“I don’t know.”
Joe put the truck in gear too fast and stalled the engine. He fumbled with the key. The second man joined the crew boss. He was staring at Joe and frowning. Joe eased the truck into reverse. The second man spoke.
“Hey,” he said. “Hey, you.”
Joe revved the engine and lifted his foot from the clutch. The truck jerked backwards in a spray of dirt. The two men cursed and jumped away as Joe spun the truck in a lumbering circle. He forced it into first gear and sped down the dirt lane.
Joe yanked the wheel into the first switchback and clipped a pine, shattering the headlight. At the bottom he veered off the road and scared an elk that plunged into cover. Joe jerked the steering wheel and bumped back into the road ruts, his head striking the roof of the cab. When he reached blacktop he pulled over, his bad leg throbbing. Nausea passed through his bowels and he leaned his head outside until the sensation passed. He tried to calm himself. The man probably wanted to know how to get cigarettes. Joe had been surprised by the number of firefighters who smoked.
He wiped his face with his sleeve and drove back to the warehouse in Missoula. He’d become lax. He should have watched the billboard at the Incident Command Post for evidence of a crew from Kentucky. He wondered if he was in danger. The best move was to quit, but he liked the job. More important, he liked himself for having a fob. He thought of his father continuing to go into the mines after being diagnosed with emphysema. That decision had turned Boyd against work for life.
He parked in the lot and turned in his keys. The boss accepted Joe’s resignation without comment. He drove through town to the interstate. At the last red light he headed east through Hellgate Canyon, where pioneers had suffered ambush by the hundreds.
He followed the Clark Fork’s gentle meandering until it reached the juncture of Rock Creek. Traffic was slowed by campers and trucks pulling enormous trailers. An RV crept around a tight curve, the face of its driver tense. A tiny slip of the wrist and the whole contraption would plunge into the creek. Beyond the tourist lodge were fewer cars, and Joe felt as if he were going home again.
An expensive truck with. Nevada plates sat before his cabin. Fishing gear lay strewn about the soft earth like a yard sale. Joe backtracked to Ty’s place. No one answered his knock. A silken light sifted through the juniper boughs, imbuing the air with a golden glow. After several minutes Ty approached the Jeep from, behind, holding a rifle loosely in his hands.
“Hey, brother,” Ty said. “I thought you’d be gone by now. How’s your leg?”
“Better. Stiffens up when I don’t work it.”
“That was some bad luck getting shot on Skalkaho like that.”
“I reckon,” Joe said.
They walked behind Ty’s cabin to a redwood table turned gray from sun and snow. The steady rush of Rock Creek came across the grass.
“I hear you’re a Fed after all,” Ty said.
“What?”
“Got your snout in the fire trough.”
“Not anymore. I just quit.”
“And came here on a social call.”
“Not exactly.”
Ty sat with one leg extended on the picnic table. He seemed content to remain there for hours. A wren called from the woods and another answered. Joe struggled against the urge to explain his situation. He wanted to tell Ty about Boyd and Rodale, his family and the garbage crew, Abigail, and Zephaniah. He wanted to confess.
“I need a gun,” he said.
“Talk to Owen.”
“If I ask him for help, he might get the wrong idea.”
“How’s that?”
“I’m not a Bill.”
“Me neither,” Ty said. “I don’t take sides.”
“I know you sell them guns.”
“In the eighteen hundreds, the French armed the Indians with rifles. The Indians lost, but at least they went down fighting. Then they got put in camps as bad as the Japanese in California.”
Joe wasn’t sure what Ty was talking about, but he believed him.
“Have you met Frank yet?” Ty said.
“When I got shot. And at a picnic.”
“Take it from me, Frank is a frigging lunatic. In my line you meet all sorts. Sociopath, gun fag, religious nut, even environmentalists want guns these days. And sometimes you meet a genuine psychopath. Frank is special, like Custer. He can’t wait to die in a blaze of glory. So watch your ass around him.”
“He doesn’t like anybody but white people.”
“You figured that out, huh.”
“I don’t understand it.”
“Let me tell you, brother. Hatred is the cheapest pleasure there is.”
“One man blamed everything on the Jews.”
“They’re like a broken record. I always tell them they’ve got things backwards. First of all, Jesus was a Jew. And second, the Jews didn’t kill him, the government did. The government bribed Judas, arrested Jesus, put him on trial, and executed him.”
“I never thought about it that way.”
“It’s hard to argue with since they’re against the whole alphabet soup.”
“What’s that?”
“CIA, FBI, ATF, NSA, IRS, UN, FEMA. There’s tons if you buy it.”
“What made them get that way?”
“The end of the Cold War.”
“You lost me.”
“During the fifties,” Ty said, “the government wanted everybody to be afraid of the Russians. That brought on a bunker mentality which led to people stockpiling arms and food. When the Cold War ended, all that paranoia lost its enemy. The Feds filled the gap. Then what happened at Waco and Ruby Ridge proved them right,”
“Proved what?”
“It proved that the government had turned on American citizens.”
“You don’t sound like you believe all that.”
“I’m not a fanatic.”
“Then why are you in it?”
“The first thing any fascist government does is disarm the people, then take away civil rights. If the Jews had guns, maybe the Holocaust wouldn’t have happened. If black South Africans had been armed, there’d be no apartheid.”
“You think guns keep peace?”
“Of course. That’s why our country doesn’t want anyone else to have nukes. Then the U.S. gets to tell the little countries how to act.”
Joe was wearied by Ty’s words, half of which he didn’t fully understand. The rest made sense to him. The hard part was trying to separate one from the other, and he wondered if Ty himself knew the difference.
“What I miss about Alaska,” Ty said, “nobody had time to worry about this kind of thing.”
“Why’d you go up there anyhow?”
“Same reason you came here.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t bullshit a bullshitter,” Ty said. “You’re on the run from something.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Show up in the fall with a bundle of cash. No friends or family around. Stay in your cabin all winter. It’s the same way I hit Alaska.”
“On the run?”
“Yeah. Ever hear of the Weathermen?”
“No,” Joe said.
“I didn’t think, so. It was a political group in the sixties. I had to leave the country in a big hurry and I went to Canada and just kept on going. Alaska gets so cold that car tires turn square, but it’s the most beautiful country I ever saw.”
“Then why stay in Montana?”
“It’s like Chicago all over again, brother. These people are as radical as the Black Panthers were. You know, a lot of people wrote them off for being racist, but they were feeding hungry children in the ghetto. Things aren’t as cut and dried as everybody would like.”
“What do you mean?”
“Radicals start change going. It was radicals who dressed up like Indians and threw tea in Boston Harbor. These people out here believe in a cause and I respect that.”