The Wild Inside (49 page)

I scanned down and saw a Margret Ostrem’s name at the bottom with the title “PR Officer
,
Glacier National Park, September 24, 1987.” It was obvious that she’d typed up the press release on the Oldman Lake incident and submitted it to Ford for review. And what was also obvious was that he’d crossed out large sections of it and, in his own writing, written the parts about careless camping habits, which were not in the original write-up. I felt every muscle in my body tense up, my fingers clenching the file like they might never open again. I forced myself to take a deep breath. I held it there for a second, then let it go, my body relaxing a little with it. My father’s words came to me:
like those rings in the water that those fish make, we make them too and what we do reverberates way beyond what you can ever imagine
. “How much trouble,” I asked, “are you going to get in for giving me this?”

“Depends on what you do with it. I don’t think he remembers or knows that it even exists at this point. It was so long ago.”

I stared at the old large type and the fading ink in the margins until it blurred.

“If it’s just for you and your family for a little peace of mind, that’s
one thing,” Monty said. “If you plan on writing up a piece for the local news, that’s another.”

I looked up at him in the dim light. He reached over and flicked on a switch, and in the sudden brightness, I felt something click inside me, like the slide of a lock opening on a car door. Something let go. My muscles relaxed even more. “There, now we can see.” He nodded, pleased with himself, then glanced at my face, which must have had a strange expression. He smiled tentatively. “Look, I wouldn’t give it to you if I wasn’t prepared for either possibility.”

I closed the manila folder and held it in both hands for a long moment. I was tempted to put it in my bag with my other work, take it just in case I needed it to show Sean or something. At the very least, to show Ma.

“Well.” Monty looked around the room, “You up for a beer?”

I held out the file. “Here,” I said. “You can put it back where it came from.”

He didn’t grab it. “You don’t want it?”

I shook my head. “Seeing it once, that’s enough. And you don’t need the trouble.”

“Really, I don’t care about that.”

“But I do. Come on, take it.” I was still holding it out to him.

“But, you’ve got a review coming up. You might need it.”

“It’s not going to go down like that,” I said. “It’s going to be fine.” This coming from a pessimist. I remained holding it out. I would continue this job. I would continue to fight nature.
That was the job I had chosen
. Ultimately, I would always be fighting Oldman Lake, fighting nature, in one way or another, and maybe that was exactly why I began this job in the first place, to insert some control into a harsh and beautiful world. “What’s in this”—I dipped my chin to the file and held it up higher—“has been bothering me for more years than you can imagine. But now”—I nodded steadily, with certainty—“now it’s time to let it go.”

After a quiet moment, the rain steady and rhythmic on the roof, he reached out and grabbed it.

“And you know what it’s also time for?”

“That beer?”

“An apology.”

Monty furrowed his brow.

“To you.” I lifted my chin to him. “I’m sorry for getting so bent out of shape over you and Ford. You’re a good officer. Very capable, and I’ve appreciated your help.”

“Thank you.” He bowed his head.

“You ready for that beer now?” I said.

“Damn right I am.” Monty smiled.

• • •

When I walked out to my car to go meet him, I saw on old beaten-up Ford Taurus sitting in the lot, which I recognized as Leslie’s. Then I saw the glow of a cigarette and realized she was sitting alone. I went over and tapped on the window, which she had cracked to let the smoke out. When she saw me, she jumped, then opened the door and stepped out.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“It’s okay,” she said.

“Can I help you?”

“I just came by. I don’t know, thought my dad might be here”—she gestured to the building to the dark windows of Joe’s office—“but I can see that he’s not.” She threw the butt of her cigarette on the ground and toed it. “His car’s not here either,” she added with a wispy voice, like an afterthought.

“You check the house? I don’t think he’s been in at all since . . .”

“No.” She looked down and scuffed the soles of her shoes into the pavement, still grinding the cigarette, then scratched the back of her neck. “I’m not really welcome there. At the house, I mean.”

“Well, things are different now. You might be surprised.” I let that
settle and watched her fidget, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. “Where’s Lewis?” I asked.

“At a friend’s for the night. Good thing.” She shrugged heavily. “Paul and I got into a fight. He said I’m whacked out, that he couldn’t handle me, so he left. Said we were over.”

I took a deep breath. “I see. Well, I’m sure once he calms down, he’ll come back around.”

She nervously glanced around the parking lot and wrapped her arms around her chest like a straitjacket. I thought of Heather hugging herself in the interrogation room and her father doing the same on the bench in Missoula. “How long have you been sitting here?” I gestured to the parking lot. It was dark now and only illuminated by the outside lights from headquarters. The lot we were in was next to the woods where the bear’s cage was hidden by black trees—maybe a hundred yards away. I couldn’t see it from where we stood.

“I don’t know. A bit. It’s, it’s”—her large, dark eyes had a faraway look in them—“it’s hard to be home right now without anyone there.” She shuffled and began twisting her hair and looking around again, anything to avoid eye contact.

I didn’t respond.

“What’s, what’s going to happen to my sister?”

“I’m not sure. Hopefully she’ll get a mitigated sentence if not completely released.”

“She’ll have to go to jail?”

I nodded. “At least for a little while in the beginning, before her trial.”

“No matter what?”

“Most likely.” I didn’t want to get into the details, that Heather could be bailed out and would end up spending seven or eight nerve-racking months before her sentencing, which probably could be mitigated from twenty, the federal guidelines under the felony murder rule stating that if you commit a felony like kidnapping or robbing a bank
and accidentally kill someone in the process, it’s still murder. “Like I said, she has a really good attorney.”

Leslie’s eyes filled with tears. She pulled out her pack of cigarettes, and her hand shook noticeably when she tried to pull one out. When she got it, she instantly dropped it. I leaned down to get it for her and handed it back. She tried to light it, but her hands quivered so badly she couldn’t manage.

“Here,” I offered. “Let me hold that.” She placed the cigarette between her lips. I held the flame to it, then handed the lighter back to her.

“Well, I better go.” She glanced at her car.

“Leslie.” I reached out and put my hand on her elbow. I try not to make a habit of physically touching people that I’ve come across during investigations, but she looked so frail and lost—like she might fade away—and that if I just made contact, I might ground her at least momentarily while her sister was no longer around to do that for her. It seemed like a very small thing I could do for Joe and Heather.

She turned, still dazed, and met my eyes.

“I can give you the name of someone who can help with this sort of a loss. I mean, it’s not death, but it is certainly a significant trauma.”

She shrugged and tilted her head to the side and tried a small smile, but it fell away as quickly as it came, just as her sister’s had. Both fragile smiles would later mesh into one and forever stay with me. She looked at the building her father worked in, then back at me. I gave a warm squeeze to her slight elbow and let go. She looked at the pavement, then got in her car and left. I watched her drive away, her red taillights disappearing as she rounded the corner.

24

S
OME MIGHT CALL
it closure. In fact, I’m sure my Missoula therapist might have called it that. But I tend to think of it as a type of conquering instead. Besides, I can’t really bring myself to think that such a thing as closure exists, as if there’s some button that you can push that will simply box and wrap trauma up and tuck it neatly away. Trust me, if there was, I’m sure I would have pushed it by now.

In fact, I don’t know what to do with memories like mine. It feels wrong to forget, although there are certainly spans of time in which I try hard to do just that. Unfortunately, that kind of closure wasn’t going to come my way, so I tried the trick performed in the movies: visiting the place. And that’s where conquering comes to mind. Going back to Oldman Lake after all this time was an attempt to triumph over jumbled-up fears more than to reassemble memories so they could reside in a more peaceful place. I now knew I owed that much to myself—to the boy with the young hands.

Monty, believe it or not, said he’d go with me, which pleased me. And even though in the movies, it seems like a prerequisite that the protagonist goes it alone to the spot where the personal trauma occurred, there was no way in hell I was hiking by myself in bear country to Oldman Lake in the fall, or any season for that matter.

On a cloudy morning, two days before I was scheduled to leave for Denver (which I had stretched out as long as I could in order to stall getting back to undergo my psych evaluation), we packed all the necessities and headed out before sunrise and drove over to the Two Medicine campsite, where I had been just days before. By the time we got there, the sky hung low and dark with a light drizzle, the aspen trees stood skeletal white without their leaves, and the peaks, although disappearing into the fog, hovered ominously around the lake. We hiked the six and a half miles, around the end of Two Medicine, over a ridge, through a valley where we crossed numerous dried-up streambeds, and on and upward. I couldn’t have pointed out the spot where the hikers found me unconscious if I had to, although Monty did ask for me to.

Monty and I barely spoke. He knew to be quiet and to let me have some space and honestly, it took every ounce of strength to keep putting one foot in front of the other and not turn back. I insisted on taking the lead. He had offered, but I knew with Monty behind me, he’d be the locomotive in my head, pushing me onward. If nothing else, it would have been too big of a knock to my ego to quit with him following me.

When we reached the higher elevation, we had to trudge through snow on the trail. Maybe it was my nerves, but I tired easily. As we got closer, I felt edgy enough to pause and take notice of the ghostly trees.
Yep, they’re dead whitebark pines.

“Everything okay?” Monty asked.

“Yeah, I’m good.”

“Tired?”

“No, I’m good.” I got my water out and took a sip.

“It’s just a little farther.”

I wiped my mouth and held out my hand for Monty to go ahead. He stepped in front of me without any comments, slogging forward on the wet snow. Patches of white surrounded us on the forest floor and the smell of wet pine filled my nose. We walked another quarter of a mile, came over a knoll, and there it was.

Its waters were as I remembered, a deep green, maybe a little grayer now in the dim light, but its size larger than I recalled. Its shape like a large teardrop, it sat in a basin, hemmed in by stunted pines and the tall snow-covered ridges leading up to Dawson and Ptimakan Passes. The shoreline was white from snow, and I was fairly relieved to know that it was too chilly for us to stay long. We had been hiking through intermittent drizzle—not cold enough for snow, but the air still felt raw, as if the rain could turn to sleet at any moment.

Monty and I found a log to sit on, had some snacks, and I appreciated the fact that he didn’t keep glancing at me or checking me out for my reaction to the place. He treated it like any other hike, wiping the sweat off the back of his neck with a blue cowboy bandana he’d brought. He dug around in his pack for snacks and after he ate, tried to skip small, flat rocks over the dark water.

After a while, he announced, “I’m going to walk over there to explore. Just around a bit.”

I nodded, a piece of apple in my mouth. I knew what he was doing—giving me space to contemplate. I sat and looked around at the trees surrounding me and saw the narrow trail, like a crooked scar, leading toward the campsite. I grabbed my pack, made sure my spray was on my belt loop, and slowly took the path.

There were only a few spaces for the backcountry permit camping, and I remembered clear-as-day which space we’d picked.
This one here, Dad. See, hardly any rocks and not too sloped
.

Good with me
, he answered.
We’ll set up the tent; then we’ll make a fire. But first,
he said with the same smile he had when we saw the moose at Therriault Lake.
Let’s sit down and just take it all in.

I had rolled my eyes. Told him,
Uh, no, thanks
, in that too-cool way,
I’ll just get started on the tent
. I began taking it out of the bag.

Suit yourself
. He shrugged and got comfortable on the rock, twirled his mustache, and made a show of taking in the mountain air just to bug me. We both laughed.

I could see his smile now.

I spotted the boulder where he had sat looking out over the lake and up at the high ridge. I went and sat on it and did just as he said: took it all in. Two small rings formed in the water from rising fish and slowly expanded. The trees were more numerous than I remembered, and I didn’t know if that was a function of time or a faulty memory. I couldn’t figure out where the bear had taken him, to which spot. The campsite seemed more closed in than I recalled, and I had to remind myself that grizzlies aren’t really worried about small, stunted pine trees in their way when they barrel through an area.

I sat still, felt the cold air on my nose. I listened to the water, ever so faintly lapping on the pebbled shore, and spotted some small dark moving objects, which I figured were ducks splashing around on the opposite side of the lake. They moved in the shadows below the steep ridge to the north, which halfway down had a fringe of fluffy mist hanging stagnantly at its base like the trim at the bottom of Santa’s hat.