“Maybe get a little fresh air.”
“Not if they lived in Missoula. Some days you’re supposed to stay indoors.”
“How do you know when?”
“It’s in the paper.”
“Well,” Joe said.
“Indians wouldn’t camp there in the old days. The fire smoke didn’t go nowhere. Then the white man came along and built a town.”
The man was becoming agitated. Joe jerked his head to indicate the child in the truck.
“Looks like you got you a helper.”
“My boy,” the man said.
“Family business?”
“Dad owns the land we log.”
“Must be nice to work together like that.”
“Right now I live half a mile from my folks,” the man said. “Sometimes I wish it was more like five or six,”
Joe paid in cash and the truck bed rose on its hydraulic stem, dumping the wood. The man drove in little jerks to dislodge the last of the load, leaving deep grooves in the grass. He circled the cabin and Joe waited for him to return and stack the wood. The sound of the truck’s engine faded through the woods and after a while he realized that the man was not coming back. Joe studied the wood, dismayed to find it was all the same — thin pine. There were no big chunks of hardwood for overnight, no hot-burning ash to take the morning chill off the house. The timber business was better in Montana than Kentucky. The wood cost more and weighed less, and the customer stacked it himself.
Inside, he stroked the possum’s back, wondering if they lived in the West, He wished he’d asked Morgan what had possessed him to stuff the ugliest animal in the woods. The cabin was dark. The walls seemed to be closing in on Joe like a cardboard box that was slowly being crushed. He hurried to his car and drove to town. Mountains ringed Missoula like the sloping sides of a giant bowl. A layer of gray clouds made a Ed that clamped in car exhaust and chimney smoke. His eyes stung. His throat hurt.
At the Department of Motor Vehicles he took a written test for switching to a Montana driver’s license. The majority of the people in line were newcomers from California who wore western shirts with button-down collars. Joe passed the test but decided to grow a beard before the photograph. He wanted the picture to look nothing like his face at home.
At the edge of town he stopped beside the mountain where he’d seen the herd of elk. He followed their trail as it wound through the saddle of a gap, then left it for the summit. Hard snow lay like web in the crevice of shade made by rock. At the top he rested, his breath gusting in the chilly air. Sweat cooled inside his clothes. He’d penetrated the haze that draped the town, as if he’d risen above a high-water mark left by flood. The air was clean, the light pure. Missoula sat below the surface like a city beneath the sea.
Joe lay on his back and remembered a boy he’d grown up with who couldn’t wait to leave the hills. He’d gone to Detroit and worked in the auto plants for ten years, and finally returned. He bought an old house on his home hill and put a mail-order skylight in the roof. Neighbors came to see it, astounded at the thought of someone cutting a hole in his own roof. After nine months the man left again, as if being gone had poisoned him for living in the hills.
Joe began walking down the mountain. Two hawks spiraled a thermal, rising in a column to the darker blue above. He wondered if he’d ever love this land strongly enough to be ruined by living away from it. Montana was similar to Kentucky except the mountains were higher and there was no oak. At home the poor people lived in the hills and the rich people lived in town. Here it was the other way around.
On his way out of town, he stopped at a used-car lot. He looked at a four-door pickup with twin tires in the rear and heavy bumpers. Another truck had aluminum siding over a plywood topper with a chimney flue protruding from its pitched roof. He bypassed the late model cars for an old Jeep Wagoneer. It reminded him of a station wagon crossed with a track, jacked high all around. The locking front hubs were alien to Joe, but it was the kind of vehicle a man wearing a snakeskin belt might drive. He traded for it, paving a little boot.
He drove home and sat on his stump. A zigzag shadow cast by the mountain split the canyon. The land was as alien to him as the inside of his cabin. The air turned gray, then black. The coyote called. Snow began to fall.
He had food but wasn’t hungry. He had a Jeep but nowhere to go. He had a new name and no one to call him.
13
November descended over the valley with a harsh freeze. Every morning Joe woke to a dead fire and the desire to stay in bed. Scales of frost covered the interior windows. The stovepipe made an angle that should have been an elbow but more closely resembled a dog’s hind leg. Smoke leaked around loose rivets at each joint. He opened the door of the cabin and wondered if cold air entered or warm air left.
After a month of evenings alone, Joe drove to Missoula at dusk, where people in light jackets walked on clear sidewalks. The inversion that held bad air close to the earth also kept the temperature high.
He parked beside a sculpture of a mountain lion that resembled a giant pile of cement manure and walked around the corner to the Wolf. He stepped aside for an elderly man who staggered toward the door, holding each stool for balance. An Indian woman slept at the bar, wearing a faded jacket bearing the name of a tavern. Beside her slumped a skinny cowboy with a dog at his feet. The back of the cowboy’s neck was scarred. His huge ears had several holes in them, and Joe realized they’d been hit with a load of small buckshot.
“Dad was in a rocky place,” the man was saying to the bartender. “He jumped from one rock to another. The rock went. Killed him. Big rock. They’ll kill you.”
A raspy voice announced Keno numbers through a speaker that hissed and crackled like a green wood fire. The smell of spilt beer, fried food, and cigarettes clung to the room. Computerized slot machines jingled and hummed, occasionally emitting the electronic music that serenaded a winner. The players stared at the screens as if hypnotized. Beyond them hung a tarp that served as entrance to a strip club. An extremely fat biker checked IDs at the door. Crude tattoos covered his hands.
Joe walked past the tarp to the last chamber of the Wolfs warrens — the poker room. It had its own mini-bar and bathroom. A TV was mounted on the wall, tuned to a channel of perpetual sports and no sound. Ribbons of smoke twined overhead. Two players wore sunglasses and headphones, and Joe wondered if blotting the senses aided gambling or was the ultimate goal. Above the cashier’s cage hung a hand-printed sign that said, “Not even Mom gets credit.”
The cardroom manager limped to a chalkboard on the wall.
“You’re first up,” he said. “What’s your name?”
“Joe.”
He wrote Joe’s name on the board. The dealer wore a multicolored hat shaped like a bottle cap that looked like it clamped to his head. A ponytail hung down his back. He waved a bill and asked for twenty hard, thirty soft and the manager carried the bill to the cage for chips and change. Joe sat on a stool and opened a gambling magazine. He enjoyed seeing his name on the board and having people know it referred to him.
The Wolfs primary game was Texas Hold’em, played at ten-dollar limit. The dealer placed five community cards in the center of the table, to which each player added his two hole cards to make a standard poker hand. There were four betting rounds. Hold’em moved faster than most other games and could seat many players. Joe studied the competition as the dealer shuffled. There were a couple of rocks who only bet on winning hands, possessors of enormous patience. A woman sat at the table with her top two buttons loose. She flirted openly. Joe recognized her as a very good player, made better by men’s underestimation of her. If she was in a pot, Joe decided that he would simply fold.