High Country : A Novel (22 page)

They took Ty to the field hospital, where they probed for more and sewed him up, the stitches neat and even. They gave him morphine and told him to sleep. That he would be all right.

When he woke a Red Cross volunteer was there. They’d brought his pack in and she’d found Alice Wright’s music box. He’d carried it all the way across Europe, keeping Fenton’s razor in it, using it when he had a chance.

“Shall I give a shave?” The woman held the box, her face kindly. She looked solid and permanent in the blocky British uniform. “ Yo u’re a lucky one, y’know.You’ll be on your way home now.”

She opened the drawer for the razor. The tinkle of “Red River Valley” lifted and Ty found himself crying. He looked away, tried to stop it.
“There, there.You’ll soon be home.” Her voice seemed to bring more tears. She lathered and shaved him while he fought for control, talking to him cheerfully as he wept.
Ty couldn’t even thank her. He wasn’t sure what had started it. But he knew talking might start it all over again.
That afternoon Otis Johnson came in.
“Didn’t mean to treat you so rough when you got hit.” He stood at the foot of Ty’s cot. “Best to do things quick when you get a hurt like that.”
“That’s what Fenton claimed.” Ty was disoriented from the morphine. They’d given him a big shot after the Red Cross woman left.
Otis Johnson looked puzzled.
“Fenton Pardee.” Ty tried to clear things up, saw Johnson was confused but didn’t know how to explain.
“What did you say your son’s name was?” Ty wanted to get back to something simple, to talk about anything but the wound.
“I didn’t. But it’s Walker. Walker Johnson. We named him after the colonel.”

There was no way Ty could foresee the bond the war would would fashion for the three of them, though there was a hint of it in the letter Walker had waiting for him at the Fort Collins hospital. It was written in Walker’s careful hand, attached to the commendations his staff had submitted for the medals.

We should offer you something more tangible than medals, Hardin. But they will have to do. The truth is that men like you and Johnson are the ones who won this war. It was a war we had to win.

I am sorry about the wound, but I am thankful it was Johnson who brought you in. He knows how to care for men as well as horses. He is the best soldier I know. You are one of the best too, even though you hated doing what you had to do.

It was necessary. Never forget that the wound you’ll live with was suffered for the right cause.You were there because the world needed you. It gives thanks.

The colonel went on to say that if the urge to sleep on the ground ever came upon him again, he intended to have Ty take him into his mountains. “I want to see if you handle mules in high country as well as you handled them in California mud,” he wrote.

He signed the letter “With admiration.” Ty slid it into the music box under the razor case, thinking he should write back. For a few days he even considered what to say. Though he never wrote that letter, it was weeks before he was free of what the colonel had written him. There was plenty of time to consider it as they put him through his rehabilitation, the nurses making him walk morning and afternoon, massaging his wound until the feeling began to come back, lifting his leg until he could lift it himself, easing him into the shiny whirlpool baths, the jets coming in above the wound, below it, the water hotter and hotter.

The cause may have been right, he would think, but wars end badly for anyone touched by them. He thought of the wounded he had patched, the dead he had waited with until the corpsmen came. He thought of the German tanker too, blown apart as he surrendered. And most often he thought of the starving wretches at Gunskirchen Lager.

He couldn’t get them out of his mind, even when the throbbing and itching would call back his own wound, making him worry about dragging a game leg behind him as he went out for his horses. He thought about the pack station every day—and about the mountains. When he couldn’t sleep he would let his imagination take him along a trail he knew, consider each camp: where to stack the saddles, put the kitchen tent, find wood and water, feed for his horses and places to sleep for his people.

And after awhile sleep would come, dulling the ache of his wound, sinking him beneath his pain. His dreams were mostly of the mountains, his biggest fears not finding his horses or being stopped by deadfall on the trail or by snow on a pass. But those things didn’t seem much of a worry now, not after what he’d just left. He didn’t like his dreams about that: Confusion and smoke. The rumble of the big guns. Explosions ripping open the night. Bone-thin arms reaching out to him.

He was in the hospital for almost three months. Cody Jo came to see him halfway through his stay, driving almost nonstop all the way from Missoula. He was walking by then, needing a cane but putting more and more weight on the leg each day.

“ Yo u’re so thin,” she said, as he limped into the sunroom. She hugged him, held him for a long time, looked at him again. “And you’re older.” She touched his face. “It’s in your eyes.”

“You look the same.” Ty saw she was thinner too, her hair shorter, the laugh-lines around her eyes deeper. But she was the same Cody Jo, laughing, asking him questions and half-answering them herself, making him feel important and entertaining all at once.

She arranged with the nurses to take him out for dinner, and they went to a roadhouse outside of town. It was there that she told him Spec had been wounded too, hit by a sniper’s bullet on Okinawa.

“We think he’ll be all right,” she said. “One of those marine officers called Tommy from Washington. Told him Spec had done something very brave. That Tommy should know what a good marine Spec was.” She made a face. “As though Tommy needed to know Spec would do something ‘brave.’ That was his problem every time he got to town.”

“I hope you didn’t try to do something brave.”
“I didn’t. Truth is I hardly remember what I did do.”
“Supposin’” was playing. Cody Jo drummed her fingers on the table

with the music, as though she were dancing as she sat there. “I can’t wait until you get well enough to dance.” She put her hand
in her lap. “These songs bring back so many things.”
Their food came and they talked and she told Ty about Fenton, that
he didn’t seem to have the energy he used to have, that he’d had to get
Buck and Bump to come over and do the shoeing that spring. “He’ll raise hell if those shoes come off.” Ty couldn’t imagine Fenton
as anything but the big unpredictable presence he’d always been. They laughed about that, and then they heard “Daybreak” playing.
Cody Jo got him on his feet and coaxed him into moving along with
the music. They stayed pretty much where they were as they danced,
the other couples giving them room. After awhile Ty leaned his cane
against the table and kept moving to the music, using his wounded leg
for balance.
It came back to him what a marvelous dancer Cody Jo was the
moment he put down the cane. They hardly had to move their feet,
but the music was in both of them. They swayed and hesitated and
swayed again as though the music came from some hidden place only
they shared.
“You haven’t lost it,” she said when they finished. “That rhythm.”
She watched him, then smiled. “That’s why those nurses told me to get
you well. I bet they want to take you dancing!”
The next night she drove him to the big hotel in Colorado Springs to
hear the dance band. They were playing on a terrace, tables arranged
around a dance floor. The musicians were wonderful. It was easy to tell
how much they liked the swing tunes they played. It wasn’t long before
Cody Jo was making friends with them, asking them to play her
favorites, his favorites too: “Green Eyes” and “Frenesi,”“Have Mercy”
and “Perfidia.”
They played all the songs that had kept Ty’s men going too. Every
time they’d found a radio they’d gathered to listen, memorizing every
word, each intonation. It was hard to believe that he was hearing those
songs now, played by a live band while they ate elegant food, used
napkins and had wine. Knew they were safe in the soft summer night. Cody Jo coaxed him into dancing to each slow number they played.
Before long he was moving much more easily than he had the night
before. They even stayed on the dance floor for some of the faster
songs, Ty shuffling in place as Cody Jo moved around him, came into
his arms and swung out again—as though they’d danced that way
forever.
They stayed on the terrace long into the night, dancing, drinking
more after their dinner. Some of the musicians joined them between
sets, talking about how much they liked watching Cody Jo dance, even
asking if Ty wanted to sit in at their drums. Ty refused, embarrassed to
realize they were serious and drinking more than he should. He was
surprised when they played “The Sunny Side of the Street,” saying it
was their last number. It seemed the wrong song to end with, but he
loved dancing to it, the musicians smiling, Cody Jo and he the only
dancers left on the broad terrace. The song was almost over before he
realized his leg hardly bothered him at all.
Cody Jo gave him the car keys. “I might take a nap,” she said,
tipping a little. “I don’t think I danced that last brandy away.” Ty was pleased he was able to work the clutch and startled by how
quickly Fenton’s Buick picked up speed. He hadn’t driven a real car in a
long time, and he slowed to make sure he had control....He hadn’t
danced away his last brandy either.
He wished they were headed back for the pack station now. Dancing
with Cody Jo had brought so much back to him that he felt a little
dizzy. She tilted against him and he shifted around to make her
comfortable. They drove that way back to the hospital, Ty thinking
about when he’d met Cody Jo and Fenton, recalling his first day:
Fenton setting Bob Ring’s leg, Ty leading Ring out across snow while
Ring drank and sang hymns, going back that same day to ride all the
way to the South Fork, the coyotes calling, the moon giving only a hint
of the country he would call home.
Fenton had fixed Ring’s leg, he thought, and Cody Jo had fixed
his—made him dance so he’d know he could walk. He understood why
she’d made them stay late. It didn’t bother him. He wished she’d worry
that much about him after his leg got better. Besides being in the mountains, he couldn’t think of anything he’d rather do than dance
with Cody Jo.
The nurses had cleared their late return and the M.P.s waved them
through with no questions. Cody Jo didn’t wake up until he slowed the
car, stopping in front of his ward.
“Home again, home again.” She lifted her head. “Jiggedy jog.” “I don’t call it home. But it’s sure improved since you arrived.” “ Yo u’ve been drinking.” She smiled at him. “I like that.” “Can you drive?” He lifted his leg with his hands to clear the door.
“The nurses could find you a bed here.”
“I can now.” She slid under the wheel. “After resting up from the
dancing.” She ran a hand through her short hair. “You improved. Bet it
didn’t hurt your old leg at all.”
“Your dancing fixed it.” He looked at her through the window. “You fixed it.” She kissed her fingers and held them to his cheek.
“People who dance like you just self-repair.”
She looked at him with only the hint of a smile. Then she was gone,
the car not even swerving as she headed for the gate.

Ty didn’t see her again for six weeks, not until Horace drove him out to the pack station in his pickup, though he got two letters from her. The first thanking him for their night of dancing.

“Like one of them Indian signs of Tommy’s. Finds its own way to come true.” Horace was driving carefully, worried about how thin Ty looked. “Special Hands was all patched and on that hospital ship home when the plane mashed itself right into them. Killed Spec and three others.” He turned to Ty, unbelieving. “Barely hurt that ship.”

But he didn’t think Tommy recognized him.
“He roused himself when they shipped Spec back. He took that flag
all folded up. Watched them lower the coffin. But he never thought
Spec was in there. Not for a minute. Just started in to drinking again.” “Might not have been in there.” Ty looked out the window again.
“Not much left when a man gets hit right on.” They were getting close
to Seeley Lake. Ty was remembering when Spec had driven him in the
other direction, celebrating Ty’s first year in the mountains. He’d been
so honored to have a hunter like Special Hands take him to town he
probably would have gone to The Bar of Justice even if he’d known
what it was.
“I guess those kamikazes think it’s an honor.” Ty saw Horace needed
an explanation. “They’re different from us.”
“You must of seen some bad things.” Horace looked over at Ty.
“Etta and me are sure glad you come out of it all right.”
They went by the bar at Seeley Lake and Ty remembered when Spec
had bought him beer there, wouldn’t let him pay, the bartender seeing
Ty was too young but serving him anyway—because Spec told him to. “I’m not sure any of us came out of it all right,” Ty said. He saw two
men drinking on the porch where he’d first seen Gus Wilson, chairs tilted back. He also saw the worry on Horace’s face and thought he’d
better change the subject.
“We’ve all changed over those years.You and Etta too.” “Does slowin’ to a crawl qualify as change?” Horace asked, still
concerned about Ty.
He began asking Ty questions: what Ty’s medals stood for, how the
Germans acted when they surrendered. He asked questions all the way
out to the pack station, offering his own answers when Ty grew quiet. “Mostly it was confusing,” Ty said. “Everyone going different directions. Roads out. Waiting. Then rushing for somewhere else.” He didn’t talk about the frightened boys they took as prisoners. He
didn’t talk about his wound, or about the smells of Gunskirchen
Lager—the starved people reaching out, needing someone to touch.

Cody Jo came out when she heard the truck. She’d been baking and had flour on her jeans. She looked so natural and happy Ty had to swallow away his feelings. She hugged him and made him walk for her, told him that Dan and Rosie were coming for dinner. Buck and Angie too. That Fenton was putting in a hunting camp and wanted Ty with him right away.

“Hold on,” Ty said, as they went into the house. Music was playing. Music always seemed to be playing when Cody Jo was cooking. “I’m not even sure I can ride.”

Ty saw the big house was finished at last: the floors polished, railings in on the stairs. Over the mantle was a painting of an Indian packer. A long, shiny table was where the makeshift one had been.

Cody Jo told him to take the guest room, but he took his things out to his old room off the barn. Someone had put a bed where the cot had been. And there was electricity, a lamp to read by.

The army had shipped a sleeping bag back with him. He spread it on the bed and went through the corrals to see what horses Fenton had left, pleased to see Smoky Girl sunning herself out in the pasture. Cottontail and Loco were there too. He got a nose bag and went to them, worried that his limp might make them wary. But they came to him right away, Loco peering around Cotttontail to make sure before nosing in for feed, trying to get it all.

He saved the last for Smoky, then led her back to the corrals, knowing the sooner he found out if he could ride the better. He began brushing her, wondering how Fenton was and why no one talked about that. It was hard to imagine anything wrong, though. Fenton seemed too permanent.

He looked up at the high ridges of the Swan. The sun was warm on his face and he felt at home at last—or at least near enough to see where home was, up where the air was thin and the nights cold.

He’d saddle Smoky after lunch, see if he could ride without too much pain. But even as he walked into the kitchen for lunch, he knew there would be no waiting, that no matter the pain, he’d be headed for the pass in the morning. He wanted to see Fenton, needed to see the country. He just wished Spec were there to see it too.

“ Yo u’re older, Ty.” Rosie put a bag of homegrown tomatoes on the table. “ Yo u’re getting some of that sad look Will used to have.”
“Just makes him more handsome,” Angie said. “Mysterious like.”
“You been breaking any hearts, Ty?” Rosie was going through Cody Jo’s records. “Hear those nurses were trippin’ over themselves to get you on your feet.”
“They sure tried to get me rid of this limp.” Ty felt awkward with all the attention. “The doctor says it’ll go away—in time. Says to do whatever I can. Just not too fast.”
“That’s what Fenton said after you were half-frozen.” Cody Jo passed out the drinks Dan had made. “I thought we’d never get your blood moving again. ‘Take it slow,’ he said. And for once he was right.”
“He’s right about a lot of things, Cody Jo.You tease him too much.”
“I don’t think I tease him as often now, Ty.” She looked at him. “And we miss it. It was one of the ways we made love.”
Then she was busy, making a cheese sauce, frying elk sausage. They drank, dipping their bread in the sauce and listening to the songs she’d collected during the war years.
“Those songs meant a lot to us,” Ty said. “Made us happy and sad all at once.”
“Well let’s be happy listenin’ to them now.” Buck got another round for everyone. “It’s best to be glad about who’s here, not sad about who ain’t.”
Things picked up a little after that. They listened to Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller and Artie Shaw. Ty thought they might start dancing, but nobody did. They just listened and drank, eating the sausages with the tomatoes from Rosie’s garden.
It was all right with Ty that nobody wanted to dance. It hadn’t been easy getting on Smoky in the first place, and it wasn’t much better after he did. Not until he’d worn her down a little and loosened himself up. Ty guessed she hadn’t been ridden at all since he left, a suspicion Horace verified that afternoon before he drove back to town.
“At first we didn’t get on her because of you bein’ away,” Horace said. “And then we didn’t cause she wouldn’t let us. By the time Fenton got her, she wasn’t fit for anyone but him. And he was busy with Easter. ‘Wait till it’s over,’ he says. Which most of us were doin’ anyway.”
Horace got in his truck. “And we did. We all waited. A lot stopped while you boys was gone. Didn’t change, just stopped. Hope you can start things up again.”
Ty watched him drive away before going back to Smoky. It took three hours. But when he finished, they were reacquainted. And he knew he could ride. At least that much was started up again.

They had a lot to drink that night, but not even Buck got boisterous. Mostly they listened to the music and tried not to worry about Ty’s limp.

“I can haul them supplies in for Fenton,” Buck said. “No reason for you to be on the trails until that leg heals.”
“And let you knock over all those saplings?”
“Been workin’ on conservation since you left.” Buck sounded hurt. “Cottontail and me.”
Ty saw being funny was no good. “Truth is, Buck, I want to go. Want to see Fenton. Find out if my leg is good enough so I can help.”
Buck got more drinks and Angie and Rosie cleared the table, all of them making nice to Ty, saying they were sure his leg would hold up, saying how much help he would be. . . . What they weren’t saying was what bothered him.
“I want Fenton to see you,” Cody Jo said. “He’ll be so glad to see you.”
Billie Holiday was singing “In my solitude ...you haunt me . . . “ Cody Jo took it off and played “Daybreak,” saying it was the last record because daybreak was when Ty had to get going. She got Ty up to dance with her, but it wasn’t at all like that night they’d danced on the terrace at the hotel. The song seemed sad.
He went out to his room and pulled his sleeping bag over him. He lay there thinking of his favorite camps, wondering what fords had washed out, thinking about all the things that could have changed . . . and thinking about Spec. It wouldn’t be the same in the woods without Spec.

“Spec may be gone,” Fenton said. “But he’ll stick with you the rest of your goddamned life. You’ll see.” He was sitting by the fire with Jasper, drinking the whiskey Ty had brought in. Gus Wilson was there too, and Ty could see why Gus was needed. He’d pulled Cottontail and Loco into camp in the late afternoon, Fenton there to meet them and looking so much thinner and smaller Ty hardly recognized him. If Fenton’s voice hadn’t held up, steady and insistent, Ty was afraid he would have been staring at him still, making sure it really was Fenton.

“Them you learn from are always with you,” Fenton said. “Telling you things. Helpin’ you see.” He shifted to get more comfortable. “That’s all the immortality a man gets, far as I can tell.” He sipped his whiskey. “When you think about it, it ain’t a bad kind to have.”

“Let’s talk about somethin’ cheerful,” Jasper said, enjoying the whiskey Ty had produced. “Like havin’ Ty back. I feel safer already.” He patted Ty’s arm. “You always looked out for me when them chips was down.”

“He might have to do more of that if I don’t shake this goddamned ache.” Fenton started to get up for another drink, but Gus brought the bottle over, watching as Fenton settled himself back down.

“Been off my feed, Ty. Off my industry too. With you here maybe we can catch up to where I let Gus down.”
“If you’d see the doc you might not worry about who you let down,” Gus said. “Or fret over what you shouldn’t be doing in the first place.”
“I know what I
should
be doing. What pisses me off is I can’t. With Ty here I just may go see Doc Haslam. Not that he’ll tell me anything new.”
“Don’t let ’em poke you with their knives,” Jasper said. “Costs all that money and not a nickel worth of repair.”
“Poke me wherever they want if they get rid of this ache. It’s hardly tolerable without whiskey.”
“They sometimes cut the ache out,” Gus said. “But you got to see them first. Ty can finish up here, take care of them hunters comin’ in.”
“I’ll take you up to the pass tomorrow,” Ty said, poking the fire. “Yo u can instruct me on what to do.You’ve probably missed that opportunity.”
“I have. But it’s hard to crack the whip. This ache keeps me preoccupied.”
Jasper shook his head, knowing that if Fenton didn’t protest about doctors poking him with knives, things were bad. He took another sip, thinking it was one of Tommy’s Indian signs.
A bad one.