The Yellowstone Conundrum

by John Randall

  “Wade McGriff,” blue shirt introduced himself, his grip solid as Cam expected. “What the hell is happening, here? Do you know?” Wade asked, behind him were citizens of Wright, Wyoming; every one with fear behind questioning eyes.

  “See that?“ Cam pointed to the black cloud in the distance. “From what I gather, Yellowstone has exploded.” Cam stopped, and turned to Wade and the others. “The only radio I can get is Praise Jesus from that station in Nebraska,” several people in the group nodded their heads. “Which isn’t from Nebraska but someplace in Texas,” he added.

  The morning in Wright, Wyoming was pretty much gone. The storm that went through yesterday and dropped two inches of snow, mostly melted this morning, was long gone…down in Texas someplace and headed East. Wright, Wyoming was a pretty place. Oil and mining and tourism were the major sources of income. This was the High Plains, elevation in the low 5000s, grassland as far as you could see, real home for Dances with Wolves. The town had enough taxes to have a modern school, a town hall, real roads, a modern motel and a gas station; paid for by taxes from Black Thunder Mining and other surrounding mining and ranching interests. Unfortunately, none of it worked today because there was no electricity and the ground continued to shake softly every few minutes from the aftershocks of the Yellowstone explosion, albeit 400 miles away.

  The real bummer was the Exxon station had no emergency power. Not many places can afford an $18,000 generator for emergency use.

  Slowly, people from the surrounding neighborhoods began to congregate around Cam’s cab and the town hall. A closer look at the community revealed damaged houses, trailer homes knocked off their foundation, cracks in the road. The beautiful recreation center, the heart of the town—with a full gym, racquetball courts, a weight room and a full-sized Olympic pool—had taken a major hit from the earthquakes, splitting the roof lengthwise on both sides of the new building. A closer examination would find significant cracks in the bottom of the pool and on the gym court.

  “I-25 is closed. Overpasses have collapsed,” Cam started. “That black cloud isn’t a dust storm. It’s volcanic ash.” Cam ran a hand through his hair; his fingers came out black with crusty crud. “You won’t last ten minutes inside the cloud. We were lucky. Another two minutes and we would have suffocated.”

  The crowd had legitimate worried looks.

  “Doesn’t look like it’s headed this way,” Wade observed.

  “Yeah, I’ll buy that. Looks like we’ve outrun it; but let me ask you this—does the wind ever blow here?”

  “A bit,” Wade added, sheepish, knowing the wind was a constant companion on the high plains. Today it was obvious where the wind was blowing by the trail of Black Death drifting to the south in the western sky not 40 miles from them. The usual blown-over-backwards wind from the West was absent today because of the storm that went through yesterday. Tomorrow would be different. Today was a day off from wind. The entire western sky was black. This was no puffy little pussy willow.

  “I don’t know about you, Wade. But, I’m scared shitless,” admitted Cameron, the crowd of locals quietly listening. “I just rescued the bitty woman in the cab from a firestorm of wrecked cars on I-25 the other side of Midwest,” he paused and there wasn’t a sound from the thirty or so folks who were gathered around. “That cloud is past Casper,” he pointed to the West. “By the size of it, it could already be down to Cheyenne on the way to Denver. It’s a hundred fucking miles wide! All it takes is a tiny shift of wind and we’re going to be covered with black ash. And once you’re in it you can’t breathe. You’re deader than a doornail.”

  The crowd started to pester Wade with some what-if questions; the cowboy held up his hand. “Everybody quiet for a second. We’re a proud community. It takes some strength to live in Eastern Wyoming; so, we’re going to need to channel that strength. These people have been under that cloud and say that you can’t breathe. I could tell you to go home and everything will be all right, that the tooth fairy will drop a quarter on your pillow by tomorrow morning. Of course, that might not be true. That cloud might start to shift eastward and tomorrow morning we’ll all be like those people in Italy—Mt. Etna, I think. All buried in ash, dead because they didn’t do anything when everything told them to get the hell out of there.”

  Wade was doing OK.

  “Jared,” Wade pointed to a tall, but rotund man in his early 40s, Jared Hastings, owner of Don’s Supermarket, a chain store in Eastern Wyoming. “I know you’re on generator, but that’s not going to last forever. Do you have a current inventory?” Wade turned to the store owner.

  “I could limp along for a week,” Jared admitted.

  “You have stuff that’s going to go bad. I’m ordering Sheriff Townsend,” Wade turned to a second rotund man in his late 50s, only taller than Jared. “To impound the supermarket, to cut off sales, to inventory the rest; it is 11:30. I want an inventory of the canned foods and the stuff that will go bad by 3:00. Nobody’s stepping on anybody’s rights, here; we have to be cautious,” Wade turned back to Jared. “Are you going to be able to do that, Jared?” he asked the store manager, who at first shook his head no then in the opposite direction yes. “What help do you need?”

  “Everybody who works there will help, Wade,” the manager replied simply, sorrowful at the takeover of his store, not yet understanding the scope of the problem.

  “Great,” Wade turned to Cameron.

  “Gasoline,” Cam replied. “I’m down to a quarter of a tank. If we’re going to get out of here, we’re going to need fuel. And there is no namby-pamby here, Wade. These are your people. There’s not going to be time to persuade people. They come or they stay. I’m not sure how much I believe in All-Jesus radio, but I have a hunch Jesus is cutting us a break here with the weather. I’m leaving, heading east, and I’m willing to help if you’re coming—but I’m leaving. I’m going over to the Exxon and fill up with diesel.”

  “How are you going to do that?” asked Wade.

  “I’m a long-distance driver, Wade. I may look like a fat fart, but I’m not stupid. When a diesel runs out of fuel, it’s a pain in the ass to re-start. You just can’t put fuel in the tank and turn the crank. You have to, well, I won’t describe it the way we truckers do. You have to get the air out of the system,” Cam added gently. “I have a siphon pump and forty feet of used 1.75 fire hose, which I use for special occasions—like saving my ass. Most truckers have something similar.

  “I’m going to be over at the Exxon refueling. I’m going to keep an accurate count of what I take from his tank.“ Cameron Hodges sounded more like a leader than a 42-year old loser running long distance loads between Minot, North Dakota and Fanning, New Mexico. “I strongly recommend that any vehicle that runs on diesel fill up now. After we run through the diesel, we’ll figure out how to get to the octane. I can’t use the same fire hose. If you want me to haul something, make it heavy and worthwhile. A fifth wheel, maybe turn it into the grocery store, or an infirmary to house all the sick.”

  Ideas were running through Cam’s brain like he was on a Vulcan mind meld. He’d never thought such things.

  The people of Wright, including their leaders, surrounding the fallen bison, to a person were amazed. Here was this nobody truck driver telling an established hard-rock Eastern Wyoming community to shit or get off the pot, and by the way, here is the pot.

  Wade McGriff nodded his head, like an iguana bobbing before announcing his presence, then said “Anyone who is planning on going and needs gas, line up at the station. Tell your neighbors. Trucks have priority.” Wade started, and then kicked into gear. “Most of us are gun owners. Get your important papers and pack an essentials bag, like you were going to Denver for a week. Lock your doors. Dress warmly. There is no electricity. Bring camping equipment and be prepared to share,” Wade looked around, his black cowboy hat firmly in place over his balding head. To Cam the man still looked cool.

  “It’s not going to do any good to bring a television set or furnitu
re. Instead bring the essentials to keep you and your family alive in the cold weather. “Wade looked around at the crowd. There was a general lack of enthusiasm. “I need help. I need cooks. I need someone to help us with sanitation. Do we have port-a-lets we can take with us?”

  “Are you telling us we’re leaving Wright and never coming back?” shouted a man in the back row.

  “If that cloud comes over here, there’s going to be nothing but mounds of black ash to say that anyone ever lived here. A hundred years from now—a thousand years from now—no one will know this even existed,” Wade spread his arm out toward the outskirts of town. He paused. “But, if we’re wrong and the black cloud goes away and the sun comes out tomorrow; then we have a Wright to return to and re-start. We’re stupid if we don’t heed what is right in front of our faces.”

  “I think we need to talk about this, Wade,” said a tall man with callused hands, to a small chorus of ‘that’s right’ and ‘amen’. His name was Hank Wright, of the early Wrights, now a rancher and a member of the family that settled the area. “I don’t think we should just leave our town,” he said simply.

  The Wrights had been in Wright since the town was named. That ranchers and city folk had gradually taken over, prospered the town, made things “Wright” was actually “all good.”

  There was a lot of quiet talk, murmuring, but not much enthusiastic agreement, not more than you would get in an average town. While growing up in Wright was no picnic; the city had fought to upgrade amenities and had done a good job. The sky was tall and the wind relentless. Hunting and fishing were family activities

  Cam shook Wade’s hand and climbed back inside his cab, powered up the engine and headed toward the Exxon station. Siphoning gas was always a major pain in the ass, and this would be no different. He looked at Betsy in the cab; she’d been crying again.

  Can’t blame her.

  Montana State Highway 42

  McCone County

  Ain’t never seed that before.

  Charley Lame Deer, 42, slowed his 1992 red Chevy Blazer to a crawl; the Blazer was thoroughly beaten to death, nearly all of its color gone; massive tires balder than the famous eagle, yet it managed to haul tons of crap here and there, in and out of gullies and mud slogs, and managed to project a mid-life kind of spirit, even though it was well into retirement age. The hardtop cover was crusty with mud, some ageless.

  Today he was late for work. It wasn’t the first time. In fact, he was late for work most days, hired by luck and the Indigenous Peoples Act and the set-aside clause that required Federal agencies to hire a portion of unemployed Native Americans in the surrounding area. While Charley was two generations removed from the Assinboine and Sioux Reservation in Eastern Montana, he’d turned out barely better than his father who had rebelled and moved off the Reservation in 1970 to the town of Circle, county seat for McCone County Montana, and married a low-life white woman whore who bore a half-breed named Charley Lame Deer in 1972.

  Both James Lame Deer and his wife (the slut) had passed due to consumption, liver failure and the ability to understand the internal combustion engine, the latter dying as a result of driving while drunk on highway 200 between Brockway and Jordan at 2:00 a.m., filled with sperm from a two-on-one dalliance outside Red’s Bar, and loaded to the gills with Captain Morgan, his mother (the whore) had headed home to Circle. The following morning the police determined that her car had left the road at a bend around a rock formation at 125 miles an hour.

  Except for the rock formation, there wasn’t much left of either Charley’s mother (la puta) or the car.

  Getting from Circle to Fort Peck required a thirty-mile trek on a mostly macadam but as often dirt road, first a yee-haw ride on Horse Creek Road, followed by a nut-buster on a gravel Weldon Road through farmland, and switchbacks up Cutting School Road to McCone County route 24. His Chevy Blazer would simply die one day from too many rocks pounding its undercarriage.

  McCone County Montana

  Whatthefuck

  Ahead in the road were three bison, two resting, one standing. Bison didn’t rest much. Crow Indian by birth and a city-dweller-drunk-like-his-father-and-mother by choice, Charley Lame Deer figured this was God speaking to him directly, telling him to relax. Bison remained in a position somewhere between revered and holy, even though it had been a hundred and fifty years since the Great Slaughter.

  Charley came to a stop. The ground beneath him shuddered lightly, kind of growling; yet, the bison didn’t move. Animals don’t care much for earthquakes, he thought. Yet these three didn’t move. Weirder yet, they also didn’t move when he had approached in the Blazer. Bison always get out of the way of The Man.

  Getting out of the cab Charley slowly approached the circle of large animals. The wind whipped around him. High prairie was like that; nothing in between. The morning was a brisk 12 degrees, elevation 5,200 feet. The sky and earth were as advertised, Big Sky. With the wind chill it felt like minus 13. Damn bison could stand out there all winter and never give a shit; because they’d always stood out there, and always there would be a Spring and wildflowers and grass to eat.

  But this was just plain odd. As Charley approached the bison he noticed something was in the middle between them. It was a man! He slowly wriggled his way through the two large smelly animals that were resting. In between was a man, perhaps 50 or so, wearing a suit coat, no parka, filthy dirty, as opposed to clean dirty. The stench was overpowering. He was being partially covered by one of the animals’ flanks. Kneeling down, Charley immediately understood that the animals had cut the cold wind off from the comatose man. The bison gave Charley a warning kind of grunt. Putting his right hand on the ground so he could reach with his left, Charley could feel the earth shaking every few seconds. It was a rumble-rumble shake, a soundless version of the shake when the Tyrannosaurus Rex escaped its boundary in Jurassic Park.

  A white man with no coat surrounded by three 1,500-pound buffaloes, out on the high prairie in the middle of fucking nowhere; Charley always knew he lived in the middle of nowhere, CNN had told him that; and the earthquakes continued to shake the ground like the earth had Parkinson’s.

  Charley slowly reached for the man’s back pocket. Just checkin’, boss. After all, we want to know who you are, dude. If you’re dead, you probably have a credit card or some twenties in that wallet of yours that you won’t be using in the hereafter.

  The second bison turned and gave Charley an evil eye, then made a sound that was half-way between a growl and a bite. There was no mistaking the bison’s intent. Hands off or I’m going to bite your fucking head off. Charley’s hand quickly withdrew. The bison, however, were in no mood for Charley Lame Deer; they rustled around, making grunting noises and circled their wagon ever so tighter.

  “Mister!” Charley shouted, then reached his hand over Bison #1 and shook the man’s leg. The standing buffalo turned and snorted.

  Is it possible these bison think the man they discovered is God? Do bison believe in God? Is the man they found responsible for the earthquakes? Can he stop them? To a bison, or to a half-drunk 42-year old-late-for-work, would finding a strange human on an open highway be equally inexplicable, a logical leap to God?

  Charley shook the man’s leg hard. “Dude!” he shouted. “Please wake up!”

  Robert O’Brien woke from a slumber where he’d nearly reached death, then been slowly drawn back. His path had taken him down a frozen ramp with brilliant light, like tumbling down an icy waterfall, no handholds, just cold; really, really cold. But there was light (and warmth?) at the end. No Jesus, just brightness; nothing identifiable. Then the light subsided as he went back up the icy waterfall; this time the sides of the waterfall were warmer, yes more comfortable, yes, even warm. Nancy was there!

  Dude! Please wake up! Robert heard the shouting in the background; Nancy was there, the icy waterfall further away behind her.

  Then the smell; Nancy in the background, the icy waterfall and what (?), dog shit, fresh dog shit. He was
buried in dog shit; tubs of it, rubbing against his legs, warm but still dog shit. It smells terrible. Dude! The voice shouted. The earth vibrated beneath him. Put another quarter in, Nancy,

  “DUDE!”

  Robert O’Brien came back from the dead.

  Heart racing, Robert opened his eyes; the visions of icy waterfalls and dear Nancy still just on the other side of his eyelids.

  The head of a buffalo is roughly four-by-three feet, with a set of sharp horns; just what you want to see when you return from Death.

  “Shit!” Robert screamed, the sound of which tailed into a wail. The primary buffalo, heretofore referred to as Bison #1, was just as surprised at the human’s re-birth that it snorted and moved backwards a foot or so. Robert’s eyes scanned his New World. He was surrounded by three large animals. His last thoughts were of dropping to the pavement of highway 24 with a prayer to His Nancy.

  On his back, Robert could feel the ground shaking ever so softly. Earthquake! The Fort Peck Dam, the Missouri River, all of the memories came back quickly.

  But, how in God’s earth did these animals come to save him?

  Someone was on the outskirts of the bison.

  “Hi. I’m Robert O’Brien. I’m the Director of the Bureau of Reclamation--”

  “You’re fucking kidding me,” replied the voice. Robert couldn’t see the man because of the beasts.

  Slowly, he got to his knees, sore as an old man’s knees always are, then to his feet. The wind and cold began to re-sting him. The bison began to re-circle closer. Robert knew the moment was magical, but didn’t understand how or why. The prone Bison scrambled to her feet. Robert put his hand on her back, which was head high on him; fur on the beast’s shoulders, but thick rubbery skin down to its shanks.

  Thank you he thought. Thank you thank you thank you thank you as he touched each of the bison.

  There was no explanation for it.