Somewhere between Pasco and Spokane, I finally fall asleep. Familiar dreams play on a smudgy screen: flying dreams, where I sail and spin effortlessly on thermals, like the hawks, or crows just before a storm. And Mick dreams, the two of us riding on his motorcycle, my cheek pressed to the back of his warm, worn leather jacket and my hands in his pockets; leaning with him into the turns, sure he will not let us crash, certain that of his many inglorious traits, unlucky is not one.
In real life, there were a few near misses: one with an elk in the Bearpaw Mountains, a few more with wet roads and gravel, a loopy bird once that caught Mick right in the chest. It was a small one, though, and we didn’t go down that time, or any other. I was never even scared enough to take my feet off the pegs, blind faith a waking specialty then.
I open my eyes around two thirty just outside Sandpoint, where the ice dam was, and the just-past-full moon is on the rise, huge and unworldly amber, rolling like Sisyphus’s rock up the side of the first real mountain we’ve come anywhere near. The train rumbles slowly over the long bridge spanning the western end of Lake Pend Oreille, and I can see a few lights on in the town, but not many. The bars have already closed by now and the bartenders given everyone the boot. The only stragglers will likely be the really drunk ones, arguing in the street about things they won’t even remember tomorrow, or trying to get lucky, trying to talk some warm human into bed or a skinny-dip in the lake.
At the edge of town, where the train tracks meet up with the land again, I see a wolf, or a big coyote, pull something out of the water, but can’t tell what it is. Maybe a fish. Or a goose. Maybe an old mukluk. Some kid’s stuffed animal, lost for all time. I remember our conversation about wolves and turn to the girl next to me, but she’s sleeping. I sneak a look at the box, which has crept out from under the seat and is now loose on the floor between us. I want to pick it up, shake it, but I don’t.
At Sandpoint a few passengers get off, a few board, and we are traveling east again, so nearly in Montana that I can taste it low in my throat. I have begun to feel a clear sense of both anticipation and panic, to fist and unfist my hands, occasionally shaking them in front of me like a little kid performing the corralled equivalent of bouncing off the walls — at the dizzying prospect of something anticipated but more than a little scary and, in a sense, withheld too long. My chest is tight and full — of what, I have no idea, but it feels like tar, or clay, not like oxygen at all. I do understand about heartache, why they call it that, but don’t know the anatomy, the chemistry, whatever. It doesn’t matter, so long as I don’t explode, which every few minutes feels like a real possibility.
By four, I know we have crossed the border, even though there is no sign, like there would be on the highway, saying Welcome or Now Entering the Treasure State. Something has changed, though: the trees, or the hills, or maybe the moon. My hands are going like hamsters jacked up on Dexedrine, and I leave them to their own recognizance.
I hear the girl next to me say, “Are you okay?” and flinch.
“Yeah, I’m okay. It’s just been a long time since I’ve been back here.”
“Back here where?”
“Montana.”
“We’re in Montana already?” Like she’s saying, “We’ve already reached Mars?”
I bring my clenched fists up to my face; press them to my cheeks. “I’m almost sure.”
“Is this where you came from?”
I repeat the words in my head, but they don’t completely make sense. What does “came from” even mean?
“I was born here,” I say. “East. The other side of the mountains. Hard telling, however, where I came from.” I laugh, but my hands are still fluttering like drunken luna moths, in complete disregard of how others might interpret their behavior. I stare at them briefly, shake my head, and wedge them between my legs.
“I must look totally insane,” I say, sort of to myself.
“Maybe a little,” the girl says.
I laugh again, feeling less dreadful, and ready to abandon my own spirit-infested memory awhile.
“Where did you come from?” I ask. “And how old are you?”
“I’m seventeen. And I come from Bum Fuck, Oregon.”
“Sounds like a fun place. I come from one of those too. I’m Riley.”
“Grace.” The girl holds out her hand, and I shake it.
“Grace for graceful?”
“Not hardly. Disgrace is more like it.” She yawns, says, “Sorry, I’m really tired.” She leans her head back, tries to keep her eyes open, and fails. Within moments, any remaining tension in her disappears, leaving her face the picture of angel innocence, as some sleeping faces tend to be. Her mouth is open slightly, and her hands twitch — not like a player’s this time so much as the sweet-smelling paws of young dogs, already chasing rabbits in their dreams.
It gets light somewhere around Libby, and the faintly sun-spackled but mostly murky green wildness of it makes me want to set off, hike north, and build myself a little cabin in a deep-woods clearing up by Canada somewhere. Get a dog. Plant a garden. But that would not be going home — that would unmistakably be staying gone.
My hands have finally settled down, but now my legs are starting to ache, so I get up and squeeze past Grace, accidentally kicking her box into the aisle. I stay for a minute, bending over to stretch, and there it is, right there, begging to be investigated. I fight the temptation to pick it up, and lose.
It’s not light, not heavy, copper colored, slightly dented, and hand-etched with an array of wild creatures: moose, coyote, bear, rabbit. I straighten up to examine it further in the dim light. Not to actually open it. Because that would be snooping. But the lid comes off so easily, with barely a tug.
Those are not cigarette ashes. I can make out specks of bone, something that might have been a tooth. I sneak a look at Grace, but she is still sleeping. I reach in, scoop out a small handful, rub a bit between my fingers before separating them to let the grainy gray dust filter through. One shard, maybe a half inch long, stays in my hand. The fire apparently didn’t burn long or hot enough to take the sharp bits off, though I don’t know how that could be. I press it lengthwise between my thumb and forefinger until I feel it poke through skin with a slight pop. I put the box back, close the lid, crouch to slip it under Grace’s seat. I keep the one little fragment, though, tucking it into the small hip pocket of my jeans.
Behind my breastbone, in place of my heart, I feel a fish flopping madly, trying to dash its own brains out on the beach before it suffocates. I make myself take a deep breath and set off to find the dining car, but it is still dark, and the sign says there will be no dining until seven. I know there is a snack bar too, somewhere, but do not need caffeine desperately enough to go searching for it. I head back toward our car but stop between two others before I reach it. The metal floor pitches and shifts beneath my feet, keeping me a bit off balance as I stand at the small window. It takes me a minute to realize it has a latch, which I test, wondering if I am doing something that could get me in trouble, knowing I am too old to be thinking like that but still feeling, especially now, pretty much seventeen all over again. Or still. Like that sleeping girl.
Being in trouble at seventeen, for me, had among other things meant becoming another statistic for the state to file under “stupid teenager tricks.” Early pregnancies were big in Montana, as were suicides, drunk-driving fatalities, hunting accidents, and domestic violence. I don’t think any of it, save the pregnancy, would have applied to me and Darrell, though; don’t believe that if he had stayed either of us would have been so inclined. At least from what I remember, all those bright images still occupying their own crowded and dust-covered corner of my mind.