by Ivan Doig
There is that memorably rueful line in Shakespeare, The soldier’s pole is fall’n. Despite my effort to be stoic, my newfound one definitely drooped.
Somewhat belatedly, I remembered manners. “Gee, Pop. Thanks. Can I try it out?” English Creek chattered past only a strong cast away, if a person knew how to cast.
“Not here,” he shook his head decisively, “the creek’s too roily. I’ll take you to the real place tomorrow. Come on back inside, we need to get you squared away.”
I followed him in and upstairs, to a warren of bedrooms; the house went with the saloon, I learned, so the original Medicine Lodge owner must have sired a batch of children. Pop thought for a moment and assigned me a room at the back, farthest from his own at the head of the stairs, on the theory that I wouldn’t be disturbed when he came in at all hours from bartending. A bedroom of my own eased disappointment about the lack of a soapbox racer somewhat; at least for now I was under the same roof with my singular father, rather than the world’s worst cousins.
But I could see his mood change markedly while we were putting away my things. He had a habit of squinting while thinking, his eyebrows drawing together until they nearly met. The deeper the squint, the deeper the thought. Whatever was on his mind now appeared bottomless. After kicking my suitcase under the bed—not far enough under to suit me—he stood there facing me, running a hand through the gray streak in the middle of his hair.
“Listen, Rusty,” he said, as if I hadn’t been all ears since the instant he showed up in the Phoenix doorway. “The joint takes damn near every hour I have, day and night, so I can’t be playing nursemaid to you all the time, right? You can stand your own company, can’t you?”
“Sure, I guess.”
“You don’t miss Danny and Ronny?”
“Huh-uh. I hate their guts.”
“That’s pretty much what I figured.” He muttered, “Too bad they didn’t run down Arvin’s leg.”
“Too bad they didn’t what, Pop?”
“Never mind. You’re here now, that’s what counts.” He started to say something more, then gruffly broke off to: “Dress warm tomorrow for fishing.”
—
TOMORROW CAME all too soon. Pop must have believed fish got up before dawn. Cats were just then scooting home from their nightly prowls, eyes glittering at us in the Hudson’s headlights, as he drove out of town and onto a gravel road that seemed to go on and on. I was more asleep than awake when eventually he stopped the car. “Here it is. Set your mouth for catching fish.”
Groggily I climbed out after him, and Montana opened my eyes for good.
The Rocky Mountains practically came down from the roof of the continent to meet us. The highest parts lived up to their name in solid rock, bluish-gray cliffs like the mightiest castle walls imaginable, with timber thick and dark beneath and the morning sky boundless beyond. Canyons, mysterious by nature, led off between the awesome rims of stone. I know now that the clear air and time of day made it all seem so wonderfully near and distinct; in the first morning of the world the light must have been like that.
Such was my introduction to the Two Medicine country, larger than some eastern states and fully as complicated. The Two, taking its name from the Two Medicine River in ancestral Blackfeet land some thirty miles north of town, was an extravagant piece of geography in all directions. The sizable canyon of the river cutting through the eastward plains was joined by a succession of fast-running creeks, with generous valleys nicely spaced along the base of the mountains. Benchlands flat as anvils and dramatically tan as buckskin separated these green creek valleys, while to the west, the peaks and crags of the Rockies went up like the farthest rough edge of everything. The Two Medicine National Forest began in the foothills and stretched up and over the Continental Divide, and that forest grazing land and the wild hay in the creek bottomlands had made the Two Medicine country a historical stronghold of sheep ranching, with one huge cattle ranch, the Double W, thrown in for contrast. That restless landscape working its way up to the summit of the continent seemed to me then a dramatic part of the earth, and still does.
Taking in the view between assembling our fishing poles, having a cigarette, and drinking coffee from a thermos, my father summed up the surroundings in his own way: “Nature. Damn hard to beat.”
What he was viewing most appreciatively, I suspected, was the body of blue water in the foreground, so big that it stretched around the nearest mountain and out of sight. RAINBOW RESERVOIR, according to the sign at the edge of the lake. I was to learn that the dirt dam of the reservoir—rezavoy, Pop pronounced it—impounded the South Fork of English Creek, there at the canyon that rounded the towering rimrock called Roman Reef. At the time, it was simply an oversize fishing hole I had been dragged to.
Rocks large enough to stand on lined the inner curve of the dam, and Pop scrambled down to the water’s edge, with me following uncertainly. Perching us on a boulder that seemed to suit him, he blew into his hands to warm them and began fiddling with our fishing poles and a bait can. “This is just our secret, got that?” He glanced around, even though there wasn’t a sign of anyone for miles, then carefully shook out a few of the grayish slimy contents onto the rock and started cutting small strips with his jackknife. “Fish knock each other’s brains out trying to get to these.”
“What are they?” In what I hoped was the spirit of fishermanliness, I picked one up to examine it, drippy and sort of oozing though it was.
“Chicken guts.”
I determinedly did not puke. Close, though. Pop busied himself showing me how to hold the fishhook steady by its shank and work the hunk of icky bait past the barb so that it covered the shine of the hook.
Trying it, I was nervous and stuck myself. I yelped, and tears started.
“Cripes, don’t bawl,” he soothed, getting me to wash the spot of blood off my finger in the frigid lake. “Stick it in your mouth and it’ll stop bleeding. Here, I’ll bait up for you, this once.”
I sucked on the finger and sniffled myself dry, watching as he took up his pole, fussed with the line and reel, drew back, and sent the hook and sinker sailing to where the fish were dreaming of chicken guts. “Now you try.”
Awkwardly I whipped my pole and the line plooped into the water about six feet from the bank. “That’s a start,” he commended my effort to the extent he could. “You want to go a little more easy when you cast, okay? It’s not like you’re chopping wood.”
Another swish, another ploop, maybe seven feet out from the bank this time. And, again, no interested response from any fish. I was beginning to get the feeling that progress came slowly in fishing. Not only that, but my hands and feet were cold, and the rest of me in between was not much better. Beautiful as the crisp scenic morning was, it would have been even more attractive from inside the car with the heater on.
“Don’t sweat it”—Pop at least was undiscouraged—“you’ll get the hang of it.”
Not, as it proved out, before losing my bait every few casts and having to deal with the hook and chicken guts a number of times more.
Something else troubled me. I could accept that the sign was right about this being a reservoir, but the other part I had my doubts about. Any rainbow I had ever seen—Arizona at least had those—needed its distance, an expanse of sky to stretch its band of colors from end to end. Here, though, the way the lake was pressed against the mountains, you would sprain your neck looking overhead for any sign of one. I asked Pop about it, and he just laughed. “It’s on the fish. Rainbow trout. The rezavoy is stocked with them.”
“Really?” I was more interested now, if chicken guts were going to lead to amphibians with red, yellow, green, blue, and purple stripes. Time passed, however, and cast after cast, with me growing more and more numb and no tug at my line—or, for that matter, at Pop’s—from any trout, rainbow-colored or otherwise.
/> Ultimately I was saved by the wind, which kicked up a strong riffle on the water and made his casts hard to control and mine hopeless. “Well, hell, they aren’t biting anyway,” he conceded at last, securing his hook into the cork handle of his pole and doing mine for me. “It just leaves that many more for you to catch in the derby.” I shivered from more than the cold as we climbed back to the car.
—
BACK IN TOWN, it began to dawn on both of us that my father did not quite know what to do with me once the fishing poles were put away. So there I was again, tagging after him as he went to tend to business at the saloon. Howie, smoking a cigarette as if he couldn’t breathe without it, was doing the same things behind the bar he’d been doing twenty-four hours before, but with a fresh gripe.
“Tom, you’re gonna have to do something about Earl Zane. Teach him to read, if nothing else.” He jerked his head toward the sign prominent above the cash register: MOSES FORGOT THE ONE ABOUT CREDIT: THOU SHALT NOT ASK. “The no-good son of a bitch wanted to keep on drinking after his money ran out, but I told the prick to—”
“Hey, not in front of the kid,” Pop cut him off, just when I was getting interested. At least in my vicinity, my father brought his own rules to the etiquette of bad language. Damn and hell salted and peppered his remarks to me as well as to everyone else, but he made an effort to swear off, so to speak, the worse words when I was around. Cripes stood in for what Bill Reinking, the newspaper editor and the town’s acknowledged wise man on matters of language, would have called invoking the Nazarene. And ess of a bee I soon figured out was his abbreviated version of son of a bitch rather than anything to do with collecting honey. Bee ess, on the other hand, baffled me until some overheard conversation enlightened me with the key word bull.
Now Howie tucked his tongue in his cheek to keep from saying anything, which nevertheless made all the statement needed about protecting my tender ears, and resumed his bar chores. Pop meanwhile was scooping unpaid bills from a drawer by the cash register. “Come on in the back while I’m busy being busy with these damn things,” he told me as if he saw no other choice. “You can help me count the booze.”
—
I HAD NEVER been in a museum, but the colossal back room of the Medicine Lodge immediately fixed that. The two-story space was like some enormous attic that had settled to the ground floor under the weight of its treasures. Ranch things were everywhere, most with the dust of time on them. Saddles, bridles, pairs of chaps, sets of harness—one entire wall was leather items of that sort, as if the horses had just left. Automobile jacks and tires neighbored with the equine gear. Elsewhere, axes and shovels and even a sledgehammer shared space with softer goods such as bedrolls and bright yellow rain slickers and hats of the Stetson sort. A guitar leaned against a pile of well-traveled suitcases. I couldn’t help but notice a clutch of fishing poles poking up in one corner, in with some long-handled crook-headed things that proved to be sheep hooks. As though one floor wasn’t enough for it all, the room had a loft—doubtless the haymow in the early days, when this extensive space had been the stable behind the saloon—and lighter items such as lariats and hay hooks, like the kind stevedores used, hung from the rafters there.
“Wow,” I let out, openmouthed, “where did you get all this?”
“All what?” Pop asked absently, shedding his suit coat but not his bow tie as he prepared to deal with the month’s bills. He followed my gaze around the menagerie of items. “The loot?” He half laughed. “It accumulates. See, customers don’t always have the ready cash when they want a couple of drinks. Or maybe need bus fare to somewhere, or are in the mood for a better pair of boots or a new hat. So,” he shrugged and lit up a cigarette, “I’ll take whatever they bring in, if it’s of any use. Maybe they get it out of hock eventually and maybe they don’t. After long enough, I sell it off, a bunch at a time.” He contemplated the motley collection again. “Some of the stuff goes way back, long before me. An old Scotchman owned the joint for a lot of years, in the early days. They say he knew every nickel about life, and he’s the one who started taking things in when cash was short. Kind of comes in handy eventually, doing it that way.” Tobacco smoke wisped over him as he stood there thinking out loud. “Gonna have to lay down the law to Earl Zane, though. He’s dumber than a frozen lizard. You got to watch out for people like that, kiddo,” he philosophized to me. “Hell, if the ess of a bee is short of money, he’s got those belt buckles he won riding at rodeos when he was a bronc punk. Hold up his pants with one hand and drink with the other—it’d be good for him.” Laughing the way he ordinarily did, quick and sharp like exclamations, he climbed the stairs to his check-writing chore.
I followed him, eager for the next sideshow attraction of the back room. The stairs to the loft were interrupted halfway up by a long, wide landing, and there Pop had his desk and a table and other office requirements, as if staying above the tide of stuff below. I thought it was a sensational perch, and I didn’t yet know the best thing about it as I gawked around from up there: a sizable air vent was cut through the wall at one end of the desk, and all of a sudden, the sound of Howie smashing ice behind the bar came through clear as anything. It took me hardly any time to figure out that when the vent’s louvered slats were open like that, a person could hear everything—and see everything, by peeking—that was happening out front in the barroom. No wonder my father had the reputation of being the lord of all he surveyed, if he could do it secretly whenever he wanted.
He dropped the stack of bills to pay and his checkbook on the desk and turned around to me. “The deal is, you’re gonna count up the booze for me, right?” His forehead furrowed. “You do know how to count, don’t you?”
Anything above ten was a challenge, but I didn’t want to appear as shaky at arithmetic as I was at fishing. “Sure! I do it all the time.”
“Okay, then, see those cases down there?” They were hard to miss, stacked halfway to the ceiling along the sidewall. “Count each kind and call it out to me. Start with the beer.”
That was the next scene for a while, me scrambling around the boxes of alcoholic beverages and out of his way while he sat there at his lofty desk tackling the financial chores. That image of him with his clattery adding machine and fountain pen and checkbook I suppose sounds as quaintly manual now as a monk with an abacus and quill and scroll, but calculators then were still the human sort cranking out sums up there on the landing and, to a lesser degree, the six-year-old one laboriously enumerating the pyramid of booze down below. Starting with the beer—the vast majority of it Great Falls Select; the beverage of the Selectrics!—I would count the cases twice to make sure I had the number right, call out the total to Pop, he would say “Got it,” and write it down somewhere and go back to his calculating, and I would move on to the next brand of intoxicant. It was educational. Booze was a new word to me, and toward the back of the pile, I was thrilled to find included with the bourbon and scotch and all the rest a case of Orange Crush, proof of my father’s discriminating taste. The thrill diminished somewhat when I counted the Coca-Cola, six cases, but I still ended up happy to have been entrusted with the inventory.
“All done, Pop.”
“Okay, swell job,” he responded without looking up. “Keep yourself amused awhile, I’m not done writing these damn checks yet.”
“Can I have some booze?”
“What? Hell no!” He scowled down from the landing, until he saw me disconsolately tracing a finger along the carton of orange pop. “Oh. Sure, help yourself to a crushed orangutang.” He tossed me an opener.
Bottle of sweet, sticky soda in hand, I circulated through the maze of things, eager for discoveries. One that puzzled me was tucked behind a stack of spare tires and covered with a tarpaulin, several toolboxes identically new and shiny. Still in my counting mode, I asked: “How come there’s so many of this?”
Fanning a check in the air to dry th
e ink, Pop glanced over at what I’d found. “Never mind. Pull that tarp over those like it was.”
“But there’s”—I had to think hard to remember what the number is when you have ten and two more—“twelve?”
“The customer must have been a dozen times thirstier than usual,” he said as if that was that, and went back to what he was doing.
I kept on prowling the wonders of the back room. Propped against the wall where the rain slickers were hanging was a sizable wooden sign standing on end. Pushing aside the curtain of coats and turning my head sideways, I managed to read the big lettering: BLUE EAGLE. Between the words, in fading paint, a fierce-looking sky-colored bird swooped as though it meant business.
“Pop, how come the eagle is blue instead of eagle color?”
“Hmmh?” The adding machine was coughing out a long result, which he waited for before answering me. “That’s the name of the joint, is all.”
“I thought it was the, uh, Medical Lounge.”
“Not this one,” he replied crossly, setting me straight about the Medicine Lodge and that the other joint was somewhere he’d been way back when, long before I entered the world. “That’s another story,” he said, which told me he didn’t want to be pestered further about it. Getting up from his desk, he straightened his bow tie and shrugged into his suit coat. “Come on, let’s mail these damn bills and grab some lunch.”
—
DERBY DAY was a repeat of the circumstances Pop had introduced me to at Rainbow Reservoir twenty-four hours before: brilliant weather, matchless scenery, and chicken guts.
What was decidedly different, though, was his method of getting us there. This time, when he gathered fishing poles and bait can and thermos and so on, he headed not toward the Hudson but to the old car parked at the far end of the driveway. Trying to get my bearings on a day that was strange enough already, I asked: “Does it run okay?”
“Hell yes.” His reply sounded a little hurt as he tumbled our gear into the back seat. “It’s in top-notch shape.”
