High Country : A Novel (19 page)

Angie
wasn’t
all that predictable. But she was a good mother and a good wife and she knew a man like Buck needed excitement. She just didn’t like him to have it when she couldn’t have some fun herself, which is why she made him sleep on the cot in the woodshed while she and the children were quarantined with scarlet fever.

Buck didn’t like it. But there wasn’t much he could do. When he got back with Fenton’s new mules, Angie was already incarcerated.
“Sleep on that bed in the shed,” she’d said from the window. “Doc Haslam says that’ll do fine. I’ll just knock on that wall each night so you’ll miss me....You can knock back so I’ll know you’re not hellin’ around.”
Buck was so disappointed he couldn’t crawl into his own bed with his own Angie that the reality of the arrangement didn’t come to him for two or three days. Each night she’d knock, and he’d knock back. “Good night, Angie,” he’d say, and then he’d toss and turn through the night thinking of her—sometimes even thinking of Jeanie down at The Bar of Justice. After a few more nights he found himself thinking of Jeanie more than Angie, which is why he got Ty to come over and spend the night.
“When you hear her knockin’,” he said. “Knock right back. Say good night right back too. Can’t tell who’s who through that wall anyhow.”
Ty was too tired to argue. It was football season, and the minute he came out of the mountains they’d put him in the games. Mr. Trout had figured that if Ty started school that late each fall, they deserved to have him for a final semester, and this was it. By now the schoolwork was easy, at least compared to all those practices they put him through. His only worry was that he wouldn’t wake up when he heard Angie knocking on the wall.
“Don’t get in any fights, Buck,” he said as Buck headed out. “Angie always seems to know.”
But this time she didn’t seem to know anything. When the knocking came, Ty woke up and knocked right back. And when she called out, Ty said his good night right back. A little before dawn, Buck was back himself, smelling of beer and tobacco and crawling into his sleeping bag.
“Jeanie says hello.” Buck passed gas so sharply he sounded like one of Ty’s mules going up a hill. “A fartin’ horse’ll never tire,” he said. “A fartin’ man’s the one to hire.” He rolled over and sighed. “Jeanie sure is a good old girl.” He was asleep before Ty could tell him he thought so too.
Ty lay there and thought of Jeanie. He’d been back to The Bar of Justice a few times since that night with Spec. He’d danced with Jeanie, with Loretta too, when she wasn’t too drunk. But he had not gone upstairs. Not that he had anything against it. He just didn’t remember it being very satisfying. And most of the time when he was at The Bar of Justice he seemed to be getting Buck or Spec—or even Jasper—out of some scrape.
And one of the cheerleaders, now gone on to the university, had surprised him by how good she was to him. She was older and had a way of making things so natural and uncomplicated he got to looking forward to seeing her more and more. When they did see one another it was mostly her idea, Ty sometimes wondering if she weren’t a little embarrassed that he was a packer. But she was so nice to him that he didn’t let that trouble him. She even came down from the university and took him for drives into the country or to one of the diners out toward Bonner before kissing him and loving him in the big backseat of her father’s car.
All of it gave Ty a good understanding of what Jeanie meant to Buck. He even slept in the woodshed twice more before the Butte game, which they played just before Angie’s quarantine ended. John Lamedeer had graduated and the Spartans finally beat the Bulldogs, Ty catching a pass and running like a jumped deer to score the final touchdown.
Buck was there, so excited about Ty’s run he almost knocked Horace over pounding him on the back. He went with Ty to the locker room, waited until Ty dressed and went back to Horace’s with him to help with the chores.
“Bet you’re wore out,” he said finally. “All that runnin’ and tacklin’.”
Ty saw what was coming. He wanted to see how Buck would say it.
“After dinner you could slip down and rest up in the woodshed.” Buck acted as though the idea had just struck him. “Course after the quarantine there won’t be any need,” he added. Ty closed the feed bin and waited.
“Hell, Ty,” Buck said finally. “Truth is I won some money on that damn game. Thought I’d use it to try out some dance steps with Jeanie.”

Buck was sitting on the bed drinking beer and listening to the radio when Ty got there, figuring he’d read himself to sleep. “Want one?” Buck reached into a laundry bag he’d filled with ice and beer and pulled one out for Ty. “Sure puts a song in your heart.”

Ty could tell Buck was feeling his oats. He sipped at his beer and watched Buck slick his hair before putting on his hat. “I’m so tired I doubt I can finish this beer.” Ty leaned back on the pillow. “Don’t get too wild now. In a few days Angie’ll want to show you some dance steps of her own.”

Buck was two blocks away, the sack of beer slung over his shoulder, when what Ty said came back to him. He stopped and considered, a yearning for Angie coming over him so completely that before he knew it he was headed back for the house. The night was mild, and he felt so good about things he thought he might drink a beer as he walked, deciding instead to drink one with Angie while they talked through the window.

It wasn’t until he’d rapped on the window that he realized Angie might ask some questions about his being in his best shirt with a sack of beer over his shoulder. He was frozen by that thought when the window opened and there was Angie, shushing him and smiling and looking pretty as a picture in her nightshirt. Before she could say anything to change his mood, he’d tossed the sack in and tumbled after it, rolling across the floor a few times.

“I got to missing you so much, Angie,” he said, sitting up. “That I thought I’d bring you this beer.”
“You dummy. I’m still in quarantine. What in the world are we gonna say to Doc Haslam?”
Buck opened a beer and gave it to her. “Tell him you put a song in my heart.” Then they were tumbling on the bed, Angie shushing him to keep him from waking the kids, loving him and scolding him and loving him more.
“Better we don’t tell him what the song is,” Angie said.
When they were through Buck drank the beer and got more. They lay on the bed talking, Buck telling her about Ty’s game and how Missoula had finally beaten the big kids from the mines. “Don’t know why they call themselves bulldogs. More like oxes. Least when Ty ran right past the lot of them.” He laughed, content with himself.
He didn’t tell her that he’d won any money on the game, a fact that had almost slipped his mind, along with any thoughts of Jeanie or the girls at The Bar of Justice. He was comfortable where he was, and pleased—balancing a bottle of beer on his stomach as he talked.
“Angie,” he said, smiling contentedly. “Just knock on that wall once.”
“Why in the world would I knock on that wall?” Angie asked. “With you right here in my arms?”
“Give a knock.” Buck took another sip of beer. “Won’t do no harm.”
“You are a silly one, Buck Conner.” Angie gave the wall a few raps. “That satisfy you?” She was looking at him when three knocks came back. Buck grinned at her.
“Give a ‘night night’,” he said. “See what happens.”
Angie looked confused. “Good night,” she called out.
“Night, Angie,” a muffled voice came back. It gave Buck such a laugh, he sprayed beer across the bed.
“Ain’t that a stitch?” He was laughing so hard he had to hold the beer with both hands to keep it balanced on his stomach. Angie cracked him so hard she knocked it loose anyway. Buck looked at her, startled.
“Son of a bitch!” She jumped up from the bed and tripped over the bag of ice and bottles. “Bastard!” She picked up the sack and swung it.
Buck saw something had gone wrong. He grabbed his clothes, ducked the bag and reached the window just as she brought it around again, some of the bottles breaking as she knocked him through. He rolled away, clutching his clothes and realizing she was coming out after him.

Ty heard swearing and glass breaking and was running toward the corner of the house when Buck passed him going the other way, running crooked in his bare feet. “She’s got the beer,” he said, running past. Ty didn’t have a chance to slow down before he turned the corner and hit Angie. She seemed to fly a little before coming down and rolling over the bottles. She began to cry and reached into the sack to throw a bottle off where Buck had disappeared.

“Should of known that reading light wasn’t for him,” she said as Ty helped her up. “Can’t hardly get him through the Sunday comics.”
Ty quieted her and put her back through the window to calm the children and call the doctor. After awhile she came out on the porch with some blankets and they sat drinking beer, keeping warm with the blankets, waiting for the doctor.
“Wish he could be more like you, Ty.” Angie didn’t seem to blame Ty at all. “Not so knot-headed.” She cried a little, sipping her beer and lighting a cigarette. “You think I drove him right back to that Bar of Justice? Where those girls will patch him? Make over where he’s hurt?”
“I didn’t see any blood.” Ty wanted to make her feel better, but it was hard. He saw things in such a straight line he was embarrassed even being around people who lied. But he looked at Angie and knew this was one those times it would help if he could think one up.
“It isn’t what you think, Angie.” Ty sipped his beer. “Buck is so good natured. He goes mostly for the companionship.” He wished the doctor would show up.
“Companionship? Seems to me it’s more like fornication.”
“Not always. Lots of guys down there just like to kid each other around. You know how Buck takes to that.” Ty looked for the doctor’s headlights. “You know, Angie, I’ve never even seen him go upstairs.”
Which was technically true, but skirted the many times Buck and Spec, egged on by Jasper, had talked about that very thing, the three of them trying to get a rise out of Ty, who tried not to think about their stories now.
“He misses you, Angie.” He patted her shoulder. And that much was true. Everyone knew how much Buck missed Angie, though no one could predict what form the missing would take.
“Oh, Ty!” Angie hugged him, gave him a little kiss on the cheek. “ Yo u’ve always been a good man.” She sighed, put her head on his shoulder. “Even when you was a boy.” Ty saw tears running down her cheeks.
He had put his arm around her and was trying to think of something else to say when he saw the doctor’s car pull up. He was so relieved he went across the yard to meet him, explaining that Buck and Angie had broken the quarantine. And now it looked like he had too.
Thomas Haslam listened, asking a question here and there but not nearly as upset as Ty thought he would be. “The communicable period is almost over, Mrs. Conner,” he said. “I don’t think drinking a little beer with Mr. Conner will be a problem. Unless you drank from the same bottle.”
“I don’t recall we did.”
“You didn’t use the same utensils, did you?”
“Well,” Angie began to cry again. “You could say he used his and I used mine.” She turned and went in the house, wiping at her eyes.
Thomas Haslam watched. Ty knew there was more he had to tell him. He fished around in the wet sack for a beer, offering one to the doctor.
“This’ll take some explaining,” he said.

They sat there for over an hour, talking and drinking the beer, the doctor asking questions about Buck and Angie, finding himself as interested in Ty as he was in them.

“Well,” the doctor said finally, getting up to leave. “They are vigorous people. If I don’t see them about the scarlet fever, I will about something else. I doubt any of it will do them in.”

Ty watched him drive away, liking the direct way the doctor looked at things. He hoped he hadn’t given him the wrong idea about Angie and Buck. The way Ty saw it, they were pretty much like the others up in the Swan.

Ty stood in his slicker, watching Buck and the doctor as they talked, the rain letting up. Ty liked it that two people so different got on so well up here. And Buck and Thomas Haslam certainly were different. He remembered the look on the doctor’s face when Buck told him why he’d broken the quarantine, the doctor questioning Buck as he looked him over for scarlet fever symptoms.

“Well, Doc,” Buck had explained, “it’s plain to see I’d take Angie over Jeanie, could I have her. Trouble was, I couldn’t. Until I did. Hell, the reason I had her knock on that wall was to show how much I loved her.”

Whatever other questions Thomas Haslam had seemed to drift away as he stood there, looking at Buck, considering.
But Ty could tell the doctor was drawn to Buck, see he was interested in Horace and Etta too, saw it when the doctor looked them over to make sure Ty hadn’t passed any germs along. His enjoying them so was part of the reason Ty got them all to come along on the honeymoon trip. The other part was that Ty thought Miss Wright would have a lot more fun with Angie and Buck and Etta and Horace than she would with anyone else, especially those schoolteacher friends of hers.
Anyone else, that is, except Fenton and Cody Jo. He was sure Miss Wright would like them more than anybody. But they had other things to do: Cody Jo going back to Chicago for her Red Cross training, saying that if we weren’t going to help those people in Europe now, we would certainly have to later; Fenton packing for the Forest Service, which counted on him more and more.
With Spec locked up in Deerlodge, that left Ty to run the pack station. He was managing, but there was a lot to manage. He had Buck to wrangle, and Gus Wilson ready to help if there were a need. He had Angie and Jasper taking turns at the cooking, even ready to work together. And he’d convinced the Murphys to handle the booking arrangements, knowing he’d have to spend most of his time until the snow fell in the saddle—even after they let Spec out.
He’d come out of the mountains for the wedding, and to make sure everything was ready. Miss Wright considered the trip his wedding gift, but to Ty it was much more. It was his way of thanking her for her books, her patience; for getting him into the right classes, making sure he had the right help, coming to his games, and being so nice to his friends. It was his thanks for her befriending Buck and Angie—even Jasper, who would stand straight as a lodgepole when she appeared, stammering and fussing until he could slip away and drink, Jasper being at a loss around schoolteachers. Cody Jo was the only one he could tolerate. And even Cody Jo left him edgy.

To Ty it was a wonderful trip. Each time Etta and Angie chased Alice Wright out of the cook tent, it was a chance to show her his country. It was as though he could share his own literature with her, things no book of hers could explain. He hadn’t ever wanted anyone to like the mountains the way he wanted her to like them. And when he saw her appreciation was tied to the doctor’s, he felt the same way about him.

That was why he took them out each night after dinner, showed them where his horses were grazing or how the moonlight danced on the rapids; why he took them on detours from the trail to get special views; why he got them up at dawn each morning and put fly rods in their hands. It was hard for Ty to think of anyone who wouldn’t get excited about fishing when cutthroats were rising as they were on that trip.

Except, Ty had to admit, the doctor. He soon saw that the doctor’s appreciation of the country turned mostly on their camping. “How many miles will we travel?” he would ask each morning. “When will we be in camp? Good places for the tents? The kitchen? Our tent?”

At the end of each day Ty would watch Thomas Haslam wash the dust away, seek out Miss Wright and slip off to their tent. In the years to come he would wonder why he hadn’t understood the doctor’s need for Miss Wright right away, how important it was to Miss Wright that he had that need. He guessed that to him Thomas Haslam had still been too much their doctor, Miss Wright still too much his teacher.

Thomas learning from it, liking the order lifting above the chaos of deadfalls and avalanches and huge troughs carved by glaciers. And they both learned from watching Ty, seeing how at one he was with it—a natural part of a landscape more imposing than any god mankind could invent. In his own way Ty showed them where the waters begin.

None of this was in any of their heads that rainy day in Danaher Meadows as Ty shucked his slicker and handed the fly rod to the doctor, pleased the rain had finally stopped.

“Go on, Doc.” Buck was all encouragement. “They’ll be plump as ticks.”
“Ever occur to Buck that trout may not be all a man’s soul requires?” the doctor asked, following Ty to the river.
“That might throw him off.” Ty pointed to a slick behind a rock. “With the trout rising this way.”
It took three tries, but the first time the fly touched the slick a big cutthroat lifted, twisting in the air before slapping back and running. The doctor moved down the bank, playing him, his mind now only on the river, the fish, the rod, the movement of water.
He caught fish for half an hour before they quit rising, the sun out now and Ty relaxing on the bank, pleased with the concentration Thomas Haslam gave his fishing.
“Let’s slip out and check the stock,” Ty said. They’ll be out from under the timber now.”
“I’ll hang around camp—try to hide from Buck.”
“He’s persistent. But he’s interesting. Give him that.”
“All of you are.” Thomas Haslam looked at the high ridges. “You have this country. It makes a difference.” His eyes came back to Ty. “What will you do when this war comes, Ty? How will you leave this?”
“I’ll go.” Ty handed him the creel, full of fish. “I’ve been talking with Cody Jo. She keeps up on what they’ve done.” He was moving again, picking up a nose bag, sticking a lead-line in it, heading out to check his mules.
“I’ll go.”

The last day the sky was blue as china, the country spread out below them in mottled greens—forest and meadow darkened by shadows from the peaks. Ty had them on the pass before noon, at the corrals by three, Fenton there to greet them. Soon they were saying their goodbyes, picking through the gear for their duffle, telling Fenton about the trip, thanking Ty, who still had much to do. He and Fenton were taking Forest Service people in the next day, and then Ty had a last fishing party before hunting season—when Spec would be back.

“Well, we’ve seen it,” Alice said to her doctor. “The West—no fences or stop signs or roads. Hardly any trails.”
“This was here before anyone thought to call it ‘The West.’” Thomas Haslam put his arm around her, loving the touch of her. “Before anyone. I think your ‘West’ is these people.”
He watched Fenton and Ty as they grained the mules, checked them for sores, Ty talking to them, keeping the nose bag away from Loco until he was sure Cottontail got her share.
“What makes them may be this country.” He held her closer. “But it’s these people. I think it’s something inside them—that’s ‘The West.’”