. They each had a beer and August tipped his can toward Tim. “To your brother Weston,” he said. “RIP.”
Tim nodded, took a long drink, and belched. “You ever hear stories about people who are drunk surviving accidents? Like, all the time how drunk people in car wrecks survive when all the sober people die. Right? You’ve heard that, haven’t you?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Why is that? I’ve never really figured it out.”
“I guess it’s because when you’re drunk your muscles are looser, and so you are more able to absorb impact, or something.”
“Maybe that’s it. Anyway, that wasn’t the case with my brother. Ol’ Weston got piss drunk after that rodeo and drove and crossed a center line and he ran head-on into a van, and the van was driven by a guy with his wife and two kids in the back and everyone died except one of the kids, and the kid, a girl, was mangled, and my old man went broke paying her medical bills. That’s how it actually went down. They were Mexicans. Illegals. Shoot them at the border, my dad says. Then he sells our best section of river-bottom pasture to your boss, Ancient Virostok, to pay for the kid’s surgeries. No one made him do it. He did that on his own.”
“Shit, man. That’s bad.”
Tim was staring straight out the windshield. Snow falling, melting on the warm glass. “Hutterites and Mexicans and my brother Weston. It’s like an unholy trinity. I was never religious, but then he died and I sort of figured some things out. You can’t believe anything that anyone tells you; that’s for starters. A man can only believe himself and only the things that come to him in dreams, because that’s where the will of the world is pure.”
“I never remember my dreams,” August said. “They say everyone dreams, but every morning I wake up blank.”
Tim turned to look at August, and there was no recognition there. “Who are you, and why are you even here?”
August was going to say something, make a joke, but the look in Tim’s eyes was withering. August backed out the truck door, turning up the collar of his coat.
“I don’t even know who you are,” Tim said. “You’re a figment.”
August was walking now, hands jammed into his pockets. At least three miles to the Two Dot Bar and his truck. He’d be very cold when he arrived.
The bunkhouse phone rang, and it was August’s father. August was heating a bowl of chili in the microwave. Only four-thirty but already dark. A hollow banging as the wind picked at a loose piece of aluminum sheeting on the shop roof.
“I got your number from your mother.”
“I was meaning to give you a call.”
“Yeah, that’s okay. I imagine you’re busy.”
“Just doing odds and ends around the place right now. Getting ready for calving, though.”
“Fun. Fun.”
“What’s new back there? How are things? Is Lisa still there?”
“Things are all right. Lisa was gone for a while, but she’s back now and we’re doing better. Been having a bad winter, and that’s hard for everyone. It’s almost like when I was a kid. Don’t know if you’ve seen it on the news, but we’ve been getting the lake-effect storms just about every week. I had to get up on the milking shed and cut the snow off in big chunks with a spade. I thought the roof was going to buckle.”
“That’s a pretty sturdy roof, though.”
“It was wet snow. I didn’t want to take any chances. You been getting snow out there?”
“Not a lot. It’s been windy.”
“Cold?”
“It was twenty below the other morning.”
“How does it feel? It’s that dry cold, right? Not as bad as it gets back here with the damp?”
“I guess that’s true. Twenty below is still pretty damn cold.”
“That’s a fact.”
“But the sun comes out more here, so it doesn’t seem so bad. It’s not so gray all the time.”
“I guess I’ve been here long enough I’m used to the clouds. Wouldn’t know how to take it if it were any other way.”
“It’s not too hard. Sunshine’s not too hard to take, really.” The microwave dinged, and August pinned the phone between his shoulder and ear. He removed the bowl from the microwave, gingerly. Steam rose from the rim and he dunked a spoon, blew over it a few times, and took a cautious slurp. It was scalding, and he spit, swearing, and nearly dropping the phone.
“You all right there?”
“Hot chili,” August said. “Trying to eat.”
“Oh, I didn’t want to interrupt your dinner. Just checking in to make sure you’re doing all right.”
“It’s fine. I’m all right.”
“Okay then. I’m signing off.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“Have a good one, son.”
“Night, Dad.”
August had been sleeping for hours. The sound of voices from the yard woke him. A yellow beam from the headlights pointing toward the bunkhouse cleaved the room. He shuffled across the cold concrete floor and stood with the door cracked, listening to Ancient and Kim argue. Kim was behind the wheel of her Subaru and Ancient was outside the car, leaning against the frame of the driver’s side so she couldn’t close the door.
“What?” Ancient was saying loudly. “What did you expect? Huh? What did you think?”
Kim said something August couldn’t hear, and Ancient barked a laugh. “Surrre,” he said. “That’s rich. That’s a good one.” He pounded the roof of the Subaru with his fist, and then the car started moving so he had to twist awkwardly to avoid getting run over. There was the scrabbling sound of Kim’s tires tossing gravel as she pulled away fast, her lights red and dimming as she turned out onto the road. Ancient was down on his back in the driveway, and when he tried to get to his feet he stumbled. He wasn’t wearing a belt, and his jeans had slid down his hips. August could clearly see the dingy white of his underwear as he made his way across the yard, hitching his pants with each step.
A week later they were fixing a fence at the back of Ancient’s newly acquired piece of pasture, and they’d gotten their truck stuck. There’d been a weeklong thaw that had softened the frozen two-track into a thick red gumbo. Ancient had been driving, and they’d slipped and skidded down a small hill, coming to rest on the rise that hid the Musselshell River. They got out of the truck, and Ancient bent to inspect the tires, caked over with clay. They both looked back at the hill they’d have to climb to get out of the field. Ancient removed his hat and ran his hands through his hair before jamming it back down. After backing the truck all the way up to the very edge of the new fence, Ancient told August to sit on the bed, for more weight over the back wheels, and he gunned it, trying to build as much speed as possible. They made it less than halfway up the hill before the wheels started spinning, throwing up greasy clods of red clay. The truck fishtailed to a stop, and Ancient backed it down. They tried three more times until finally they were dug in so deep that he was unable to move at all and they were stuck. They tried rocking it, with August pushing from the front. Then they tried putting alder limbs from the riverbank under the tires, and that didn’t work either.
The pasture was not attached to the main Virostok ranch holdings, and so they were more than five miles from the house and a tractor they might use to pull them out. Ancient sighed and spit into the mud. He shaded his eyes with his hand and looked off across the river, where the slowly rotating turbines of the Hutterite colony’s wind farm were just visible. “Well, fuck,” he said. “I guess we’ll go talk to the Hoots.”
They set out walking across the rutted pasture, a few of Virostok’s Red Angus watching them balefully. At the top of the hill they angled across the field and ducked under the fence that separated Virostok’s section from the Hutterite land. They climbed the rise, and the windmills loomed before them, three stories high, their brilliant white turbine blades turning lazily. August could feel only the slightest breeze and was surprised that it was enough to move the windmills.
Both of them stopped walking, and craned their necks up; the blades in front of the sun draped great dagger-shaped shadows across the brown fields.
“I watched them put those things up,” Ancient said. “The blades came in from Seattle, I think. Two flatbed railcars for each one. They had to truck them up the last leg here from Livingston. I remember seeing them coming up the highway, bigger than seemed possible.”
“I heard that eagles and hawks sometimes run into windmills and get killed,” August said. “But from here it looks like they’re moving so slow I don’t see how that could be true.”
“I’m not sure about that,” Ancient said. “I do know the Hoots are making a killing on the deal, though. The company that put them up leased the land, and I guess the colony gets some kind of percentage of the profits. It’s been five years, and I’ve been noticing they’ve got a bunch of new trucks on their place. Giant new chicken barn, too. You ever been down into the colony?”
August shook his head. “Kind of. Not really.”
“Well, you’re in for an experience.”
From the hill they could see down into the Hutterite compound. “Doesn’t look like anyone’s around,” August said.
Ancient looked at his watch. “Probably dinnertime. Don’t worry, they’ll come out of the woodwork when we go down there. They’re always around.”
August and Ancient headed down the hill, crossed the small bridge over the Musselshell, and continued behind the large, dormant gardens into the colony itself. The whole place was exceedingly neat. No trash or junk. A wooden fence circled the main yard and it was a brilliant, freshly painted white. The dorm buildings were long and low, with many separate entrances on each sidewall. Every doorway had a small poured-concrete stoop upon which rested a metal-wheeled cart. Probably thirty doorways, August guessed, between the two buildings. Thirty evenly spaced doors, thirty stoops, thirty carts. No decorations of any kind, every door a clean, freshly painted white.
“Kind of creepy,” August said.
Ancient laughed. “Oh, come on. They’re God-fearing Americans, just like you and me.” He reached around in his back pocket and pulled out his dip can, thwacking it a few times against his thigh before packing his bottom lip. “But seriously,” he said. “All these people think radicals are only living in hippie towns on the coast. Berkeley or Brooklyn or whatever. These people right here are the straight-up most radical group of people I’ve ever heard of. At some point they said, Fuck society. We’re going to go out to the middle of nowhere, Montana, and live our goddamn lives. We’re going to raise our chickens and wear our little homemade outfits and the rest of the world can burn itself to the ground for all we care.”
Before long a man emerged, wiping his hands with a rag. He wore the standard Hutterite garb—a black broad-brimmed Stetson and a dark blue pearl-snap shirt tucked into black Wrangler jeans. Black boots covered in mud. He had blondish-red muttonchops, his belly strained the front of his shirt, and his red face was split in a big smile.
“Hey, John, how’s it going? Long time no see.” Ancient and the Hutterite shook hands; the Hutterite’s were huge and grease stained.
“Okay,” the Hutterite said. “Sure has been a long time.” He put his hands in his pants pockets, rocking back a little on his heels. “Remind me of your name again,” he said.
“I’m Ancient Virostok. That’s me over there.” Ancient pointed in the direction of the pasture. “Remember, I gave you and your boy a lift from Livingston a few years ago when your truck broke down?”
The Hutterite nodded and rocked a little more on his heels. “I don’t have a son,” he said. “Maybe that was my cousin, John Daniel. I’m John Rile. I’ve got three daughters. John Daniel has a son, though. Probably you gave him and his boy a ride, because he’s the fowl boss and he gets down there to town for deliveries. I’m the farm boss, though, so I mostly stay around. That John Daniel, though, he gets down there to town as much as he can. He’s always going to the Taco Time drive-through and getting those chalupas with the hot taco sauce. He loves spicy. We don’t get much of it up here. I don’t really like spicy. What can we do for you, then?” the Hutterite said. “Want to buy some fryers?”
“Well,” Ancient said, “the thing is, we’re stuck. Got our truck bogged down in the pasture on the river back there, and we’d be super obliged if you could give us a hand.” While Ancient spoke, dormitory doors were opening. Kids stepped out into the yard, the boys dressed in home-sewn dark blue pants and shirts, the girls in dark blue or dark green dresses, hair covered by black-and-white polka-dotted kerchiefs. They stood quietly at the edge of the yard, watching.
“Real muddy out there, eh?” John Rile said. “I bet. I’ll drive the Kubota up there, should do the trick. No problem. Maybe you want some fryers, though, since you came all this way? Nice fresh ones right now, all wrapped up and ready to go.”
Ancient shrugged. “Sure,” he said. “My fiancée will be happy about that.” He pulled out his wallet. “How about three?”
John Rile nodded and looked at August. “And you?”
“I don’t know,” August said, looking at Ancient. “I’m sorry, I don’t even know what we’re talking about. What’s a fryer?”
John Rile blinked and wiped at his mouth with the back of one hand. “Poultry, boy,” he said. “A nice young fryer. You must not be married. You probably like our rhubarb wine, though, eh?”
“I don’t know,” August said. “Never come across it before.” August could see Ancient trying to hide his smile, looking down at the ground and kicking at something with the toe of his boot. “How you set for cash, August?” Ancient said.
August patted his jean pocket and shrugged. “I guess I got like twenty bucks.”
“Whelp,” Ancient said. “Bust it out and pay the man for your booze.”
John Rile was smiling again, holding the twenty Ancient had given him for the fryers. August dug out his wallet and handed over his money.
“Good deal,” John Rile said. “I’ll get Ma to box up the fryers and set up your jug. You have a chain?”
“I’ve got a tow strap,” Ancient said.
John Rile stuffed the two twenties in his pocket and said, “We’re in business, then.” He turned to the gaggle of kids and yelled, “Tell Ma Sal three fryers and a jug, hurry up.”
John Rile drove the Kubota out of the colony with August and Ancient riding perched on the fenders, and the box containing the fryers and rhubarb wine resting in the tractor’s front bucket. The kids followed, running silently behind the tractor, and a gray-muzzled heeler trotted behind them, tongue lolling.
It was nearly dark by the time they got the truck up the hill and out of the pasture, and everyone involved was very much splattered with mud. After extended thanks and goodbyes to the Hutterite clan, they headed out, with Ancient at the wheel. The box of fryers sat between them on the bench seat. The rhubarb wine was in a plastic milk jug, and August twisted off the cap and sniffed.
“Ever had that before?” Ancient said.
August shook his head and took an experimental sip. It was golden in color, sweet and syrupy—not too bad, but tasted faintly of the milk jug’s plastic. He offered the wine to Ancient, who shook his head.
“Had plenty when I was younger. Just tastes like a hangover to me.”
August recapped the jug and put it at his feet. “I heard a thing about the Hoots the other day,” he said. “Probably not true. But I heard that they sometimes get guys from outside the colony to come sleep with their women, like, as a stud service.”
Ancient was shaking his head, laughing. “That old line. Guys have been saying that around here for thirty years. I don’t know one single person that has actually ever done it, though. Just wishful thinking by a bunch of sad-ass bachelor ranchers.”
“That’s pretty much what I thought. I met a guy the other night that was giving me a big story about it.”
“Who was that?”
“Guy named Tim Duncan. I guess you probably know him.”
Ancient started to say something, then stopped. Shook his head. “I’ve known that kid since he was a toddler. They’ve had a tough go of it over there for a while. Timmy’s dad, Big Tim, is, well, I don’t know. He used to be all right. You ever drive by their place? It’s on the back way to town on Dry Creek. All those signs out by the road?”
August shook his head.
“Yeah, it’s kind of out-of-the-way. No real reason to go that direction.”
“What kind of signs?”
“Conspiracy theory shit. About how 9/11 was a cover-up and Bible verses and Nazi-type stuff. Your basic standard-issue right-wing lunacy.”
“Tim told me his brother died a few years ago.”
“Yeah. I knew Wes, too. Good kid. Everyone liked Wes. Hell of a natural athlete. Did rodeo and pitched in high school and probably could have just walked on anywhere, but I guess he went down to college and got distracted so that he didn’t care too much about sports. Can’t blame him there.”
“Tim said he was drunk and got in a wreck.”
“That’s the long and short of it. We’ve all been there. Bad luck. Big Tim’s screwiness seemed a little more harmless before Wes died. But that’s no real surprise. You lose a kid like that and all the normal anger within a person gets the heat turned up on it. Timmy’s not a bad kid.”
“He said you bought some land off his dad.”
Ancient nodded. “For more than a fair price at that. He say that I took advantage, or ripped them off, or anything like that?”
“Nothing like that.”
Ancient looked out the window and tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. “People around here, I don’t know. Everyone’s all neighborly, and then you find out that people you’ve known for decades have been secretly holding their breath, waiting for your downfall. Timmy say anything about Kim?”
“Kim? No. Why?”
Ancient shrugged. “People are nosy.”
“Where is Kim, anyway? I haven’t seen her in a while.”
They were home now, sitting in the driveway. Ancient turned the truck off, and the diesel ticked. They sat there looking at the house, no lights on because there was no one there.
“Give me that jug,” Ancient said. August handed it over and Ancient tilted it back, his Adam’s apple bobbing twice. “Goddamn, but that’s bad,” he said, coughing. “I don’t know what it would do to you first, get you drunk or give you a cavity.” Ancient was sitting behind the wheel looking straight ahead. He had the jug on his lap and was turning the cap over in his fingers. He was a small man, high cheekbones perennially red and chapped. Tangled blond hair flaring from under his dirty cap. “Sometimes when your fiancée says she’s going downstate to visit her sister, it means that she’s going downstate to visit her sister. Apparently, though, it can also mean that her return is questionable.”
After two months of unrelenting cold, in early March, just in time for calving, the warm winds started coming down from the north. August and Ancient patrolled the herd, cutting out the heavies and moving them into the small corral near the calving shed. Ancient was on his big geriatric gelding, Chief, the only horse left on the ranch, and August drove the four-wheeler. It was a fifty-fifty day, as Ancient termed it. Fifty degrees and blowing fifty miles an hour. Snow melting, the knobby four-wheeler tires throwing big clods of wet mud.
They got a half dozen of the cows that seemed closest to being ready separated from the herd, and then they stopped to eat their sandwiches, hunkering down on the lee side of the calving shed. In this patch of calm, the sun warmed them and August leaned back against the boards of the shed and closed his eyes. They were halfway through calving, and the long days and nights had started to take their toll. He hadn’t had an uninterrupted night of sleep in a week. Ancient, somehow, didn’t seem tired. He chewed his sandwich loudly, crunched his chips. “Check out ol’ Chief,” he said, nudging August’s leg. August opened his eyes. Chief had wandered to the wind block as well. He stood next to them, asleep on his feet, reins trailing in the dirt. “I swear that horse is part dog. He’d follow me into the house if I let him. You want to hop on his back this afternoon? He pretty much drives himself. If he had thumbs he could probably run this ranch better than me.”
August shook his head. “I’ll stick with the four-wheeler.”
“Suit yourself. My dad was a hell of a horseman. Chief was his last. Started him as a green broke colt. He always said the only reason he messed with cattle at all was to keep his horses exercised. He hated the four-wheeler. Of course, he wasn’t dumb; he recognized how useful they are. But he used them for doing the irrigation only. It was like a religion for him. Money only factored in when it was scarce and he never set himself up to make more of it. Poverty and a pasture full of horses eating new grass—that was his idea of heaven. You have horses on your place growing up?”
August closed his eyes again. Shook his head. “Dairy cows. They pretty much come when you call them. No need for horses.”
“Dairy,” Ancient said, as if trying it on for size.
“One hundred acres,” August said.
“One hundred acres?”
“That’s it.”
“My old man and I probably would have killed each other if we were cooped up on one hundred acres.”
“There you go,” August said. “Instead of that I came out here.”
Ancient nodded and balled his sandwich foil. He thwacked his chew can a few times and packed his lip. “My old man could be a funny dude. The first four-wheeler we got was a Honda. He always called it the Jap quarter horse.”
“Good one.”
“He had a lot of good ones. Kim only met him at the end, when he was already half out of it. She’d chopped her hair so it was even shorter than it is now, and the old boy thought that was something. He told her that the West was won by women with men’s haircuts. She laughed. I think they liked each other okay.”
August didn’t say anything and the wind picked up for a moment, the gust sending up a howl as it was cleaved by the single strand of electric wire strung up on posts to the shed.
“Yep, when ol’ Chief kicks the bucket it’s going to be the end of an era. It’ll just be me, Ancient, the poor orphan boy. The only one left who remembers how it used to be.” Ancient grunted, heaved to his feet, and stepped around the side of the shed. “The divine wind,” he yelled. “The Chinook. The snow eater.” He turned his back and unzipped, sending a plume of wind-driven piss flying for nearly thirty feet.
August took the Dry Creek cutoff, pausing for a moment on the old single-lane iron bridge over the Musselshell. He could see down into the water; it was clear enough to make out the rocks of the streambed, and he watched for a while but couldn’t see any trout. He clattered over the bridge timbers and headed toward town, driving slowly on the heavily rutted road, passing a field of winter wheat and a group of crows, shards of scattered iridescent black against electric-green new growth. The field was fenced, and there were signs on the posts running along the barrow pit. They were hand-painted, thick black letters against whitewashed plywood: KEEP AMERICA FOR AMERICANS! JEWS ARE THE TERRORISTS—MOSSAD DID 9/11! BUSH KNEW! Some of the letters had dripped, lending their messages an air of fresh fevered intensity.
August was creeping along, reading, when a truck rumbled around the corner and slowed. It was Tim. He braked next to August and rolled his window down. August rolled his down as well, and Tim nodded at the signs. “You taking some time to get educated?” he said.
“I don’t know about that,” August said.
“There’s a lot of shit that don’t make sense about 9/11.”
“Like what?”
“Like the fact that there were unidentified explosions that came from the ground floors. It wasn’t just from the planes. And—” Tim paused, rubbed his face, spat out the window. “You know what? It don’t matter. It’s not my deal. My dad’s always going on about it. Talk to him if you want all the info. I’m just living. How’s it going? How’s that dick Ancient?”
“Going fine. Ancient’s fine, I guess.”
“Does he pay you to drive around admiring the scenery, or what?”
“He had to go to Billings. I’m headed to town to get some stuff from the Feed-n-Need.”
“What kind of stuff?”
“Some big stainless lag bolts. Rehanging a gate that ripped out of a post. It was just screwed in at the hinges before.”
“Yeah, that’ll happen. If you want to make it last, you have to drill a hole through and then bolt it.”
“That’s what I’m going to do.”
“Smart.”
“I guess.”
“So if you’re going to town, why’d you come this way? It’s going to take you about twenty minutes longer.”
“Never been back here before. Ancient told me Dry Creek would pop you out in town. Just decided to go for a drive.”
“Probably he told you to come check out crazy Duncan’s place, didn’t he?”
August shook his head. “He didn’t say anything about it.”
“Uh-huh.” Tim looked off. “I was thinking. You and me should get dogs. Pups. Raise them up. It’s nice to have a dog around. If we got them at the same time they’d grow up together and learn things from each other, and maybe we could get a two-for-one kind of deal from a breeder. Something smart and trainable, like an Aussie. Maybe a heeler, but then heelers are always so standoffish and weird. I’ve been bit by three dogs, and they’ve all been heelers. What do you think?”
“About getting a dog? I’d have to think about it. Not sure that it’s the right time.”
“Hell, the timing is never exactly right to get a dog. You just have to get one and then arrange your life accordingly. That’s the point of it. Having a dog makes you act more responsibly.”
“I’ll consider it. I like dogs.”
“Of course you do. If you didn’t they’d have stopped you at the border.”
“What border?”
“It’s just a turn of phrase. I’m just bullshitting you.”
“How about the other night? About your brother. Was that bullshit?”
“No bullshit, man. Sorry about all the stuff at the end there. Things are a bit fuzzy, to tell the truth. I’d been putting them back pretty steady all day. I sometimes turn to black. I should never have had the whiskey at the Mint. That’s what did it. If I just stick to beer, I’m fine. Get me on the whiskey, though, I turn right into ol’ black Tim. It’s a known fact about myself, and I apologize.” Tim reached out his window, his hand in a fist. “We cool?” he said.
“Sure.”
“Well, then, don’t leave me hanging. Give me a bump, pal.”
August reached out and knocked his fist against Tim’s.
“Good man,” Tim said. “Don’t forget about the dog.” Then he drove off, tires spinning, leaving August there with his arm outstretched.
August kept on toward town. The signs continued for a half mile. A NATION BEGET BY SIN WILL REAP ITS OWN DISASTER! A MAN SHALL NOT LAY WITH ANOTHER MAN, IT IS AN ABOMINATION! A MAN SHALL RETAIN THE RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS! 9/11 WAS AN INSIDE JOB! SHEEPLE WAKE UP!
August got a pot of canned chicken noodle going on the hot plate. When it was bubbling he didn’t bother with a bowl, just crushed a handful of saltines in and started spooning it out. He was finishing when his father called.
“How’d calving go?”
“Pretty good. We lost one, but other than that it went all right. Not a lot of sleep for a while, that’s for sure.”
“Well, that’s calving for you. Always hard when one doesn’t pull through.”
“It was that. For sure.”
“I was looking at your weather. Looks like you’ve been getting a little warm-up the last few days.”
“It’s been decent. Super windy, though. Ancient calls it the Chinook wind. Comes down from Canada this time of year. Melting the snow in a hurry.”
“From Canada?”
“Supposedly.”
“Seems like if it came from Canada this time of year, it would be a colder wind. Wouldn’t it?”
“I’m not totally sure. That’s just what he said.”
“Well, I’m sure he knows the weather in his neck of the woods. I don’t doubt him. Just seems a little counterintuitive.”
“I think the mountains have something to do with it. They stall the weather patterns out in certain ways.”
“That could be. I’ve never seen the Rocky Mountains. I guess I’m probably getting too old for it to make much difference. It seems like it’s a young man’s country out there.”
“I don’t really see how you could be too old to see the mountains. You just look at them, and there they are.”
“I don’t mean I’m too old to look at them. What I mean is, I’m too old to see them, you know what I mean? I could drive through the Yellowstone National Park and look at Old Faithful or whatever, but the time for me to tackle the landscape head-on has come and gone.”
“Well, you could still come and visit sometime.”
“Yeah, I’ll just punch the autopilot button on the place here and take off for vacation.”
“I was just saying.”
“I know what you were saying, but some of us have to work and can’t just take off whenever the mood strikes.”
“Never mind. Has it been starting to warm up there at all?”
“Not a tremendous amount. We had a decent little stretch last month, but I didn’t put the long johns away. Had a bad ice storm last week. All the kids around here got school off for a few days. We didn’t have power until yesterday.”
“Good thing you’ve got generators.”
“Lisa was making candlelit dinners every night anyway. She’s a hard worker, but damned if she isn’t still a woman all the way through.”
“Isn’t that the point?”
“What do you mean?”
“If she wasn’t all woman, she’d just be your hired hand still. Right?”
There was a soft laugh. “She sometimes seems to forget that she was my hired hand at all. Anyway. You don’t really get ice storms out there in Montana, do you?”
“I’ve never seen one. Too cold, I think. It just snows and blows and drifts.”
“I’d take some drifts over an ice storm any day. With an ice storm you almost always lose power.”
“I used to like ice storms when I was little. That was the best sledding. Remember that metal saucer we had, and how you sprayed it down with silicone, and I made it from the hill all the way to the road before I stopped?”
“I remember. That was a hell of a storm. That ice was about an inch thick over everything. You were just a little shit then, and you could just walk right on top of the snow. I, of course, broke through the ice crust with every step. Wore my ass out carting you up that hill.”
“I don’t remember that. I thought I walked myself. I guess all I really remember is flying down the hill.”
“Isn’t that the way of it? For every child’s fond sledding memories there’s the forgotten parent who lugs him up the hill. It’s all right, though. Probably in order to be your own man you have to forget certain things about the one that made you.”
“I’m not trying to forget anything.”
“No, I know. Well I’m about cashed in. Talk to you later.”
A cup of coffee down before it was even light, the second cup as the gray dawn solidified into golden morning. August toasted two pieces of white bread. He slathered them with butter and then sliced bananas, carefully arranging them like pale coins. He drizzled a precise zigzag of honey over the bananas and he ate, sitting on his small porch, his hood up against the chill, inhaling the steam coming off his mug. From where he sat he could see the light on in Ancient Virostok’s kitchen. Occasionally Ancient was visible, alone, moving across the window, filling the coffee carafe with water, rinsing out a travel mug, washing his hands after peeling strips of bacon into the skillet. August finished his whole pot of coffee before Ancient emerged from his house. When he did finally step outside, he stood on the porch and stretched and yawned.
“What a morning,” he yelled. He gave August a little salute. “You coffee’d up?” he said. “Let’s go deal with that son of a bitch of a tree.”
With Ancient driving they headed out the rutted drive and turned east, toward the river. The radio was on low; August could just make out the song, Doc Watson doing “Tennessee Stud.” Ancient was thumping his thumbs on the steering wheel in time, and the truck smelled of coffee and mouthwash covering last night’s alcohol.
“Billings,” he said, shaking his head. “What a shithole. You spent much time there?”
“Not much.”
“Well, good for you. I’ll be happy to not step foot in that cesspool for a while. They got the reservation right there and that’s always been bad enough, but now they got the oil fields and that’s even worse. Only thing worse than a drunk Indian is a drunk roughneck with a paycheck burning a hole in his pocket. You told me you did a stint down in Wyoming, right?”
“I don’t claim it. Just a couple months. Long enough to figure out it wasn’t for me.”
“Good money, though, I bet.”
“Paid out most of it in rent.”
“Yeah, that’s what I’ve heard. Nowhere to live. I also heard prostitutes from Vegas fly in and out every weekend. Absolutely raking it in.”
“Maybe. I have no idea.”
“I’ve never paid for it, myself. I have nothing morally against it. But it doesn’t do it for me, knowing that the woman, no matter how hot she may be, is just at work, probably thinking about what she’s going to have for dinner later or something. She could care less about you, and if that’s the case then what’s the point? Might as well save some money and jack it. Same with titty bars. Never saw the logic of spending a bunch of money to sit next to other dudes drooling over bored single mothers who fundamentally hate you.”
“They do this thing on the rigs. We worked really long hours. Some of the guys would buy a bunch of those energy drinks and open them up and let them sit overnight so the carbonation goes flat. They’d use it to brew the coffee with. One morning I got up and drank a cup of that. I was going to lace up my boots, and I was leaning over and I just threw it all up. I vomited on my boots. I couldn’t get all the puke out of the laces and I could smell it all morning when I was working, and so when I took lunch break I just went to where I was staying and packed up my things. Left my boots there. Drove away barefoot. Some people can stand the smell of puke. I can’t.”
“My God. What that must do to your guts,” Ancient said. “You were smart to get out of that. My old man might have been right about some things. Poverty on a ranch is still better than a lot of situations. Like living in Billings, for example. Jesus. The women aren’t even good-looking down there. Big hair. Thick ankles.”
“Did you see Kim?”
With the flat of his palm, Ancient rubbed his chin. Unshaven, it scratched against his chapped hand. “Yeah, I saw her. People always run their mouths about out-of-towners that move here. Good-looking girl like Kim takes up with Ancient, and then everyone starts their sniping.”
“I haven’t heard anything.”
“I suppose not. People know that you and I work close so whatever comes to you will come to me eventually. And you’re not from around here either, so there’s that.”
“Maybe people are talking about me,” August said.
Ancient looked at him and took a sip of coffee. He shook his head. “No one is talking about you, cowboy. Hate to burst your bubble.”
Ancient and August stood on the bank of the Musselshell and regarded the problem. A giant cottonwood had fallen and come to rest directly against the headgate that fed the irrigation ditch that watered the hayfield. The cottonwood’s massive trunk was wedged in such a way that raising or lowering the steel gate was impossible. It was stuck closed, and until they were able to get it open, no water was going to find its way out to the thirsty alfalfa.
The river was up, flowing brown and cold. The pressure of the water was forcing the tree hard against the gate. Ancient’s plan was to get a rope around one of the tree’s upper limbs and use the truck on the bank to pull it up and away. To facilitate this process he had come to the conclusion that they ought to cut away as many of the tree’s thick branches as possible, streamlining the whole mess and making it more likely to come free under the force of the truck.
Ancient was messing with the chainsaw, and August could smell gas. The sound of the river was a constant dull hum; the chainsaw was chugging but wouldn’t start. “Goddamn this thing,” Ancient said. He was dropping the saw with his left hand and pulling the cord in his right with everything he had, over and over, grunting with every stroke, the old grease-coated Stihl growling a little but stubbornly refusing to fire.
August stood on the edge of the concrete that held the headgate and looked over at the tree, sticking like a knife in the cold meat of the current. The only way to reach the limbs that needed to be cut was to climb out onto the tree itself. Water was cresting on the lower end of the trunk, and the deep furrows of the cottonwood bark were black and slick looking. There was a chug and a cough and then a snarl as Ancient finally brought the saw to life. He revved the motor a few times and brought the chain to a high whine before backing off and letting it idle.
“All right, she’s purring like a kitty now,” he said. “Hop on out there and I’ll hand it to you.”
August looked at the saw, looked back at the cottonwood bucking in the current. “Maybe we should just give it a shot with the truck first,” he said.
Ancient gave the saw a goose and shook his head. “Won’t work,” he said. “That limb there and that limb there have got to go. If we pull on it like it is we’re just going to be wedging it further up in there. That or maybe we’ll fuck the gate up beyond all repair. Come on. We’ll just have you hop out there and then I’ll hand you the saw and zip-zip you’re done.”
“Right,” August said. “Zip-zip.” He stepped off the concrete wall to the cottonwood trunk, gingerly finding purchase, his boots squelching on the wet bark. He could feel the river under his feet. August steadied himself with one hand on a limb, and Ancient stretched out with the saw until August could grab it. The heavy saw unbalanced August. He knelt and went to work on the first limb. The chain flung chunks of bark and then hummed into the pulpwood, sending out a rooster tail of white, sappy, wet sawdust. The first limb went easily. The saw was sharp and the cottonwood was soft. In a few moments, August kicked the limb away and it bobbed off downstream, turning slowly in the roiling water. He changed positions and started on the second limb. This one was trickier; the river was pushing on it in such a way that the saw kept binding. Finally, as it neared the center of the limb, as big around as his thigh, the saw ran to a stop completely. He tried to jerk it clear but the bar was wedged, the current pushing the limb back on itself as if trying to heal the cut.
“Is it stuck?” Ancient said.
“Looks like it, doesn’t it?”
“Can you wiggle it out?”
“I’m trying.”
“Maybe if you step out on the limb and push it down that will release that pressure?”
“Jesus Christ.” August slid one foot around the stuck saw so that he could put his weight on the stubborn branch. He gave a hop, and when his weight fell on the limb he pulled on the saw and he felt it budge slightly. He repeated the hop-and-pull maneuver and was able to get the saw free.
“You’re going to have to try to cut it from the other side,” Ancient said. “It’s just going to bind again if you go at it the same way.”
“I know,” August said.
“Okay, just pointing out things as I see them here from mission control.”
August changed angles and started the saw on the upstream side of the limb. Now the current was pushing the branch away from the saw, and the wood ripped eagerly under the chain. Too eagerly. Before August was ready there was a sharp crack and the limb broke free. Swinging up and over the cottonwood trunk, the butt of the limb knocked into the bar of the Stihl so quickly that August still had the saw running wide-open when it bit into his boot with a whine. Leather and rubber vaporized instantly. In the shock of it, he dropped the saw, slipped from the log, and met the water with his back.
He was fully submerged. For a second he could hear the saw running underwater and then that was gone. He couldn’t feel pain yet, but he was certain that in the split second the saw had smashed into his boot it had chewed all the way through. He struggled toward shore, his jeans and denim jacket weighing him down. Ancient yelling, cursing, running down the bank.
August got a hold of an overhanging Russian olive and pulled himself out of the water, gasping. His foot still didn’t hurt, but he was scared to look. He wrestled himself into a sitting position, expecting to see blood and gore. As it turned out, the saw had cut through the leather of his boot upper so that a stripe of his white sock was visible, but that was it. He’d been a sock’s thickness away from having the chain tear into him. He collapsed onto his back and listened to Ancient crashing through the brush toward him.
They eventually looped a length of rope around the top of the tree and, with the truck, were able to shift it enough that the current washed it out downstream. Then Ancient cranked up the steel gate and sent a tongue of tea-colored water probing down the dry irrigation channel.
Driving back to the house, Ancient said, “I had that saw for damn near twenty years. Not your fault, obviously, but I’ll miss it. Never gave me any problems. Stihl makes a good product.”
“Too bad,” August said. His clothes were still soaked, and he had to force away a shiver.
“I should have had you tie a rope to the handle. That was my fault.”
“That probably would have been the smart thing.”
“But don’t worry about it. Could have happened to anyone. I just want you to know that I don’t blame you for dropping the saw like you did.”
“I could have cut my foot off,” August said.
“Oh, come on. Five white monkeys could have flown out of my ass, too. Neither of those things happened, though, so it doesn’t make much sense to worry about it.”
“Easy for you to say.”
“Oh, I get it. You’re pissed at me.”
“The whole thing was stupid. There could have been some better way to go about it.”
“Let’s hear it, then. How should we have done it?”
“Forget it.”
“No, I want to know. I’m all ears.”
“You’re right. We should have tied a rope to the saw. That’s what we should have done.” August leaned his head against the window and closed his eyes for the rest of the ride.
That night August stood under the shower until the hot water ran out. Afterward, somehow still cold, he took the wool blanket off the bed, wrapped it around himself, and called his mother.
“Augie, what a nice surprise,” she said. “I was just thinking about you.”
“Oh yeah? What were you thinking?”
“Nothing specific, really. I was just having a general Augie thought cloud. And then you called. It’s like I summoned you.” She laughed and he could hear her inhale, taking a drag from her cigarillo. “How’s life on the ranch?” she said.
“Oh, it’s okay. They’ve got Hutterites up here. They’re kind of like the Amish back home but not quite as strict. They’ve got trucks and electricity and stuff.”
“Well, that’s interesting. I’m glad you’re getting some culture.”
“What have you been up to?”
“Oh, you know me. Just continuing on the long path to self-betterment. For every hour of confusion and doubt I experience I’m trying to devote at least ten minutes to positive self-talk and self-love.”
“Self-talk? What does that mean?”
“The specifics are between me, myself, and I. But in general it’s combating the hostile babble of the world with some highly directed inward praise.”
“How can you praise yourself and have it do any good?”
“It’s possible, it just takes some practice.”
“Seems like trying to tell yourself a joke to make yourself laugh when you already know the punch line.”
“Well, that would be the cynic’s response. Speaking of, have you been talking to your father?”
“Not in a while.”
“That’s what he said. I called him recently.”
“I didn’t know you guys were talking these days.”
“Not much but here and there, mostly in regards to you.”
“Me?”
“Specifically about your decision to not attend college this year. I know that you know that your father didn’t go to college. However, I feel that you’re processing this information incorrectly. Instead of understanding that your father wants a better life for you than the one he had, I think you believe that because he didn’t attend, you yourself needn’t.”
“It has nothing to do with him. We’ve been over all of this.”
“Okay. It sounds like you’re really thriving up there. But, you know, you could probably get into MSU next semester with no trouble and still get a decent scholarship even.”
“I fell off a tree into the river today and almost cut my foot off with a chainsaw. I’m fine, don’t worry. I wasn’t even going to tell you, but to be honest, I’d rather do that every day of the week than go sit in a classroom down in Bozeman.”
August’s mother was silent for a moment. An inhale and long exhale, a soft cough. “You brought that up to make me worry, and that’s unkind.”
“I was just trying to make a point. I didn’t mean it like that. Never mind. Are you still getting those Bush-isms sent to you every day? I heard a good one the other day, and I wrote it down because I knew you’d like it. Hang on, I’ve got it here somewhere. Okay, here we go: There’s an old saying in Tennessee—I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee—that says, fool me once, shame on—shame on you. Fool me—you can’t get fooled again.”
He thought she might laugh, but she didn’t. He heard the click of her lighter. “I’m having a harder and harder time finding the humor in our current situation,” she said.
August and Tim Duncan were set up on the long, sloping flank of Antelope Butte shooting gophers, sitting in the back of Tim’s truck, using the side for a rifle rest. They’d been at it for a while, and the truck bed was littered with spent shells. The field in front of them was dotted with small lumps of dead gopher, and the surviving gophers were hunkered down in their holes, not showing themselves. August and Tim waited. The sun was a benevolent presence in the sky, the scent of cottonwoods budding down by the river on the wind like a gift.
“Okay, okay, here we go.” August could hear Tim expelling his breath in one long rush and then the pausing at the bottom of the exhale, that moment of stillness where the trigger was best squeezed. The rifle cracked, and Tim clucked his tongue. “Gotcha,” he said. “Check it out. That used to gross me out so bad when I was a kid.”
August shielded his eyes against the sun. He could barely make out a dead gopher and another live gopher doing something with the carcass.
“Wes always told me that gophers were cannibals. Just waiting for one of their pals to go down so that they can munch on their flesh. But that’s not it.”
“Hand me that,” August said. “I can’t really see.”
Tim passed him the rifle and August tracked with the scope until he found the gopher Tim had just shot. Under magnification, he could see the living gopher chewing through the hole that Tim’s .22 round had blown in the dead gopher’s belly. The gopher stopped what it was doing and looked up. August could make out its snout clearly, covered in blood, its eyes black shards.
“That’s disgusting,” August said. “I thought gophers only ate seeds and berries and stuff.”
“Well,” Tim said, “that’s actually what’s going on. Basically, I shot the guts out of that first one, and the second one is in there eating the undigested contents of its pal’s stomach. That’s the survival instinct at its finest right there.” Tim took the rifle back from August and worked a shell into the chamber. He settled down in his shooting stance and scanned the field until he found his target. “Hope that last meal was a good one, little buddy,” he said.
With the light going gold and then orange and then pink over the top of Antelope Butte, Tim emptied his clip. He ran an oiled rag along the Marlin’s blued barrel and worn stock, taking care to wipe the areas around the trigger and bolt. “Hey,” he said. “I never asked you, but what’s up with you having the day off? I mean, I have the day off, but that’s because it’s Sunday and that day still means something in the Duncan household. I know for a fact that Virostok doesn’t keep the Sabbath holy.”
“He just gave me the afternoon off,” August said. “He does that sometimes.”
“Nah,” Tim said. “You’re his only hand. I got my brother and so we switch off doing chores on Sundays and it happens to be my Sunday off is all. But if I’m Virostok and I got you on the payroll, then you don’t get any extra days off.” He held the Marlin up and huffed a fog on each lens of his scope, wiping the lens clean carefully with the tail of his shirt. He slid the rifle back into its fleece-lined case and zipped it up before leaning back against the cab, stretching his arms up, and interlacing his fingers behind his head. “Don’t tell me if you don’t want to, but something’s up.”
“I don’t think it’s any big deal,” August said. “He went down to Billings again.”
“I drive by the place almost every day. I haven’t seen Kim’s car there in, since I can’t even remember when.”
“She’s down in Billings visiting her sister, I guess. That’s what Ancient told me.”
“So then why’d he go down to Billings? If he needed something from there, he could’ve just had her pick it up. Why do you need to visit your own fiancée?”
“I don’t really know, man. I got the afternoon off. I don’t care. None of my business.”
“Uh-huh.” Tim fiddled with the zipper on his gun case, zipping and unzipping in rhythm. “Did you know that you can look up registered sex offenders on the Internet? Just type in your zip code, and it shows all the perverts in your neighborhood.”
“So?”
“Do you have a computer at Virostok’s?”
“No. No Internet in the bunkhouse, either.”
“Well, you could go to the library or something if you wanted to check it out.”
“Why would I want to check it out? Why don’t you just come out and say whatever you’re trying to say?”
“I’m not the type of guy that talks about folks behind their backs. I’m just saying that if you’re in the mood for some interesting reading, you could check out the sex offender registry.”
“I think that’s probably the last place I would go for some interesting reading.”
“Suit yourself.”
“I aim to.”
“Fine. Then forget I mentioned it. I was thinking. It’s almost rodeo season, and you know what that means, right?”
“What does it mean?”
“Cowgirls, and wannabe cowgirls, which are better in my opinion. You dance?”
“No.”
“Seriously?”
“I don’t give a damn about dancing. You do?”
“Not about dancing by itself, but if you mean dancing as a way of meeting young ladies, then the answer is hell yes. All the girls that show up for rodeos can dance, or want to. If you can’t two-step or jitterbug, at least a little, you’re going to be sidelined, bud.”
“I couldn’t care less.”
“The dudes dance, too.”
“So?”
“So, I’m saying that if girls aren’t really your thing, you’ll still need to dance to pick up men. Either way, there’s no avoiding it.”
“Fuck you.”
“No judgment here, pal. It’s the twenty-first century. If you’re into cowboys, I’ll still be your friend.”
“I’m not gay.”
“Then you should probably let me show you the basic moves. You don’t need to be Travolta out there; you just need a couple standby maneuvers to get things flowing.”
“I have absolutely no interest in learning how to dance.”
“I told you, it’s not about the dancing; it’s about the women. A means to an end. Do you want to meet women, yes or no?”
“Not particularly right now. I just don’t want the hassle.”
“The hassle? Dude. Life is the hassle. Women are the only thing that make the hassle worth enduring half the time.”
“Do you want to go get a beer, or what?”
“Does the pope shit in the woods? Let’s get the hell out of here.”
Tim drove, windows down, although it was evening now and getting cool. “My theory is that you’re nursing a little broken heart. Am I right? Some girly do you wrong and send you packing with a bad taste in your mouth and your feelers hurt?”
August shrugged. “Something like that,” he said. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Okay. Okay. I understand. I’ll just say one thing, and then I’ll shut up about it. Best way to get over an old lover is to get under a new one. That’s all I’m saying.”
“Good one.”
August was done with work for the day. He had a package of Virostok’s ground beef thawing in a bowl on his kitchen counter. Before firing up the grill he called his mother.
When she answered he could hear music in the background. That one CD she always played when she was cooking dinner for someone. It was the old Cuban guys, Buena Vista Social Club. When that was on in the kitchen, she was preparing to not dine alone.
“Augie!” she said. “How are you?” He could hear the sound of her earring scraping across the phone receiver and then a wooden spoon banging several times on the edge of a pan.
“I’m okay. You cooking?”
“I’m making spaghetti and meatballs. Art was telling me he hasn’t had a good meatball in ages, and that got me thinking. My mom had a great meatball recipe so I dug it up. Good Italian-seasoned bread crumbs are the key, and little chunks of fresh mozzarella that get all melty.”
“Oh, Art’s there. I don’t want to keep you. I was just about to make some dinner myself, and I was calling to ask what you put in the hamburgers you make. I’ve made them a few times, but they haven’t turned out as good as yours.”
“Art’s not here yet. You’re cooking? Wonders never cease. I’d imagined you up there on a steady diet of Cup O’ Noodles and Frosted Mini-Wheats.”
“I’ve been doing a fair amount of that. But Ancient gave me a freezer full of beef, so I figured I might as well start using it. So far I’ve done tacos and burgers. Fair to medium results, but it’s just me so it’s not like anyone is complaining.”
“I’m glad you’re cooking. When you meet a girl you like it’s always nice to be able to make her something. It’s cheaper than going out all the time, and I’ve always said that the way to a girl’s heart, or whatever you’re trying to get to, is through her stomach. Shit, my marinara is bubbling over and I think Art just pulled in. I’m going to let you go, Augie. The secret to my hamburgers is Lipton’s French onion soup mix and Worcestershire sauce and an egg to hold it all together. Good luck, dear, I’ve got to let you go.”
August heard a clunk as she dropped the phone on the counter without hanging up. Buena Vista Social Club, indistinct muttering from his mother, the sounds of a spoon against a metal pan. A male voice. He heard his mom say something about a wine opener. August pressed his ear to the phone. It was silent now except for the music. What were they doing? He hung up before something happened that he couldn’t unhear.
He sat for a moment regarding the package of half-frozen beef and then looked in the small set of cupboards about the sink. Salt, pepper, garlic, Tabasco. Nothing even closely resembling Lipton’s French onion soup mix or Worcestershire sauce. In the end he put the meat in the fridge, changed his shirt, and headed to town.
Tending the Two Dot Bar was a tall, slope-shouldered man, not tremendously older than August, sandy hair and a tucked-in pearl-snap shirt. He slid a coaster across the bar and gave a nod of his head.
“Bud,” August said.
“You old enough? I don’t recognize you.”
August put his wallet on the bar. Looked around. There were two women working the keno machines at the back; other than that the place was empty. “I’m old enough,” August said.
The man shrugged. Twisted the cap off a Budweiser bottle and put it down.
“I’ve actually been in here a few times,” August said. “Usually it’s Theresa behind the bar.”
The bartender leaned against the beer cooler and wiped his hands on his towel. “That’s my aunt. It’s her place. She’s having migraines lately so I’ve been helping out. She never has migraines on Fourth of July weekend when I could actually stand to make some money in here. Always she gets the migraines on Tuesday nights in the off-season when she wants to go up to Great Falls with her girlfriends for the karaoke contests.”
“Karaoke contests?”
“Yeah, there’s some bar up there that has a contest every month. Theresa thinks she’s Shania Twain or something. She trucks up there with her little gaggle of divorced friends to get shitty in a town where no one knows who they are and they can just go wild.”
“I never really understood karaoke,” August said.
“I hear you there. You want a food menu?”
“I know what I’m going to get.”
“Shoot.”
“Small Caesar salad and small pizza. Pepperoni, mushrooms, and green olives.”
The bartender put the food order in, and when he returned he fished out another beer for August and got one for himself. “I figure that by closing time tonight I’ll have pulled down, in tips, just slightly more than the gas money it takes me to drive over here. I feel that I’m entitled to make up some of my pay in Aunt Theresa’s booze.”
“Seems fair,” August said.
“So, what brings you to town?”
“I’m out working at the Virostok place. Been here a couple months.”
“Oh, sure. Ancient used to come in here quite a bit. Haven’t seen him in a while. How’s he doing?”
“Good, I guess. Fine. He’s got a fiancée.”
The bartender rolled his eyes and took a drink. “I know how that goes. A fiancée will definitely infringe on a guy’s bar time.” He wiped his hand on his rag and extended it across the bar. “I’m Cale, by the way.”
“August.”
“Like the month?”
“The one after July.”
“Huh. I never met an August before. Is that a family name?”
“Not a family name. My mom’s a librarian. She got it from a book.”
“Like a book of baby names?”
“No, it was a novel she liked, I think.”
“You haven’t read it?”
August shook his head. “Nah.”
“If it were me, I think I’d read it. I’d be curious.”
“Maybe someday I will.”
“My parents named me Cale after my mom’s favorite uncle. It’s a Jewish name. I’m not Jewish, but somewhere back in my family they must have been. It means brave dog.”
“Seriously?”
“Yep. My mom always told me that, and then I looked it up one time. It’s true.”
“That’s a pretty good meaning for a name.”
“I’ve always thought so. There’s a lot worse you can do than brave dog. I think a man that knows what his name means does his best to live up to it. That’s why I think you should figure out where yours comes from.”
When August’s food came, he sprinkled dried Parmesan and red pepper flakes over his pizza and let it cool, starting in on the salad. It was iceberg lettuce, swimming in thick Caesar dressing, croutons already soggy. Cale watched August eat. “Not too many people go for the salad here,” he said. “Or the pizza. Our burgers are pretty good, though.”
August shrugged. “I’ve got a freezer full of beef at home.”
“You and everyone else. The question is, do you have someone at home to turn that beef into a hamburger while you sit and drink a beer? I thought not. And that’s why this place has a crew of regulars. The food has nothing to do with it.”
“Is Tim Duncan a regular?”
Cale flicked his rag at something on the bar. “Oh, sure, all the Duncans used to come in a lot. Tim’s brother Weston was my best friend. Big Tim used to be in here damn near every night just to talk to Theresa. I haven’t seen him in a long time.”
“I’ve been running around with Tim a little bit,” August said. “He seems like a good enough guy.” August took a bit of pizza, strings of melting cheese stretching out long on his chin. “But I guess I’m actually not one hundred percent on that.”
Cale drained his beer and threw it in the trash. It broke against the bottles already in there, loud enough that one of the ladies playing keno said “Goddamn” and turned to look, her glasses low on her nose. Cale opened more beer for both of them. “Timmy can be a bit of a wild card,” he said. “No way to deny it. Avoid giving him hard liquor. I learned that lesson. Get some of the high octane in him and he goes off the rails.”
“I did notice that.”
“I think his heart is in the right place. But Wes was a beautiful person, and I don’t care who hears me say. Loved him like a brother. I’m getting married in a few months. Supposed to be a real big happy day in my life. I’ve got my drunk uncle Dwight as my best man. Should be Wes. He never met Noelle. She moved here right after he left for school, and that’s a weird thing. I’ve got this woman I’m going to spend the rest of my life with, and she never met the person that meant the most to me. Almost doesn’t seem right somehow, but that’s not something a woman wants to hear about.” Cale sniffed and rubbed at his nose with the back of his hand.
August finished his last slice of pizza and pushed the plate away. “So, this may sound weird,” he said. “But when you said your name I actually kind of knew who you were, because Tim told me a crazy story the other night and you were in it.”
Cale crossed his arms over his chest and laughed. “Uh-oh,” he said.
“It was mostly about his brother, something you and Wes did down at the Hutterite colony.”
Cale frowned, shook his head. “What did we do at the Hutterite colony? I’ve only been down there once or twice to get turkeys for my mom around the holidays.”
“I figured it was a bullshit story. Tim was drunk. Never mind.”
“No, what did he say? I’m curious.”
“That you got a VD check and then took Wes down there to the colony to be, like, studs, because the Hutterites were looking to get some of their women pregnant. Tim said his brother told him about it.”
Cale shook his head. “Fucking Wes. Still messing with me from the grave, I swear to God. First off, I’m not the one that was banging a Hoot. Second, stud service? That’s just a myth dudes are always talking about up here. Never happened.” Cale stopped. Twirled his beer bottle a few times on the bar. “I maybe shouldn’t say anymore, but fuck it. It’s not like Wes is going to get pissed at me. It’s a hell of a story, way better than that stud nonsense. You like fishing?”
“It’s all right. I used to do more of it when I was a kid.”
“Wes loved it. Hardly anyone fishes the Musselshell, but he had some spots where he pulled out huge brown trout. Seriously, some of them were as long as your leg.”
“People are always saying that. I’ve never seen a trout as long as my leg.”
“I’m telling you. He didn’t catch a lot of them, but when he did, they were giant. Believe me or not, I don’t care. The size of the fish isn’t the point. One of the spots Weston would go to was in the middle of the Hoot colony. He’d hop in at the bridge in Two Dot and just wade downstream for miles. The Hoots don’t give a shit about fishing as far as I know, so the trout are just hanging out there, dying of old age.
“That summer before Wes left for college he was going fishing, like, every day. He’d get done with his chores and he’d be fishing. Early morning. Sometimes staying out past dark. I was hardly seeing the guy, and he wasn’t showing me pictures of the trout he’d been catching either. I finally pinned him down about it. He was like, Don’t laugh, but I’ve been spending a lot of time with Sarah Jane. And I’m like, Who the hell is Sarah Jane—is that, like, a euphemism for something? Are you doing meth, brother? But no. Sarah Jane was a Hoot girl. I, of course, started giving him a ton of shit about this but he didn’t laugh. He said that he’d been fishing on the river way down there in Hoot land, a nice warm day in spring, and he came around the bend and there was a girl laid out on a rock, reading, blond and butt-ass naked. He surprised her and she got embarrassed and covered herself up, but they started talking and I guess you can figure out the rest. That was Sarah Jane. She was only sixteen, and she somehow turned Wes into an idiot.”
“She was a Hutterite? And she was sunbathing naked?”
“I know. I never really met her, but apparently she was not your average Hoot gal. She had this spot down there where no one from the colony would ever see her, a cliff that she scrambled around somehow. The only way anyone could come up on her was from the river.”
“I’ve never come across anything that interesting while fishing.”
“Yeah, me neither. Weston was always lucky that way. Until he wasn’t. For a while, though, he was head over heels. Before he left for Austin, he and I were drinking some beers one night and he told me he was thinking about saying fuck it and not going. Said he and Sarah Jane might just take off somewhere for a little while and see how it all panned out. I remember exactly what I told him. I said, Wes, look at me. That is a horrible idea. You’re thinking with your dick. You’re going to college. There’s going to be a million girls in Austin, and all of this will seem ridiculous. And after a while he said, You’re right. I don’t know what I’m thinking about. Of course I’m going to go. And then he went. And look what happened.”
Cale had been polishing a glass, but now the rag in his hand had stopped and he was looking over August’s shoulder at the door as if expecting someone to come in.
“Everyone you meet, their lives can hinge on the words that come out of your mouth. You ever consider that? You can just say a few sentences and then your best friend dies. We just walk around all day putting words on people, sowing the seeds of disaster. He could be set up right now, a little place of his own with Sarah Jane, helping run the cattle on his family place. Happy and in love. That’s the alternate universe that occurs if I don’t open my mouth.”
August turned to see what Cale was looking at, but there was no one at the door. They were silent for a few moments, and then August drained his beer. “You look at the extended forecast lately?” he said. “Is it supposed to stay mild like this for a while?”
Cale cleared August’s dishes and brought him his change from the twenty he’d put down. “I’m not sure. But you know what they always say about Montana weather: If you don’t like it, just wait ten minutes and it will change.”
“They say that about the weather everywhere.”
“I heard about a place in Africa where it hasn’t rained in one hundred years.”
“Yeah?”
“I bet they don’t say that about the weather there.”
“I guess you got me. See you around.”
As August was making his way out the door, one of the keno machines went off, lights flashing. The gray-haired lady in front of it had her arms raised over her head, fists clenched in victory. “Sadie, you lucky bitch,” her friend said. “You’ve hit twice this week. Why does God hate me?”
After picking up several gallon jugs of weed spray at the Feed-n-Need, August swung by the Martinsdale Carnegie Library and signed up for a library card. The librarian wrote down his information from his driver’s license on a small green piece of paper that she then ran through a laminating machine. She trimmed the plastic edges and slid it over the counter at him, her nose wrinkling slightly. He’d been helping Ancient all morning with his old baler. It had been spewing hydraulic fuel, and haying season was right around the corner. Mostly, Ancient was doing the work and August was getting him the tools he asked for, holding things, shining the flashlight on grease-coated fittings in the dim interior of the shed. Ancient had one CD in the old stereo in the shop. It was Jimmy Buffett, and it was on constant repeat. Although he wasn’t under the machine, wrenching, August still managed to get himself coated with grease and fluid. His jeans had long black smears, and even after multiple washings with GOJO in the shop sink his hands were still stained, dark crescents under each fingernail. Worst of all, he had Buffett stuck in his head. Jangly steel drums.
After some browsing August selected a large tome from the “Regional Interest” section entitled The Hutterites: A People’s History. Before leaving the library he sat down at one of the public computers and connected to the Internet. He found the Montana sex offender registry website, typed in the Virostok Ranch’s address, and in less than a minute was looking at a picture of Kim Meyers. Deep purple bags under her eyes, her hair shorter and dyed peroxide blond. Below the picture was a short list of information.
Further down the pages was a definition list.
August scrolled through the list of all the offenders in Meagher County, Kim the only woman among a sad lineup of twisted gray beards, slumped shoulders, gaping jaws. One guy was near August’s age. Shaved head, glasses making his eyes look as if they were disembodied and swimming.
August looked at Desmond Swandel long enough to notice that he’d shaved badly before the photo was taken. A patch of reddish stubble was visible on his lower chin. He closed the browser, checked out his book, thanked the librarian for her time, and drove home on the river road. He had the window down to erase the public-library smell from his nose, and he could hear the prehistoric sounds of sandhill cranes, paired up for mating, calling out from the greening fields.
The phone in the bunkhouse rang, and August let it go for a while before he picked it up.
“Catch you at a bad time?” his father said.
“No, not really. Just thinking about making some dinner.”
“Seems like I’m always calling you at mealtime.”
“It’s okay.”
“What are you having?”
“Ramen.”
“Really?”
“I’m putting some vegetables and shrimp in it.”
“Well, that’s a little better than just plain. But I guess you inherited my culinary skills.”
“I fenced all day. I really don’t care what it is.”
“Don’t have to explain it to me. I hear you loud and clear. If it weren’t for Lisa, I’d probably be asking you for your recipe. She made beef Stroganoff the other night. When’s the last time you had that? That’s a meal you forget about, but when you have it you’re always reminded how good it is.”
“Never cared for it much myself.”
“Really? How not?”
“It’s gray. I don’t like gray food.”
“Huh. Lisa’s is actually more of a light brown. I bet you’d like it.”
“I doubt it.”
“Well. I saw one of your mom’s daffodils poking up next to the house last week. Then last night we got two inches of snow. Typical March weather. You know what they say—in like a lion, out like a lamb.”
“Seems like it doesn’t finally start going out like a lamb until sometime around June here.”
“Everything’s bigger and badder out there, eh? Speaking of June, though. You haven’t mentioned your gal friend recently. What’s up with that?”
“She’s out on the East Coast for school. She’s coming back for spring break, though. We talk on the phone all the time.”
“That long-distance thing, I don’t know. Maybe it’s a blessing in disguise. In my opinion, as a young buck, you should play the field. Makes things a little easier if you decide to settle down later. A little easier. I don’t think it’s ever actually easy, as long as you still got blood pumping in your veins. The struggle of modern man.”
“What’s that?”
“Settling down.”
“Last I checked it’s a free world. No one is making you do anything.”
“Maybe not. We’re on the edge of a new humanity. I feel that way. I do. Pretty soon society is going to be run by women, and I don’t know that it’s necessarily a bad thing, just that you and I are going to be obsolete.”
“How so?”
“We’re entering the age of cooperation. The age of teamwork. The age of feelings and equality. The only reason they’re still allowing boys to be born is because there’s other nations out there not advanced enough to look down their nose at war. As long as you got people being born into dirt-floor huts wanting something they haven’t got, you’re going to need boys to hold guns. From hero, to necessary evil, to relic of our barbarian past—that’s the fate of man in the arc of time.”
“You told me once that a good woman is man’s only hope for salvation on earth.”
“That doesn’t sound like me.”
“Pretty sure you did. Doesn’t matter.”
“Let me put it real simple: Men will ruin the world. Women can save the world, but they’ll ruin men in the process. Get me?”
“I guess.” They fell silent for a moment and then August said, “They clocked the wind at seventy-one miles per hour at the little airstrip up here last week. An RV heading down 89 flipped and rolled twice, but I guess no one died. Seventy-one is almost hurricane strength.”
“Doesn’t it have to be sustained to be considered hurricane strength—not just a gust? I mean, that’s still a strong wind, of course.”
“Not sure on that. Maybe. They said that on the news, about the hurricane strength. It wasn’t just something I made up.”
“No, of course not. I don’t doubt it. I was just not totally sure about what exactly constitutes hurricane strength, you know? Shrimp, you said? Never would have thought it to put that in ramen myself. You getting it frozen, I take it?”
“Yeah, frozen.”
“Already cooked, though, right?”
“They’re cooked.”
“Peeled?”
“The tail is still on there.”
“So, do you thaw them out and then take the tail off and then put them in the ramen, or do you just put them in frozen?”
“I usually just get the water boiling and then put in the broccoli and carrots or whatever and that’s when I put the shrimp in. Frozen. It works fine. You just take the tails off as you eat them.”
“Well, that sounds pretty easy. Healthy, too, I imagine. Maybe I’ll try it some night when I’m baching it. Okay. I’ll let you get to it. You’re probably hungry. Nice talking to you.”
Late June, with the shadows of the clouds making calico patterns on the hills. August rode shotgun in Tim’s truck on their way down to Wilsall for the first rodeo of the year. Tim tossed August a shooter of Beam and handed him a can of Bud. “Put them down fast, pal,” he said. August downed the Beam and sipped from the beer. He looked over at Tim. He was dolled up. Clean summer Stetson. Pale pink pearl-snap tucked into freshly ironed Wranglers. His boots were wet-looking, devoid of mud and manure. “You’re not drinking?” August said.
“Oh, I will. Plenty. I’m not the one that needs to get loosened up, though.”
“What?”
“Yep. Get loose.”
“Why? What are you talking about?”
Tim laughed, pulled his truck off the road, drove into a flat rocky pasture, and parked. He fiddled with his CD player and Johnny Cash doing “Cocaine Blues” came on. He turned it up. “Here we go,” he said hopping out. “The Tim Duncan five-minute crash dance course. Let’s get to it.”
“I’m not dancing. Let it rest.”
Tim hooked his fingers in his belt loops and rocked back on his heels. “You can just start walking from right here, then. You go to the rodeo with me and you’re going to dance. Bottom line. I’ve got a reputation to uphold. I’ve got a gal coming from Bozeman with a friend, and I told her I’d have a tall, good-looking cowboy with me that would be happy to twirl her girlfriend around. If you’re the tool standing there against the wall, it makes me look bad, understand? Relax, you’re not going to be out there doing the fox-trot or the tango or whatever. A girl just wants to be spun a little.” Tim tapped his boot on the ground and whistled along out of tune. “Don’t be nervous. It’s easy.”
“I’m not nervous. This is ridiculous.”
August stood in front of Tim, and Tim grabbed his hand and pulled him close. “Okay. I’m going to be you. Meaning, I’m going to lead. As a man, you lead. It doesn’t really matter too much what you do, as long as you do it with conviction. This is your basic western swing, or jitterbug, or whatever you want to call it. Works better with the faster songs, it’s kind of flashy, you get the lady twirling, which is what they all want. The basic spin is here. Twirl, dumbass. Okay, you see how I kept my right hand on your sexy midsection while you spun? That’s key. Dancing is foreplay, pal. No other way around it; that’s why it hasn’t gone out of fashion and never will. I leave my hand on your hip right there and as you spin it travels around, stomach, to lower back and that’s where it rests. Enough pressure so that she can feel it, not enough to be the creepy guy copping a feel. After the spin you’re in close. Two-stepping. The footwork can be a little tricky but it’s short, short, looong. So, two shorts left, one long right. Yep, like that. If you’re in doubt, just shuffle a little. See, I’m a good leader so it just comes natural for you to follow like that. If you can do it like I’m doing it, the girl kind of naturally falls into step.
“Couple more little things. Girls get wet for the pretzel. Even if it goes wrong and you get all tangled up, just laugh about it. It looks complicated but it’s not too hard. My left hand is going behind my back. See how I’m looking back at it? That lets the girl know she’s supposed to grab it. Grab it, jackass. Okay, now I bring it up and over. Damn it, don’t let go. Try it again. Okay, grip tight, it’s coming up and over and you’re spinning, good. Just watch the elbows and go a little slower than the music. That’s the key. You see these asshole guys from Bozeman or Billings, and they’re dancing flat out no matter what the song is, jerking the gal around like a rag doll. Keep it slow and tight. Pull the lady to you. Okay, nice, now back to home base. There you go. Spin me out. Perfect, now grab that one there and lead me through the pretzel. Fuckin’-A, man. You’re a natural.”
“Oh, shut up,” August said, dropping Tim’s hands and stepping back. “There’s been three trucks that have gone by and seen us out here.”
“Why are you so uptight? My dad taught me and my brothers how to dance just like that. It’s no different than learning how to drive. It’s basic knowledge you got to have. Okay, that’s good enough; the rest you’ll figure out on the fly. You Michigan people are a trip. You remind me of a guy I knew in high school that moved here from the Upper Peninsula, Gerald Priest was his name. If he wasn’t sure about something he’d say, Well, Tim, you know, I don’t know, you know? Used to just kill me every time. I haven’t thought about him for a long while now. Wonder whatever happened to that guy. I think he was at graduation, then he disappeared. You know, I don’t know, you know? Funniest thing ever.”
Wilsall was besieged by pickup trucks. Stock trailers parked at haphazard angles around the rodeo grounds. The Bank Bar had a crowd of people spilling out onto the street, everyone holding beers or red plastic cups of mixed drinks. Tim drove slowly through the throng, windows down. “Goddamn, would you look at that,” he said. “So much ass. Those look sprayed on. Do they have like some sort of tool they use to get into them things? It’s going to be a good night, pal.”
Tim parked, and they dropped the tailgate of his truck and sat, drinking beers from the cooler they’d packed earlier, watching the procession of women in tight Levi’s and sundresses with boots.
“Are we going to go get a seat?” August said. “Might be getting pretty full.”
“What do you mean? We have our seat right here.”
“Aren’t we going to go watch the rodeo?”
Tim went wide-eyed. “Are you serious? You want to go watch dudes get bucked off bulls when we have a front-row seat to a parade of Western femininity at its finest?”
August laughed. “I’ve been to the rodeo down in Livingston. I guess I don’t really care about it one way or the other.”
“Of course you don’t. You’re like me, you work on a ranch. You don’t need to waste your free time watching a rhinestone-bedazzled mockery of the shit you do every day.”
As if on cue a man walked by wearing a gold belt buckle the size of a dinner plate. Spurs on his boots jangling with every step. Tim and August wordlessly stared at him, and when he’d passed Tim slurped on his beer and belched. “Too easy,” he said. “I’m not even going to comment.”
“I’ll start watching rodeos when they feature a fence-post-driving competition,” August said.
“Exactly. Or shit mucking. But until then, we’ll sit out here and take advantage of the sights. When the actual thing gets going we’ll make our way into the bar and get set up before it turns into an absolute zoo.”
By the time the rodeo finally let out, August and Tim had staked out a prime spot at the bar, close to the dance floor and the stage where the band was getting warmed up. People kept streaming in, and the whole place filled with a dull roar. Tim ordered them both shots and beers, and not long after they’d slammed their empty glasses down on the bar, a group of women materialized from the crowd near them. It seemed that Tim knew some of them and soon he was leading a short, busty blonde out onto the dance floor. A tall brunette with a rash of freckles across her cheeks and the bridge of her nose looked at August, smiled and shrugged, extended her hand.
August tried to keep Tim’s instructions in mind, but short, short, looong was immediately lost in the mass of people twirling on the dance floor. August pulled the girl in close, and she had a tangible heat, his hand on her lower back feeling the twin bands of muscle there. They rotated slowly and he spun her, and as she went he could see the white of her smile, her long hair splaying out around her face; could smell her citrus shampoo clear through the bar-sweat beer smell. There were elbows in his back, hats and hair in a kaleidoscopic twirl. He pulled her back in. He shuffled and was surprised to find that she seemed to mostly be in step with him. She put her mouth up to his ear, shouting over the band. “I’m Maya. Thanks for dancing with me. I love it, but I’m not very good.”
“I’m August,” he said. And then he spun her again and the talking was done. Before the song’s end their random progress around the dance floor brought them near Tim and his partner. Tim was leading the blonde through an intricate series of moves—her face flushed and happy, their arms a blur, both of them laughing. When the song ended, Tim dipped his partner low so that her head nearly hit the ground and then swung her back up. She gave a little jump and straddled his hips with her arms around his neck. He walked her to the bar that way, running blindly into people with his face buried in her cleavage.
August danced with freckled Maya; he danced with Christi, Tim’s partner; he danced with a procession of other women, their faces and bodies running together. The room was stifling, and he had sweat rolling down his temples. He did the few moves Tim had taught him, and he learned a few more from watching other couples. The band kept everything going, and he went from one partner to the next with hardly enough time in between to get a drink at the bar. For the most part, the women did the asking.
When the band stopped, Tim and Christi were deep in conversation at the bar. August ordered one more beer and finally sat, glad for the rest after what seemed like hours of frantic movement. People were trickling out now, and the bartenders were shouting about last call. August felt a warm hand on the back of his neck, and freckled Maya plopped down on the stool next to him. Earlier she’d been wearing a plaid shirt tied up at the midriff but that was gone now and she was in her tank top and Levi’s. Her arms were covered with the same spray of freckles that crossed her nose. There was a dark spot on her tank top at her lower back where her sweat had soaked through under the various hands of all the night’s dance partners.
“Whew,” she said. “I’m about danced out.” She laughed and nodded down at Tim and Christi. “Looks like those two are getting along well.” She turned her eyes on August and smiled. “I had fun dancing with you,” she said. “I tried to get back to you, but it seemed like every time I looked you had your hands full.”
August shrugged. “You’d get bored dancing with me more than a few times anyway. I only know, like, three moves. I was just doing them in different orders and hoping the song would finish before it became obvious that I’m clueless.”
Maya laughed and then her hand was on his arm. “I know what you mean. Have you ever watched an older couple dance? Sometimes they’re just so good, like they can predict each other’s movements perfectly.”
“Must take a long time to get that way.”
“Probably. I like to think that some of these old-time dancers started out like us.”
“Seems like dancing with the same person for years and years might get boring.”
“Dancing with the same person isn’t boring if you’re always trying new things. And maybe you take little breaks occasionally and have a quick dance with someone else just to reaffirm that dancing with your old partner is still the best.” She reached over and took a long drink of his beer, her eyes on his the whole time.
Eventually Tim and Christi broke their huddle and came over, and before long they were all out in the back of Tim’s pickup. Only a few hours until dawn, the air cool, the occasional shouts of the diehards still standing around outside the bar. Tim had blankets, and the girls were wrapped up in them. They drank the remaining beers in the cooler, and before long Tim and Christi moved to the cab of the truck. Maya rose up, the blanket over her shoulders, raised her arms out like wings, and settled herself down over August. She laid her head on his chest. There was a soft laugh from the cab of the truck, then a differently pitched sound, and soon the whole truck was rocking unmistakably.
Maya snorted. “God, that didn’t take long,” she said. “Christi is such a tramp.” Maya was moving against him and August was fumbling with her belt, her zipper. She wasn’t exactly making it easy for him, but she wasn’t telling him to stop, either. When he started to pull her jeans off, she wriggled to help, both of them laughing when they got hung up around her ankles. Her panties soon followed and he moved down, starting with his tongue the way Julie had always liked it, slow at first. Maya’s hips were going, but where Julie would seem to ascend Maya actually started to slow. Eventually she was still, and so August tried harder. He moved his hand up until he could feel the soft cords of her throat; he clenched. She made a startled squawk, pulled his hand off her, and wriggled away. “What was that?” she said. “No more of that. I’m not into that.” He tried for a while longer, but something had been put off. Her legs were rigid now, she made no sounds, and eventually he just rolled away and lay on his back.
There were muffled yips from Christi in the cab. Maya groaned and turned on her side, facing away from him. It was quiet except for the soft squeaking of the truck’s suspension. “I don’t know how for some people it seems to be so easy,” she said. “I’m sorry. I just can’t get into it until I’m comfortable. That’s just the way I’m wired.”
“It’s fine. I’m tired, anyway.”
“Me, too. You can still put your arm around me if you want.”
Before long Maya was giving soft, halting snores and August lay there with his arm going numb underneath her. There were some decent stars, and he searched for a constellation in the shape of how stupid he felt.
He was awake to witness the dawn, and he disentangled himself from Maya and stepped softly from the truck. He was waiting on the porch when the cook came in to open the Wilsall Diner.
“Coffee?” he said.
“Yeah, you and every other person in this hungover town,” the cook said. “You can sit and wait. It’s going to be a few minutes.”
When August returned to the truck with two steaming Styrofoam cups, Tim was sitting on the tailgate and the girls were gone. Tim had found a beer somewhere and was drinking, not even trying to keep the smile off his face.
“Hair of the dog?” he said.
“Ugh. I might hurl if I tried that.”
“Suit yourself. It’s the best thing, really. You a little hungover, son?”
“Little bit.”
“Well, I feel great.” Tim gave a shout and stretched. “Good morning to be alive.”
“You’re probably still drunk.”
“I could still be. Whew. What a night, eh? Goddamn rodeo season. Best time of year. We’ve got at least a couple of these things a month through September. Buck up, pardner. It’s going to be a hell of a ride. So what was the deal with that Mayra?”
“Maya.”
“Maya. What kind of name is that, anyway? She was smoking. How’d that go for you? Does she have those freckles everywhere?”
“We only messed around a little. Nice girl.”
“Like, you mean she was a good girl kind of nice girl?”
“Pretty much.”
“Well, that’s not all bad. You laid the foundation, right? Usually the good ones it takes a bit of groundwork. That’s how the game is played. And, was I right about dancing, eh? Eh?”
“It’s all right.”
“Just all right? I saw you out there twirling them like a champ. It’s amazing they weren’t getting all tangled up and tripping, that’s how fast their panties were dropping.”
“Not quite.”
“Nah, you were doing good. But seriously, it’s better than actually talking to them to break the ice, isn’t it? I mean you had your hands on, like, twenty attractive, slightly sweaty young ladies last night and how many sentences did you actually have to come out with?”
August laughed and nodded. “You’re right about that. It’s usually never that easy for me.”
“Allow me one big fat I told you so. I’ve got a whole theory about it. You can pretty much tell if you’ll have good sex with a girl based on how you dance together. If everything is all awkward and jerky out there, that’s how the sex will be. If you just start flowing right out of the gate, then that’s how it will be when you get horizontal. Tim’s theory of attraction. Keep it in mind.”
“Looked like you and Christi were dancing pretty good.”
Tim finished his beer and flopped back into the bed of the truck. “You know who is definitely not a good girl?”
“I have an idea.”
“She’s not good, but she might be perfect. Little Timmy is in love.”
August worked the come-along on the final strand of wire, and when it was tight he made a double wrap around the corner post and stapled it in place. He wound the tag end of the wire around the standing end with his pliers, and when it was secured he removed the come-along and the fence was done. He plucked the top strand a couple times with a gloved finger, and it thrummed satisfactorily. He sighted down the wire. Despite the roughness of the ground, his posts ran mostly clean and straight.
Ancient was down in Billings getting parts for the baler and seeing Kim. It was just midmorning, and August was done for the day. He tossed his gear in the milk crate lashed to the back of the four-wheeler and headed back down the hill to the house. In his room he stood with the door to the small fridge open, drinking orange juice from the carton. He washed his coffee mug and spoon and bowl from breakfast, dried them, and put them away. There was a broom in the small closet, and he used it on the kitchen floor. When he was done he examined the contents of the dustpan—they were negligible—then spent ten minutes leaning back on his bunk contemplating the underside of the box spring above him. Silence above and silence below, silence to his right and left. He heaved to his feet and headed to town.
At the Feed-n-Need he perused the small selection of fishing tackle. He settled on a six-foot ultra-light Ugly Stik and a Zebco 202. He picked up a small plastic divider box and a handful of Mepps and Blue Fox spinners, a canvas-insulated creel with a shoulder strap, and, as an afterthought, a wide-brimmed straw hat.
The man behind the cash register had a full gray beard with a brown stain at the corner of his mouth from tobacco spit. “Going fishing?” he said, raising his coffee mug to his lips, making no effort to start ringing August up.
“I was considering it,” August said.
“Where you going to go?”
“Probably just go mess around on the Musselshell.”
“Used to be good. You’re about twenty years too late on that one.”
“Yeah?”
“It’s these pivot lines these ranchers are using, and the stuff they spray on their fields for the grasshoppers. People want to tell me that that stuff is only toxic to bugs, and I say, What do you think trout eat?”
“I can see your point there.”
“Not a real popular opinion to have around here, but the cow sultans and their minions are ruining the fishing in this state. What these guys don’t realize is that their days are numbered.”
August adjusted his items on the counter. Looked at the cash register. Rocked a little on his heels. “Oh yeah?” he said.
“Definitely. This way of raising meat isn’t going to be viable in another fifteen, twenty years. Soon we’re going to be a nation of vegetarians. Not because we want to be, but out of necessity.”
“Are you saying because of global warming?”
“Not directly, but as a result. Only the elite are going to be able to afford Montana beef. The rest of us are going to be scrounging. I’m not saying it’s going to be completely apocalyptic, but it will be a lesser doomsday, at the very least.”
“Well, that sounds bad.”
“Everything seems normal now but we’re on the cusp.” The cashier waved his finger in a circular motion. “Feel lucky that you live out here. It could be a lot worse. Imagine being in New York City.”
“I really can’t.”
“Think 9/11 times a thousand. I’m preparing. Every time I go to the grocery store I get a dozen or so extra canned goods. I’ve got a big root cellar under my house, and I’ve got shelves of beans, water, blankets, candles, stuff like that.”
“Can’t hurt to be ready, I guess.”
“Damn straight. Nice choice on the pole there. An Ugly Stik is real durable. Should last you a good long time. Want my advice?”
“Sure.”
“Forget the Musselshell. Go to Martinsdale Reservoir and walk around the edge of the reeds on the south side and throw off to the middle. There’s a nice little ledge out there, and the rainbows will be hanging next to the deeper water. The state stocks ten thousand rainbows annually and usually you get your limit in an hour.” The cashier picked up the Ugly Stik and wiggled it a few times. “Oh yeah,” he said. “Should be able to toss those spinners a mile. I’m jealous. I’ll be stuck in here. Wishin’ I was fishin’. Story of my life. Do me a favor?”
“Yeah?”
“Come back in and let me know how it goes. If you do good I might get up there this weekend. Always nice to have a recent report.”
“Okay,” August said. “Will do.”
On the way out of town, August hit the Qwikstop. The skinny guy with FUCK LOVE tattooed on his knuckles was behind the counter. Apparently he’d been in school with Tim, and he never asked for ID. August got a six-pack and a bag of ice. He loaded his creel with Pabst, packed the ice around it, and headed out away from Martinsdale toward Two Dot. The hayfields were a ripe green, heavy with a damp heat that he could smell. They’d be cutting this week, and this was probably his last day off for quite some time. He parked off to the side of the road near the bridge in Two Dot. Sun warm on his neck, he strung up the rod, tied on a silver Blue Fox, put the treble hook through the hook keeper, and cranked the reel until the line went taut. He donned his new hat, slung the beer creel over his shoulder, and scrambled down the steep bank.
The rocks at the river’s edge were covered with a dried layer of silt, and the low branches of the Russian olives and alders were plastered with hardened gray muck and leaves where the water had receded following spring runoff. August walked downstream on the bank, and when the vegetation got too tangled, he was forced to step into the Musselshell’s flow. The rocks were snot-slick underwater, and his old tennis shoes offered little traction. He proceeded slowly, the rounded river stones slipping and rolling underfoot. At a likely-looking pool he flipped the bail on the reel and tossed a cast toward the far bank. It had been a long time since he’d fished, and it showed. His finger came off the line too late and the lure plopped in the water only a few feet away, a silver tangle of backlashed monofilament forming on the spool of his reel. As he teased the coils out of the line before it could tighten into an impossible knot, he felt like his fingers had thickened somehow since he’d last done this. The hand adapts itself to the tool most held. He could wield fencing pliers and a come-along all day, but now the soft new cork of the fishing rod felt foreign, the light six-pound monofilament as difficult to grasp as gossamer.
After clearing the tangle August made a few passable casts, the lure sweeping through the pool; he could feel its fluttering pulse in the taut line under his finger. Half a dozen uninterrupted casts and swings later, August gave up and reeled in, continuing on downstream. He passed under a low timber-frame bridge, squadrons of cliff swallows darting out of their mud-daubed nests. He could make out the roofline of one of the Hutterites’ outbuildings in the distance and he debated turning around, but kept going. He stopped and fished at several more pools with no luck. The sun was starting to slope in the west, the hottest part of the day, and he was glad for his hat. He kicked through the streamside grass, the grasshoppers jumping and bursting into flight, striated black and yellow wings clacking. At a point a mile or so from the Hutterite bridge, the bank shot way up, a sheer cliff wall of yellow sandstone that forced August to backtrack and drop down into the river. The water was moving quickly here, hip deep and racing. With every step he took, the current threatened to push him off his feet, and eventually he went down. Half swimming, half stumbling, he was pushed around the bend and onto a sloping gravel beach, sheltered by an overhang of rock from the cliff above.
He pulled himself out, his T-shirt and jeans plastered to his body. He noticed, too late, that his two remaining beers had fallen out of his creel, and he watched them bob off downstream, followed by the four crushed empties, all of them in a line like a little family of aluminum ducklings. August dropped his rod and creel and removed his dripping hat. The cliff wall stretched over twenty feet above him, the face slightly concave with a ledge sticking out. The declivity in the rock extended back a few yards, and at the base of the cliff was a jumble of large chunks of sandstone. The small beach was protected from the wind on three sides; the sun lowering over the hills in the west seemed to focus its energy, the cream cliff walls reflecting its light and heat. August peeled his shirt over his head and shrugged off his jeans. He walked gingerly up the small pebbled beach to lay his clothing over the rocks to dry, and it was behind one of them that he found a blue plastic tarp.
Underneath the tarp was a cushion, like what might be found on a reclining beach chair, a down pillow, and a white sheet, folded into a neat rectangle. August moved these aside and found a grain sack. In the sack: a pair of imitation Ray-Ban sunglasses; several tubes of Blistex SPF 15 lip ointment; a small bottle of baby oil, greasy and half-empty; two packs of Marlboro Lights, one unopened, the other with only a few cigarettes left; a purple plastic Bic lighter; and a small black plastic portable radio with an extendable antenna, batteries dead.
August spread the cushion out and lay back with his head on the pillow. Out of the corner of his eye he spotted a single long blond hair on the white cotton pillowcase, and he plucked it up and held it to the sky. The sun illuminated the strand; it shone a clear glassine honey. He brought it close to his nose, and of course there was no scent. A single strand of hair was not enough to retain the odor of shampoo, smoke, sweat, perfume. Probably not two strands, either, or three or even four. But, at some point, gather enough strands and you had something discernibly human.
August blew the hair away and reached for the cigarettes. After several flicks, the lighter caught and he leaned back, puffing a stale-tasting Marlboro Light, already feeling the tingle as the intense sun started to burn his pale bare chest and limbs. He tried, unsuccessfully, to blow smoke rings. He tried to take a nap but couldn’t. He wished he hadn’t lost his beer. While fishing out another Marlboro, he noticed something tucked away behind the remaining cigarettes. It was a Polaroid of a couple, about August’s age by the looks of it. They were sitting on one of the sandstone rocks in this very place, both of them sun-browned and blond, squinting into the camera that the man had obviously held at arm’s length. He had his free arm around the girl’s bare shoulder, both of them shirtless; naked probably—although their lower bodies weren’t in the frame, their faces seemed like those of naked people, somehow. The woman’s hair long and blond and loose, flowing down past her small breasts. Her erect nipples parted the gold current on both sides, pinkish and pointing out slightly. The boy had shaggy hair, disheveled like he’d just taken off his hat or maybe the girl had just run her fingers through it. They wore cheesy smiles, mugging for the camera. They could have been free-loving hippies, a Woodstock photo, or a California surf couple circa 1960.
August looked at the picture for a long time. Trying to imagine himself inhabiting a moment in such a way, at ease with a woman like that.
He flicked his butt into the Musselshell and shrugged back into his still-damp clothes. He repacked the grain bag, folded the cushion, and covered the whole thing with the tarp, like he’d found it. Then he tucked the Polaroid into his T-shirt pocket, where it wouldn’t get wet during the many stream crossings to come as he made his way back to the truck.
“You’re wearing that?”
August looked down at his shirt. “So what?”
“It’s like tropical birds, man. You can’t go to a rodeo in a dingy-ass gray shirt. You need plumage. Hold on. I’ll be back.”
August sat with his truck idling while Tim ran back inside his house. In a few moments he came out, then stopped on the porch, the screen door open behind him. August had the windows down, and he could hear Tim talking to someone in the house. “I said I’ll be back early, and I’ll be back, fuck. Lay off me.” He let the door slam behind him and came off the porch shaking his head, a grin on his face. He swung into the truck and threw a shirt in August’s lap. August held it up. It was a silk pearl-snap, a blue-and-white paisley design. “Are you kidding?” August said. “It’s like a clown shirt.”
“Trust me. It’s going to fit you like a glove. And you’re going to have to fight off the buckle bunnies with a stick. The arms are too long for me, and you see how jacked I am. If I flexed I’d blow the buttons out. It was Wes’s—better you have it than letting it go to waste in the closet. You can thank me later. Let’s get the hell out of here before my old man starts in on some more of his bullshit.”
The rodeo was in Gardiner, and August drove south while Tim opened their beers. The two-lane highway was clogged with motor homes and RVs, impatient tourists in rental cars trying to pass on blind curves.
“I never understood the passing thing,” August said. “You nearly kill yourself to do it and then you pretty much always get stuck behind another RV. Like that BMW asshole right there. I guarantee he doesn’t get to Gardiner more than three minutes faster than us.”
“It’s not really about getting there faster,” Tim said. “It’s about getting there on your own terms. Fighting against the slow hordes. These motor homes make me crazy. And you drive like a grandpa.”
“Fifty-five, stay alive,” August said, tipping his beer in Tim’s direction.
They pulled into Gardiner, and there was a solid line of traffic heading to the rodeo grounds. The BMW that had barely avoided a head-on collision was four cars ahead of them in line. A small herd of scraggly elk stood on the high school football field, and people had their car windows down, snapping pictures. August finally found a parking spot and maneuvered his truck in. Tim dropped the tailgate and brought the cooler within easy reach, and they settled back to pregame.
“You going to put that shirt on or what?” Tim said.
August shrugged. “I don’t know if it will fit.”
“You’re pretty much the exact same size as my bro before he went down and gained the freshman fifteen. Just try it on and see.”
“I don’t know.”
“Oh, because he’s dead? Putting on a dead guy’s shirt freaks you out, is that it?”
“A little. What if I get it dirty, or rip it or something?”
“It’s a shirt. Not a relic. Wes had a million of the damn things. He was kind of a dude that way. Liked to get all fancied up. I already tossed out, like, twenty of them. You could get in a knife fight in the damn thing for all I care. Just put the stupid thing on and get loose.”
August shrugged the shirt on and buttoned it up. He smoothed it over his chest. “I’ve never worn a silk shirt before,” he said.
“Tuck it in, you heathen.”
August tucked the shirt in, and Tim handed him a beer. “My bro would be proud. And your girl is probably going to get all swoony just looking at you.”
“My girl?”
“Mayra.”
“Maya?”
“Yeah, her.”
“She’s going to be here?”
“Of course.”
“How do you know?”
“I’ve been talking to Christi. She wants round number two, no surprise. Anyway, she says Maya has been asking about you. Apparently you didn’t get her phone number? Amateur move, pal. Or maybe you’re dumb like a fox. A woman who knows you like her will ignore you quicker than shit.”
“Dumb like a fox,” August said. “Yeah, that’s definitely it.”
“Well, whatever it is, I’m a results-oriented man myself, doesn’t matter. She’s into you, and she’s smoking hot. Since you kind of ditched her last time you’re going to have to apply a little more pressure tonight. The old hard-to-get routine works for only so long, and then they just give up and take up with the next swinging dick. That’s some advice Wes gave me. There’s always another one of you out there, so don’t go getting it in your head that you’re special. Men are expendable. It’s like evolution. It’s like hunting season. The draft.”
“Hunting season?”
“Yeah. Why is it that you can shoot your limit of rooster pheasants or drake mallards or whatever, but there’s always a restriction on the female side of things?”
“People want trophies?”
“Well, maybe that makes sense for elk, but for all the other stuff, not so much. You just don’t need as many males around. Genetically speaking. One weenie can service many wombs. Ladies have an innate understanding of this reality, and so they don’t need to put up with a bunch of bullshit from any one dude. Hear me?”
“Interesting theory.”
“Keep hanging around me, pal. You’re bound to learn.”
August tugged at his collar and held an arm out. “I feel ridiculous in this thing.”
“Shut up. You’re a magnificent peacock; spread your feathers. Here come the ladies.”
Christi wore a man’s Wrangler shirt tied up at her midriff, jean shorts cut off so high the crease where her buttocks joined her thigh was clearly visible. Maya wore a pale yellow sundress that hugged her hips and flared at the upper thigh, her legs long and bare. Devoid of freckles, he noticed. Tim let out a low whistle and swooped Christi up into a kiss.
Maya shook her head and rolled her eyes and hopped up to sit on the truck tailgate next to August. She took the sleeve of his shirt between her fingers and rubbed. “Wow,” she said.
“I know. It’s ridiculous. Tim made me wear it.”
“No, it’s amazing. That’s silk, isn’t it?”
“Afraid so.”
“So soft. It must feel great. You look great. It’s nice to see you, by the way.”
“You look great, too.”
Maya laughed and tossed her hair dramatically. “Well, aren’t we just great!” She looked at Tim and Christi, embracing next to the truck, whispering things into each other’s ears and laughing. Tim had a hand firmly clenched on each of Christi’s partially exposed ass cheeks.
“Not as great as those two, apparently. Are you going to offer a girl a beer, or what?”
The post-rodeo dance was held at the Blue Goose. The crowd of people spilled out of the open doors onto the street, and August and Tim followed the girls as they made their way through the tightly packed throng. At the edge of the stage, Christi produced a silver flask from her tight back pocket, unscrewed the cap, took a long slug, and then passed it. The flask was body-hot and the whiskey burned. August coughed and passed it back to Christi, and then Maya was grabbing his hand and pulling him out on to the dance floor.
It was so crowded that actual dancing was mostly out of the question. Maya pressed against him and they just revolved. He tried to spin her but there was no room, and she came back to him, laughing, after bouncing off a wall of bodies. She had her thigh fit in between his, and he could feel the firmness of her breasts pushing tight below his sternum.
When the song ended, Maya said she had to go to the bathroom and headed off through the crowd. August looked around for Tim and Christi, but they were nowhere to be seen. He worked his way toward the bar, and when he was finally able to belly up he found himself wedged between a crew of guys about his age, summer Stetsons and fresh-pressed jeans, boots with a level of shine he’d never attempted to achieve. Their shirts were a riot of colors. August would have thought it impossible, but the blue-and-white paisley number he was sporting looked almost inconspicuous next to theirs. They were talking about the rodeo. Apparently, a bull rider had been thrown and had landed awkwardly. The sound of his leg breaking had been audible in the grandstands.
“Could you hear it from where you were sitting, man?” a guy in a fuchsia shirt with embroidered stars over the pockets said. August realized he was talking to him and shook his head. “When I go to the rodeo, I don’t actually go to the rodeo,” August said. “I just go to the bar.” The guys all laughed at this and then they were ordering shots and the bartender was setting them up on the bar: Jägermeister, black and evil-looking in the glass. One of the crew pressed a shot into August’s hand, and they all tossed them back. August felt the Jägermeister settle on top of the whiskey in a less than pleasant manner. He tried, unsuccessfully, to get one of the bartenders’ attention to ask for a beer and a glass of water. In the mirror of the backbar, he saw Maya coming through the crowd. He was turning to suggest they step outside for some air, when he saw her reach for a hand and lead the fuchsia shirt out onto the dance floor.
August watched for a moment. Maya had her leg fit in between fuchsia shirt’s legs. She was right up against him, and they found a pocket of open space and he spun her, rotated and caught her hands behind his back in a move that August didn’t know. He didn’t have to watch long to realize fuchsia shirt was a much better dancer than him. Maya was smiling from ear to ear. Her freckles glowing, hair tossing around her face, her dress rising as she spun, a momentary blurred hint of white panties.
“Goddamn, Trey has a live one there,” one of the guys said and nodded at Maya.
August turned back to the bar. “Let’s do more shots,” he said.
By the time August finally punched fuchsia shirt, the Blue Goose had long been a carnival fun house of faces and hats, belt buckles and barstools; he’d already been to the bathroom and heaved the contents of his stomach. He swished his mouth out at the sink and wiped his face with paper towels. He stumbled through the crowd and saw Maya leaning into fuchsia shirt at the bar. He had his arm around her. He was saying something into her ear and she was laughing, and August pulled him around by his shoulder. Fuchsia shirt said something like, “Hey, dick, watch out.” August saw Maya’s look of surprise, and then he tried to give fuchsia shirt everything he had to the side of the head.
August’s aim was slightly off and his fist only glanced off the back of fuchsia shirt’s head, sending his hat flying. Fuchsia shirt still went down, dazed, hands on knees, and August was going for the choke hold when someone hit him from behind. He crashed into fuchsia shirt, and they went down in a heap. He saw the pale yellow of Maya’s dress sprawling toward the floor and then it was a melee of faceless limbs, disembodied fists. He took a knee to the face and there was an immediate spill of blood from his nose. His eyes puddled and blurred with tears. Someone was punching him repeatedly in the ribs, and then that person was gone and August got his forearm around fuchsia shirt’s neck and he could clearly feel the coarse stubble of his jaw through the silk and he was trying to get a deeper purchase when there were hands on his shoulders pulling him back and Tim’s voice saying, “We’re done, we’re done. Stop, August, you fucker.”
He let Tim yank him to his feet, and together they stumbled out through the overturned barstools and spilled drinks, August trying to wipe his face, spitting blood.
They sat in August’s truck, Tim behind the wheel. “Well, that got Western,” Tim said. “You’re shit-faced, aren’t you?”
August didn’t say anything. Pressed his face to the cool glass of the truck window.
“I was out back having a cigarette with Christi and then we come inside and it’s a free-for-all. What did that asshole say to you, anyway?”
“I don’t know. It was all just stupid. Maya was there, and I punched him.”
“I see. It was that kind of deal. I did notice them dancing. I’d like to be able to tell you that getting in a brawl will impress her, but I honestly don’t really think that’s going to be the case, Hoss.”
“It was stupid.”
“You were trying to squeeze that dude’s head off. Bunch of frat boys. That one that was whaling on you from behind—I dotted him good. He’s probably in there looking for his teeth.” Tim sucked on the bleeding knuckles of his right hand. “Well, I suppose we should get out of here before those assholes regroup. Or the cops show up. Keys?”
“I can drive.”
“I don’t think so.”
“I’m fine.”
“Keys.” Tim stretched out his hand, palm up. “Come on, cough ’em up, Rocky.” August gave him the keys and they were starting to pull away when the girls appeared in the headlights. Maya was at the window. “What’s your problem, August?” she said.
“Sorry,” August said. “I don’t know.”
“I think everyone’s a little drunk,” Tim said.
“I’m not drunk at all. Look at my leg,” Maya raised her leg and even in the dim streetlight glow the large bruise on her thigh was already visible. “Who gets in fights over dancing? What are you, twelve? Say something.”
“Sorry. I don’t know.”
“God. You’re so weird.” Maya turned and strode away, pulling Christi with her by the hand.
Tim drove the winding road through Yankee Jim Canyon, the big river down there—a churning mass of boulder-strewn rapids. The headlights lit the white memorial crosses on the curves—a deadly stretch of road—and Tim drove with two fingers on the wheel. He’d procured a beer somewhere, and he had it jammed between his legs, swigging occasionally. No music on, just the rush of air from the lowered windows. August pressed his nose on either side, feeling the crusted blood there.
“That thing broken?” Tim said.
“Not sure. Doesn’t feel good.”
“I think if it’s broken you know in a hurry. I think you might need an alignment.”
“Huh?”
“Your truck. It’s pulling a little left. I think it’s out of alignment.”
“Maybe. I don’t know.”
“When’s the last time you rotated your tires?”
“I have no idea.”
“Sometimes they do it when you get an oil change. When did you get an oil change last?”
“I can’t remember right now.”
“Don’t you put the receipt in your glove box? We could probably figure it out.”
“Tim, I don’t really give a shit.”
“Okay, fine. I’m just trying to make conversation.”
“Well, don’t feel like you have to on my account.”
“Okay. Fine.”
They were silent for a few miles. And then August said, “You ever see a buffalo jump?”
“I thought we weren’t talking.”
“Have you?”
“Jump over what? Like, have I seen a buffalo jump over a fence?”
“No, I mean an old Indian buffalo jump. A place where they used to run them over a cliff. I found one way back in the hills on a place I used to work. Bunch of broken skulls and stuff. You could see where they’d come over the edge and then where they’d land on the rocks below. Must have been a hell of a thing to see. A whole herd coming over like that.”
“Yeah? And?”
“And, that’s it. I was just thinking about it. Buffalo herds have a lead bull and the Indians would get that one spooked and running and the rest would just follow him right over the edge.”
“Dumb animals if you ask me. You probably couldn’t get cattle to stampede over a hill. And they’re plenty dumb, so that’s saying something.”
“I was thinking that when there’s a stampede going, at some point, the buffalo have to realize what’s going on. Most of them just follow blindly, but then when enough of them have jumped off into space, one of the guys in the back must be kind of like, Well, wait a minute, I see what’s going on here. Maybe I’ll just run in a different direction. And then, when he starts off, some of the others start following him and then just like that they’re all running behind him and he’s leading them off to safety. And since the old lead bull is down at the bottom of a ravine getting butchered, does that mean the new guy takes his spot?”
“I don’t think buffalo hold elections or anything like that. So yeah, probably he’s the man now.”
“What I was thinking was that at some point in the future, the Indians will come up on them again and get the stampede going and the new lead bull will do the same damn thing as the one before him. See what I mean? It’s just a cycle of stampedes. One animal following another, off the cliff or to safety, it doesn’t really matter. No heroes. We go around all day on the earth, one direction to the next, just following the ass in front of us. Like with women. Right about when you start thinking you’re the lead bull, that’s when the earth comes out from under your feet. You’d think we’d learn, but there hasn’t been an original idea in the world since Adam first stuck it to Eve. Probably the best way to go about things is to just live out your days solitary and then, when it’s time, go wander off into the brush to die.”
“Sounds lonely.”
“At least it’s dignified.”
“This is getting pretty metaphysical. You got your cage rattled, didn’t you?”
“Sorry I got blood all over your shirt.”
Tim looked over at August. He flicked on the dome light and shook his head. “It’s ruined. How could you?” he said. “That was my last link to my beloved dead brother and now I have nothing to remember him by. I used to smell it every night before saying my prayers.” He flicked off the dome light and laughed. “No heroes? You’re just now coming to that conclusion? Welcome to the planet the rest of us have been living on, pal.”
It was early evening when August drove the four-wheeler into the shop. He’d been out setting new fence posts on the high ground above the ranch house. Jimmy Buffett was blaring from the fly-specked stereo. To be a cheeseburger in paradise / I’m just a cheeseburger in paradise. Ancient was there, ducked up under the cowl of the round baler.
“Fuck,” he said. “Fucking cunt-nut. Get the fuck on there, you motherfucking fuck.” He pulled his head out, nodded at August, and threw the wrench he’d been holding so it banged hollowly on the sheet metal on the opposite side of the shed. He wiped his forehead with the back of his sleeve. “How’d your day go?” he said quietly.
“All right,” August said. “Got a few more posts to set tomorrow and then I can start stringing up the new wire.” August topped off the four-wheeler with gas. Ancient, watching him, raised his eyebrows at the sight of August’s still-swollen nose and cheek, but didn’t say anything. “That hill is steep up there,” August said. “I feel like one of my legs is shorter than the other.”
“Yep,” Ancient said. “That’ll happen.” He’d ducked under the baler again, and then he came up suddenly with another wrench that he gave the same treatment as the first. After hitting the side of the shed it clinked to the cement floor and Ancient shook his head. Wiped the grease from his hands on a rag. He punched a button on the radio, silencing Buffett. “That has to be the stupidest song in the world. You look like you could use a beer, and this baler is shortening my life expectancy every time I look at it. I’m sick of feeling sober. Let’s go to town.”
As Ancient drove he thwacked his chew can on his thigh and packed a large dip in his lower lip. “Grass is looking decent,” he said, nodding at the glistening-wet field, a rainbow forming in the spray of the big irrigation pivot. “We’ll be doing first cutting before you know it.”
“Looks like it.”
“You ever go to the Big Hole Valley? Down by Wisdom?”
“Wisdom?”
“Yeah, that’s the town name. Wisdom. Hardly anything there. A bar. Maybe a post office. They still do hay the old way over there, with a beaver slide. You ever see that? Crazy thing. They’ve got this wooden contraption, kind of like a big scaffold ramp with a sliding platform. Some of the old boys still use horses with a buck rake. They push the hay onto the platform, and then they have another team that’s hooked up to pull the platform. The hay goes up the ramp, and when it hits the top all the hay flips off onto the pile. There’s a couple guys up on top with hayforks tamping everything down and evening it out.”
“So, no bales?”
“Nope. You just get a giant stack, like thirty feet high. Only works in real dry places, because a big pile like that is prone to rot. But just think of it—no goddamn baling machines to ruin your life.”
“You’d have to deal with horses, though.”
“Some guys just use tractors to run the slide.”
“Well, maybe we should build one and give it a try.”
Ancient laughed and shook his head. “Wouldn’t that be funny? The looks I’d get from the old codgers around here if I threw up a giant haystack.”
“It’s dry enough up here, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, but when the wind gets going in the winter that whole stack would vaporize.”
“I hadn’t considered that.”
“It’s nice to think about, though. Just hooking up the team and going to work. Of course, it would take about four people and a couple days to finish a field that a single guy with a tractor and baler could do in a few hours.” Ancient parked across the street from the Mint and shut the truck off, the diesel ticking. “The good old days,” he said, shaking his head. “Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be.”
Ancient was drinking his beers two to one ahead of August. He put five bucks in a keno machine and won fifty, and so then they were doing shots of whiskey. He loaded up the jukebox and came back to his stool next to August. “I haven’t tied on a daytime buzz in a long time,” he said. “Can’t even remember when. Pre-Kim, that’s for sure.”
“How’s that going, anyway? Kim?”
Ancient shrugged. “She’s down in Billings. She’s got it in her head that she can’t live up here, it’s too small, nothing for her to do.”
“But didn’t she know that going in? You own a ranch. Wasn’t like you pulled a bait and switch on her.”
“I guess. Truth be told, it’s not so much that she doesn’t like the ranch. When we were first dating we’d go on hikes all over, and she’d go on and on about how beautiful it was and how she’d love to just live in a place away from everything else. She likes the ranch. And she likes me well enough. Me and the ranch aren’t the problem.”
“What’s the problem, then?”
Ancient took his hat off and scratched his head, settled it back down, spun his bottle on the bar a few times. “There’s some people around here that just can’t mind their own business. People that have some kind of grudge against me for one reason or another, and instead of approaching me about it man to man, they decide to slander my fiancée and leave shitty little notes in the mailbox and things like that.”
“Notes in the mailbox?”
“Yeah, can you believe it? How can you call yourself a man if you’re going around slipping notes to people in their mailboxes?”
“What kind of notes?”
Ancient looked at August narrowing his eyes. “Are you telling me you have no idea what I’m talking about? You haven’t heard anything about Kim? You’ve been hanging out with Timmy. I have a real hard time believing that he hasn’t talked some shit.”
August scratched at the label on his beer. “I don’t know.”
“What don’t you know?”
“I don’t know.”
“I know you know. You acting like you don’t know is just going to set me off. Tell me what you heard and then we can go from there.” Ancient had both his hands balled on his thighs. He was leaning back on his stool, not taking his eyes from August.
“Tim told me one time that I ought to check out the sex offender registry in Meagher County. That’s it.”
“He just told you to check it out, didn’t tell you why?”
“He said he wasn’t going to talk about anyone behind their back.”
“And you went and looked.”
August shrugged.
“Did you go and look it up or not? Tell me flat out.”
“I looked.”
“You were curious.”
“I guess.”
“Sure, a guy tells you to check out the sex offender list and doesn’t tell you why—of course you’re going to look. It’s human nature. Hey.” Ancient reached over and slapped August’s leg. “I’m not pissed at you. You’re a good guy and you mind your business, I know that. But you read what you read in that registry, and now you’ve got questions.”
“You don’t have to tell me anything.”
Ancient finished his beer and set it down hard on the bar top. “Hell, I know that,” he said. “I don’t need you telling me what I don’t have to tell you.”
“Okay then.”
“Okay then. Look at you, Mr. Cool. Acting like you weren’t foaming at the mouth to find out just who was the pervert on the list. Were you surprised it was Kim? Did you think it was going to be me?”
“I didn’t think anything. It was Tim that brought it up.”
“That I don’t doubt. That little shit. I don’t know who did it, him or his dad, but I guarantee it was one of those two. My bet is on Big Tim, because he’s twisted and he spends all his time looking up conspiracy theories on the Internet when he should be out handling his business. He’s a piss-poor cattleman, always was. I bought that chunk of pasture from him at a fair price rather than let the bank take it from him, and he acts like I stole it. And then Kim finds a little anonymous note in the mailbox. Calling her a pervert and a pedophile and a dyke and whatever. She moved up here in the first place to get away from all that noise. She thought this was a place where she could go about her life and people would leave her alone. You know what she did? Her big crime? I’ll just tell you flat out. She was a student teacher—”
“I really don’t care. I don’t even really want to know.”
“You don’t want to know?” Ancient laughed and shook his head. “I could almost believe that’s true. You’ve been working for me for a while now, and I pretty much don’t know a damn thing about you. I get the sense that’s how you want it, and that’s all well and good. But Kim and I are decent people and you’re going to know the root of this thing whether you want it or not, because I’m going to tell you and you’re going to listen. Kim was a student teacher. Twenty-three years old, at a high school in Boise. She was also helping out with the girls’ volleyball team and one of the girls got infatuated with her. Fifteen or sixteen years old, a high school junior.
“Now, Kim is the first person to admit that she showed some bad judgment. Okay? She knows she messed up, but Jesus Christ, she’s been branded some kind of predator for the rest of her life. She and this girl got close and they took a couple showers together, or whatever. Doesn’t really matter. Kim realized it had gone a little too far and so she cut it off, and then the girl got all mental. She acted like a jilted lover. Started calling Kim and showing up at her house at all hours, and then when Kim kept turning her away she went to her parents and said that her teacher had touched her inappropriately in the shower, and of course one thing led to another. You’re trying to tell me that a twenty-three-year-old woman soaping up with a very consenting fifteen-year-old girl is the same thing as some defect molesting his ten-year-old niece? It’s ridiculous. And then to have a puke like Duncan putting his little notes in your mailbox when you’re just trying to live your life? I don’t really blame her for taking off. Anyway, let me pay for these.” Ancient looked at his watch. “Feed-n-Need will still be open if we hustle. I’ve got a purchase I’ve been meaning to make.”
On the short drive across town, Ancient said, “Remember that time you dropped my chainsaw into the river?”
August shook his head.
“No? You don’t remember that?”
“I remember it a little different.”
“What’s the saying? History is just the memories of the victors? Something like that. We’re all pretty much constantly victorious in our own minds.”
“You had me out on a sketchy tree in the middle of a river, and I slipped and nearly cut my foot off.”
“Don’t get all huffy. I’m just needling you. That thing was older than the hills anyway.”
At the Feed-n-Need, Ancient bought a brand-new Stihl MS 311 with an eighteen-inch bar. It came with a spare chain and a heavy-duty orange plastic case. The Feed-n-Need employee threw in a gallon can of gas, a pair of safety goggles, and ear plugs. It was the same old-timer with the tobacco-stained beard, and when he recognized August he pointed and said, “The fisherman returns. How was your luck?”
“Not too good. I got skunked.”
“Did you do like I told you and go to Martinsdale and cast off the reeds at the south side?”
“I just went down to the Musselshell.”
“Well, shit. No wonder.” He shook his head and smiled, winking at Ancient. “You try to help out the youth, and it’s like their ears are deaf to the words coming out of your mouth. You give a kid a hot tip, and he goes and fishes where there aren’t any fish.”
Ancient signed his receipt and hefted his saw. “I’ve always preferred going fishing where there’s no fish. Your naps don’t get interrupted as much that way.”
“You know the saying. Give a man a fish, he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he’ll be a bum for the rest of his life.”
“Good one,” August said.
Tobacco beard hooked his thumb in August’s direction and spoke to Ancient. “This one’s not overly impressed with my humor.”
“Don’t take it personal,” Ancient said. “I saw him smile once. I think.”
In the parking lot, Ancient put the saw and gas in the back of his truck, slammed up the tailgate, and slapped his hands together. “Now, that’s shopping,” he said. “Get in and get out. A purchase a man can feel good about. A lot of money to shell out, but I’ll have that saw for fifteen years, if I can keep it out of your hands.” Ancient laughed. “Your face. It’s just too easy.”
On the road home, dark now, with a half-moon hanging over the valley, the irrigation lines spraying silver under its light, Ancient rolled his window down and took a big breath, letting it out in a long whistle. “Goddamn,” he said. “There’s something about coming into possession of a new chainsaw that makes a man eager to cut something down. I’ve just had a brilliant idea.”
Ancient took the Dry Creek cutoff road and they rattled over a cattle guard, off the pavement, the truck light in the back, skittering over the washboards. They were nearing the Duncan place, and when the first sign loomed white in the headlights Ancient slowed, put the truck in park, and hopped out. August turned in the seat to watch. Ancient had the saw out and was tipping up the gas can, his face glowing red in the taillights. He pulled the cord twice, adjusted the choke, pulled it once more, and the saw roared to life. He revved it a few times and stepped off the road into the ditch. The saw hardly paused as he ran it through the first two-by-four signpost.
“Hoo boy, that’s a sharp saw,” he yelled. “Come on. Slide over behind the wheel and drive me up the road. I’ll be in the back. We’re getting all these stupid things.” Ancient tossed the sign in the truck bed and sat on the tailgate, the saw idling next to him. August drove and they progressed this way—Ancient hopping out to cut the signs, the pile of them in the back of the truck growing—until they reached the head of the Duncans’ driveway.
Ancient had August back the truck in, and he kicked and slid the signs out of the bed onto the driveway, over a dozen of them, a pile hip high. Ancient put the saw back in its case and then emptied the gas can over the signs. He put the can in the truck and produced a book of matches from his pocket. The match popped to life in his hand, and when he dropped it the signs erupted with a deep thump of blue-orange flame. From the truck August could just make out the lettering on the top sign—PREVENT WHITE GENOCIDE!—the paint beginning to bubble and melt.
Ancient swung into the cab and August accelerated away, the bonfire fading in the rearview. Ancient wasn’t saying anything, and August could smell chainsaw gas. When they got home—the engine ticking, the house in front of them empty and black—Ancient finally laughed. He took off his hat and rubbed his head and opened his door. He paused with his foot on the running board.
“I bought me and Kim tickets to Jamaica for our honeymoon. We were going to go this fall.”
“Jamaica. Really?”
“She said she wanted to go one time when we were first dating. She really likes coffee. They have the best coffee in the world there. Blue Mountain. And, believe it or not, I like the marijuana smoke occasionally. They’ve got the best of that, too. And beaches. I’ve always wanted to go scuba diving.”
“You still think you’ll go?”
“Hard to say.”
“Probably expensive tickets.”
“I bought traveler’s insurance. They recommended I do that. Especially because it was a honeymoon trip. The travel agent I used said that it would definitely be a good idea, because things happen. I asked her what she meant by things happen, and she said that people have been known to change their minds. Also, hurricanes. I told myself I bought it because of the hurricanes. I think she threw that in there for that very reason. No one wants to believe their honeymoon won’t happen. Getting traveler’s insurance for something like that is kind of like going the prenup route. You know it’s a smart idea, but it’s sort of like setting yourself up to fail. Anyway, if Timmy comes asking you about the signs, you can straight-up tell him I did it.”
“I’m not going to say anything.”
“You don’t have to lie for me.”
“Okay.”
“Shoot. I guess I got a little excited tonight. I might live to have regrets about this. Big Tim is generally not one to let things lie.”
August filled a large bowl with Frosted Shredded Wheat and poured in milk. There was a sunset happening, and he ate his cereal on the small concrete patio behind the bunkhouse, watching it go. Darkness fell, with the first stars coming in like pinpricks, small holes, a buckshot pattern fired into the black sky. August slurped his milk from the bowl and went inside to call his mother.
“Augie!” she said. “It’s great to hear your voice. I was just thinking about you.”
“You always say that.”
“Because it’s always true.”
“Do you really think about me that much, or do I just happen to call when you are?”
“It’s like breathing. Probably is the same for all mothers.”
“Meaning?”
“I don’t make an effort to think about you; it’s just going on constantly in the background. Inhale, exhale. Like that.”
“That’s kind of creepy.”
“And that, in a nutshell, is the plight of mothers everywhere. I don’t know why we continue to put ourselves through it. Anyway, how’d those hamburgers turn out?”
“Hamburgers?”
“Last time we talked you said you were making hamburgers.”
“Oh yeah. They were decent. Not as good as yours.”
“That’s right. And they never will be. Don’t you forget it. What else have you been up to?”
“Mostly just work.”
“Your father’s son. I sometimes think he works so much because it’s easier than coming up with something else he might actually like to do. Be careful about that.”
“I went fishing.”
“Oh? Good for you. Were they biting?”
“Not really. Was nice to get out, though.” There was silence on the line for a moment. And then August could hear a clicking, her lighter, the sharp inhale as she sucked on her Swisher. “So,” she said. “The reason I called you was that Art asked me to marry him, and I just wanted to let you know. I said yes, of course.”
“You didn’t call me,” August said. “I called you.”
“We’re not going to have a ceremony. He’s not religious, either, and we’ve both been through this before. We’ll just go down to the courthouse and then have a party after. I’d like to have a little dinner. Just you, me, and Art. He wants to get to know you better, and I’m certain you two will hit it off if you just give him the time of day. And—this is exciting—Art wants to go on a trip somewhere. The word honeymoon seems a little ridiculous, but there you have it. He’s thinking Greece, and I have to say that I like that idea. He’s big on history. And I’m big on beaches and baklava and spanakopita. So I think both of us will be happy. I haven’t been on a vacation in forever.”
“Vacation. Must be nice.”
“Don’t act like your blind pursuit of work is a virtue. Your father always did that, and it annoyed the hell out of me. When I was a little younger than you, I studied abroad in France and Germany. You could easily do the same if you applied yourself. And anyway, I’m old. I’ve earned a vacation.”
“Well, I hope you get travel insurance.” He could hear her long exhale, could easily picture the fine network of lines around her lips as she pursed them, cigarillo smoldering in her forked fingers. She laughed. “Travel insurance? Why do you say that?”
“Probably an expensive ticket. And things can happen.”
“When you say things, do you have something in particular in mind?”
“I don’t know, Mom. Maybe a hurricane. How long have you and this guy been dating, anyway? It seems kind of drastic.”
“It’s the Mediterranean, hon. They don’t have hurricanes. And at my age it gets increasingly harder to do anything that someone your age might call drastic. So I’m just going to take that as a compliment. How about you? You find any interesting cowgirls up there?”
“Mom.”
“What? You’re always so secretive. Every once and a while you could let me in on some things going on in your life.”
“What do you mean? I wake up, I go to work, I do that all day, and then I go home and go to bed. That’s pretty much it.”
“I don’t buy it. Even your father could only do so much nose-to-the-grindstone before he’d have to go out and blow off some steam. With a waitress, or a hairdresser, or Lisa the milkmaid, or whomever.”
“Jesus, Mom.”
“Well, I’m sorry. It is what it is. I’m not even mad at him anymore. We just got started too young. And we had a lot of fun. I just want you to have a fulfilling life and not have strange hang-ups. Okay? And don’t just knock up the first rancher’s daughter that comes along. These are the thoughts that keep your mother up at night.”
“Thank you. Really appreciate that advice. Stay away from fertile ranchers’ daughters. Check.”
“We moved right during your high school years; I know that wasn’t easy for you. You never took anyone to prom. You never really brought anyone around. And then all that stuff happened with her. I’m not worried, I just, I don’t know. I feel like you’re such an honorable, not to mention good-looking, young man, and you’d have a lot to share with someone. I hope you are having experiences. If you were in college you’d be surrounded, I mean—well, you know how I feel about it. I’ll stop harping.”
“I learned how to dance the other day.”
“You kid.”
“Serious. My friend Tim taught me. We went to a rodeo, and he told me that if I didn’t dance I’d make him look bad and so he showed me a few moves beforehand and it was pretty fun, actually. Not too hard. I danced with ranchers’ daughters of all shapes and sizes.”
“Well, I’m glad. I bet you’re a great dancer. Your dad was rather light on his feet, believe it or not. We’d go to polka parties in Grand Rapids on the weekends when we were first dating. He had the girls lined up around the block. He made me so nervous.”
“Polka parties?”
“Yes indeed. Mostly ironic, but still. Wild times. Well, I’m glad to hear you’re making friends and mingling. Was that so hard? Just a little insight into what exactly you’re up to, and I’m much less worried.”
“There’s no need to be worried. I’m fine.”
“Inhale, exhale, hon. I’ll stop the worrying when I stop the breathing.”
August was at the bottom of an irrigation ditch hauling a ripped section of orange poly tarp out of the mud when Ancient rode up on Chief. He leaned over in the saddle, squinting down at August. “Should have worn your muck boots,” Ancient said. “You’re going to be all squelchy for the rest of the day.”
“Don’t have any muck boots.”
“Feel free to borrow mine next time.”
“I’ve got size thirteen feet.”
“Well, that’s a problem then.”
“This mud smells like ass.”
“That’s a fact. I don’t know how many hours of my life has been spent shuffling those stupid dams around. We used to do all of it with flood, back in the day. We’ll get this switched over to the pivot at some point. When the money comes in. No way to deny it’s more efficient.” Chief stood dumb still except for an occasional tail swish at a buzzing fly. Ancient raked his hat back on his head and sighed. “Yes, sir. Long-term plans are a bitch,” he said. “Owning some ground gets a man looking ahead, balancing the improvements he’d like to make against the things that will realistically show fruit in his life span. And then from there it’s a short trip to thoughts of legacy. You get this land, and then you start realizing that there’s only so much you can do with your allotted time.”
August had the ripped tarp up on the bank now. He was coated in mud to midcalf. “Yeah?” he grunted. “Legacy?”
“Definitely. Three generations of Virostoks right here,” he said, making a circling motion with his hand. “Three generations, and sometimes I think that, for all our striving, what we’ve managed is just a flesh wound on a very small patch of the earth’s hide. There could be three more generations and still we wouldn’t have dug in deep enough to leave a scar worth noticing. When my old man was alive? I never once had thoughts like this.” Ancient lifted his nose and made an exaggerated sniff. “Love the smell of cottonwood in the spring.”
August had the new tarp in place now and was using the shovel to set the cross brace in the soil so it wouldn’t shift when he opened the gate and sent the water flowing down the ditch.
“Cottonwood gives me allergies,” he said, stomping the loose dirt to tamp everything down.
“My old man had the allergies bad. Hay always got him, and cats, too. If he so much as came into a room where a cat had been, his eyes would get all red and he’d start hacking and coughing and sneezing.” Ancient had a small soft cooler tied up on the back of his saddle, and he turned and unzipped it. He pulled out two cold cans of Pabst and reached one down toward August. “Getting hot out here,” he said. “Take a breather and have a beer with me.”
August clapped the dirt off his gloves, leaned on his shovel, hawked, and spit into the dirt at his feet. “It sounds good,” he said. “But if I drink one now I’ll just get tired. I’ve still got those three tarps to move and set on the east side.”
“It’s just one beer.” Ancient tossed the can so August had no choice but to catch it. “It’s my old man’s birthday today. He would have been eighty-four. That’s why I’m out exercising this old bag of bones here.” Ancient slapped Chief’s haunch, and Chief, unconcerned, continued pulling up mouthfuls of the long grass at the ditch’s edge.
August cracked the beer and it foamed up through the mouth of the can, spilling down his wrist. He took a drink, shoved the spade head-down into the soft dirt, and leaned against the parked four-wheeler.
“You see that up there?” Ancient pointed up toward a low hill at the back of the field, half a mile distant. “That juniper tree sticking up from the ledge rock?”
August shaded his eyes from the sun. “That little one by itself, all twisted up and gnarly looking?”
Ancient nodded. “That’s the one. My old man wanted his ashes buried up there, under that tree.”
“Ashes buried?”
“Yeah. Most people that get cremated want their ashes scattered, I know. My old man wanted to get cremated, but he wanted his ashes buried. I don’t think he liked the idea of his parts just scattering out willy-nilly. Wanted everything to be contained in one area. I go to the funeral parlor and they’ve got his remains in this little cardboard box. They tried to sell me all sorts of urns and things, but I said nah. My old man had a thermos. A big Stanley, all beat up and dented. I don’t think he ever washed it out, not once. He brought that thing with him everywhere. I took the cardboard box home and I got a funnel from the shop and I funneled my old man’s ashes into the coffee thermos, screwed the cap on tight, and Chief and I rode him up to that little rise with the little juniper tree. I had a shovel with me, thinking I was going to bury the thermos, but when I made it all the way up there I found out that the tree is growing out of a crack in bare rock. It’s the only tree around because there’s nothing but sandstone except for one crack, and that’s where its roots had gotten their hold. So I ended up just wedging the thermos down in the crack and piling up some rocks around it. Seemed to work out okay. Every year on his birthday I go up and check on it.”
August wiped the sweat beading on his forehead with the back of his sleeve and settled his cap down. “Most likely, buried under rocks way up there, nothing would mess with it.”
“I suppose not. That thermos with my old man’s ashes will definitely outlast me and my time. If I ever had kids, probably theirs, too.”
“Those Stanleys are bombproof. What’s that thing they were always saying in science class—matter can’t be created or destroyed, just changed. Right?”
“That seems familiar. Apply that to a person and you might be tempted to call it immortality.”
“Or eternal imprisonment,” August said.
Ancient drained his beer and crunched the can against the pommel. “All of that depends on what side of the bed you woke up on in the morning, I guess.”
“Probably true.”
They didn’t say anything for a moment, and in this period of quiet Chief released a burst of wet flatulence. Ancient laughed and shook his head. “That’s what ol’ Chief thinks about our philosophizing. You done with that? Hand me the can. Okay. Well, I’ve got to get on. I’m headed up to that rise to sit for a spell with my back to the juniper tree, ponder eternity, and survey my holdings. Keep up the good work.”
Later that night August made tacos. He stirred a packet of store-bought taco seasoning into a pan of ground beef and waited for it to brown. He chopped a small white onion and put a stack of soft corn tortillas in the microwave. It was a mild evening, and he had the bunkhouse window open, hoping to hear the yodeling of the coyote pack that seemed to hunt frequently in the low hills behind the house. When the meat was ready he spooned it onto the tortillas and sprinkled on the raw onion, eating standing over the stove so that whatever fell from the tortilla landed back in the pan. He’d forgotten to buy salsa or cheese, and the tacos were dry and bland. He ate because he was hungry, but when he was full he considered the ground beef left in the pan and tried to imagine it reincarnated as leftovers. He ended up scraping the whole mess into the trash. When he was at the sink washing his dishes in front of the open window, he heard a voice, indistinct and soft, coming from the corral.
He opened the bunkhouse door slowly, wiping his hands dry on his jeans, stepping barefoot out onto the small patio. Standing at the corner of the bunkhouse he could see around to the far edge of the corral. Ancient was there, sitting on the top fence rail, facing away from August. He wore a white undershirt and jeans. He sat with slumped shoulders, his back curved in an unnatural arc, the knobby ridge of his spine protruding. A sickle moon cast the yard in dim light, everything matte, monochromatic, except for the bottle of vodka—on a post next to Ancient’s right hand—which glowed as if lit from within. Chief was standing close and Ancient was reaching to stroke his muzzle.
Ancient was talking, but August couldn’t make out the words. The horse was making a strange grumbling whinny and nodding its head, reaching for the apple half Ancient had in his outstretched palm. There was the sound of appreciative horsey chewing, then Chief blowing and shaking out his mane. Ancient tipped the bottle so that, from where August stood, it appeared that the moon had become imprisoned within the glass itself and Ancient’s drinking was nothing more than an attempt to reach it—as if, when he finally gulped the moon to his lips, he was going to take it in his mouth and spit it back to its rightful place in the sky.
August was done for the day. He was drinking a beer on the porch when his father called.
“You finally thawing a bit out there?” his father said.
“Yeah, it’s been nice.”
“You got a cold? Your nose sounds stuffed up or something.”
“Allergies, I think. The cottonwoods by the river are putting out a lot of pollen.”
“You taking an antihistamine?”
“I haven’t been.”
“Well, you probably should. You can get the twenty-four-hour stuff over the counter now. Generic so it’s not too expensive.”
“I’ll check it out.”
“We didn’t get the rain we normally get in April. I’m a little worried about what that’s going to mean come summer. But then again I’ve seen it warm and dry in April and then rain every day in May and June; you never really know.”
“Yeah, you can never tell.”
“I put a new coat of paint on the barn and milking parlor. Haven’t done that since probably before you were born.”
“What color?”
“Barn is red. Milking parlor is white.”
“So, exactly the same as before?”
“Same as before. Just freshened it up a little. It was Lisa’s idea. Nice bright white trim on the barn. I didn’t think it looked too bad, but now that it’s done I guess I can see her point. She says that if your work environment is attractive to the eye then you go about your day a little jauntier. That may or may not be true. But take it from me, if your girlfriend is happy you’re bound to be a little jauntier yourself.”
“I talked to Mom the other day. She says her boyfriend proposed. They’re going to get married. Did she tell you?”
There was a pause. A low whistle. A soft laugh. “No, I guess my invite got lost in the mail.”
“She said they’re not going to go have a church ceremony or anything. Just go to the courthouse and then have a little party after. She wants me to come down for dinner to get to know her boyfriend.”
“Well, of course.”
“Pretty soon we’re going to be smack in the middle of haying. Ancient isn’t going to be impressed with me asking for time off.”
“I’m sure you could get away for an evening.”
“You know how haying is, though. Sometimes you have to just work until it’s done or else you’ll be stuck with it laying down when it rains.”
“Oh, you don’t have to tell me. Once when I was about your age I was helping my dad put up hay in a section we were leasing over in Mecosta. We had the whole field cut and we were just starting to bale. We had this old John Deere round baler, and the hydraulic pump that runs the little arm that feeds out the twine was on the fritz. We messed around with it and my dad finally got so pissed that we called it a day and were going to come back in the morning and get it straightened out. We’d put up about two bales out of a forty-some-bale field. That night it started to rain and it didn’t stop for nearly three weeks and everything just rotted where it lay. I think Dad was bitter about that until his death. We could have just kept filling the pump with fluid and limped it along. An expensive way to learn a lesson for sure. I hadn’t realized your mom and that guy were getting all that serious. Seems kind of sudden if you ask me.”
“It’s been over a year.”
“That long? Is he a good guy? What’s your impression of him?”
“I hardly know him. She met him at the library.”
“He works there?”
“No, I think he works over at the university. He was just coming into the library a lot or something.”
“I see. Well, I looked at your extended forecast out there and they’re calling for a slightly cooler than average summer with average to slightly above average precipitation.”
“Yeah?”
“That’s what it said. So as long as you guys get your hay up it should be pleasant and not too hot. But you never know. I’ve seen those long-range forecasts be so wrong it’s not even funny. I didn’t even realize that they were living together.”
“They’re not. I don’t think. At least not full time, anyway. He’s got a place over in Bozeman.”
“So is she going to sell hers and move in with him?”
“I really have no idea.”
“Probably she’ll just keep hers and rent it out. Or, depending on what his place is like, he’ll move in with her and then they’ll rent out his. That’s what I’d do. Having some rental income is a great way to go. Okay, well, nice talking to you, son. Keep your nose clean.”
“Night, Dad.”
It was around noon, and August took the four-wheeler back to the house for lunch. He was standing in front of his sink eating a ham and cheese sandwich and drinking a Coke when he saw the truck come barreling up the drive, veer around the corral, and keep going, cross-country, through the pasture behind the house.
It was an older Chevy flatbed with a green HANGING R logo on the side. August walked out the door and around the shop, and from there, he could see the truck had come to a stop at the fence line near the top of the hill. A man was out, doing something at the back. The man got back into his truck, pointed it back down the hill, and accelerated. The truck paused for a second and then came down the grade, something silver flashing in its wake. It took August a moment, but he realized that the truck had been hooked up to one of his new corner posts. The driver was roaring down the hill towing thirty yards of fence. T-posts were flopping and falling; the big pressure-treated corner post was bouncing over rocks, the wire strands singing wickedly, screeching and popping. The truck was coming fast toward the yard, and August, still holding his sandwich, ducked back into the shop. From the window, he watched as the truck came to a gravel-crunching stop in the driveway. The man hopped out, his beard a thick gray-black. Short and stocky in a baseball cap, jeans, and grimy white tennis shoes, he moved unhurriedly to the back of his truck and unhooked a tow chain from the corner post. He threw the chain into the bed of his truck, wiped his hands on his jeans, and swung back into the cab. He drove away and August watched the ragged cloud of dust follow his path all the way out the road. He called Ancient from the phone in the bunkhouse. He got voicemail once. He tried again and this time left a message.
“It’s August,” he said. “Not sure if you’re still in Billings, or on your way back, or what. I’m at the house. I think Tim Duncan, Big Tim, just came and pulled out all the fence I built going up the hill behind the shop. Hooked it up to his truck and dragged it. Not sure what you want me to do. I’ll hang around for a while to see if you call back. Okay, bye.”
It was well past dark when August heard Ancient’s pickup come up the drive and then keep going past the house. August stepped out to watch Ancient’s taillights bouncing up the rough track to the upper pasture. When the truck stopped and the door opened, August could see Ancient’s form crossing the headlights. He stood there, illuminated, his hands on his hips, inspecting the line of downed fence. There were coyotes singing in the draw by the creek. Ancient put his head back and let out a howl, and the coyotes went quiet. He howled again, and then a solitary coyote called back, and then another. Ancient kept it up until it sounded like the whole pack was letting loose in a frenzy of yips and yodels. August returned to his bunk, but he could hear the coyotes going for quite some time. There’d been occasions where he’d tried to join the coyotes like Ancient had, but August could never make the right sound, and so he’d always stop, feeling ridiculous.
August had the coffee maker set on a timer, and he came awake slowly to the pissy trickling sound of the pot filling. He slipped on the same jeans he’d worn the day before, three days past due for washing, and poured himself a cup. He took a leak outside, his feet bare, the grass dew-wet, daylight just gaining strength. Back inside he put two pieces of bread down in the toaster and switched on the small radio he kept on the counter. KPIG out of Billings came in, only slightly scratchy. They did the weather; this early in the day it was a mechanized voice reading the report. More sun, no clouds forecasted. No surprise. The first song after the weather was John Mellencamp’s “Jack and Diane,” and August slathered peanut butter on his toast—wishing for jam—and ate it dry and sticky standing at the sink. He’d pinned the Polaroid from the Musselshell up on the wall there and Mellencamp was singing about two American kids growing up in the heartland, and August was looking right at them. Jack and Diane. Two ’merican kids doin’ the best they can. He poured the rest of the coffee from the pot into his travel mug, switched off the radio, slipped on his boots, and went out to gas up the four-wheeler. He had a whole line of dragged fence to rebuild.
Another afternoon under the sun. Rebuilding something that had been torn down was never as satisfying as making new. The first fence had been truer, but in the end he was satisfied. When he came back down the hill in the evening, Kim’s Subaru was parked in the drive. Ancient’s truck was gone, but lights were on in the house. August put the four-wheeler away in the shop. He was walking across the yard to the bunkhouse when Kim stepped out onto the porch and waved him over. She was wearing overalls and yellow rubber cleaning gloves, and had a red paisley handkerchief tied around her head. “Hey, August,” she said, smiling and taking off a glove to shake his hand. “How are things?”
“Good,” August said. “Things are fine. Just finishing up for the day.”
“Great. Well, I’m here for the night. I had to come up and get a few things, and I decided I’d give the house a nice deep clean. Leave Ancient by himself for just a little while and it looks like a bomb erupted. He had to go up to Helena to a breeder to take a look at a bull he might lease. He’s going to be back sometime tomorrow. He told me to tell you that.”
“Sounds good.”
“Hey, would you mind giving me a hand here for a minute? I was hoping to get this elliptical machine on top of my Subaru. It will be a little cumbersome but shouldn’t be too heavy. Maybe you can help me get it secured?”
August followed her into the house, and together they carried the machine, rearranging themselves a couple of different ways to get it out the door and hoisted onto the low roof of the Subaru. She had ratchet straps, and August went to work getting the bulky thing secured. When he was done he gave it a hard shove, and it didn’t budge. “I guess that will do it,” he said. “I’d probably keep it under a hundred on the highway, though.”
“I’ll definitely do that. Thanks for your help. I’m going to make some dinner soon. You probably want to get washed up, but after that, come on up to the house and eat with me.”
“Oh, that’s okay,” August said. “You don’t have to go to any trouble for me. I’ve got stuff I can eat in the bunkhouse.”
“It’s no trouble. I’m cooking anyway. We both need to eat; no sense in doing it separately when we can share. It’ll be ready in about an hour.”
Dinner was overcooked boneless, skinless chicken breasts. Undercooked baked potatoes. Canned green beans.
“Thanks for doing this, Kim,” August said. “The chicken is great.”
“Happy to do it. I marinate the chicken in Wish-Bone Italian dressing. That’s the secret. Gives it a really nice flavor, I think.”
“Never would’ve thought of that.” They were sitting across from each other at the large dining room table. The house was silent around them, empty, with shadows gathering. She’d turned the chandelier lights lower. “Mood lighting,” she’d said with a laugh. She opened a bottle of wine and the room was dim. He’d have preferred it to be brighter.
“So,” she said. “How are you liking it up here? I haven’t seen you in a while.”
“I like it. It’s beautiful country.”
“I can’t argue with that. The country is impeccable. Have you been meeting any of the locals?”
He chewed his chicken. Kept chewing. Chased the swallow with water. “A few,” he said. “People are pretty nice around here, mostly. I think they kind of keep to themselves. Everyone’s got a lot of work to do.”
“I suppose. It’s funny; for how empty and vast it is up here, it can really feel pretty damn crowded sometimes. I’ve actually been surprised by how much I’ve come to enjoy Billings. I’m not going to get into things with me and Ancient. I’m sure you really don’t care about it anyway. But living up here, I’d have to drive a hundred miles to go to a damn yoga class, or get a decent piece of pizza, or see a show. Everything is so far.”
“There’s good things about that, though. No traffic. You don’t have to lock your doors.”
“Sure. I appreciate those things. When I moved here I was looking for some out-of-the-way place where I could just live my life. And then I met Ancient, and he is different from some of the people around here, in a good way. But he’s also one of them, too. Do you admire him? Just a question. I’m curious what you think of him.”
“Ancient is fine. I like him fine. He’s good with cattle. Good at what he does.” August was trying to eat more quickly. He wanted this, whatever this was, to wrap up. He longed for the simple, empty confines of the bunkhouse.
“Sure, but what do you think of him as a person? Is he someone you might ever model yourself after?”
August said nothing. He gave a small shrug and focused his attention on his potato.
“I’m sorry. I guess that’s not really a fair question. He’s your boss. It is what it is.” Kim had refilled her wineglass several times. Her chicken was still mostly intact. “Let’s change the subject,” she said brightly. “So, tell me, have you ever been in love?”
August’s every inclination was telling him to shrug and be noncommittal. To dodge and mumble his way out of this meal, out of this dining room, and out from under this awkward woman’s inquisition. He’d worked all day and he was tired. Instead, he found himself putting his knife and fork down on the plate loudly. “I have,” he said. “Have you?” He looked at her directly for the first time. Something on his face seemed to make her smile falter. She sipped her wine.
“Tell me about her,” she said.
August was very aware of his hands, splayed on the tablecloth. Tanned dark. A dry crack on his thumb. Dirt under the nails, thick veins leading to his wrist. As he spoke he looked at them. “She was my mother’s friend. My last year of high school.”
“So she was much older?”
“Twenty-seven. Ten years older than me at the time.”
“What did she look like? Was she beautiful?”
“She’s tall. Blond. Not skinny. But not fat, either. There’s just lots of her, and it’s not mushy but it’s soft.”
“I can imagine her perfectly. I know that type. And she broke your heart, right?”
“Maybe.”
Kim nodded as if this had confirmed something she’d thought all along. “Are you to the stage yet where you appreciate the experience for what it was? Because you were young and you learned, right? She taught you things?”
August was looking over her shoulder now. Out the window behind her he could see the yard light blink on, glowing green. “She taught me about her. That’s it. And so far, I don’t see how that knowledge could be useful in the future. Because she’s gone. It’s useless knowledge.”
They’d finished the bottle, glasses empty, food cold. “What do you mean? You don’t think all women are fundamentally similar?”
“I couldn’t say.”
“Maybe you haven’t had a large enough sampling size yet to draw conclusions.”
“She’s not like you. I know that much.”
Kim gave a dry laugh. “Outside of being one, I’ve had some experiences with women. Men like to make out that there’s some big mystery there, but it’s not true. You ever hear about something called the sacred feminine?”
August shrugged. “No.”
“It’s basically a theory about how all life on earth flows through the female form. And that women are closer to the sacred than men because they can give birth. It’s supposed to be about female empowerment, but I guarantee the concept was dreamed up by a man. Men want to believe that a woman embodies something essential about the universe, and so they tend to get all worked up over us. Most women won’t admit it, even to themselves, but deep down we know it’s all bullshit. A woman is like a knot. A knot isn’t sacred. A knot isn’t profound or evil or virtuous because it’s intricate. Once you’ve untangled a knot it disappears.”
“So?”
“All I’m saying is that you should forget her. If you don’t, she’ll be like black paint on your hands, and it will stain everything you touch for the rest of your life.” She cleared her throat and stood up, her chair making a loud noise on the floor tiles. “Help me clear this stuff away. No dessert tonight, sorry.”
He helped her scrape the plates and left her there in the empty kitchen, leaning against the counter with her arms crossed over her chest.
Coming back from town, August pulled off at the Hutterite farm stand that had just opened for the season. It was a small whitewashed plywood structure with a corrugated metal roof and awning. Behind a low counter were racks of jars: apple butter and strawberry-rhubarb jam, pickled asparagus and green beans and cucumbers. Shelves of baked goods, pies, and loaves of white bread. There were large plastic bins stacked for the eventual produce that wasn’t yet ready for harvest and a hand-lettered sign: SELF-SERVE. PUT CASH IN THE BOX. FOR FRYERS DRIVE TO COLONY. NO SUNDAY SALES.
August stood considering the jars of jam and preserves. Chokecherry jam. He’d never seen that before. It was a warm day, and the pies seemed to glisten and sweat under the plastic wrap. He picked out a loaf of plain white and a loaf of sourdough and a jar of apple butter and a jar of the chokecherry. He was digging through his wallet for correct change when a Hutterite girl came up from the colony, towing a wheeled metal cart. From the cart she lifted a large box full of baked goods. She smiled at August and began restocking the shelves. August watched her, blond hair, a few tendrils escaping the polka-dot kerchief she wore over her head. A dark-green dress with a black apron, her feet bare, soles dirty as she raised up on her tiptoes to reach the top shelf. She was humming.
“This chokecherry jam,” August said. His voice seemed loud, bouncing around under the tin roof of the shed. The girl turned, startled. “What’s it like?” he said, quieter.
“Like?” she said.
“How does it taste?”
“It’s sweet,” she said. “Chokecherries are really sour, so we add lots of sugar.”
She had just the faintest hint of accent. German, August figured. She had a small mole on her right nostril. He thought she was probably fourteen or fifteen years old. “Okay,” he said. “How about the apple butter? How’s that taste?”
She looked at him, eyebrows raised. “You’ve never had apple butter?”
“Maybe, but it’s been a long time.”
“It’s sweet,” she said. “We boil down lots of apples with cinnamon and sugar. Everyone likes it. I’m sure you’ll like it.”
“Okay. Well, I think I’ll get one of each and these loaves of bread, too.”
She gave him a small smile. Pointed at the sign, then tapped a finger on the slotted cashbox bolted to the counter. “Go ahead and just slide your money in here and help yourself,” she said.
August had his wallet out. “Is there any way I could get change? All I’ve got is a twenty.” He waved the bill slightly, as if to provide evidence.
She produced a key from her apron and unlocked the cashbox. Apparently it had been a slow day. It contained a lone twenty. She shrugged. “I guess that doesn’t help much. I could run back to the house?”
“I don’t want to put you out. I’ll just pick up some more stuff, I guess. A few more jars of jam, maybe. I could give them to my mom or something, because I probably won’t eat it all.”
“Well, that’s nice. Jams make great gifts.” She turned back to her work, organizing the pies, taking one out of circulation that seemed to not pass inspection.
“How about this strawberry-rhubarb?” he said. “Is that pretty good?”
She didn’t turn around. “It is good,” she said. “All of it is pretty good, actually.”
“What’s your favorite?”
She was humming again and her response came in a short, melodious burst. “Strawberry-and-butter-and-sourdough-toast,” she sang, laughing. “I like that for dessert.”
August laughed, too. He picked up a jar of strawberry and another jar of apple butter and set them next to his loaves of bread. Emboldened, he said, “Are you related to a girl named Sarah Jane, by any chance?”
She had a broom and was starting to sweep the leaves and grass dander from the floor of the shed. She stopped, no longer humming. “SJ?” she said.
“Yeah. SJ. I was just curious. A friend of mine knew her, I think. A few years back. I think she lived here.”
The girl was looking in his direction, not quite at him, somewhere off above his shoulder, eyes narrowed slightly. “SJ is my second-oldest sister,” she said.
“I thought you looked like her,” August said. “That’s why I asked.”
“How do you know what she looks like?”
“A picture. My friend showed me.”
“Graven image.”
“Huh?”
The girl was sweeping furiously now. Ramming the broom into the corners so hard, pieces of straw were breaking off. “Thou shalt make no graven image,” she said. “Excuse me.” August stepped to the side so she could sweep past his feet.
“Does she still live here?”
The girl gave one firm shake of her head. Paused her sweeping for a moment to slam the cashbox closed and fasten the lock. “Arm River,” she said. “Up in Saskatchewan. I haven’t seen her in almost two years. And she hardly ever calls.”
“Does she have children?”
“Why do you care?”
“I’m asking for my friend, that’s all. He wanted to know.”
She was sweeping again, angrily. Broom-straw shrapnel flying, making more of a mess than she was cleaning up. “She only just got engaged last month. So how could she have children? Didn’t even tell me herself, just sent a letter in the mail. Will you be needing anything else? Because I’d like to finish cleaning this.”
August gathered up his jam and bread and retreated from the stand, the girl sweeping him out the door as he went.
It was late afternoon, and the sun was stalled at a wicked angle. August was wrapping up his near-daily battle with the irrigation dams, sweat plastering his shirt to his back. Ancient drove up on the four-wheeler and helped him get the last poly tarp in place. “Hot bitch today,” Ancient said. He stood with a grass stem between his teeth regarding the rising water. “Killed a rattlesnake out behind the house earlier. Was laying all stretched out big as you please, right across the path going to the shed. Didn’t even move when I came up and got him with the shovel. It was like he wasn’t concerned about me at all. Big sucker. Cut this off him.” Ancient reached into his pocket and opened his palm to show August the segmented rattle, nearly as long as his pinky.
“Damn,” August said. “That is a big one.”
Ancient shook the rattle to make it buzz, then put it back in his pocket. “Might make me a key chain out of it or something. Some guys think a rattlesnake rattle is good luck. My old man got bit one time. His leg swole up like a tree trunk. He wanted to wait it out, but I made him go down to Billings to get the shot. He bitched the whole time about how much it was going to cost and was out messing around with the horses again at dawn the next day. Tough old buzzard. They don’t really make them like that anymore.” He cleared his throat. “You been around me a fair bit these past months. Feel free to tell me straight up. You think I have a drinking problem?”
August wiped his forehead with his shirtsleeve and settled his hat back on. “What does that even mean?” he said. “A drinking problem.”
“Exactly. That’s what I told Kim. I said, I might have a drinking habit but that don’t necessarily mean it’s a problem. She loves yoga, right? She always calls it her practice. Well, I told her that my practice is drinking. It’s something I engage in. It’s not something that runs my life. She thinks my behavior has been getting erratic, and if I want her to come back I’ll have to go to at least one AA meeting. That’s her condition.”
“Just one?”
“That’s what she says. But I get the feeling that we’re playing a game, and she’s the one that gets to make all the rules. I go to an AA meeting and what’s next? It’s a slippery slope. Do you think I’ve been acting erratic?”
“Do you want her to come back?”
“Of course. That’s what all this is about. You’re evading the question. Have I been erratic?”
“Maybe you should just do it. If it makes her happy. A good woman might be a man’s only hope for salvation on earth.”
Ancient looked at August. Blinked.
“I heard a guy say that one time.”
Ancient laughed, spit his grass stem into the ditch, and straddled the four-wheeler. “I might have to ponder that one for a bit,” he said. He looked at August for a long moment. Shook his head. Fired up the four-wheeler and drove away.
August took the back way home from town. It was early evening, and he had a rotisserie chicken from the IGA steaming in a paper bag next to him on the seat of the truck. He had a side of potato salad and a peach iced tea and a six-pack of Bud. He slowed as he passed the Duncan place. There were new signs, the paint still glistening a fresh and urgent black. They had been installed on two-by-fours as before, but something looked different now and August slowed further, craning out the truck window to get a better look. Each two-by-four was backed by a chainsaw-wrecking metal T-post.
August drove the rest of the way home and sat on the porch to eat. He read some of his Hutterite book, his chicken-grease-coated fingers smearing the pages. It didn’t seem the sort of book that one needed to read from cover to cover in any particular order, so he just opened to a random spot and started in. He learned that the Hutterites were devoted to pacifism and that, during World War I, numerous Hutterite men were imprisoned for not complying with the draft. Two brothers, Joseph and Michael Hofer, were abused so badly they both died in Leavenworth. After this came a lengthy chapter on various traditional Hutterite animal husbandry practices. It was dry reading, and before long August dropped the book on the porch and finished picking at the chicken.
He had his feet propped up on the railing and was finishing the last beer when there was a loud huffing noise, like a stubborn engine refusing to turn over, followed by the sound of hooves churning, a crack of wood splintering. August got to his feet just as Chief came around the corner of the shop. Broken free of the corral, he was walleyed, with a long string of viscous snot running from his muzzle. He made one final stride and then went down, legs tangled, skidding in the long grass at the edge of the yard. His raised his head one more time, the cords of his neck clear as ropes under his skin as he struggled and failed to get up. August could feel the thump of his head hitting the ground through the soles of his boots. The horse’s sides heaved, and then he was still. There was the long, slow sound of flatulence, and then Chief was just a brown mound in the weeds, unmistakably dead.
The next day Ancient rented a small excavator and dragged Chief out to the pasture. Before starting on the hole he walked to Chief’s dead form, stood there looking down for a moment, and sat down on the horse’s large haunch. August was there with a shovel, and he tapped the blade on his boot a few times. Waiting.
Ancient took his hat off and held it between his hands, his head bowed slightly. “Chief was a good horse,” he said. “I’ve never much cared for horses, but Chief was all right. My old man’s last horse. I buried my father and now I bury his horse, and it’s like somehow this is actually it. Like, now my old man is truly dead, because as long as something he’d trained was still around, then part of him was still alive, too. But now we put Chief in the ground, and it’s just poor orphan boy Ancient. But I guess the show goes on. No sense being all shmoopy about it.”
Ancient stood and jammed his hat back on his head and slapped his hands on his thighs. He laughed and toed Chief’s shank with his boot. “Maybe this is the universe’s way of keeping us hopping along. Every time someone or something close to you dies, there’s a carcass you have to attend to before it starts to stink. If bodies didn’t decay, the dead would be stacking up everywhere, and soon enough the living would become enslaved by them. Memories are bad enough as it is. Let’s get this thing dealt with.”
August stood by with the shovel to help him but there wasn’t much for him to do. The excavator bucket scraped and sparked, and August could smell the ozone odor rising from the bruised stones in the pit. He leaned on his shovel, and when a magpie landed on Chief’s flank, August scuffed his feet to make the bird fly away. When the hole was dug Ancient hooked the bucket around Chief’s long back and dragged him over the edge into the hole. August felt Chief’s final thud broadcast through the dirt, and then Ancient began shoving the loose, rocky soil back into the grave.
Hole filled, Ancient ran the excavator back and forth over the grave a few times to tamp everything down, and soon there was just a disturbed patch of dirt that would be indistinguishable from the rest of the pasture in a matter of days. Ancient drove the excavator back to the yard, up the ramp, and onto the trailer, where August helped him hitch the safety chains around the tracks.
“I rented the thing by the hour,” Ancient said. “Probably some other little jobs I could do around the place while I have it but I don’t really feel like messing with it right now. I’m just going to take it back. You eat yet?”
August shook his head no, and then they were heading into town.
They dropped the excavator at Northern Rental and went to the Mint for dinner.
Ancient was drinking whiskey, barely picking at his hamburger. August stuck to beer; he was suddenly ravenous and ended up eating half of Ancient’s burger on top of his.
“How’s it going with Kim?” August said. “None of my business. I just hope it’s going okay.”
Ancient swirled a fry around in ketchup. Chewed and sipped his drink. “It’s all right, you asking. I’ve been leaving you in the lurch a fair amount lately, and I’m sorry. You’ve been doing a good job. And, when I’m gone, I don’t worry that things aren’t being taken care of. I lucked out hiring you, and I hope you know that I feel that way. I’ve never met your old man, but I have to think that it was him that taught you how to work. Hopefully you thank him for that on occasion. If I ever met him, I’d thank him. Anyway. She’s got a job down there now. She’s working as a receptionist at an orthodontics office. I go down there and we go to counseling. She’s still staying with her sister, and so we go to counseling, and after, we go have dinner or something and then we go sleep in her sister’s basement on the pullout couch. I’ve seen enough of Billings to last me a lifetime. Smells like burning oil all the time, and the streets are littered with bums and drunks and other defects.”
“You’re doing counseling?”
“Yeah. We talk in circles and pay someone to listen. She’s got the job now, though, and it’s hard to see that as anything but one foot following the other out the door. Your parents are split, aren’t they?”
“For a while now.”
“What happened? If you don’t mind me asking.”
“My dad started messing with a girl he had helping out in the barn. At the time, she was younger than I am now. She’d just graduated high school. Was actually working for my dad when she was still in high school, so who knows.”
“That must have been a hard one for your mom to swallow.”
“Well, she can be difficult in her own way. Her family had some money. My dad’s people never had much. Whenever he couldn’t afford something she wanted, she could come up with the funds easy enough with a phone call or two. That had to get old. They fought about this couch she bought—it was fancy upholstery, real expensive. He’d put his boots up on it whenever he got a chance and it got stained, and then one day she had me help her drag it out into the front yard and she lit it on fire and it sat there burned out and smoking for a few days before he took an ax to it and hauled it off. He laid on the floor to watch TV for a long time. My mom never watches TV. That’s a small thing, but I guess it’s the buildup that happens over the years that does it. Never any one major problem. Who knows? At least you and Kim never had any kids.”
Ancient shook his head, his eyes widened in fake surprise. “I think that’s the most words I ever heard you string together.” He laughed. “But the problem is, when you get to my and Kim’s age, the kid aspect is the biggest issue, believe it or not. I want kids, I think. A child keeps people together and gives them a reason to behave better than they might on their own. Without a kid, it’s way too easy to just pull up stakes and go down to Billings and take yoga classes and get a job as a receptionist.” Ancient downed his whiskey and ordered another.
It was well past dark by the time Ancient slid, none too steadily, from his stool and fumbled his keys from his jeans pocket. “Want me to drive?” August said as they headed toward the truck.
“Shiiit,” Ancient said and swung into the driver’s seat. It took him two tries to get the key into the ignition, and when the truck rumbled to life he paused before putting it in gear. “Guess maybe I’ll take the back way,” he said.
As they drove out of town, August said, “We’ve had that hay down for a while now. How’s that baler coming along?”
“The main problem with that baler is that it is a giant hunk of crap. Was a problem almost from the time my old man bought it. I put a new idler and V-belt in it, though. I’m cautiously optimistic.”
“Should I give it a shot tomorrow?”
“Yeah, we’ll give it a shot. You know how much a new baler costs?”
“I’m guessing it’s not cheap.”
Ancient was about to say something but stopped. He’d taken the Dry Creek turnoff. They were rattling along the dirt road, and then Duncan’s signs bloomed white in the headlights. Ancient slowed. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Looks like he even added a couple new ones. GOOD FENCES MAKE GOOD NEIGHBORS. SMILE, YOU ARE UNDER SURVEILLANCE. Good fences make good neighbors? Seriously? Isn’t that from a poem?”
“I believe so.”
Ancient let the truck idle. “I told Kim about Big Tim coming and tearing up the fence, and she said that now it was even and I should let it alone. You said he just came in and tore it out and left, right? You didn’t see him messing around with Chief at all or anything like that?”
“No. Nothing like that.”
“I suppose not. Fences are one thing; killing a horse is another. And Chief was older than dirt. Still, I have a suspicious mind. Wish I had my chainsaw. The ignorance of these things just irritates the hell out of me.”
“Saw probably wouldn’t do it anyway.”
“What?”
“I came by the other day, in the daylight, and he’s got T-posts behind the two-by-fours. Probably hoping you try to cut one and mess your chain up.”
“Seriously?”
“There’s definitely metal fence posts behind the wood. Yeah.”
Ancient shook his head. “Where does this asshole find the time? How many days’ work are we looking at right here? For what? To make some people driving by feel shitty? Kim’s always telling me that part of her problem is the small-mindedness of the people around here, and I try to tell her that people are people wherever they’re at, not much difference, but when you come across things like this, you have to admit that she might have a point. It’s hard to make a go around these parts and everyone hunkers to their own to survive, and sometimes that itself starts to feel like an injustice, and then pretty soon we’re all just rats eating at each other for no reason other than to get out our internal meanness. And she’s wrong about me and him being even. There’s the note that started it all, then I cut his signs, then he tore down the fence, and if my math is correct that puts him up one.” Ancient looked off the road and tapped his thumbs on the steering wheel. “There’s people I’d be willing to concede a point to. Big Tim is not one of those people.”
He drove down the shallow ditch and backed the truck up next to a corner post on the fence line. He put the truck in park and hopped out. August turned to watch Ancient moving around in the red taillight glow. He had removed a tow strap from the toolbox and was looping it around the post, ducking low to hook the other end around the ball hitch.
“Fences make good neighbors, my ass,” he said, returning to the cab, shifting into drive, and accelerating out of the ditch.
In the rearview mirror August watched the corner post jolt and then pop. There was a high-pitched wail of barbed wire stretched to the max and the deadly whang of strands snapping. Several of the signs tipped and came thrashing along for the ride. Ancient drove up onto the Duncans’ driveway, and August thought he’d stop and undo the tow strap but he kept going, heading toward the lights of the house in the distance.
“Looks like someone is home,” August said.
Ancient was looking straight ahead, a knot in his jaw. “I hope so,” he said. “Should have come down here first thing, and now it’s gotten out of hand. It’s all going to be done, one way or another, after this.”
Ancient sped up, and the trailing signs splintered and bucked. He pulled halfway around the circular drive in front of the Duncan house and put the truck in park. The dust that had been billowing behind them caught up and swirled, motes floating through the headlights like a brown fog. Ancient laid his fist on the horn and then opened the door. Before getting out of the truck he looked at August. “Sorry to involve you in this. It’s not your deal, but I’d appreciate it if you’d make sure no one shoots me from behind.” And then he was out of the truck, heading toward the porch, the front door already opening to greet him.
Big Tim stood backlit in the doorway. He was barefoot, in jeans and a white undershirt. His beard trailed down his chest, and his hairline receded halfway back his skull; what was left of his hair a thin, wispy mess above his head. He had his arms at his sides, and he held something in each hand, down low next to his legs. Ancient was approaching the porch, and August got out of the truck. There was a tire iron under the seat and he gripped it, leaning against the truck in the shadow.
Ancient stopped at the foot of the porch stairs and hooked his fingers in his belt loops. “Let’s talk about fences, neighbor,” he said.
Big Tim stepped out of the doorway, and August still couldn’t make sense of what he was holding. His voice came low and calm. “I saw you coming, and I know that you’ve got a deep-seated problem, Ancient. I talked to your father about you once before he died, and he asked me to keep an eye on you. He was worried, I think.”
Ancient shook his head and spit. “Don’t even talk about my father. No more of your bullshit now, Tim. You never got over the fact that you had to sell that piece of pasture to me, and then you tried to run my fiancée out of town because you’re a small-minded, conspiracy-theory-spouting backwards ingrate.”
“The only question,” Big Tim said, “is just how deep your problem lies. It’s come to the surface now, but how far back are the wellsprings?” Big Tim came across the porch, his bare feet whispering on the boards. He was raising his arms, and in each hand he had a long, thin piece of black wood or metal. They were rods, no thicker than car aerials, cylindrical and L-shaped, each with a ninety-degree bend. He had his index fingers pointing, each hand in a gun shape, the rods balanced and swaying on the protruding digits. In the headlight glare, the angled rods cast long shadows, and Tim was an arm’s length away from Ancient, moving in slowly.
“I’ve been practicing rhabdomancy since I was young,” Big Tim said. “You know that before you were born your old man came to me because his well was drying up, and in an afternoon I dowsed up the spring for the new well that you drink from to this day? Did you know that it was me that delivers your everyday water, boy?”
“Get that goofy shit away from me and talk to me normal,” Ancient said, taking a small step back.
“I can find the problem you’re having, Ancient. Springs below the earth’s surface are not so different from the springs beneath a man’s skin. If you let them, my tools will find the source of your pain, and from there we can start the work of healing.”
“I’m sorry your kid died, Tim. I truly am. But that’s no excuse to unhinge. Look at yourself, man. Do not touch me with those things. Tim, I’m telling you.”
“It’s the drink, in part. I don’t even need my tools to tell me that. I can smell your breath from here. But drinking is just a fool’s attempt to bandage the wound. Let me do my work, son.”
“I’m not your son, you loon. If you touch me, I swear to God, Tim. Get away from me with that.”
Tim appeared on the porch. He was in plaid boxer shorts and a white T-shirt. He held his Marlin .22 low, pointed toward the ground. “Dad?” he said.
August stepped away from the truck, and from the corner of his eye he saw Big Tim stretch his arms toward Ancient, balancing rods trembling between them.
“Dad?” Tim was coming off the porch.
“Just relax,” Big Tim said, and then his rods made contact with Ancient’s chest, both of them touching at the same time just beneath his breastbone. August saw Ancient’s fist flash and connect with Big Tim’s jaw and they were down in a tangle, the dowsing rods landing on the rocky driveway with a tinny sound.
“Dad!” Tim shouted and came toward the downed men, rifle coming up. Big Tim and Ancient were grappling, dust raising, their limbs nearly indistinguishable. Tim saw August and stopped.
“Put it down,” August said, still holding the tire iron.
“Or what?” Tim said. “You’ll hit me with that? Why are you even here? Dad!” he shouted. “What the fuck?” He had the gun pointed in a vague place between August and the men on the ground.
“Come on,” August said. “I’m not trying to hit anyone.”
August was watching Tim, but on his periphery he could see Ancient roll atop Big Tim. He straddled him on the ground and was punching slowly and deliberately into Big Tim’s face, Big Tim’s arms trying to block but faltering. Tim took several strides closer, .22 to his shoulder. “Ancient!” he shouted. “Ancient, lay off, you fuck.” And August was coming, tire iron gathering. Tim, feeling his approach, turned, and the small black eye of the .22 focused on August, and he stopped. There was one more wet thump of fist hitting meat and then, a bass line.
Taxi!
…driver…take me…ride?
A slim figure was coming down the porch stairs, shirtless—a pale torso with hip bones jutting above the waistband of sleek leather pants, a large boom box propped on the shoulder, trailing an orange electrical cord, a strange, halting, skipping, strutting walk, a dance. The music was extremely loud, Prince’s “Lady Cab Driver,” but there was a bad connection somewhere and the song kept crackling. August could see the figure’s long black hair flowing from one side, shaved to stubble on the other. Avery. His eyes closed, nodding, he made his way toward the men on the ground, a jaunty step back, two shuffling steps forward. Everyone stopped, watching in disbelief.
He grabbed the electrical cord and resumed stepping, twirling the cord in time. He was singing along, pelvic-thrusting, moonwalking. Ancient rolled off Big Tim and got to his knees, breathing heavily, his eyes wide in the gloom. Big Tim sat up, blood on his face. Tim had the gun barrel down in the dirt, rubbing his jaw. Avery spun a complete circle as the song continued to cut in and out.
…brother, handsome…tall
…bored…believe…war
…for me, that’s who…
He wasn’t looking at anyone, eyes closed, overpowering Prince’s falsetto with his own more desperate voice, sending it out over to the black behind the headlight beams. And then he reached up, pressed a button on the boom box, and the music came to a sudden stop. He opened his eyes, and his gaze passed over all of them.
“You people are ridiculous,” he said quietly. He tucked the boom box under his arm, retraced his steps up the porch, and went inside the house, slamming the door behind.