by Clara Hume
Now, during my few days in Montana, my head wrapped around Fran almost constantly—I had never been in love. Was this it? I kept reminiscing about the sights, sounds, and smells on her mountain, and her friends whom I'd briefly gotten to know. The opalescence of the sky when it stormed, the sound of Daniel's sheep bells as he tended to them during the day, the barking of the shepherd's dogs, the lazy way the sun hung high over Lake Stardust, the colorful fabrics Elena created with mountain dyes, the chickens constantly squawking: these things would draw me back. I wouldn't have seriously entertained the idea, however, if Fran weren't there.
I figured on taking some goods from Montana back to her Idaho, to the place of sacred water and eternal eyes, of death and disease and new wildness taking over in its place. I loaded the jeep with memorabilia—my guitar, photos, a few bio-fuel tanks I'd hidden in a trapdoor in the kitchen, firewood, dried and canned foods, and chemicals to purify water—and I took a last trip around the old house where Mom used to sit on the big porch snapping beans or waving to neighbors. That which was left was now but a dream and didn't even seem like memory.
Mom had died in bed, like David, but years prior from a flu virus. I had buried David in the back yard last time I was here, next to her. Dad had disappeared one day out of the blue, and we never figured out what happened. Lack of law enforcement meant that we didn't have help investigating what happened, and day after day we follow leads—but nothing. It's like he just woke up one day and decided to walk away, which was totally unlike him. Next to David's and Mom's graves was a small wooden plaque for Dad. I gazed upon the mounds from when I'd heaped dirt up over their graves. I tossed some wildflowers on the graves and figured I'd never be back here again.
On the passenger seat of my jeep, I had a briefcase showing my acting memberships and movie credits, and these documents' meaning was as thin and fleeting as the papers themselves. I had some rolls of cash, still useful in some parts, though it didn't mean shit anymore in most places. People were hoping it would mean something again someday. You could buy some rare items if you knew where to look: weapons, fuel. I used my cash for some more bio-fuel and ammo from an old friend, Pedro, who still resided up the road with his toothless son. They believed in gold, but gold was about as useful as cash these days. Nevertheless, the guys helped me out because they had loved my family.
It took a long time to get back to Idaho. Roads had been ruined during the past few years. People had died on them, left their cars on them. Nobody was fixing up the potholes these days. The heat, the bugs, the rats, the wild dogs, the dead things; you never knew what you’d find on the road. It was impossible to drive a straight line in some areas, while in others it seemed a highway disappeared into eternity with no sign of any civilization nearby. I had to drive in and out of ditches and pocked asphalt.
Looking out from the road, I could see a wasteland of rubble—discarded aluminum, acres of plastics, and random sparkly things hanging like sadly beautiful metal ornaments from parched trees. It was sometimes a weird kind of beauty, all this human folderol, strewn about brown grasslands and canyons. But it was sad and puzzling too. Other times I would enter a sanctuary where seemingly untouched deserts or mountains extended far into the distance with no humans or human-made substance within sight.
***
When I got back to Idaho, it had been several weeks since my departure. Winter had hit the higher elevations, but the heat of the sun still pickled the valleys during the day. The higher I rose into the mountains, the more anxious I was to see Fran again. I hit snow at about 1,000 feet, lost a drive-able trail soon, and packed everything up in a sled I'd brought from Mom's garage, the same sled I floated down hills on so many years prior. I hadn't cried in a long time, but seeing this dull red sled in the white snow tugged at me. I had enough rope to get to work: I put some propane and smaller goods into a boxed container on the sled. I'd have Daniel help me get the bio-fuel later. I threw my guitar over my shoulder. Likely, nobody would be up this way this winter at all, but you never knew. I rolled the jeep off the main mountain road into some trees to hide it best I could and hiked to Fran's ranch. What struck me was the utter frigid air at this elevation.
When I got up to her place, Fran didn't answer and the door was locked, so I hiked up to Daniel and Elena's place. Daniel answered the door. His hair seemed thinner, and he looked sad. I didn't remember him like this. He shook my hand and said he was glad to see me. "Fran is out, down at the stables."
"Out," I huffed. It was a miserable temperature, with an awful windchill. My scarf was blowing wildly around, and the wind sounded like an augury warning that the end of the world was coming to this very mountain tonight.
Daniel invited me in. He said she'd gone to feed the horses. "We've been insulating the stables with old vegetation and shit."
It took a few more minutes before he also told me that Elena had suffered a miscarriage in the other room. Their children looked at me with innocent faces. The toddlers were slightly different from each other. The girl had green eyes, dark skin, and darker hair than the boy, who looked more like his father with lighter hair and eyes. They were staring at me intently, but I averted my eyes, not knowing how to act around children.
I nodded, struck by the fact that nearly every piece of news these days was solemn. Abrupt. Said with a straight face. I heard Elena lightly whimpering. She shortly emerged with the announcement they had to bury their fetal son that afternoon.
I went outside at that point. I had warmed up enough by now and had come back to speak with Fran mostly, not interfere in this family's troubles. I didn't feel close enough to them yet.
Outside, I dragged my sled back to Fran's barn. The barn had a variety of tools and hay, along with containers of chemicals and other materials for making bio-fuel, water-sampling kits, and who knows what else. She wasn't there now, and I headed back outside to the blustery weather. From the barn was a trail that led one way to the horse stables and the other way to her cottage. At this juncture of the trail was a strange wagon I had seen before. It looked like a Prairie Schooner but was missing some parts. Now it served as…decoration? I wasn't sure.
I began to head toward the stables when I saw Fran. She had not seen me yet, and I hid behind falling snow and a holly bush just to look at her. She began to hike toward the trail leading up to Daniel and Elena's with a pleasant look about her face. This is what I had noticed about her last summer. You could not read her thoughts. Nobody these days walked around looking content and happy. Those days were gone. But her expression was vibrant and timeless. I envisioned us in a vast forest of yore.
I must have made a small noise, for she looked my direction and stopped. Her hand was on her quiver right away. I emerged from the foliage and smiled while walking to her, with my arms open.
"Were you spying on me, Leo?" She looked at me with a pursed grin. I could tell she was happy I had made it back here.
I didn't know what to say, so said nothing. She walked into my arms and then let go to stand back and gaze at me with her clear eyes. "I am glad you made it back safely. We'll have a feast this evening."
She held my gloved hand, and we headed back to Elena's house, where Fran planned to cook later.
Daniel and Elena were dressing up in jackets so they could bury their unborn child.
I watched as Fran walked over to give her friend a hug. "Should we watch Kristy and Cam?"
"No," Elena said. "They need to understand what we are doing. They were excited for this baby."
Fran nodded and said she'd start dinner. I looked out the kitchen window to see Elena and Daniel walking toward a back "yard," which was just a small clearing, for the burial. They had their children between them. Daniel carried a small wooden box. Elena wore a red shawl, which she had wrapped tightly around her; her long, black hair flew darkly in the wind like a spirit. As I watched, the vivid red of her scarf seemed to be the only color in the white and black day.
I shifted my gaze to watch Fran as she roll
ed flour, fat, and water for simple bread; she also made a soup with antiquated chicken bouillon and some canned tomatoes and carrots. She added dried garlic and basil. This was her idea of a feast. In the small kitchen, windows gathered steam on the inside and frost on the outside. Fran stirred the soup in a large kettle atop a wooden stove. By the time Daniel entered in with his family, Fran had also prepared some hot chocolate made of old dried powder and water. The children's grief proved short lived, and Elena smiled at Fran.
We retired to the little living room—the house cozy with a fire and wooden furniture, making us feel sleepy and aloof. Fran let Kristy sit on her lap, and Daniel laid Cameron on the sofa for a nap. Daniel situated Elena in an easy chair so she could prop up her legs. She drank a shot of whiskey to rid herself of the continued cramping and then sipped her cocoa.
Elena said, "Your man is back, and you are hanging out with our family?" She was teasing Fran, who blushed a little.
"Leo and I will leave after dinner and catch up." She looked my way, her skin lovely and her eyes burning.
Daniel handed me the whiskey bottle. "Tell of us of the country, man. Anything new out there?"
"Most everyone I knew from Missoula is either dead or gone away. But there's still people here and there. You just don't know if they can be trusted. Everyone's gone wild."
"And the roads?"
I told them about my jeep and said, "Look, man, unless you have some kind of old money or fuel stashed away, there isn't anyone driving out there. I got me enough fuel to make it back, but not enough to last forever. What you see is cars stalled from back when there was fuel. You see people trying to find a home, but they're using carts and wagons. Reminds me of how the old west was settled, but with more death in the path."
Kristy was distracted on Fran's slender lap, playing with a doll, her eyes getting heavy. Cameron was snoring softly on the couch.
"Wish I could figure out the rest of the country," Daniel said. "Is it all that way?"
"Likely so," I said.
Elena's weary voice said, "Does it matter? We have a good little place here. We filter our water supply and are still growing enough crops and chickens to stay healthy. We've got sheep and a hatchery. Maybe after all this death, we will be part of a new sort of world, where Mother Nature starts to rebuild herself."
I looked at Fran. Her eyes, which had been staring at the jumble of flames and patterns in the hearth, turned toward me. The light in the room was dim and made her look soft and subdued.
"Will she start rebuilding herself? I'd like to travel when it gets warmer," Fran declared. Her gaze moved away from me. "I want to come back to the mountain too, but America, the way she is now, is underexplored. It has become a wasteland, I'm sure, but I want to see it. Most importantly, though, I want to make sure Mom's okay."
This statement surprised me, as Fran had spoken only idly about her mom so far. The last time I'd been around Fran, she was satisfied to stay put, to survive in the mountains. But we had not talked at length, so what did I know? I had sensed a sort of quietness in her, though, when it came to her mother, like she didn't want to talk about it because she was hurt by something there.
"But when you go out there," Daniel warned, "You might catch a disease. Don't you want to stay put and live?"
Fran didn't answer right away. But she finally said, "We're just as likely to get Dengue or the flu or anything else up here as anywhere."
"Fran, if you want to know how your mom is doing, I may have connections that can get communications to her," I said. Even as I said it, I realized I no longer had such connections.
"And how is it that you have this fuel, and this connection?" she said.
"There's a lot about me you don't know." I felt my voice grow shady. I wasn't ready yet to go down that path, the one weedy with explanations. I enjoyed my new identity of being as anonymous as the next person.
"Well, alright," she said with an inflection that dropped the subject.
Daniel seemed antsy. "Let's be realistic, though, Fran. Do some research on what it's like out there before you take off. I know you. My Elena has known you always. I know you like to take risks. To adventure. There's something admirable in that, but the survival rate still depends on knowing your turf before you tackle it."
"If you truly knew what lay ahead, there would be no surprises, would there?" Fran said. "Anyway, I would be as prepared as possible. And I have many months to think about it. So don't worry."
Daniel didn't seem encouraged, yet passed the whiskey around again. By this time, Kristy had fallen asleep in Fran's lap, but woke up when it was time to eat. Her brother also stretched, awoke, and climbed down from the sofa.
After dinner, I finally got to be alone with Fran. We left Daniel's cabin and hiked across the mountain in air so frigid that our nostrils froze the minute we stepped outside. We made our way to Fran's in the dark after first hiking to the barn. We pulled and pushed the sled—our energies concentrated on that rather than the coldest of colds we'd felt for some time. At her place, she started a fire while I unloaded my supplies and then used the sled to gather more firewood from her stash out on the back deck. I could see that Fran had stocked up on a few months' worth of firewood. In cold times like this, you had to have a fire running most all the time, and that burned a lot of wood. I knew from being here last summer, she had a propane tank and a generator in the basement, but little practicality it would provide as all computer, radio, and network broadcasts were down.
Fran had batteries and a transistor radio; these days you could occasionally come across a satellite station or some ham operators out there, but it was rare and hardly listenable. Too much cutting out. Not enough energy sources for people to broadcast on. Computers were defunct. Lights weren't needed, since fire was now, once again, the means for heat and lighting. Fran and Elena had also made many candles from parchment and waxes.
When I got back in from bringing the firewood, Fran had lit candles and was seated on the sofa, with several blankets around her. I could see her breath, even as the fire she had created began to warm the room. Outside, the cold world beyond the cottage creaked and settled. Wolves cried in some unknown distance with the harsh winds. Behind burlap curtains we could see the faintly blowing snow, slightly lit by the fire. Fran had told me the story of how her pappaw had once built this great mountain lodge, which was later mostly destroyed in a rainstorm and mudslide, and was just a story tall now. Inside it was simple, bare, and cozy when the fire began to heat it.
I sat with Fran on the couch, and we warmed ourselves as much as possible. She said, "I used to dream of going to a tropical island. Did you ever go to one?"
There was a lot she didn't know about me. I had been to practically every tropical island that served as a hotspot for the rich and famous. Here I sat in a dying world, with firelight licking my scraggy face, in the company of a woman who was dreaming aloud.
"A few," I said.
She looked at me seriously, but said nothing. I knew someday the conversation would come, the time would come, when we would find out who we used to be.
But all she said finally was, "Is your name really Leo?"
"Leonardo Callahan."
"That's it? No middle name?"
"Joy," I said, ducking internally.
She grimaced. "That's rough."
"It was my father's middle name and his father's middle name."
"I guess the mothers in your family were happy when you boys were born."
"I'm sure they were." I grinned. "What about your name, Fran?"
"Francesca Carmen Herrera," she said.
And now we were starting to learn something about each other.
Fran—Chapter 5
Before Leo returned from Montana, old Jimmy Coombs had come down the mountain in October, and we had a pleasurable settin' a spell on the front porch. He took off his boots, and I about just fainted from the smell of his bare feet, once he ripped the crusty socks off.
"Jimmy, I wan
t you to clean yourself up here. I know you have barely any water up there at your place."
"Honey, men was made to be smelly. That's what keeps us strong."
"And what keeps us weak, I s'pose."
He let out a long howl of belly-deep laughter. In the distance, our pack of wolves responded with their own songs.
I laughed. "Honest, you old fart. Come in and wash up. I'll clean your clothes. You can wear some of my daddy's old clothes in the meantime."
But he would have none of it, and started waving his foot around. "Mmm, smell that. It's like perfume."
I backed away from that thing. "Now, Jimmy, I swear, if you don't get inside and clean up there'll be no whiskey for you tonight. And I've saved up some Crown Royal just for you." It's what my dad and my pappaw always drank. The old kind in the purple velvet bag that had not been made for decades.
Only then did Jimmy get up, obliging me. Thank goodness. I collected his old brittle clothes and took them to soak in a basin outside near the chicken coop. Even the chickens squawked at the odor. I loaned him some of Dad's old clothes, which neither Mom nor me had ever gotten around to throwing away.
Soon we sat out on the wooden porch while a late day full of chattering insects and unbearable heat alit upon us. He said he'd spent that spring and summer trekking around the Selkirk Mountains looking for bear and other species that seemed to have been wiped out. But he "didn't find no bear 'tall."
With his first sip of whiskey, he was already on a bender. Didn't bother me none. My dad had known Jimmy most his life, and when Pappaw Alejandro settled on this mountain, Jimmy was knee-high to a grasshopper. I trusted the old man with my life, despite his callous word choices.
"Hot damn, this weather is damper 'n hotter than my Loretta." He spoke it innocently enough, about his wife before she'd died to the fever. He wiped a bandana across his brow. "I 'member back when these mountains had no such thing. It'd be in the 60s or less in the early fall at this elevation, not no goddamn 90 degrees or more."
