“I thought you were from here? Sounded like quite the Montana expert.”
“I’ve never been in the airport. I could tell you what the bus stations are like.”
She tilted her head and studied him. “How exactly did you end up in Tampa?”
“It was a circuitous route,” he said. “That’s the best I can explain it. There was never a destination in mind.”
That was the truth. He’d had destinations he wanted to avoid, however, and they’d just arrived in one.
As they left the airport and crossed to the rental-car parking lot, Mark felt his breath catch a little. The Billings airport was built on a plateau above the city, and while the mountains were far off in the hazy distance, the big sky was right there on top of you. The Montana sky felt older than time and endless as space itself.
It was a humbling sky.
They took I-90 across the Yellowstone River and out of Billings, followed it to Hardin, and then angled south through the Crow Indian Reservation and toward Wyoming. He saw Lynn rubbing her face just above her eyes.
“Headache?”
“Yes. Strange.”
“Not really. Elevation change. You came from sea level, and we are going to hit ten thousand feet. Let’s stop for some aspirin.”
They stopped at a gas station in Crow Agency. Then they drove out of the town, and she was quiet as she watched it go by. He understood why. To drive through the places where the natives had been when the white settlers found them and then to drive through the places those settlers had left for those natives seemed to demand shame. Or should have.
“You should hear the music at a powwow,” Mark said, and she looked at him with confusion.
“The chants and drums. It’s powerful. Really powerful. I’ve never heard anything else like that, where the sound brings the past into the present. There’s a place called the Medicine Wheel that feels like that, though. Feels the way the music sounds.”
He was talking too fast and felt foolish for bringing it up. He wasn’t making any sense, and he was telling her things he’d never shared with anyone. It was all the fault of this place, the sensory memory of the return.
“Who introduced you to the music?” Lynn asked.
“My mother, I guess, but I’d hate to give her the credit.”
He hoped his tone indicated that the subject was done, and it seemed to, because Lynn didn’t press him.
They continued south into Wyoming, and in Ranchester they broke off the interstate and headed west, into the mountains. At least thirty minutes passed in silence and Mark was lost in thought when Lynn said, “What are you smiling about?”
He hadn’t realized that he was. “Lot of memories, that’s all.”
“Let a girl in on the fun.”
He glanced at her, saw that she was smiling, and went along with it, though he knew better.
“We drove a stolen car out of Sheridan on this highway once, me and my two uncles,” he said. “One of my uncles was convinced that it was a legitimate thing to do because the guy he’d boosted it from owed him more in poker debts than the car was worth. But what he didn’t know about the car was that the gas gauge was broken. This road gets up as high as ten thousand feet, basically two miles in the air, and we were right near the top when the car died. The argument my uncles had there on the side of the road was one for the ages. Then, once we got to walking, they turned philosophical and carried on for a few miles about how much easier things were in the days of the horse thieves, because at least you could tell what you were getting. It was harder stealing cars, because unless you were a damn mechanic, you might get screwed. I always liked that logic. Sucks to steal a car that’s a lemon, you know?”
When he looked back over at her, she had wide eyes, but there was no indictment to them. Just that faint amusement.
“A circuitous route to Tampa,” she said. “You weren’t kidding.”
He nodded and drove on as the rode wound in sharp switchbacks and climbed steadily-seven thousand feet, eight thousand, nine. The Bighorn Mountains closed around them, still snowcapped on the peaks, weeks from wildflower season. At Baldy Pass they crested ninety-five hundred feet, Mark’s ears popping as they drove just below the clouds, more like flying low than driving a car. Melted snow was all around them now, bleeding out in the sun in the places of trapped shadows where it had been able to survive so long. A voice inside Mark’s head that was not his own said, Welcome home, and it wasn’t kind. It was a mocking voice.
And a knowing one.
The post office box in Lovell was all they had for Eli Pate, but lounging around the post office waiting for him to show up was hardly the most effective way to go about finding him. Still, they started there, asking the girl behind the counter if she knew Pate. Mark thought he saw a ripple in her face, like the name had a sour taste.
“Well, sure. There are less than two hundred boxes in use here. I know everybody who uses them regular, but I’m not allowed to speak about it.” She was looking Lynn’s business card over. “What’s he done?”
“Nothing. We just need to talk to him.”
“Sure. But I’m just not, you know, allowed to tell you. It’s a federal crime. If I was to tell you that Mr. Pate comes in here once every two weeks, usually on Tuesday, and he didn’t come last week, that would be a federal crime.”
Lynn smiled at her. “Then we won’t ask you to do that.”
Today was Monday.
“Be careful with him,” the girl said, and Lynn’s smile faded.
“Pardon?”
The girl pocketed Lynn’s card and glanced out the window at the street. It was empty and they were alone. She seemed to take comfort in that.
“I would’ve remembered him even if he came in only the once,” she said. “He has these real intense eyes, real dark eyes, and they’re just, like, so…so focused. And I was running the paperwork for the box and all of a sudden he reached his hands out and I almost jumped, you know? But he didn’t actually touch me. He just kept them out, like this.”
She was holding both hands flat, palms toward her breasts, hovering about six inches away from her body.
“The way you’d put your hands out in front of a vent if you wanted to know whether the furnace was running,” she said. “Like he was testing me for heat. He did that, and he smiled, and he said, You’re very weak. And I don’t even remember what I said exactly, told him he’d have to stop being weird or that he had to leave or whatever, but before I got much out he put his hands back in his pockets and said that it was a good thing. Then he acted normal the rest of the time, just filled out his papers and thanked me and left and he’s never been anything but polite since then, but still…I remember it, you know? Fucking weirdo.” She had a distant expression when she added, “And I’m not weak.”
Mark was interested that what had lodged deepest in her mind seemed to be Eli Pate’s assessment of her, not his actions.
“You ever tell anybody about that, or ask about him or anything?” Lynn said.
“No. But like I said…be careful with him.”
They left the post office and walked back to the rented Tahoe.
“Your first claim in the West, and you’ve already hit gold,” Mark said. “If he shows up tomorrow, that’d be a gift.”
“It would be a lot of waiting if he doesn’t, though. Hopefully, we’ll find him first. Next date is with the sheriff.”
“Befriend the local law,” Mark said. “You’re really sticking to that 1850s approach.”
“Hardly. I think he runs with troubled people, and in a small town, the local law is indeed likely to know him.”
“If he’s been in trouble, he hasn’t served any time. Not under that name.”
“You’ve checked?”
“I checked on a lot of things.” He told her about his searches the previous night and concluded with the vandalism near Red Lodge and Laurel. “Probably unrelated, but from a timing standpoint, it bothered me.”