by James Grady
The trailer almost in sight, Sidd slowed the four-wheeler. Again he tasted dust, and wondered whether it was carried on a hot wind. He knew that huge forest fires created their own chaotic climates, the oxygen-hungry blaze producing gusts that could howl like freight trains. But the fires in Idaho were nowhere near that close.
Even though he no longer believed the Montana Gold Ski Resort was viable, Sidd was still happy as its caretaker. He didn’t fully understand his duties and sometimes felt he was cheating Buck out of his meager pay, but he loved the solitude and had come to love the land itself. The ski runs had scarred it and the persistent drought had choked it, but he knew now that he was wrong about its lifelessness. All he had to do was sit still. Large birds of prey wheeled on thermal currents, and deer came to lap the water that pooled around the sprinklers on the big house’s green lawn. Sometimes it was so quiet he could hear beetles scratching in the dust.
Occasionally, at dawn or at twilight, he even glimpsed the gophers Mr. Severson so despised. Disobeying instructions, he hadn’t shot at a single one.
He did his best with the other duties, though. He kept the four-wheeler fueled up and patrolled the land every day. And while the gopher invasion was real—the holes and mounds were proof of that—Sidd had yet to see a sandal-wearing conservationist, and the NO TRESPASSING signs had not been tampered with.
Winter was months away, but Sidd was anxious for his first one on the mountain. He was curious to see how deep the snow would fall. Buck had told him that riding a snowmobile was more fun than bull-riding, not quite as fun as getting laid.
Reaching the trailer’s weedy yard, he stretched his hamstring and calf muscles, then worked the hand pump by the side of the trailer. He drank straight from the spout, the first mouthfuls of water lukewarm and tasting of iron. On a hot day, it was like drinking blood.
He worked the handle, letting water splash over the river stones that had been piled around the pipe to keep the yard from turning to mud. Then he drank again, gulping cooler water until his belly was full.
He walked to the edge of the yard and urinated into the trees, a genuine pleasure. It was in mundane moments like these that he knew he could never return to Mumbai. A man who belonged nowhere could live anywhere. This dry place would be his home.
Sidd liked to do his first patrol right after his run, before the sun grew too intense. It was best to change into jeans and a long-sleeve shirt to protect his arms and legs from the four-wheeler’s hot metal and the rocks thrown by its knobby tires, but putting on clean clothes when he was sweaty was too unpleasant.
He climbed the railroad-tie steps, went into the dim trailer, and came out wearing the visored helmet and carrying the shotgun. He considered putting the shotgun back. He had already decided not to kill gophers, so logically it followed that he could not kill a human being. But nobody else knew he wasn’t going to kill a human being, so he supposed the gun was at least good for show. If he did meet any of Buck’s sandal-wearers, and if they refused to leave the property, he could always fire it into the air.
Sidd slung the gun over his shoulder, the thin membrane of his running shirt doing nothing to cushion the hard stock against his back. He tightened the helmet under his chin. Then he climbed on the four-wheeler and turned the key to start its engine.
* * *
The thing about arson was that it couldn’t look like arson. Obviously. Insurance companies didn’t pay out if they found a pile of melted gas cans at the place where the fire started. Poe did have two red five-gallon cans strapped in front of the wheel wells, but using an accelerant was an absolute last resort. Over his career Poe had figured out, usually by talking to contractors over cans of beer, a few simple ways of starting a fire and making it look like an accident.
“Why don’t you just call him?” asked Mike.
Dumb shit had been in stir too long. He didn’t even know why you didn’t do business on a cell phone.
Poe put the truck in four-wheel drive and started easing up the slope. “Look, it makes sense. They got insurance for everything now. This place is insured as a ski resort. Scenery’s part of the package. No one’s gonna fly to Montana to vacation in a moonscape.”
They probably should have gotten out and hiked. The truck was lurching from side to side, and the undercarriage sounded like it was being swept with the wrong end of the broom. But he wanted to get this thing done.
At the top of the lowest ski run, there was a little bench and the ground leveled out into a meadow. Poe angled the truck toward a thicket of trees. “You think here?”
Mike didn’t answer. He was tapping the screen again.
Unbelievable. Poe slapped the phone out of Mike’s hands and it tumbled onto the floor mat. “Hey, Mike! You think this place is okay?”
Mike looked at him, and again Poe had the feeling that, if the sleepy man-mountain ever erupted, the crater would be deep and wide. But Mike glanced out the window and nodded. “Here’s fine.”
They climbed out of the truck, walked into the trees, and picked up rocks, which they arranged in a circle. Then they filled the circle with tinder-dry wood. The fake campfire sat right in the brittle yellow grass. Poe felt confident he’d be able to get the whole job done with one match.
“Good?” asked Mike, breaking a stick over his knee and leaning the pieces together like a teepee.
Poe thought, shook his head. “This looks like two guys drove up here to make a campfire. We need a stack of firewood next to it, logs to sit on, all that shit.”
Mike rubbed his neck and then walked deeper into the trees. Poe heard him crunching around and wondered what went on in his head. Was he wishing he could get back to that video game? Missing his cage and his bunk?
Then Mike came back dragging a log so big Poe couldn’t have managed it if there were two of him. He let it down with a grunt. “Bench.”
They gathered more firewood and stacked it close to the fire ring. Poe pictured the campers as a couple of stoned college kids who don’t know the first thing about fire safety.
“Needs trash,” said Mike, and Poe was actually impressed.
“I got some beer cans. I’ll wipe ’em down, but the fire’ll burn off the prints anyways.” Mike went back to the truck, knowing there would be empties rattling around in the bed. Yet when he came out of the trees, he stopped. The sun had cleared the bald hills to the east. The Bitterroot Valley was hidden by the flank of the mountain, but the Missoula Valley opened up below him to the north.
Brown smoke smothered the town like a winter air inversion, but above it, a steady wind had scoured the sky an aching, brilliant blue. It was like being in a plane above the clouds.
Then he heard a four-wheeler in the distance. It sounded like a VW Bus in reverse. He froze—no backup plan except to apologize, get the hell out of there, and try again in a few weeks. That’s when he saw the rider. “What in Christ?”
“Oh boy.” Mike was beside him.
It was the brown-skinned jogger from half an hour ago: same dark shirt and shorts. Only now he was wearing a helmet and had a shotgun strapped across his back.
Poe’s first instinct was to open the cab and pull his Savage .270 out of the gun rack. But since it was fishing season, all he had to protect himself was the cheap Zebco rod he sometimes used to kill time. He never caught anything because he slept too late.
“You bring a gun?” asked Mike.
“Hell no, I didn’t bring a gun. Nobody hired us to shoot anybody.”
“I guess it’s a good thing I did.” Mike unzipped his fanny pack and took out a .38. It was small in his massive hand, and so old the bluing was wearing off. It looked like a $150 pawn-shop special.
Poe’s stomach dropped. The big man really did want to go back to Deer Lodge.
* * *
Sidd’s heart started hammering as soon as he came out of the trees and saw the men—real, live trespassers. It looked like one of them was holding a beer can, so hopefully they were just some “good old boys” e
njoying a drink. But why had they driven so far up the mountain?
The whole thing was puzzling. Sidd braked the four-wheeler about fifty yards away. Buck had given him strict orders to show the shotgun and to fire a warning shot in the air if necessary, but he doubted it would come to that. “This is private property!” he shouted.
Then he saw the GMC on the side of the truck and realized that this was the one that had passed him while he was running, and the shorter man was the angry driver who’d yelled at him. Judging by the way he threw his beer can into the bed of the truck and spat on the ground, he was still angry.
Sidd suddenly had a powerful urge to fire the warning shot. As he pulled the shotgun over his head, the strap snagging on the back of his helmet, he saw the two men struggling over something. And then, as he raised the barrel of the shotgun in the air, the big man cuffed the smaller one, who staggered back. The big man leveled a small dark gun over the side of the truck.
Sidd didn’t think. He dropped the barrel and squeezed the trigger. The big man ducked. The shotgun boomed and the recoil punched Sidd’s shoulder, almost turning him sideways. The big man peered over the truck and shot twice. His breath loud in the helmet, feeling like a spaceman, Sidd peered down at his own body, checking for holes. Then he ejected the spent shotgun shell and fired again. The pellets ripped holes in the side of the truck, right above the gas-cap door.
The big man shot back again, and Sidd heard one of the bullets—he heard the bullet—whine past him.
Moving clumsily, as if a child were at the controls of his body, Sidd slung the gun around his neck and turned the four-wheeler down the slope, looking for cover. Swiveling his head, he saw the smaller man scramble into the cab. The truck started moving and the big man grabbed onto the tailgate, ran a few steps to keep pace, and pulled himself into the back, nearly getting thrown off as the truck lurched and bounced.
Sidd brought the four-wheeler around and braked. They were going up, toward what Mr. Severson had told him would be a black-diamond run.
He hesitated. Then he accelerated and went after them.
It was hard going up the slope in the four-wheeler—he had no idea how the truck was doing it. The white GMC on the tailgate blurred as the truck’s tires chewed their way up the pockmarked slope. The man in the back rose up, aimed the gun, and lost his balance before he could shoot.
Sidd zigzagged back and forth, knowing it made no sense to follow but hating the intruders, wanting to chase them off Severson’s land. His land.
The truck struggled as the pitch grew steeper. When the driver turned to take another diagonal line up the slope, Sidd half-expected the vehicle to roll over.
The underside of the four-wheeler struck a rock, so hard it almost jarred his palms loose from the handgrips. He smelled gas. He looked back and saw flames, little signal fires dotting the slope. Sparks? A hot tailpipe?
Then he looked forward and saw trails of fire behind the truck, moving unnaturally fast. At that moment he saw liquid sheeting out of the gap at the bottom of the tailgate. There was panic on the big man’s face as he shouted to the driver and threw a large gas can, amber fuel draining from a dozen holes, beading and shining in the sunlight. Flame from the already-burning grass leaped up to meet it, ignited, and obscured the truck behind a sudden wall of flame.
Sidd stopped as another big red gas can arced through the air. He looked down the slope. The fire was spreading fast, the little islands joining together, the flames rising, smoke whipping. Once it spread from the grass to the trees it would explode. Men would climb the mountain to cut fire lines, and planes would drop orange plumes of retardant.
He turned the four-wheeler downhill, feeling a roller-coaster drop in his stomach, and aimed for a gap in the flames.
The heat from the rising sun was nothing compared to the heat from the fire. The sound, like ripping fabric, was louder than his engine. How could it spread so fast? He piloted the four-wheeler blind through a pocket of smoke, hitting a depression so hard his head almost banged the handlebars; he felt lost, felt fire singe his arms, panicked—and then he was through. Glancing up, he could just make out the truck fighting its way up the slope. He couldn’t see the big man in the back.
Dawn was red. As smoke poured over the hills from the west, new smoke rose up from below. The hope of home was a dream for children. Sidd imagined the fire burning all the way to Idaho, through Washington, to the rising sea. Someday, someone would start a fire that would burn until all the fuel was gone.
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
David Abrams is the author of the novels Brave Deeds and Fobbit. Fobbit was named a New York Times Notable Book of 2012, an Indie Next pick, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, a Montana Honor Book, and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction. His stories have appeared in Esquire, Narrative, Glimmer Train, and many other publications. He lives in Butte with his wife.
Janet Skeslien Charles grew up in Shelby and attended the University of Montana. Her novel Moonlight in Odessa, which explores the business of e-mail-order brides, was translated into ten languages. She currently lives in Paris, France.
Debra Magpie Earling is Bitterroot Salish and a member of the Flathead Nation. She is the author of the novels Perma Red and The Lost Journals of Sacajewea. She has been a recipient of an NEA grant, an American Book Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. She is currently the director of the creative writing program at the University of Montana.
Gwen Florio is an award-winning journalist who turned to fiction in 2013 with the publication of Montana, which won the Pinckley Prize for Debut Crime Fiction and a High Plains Book Award. Disgraced is the third novel in the Lola Wicks series, and two more are scheduled. Florio lives in Missoula.
Jamie Ford loves living in Great Falls, his home for seventeen years, though he occasionally calls it Adequate Falls. His debut novel, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, spent two years on the New York Times best-seller list and went on to win the 2010 Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature. His most recent novel, Songs of Willow Frost, was published in 2013. His work has been translated into thirty-four languages.
James Grady was born and raised in Shelby and graduated from the University of Montana. He was a research analyst for the state’s 1972 Constitutional Convention and a legislative aide to Montana’s US Senator Lee Metcalf during Watergate. Grady’s first novel, Six Days of the Condor, became the iconic Robert Redford movie. He has published more than a dozen other novels, twice that many short stories, and worked as a national investigative reporter.
Keir Graff was born and raised in Missoula, where he attended Hellgate High School and, briefly, the University of Montana. He is the author of four novels for adults (most recently The Price of Liberty), two novels for middle-graders, and many short stories. Graff now lives in Chicago, where he is the executive editor of Booklist and cohost of the popular Publishing Cocktails events. He returns to Montana every year.
Eric Heidle is a full-blooded Montanan-American working east of the divide as a creative director, writer, and photographer. In 2015 his story “At Jackson Creek” took first place in Montana Public Radio’s fiftieth-anniversary short-fiction contest. Heidle’s photography has appeared in Montana Outdoors, Backpacker, and other publications. When he’s not at his desk, he is usually roaming the Rocky Mountain Front, paddling the Missouri, or failing to catch fish.
Walter Kirn is the author of eight books and an e-book. His most recent is Blood Will Out, a memoir of his friendship with murderer Clark Rockefeller. His other books include Up in the Air, Thumbsucker (both of which have been made in to feature films), and Mission to America. A columnist for Harper’s, he has also written for the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, the New Republic, GQ, New York, and Esquire. He lives much of the year in Livingston.
Sidner Larson is the former director of American Indian Studies at Iowa State University (2000–2015); an enrolled member of the Gros Ventre tribal comm
unity of Fort Belknap; and the author of Catch Colt, Captured in the Middle, and numerous academic articles and poems. He is currently teaching at the University of Arizona Law School and working on an indigenous peoples law book.
Carrie La Seur is a Billings-based environmental lawyer whose debut novel, The Home Place, was on the Indie Next list, won a High Plains Book Award, and was a finalist for a Strand Critics’ Circle Award. Her work has been published in the Daily Beast, Grist, the Guardian, the Harvard Law and Policy Review, Huffington Post, Kenyon Review, Mother Jones, Oil, Gas and Energy Law, Salon, and the Yale Journal of International Law.
Thomas McGuane has written ten novels, beginning with The Sporting Club (1969), as well as three nonfiction essay collections and three short-story collections. His short fiction began regularly appearing in the New Yorker in 1994. McGuane’s novel Ninety-two in the Shade was a finalist for the National Book Award, and other works have been included in Best American Stories, Best American Essays, Best American Mystery Stories, and Best American Sporting Essays. He lives near McLeod.
Caroline Patterson is the author of the story collection Ballet at the Moose Lodge. A former Stegner Fellow in fiction at Stanford University, she edited Montana Women Writers: A Geography of the Heart and published fiction in journals and magazines including Alaska Quarterly Review, Big Sky Journal, Epoch, Southwest Review, and Seventeen. She lives in Missoula, where she is the executive director for the Missoula Writing Collaborative.
Yvonne Seng has lived in Montana for most of the twenty- first century—in Missoula, Ovando, and Helena, where she was curator for the Holter Museum of Art—all after having worked extensively in the Middle East. Born in Australia, her first book was the nonfiction Men in Black Dresses: A Quest for the Future Among Wisdom-Makers of the Middle East. Her short fiction has appeared in the anthology Explosions: Stories of Our Landmined World and the literary journal Gargoyle.
