For Granniemose's 80th: a short story called Browning
Oct 18 '02
The Bottom Line This is a short story I wrote several years ago. I thought Granniemose might enjoy it. I think she can handle the harsh language.
A red sedan sped by me without slowing down, and I dropped my arm.
Stepping back from the road, I looked west toward Mount Wilbur, with Grinnell Point in the foreground, and marvelled for a moment at the beauty I was beginning to take for granted. Then I thought of my grandfather, and a lump started to form in my throat.
It was grandpa who had introduced me to the mountains of Montana more than ten years before, and it was grandpa I couldn't imagine lying in a hospital bed in Chicago.
Just yesterday, Michael and I had climbed Grinnell Point by a route not suggested in my trusty "Climber's Guide to Glacier Park," and I remembered my grandfather's admonition: get off the beaten path, boy, but you had damn well remember your way back to it! He would probably survive, my mother had told me yesterday, but I knew that he would never again help me choose paths up low cliffs between dangerous snowfields, and that to him, survival would not mean really living.
Stepping toward the road, I put my thumb back out and tried to think of something positive. It would be good to get away from the hotel, I decided. Glacier Park Incorporated seemed to hire mostly squeaky-clean kids from the big state schools, and I was glad to be alone for the moment with the mountains and the afternoon sun. The workers at the front desk were all hired for their musical Southern accents, and the bellboys and waitresses were almost all from the University of Minnesota. I don't think any of them had heard of Kalamazoo College. When we entertained the guests, they sang songs by John Denver and James Taylor--they thought the stuff I did by John Prine and Loudon Wainwright was "strange." I was tired of wholesome. My hands could use a break from washing dishes too.
I didn't have my thumb up when the old car stopped--it was a mid-sixties beater with a white guy driving and a young Indian sitting next to him. "Where you going?" the white guy asked without looking at me.
"East Glacier," I said. "My car is there, and I need to get to the airport in Great Falls."
"Great Falls, eh?" said the white guy, and he nudged the Indian and laughed. The Indian smiled sheepishly and looked straight ahead.
I cared little about their private joke--I just wanted to get to Chicago to see my grandfather. If he was well enough, I would tell him about the new route we had taken up Mount Gould, and how we had hiked along the top of the Garden Wall almost to Little Gem Glacier, hanging precariously over the wide, flat surface of Grinnell Glacier, more than a thousand feet below.
Grandpa had been a rancher near the Big Snowy mountains, southeast of Glacier Park, and I thought of my childhood summers spent on his two-thousand acres with my family. I had always felt more at home galloping across one of his hayfields than I did on the streets of Chicago, but I knew that I would never understand the land like he did. Over three generations, his family had survived the transition from sheep to cattle and wheat, and winters which left entire flocks or herds dead, frozen in fifty-below cold or trapped in thirty-foot drifts. To me, the ranch meant warm, dry summers, and the romance of horses and stacking hay. Grandpa had still been healthy when he moved to Chicago. He just wanted to spend more time with my mother--his ranch girl, he called her--and my father.
The white guy wore no expression as he drove. He had a long pony tail, tied back with a rubber band, and wore dirty grey corduroy pants and a ZZ Top t-shirt. The Indian wore jeans and a black muscle shirt. His jet black pony tail was also tied back with a rubber band.
As we drove east, the grandeur of the mountains began to recede behind us, and we could see the vast prairie before us. The white guy accelerated as we passed the entrance gate to the Park, and then laughed to himself and said, "f-ckers."
Then he started to fumble inside a jacket sandwiched on the seat between him and the Indian, and the Indian said, "No, not yet."
The white guy showed no reaction, and we drove on in silence until he said, "White man's law make you feel pretty safe here?"
We were approaching the town of Babb, and I was beginning to wish that I had been picked up by other Glacier Park employees on their way to hike around Avalanche Lake or climb Mount Oberlin. Most people agreed that the Many Glacier area, where I worked, was the prettiest in the Park, but it was also the most isolated, many of the best trailheads being over forty miles away.
Or maybe an old couple would have been good. The hotel workers affectionately called them Raisins, and spoke of them with mock-indignation when they complained about their food, their rooms, and the lack of transportation to the glaciers, but for most of us, it was all in fun. The older folk I had spoken with were actually pretty nice, and they tended to be impressed when I told them that my family had been from Montana. I was a bit smug about that--Michael and I were the only two kitchen workers who had roots in the state.
Michael was a good friend as well as a strong hiker. He was interested in my "strange" music, and about life in Chicago. I told him how the West meant an escape from the dirt and the drugs for me--he told me about being a lineman on the worst football team in the division, and about making out with cheerleaders in cars.
Suddenly, Babb was upon us. I said, "Nice town, huh?"
The Indian smiled and the white guy continued to look straight ahead as he slowed to the stop sign.
Then, without warning, he accelerated and turned left hard, skidding into the parking lot of the Babb Bar, where he jerked on the parking brake, but left the motor running.
"Wanna buy us some beer?" he said, looking straight at me for the first time.
"Come on, man," the Indian said. "I'll get it."
I had never been in the Babb Bar, but I knew that white people generally did not go in there. I figured the driver knew that too.
The story was that a hotel employee had been stabbed there two years before, and that a friend, fleeing, had been run over by a pick-up truck. We had also been told that if they treated you nice, someone was outside using your windshield for target practice. There were two other vehicles in the lot, both Chevy pick-ups, beaten up, but otherwise intact.
The Indian emerged with a brown paper bag and handed the driver a Bud through the window as I climbed out the other side to let him have the middle seat again. He popped his beer and we drove on in silence for a couple of minutes until he said, "Want one?"
He anticipated my answer, handing me a beer as I said, "Yeah, thanks."
We had turned south toward Saint Mary's and to our right were the mountains of Glacier Park. To the left were the plains of eastern Montana. After a few more minutes of silence, I said, "Interesting, isn't it, how the park ends just as the beauty ends, and we give the barren plains to the Blackfeet?"
The Indian looked straight ahead and the white guy said, "Who gives a sh-t."
I felt something surge in my chest--I don't know if it was fear or anger--and I decided to move to the offensive.
"Where are you from?" I asked the white guy.
He took a drink of his beer and said, "Near Boston."
I looked at the Indian and he said, "Around here." Neither asked me where I was from.
I said, "When we get around this curve, there'll be a mountain over Saint Mary's which looks like a man in a headdress looking up to the sky. You can see it in about a mile, then it really comes into focus."
The white guy started to fumble inside his jacket again, looking straight ahead, and the Indian leaned forward to get a look at the mountains ahead and to our right.
As the white guy began to withdraw his hand, the Indian stopped him with his left and said, "Check it out, man." He smiled and his eyes caught mine for just a flash of a second.
"Looks like a f-cking mountain to me," said the white guy, throwing his empty into the back seat and reaching for another.
The Indian took a long drink and watched as the illusion faded into view. The white guy shifted in his seat and continued to look straight ahead. "You wanna go to East Glacier, huh?" the white guy said as the first buildings of Saint Mary's appeared. Then he chuckled to himself.
---------------
The road from Saint Mary's to the town of East Glacier is both beautiful and potentially dangerous. South of Saint Mary's it begins to climb through a dense pine forest which then gives way to the yellow grass of a high prairie. Here, the park seems miles away, and the rocky grass is a reminder of the desolation to the east.
But then, after winding through rocky high pastures for a number of miles, it returns to the edge of the park. Finally, one begins a gradual descent into East Glacier, with high sloping meadows to the left, and sheer dropoffs to the right.
We drove in silence until the road began to curve back toward Glacier. I thought of my grandfather, and how he had sold all but the last forty acres of his ranch before moving to Chicago. I watched a cow and her young calf running along side the road and remembered the time I had been chased behind a tree at my grandpa's when I had unwittingly gotten between one of his heifers and her new baby. I smiled to myself and looked toward the white guy and the Indian.
The white guy's jacket was on the floor between them and he was driving with his right knee, leaning hard to his left. The Indian was leaning over too, ready to grab the wheel.
When the white guy straightened up, I saw he had an outfit in his hand.
Then he leaned back and passed it to the Indian. The Indian held his left arm tight against his body, found a vein, and shot up most of what was left.
Then he passed it to me.
I was thinking of me and my old friend Mark, who had also refused to shoot up, sitting and watching four of our buddies nodding out, and me yelling at Sam, "Man, it makes you not care!" and him just smiling at me dreamily and saying, "That's right," and Randy telling Mark he was a f-cking weenie and to shut up and here I was fifteen-hundred miles from all this bullsh-t and I had found the only two junkies north of Great Falls.
I said, "No, I gotta catch a plane."
The Indian shot up the rest of it while the white guy began to nod out. We made a sweeping left turn toward a straightaway with a valley to our right, and I felt the right front tire catch gravel.
"Hey, he's nodding out," I said to the Indian.
"Man, you're nodding out," he said to the white guy.
"I'm OK," said the white guy, struggling to keep his eyes open.
"OK, I'm outa here," I said. "Pull over."
The Indian looked at the white guy and the white guy said, "You're not going anywhere. We're all going to the same place."
"That's two thousand feet down, " I said, gesturing with my right hand.
The white guy smiled a strange smile and adjusted quickly as the right front tire caught gravel again. "We're all going to the same place," he repeated as he began to accelerate.
"Come on, man," the Indian said. "Let me drive for awhile."
The white guy accelerated down the straightaway, expressionless now, until the road widened.
Then, without warning, he took his foot off the accelerator, and let the car roll to a stop on the shoulder of the road. He sat for a minute, looking straight ahead, then gingerly picked up his jacket and got out. The Indian slid over and I got out to let the white guy have the middle.
The Indian was able to keep the car off the gravel, and I began to think of my grandfather again, though my heart was still pounding. I remembered him telling me that Montana was the land of grand things that almost happen, and of the tallest tall tales. "You'll hear the same stories every summer," he said, "and if you listen carefully, you'll notice that they age well indeed. The events become a little less probable and the danger a little greater with each passing year."
The white guy woke for a moment and said, "We're on reservation land here," and then he began to nod again.
I looked at the Indian and said lamely, "I've never seen anyone shoot up while driving before."
The white guy said, "We're on Indian land here and white man's law doesn't apply," and he began to reach under his coat.
The Indian said, "I wanna get laid."
The white guy was nodding out again.
The Indian said, "I'm going to take us to Browning. I'm turning around," and he pulled off into an abandoned picnic area between the road and the valley.
The white guy woke again with his hand under his jacket and said, "This Indian land, and we could kill you here and no-one would care. White man's law doesn't apply here."
Then he pulled a hunting knife out from under his jacket and held it to my throat.
I looked at the Indian and he said, "I want to go to Browning."
A bank of trees hid us from the road and my light pack rested in my lap. My right hand was inches from the door handle. The door was unlocked.
The white guy's head began to move forward and I felt the knife slide down toward my chest. The Indian said, "Nice looking women in Browning."
Browning is an Indian town east of Glacier Park. A dusty main street turns from the prairie toward Glacier there, as weary Blackfeet go about their business, expressionless. I thought of the giant cement tee-pee with the Cafe sign--it had changed locations three times in the last ten years but never opened--and of the old guy I had watched beating his wife in front of a bar while she begged him not to leave her. I said, "I suppose there are."
I heard the white guy snore and I said to the Indian, "Your buddy's knife is like my brother's," and then to the white guy, "Care if I check it out?"
The white guy jerked momentarily but his fingers relaxed as I eased the knife from his hand. Then he shifted in his seat and said, "Hey, you're alright, man."
The Indian put the car in gear and the white guy said, "Come on, let's go f-ck some b-tches in Browning," before he started to nod out again.
I said, "I really got to get to Great Falls," and I began to open the door.
The Indian said, "Don't you want to get laid, man?"
I said, "Kiss a fine one for me," and opened the door, tossing the knife onto the empty seat as my feet hit the ground. The Indian floored it, kicking up dirt and rocks, the door slamming shut, the sleeping white man's body lurching back like a rag doll. I jumped back and watched as he turned left at the road, back in the direction from which we had come.
---------------
I brushed the dirt from my shirt and stood without moving. A light breeze was beginning to blow, and I noticed the sun reflecting from behind me off of my hair which hung in my face. I was facing east, so I knew the sun was starting to set. I looked to my right, saw the shadows growing long, and felt a bit of apprehension.
Walking back toward the road, I wondered if I'd make it to East Glacier by dark.
But I was lucky.
The first car to pass me was a Buick sedan with a couple of white-haired ladies inside. They slowed to a stop, and I took note of the Minnesota plates as I ran up behind them.
"Are you headed to East Glacier, young man?" the driver said, leaning across her companion.
"Yes, I am," I said. "I have to get to my car to go to Great Falls."
"Well, get on in!" the other lady said, reaching over her shoulder and unlocking the back door. "And I'll bet you're a park employee" she continued after I had gotten in.
"Yes, I am," I said.
"You know," she continued, as the driver pulled slowly back onto the road, "I have never met a more pleasant group of young people. Where do you work?"
"Many Glacier Hotel," I said. "I'm a dishwasher."
"Many Glacier!" the driver said. "That's where we stayed last night! Why, do you know that the waiters and waitresses got together and sang for us at dinner? It was lovely."
"It's fun when they do that," I said, wondering for the first time if the white guy really would have cut me. "Many Glacier Hotel hires mostly musicians to work there."
"And pleasant ones at that," said the second lady. "Do you play?"
"I play guitar," I said. "And some piano."
"Wonderful!" she said. "You know," she continued, "I think it's the mountains. I have never met so many lovely people before, and I really think that these beautiful mountains just bring out the best in all of us."
"That could be it," I said. "That just could be it."
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Happy 80th Birthday, Granniemose!
To see a list of Epinions honoring Granniemose in this write-off hosted by her daughter, artbyjude, please visit:
http://geocities.com/granniemose2002/
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