As he held out his paw, Lane Lawlor actually said to Frank, “Put ’er there.”
“Daddy,” said Holly, “this is Lane Lawlor.” She smoothed the front of her dress and shrugged up one shoulder. She shifted her look to Frank and said, “And Mama, she’s met.”
Gracie came in from behind and almost secretively found herself a chair. Everybody looked over at her and she reexplained, “We’ve met.”
Frank gazed at Gracie. Love had turned to rage. It came out in some rather sharp questioning of Lane.
“Where you from, Lane?”
“I’m from Fort Benton,” he said, “right where she all began.”
“Right where what all began?”
“The history of Montana, the fur trade and so on.”
“Oh, the white history of Montana.” This wasn’t quite fair, as it suggested subtextually that Frank spent a good bit of his time fighting for the rights of Indians. He really meant Otis Redding. “What’s your line of work?”
“Water.”
“A swimmer?”
“I’m an attorney. My practice is confined to water issues — apportionment, adjudication, priority and so on.”
“You’ve been at it several summers, I take it,” said Frank, allowing his eyes to drift to the gray curls.
“Sure,” said Lane, ready to take him on, which seemed to be looming.
Holly made a presentational gesture with both hands toward her mother. Her interest in Lane had made her into a bit of a simpleton. She had an expression of appalling devotion, a Nancy Reagan gaze directed at the side of his head. “Well, what do you think?” Holly asked.
“She looks well,” said Frank. He wasn’t controlling his projected tone very well. He was usually better at this. Either more was at stake or the background of his slipping business was seeping in. He tried it again. “She looks well.” This time it sounded as if he were saying she didn’t look well at all or was actually ugly.
“You look well too,” said Gracie.
“Thank you. Anytime.”
“Oooh,” said Gracie, and this almost got away from them. Holly was frozen. Frank noticed that Gracie was angry.
“You want to hear how we met?” Holly asked.
“Yuh,” said Frank. “How?”
“At a rally for We, Montana.”
“I’m terribly sorry, darling,” said Gracie, “but your father and I don’t know what that is.”
Despite his pleasure at Gracie’s figure of speech, Frank said grimly, “I know what it is.” We, Montana was an organization of citizens who hoped to keep any water from leaving the state, through the erection of dams and diversions. They had some reputed connection with the Posse Comitatus as well as the radical tax protesters of the Dakotas. They spoke to the press sardonically about their interest in “white water issues,” by which they meant water for white people. Frank especially remembered their Western Family archetypes: the John Wayne male and his bellicose, gun-toting woman, their cold-eyed, towheaded children.
“Then we started going to the pistol range together,” Holly said.
“Why were you going to the pistol range, darling?” asked Gracie.
“To be able to defend myself,” said Holly flatly. “I shoot two hundred rounds a week.”
“I never thought of you as being in danger,” said Frank.
“You’re not in danger,” said Holly, “until you develop a few convictions. I found that out. There are some very peculiar out-of-staters on campus that give you the feeling that happiness is a warm gun.”
“I guess that’s why we’ve been so safe,” said Gracie to Frank. She seemed lost by this new Holly. Frank was numb.
“I hope you’ll realize with what love I say this,” Holly said. “Your generation, especially with your own out-of-state experiences, has been pretty much bent on self-discovery. Something very different happens when standards enter into it.”
Frank missed something here. “What are out-of-state experiences, darling?”
Holly laughed. “Experiences outside of Montana!”
“Uh-huh. Just what it sounds like.”
Gracie turned slowly toward Lane. “Lane, do we have you to thank for this?”
“I’m not sure what ‘this’ is, but probably you have Holly to thank.”
“Mom, you’re not even from here!”
“Where are you from, Mrs. Copenhaver?” Lane asked quietly.
“Louisiana.”
“Louisiana,” mused Lane. “I’ve often heard how colorful it is.”
“Don’t be a wise guy,” said Gracie. “It’s a great place.” Lane bobbed his head agreeably. “You can get a soft-shell po’ boy there which sets it apart in my eyes.”
“I’ve heard a good deal about your organization, Lane,” said Frank. “What do you hope to accomplish? Elect some people?”
“First of all, it’s not my organization. We see ourselves equally vested in Montana. We don’t want to elect anybody. We simply wish to provide an atmosphere of accountability throughout the state.”
“Who’s trying to hide the water …”
“Exactly. That’s the magnetic issue which collects all the other iron filings. We take the position that no water leaves the state, period. That tells you all you need to know. It tells you who the tree huggers are, the wolf recovery sleazos, the grizzly kissers, the trout pinkos —” Frank glanced over to Holly to see if he had become a trout pinko. She looked straight back at him, through him.
“Uh, Lane. Some of the state is twelve thousand feet high and, uh, water goes downhill, as I remember. Seems like some of it’s going to leave the state.”
“Not if you impound it.”
“Not if you impound it …”
“Exactly.”
“But then all the streams and rivers would, would be impoundments, all the beautiful streams and rivers.”
Holly and Lane chanted at him, trying to help him see the light: “There’s no such thing as a free lunch!” This phrase must have held some philosophical importance to them.
“I met one of the wolf enthusiasts,” Frank said noncommittally.
“Those people — the birds, bees, wolf and buffalo people — need to know that Montana is not a zoo,” said Lane. He got up, went to the kitchen and came back with a plate of little reddish brown discs. It was elk jerky that he had made himself. He passed the plate around.
“I start every session of the legislature passing out jerky to my fellow Republicans.”
“We’re Democrats,” said Gracie. “What do you give Democrats?”
“A piece of my mind — no, just kidding. I try to give them a sense of our ideology. Liberals think a victimology is an ideology — just line up victims and the policy will dictate itself. T’ain’t so, McGee. There’s a way of looking at this world and this country and, more importantly, this state that begins with saddle leather and distance, unsolved distance. And water. American government is run on the squeaking wheel getting the grease. In Montana, we not only don’t need grease, we don’t need the wheel. We need water, and we’re going to keep every drop that’s ours.”