by John Hansen
“I really couldn’t say; what’s it supposed to do?” I asked him.
“It’s supposed to calm her down – keep her spirit at peace,” he said. “It was hers, before it was yours.”
“She wore it?” I asked, surprised that he had not told me that before.
He just nodded nonchalantly, and kept walking along the shore with me. “The council understands that you were with her – the last one with her – before she died. And so they know you carry her spirit. We got to let her go – go in peace back to the earth. We’ll do that at the sweat,” he said.
“The sweat?” I asked. “As in a sweat lodge?”
“Uh huh,” he nodded. “You’re gonna go with us to the sweat; I got permission.”
“Permission from whom?”
“The council,” he said. “It’s a special honor, Will.”
“Thunderbird,” I said. “I heard you were the liaison or something for the tribe with the BIA and rangers for the council.”
“Yep,” he nodded emphatically.
“Well, what is going on with her investigation? Have you heard anything? Do the cops have any suspects?”
“Oh,” he said breezily, “Officer Olsterman thinks you may have done it.”
I stopped walking and looked at him. “He told you that?”
Thunderbird stopped and looked at me with a concerned frown. “I told them you had nothing to do with it, Will, that you had her spirit on you.”
Great. The idea of Thunderbird talking to cops about me and Alia’s spirit couldn’t do me any good at all. “Wait…” I said, “when did Olsterman tell you that he thought I did it?”
Thunderbird waived his hand again, casually. “Oh, don’t worry about that Will.” He turned and kept walking, adjusting his day pack on his huge rolling shoulders. “They aren’t going to do anything – I talked to them.”
I stood there a moment before answering while Thunderbird walked on. I looked out across the lake. The day was beautiful – a long, dark-blue sky was spread over the lake like a smooth sheet of silk, small waves being blown across the water by a breeze underneath. The mountains reflected in the calmer parts of the water. Yet again – the ludicrousness of talking about murder suspects, cops, investigations, in such a pristine and wild place struck me.
However, the fear of being arrested also struck me – and worried me now. Thunderbird had looked back at me and caught my worried expression as I stared at the lake.
“Will,” he said with a furrowed brow, “don’t worry. The BIA can’t solve this anyway – it’s a tribal matter. We’ll figure it out.”
“When?” I asked. Better not wait too long, I thought.
He smiled at me. “Wait until the powwow! You’ll see what we do there.”
I shook my head in wonder, and caught back up with him on the trail. “Well, there’s one thing you may have wrong, Thunderbird,” I said, as I resumed walking next to him, “I wasn’t the last one with her before she died – the person who killed her was.” I looked over to the store and then beyond it to the peak of Rising Wolf. A dark bank of thunder clouds crept over the summit and began its marching towards the store. “And Alia’s spirit could be on him then, and, if so, I hope she’s giving him hell.”
We got back to the store soon after that, and I took my leave of Thunderbird, and tried to get back into the swing of things in the kitchen once I’d returned from my break. Thunderbird had worried me more than encouraged me with his news about the BIA and his getting me an invite to a crazy sweat lodge ceremony; but despite his simpleminded clownishness he was a part of Alia’s life and he could help in that regard, if in no other.
Besides, I thought to myself as I rang up an order for Chef Katie in the kitchen, nobody is what they seem around here anyway. Not Thunderbird, not Clayton, not Katie, not Larry, not even Greg, whom I hadn’t heard from for days and who had originally seemed so gung-ho to help me out, so driven... Everyone was a chameleon who only revealed their true sides when faced with adversity – and there was plenty of that to go around in this otherwise idyllic paradise.
I switched places that afternoon with Katie so I could cook and just keep to my own thoughts. She was always glad for any chance to get off the grill, anyway. After a couple of hours cooking burgers, tacos, chicken strips and fries, she stuck her head into the kitchen and said, “You’ve got a call, Will. Someone from Georgia, they said.”
Georgia? Would Dad be calling me? I had actually called him and very briefly talked to him a couple of days after arriving in Two Med, just to check in, and then hadn’t heard a thing from him – nor had I particular wanted to. Who else knew my number?
I reached for the phone. “Hello?”
“Hey Will…” It was Holly, that unmistakable light, sweet, angelic voice. It made my heart seize for a second, and then almost just a quick I felt a clear reluctance to speak to her.
“Holly?” I said. “What’s up? How you doin’?”
“Oh, I’m good. I’ve been working like crazy as a teacher’s assistant, and taking a couple classes at night too. I called the park’s main number and got your location from them. I just wanted to hear from you… How are you is the question. How’s that job? What’s Montana like?”
How could I describe it? I wondered. I also felt a strong inclination to not describe it –and that I shouldn’t drag that old life of mine into this new one – and even though she was probably the main reason I had finally decided to chuck it all out and move to Montana – the last straw… the breaking point. I didn’t even want to bring her into my world in Two Med, not even her who had been the love of my life.
“Oh, it’s pretty good,” I said breezily. “It’s beautiful here – you’d love it.” I didn’t sound like I had much feeling or conviction, and I knew Holly could hear that in my voice. She could always detect the slightest feeling in anything I said – she never missed any signals like that.
“This job is kind of funny,” I continued, as an explanation for my tone. “Kind of like working in a fast food place and a gift shop at the same time.”
“Really?” she asked. “I thought you’d be out chopping trees or fighting bears or something.”
“Ha, yeah…” There came a lull in the conversation.
“It’s different here,” I said after a moment, still trying to thread together a coherent explanation of my life in Two Med. “It’s hard to explain…” I trailed off unsuccessfully.
“I understand,” she said. “You’re in a different world now. I just wanted to see how you were doing, to make sure you were OK.”
“It is really good to hear your voice,” I said, and it was the first time I had said anything with the ring of truth to it, and she could hear it.
“Yours too, Will.”
Another pause. “When are you coming back?” she asked. “Are you coming back? You left so suddenly…”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I may work for the park here, over the winter... Ronnie’s got this connection – Ronnie’s this guy I work with.”
“Ah.” she said. “All year, huh?”
“It’s a possibility…” I said. I looked down at the leather string and beads on my wrist. I thought about Alia and everything since.
“This place…” I began to say on the phone, then stopped. Better not get into it – it would take an hour to discuss my feeling of “this place.”
“You sound different,” she said after a moment.
“Really?”
“Are you ok?” she asked.
“Sure.” And that was the truth too. Despite it all, it did feel ok, despite it all, I realized as I spoke with her that I wanted to be in that place more than any other I knew. “I love it here at times, Holly. I wake up and it just amazes me that I live out here… in the mountains. It…. Just feels right to be.”
“Good,” she said, sounding a little relieved. “Well I’m glad I caught you. I wanted to make sure you were ok.”
“Yeah, it was good talking to you too,” I sa
id. Then considering for a second, I asked, “Are you still with Jonathan?”
A pause. “Yes.”
“Is he good to you?”
“Of course he is,” she said. “But let’s not talk about him, Will. Let’s not end on that note. I wanted to hear from you and I knew you wouldn’t call me.”
“You were right,” I said. “I think, now that you’ve called, that it was a good idea. I needed to hear from you again – for a proper goodbye, at least.”
“Then Goodbye, Will,” she said. “And don’t think I don’t ever want to hear from you – we can still be friends.”
“I doubt that,” I said, imagining it and not seeing the possibility. “Never just friends.”
“Well, if you ever want to talk, give me a call,” she said softly. “And take care of yourself out there.”
“Goodbye,” I said.
“Goodbye Will.”
I hung up and just stood rooted in place by the phone for a minute. I felt sadness; and I knew after I had hung up that I would probably never talk to her again. I simply didn’t want to reopen old wounds, and for what?
How quickly things can change in this world, I thought to myself as I went back to the kitchen and tied my Two Medicine apron back on. I still had love for her; I could feel it like a cold stone lying dormant inside me as I spoke to her on the phone, slowing warming up and getting close to an awakening. But the love was of a different kind, now, it was like the love of someone who’s passed away, or so out of reach that they may just as well have passed away. It was nostalgia, and it was solemn, like a memorial to a past life.
That was the last time I ever did talk to her. But I wasn’t done with Georgia, not just yet. We were getting into mid-summer when I got my call from Holly. And a short time after that, I got another visitor from the past.
Thirty-One
I was off on this particular day, but was in the store as it was raining heavily and I didn’t have anywhere else to go. I was sitting in one of the big rocking chairs that encircled the stone fireplace in the store – where Larry didn’t want customers to “loiter” – and I was whittling a stick into the shape of a bear like I had seen someone do in camp, or trying to – it looked more like a lumpy goat than a grizzly – when I heard someone call out, “Will Benton!”
I turned to look where the call had come from, and there was Scott himself, smiling at me near the front door, a backpack on his shoulder. His sandy blonde hair was a bit longer than when I had last seen him, and he seemed, healthier, bolder. As I stood up, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing – Scott from Georgia, last seen at Coco Joe’s, there, in the store amid the sweatshirts and coffee mugs in Montana, 2000 miles away... Larry’s bald head poked up from a couple of aisles away and regarded him and me respectively with a suspicious look.
“Scott!” I called out to him, smiling, and got up from the chair. “What the hell are you doing here, man?” I went up to meet him and we hugged; he laughed and slapped me on the back. Larry’s bald head slowly ducked back down to whatever he had been doing.
“Look at you!” Scott said. “I thought you’d have a beard down to the floor by now – Grizzly Adams.” He laughed and looked around the store. “So this is where you’ve been working?”
“Yea,” I said, following his gaze. “This is the place.” I knew how strange it must have looked to him. “We live upstairs.”
“I see, I see.” he said, taking it his surroundings.
I felt really pleased to see him, like I’d just found a lost, treasured gift that I didn’t even know I had been missing. Scott somehow made that new place more real, more legitimate for me when he walked in. It would have been so different with Holly… if she had shown up it would have completely wrecked the harmony and peace I had found of late.
“So what’s with the surprise visit?” I asked. “I don’t here peep from you and then you just walk in here out of the blue?”
“I didn’t hear a peep outta you!” he said. “So I had to come make sure you were still alive.” He explained that he had two weeks to burn and was doing a “mega road trip” across the West, and had decided to make the trip to Glacier.
“We got in yesterday and stayed the night at the big lodge down the road. Brooke’s outside,” he said, meaning his 20-year-old girlfriend.
“Ah, you’re still with Brooke, good… You guys are gonna love the trails around here. Let me show you around.”
We retrieved their bags (they had brought the appropriate backpacks to the park); and we retrieved Brooke, who had been taking pictures of the lake, and then I showed them around the store.
Ronnie saw us and wandered over and said “hi.” He kept gawking at Brooke, and I got us away from him quickly and went back to the kitchen. Katie was friendly, at least, and offered them some shakes she was making. Later on Larry came back to the store, and I introduced them to him, and even that grumpy bastard managed a smile – more tourist dollars to be spent in the store he probably figured. But that was Scott all around; he just had an energy and positivity that brought a smile to the face. He was always good company.
They had arranged for a campsite nearby, and had a new tent that they planned on finally breaking in that night. I couldn’t think of the last time Scott had ever camped, but then again he now looked like he could handle the outdoors better than before. In fact, he looked a lot different. His face was unblemished, his ears were clearer, and his overall figure was solid and healthy looking.
I told him as much as we settled into a table in the snack bar area of the store. He nodded like he expected the comment. “I cleaned up, Will,” he said. “Been completely sober now – 29 days.”
“And Brooke here’s been my savior,” he continued. “She got me into yoga and meditation, and it’s allowed me to really reach some strength that I needed, inner strength.” He looked over at Brooke.
“He’s really been doing great, Will,” she said, her blue eyes sparkling under her mass of black hair held back with a headband. “He’s got a new sales job with Verizon, and he’s working out again.”
“Glad to hear it – very glad.” I said, and I meant it. Scott’s fate was still a concern for me, whether I was conscious of it from day to day or not. “What do you think finally brought this all on?”
“Well,” Scott said, “honestly? You did.”
I rolled my eyes in disbelief.
“No, really,” he protested. “When you up and left and went after this crazy idea – your dream – and left it all behind like you did, at first I thought you had some kind of breakdown… But when I realized why you did it: you had reached a breaking point, and you had to find a change. You inspired me to leave my shit behind and start over again, too.
He took a sip of his shake, and then shook his head. “It was a big risk for you to come out here – I know you don’t have any safety net to land on… So I decided to go without the safety net too.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know about that. You had it in you to break those habits man, you didn’t need me moving to Montana to get there.”
“No, I did,” he said, with a frown. “I’d tried cleaning up a dozen times before – you know that. But I think,” he put his hand out and holding Brooke’s, “that when you up and got a new life out here I had to get a new life too – that or just get busy dying. It’s nothing complicated man; sometimes it’s as simple as following the lead of your best friend.”
He nodded at me for a moment, with a serious expression on his face. So, in a way, that’s two times you’ve saved my life.”
We talked for about an hour there in the snack area, and I made them some sandwiches for their lunch at camp. I showed them the rooms upstairs on our side; and I took them outside and pointed out the mountains and the various trails you could see around the lake. I felt an irrational but very personal pride in showing off the rugged beauty that had become the backdrop of my daily life; and I described the terrain with the pride of a land baron looking over his vast acreage.
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They eventually left to set up their campsite after the rain stopped; and after finishing up work I got to their camp site later and found a fire already blazing with some fold-out chairs stationed around it. Behind the chairs was their rental car and I saw their big tent set up nearby.
“There he is,” Scott called out when he spotted me. “Just in time for desert!”
Scott gestured over to Brooke who was concentrating on a marshmallow stuck onto the end of a coat hanger she carefully held over the fire. He tossed the bag of marshmallows in my lap after I sat down in one of the chairs.
“Don’t mind if I do,” I said, untwisting one of the hangers lying by the fire.
“So I’ve been wondering…” Scott said. “What’s it actually like living here? What’s a typical day like?”
It was a little unsettling listening to him, only because I wasn’t used to his voice being so clear and straightforward. I had gotten so unconsciously used to hearing just a shadow of that person over the years, always buried under stress, fatigue and chemical inducements over the years. Now he was a different person. He was so often, in the past, either drunk or almost there, or on some pills, or snorting coke, that he was always compromised in some way or another, in speaking or even just physically moving about. Here he was though, in the evening, in front of me, as sober as a man can get. It was a bit strange, but completely refreshing.
“Well,” I thought for a moment, “it’s complicated..”
Scott and Brooke both looked at me, and I waived a hand dismissively, the other hand slowly rotating the marshmallow hanger, getting a nice browning on each side. “It’s just that it’s a lot to take in. I mean it’s beautiful up here, of course; but it’s a strange place to live.”
“I bet,” Scott said, looking out past me at the mountains barely visible in the cloudy moonlight. “I still can’t believe you actually live out here.”
