by John Hansen
I looked out past her ahead of us, towards the other end of the lake. “Probably should be heading back,”
“Sing me something on the way back,” she said, splashing me again. “We gotta lighten this mood.”
“Do that again and I’ll flip this boat,” I said, “that’ll lighten the mood. I never said I sing.”
“You sing,” she said with assuredness. “I can always tell – you sing.”
I thought about it for a minute. “What the hell.”
I sang her a song from Led Zepplin, but I didn’t tell her it was them. She was too young to know, I figured.
Spent my days with a woman unkind,
Smoked my stuff and drank all my wine.
Made up my mind to make a new start,
Going To California with an aching in my heart.
Someone told me there's a girl out there with love in her eyes and flowers in her hair.
Took my chances on a big jet plane, never let them tell you that they're all the same.
She clapped her hands with a big smile on her little face as I finished, not with sarcasm but with honest delight. “Nice job!” she said. “Now sing me one you wrote.”
“Next time… we’re almost back.” I pointed over to the store with the paddle as we approached shore. I paddled harder and soon the boat ground to a halt on the rocky shore right where we had started. As we ground to a halt on the shore she lost her balance on the bench and plopped down into the bottom of the boat at my feet.
“Fuck!” she shouted. Her little butt had gotten wet with the dirty water that had sloshed around in the bottom of the canoe, collected from the drips of the paddle as it passed from side to side as we went along.
I quickly helped her out onto the shore, and then I dragged the boat up to the trees back to where it had been, and locked it up with the chain.
“So,” I said, wiping off my hands on my jeans, “we survived, almost intact. You ok?”
“I’m fine,” she said, wiping her bottom. “I’m an ‘Injun’ remember? We invented canoes.”
“So, you got time to take a walk around the lake with me?”
She wrinkled up her nose as she did from time to time, and her little mouth slid sideways, in thought. “No, don’t really have time, Will, and it’s getting dark. But show me your room in the store… I want to see where you guys live. I’ve always wondered what those rooms looked like.”
I glanced over at the store warily, thinking of Larry and his strict “no guests” rule, Ronnie with his shirt off and sexual overdrive, and wondered whether it was worth the risk. I looked back at Alia. She looked so beautiful, and it definitely was.
“Ok,” I said, “but let’s go the back way.”
I walked her back towards the rear entrance, which led to the kitchen, and she grabbed my hand as we walked. This made my heart beat a little faster. Her little hand was soft and very warm. I smiled at her.
“Well, well, well,” I joked, from my own tension more than anything else, “Ms. Romantic.”
She laughed and ripped her hand away. “Fine – screw you then.”
She ran up to the screen door in the back, her butt has two round water stains on it now.
I called over to her. “Wait! Larry is kind of a dick about his rules…” I ran up beside her to the screen door and grabbed her hand; she turned to me with a mischievous smile, her eyes showing entertainment at my awkwardness. I smelled her fragrance and wanted so much just to bury my face in her hair and kiss her neck. I looked through the screen door – and the coast seemed clear.
Eleven
I led her quickly and quietly through the screen door and into the kitchen, then up the stairs, and finally into my room. I could hear music blaring from Ronnie’s room; his door was open but we couldn’t see him in the room.
I hurriedly shut the door to my room and waved an arm around the tiny wooden rectangle. “Here’s the tour – bed, closet, mirror, window, and…. bats.” I pointed up in the slanted wooden ceiling at the little black lumps of fur clinging to their usual spot.
“Hmmmmm,” Alia murmured as she walked over and studied them. “So adorable…” One of the bats moved, as if realizing it was being talked about, and Alia involuntarily recoiled, and then she stepped away and walked over and sat down on my bed, the only furniture in the room that offered a seat. I sat down beside her.
Alia looked around the room and then at me; she smiled as if satisfied by the look of the place. “Aside from the bats, I like it,” she said.
“They watch the place for me during the day.”
“This is pretty much what I thought these rooms would look like – log cabinny.” She took the room in again, and then looked over across from me at my door.
“It might seem weird, but I like visiting this store,” she said after a moment. “It seems… different, it’s like someone else’s house, kind of. I like the faces I see here, most of them. The people who visit here talk so different, from all over the place – goofy accents. So different than what I’m used to… on the res.”
We were setting together just inches apart on the bed. “The first time I saw you, I thought you were really handsome, and liked your smile,” she said.
“Past tense?” I said softly, smiling slightly at her. The tension was growing again, stronger now that we were alone.
“A little, still…” she said, staring into my eyes.
I hesitated for a second and she looked away shyly, over to the window. You can only hold a gaze like that for so long, before either kissing or looking away. And she looked away. I worried for second, thinking I had blown my chance at a kiss. I looked down at her neck where soft streams of dark hair escaped and met the smooth curve at the nape where her neck met her shoulder. The little, metal arrowhead earring shivered slightly with movement. Her fragrance was so light and sweet like sugar in the air that I breathed it in deeply to try to get a strong sense of her inside me.
I leaned down slowly to kiss her neck; this was going to be it, my hand moved up to brush aside the light strands of hair by her hear. But she was looking down at her feet when I made my move and she didn’t see me. She then happened to hop up in the instant I had just brushed a few strands of her hair – and then she looked back at me in sudden surprise, which quickly turned to frustration as she realized I had just tried to kiss her.
To complete the disaster, before I could say anything to her, someone banged loudly on my door. BAM! BAM! BAM!
“Will!” Larry shouted through the door.
Larry! That old bastard… I cursed him under my breath. I looked over at Alia and she looked back at me. She didn’t seem nervous at all, more fascinated and watchful, as if trying to see what kind of reaction I would have to this interruption.
“What?” I barked back at him, looking over at the door.
“You forgot to take the trash out tonight,” he said, “had to get Katie to do it. Don’t let it happen again – there’s too much trash!” he barked. I heard his heavy steps creaking loudly back down the stairs as the ancient boards complained about the weight.
I looked away from the door, slowly shaking my head.
The magic had faded from the room like old smoke. Larry’s offensive presence, even outside the door, bellowing about trash, had changed the air in the room like a grotesque smell. I gave up and nodded in the direction of the door to Alia. She smirked at me and shrugged back, imitating me, fascination and thoughtfulness in her eyes.
“I should be getting back anyway,” she said, almost in a whisper.
We left the room and I walked her out and down the stairs, and then walked a bit with her towards the road that led from the store and campground into the main park. As we walked I cursed Larry inwardly. More than the interruption, what bothered me was here I was a grown man, out of college, on my own, and here was the guy ordering me around like I was some teenage punk, in front of Alia. I kicked at some stones on the path as we walked. The whole thing embarrassed me.
Then I
looked over at Alia, who looked lost in thought herself. “Wait,” I said, looking around the parking area, “how are you getting back home?” Browning was about a half hour away – by car. There were no cars at all anywhere around the store, not at this time in the evening after we had closed.
“Oh,” she said causally, “I’ll walk part of the way, and call a friend of mine to pick me up.” She patted the phone in her pocket.
I looked around the woods and the gravel lanes leading through the trees. “That’s not too safe, though, is it?” She smiled and turned towards the road and began walking, without so much as a hug.
“Don’t worry about me, mister,” she said, looking back at me and blowing me a kiss. I watched her little form disappear into the darkness around a bend in the road.
Twelve
The day after Alia and I’s little hangout, me, Ronnie and Katie were scheduled to head to the main lodge for an afternoon park orientation, put on by the rangers. Larry told us it was mandatory, and that he and Phyllis would run the store without us for a few hours. But he also warned that we should hurry back to help as soon as the orientation was over.
“No ‘lollygagging,’” he told us.
Before we left, Larry pulled me aside. He walked me back to the gift shop front of the store and stood close to me, looking me in the eye. His breath reeked and I looked down at his fat, heaving belly to avoid it.
“Will,” he said in a terse whisper, “did you let an Indian up to your room last night?” He breathed on me again and I backed off a little. I looked at him with disgust.
“None of your concern, Larry,” I said.
“It is my concern, because I run this place. And to bring one of them…”
I held up my hand and he stopped, glaring at me. “I don’t want to hear another word about it, Larry. You mention her again like that and we are going to have a serious problem.”
I turned and walked away from him, leaving him standing there in dismay; I could feel his glare on the back of my head as I walked into the kitchen.
“You bring her back here and you’re fired!” he shouted after me.
I kept walking.
Ronnie was the only one of the three of us staffers who had a car – an old, beat up Ford Tempo. The entire summer it was full of junk: clothes, CDs, dirty cups and coffee mugs; and he permanently had the stereo blasting when he was driving. Never once did I see him pull up or pull out of the store parking lot without it blaring.
So the three of us packed into Ronnie’s car and drove off for the lodge due south. Ronnie shoved Led Zeppelin into the deck as we started off, cranked up the volume knob and lit a cigarette, cracking his window and the one behind him a bit to drag the smoke out. He did all this while he was pulling out of the parking lot. Katie moved over to the seat behind me in the rear to avoid any 2nd-hand puffs. For her part she rode in silence the whole way, staring moodily out of the window beside her. I felt a wall between us that I didn’t understand, and didn’t really want to at that moment.
The Tempo meandered through the lower hills and spurs of the mountains on a winding, asphalt road, which was actually the main road that connected Two Medicine with the rest of the park, and the road that split off and led to Browning as well. At one point we passed a jammer bus chugging along, chock full of early-season tourists and peering through the windows. I thought back to my first morning coming to the store in a bus like that, maybe that very bus. The driver was someone else, I noticed. As I sat back in the car seat I realized that that bus ride now seemed months ago.
It took about an hour to drive to the lodge, and once we got there, around 3 o’clock in the afternoon, I navigated for Ronnie, pointing down a side gravel road to the ranger station some distance away from the lodge.
There were a few other cars there, and some people were filing in through open doors to the station. The ranger station was a small, square brick building with a couple of official-looking ranger trucks parked beside it. Radio antennas and other communication aerials stuck out from the roof of the building at different angles; but basically it looked more like a small post office than anything police-related.
Ronnie, Katie and I walked in together, and we were greeted by a young-looking ranger in the park ranger uniform of grey khaki short-sleeved shirt and dark green khaki pants, wearing a gold badge and canvas belt. “Sanders” was his last name, reading from his name tag.
“What’s up guys?” he asked, smiling at us as we walked up to the door. He was short, and had dark, very curly hair, and a puckish, friendly, almost Greek face. He had very hairy arms and a thick stubble on his face – a bit “hobbit” like.
“I’m Greg, one of the rangers here,” he said. “Where are you three working this summer?”
“Two Medicine,” I said.
“Ahh!” He suddenly brightened, his thick eyebrows raised. “Two Med? That’s my turf! My wife and I will be seeing a lot of you guys probably – she’s a ranger there too.”
“Super,” Ronnie said with a frown, then glanced away at the rest of the people in the room.
I cast Ronnie a side long look as a quick awkwardness crept into the moment; then I looked back to Greg as I nodded at the crowd over his shoulder.
“Where are all these people working?” I asked.
“Them? All over the park, but the main lodge up the street mostly; there’s a separate dorm building for all of them here. The main lodge employs more kids than any other place in the park. It’s like a little university here – so many young people.”
He looked around the room. “This is just a smattering of them actually, those who couldn’t make the 1st orientation a few days ago.” He looked at his watch. “Grab a seat,” he said, gesturing towards the front row, where there were a few unclaimed folding chairs.
We sat down, and the orientation began with an older woman ranger, who looked more like a retiree than an actually park ranger, who began by talking about the park itself, its history and its geography. She described the layout of the park, talked about the famous “Going-to-the-Sun Road,” which was this long stretch of asphalt carved out of sheer rock in the mountain passes by the Great Northern Railway Company sometime in the 1900s.
At that time the Great Northern Railway Company was setting up stations to house workers who would be laying tracks in the nearby valley. The stations ended up becoming lodges soon after the establishment of the park, which was in 1910. The various stations/lodges grew in size, and eventually became what we had today, several big hotel-like lodges with hundreds of rooms, like the main lodge I had stayed in on the first night, with the Swiss-Alpine theme.
She finished her talk by describing the most popular destinations for visitors to the park – places I’d never heard of: Lake McDonald Valley, Logan Pass, the St. Mary Valley, The North Fork, Goat Haunt, Many Glacier, and Two Medicine. Staffers in the audience started looking around, whispering, bored already.
The lady sat down and then Greg stood up had let loose a long blast with this whistle he had been wearing on a string around his neck.
“Wake up guys!” he said loudly to the room with a smirk. “Whether you know it or not, the history of the Railway Company is more important than you may think, it made this place what it is – it wouldn’t exist without that effort.
“But for my talk, I’m going for a more practical theme. It’s my job to make sure you newbies learn this evening about one thing: how to stay alive in the park, things like avoiding bear attacks, what to do if bitten by a venomous snake, if you’re caught in a sudden snow storm.
“I’m going to teach you how to avoid getting lost and left out in the elements, and how to safely get in and out of rough and steeply elevated terrains.”
Heads turned to him as he started, and the attention level perked up at the mention of bears and snakes – concrete, specific ideas we could wrap our heads around – things that sounded dangerous, and closer to home, and, therefore, more interesting.
“So,” he continued, paci
ng slowing in front of our front row, “this region that became Glacier National Park was first inhabited, obviously, by Native Americans – the Plains Indians. And at the time of the arrival of European explorers, the dominating tribes here were the Blackfoot in the east, and the Flathead in the west. He gestured over to a map of Glacier Park on the wall to his right. The Blackfoot are still with us today, not too far – in Browning, but the Flathead have all but disappeared.”
“Their heads were too flat.” Someone murmured from the back, to a couple of chuckles. Greg ignored them.
“The Blackfoot were the bison hunters of the Great Plains, fearless, wild, hunting the bison on foot before the Europeans came, hunting with these.” Greg held up a little bow and arrow set that appeared to have been made recently.
“And spears. But after horses were introduced by the Europeans the Blackfoot took over the area in great force. Their name, by the way, is said to have come from the color of their moccasins, made of leather. Legend has it they typically dyed or painted the soles of their moccasins black. Another story, one I like better, is that the young men would have to walk through a large prairie fire before he could take a wife, which in turn colored the bottoms of their moccasins black. That’s actually how I got my wife, coincidentally.”
A couple of people snickered in the crowd behind me. I liked Greg’s honest, open, almost childlike way of talking about his park, and his shameless smile as he talked about where he worked. Greg struck me as the kind of guy who showed all his cards when teaching a new game – to help everyone figure out the game together.
“… and it’s always ‘Blackfoot,’ even when it’s plural,’” he said. “It’s not ‘Blackfeet,’ by the way.”
