Heartbeat of the Bitterroot

by Janice Mineer

  The other papers, brittle and breaking at the folds, were letters from relatives, my Aunt Ada mostly, asking about the baby—me—a year after I was born.

  Ricky coughed and struggled to his feet. “Beer?”

  “No thanks.”

  I spread my hands over the letters and the photo on the table as if I could pull the story from them I wanted so badly to hear.

  Ricky returned with a Budweiser, the can beaded with sweat.

  “Ricky,” I said, “can I have these? Or copy them?”

  He sipped at the can and thought for a moment.

  “I suppose,” he said slowly. “You might as well have ’em.” His face washed with a quiet pain, as if he were losing a last part of her, then his chin set in resolve. “Sure. You can just take them.”

  I gathered the papers and held them to my chest. I looked at the box beside him.

  “Oh, yeah, you can look at these, but they are not much.” He rifled through the box. “Oh, there is a picture or two of you though.”

  He handed me the box. Inside was a photo of me on Martin’s bay horse Sunny when I was about thirteen, two years after I went to live with the Pearsons. It was a period of time during which I remember seeing my mother only once or twice briefly as she passed through the state. On the back was a note from Ann. “She’s growing up so fast,” it said. The other photo was a wallet size of my eighth-grade graduation picture folded inside an invitation Ann had insisted I send. I had no delusions she would come. I tucked the papers into my backpack and stood to go.

  “Ricky, I’d like to stop by the cemetery. Can you tell me how to get there?”

  I wrote down the directions, thanked him, and said goodbye. He stood in the doorway, a lone figure, leaning on his cane as I walked to my car.

  When my mother passed away, I flew down to Vegas with Martin and Ann for the funeral. It was just a graveside service, actually, attended by Ricky, the minister, ourselves, and one or two others. It was the summer after my sophomore year in high school. We stood at the grave site for the service in oppressive heat. I did not cry. There were no tears left in me for a loss that had happened so long before that day. The clergyman spoke in general terms about life and death. It was clear he had not known my mother. He struggled to offer words of comfort and hope.

  I tried to remember our experiences together before I came to live with the Pearsons, but those times were grayed by the intervening years. I remember feeling torn between sympathy and resentment, feeling unable to comprehend the sudden snapping apart of the weak connection we shared.

  Ann and Martin had looked at me with sympathy, but I was not willing to talk. I was embarrassed by my confusion and lack of pure sorrow.

  I followed Ricky’s directions to Bunker’s Eden Vale Cemetery. I walked into the third row back, seventh grave marker from the right, and stood over the flat marble rectangle, etched deeply with the words, “Kathryn Marie Pearson Clark. May she rest in peace.” A simple stone with the dates of her birth and death, marking a life that was far from simple. I knelt there and scraped away the sand and grass that nearly obliterated the dates. The sounds of the city throbbed around this quiet place, seemingly forgotten, and yet inevitably an end destination for those who walked these streets, so full of life, dreams, and turmoil.

  I tried to picture her as a young mother, holding me in her arms. Tried to picture her smiling as I took my first steps. Was there a time for her—and for me—that was so uncomplicated, filled with happiness? Was there a time she looked ahead with hope? A time before life eroded the affections of her heart?

  Would I ever understand the drama that scripted her to bury the name of my father under layers of bitter years? And could I ever forgive her?

  I balled my fists and pressed them, hard, into the cut letters of her name. I bent low, my forehead on my hands, tears streaming, pooling across the dark veins of burled gray marble.

  Chapter 15

  dc

  I spent the night in a hotel by the airport in Las Vegas and took a flight back to Missoula the next day. I arrived at my house as the afternoon sun touched the maple trees lining the curb across the street, their leaves flaming into bright gold.

  As I pulled up, I was puzzled to see something strange at the corner of the garage, next to the sidewalk that led to my front door. It was a plastic ice cream bucket lying on its side, a red ooze spilling onto the green grass. Kids next door, I thought. But when I pulled my carry-on from the trunk of the car and rounded the corner to my porch, I was startled to see large red letters scrawled across my front window: “I will not forget. You must remember.”

  I stopped, stunned. Who did this? And why? I looked across the lawn and down the street. A woman in a gray sweatshirt was walking her beagle. I had seen her several times before. A girl rode by on a bicycle, nodding her head, an iPod strung to her ears. Everything seemed quiet, normal, but I had the disconcerting sensation I was being watched.

  I went next door and knocked. An elderly woman, the grandmother of the regular tenant, opened the door. She was visiting from out of state, I had learned one evening as the two were headed to dinner. The girl was a friendly sort, a waitress who worked the day shift at Denny’s.

  “Hi, Maggie.”

  “Oh, hi, honey,” said the woman. Pink foam curlers cluttered her gray hair, and a mop of a dog yipped behind her.

  “Hey, were you at home most of the day?” The old woman cupped her hand to her ear. I repeated what I said, louder.

  “Yes, me and Roger.”

  I remembered Roger was the Pomeranian.

  “Did you see anyone over at my place? Someone wrote something on my window.”

  Maggie’s hand fluttered to her chest. “What a terrible thing. My granddaughter said she’d heard of some vandalism in the neighborhood a few months ago. It’s a pity. No, I didn’t see anything today.”

  “Thanks anyway,” I said.

  I went into the house, rolled my suitcase to the bedroom, and dialed 911 to report the graffiti. A somewhat indifferent woman took the information and hung up, leaving me to wonder if anything would be done about it.

  I gathered some things to clean the window with and went outside. The letters were greasy, like lipstick, and it took several minutes to clean off the mess.

  Just as I was scraping off the last streaks of paint, my cell phone rang. It was Derek.

  “Hey, baby. What are you doing?”

  “I’m washing my front window,” I said, a little out of breath.

  “Spring cleaning? You got the wrong season, kid.”

  “No, somebody wrote on my window.” I looked around again with that eerie feeling of being watched. “It was creepy. It said, ‘I will not forget. You must remember.’ It was threatening. I can’t image who would do that.”

  “Too bad. Punk kid, I suppose. Hey, I’ll be in town next Wednesday. How about we catch some dinner?”

  The blunt force of his nonchalance perturbed me.

  “Sevenish? And, let’s have that talk I mentioned. I’ll be thinking of you, baby.”

  I flung the red-stained rag into the bucket and peeled off my rubber gloves. I had a lot of things on my mind right now. Figuring out what Derek had on his mind was getting lost in the mix.

  I threw the paint-filled rags in the trash can and went to unpack my bags from the trip. I found the manila envelope Ricky gave me under the jeans and T-shirts and sat on the bed to look once again at its contents. Skip Morrison. A name—like a door that opened on a story I both feared and longed to hear.

  I went to my desk and powered up my laptop. I spread the letters out carefully on my desk, smoothing away the wrinkles. I stared at the computer screen, tapping a finger to my lips. The box to the search engine waited; the curser blinked. I took a breath and typed in the name. A page of possibilities flashed on the screen, but as I scrolled through them my hopes waned. Too old, too young. One was very tall and thin; one was an elderly man born in Australia.

  I knew that without his real
first name, I was shouting into the wind. I ran my fingers through my hair. I wished I could just reach in through the silvery screen, pierce that barrier, and touch him. But if I discovered him, what would I discover about myself? Would I be sorry? Would he?

  My head ached and I finally shut the lid.

  Chapter 16

  dc

  Later that evening, still haunted by the strange words smeared on my window, I dug under the books in my nightstand and found my Glock 19 handgun. As I slid it out of the case, fading amber light from the window fed the sheen on the barrel.

  When I got the job at the airport in Los Angeles, my uncle bought the weapon for me as a sort of farewell gift. The model was built to be easy to use with a mechanical safety that prevented the gun from being shot without a deliberate pull. Martin taught me how to handle it, and after an hour in the woods shooting pop cans full of holes, he proclaimed me a dead shot. I would be safe in the “big city” on my own, he declared with pride. I tucked the gun back into my nightstand on top of the drawer’s contents.

  I still felt unsettled—and not just about the paint on my window. The papers I brought back from Vegas whispered to me whenever I passed my desk. My mind was filled with questions about my mother and the father I never knew and just like an extended game of tennis whose tired players battle over the court, my thoughts volleyed back and forth erratically between my family of origin and thoughts of Derek. What was he thinking? What was coming next? What did I want to come next?

  My thoughts about Derek were like the dry leaves that clattered up my walk, rattling against my door with every gust of wind. He could be so irritating and self-centered, and the next moment be so generous. When I was with him in California, it was so easy not to think about anything beyond the parties and the fun. I drew upon his intuitive social skills and his calm self-assurance when mine faltered. But I began to feel like an empty shell, like there was something better if I just had the courage to reach for it.

  In a fit of efficiency, I made a mental list of his positive characteristics and then I started a list of his shortcomings. Somewhere after the first few characteristics on either list, the words blurred and ran down the page of my mind. Was I expecting too much from him? What right did I have to ask for perfection from another human being?

  Why was what I had with Derek not good enough for me anymore? What had changed? Or was it that I had changed?

  And what about Michael? Michael was like a song that kept running through the back of my mind, sweet and rich.

  I could not wrestle my thoughts into any semblance of order. I finally went for a run to clear my head, pounding the pavement in the dusk, breathing out thin ghosts that writhed in the crisp fall air. But it was no good. I needed some clarity and I knew where to find it. When I got home, I picked up my cell and dialed the number.

  “Hello?” a deep voice rumbled.

  “Uncle Martin, it’s me.”

  “Hi, me. How’d it go in Las Vegas?”

  I sighed. “It was confusing. There’s something about some property and my real father.” I pushed my thick hair back from my face. “Exactly how busy are you tomorrow?”

  “Very busy. Very busy, indeed. I am going fishing,” he said emphatically. “But I’d be happy to have you come along. It would give us some time to talk. Can you be here early?”

  “How early is early?”

  “Early as you can. We got to provide those fish breakfast before they can be our dinner.”

  A

  The sun was breaking over the Sapphire Mountain Range as I drove down the valley to the ranch. Warm rays gilded the pines.

  When I pulled up to the house, there was a blue Pathfinder in the driveway, and I saw that Cindy, my uncle’s veterinary assistant, stood on the front porch, talking to Ann. Cindy had worked for Martin for as long as I could remember. She was a kindly, robust woman with an all-consuming love for animals of any kind, be they feathered or furred. When I reached the porch, the wiry blonde gave me a squeeze.

  “It’s good to see you, Jenna.” Cindy said. “I hear you had to talk pretty hard to get your uncle to go fishing today.” She winked.

  Just then Martin came to the door, a lunch box in one hand and a fishing pole in the other. “You talkin’ about me?” he said.

  Ann hugged me, then held me at arm’s length, examining my face. “You OK? Trip go all right?” She searched my face for answers I felt would have to wait till we were alone.

  Ann turned to Martin. “Cindy just stopped by for some medicine for that bison bull of yours. I’ll get the solution for her. It’s in the fridge, right?”

  He nodded. “She takes good care of my animals,” he said to me, tilting his head in Cindy’s direction.

  “Those bison are like my kids,” Cindy said with a smile. “When I drive my SUV through the field, I roll down my windows and play Bing Crosby's song, ‘Don’t Fence Me In,’ on my CD player as loud as it will go. They love that song. They come over and just follow me along like baby ducks. And of course, they know sometimes I have their pellets—their treats.”

  “Ornery buggers like her better than me,” my uncle grumbled in mock chagrin. “I couldn’t get them into the chute the other day to worm them. Had to have her come over and run them through the chute like the Pied Piper.”

  I laughed. “I’d like to see that.”

  “Well, you come some day when you have a little time,” she said. “You can help me feed them their pellets and we’ll visit.” She laid a warm hand on my arm, and from her look, I figured Ann had filled her in on at least some of the details about my search for my father.

  “I will,” I said.

  “Well, we are burnin’ daylight, gal. Let’s be gone,” Martin said as he loped toward the truck. The moment he dropped the tailgate, Freckles leapt up into the truck bed, tail wagging.

  I grabbed my backpack from the car and vaulted myself up onto the front seat of the truck. When we reached the main road and turned south, I asked, “Where are we headed?”

  “Blue Joint Creek, west of Painted Rocks,” he said. “We’ll fish for cutthroat and brook trout.”

  We snacked on peanuts and made small talk for a while. The wedding, the price of bison meat on the market, my work. I slid the back window open and threw a piece of jerky to Freckles. He wore a broad dog grin, his ears flapping in the wind.

  The morning waned into one of those beautiful Indian summer days, the ones that seem to borrow a gown of glory from the midsummer months. It was like nature’s last dance of freedom, and it filled me with a sense of stolen time. I felt as if we hung in the balance while the season staved off, for a time, the bitter cold of winter.

  We parked near the creek at a wide spot in the road and piled out of the truck. Freezing temperatures had nipped the trees, and some of the leaves on the bushes were tinged with burgundy. Most of the tall grasses had spent their summer green and dried to a pale yellow.

  Freckles sprang out of the truck the instant the tailgate was lowered. He zigzagged the area, tail fanning the air and nose to the ground, excited by the many scents he came across. As I pulled on wading boots, I noticed birds gathering and calling, shifting from tree to tree overhead, restless to turn south for the winter.

  “Here, you can borrow my lucky hat,” Martin said, tossing me a rumpled straw hat. I put it on and we laughed as it fell down over my ears. I handed it back to him and scrounged in my backpack for a Nike visor.

  Gear in hand, we hiked a few yards down toward the creek. I heard the noise of it long before I pushed the bushes aside and saw it, splashing over logs and slowing to pool in shaded places. Multicolored rocks lay like polished jewels beneath the fast-flowing water. Mayflies danced off the glassy surface, hovered, and dipped again.

  My uncle extracted his pole from its case and began sorting out the line. “Do you remember how to cast?” he asked.

  I hesitated. “Well, you’ll have to help me brush up on my skills. It’s been a while.”

  He waxed poet
ic as he instructed me in the art of fly-fishing. He explained casting techniques, demonstrating with a graceful flick of the wrist. I did my best to duplicate the motion.

  Poring over the numerous small compartments in the tackle box, we selected flies with great care, discussing at length the merits of red feather as opposed to blue-dyed deer hair.

  I poked at a package labeled “Deer Hopper” festooned with bright yellow hairs.

  “Now here’s an Adam’s fly,” he said. “You would use it when the water is lower and not so fast like it is now. You could go with this Purple Haze Parachute today. It’s a good one.” He held it up on his palm as if he were tempting me with a delicacy. “Or how about a Damsel fly?”

  “What’s that one?” I said, pointing to a shiny silver hook. A red teardrop shape dangled from one end.

  “Ah, the Swedish Pimple. Not for us today. It’s a jig for ice fishing. Good for trout.”

  Finally, armed with flies and poles, we carefully descended into the creek. Our waders slipped a little here and there as we picked our way across and down the stream closer to shadowy pools where trout find refuge. Martin demonstrated his polished casting method again, raising his long arm in a slow, graceful motion. He lofted his line in a smooth arc out over a glassy dark pool beside a moss-covered log. A ring formed, then grew where the hook hit the water. He slowly worked his reel, water droplets dancing on the line, throwing back the sunlight in all directions like diamonds.

  I cast my line for a few minutes, the fly skipping across the water until the line became entangled in a dogwood that bent low over the creek’s edge. I extracted it, then sat on the bank, sorting out the line not far from where Martin stood knee-deep in icy water.

  I sighed. “Uncle Martin, I’ve been trying to figure out what made my mother turn out like she did.”

  He looked at me for a minute, then examined the fly at the end of his line. “I don’t know what happened there. She was just kind of a wild one. She and our dad didn’t seem to see eye to eye. He never spoke his feelings much. He tended toward being stern and distant. It didn’t affect us boys seriously, but she seemed lost pretty early in the game.” He cast the line, then slowly wound it back in, his reel clicking softly, steadily. “Our mother was a plain, quiet person. Stuck to her work. She was sick a lot. I remember one day our mother had been in bed for a few days. Kathy was making a roast. I came in from working in the orchard and it smelled so good. She had been working on it all afternoon adding onions, carrots, and spices. Brought it to the table on a special platter we used only on holidays. She was so proud. We had hardly all sat down to eat and our dad started to complain. Said the meat was tough. Said it wasn’t made right and money was wasted. I watched her face. It was like a river of hurt quietly washed over it and left her empty.” He glanced over at me, then cast again into a glassy pool. “It doesn’t take much to be kind. Makes a big difference in the long run.”