Not bothering to dress, she put on only a chenille bathrobe over her nightdress. Soon the black coupe rolled across the bridge and up the hill. When Willard saw the lights, he shook his hands in front of her face to tell her he wanted to go slowly. She put the car in first gear and filed by the endless fence, the nine manned guard towers, the bright sentry gate. Maybe because it was New Year’s, Carol thought it was like coming on a carnival, whose rides were filled with prisoners of war. Willard rested his chin on the dashboard and looked. He thought the awful, incomprehensible luminosity burning all through the night came from some hot place underground.
That was the night the guards switched on the big spotlight. It swept the ground on each side of the fence like a blade. No human entered its beam. When the light came toward Carol’s car, Willard ducked and held his head in his arms. The next morning, January 1, 1944, he drew a picture of a bodiless human head with spotlights for eyes, from which rays broke loose and made small fires at the edges of the drawing paper—in long, straight lines as if marking out a runway.
PART THREE
1944
28
The day Vincent, Pinkey’s son, received his induction notice, he drove to Snuff’s hoping to find his father. But the bar was empty at midday. Carol saw him lay the army envelope on the counter.
“The army?” she asked, wide-eyed.
“Um.” Vincent nodded yes.
She busied herself making a sandwich for the boy.
“He’s been called up,” she shouted across the dance floor to Snuff, who was taking down the New Year’s decorations. Festooned with red crepe paper, Snuff went behind the bar and poured Vincent a glass of beer.
“Have anything you want, Vince—it’s on the house.”
Carol opened the newspaper she had brought from the post office that morning. She scanned the headlines, then folded it again. When Vincent went to the men’s room, she stood below Snuff’s ladder, and read aloud: “JANUARY 28. ALLIED NATIONS STUNNED BY STORIES OF JAP ATROCITIES TO WAR PRISONERS,” she began, then continued:
On eighty-five miles of road from Bataan to San Fernando, the Philippines, Col. Dyess said U.S. and Filipino troops plodded for six days, thirsting under a piercing sun. The sick and delirious were dragged from straggling columns and cruelly put to death. In one instance, Americans were forced to bury alive three American and Filipino prisoners at bayonet point.…
She put down the paper when Vincent came back and gave him another beer.
Vincent nodded thanks and kept eating. He said nothing about his impending departure or what lay ahead because he couldn’t imagine what that might be. He had never been beyond the reservation or the Basin and had only done the kind of work that can be accomplished on horseback.
“All the more reason to give him a good send-off,” Carol said after he left the bar.
At ten the next morning, she went to the post office. She couldn’t stop thinking about Bataan and what misery the prisoners of war—especially Henry—must be enduring. Her interest was selfish, of course: to lose Henry would be to lose the last link with what she knew of human passion, of opening out from the narrow way.
But for the moment she put those thoughts aside and concentrated on Vincent. She thumbtacked a poster to the post office wall: DANCE SATURDAY NIGHT. SNUFF’S BAR. FOR VINCENT COLEMAN, then drove back to start the preparations, even though it was a Thursday, her “free day,” because the dance had been her idea. She hadn’t hired on at Snuff’s; instead, she had become indispensable and her awkward, brisk efficiency delighted him.
Days when she was most distant and restless, Snuff watched her from the corner of his eye, anticipating the worst—her flight from him, her inward rage exploding. He grew softer in her presence, and like rock giving way to a constant flow of water, she acquiesced. His tacit acceptance comforted her.
Yet if Snuff took her in his arms, she’d break away, straighten herself, reapply red lipstick, and get back to work. She washed glasses that had already been washed. At all costs, she thought, she must avoid losing herself—even to this kind man—avoid losing track of what was taking place.
It took twenty-four hours for the call to Janine Coleman Big Elk—Pinkey’s ex-wife—to go through. There was only one phone in Crow Agency, and the man who answered it finally couldn’t or wouldn’t speak English. Exasperated, Velma Vermeer handed Pinkey the telephone, and with his pigeon-Crow-English, spoken with an accent, he was able to send out a runner to find Janine. When the operator rang the call through, Pinkey held the phone gingerly, then yelled into the receiver, knowing it was a long-distance call.
“Hello …!”
“Hello,” Janine said in a soft voice.
There was a silence. Pinkey shifted his feet and scratched his head under the soiled brim of his hat.
“Well ain’t you gonna talk?” he said.
“Didn’t you call me?” she asked.
“Hell if I didn’t,” Pinkey said, grinning. “Well you can still talk, can’t you?” He was stalling, because for a minute, he couldn’t remember why he had called.
“Is everything all right down there?”
“What?” Pinkey yelled.
“What are you calling for?” she asked.
“Oh … Vincent’s got himself called up by the damned army.”
“Oh no,” she gasped.
“We’re giving him a send-off—you better come on down.”
Another silence.
“Janine?” he yelled.
“When does he go?”
“Monday, I guess.”
“What kind of send-off?”
“Just a dance over here at Snuff’s. His gal’s putting it on.…”
“A drunk you mean.”
“Vincent hardly touches liquor. You know that.”
Pinkey’s hands were sweating. He waited for Janine to say something but she didn’t.
“Janine?”
“What about you? You sober?”
“Hell yes. Don’t I sound like it?” he asked, challenging her.
“Yes,” she said meekly.
“You can get that afternoon train—”
“I don’t want to come to no brawl—”
“Hell, Janine, we used to have good times—”
She snorted.
“Well damnit. Are you comin’ or not?”
“Okay,” she said flatly.
“Vincent asked for you—”
“I’m coming,” she repeated.
“Janine?” Pinkey said in a softer voice. “It’ll be fine. You’ll see.”
There was a faint good-bye, then Pinkey put the receiver down.
Pinkey met her at the station on Saturday. A Negro porter swung down from the day coach, followed by Janine and her father, a short, silver-haired man with a grotesque nose and twinkling blue eyes. His legs planted firmly on the station platform, he looked over the top of Pinkey’s head, then down at him, and grunted. He wore wool trousers and a tweed jacket over two wool shirts and carried his dance moccasins, gaudily jeweled with silver and blue beads from heel to toe.
Pinkey watched Janine climb down. She had gotten wider, he noticed, and she wore her hair in braids. When she approached, Pinkey doffed his hat.
“Well ain’t you a sight for sore eyes,” he said.
She smiled shyly, and Pinkey thought he loved her just as much as he did the first day he saw her. She looked the platform over.
“Where’s Vincent?”
Pinkey had forgotten to tell Vincent his mother was coming. He had no idea where he was.
“Packing,” he lied.
Janine nodded solemnly and helped her father into the truck.
“Since when have you been driving again?”
“It’s McKay’s outfit—he was busy.”
Janine stared straight ahead as they drove through town. Just after the state line the truck sputtered to a stop.
“Well I’ll be go to hell …,” Pinkey said, got out, and lifted the hood. He climbed on the b
umper and stuck his head down into the engine. Finally he climbed back in, blowing on his hands because of the cold. “Don’t see a damned thing wrong with her.”
Jimmy Big Elk leaned forward slightly. “No gas,” he said.
Pinkey looked at the gauge. The needle was on empty.
They walked the last mile.
“Where you taking us?” Janine demanded.
“Snuff’s.”
“I’m not staying in no bar,” she said.
“Oh hell, Janine, it’s them cabins up back,” he said, though he didn’t tell her they were the rooms once inhabited by Venus and her ladies of the night and later, by bums passing through on freights.
Ahead they could see a cloud of white dust from the mill and as they moved closer, felt it on their skin. The road was snow-packed, and after a while they strung out single file, like cattle, Pinkey thought, as he fell back to the rear, hobbling, while Jimmy took the lead with decisive steps.
Carol Lyman clucked her tongue against the roof of her mouth when she saw the ungainly procession come in.
“That goddamned McKay …,” Pinkey muttered, heading for the bar. “I need a drink. That’s the one thing a man shouldn’t ought to do, is walk.”
“Help yourself then,” Carol snapped.
“Well, how am I supposed to know when there ain’t no gas in the outfit?” he said in his defense.
“Try looking at the gas gauge,” she said, leading Janine down the dark hall.
“Hell … my pony don’t have no gas gauge and we get along just fine.”
“You mean that ugly mare of yours?” Snuff interjected as he came in from the back room.
Pinkey turned. “Jimmy … whiskey?” he asked, lifting his glass to show the old man.
Jimmy sat at the booth against the wall and nodded yes. He saw no sense in talking with white people.
Carol Lyman led Janine out the back door to the Wild Man’s cabin. Unused since he had taken to living in his car, it had been cleaned by Carol for the occasion. The trunk with the candelabrum was gone, but the bookshelves still stood, and she had brought fresh sheets and blankets from her own house, plus a down comforter because of the extreme cold.
Janine sat on the edge of the bed and took a book from the shelf. She turned it in her hand like some foreign object.
“Good?” she asked Carol.
Carol glanced at the thick volume. “Oh goodness, I’ve never read it.”
Carol opened the door to Venus’s room for Jimmy Big Elk. She leaned over the bed where God knows how many men let their seed go into that one woman and smoothed the green wool blanket as if passing her hand over the backside of a man. Six wooden straight-backed chairs were stacked in one corner, and over the bed the red flocked wallpaper had pulled loose. Two pictures hung on the wall, cut from magazines. One was of a square-rigged schooner on the high seas and the other was Titian’s painting of an odalisque.
“Your room’s right here. First door down the hall,” Carol told Jimmy.
He stared at her, expressionless, then growled. His joke—to see whether he could make the woman frightened of him. Carol laughed, unfazed. Jimmy pulled a thick wad of money from his pocket. The bills looked old and worn and the corners were bent back. He slipped the single rubber band that held them and peeled two bills off. Carol approached him, shaking her head.
“It’s on the house. This party is for Vincent and his family,” she said, then saw they were not ones, but hundred-dollar bills.
“You be careful with all that,” she admonished.
Jimmy turned the money over in the palm of his hand and when he laughed, she saw he was toothless.
That afternoon they decorated the bar with red, white, and blue crepe paper, twisted and taped to the walls, and tied back the flannel curtains with balloons. At six, the barroom began to fill quickly. Pinkey and Vincent arrived on horseback, not from the direction of either of the two ranches where they lived and worked, but from north of the calcium mill, though no one knew why. Vincent’s long hair had been combed and rebraided and he wore a ribbon shirt. When he felt everyone in the room looking at him, he hung his head. One whole wall was lined with women waiting to dance with him, or anyone else they could find, and when they ran out of men, they danced with each other, taking turns leading and following. The men who came were either too young to be called men and too young to drink, although they ended up with drinks anyway, or else were too old to go to war, except McKay. The women who didn’t dance handled the food. They had brought frozen salads, hams, homemade bread, pies, cakes, and whatever they still had on their shelves in the way of canned beans and pickles. Jesse and Pinkey asked every woman in the building to dance, then retired to the bar.
Velma Vermeer arrived late in a fussy pink voile dress, her arms and legs so thin and white they looked like clothesline. When Orval and Clementine stood in the door, they swung their matching but worn cowboy hats down. “Powder River, let ’er rip,” they yelled in unison, then leapt to the middle of the dance floor and two-stepped straight into a wall.
“Down in that hole-in-the-wall country we had one of these brawls, and damned if ol’ Clementine didn’t pick up a big rock and drop it on this ol’ kid who was trying to kill me. But it killed him instead, so we drug him all the way to the outhouse and dropped him—” Pinkey heard Orval telling one of the wallflowers as he walked by to find Janine. The music had stopped momentarily and someone else who had brought his fiddle stood on the little stage and sawed a tune. Out back, one of the sheepherders from a Bridger, Montana, outfit had ridden in. He sat on his horse, holding the harmonium he had brought all the way from Spain, through Ellis Island, and his dog lay under the horse’s tail.
“Better get on in there and get yourself something warm to eat and drink. A man could freeze plumb to death out here,” Pinkey said jovially as he hobbled by.
The sheepherder stuttered something, but by the time he got the words out, Pinkey was gone.
Janine was sitting on the edge of the bed in the Wild Man’s cabin with the book she had picked out of the shelves opened on her lap, though she wasn’t reading. Pinkey knocked, then opened the door.
“Vincent wants to dance with you,” he said.
“Tell him to ask me himself.”
“I ain’t drunk and I’m asking you to come in to his party,” Pinkey said,
Janine glared at him.
“Why the hell did you come all this way if you wasn’t planning on being here?” he asked, then walked away.
When Vincent came to the door, she made a place for him beside her on the bed. “Don’t let whatever happens to you take your heart away,” she said.
Vincent nodded, his eyes on the floor. “Will you dance with me?” he asked finally.
There was a hurt look on his mother’s face. “It’s no good in there,” she said.
He kissed her good-night.
Jimmy Big Elk sat in the middle of the back booth as if it were a throne. People came and went, paying their respects, though he seemed not to look at any of them, but instead, gazed beyond the crowd, out the window to the two-lane highway pocked with potholes and beyond, past the mill, to McKay’s hundred square miles of grazing land where it was so cold the moisture in the air glittered. Between songs, Pinkey could hear Jimmy’s thumping foot and the low, cracked voice droning a chant that had no end.
The temperature dropped. By eight in the evening it was twenty below zero and by ten it was thirty below. The windows frosted into opaque screens framing a black sky too cold to snow. Pinkey stood on the edge of the dance floor greeting couples as they passed, not out of courtesy, but because he found his legs wouldn’t take him where he wanted to go and it was easier to stay in one place. Carol and Snuff made the drinks behind the bar and Velma Vermeer took shots of Cobb’s Creek to Pinkey.
Once, over all the heads, Pinkey caught another glimpse of Jimmy Big Elk. He was surrounded by three women and looked content. He and Pinkey had never known each other well, not because of the
language barrier, but because he and Janine had worked on a ranch out of Missoula in western Montana until a drunken night when he swore the pine forests were moving in on him—literally mowing him down—and they hopped a freight with their baby, Vincent, bundled up in a new Pendleton blanket, and landed in Luster, where Pinkey claimed the tallest thing growing was a jackrabbit standing on his hind legs or a rattlesnake coiled and striking.
When McKay and Madeleine came in a waltz played, and before he had even been to the bar, McKay pulled Madeleine out on the floor and spun around so gracefully, no one could tell which of his legs was the shorter. After, they paid their respects to Vincent, who was, by then, sitting next to his grandfather at the back booth, then went up to the bar.
“Could you make us a couple of whiskey ditches, please?” McKay asked.
When Carol pulled her hands from the dishwater, she discovered she had cut her wrist on a broken glass.
“Are you trying to kill yourself?” Snuff asked and tied a bar towel above the cut.
“Silly me,” Carol said to Madeleine, who insisted on looking at the cut.
“It just missed that artery,” she said.
“Oh.” Carol laughed gaily, then primped her hair as Snuff applied a bandage.
After, she went out for fresh air. The line of cabins—all vacant except one—wound up the hill as if connected like lives but were not. Beyond were the Pryor Mountains, over which she had ridden to that party long ago and had sat on the edge of a bed with a man so sick his whole body felt almost too hot to touch, and to whom she had lost herself. “How quickly you’ve gotten to the inside of all my thinking,” she had told him, and by the time she had ridden back over the mountains and packed her steamer trunk with a summer’s worth of ranch clothes and boarded a train for Denver, he was dead.
In Snuff’s parking lot in the backseat of a car, she saw a woman’s head bob up, then duck down, then a man’s. She clucked her teeth and returned to the bar.
Heart Mountain Page 26
