The engine coughed. He’d go for a new Diehard in the morning and firm up an exit strategy while bolting it in. He saw the card wedged in the seam of the dash and ran his thumb across Amy’s delicate number before flicking it over. The front read, BLACK EAGLE COMMUNITY CENTER, above a dated line cut of the building. Chance tucked it back in the dash and spun the wheel with his palm.
He passed along the riverfront park and its hollow band shell covered in snow. He’d kissed a girl there once, in summertime. A thin sheen of ice lay over the duck pond and the truck guided him under the low rail bridge onto the drive along the river. On the far shore rose the great chrome mass of the refinery, a glittering cathedral of plumbing and sodium light. He should’ve turned at 9th Street but he knew he’d have to do it sometime. The truck knew it too, and slowly it pulled him back to the scene of the crime.
It had been this time of day but with the balm of a fine June evening. He’d dropped into town on the far side of the river, coming from Havre and Canada beyond. Having walked a heavy backpack through a sympathetic farmer’s field, he’d passed a concrete pylon marking the border and over to his waiting rental. The drive was a couple hours. The slopes of the Bears Paws waxed and waned as he sipped a Coke behind the wheel, one arm propped on the open window.
Something went haywire at the edge of Great Falls. Whether he’d been informed on, he still didn’t know. But down the hill toward the river a deputy’s lights were in his mirror and the backpack was propped against the passenger seat.
He’d pulled over, counting the officer’s steps toward his window. He saw the man unsnap his holster. That was enough for Chance. He stood on the accelerator, watching the scrambling deputy recede in his mirror as the rental shot through the night.
Chance pushed the engine hard but the traffic light was red on the 15th Street bridge. He saw another sheriff’s rig coming at him.
Braking to a halt, he’d run the pack to the bridge’s east rail. He tore open its flap and hurled compact green bales over the side. The last had taken flight before the deputy’s brakes howled. Chance watched the bundles tumble toward the water below. They smacked into the face of the Missouri, rolling off toward the hungry turbines at the dam.
All but one. The last bale, thrown just a little short, landed with a dusty puff atop a piling below his feet and settled to rest. Another three inches and it would have floated to Fort Benton. Three inches short and he’d gone to jail.
Now Chance crossed the bridge slowly, easing past the point where the chase and life had stopped. Ice jammed up against the Black Eagle Dam. He turned off the bridge at the south end of Black Eagle, toward the absence in the sky where the giant smelter stack should be. His grandfather had worked in its furnace as a blacksmith in the war, forging one link in a great chain bringing bright nuggets of copper from the bleeding earth of Butte to Nazi brainpans in France.
At the edge of the hill, the community center lay squat above a mostly empty lot overlooking the river and lights of Great Falls. Chance goosed the throttle to give the battery some juice, then switched it off.
Double doors opened on a hall lined with faces of men his granddad had known. Built by the Anaconda Company as a place these boys could drink and fight respectably, it opened on one side to a bowling alley. Chance peered through the door and saw knots of rowdy, pretty women whooping it up on the lanes. League night. He went the other way into the bar and pulled out some money. The place was vacant except for the haggard gamblers growing roots at their machines. Amy was tending bar.
She sidled toward him, drawing a pilsner glass from the rack and filling it with beer. She wore jeans and a black T-shirt and arrived with a quiet grace to set the glass by his hand.
“Joe Frazier. Still alive?”
“More or less.” He hoisted the glass. “Thanks for helping me out.”
Her naked left hand rested on the flat bar. “You see the doctor yet?”
“I’ll be fine. You work here too, huh?”
“Mermaiding doesn’t pay the bills.”
“Yeah. So what happened to Billy?”
“He went to drill for oil in North Dakota. Wasn’t all he wound up drilling.” She threw a wan grin and looked him up and down. Her gaze stopped at his side. “Naughty, naughty.”
Chance touched the pistol’s checkered grip and realized the gun was peeking out of his coat pocket. “Yeah, well. I’m not going another round like last night.”
Amy shrugged and shied away from the bar, sweeping its top with a rag. Chance sipped his beer and slid off the stool to find a poker machine. He fed a twenty into the slot and got three of a kind his first hand. He fooled with the notion of going on a run, cashing out at eight hundred to parlay into a big stake to pay off the debt. Maybe go to Vegas and hit a streak. Maybe just go.
He tapped the buttons for a while, earning a few dollars in the pale glow of the machine. He reached for his beer and found a fresh glass in its place, turned to see Amy retreating to greet new arrivals. The place was starting to fill. He settled back in to earn his way to freedom.
Chance sat in the truck, his breath frosting the glass. The outside of the windshield was layered with a rime of ice. He dug the pint from below the seat. Took a shallow pull. Tried the key. Nothing.
He opened the door to go back in and saw Matt standing there with his hands in the pockets of his yellow jacket. “Hello, Chance.”
“Matt.”
“Sit back and take it easy. I just want to talk.” Matt glanced toward the community center. “Mermaid hunting again?”
“Gambling my way to glory.” Chance felt his pistol against his ribs and wondered if there was one in Matt’s hand.
“Two days, Chance. Whatever you’re drinking on now, you’re going to piss it away. The sooner you sober up and get me my money, the sooner I won’t have to come back.”
“It’s a down economy, Matt. Smelter’s a bit slow.” Thumbing the air behind him where the stack used to be, he took a pull from the bottle.
“I’m done threatening you, Chance. I won’t do it again.” Matt turned toward his running rig. “Two days.”
Chance toasted him with the pint as he left. He sat back and stared at the bar’s fuzzy light leaking through the windshield. Dropped the bottle and went back in.
He worked through the buzz of the crowd to the bar and propped himself against it. The whiskey was taking hold and the throb in his nose faded out. Amy appeared from the back and placed a coaster in front of him.
“I thought you took off.”
“Battery shit itself again.”
“Bummer. You just can’t seem to catch a break, now, can you, cowboy?”
“Not so far.”
She glanced at the clock. “I get off in half an hour. Sit right here and when I’m done, I’ll be happy to jump you.”
“What’s wrong with your face?”
Chance opened his eyes. A small boy stood in front of him, staring. Chance sat up on the couch. “Hi.”
“Hi.” The boy didn’t blink. “Did you get hit?”
“Did I ever.” He stretched and looked around. It was a tiny living room, blank except for photos on the wall. He caught his reflection in the TV’s curved screen.