by Various
Summer nights Steve woke sweating, having dreamed of reptiles slithering and warm waves beating on a ragged beach in the lower pasture. He sat straight, staring out the bedroom window, watching the giant ferns waver and solidify back into cottonwood and box elder.
The dreams came less frequently and vividly as he grew older. He willed that. They altered when the family moved into Fremont. After a while Steve still remembered he had had the dreams, but most of the details were forgotten.
At first the teachers in Fremont High School thought he was stupid. Steve was administered tests and thereafter was labeled an underachiever. He did what he had to do to get by. He barely qualified for the college-bound program, but then his normally easygoing father made threats. People asked him what he wanted to do, to be, and he answered honestly that he didn't know. Then he took a speech class. Drama fascinated him and he developed a passion for what theater the school offered. He played well in Our Town and Arsenic and Old Lace and Harvey. The drama coach looked at Steve's average height and average looks and average brown hair and eyes, and suggested at a hilarious cast party that he become either a character actor or an FBI agent.
By this time, the only dreams Steve remembered were sexual fantasies about girls he didn't dare ask on dates.
Ginger McClelland, seventeen. Who could blame her for feeling out of place? Having been born on the cusp of the school district's regulations, she was very nearly a year younger than her classmates. She was short. She thought of herself as a dwarf in a world of Snow Whites. It didn't help that her mother studiously offered words like "petite" and submitted that the most gorgeous clothes would fit a wearer under five feet, two inches. Secretly she hoped that in one mysterious night she would bloom and grow great, long legs like Carroll Dale. That never happened.
Being an exile in an alien land didn't help either. Though Carroll had befriended her, she had listened to the president of the pep club, the queen of Job's Daughters, and half the girls in her math class refer to her as "the foreign exchange student." Except that she would never be repatriated home; at least not until she graduated. Her parents had tired of living in Cupertino, California, and thought that running a coast-to-coast hardware franchise in Fremont would be an adventurous change of pace. They loved the open spaces, the mountains and free-flowing streams. Ginger wasn't so sure. Every day felt like she had stepped into a time machine. All the music on the radio was old. The movies that turned up at the town's one theater — forget it. The dancing at the hops was grotesque.
Ginger McClelland was the first person in Fremont—and perhaps in all of Wyoming—to use the adjective "bitchin'." It got her sent home from study hall and caused a bemused and confusing interview between her parents and the principal.
Ginger learned not to trust most of the boys who invited her out on dates. They all seemed to feel some sort of perverse mystique about California girls. But she did accept Steve Mavrakis's last-minute invitation to the prom. He seemed safe enough.
Because Carroll and Ginger were friends, the four of them ended up double-dating in Paul's father's old maroon DeSoto that was customarily used for hauling fence posts and wire out to the pastures. After the dance, when nearly everyone else was heading to one of the sanctioned after-prom parties, Steve affably obtained from an older intermediary an entire case of chilled Hamms. Ginger and Carroll had brought along jeans and Pendleton shirts in their overnight bags and changed in the restroom at the Chevron station. Paul and Steve took off their white jackets and donned windbreakers. Then they all drove up into the Wind River Range. After they ran out of road, they hiked. It was very late and very dark. But they found a high mountain place where they huddled and drank beer and talked and necked.
They heard the voice of the wind and nothing else beyond that. They saw no lights of cars or outlying cabins. The isolation exhilarated them. They knew there was no one else for miles.
That was correct so far as it went.
Foam hissed and sprayed as Paul applied the church key to the cans. Above and below them, the wind broke like waves on the rocks.
"Mavrakis, you're going to the university, right?" said Paul.
Steve nodded in the dim moonlight, added, "I guess so."
"What're you going to take?" said Ginger, snuggling close and burping slightly on her beer.
"I don't know; engineering, I guess. If you're a guy and in the college-bound program, you end up taking engineering. So I figure that's it."
Paul said, "What kind?"
"Don't know. Maybe aerospace. I'll move to Seattle and make spaceships."
"That's neat," said Ginger. "Like in The Outer Limits. I wish we could get that here."
"You ought to be getting into hydraulic engineering," said Paul. "Water's going to be really big business not too long from now."
"I don't think I want to stick around Wyoming."
Carroll had been silently staring out over the valley. She turned back toward Steve and her eyes were pools of darkness. "You're really going to leave?"
"Yeah."
"And never come back?"
"Why should I?" said Steve. "I've had all the fresh air and wide-open spaces I can use for a lifetime. You know something? I've never even seen the ocean." And yet he had felt the ocean. He blinked. "I'm getting out."
"Me too," said Ginger. "I'm going to stay with my aunt and uncle in L.A. I think I can probably get into the U.S.C. journalism school."
"Got the money?" said Paul.
"I'll get a scholarship."
"Aren't you leaving?" Steve said to Carroll.
"Maybe," she said. "Sometimes I think so, and then I'm not so sure."
"You'll come back even if you do leave," said Paul. "All of you'll come back."
"Says who?" Steve and Ginger said it almost simultaneously.
"The land gets into you," said Carroll. "Paul's dad says so."
"That's what he says." They all heard anger in Paul's voice. He opened another round of cans. Ginger tossed her empty away and it clattered down the rocks, a noise jarringly out of place.
"Don't," said Carroll. "We'll take the empties down in the sack."
"What's wrong?" said Ginger. "I mean, I...." Her voice trailed off and everyone was silent for a minute, two minutes, three.
"What about you, Paul?" said Carroll. "Where do you want to go? What do you want to do?"
"We talked about—" His voice sounded suddenly tightly controlled. "Damn it, I don't know now. If I come back, it'll be with an atomic bomb—"
"What?" said Ginger.
Paul smiled. At least Steve could see white teeth gleaming in the night. "As for what I want to do—" He leaned forward and whispered in Carroll's ear.
She said, "Jesus, Paul! We've got witnesses."
"What?" Ginger said again.
"Don't even ask you don't want to know." She made it one continuous sentence. Her teeth also were visible in the near-darkness. "Try that and I've got a mind to goodnight you the hard way."
"What're you talking about?" said Ginger.
Paul laughed. "Her grandmother."
"Charlie Goodnight was a big rancher around the end of the century," Carroll said. "He trailed a lot of cattle up from Texas. Trouble was, a lot of his expensive bulls weren't making out so well. Their testicles—"
"Balls," said Paul.
"—kept dragging on the ground," she continued. "The bulls got torn up and infected. So Charlie Goodnight started getting his bulls ready for the overland trip with some amateur surgery. He'd cut into the scrotum and shove the balls up into the bull. Then
he's stitch up the sack and there'd be no problem with high-centering. That's called goodnighting."
"See," said Paul. "There are ways to beat the land."
Carroll said, "'You do what you've got to.' That's a quote from my father. Good pioneer stock."
"But not to me." Paul pulled her close and kissed her.
"Maybe we ought to explore the mountain a little," said Ginger to Steve. "You want to come
with me?" She stared at Steve who was gawking at the sky as the moonlight suddenly vanished like a light switching off.
"Oh my God."
"What's wrong?" she said to the shrouded figure.
"I don't know—I mean, nothing, I guess." The moon appeared again. "Was that a cloud?"
"I don't see a cloud," said Paul, gesturing at the broad belt of stars. "The night's clear."
"Maybe you saw a UFO," said Carroll, her voice light.
"You okay?" Ginger touched his face. "Jesus, you're shivering." She held him tightly.
Steve's words were almost too low to hear. "It swam across the moon."
"What did?"
"I'm cold too," said Carroll. "Let's go back down." Nobody argued. Ginger remembered to put the metal cans into a paper sack and tied it to her belt with a hair-ribbon. Steve didn't say anything more for a while, but the others all could hear his teeth chatter. When they were halfway down, the moon finally set beyond the valley rim. Farther on, Paul stepped on a loose patch of shale, slipped, cursed, began to slide beyond the lip of the sheer rock face. Carroll grabbed his arm and pulled him back.
"Thanks, Irene." His voice shook slightly, belying the tone of the words.
"Funny," she said.
"I don't get it," said Ginger.
Paul whistled a few bars of the song.
"Good night," said Carroll. "You do what you've got to."
"And I'm grateful for that." Paul took a deep breath. "Let's get down to the car."
When they were on the winding road and driving back toward Fremont, Ginger said, "What did you see up there, Steve?"
"Nothing. I guess I just remembered a dream."
"Some dream." She touched his shoulder. "You're still cold."
Carroll said, "So am I."
Paul took his right hand off the wheel to cover her hand. "We all are."
"I feel all right." Ginger sounded puzzled.
All the way into town, Steve felt he had drowned.
The Amble Inn in Thermopolis was built in the shadow of Round Top Mountain. On the slope above the inn, huge letters formed from whitewashed stones proclaimed: WORLD'S LARGEST MINERAL HOT SPRING. Whether at night or noon, the inscription invariably reminded Steve of the Hollywood Sign. Early in his return from California, he realized the futility of jumping off the second letter "O." The stones were laid flush with the steep pitch of the ground. Would-be suicides could only roll down the hill until they collided with the log side of the Inn.
On Friday and Saturday night, the parking lot of the Amble Inn was filled almost exclusively with four-wheel-drive vehicles and conventional pickups. Most of them had black-enameled gun racks up in the rear window behind the seat. Steve's Chevy had a rack, but that was because he had bought the truck used. He had considered buying a toy rifle, one that shot caps or rubber darts, at a Penney's Christmas catalog sale. But like so many other projects, he never seemed to get around to it.
Tonight was the first Saturday night in June, and Steve had money in his pocket from the paycheck he had cashed at Safeway. He had no reason to celebrate, but then he had no reason not to celebrate. So a little after nine he went to the Amble Inn to drink tequila hookers and listen to the music.
The inn was uncharacteristically crowded for so early in the evening, but Steve secured a small table close to the dance floor when a guy threw up and his girl had to take him home. Dancing couples covered the floor though the headline act, The Radford & Lewis Band, wouldn't be on until eleven. The warm up group was a Montana band called the Great Falls Dead. They had more enthusiasm than talent, but they had the crowd dancing.
Steve threw down the shots, sucked limes, licked the salt, intermittently tapped his hand on the table to the music, and felt vaguely melancholy. Smoke drifted around him, almost as thick as the special-effects fog in a bad horror movie. The inn's dance floor was in a dim, domed room lined with rough pine.
He suddenly stared, puzzled by a flash of near-recognition. He had been watching one dancer in particular, a tall woman with curly raven hair, who had danced with a succession of cowboys. When he looked at her face, he thought he saw someone familiar. When he looked at her body, he wondered whether she wore underwear beneath the wide-weave red knit dress.
The Great Falls Dead launched into "Good-hearted Woman" and the floor was instantly filled with dancers. Across the room, someone squealed, "Willieee!" This time the woman in red danced very close to Steve's table. Her high cheekbones looked hauntingly familiar. Her hair, he thought. If it were longer— She met his eyes and smiled at him.
The set ended, her partner drifted off toward the bar, but she remained standing beside his table. "Carroll?" he said. "Carroll?"
She stood there smiling, with right hand on hip. "I wondered when you'd figure it out."
Steve shoved his chair back and got up from the table. She moved very easily into his arms for a hug. "It's been a long time."
"It has."
"Fourteen years? Fifteen?"
"Something like that."
He asked her to sit at his table, and she did. She sipped a Campari-and-tonic as they talked. He switched to beer. The years unreeled. The Great Falls Dead pounded out a medley of country standards behind them.
"...I never should have married, Steve. I was wrong for Paul. He was wrong for me."
"...thought about getting married. I met a lot of women in Hollywood, but nothing ever seemed..."
"...all the wrong reasons..."
"...did end up in a few made-for-TV movies. Bad stuff. I was always cast as the assistant manager in a holdup scene, or got killed by the werewolf right near the beginning. I think there's something like ninety percent of all actors who are unemployed at any given moment, so I said..."
"You really came back here? How long ago?"
"...to hell with it..."
"How long ago?"
"...and sort of slunk back to Wyoming. I don't know. Several years ago. How long were you married, anyway?"
"...a year more or less. What do you do here?"
"...beer's getting warm. Think I'll get a pitcher..."
"What do you do here?"
"...better cold. Not much. I get along. You..."
"...lived in Taos for a time. Then Santa Fe. Bummed around the Southwest a lot. A friend got me into photography. Then I was sick for a while and that's when I tried painting..."
"...landscapes of the Tetons to sell to tourists?"
"Hardly. A lot of landscapes, but trailer camps and oil fields and perspective vistas of I-80 across the Red Desert..."
"I tried taking pictures once...kept forgetting to load the camera."
"...and then I ended up half-owner of a gallery called Good Stuff. My partner throws pots."
"...must be dangerous..."
"...located on Main Street in Lander..."
"...going through. Think maybe I've seen it..."
"What do you do here?"
The comparative silence seemed to echo as the band ended its set. "Very little," said Steve. "I worked a while as a hand on the Two-bar. Spent some time being a roughneck in the fields up around Buffalo. I've got a pickup—do some short-hauling for local businessmen who don't want to hire a trucker. I ran a little pot. Basically I do whatever I can find. You know."
Carroll said, "Yes, I do know." The silence lengthened between them. Finally she said, "Why did you come back here? Was it because—"
"—because I'd failed?" Steve said, answering her hesitation. He looked at her steadily. "I thought about that a long time. I decided that I could fail anywhere, so I came back here." He shrugged. "I love it. I love the space."
"A lot of us have come back," Carroll said. "Ginger and Paul are here."
Steve was startled. He looked at the tables around them.
"Not tonight," said Carroll. "We'll see them tomorrow. They want to see you."
"Are you and Paul back—" he started to say.
She held up her palm. "Hardly. We're not exactly on the same wavelength
. That's one thing that hasn't changed. He ended up being the sort of thing you thought you'd become."
Steve didn't remember what that was.
"Paul went to the School of Mines in Colorado. Now he's the chief exploratory geologist for Enerco."
"Not bad," said Steve.
"Not good," said Carroll. "He spent a decade in South America and the Middle East. Now he's come back home. He wants to gut the state like a fish."
"Coal?"
"And oil. And uranium. And gas. Enerco's got its thumb in a lot of holes." Her voice had lowered, sounded angry. "Anyway, we are having a reunion tomorrow, of sorts. And Ginger will be there."
Steve poured out the last of the beer. "I thought for sure she'd be in California."
"Never made it," said Carroll. "Scholarships fell through. Parents said they wouldn't support her if she went back to the West Coast—you know how 105-percent converted immigrants are. So Ginger went to school in Laramie and ended up with a degree in elementary education. She did marry a grad student in journalism. After the divorce five or six years later, she let him keep the kid."
Steve said, "So Ginger never got to be an ace reporter."
"Oh, she did. Now she's the best writer the Salt Creek Gazette's got. Ginger's the darling of the environmental groups and the bane of the energy corporations."
"I'll be damned," he said. He accidentally knocked his glass off the table with his forearm. Reaching to retrieve the glass, he knocked over the empty pitcher.
"I think you're tired," Carroll said.
"I think you're right."
"You ought to go home and sack out." He nodded. "I don't want to drive all the way back to Lander tonight," Carroll said. "Have you got room for me?"
When they reached the small house Steve rented off Highway 170, Carroll grimaced at the heaps of dirty clothes making soft moraines in the living room. "I'll clear off the couch," she said. "I've got a sleeping bag in my car."
Steve hesitated a long several seconds and lightly touched her shoulders. "You don't have to sleep on the couch unless you want to. All those years ago.... You know, all through high school I had a crush on you? I was too shy to say anything."
