by Patrick Lee
“Better let you go. I love you Dad. Say hi to Tommy and David. I miss all of you so much.” Tears welled up in her eyes as she looked away from her daughter.
“OK now. That’s it on that. We’ll be together soon. Hang tough. Goodbye now.” Mikhail hung up the phone and bumped the cluttered desk as he walked into the men’s room.
On Saturday morning, Tomas sat on the front step of the barracks and waited for David to pick him up. He didn’t sleep very much the night before. He felt anxious as he waited. He couldn’t wait to see Glacier Park. I’ve seen lots of pictures, but this will be different. He also planned to fix things up between his brother-in-law and his father. “It might take me awhile,” he thought “but I can do it. It’ll mean a lot to Kat and Anna. If Dad hears what a good guy David is, he’ll change his mind about him.” Tomas spoke to various other workers who walked up and down the barrack steps. Finally after waiting for an hour, he spotted David’s black pickup make the turn toward the barracks.
David stepped out of the pickup and walked toward Tomas. “Sorry for being so late, Tom. I had to help some volunteers with setting up for their picnic.” David had just left Lila at her Lake Five cabin. He spent the night. Lila insisted on fixing breakfast before he left. After breakfast, David made it to the porch to leave. As he looked through the screen door he saw Lila drop her robe to the floor. She stood naked and smiled at him. He went back into the kitchen and they made love one more time on the couch near the bay window.
Tomas picked up his lunch bucket and smiled at David. “Oh, that’s fine, David, I sat here and enjoyed the sunny morning. It’s quite a day out, ain’t it?”
“That it is. That it is. Well, let’s go see Glacier Park.” David turned on the radio as they pulled out onto Highway 2 East. Frankie Laine just started singing Do Not Forsake Me. The words rushed images of his wife and daughter into David’s mind. Guilt only followed once in awhile after he spent time with another woman. It must be because I’m with Tom. He quickly brushed the thoughts aside and sang along with Frankie Laine. “Do not forsake me oh my darling—”
Tomas interrupted as he asked, “David have you seen High Noon? It goes along with this here song.”
“No. I ain’t seen a show for a couple of months now. Did you see it?”
It felt good for Tomas to be talking like this to David. He focused back to the question, “Yeah, I did see High Noon. It was good. Maybe my favorite show so far. Dad really liked it too. He likes cowboy shows.” Again he thought how his father and John
Nolan would like David if they’d just give him a chance. After all, he helped out some people already this morning. He’s doin’ something pretty nice for me right now, too.
David broke in on Tomas’ thoughts. “Do you know much about Glacier, Tom?”
He shook his head as he answered, “I read somewhere where the Park started in 1931, but other than that, I don’t know much.”
“Take a look at that book there on the seat next to ya. It’ll tell ya all you need to know about the Park.”
Tomas turned to the introduction and started to read about the foundation of Glacier Park.
David put on his right turn signal and pulled into the parking lot of the Dew Drop Inn. “I know it’s only 11:00 in the morning, but I need some beer. Com’on in. Ya can meet a friend of mine.”
His stomach turned a little. He knew his father didn’t want him in any bars. Besides he was only nineteen. The only beer he ever tasted was the short drink John Nolan gave him when Tomas graduated from Butte High School last year. His father found out and chewed out Nolan pretty good and told Tomas that every dumb thing he did in his life was when he drank. He told Tomas not to drink—now he walked into his first bar.
As David entered the bar, the bartender looked away from the sink and wiped her hands on the bar towel wrapped around her waist. “Well. I’ll be go to hell. If it ain’t the man of my dreams. Where’ve you been hidin’ out? I heard you got yerself a girlfriend—”
David put his finger up to his lips and slightly threw his head to the side. Jackie Johnson picked up on his signal to change the subject as she noticed the young man following close behind David. She came around the bar and gave David a big hug. She whispered in his ear, “I need a little lovin’ from you one of these nights. I ain’t had nothin’ like it for a couple of months. So get yer ass up here without yer little buddy. Follow.”
David laughed and slowly broke the embrace. He managed one arm still around Jackie’s tight waist. “Jackie, this here is my brother-in-law, Tom Anzich. How about a couple of Great Falls Selects for a couple of hard workin’ guys from Butte.”
Tomas spoke up, “I’d like a Nesbitts Orange please. No beer for me.”
She extended her large, tan hand and waited for Tomas to shake hands with her. He slowly shook her hands, but his eyes focused right at her noticeable cleavage. As usual, she left the top two buttons of her white shirt undone. “My eyes are up here, Tom. Not down there.”
His embarrassment disturbed his speech as he attempted to cover the mistake of his wandering eyes. “I, I, I’m happy to meet you Madam.” He had not seen a woman like this before.
Jackie and David laughed at hearing ‘Madam’. She spoke through the laughter, “Call me Jackie.” David laughed even louder and sat down on one of the stools at the bar. He patted the top of the seat next to him to tell Tomas to sit down. Tomas sat down and David playfully tussled his hair with his hand. Tomas shrugged his shoulders. David’s sign of acceptance relaxed him even though he wanted to be a long ways from this bar.
David quickly finished two beers. Tomas drained his soda in between looks at the other bar patrons. The two men said goodbye to Jackie and drove up the highway to West Glacier and entered Glacier National Park.
The town of West Glacier was once known as Belton. It came about as part of the Great Northern Railroad expansion and Glacier Park. The resident population increased in 1915 as three hotels for Belton were constructed. Most residents worked at either Glacier Park, for the Great Northern Railroad, or were hotel employees of the Belton Chalets and Lake McDonald Lodge inside of Glacier Park. It was during this time that the first car and bus transportation, Glacier Park Transportation Company, began to transport visitors from Belton to Apgar and Lake McDonald Lodge in the Park.
In 1949, the name Belton was changed to West Glacier, and the residents were employees of the U.S. Forest Service and Glacier National Park. By 1951, the population increased to three hundred, and it later declined through the 1950s. Hungry Horse dam workers on their days off kept the stores and bars open during the off-season from the Glacier Park visitors.
The early summer day dawned much like the ones before it. Temperatures, warmer winds, and sunshine erased the traces and memories of the hard winter experienced by the locals in the Canyon and its foothills. Hannah worked in her usual way, mind racing with the same questions. “What day is it? What do I have to get accomplished today?” She temporarily relaxed. It was Saturday. The time didn’t matter. The Royal was closed until the matinee at 2:00.
Her contentment with these ideas long with the knowledge that a perfect day spent on Lion Lake lazily passing the time was quickly replaced with the vision and memory of inviting Mikhail to join her. She had single-handedly compromised an often repeated, routine, and most enjoyable outing. It was now a planned, anxiety-ridden excursion with decisions to be made. For some strange reason she wanted to get to know this man from Butte.
How would she explain her tackle box? The idea of trying to look more feminine was ridiculous. Comfortably filling hours with this man seemed insurmountable. Her standard of fare would have to be adjusted other than Maggie’s homemade brew. Hannah knew enough about the world and Butte. Any man from those parts certainly had downed a few beers in his lifetime. She knew Mikhail was worth getting to know and her own reactions to him were intriguing even if she couldn’t explain it.
She gulped her morning coffee and looked across the back alley for Maggi
e’s signal that all was well. Maggie aged well, but Hannah continued to have concerns for her well-being. Neither of the women had room for two in their cabins. Neither could have survived the loss of privacy either. Seeing the metal blind one-quarter raised set Hannah’s mind back to the matter at hand. Changing her mind wasn’t a trait she had developed. Moving forward was.
Mikhail arrived right on time. It was still morning and quite cool. He was puzzled by Hannah’s invitation to go fishing with her. What did it mean to accompany her to Lion Lake? Was it to be a hike, a picnic, a car ride, fishing, or just floating around in her boat? He silently chastised himself for his inability to feel comfortable enough to even ask. He had only shrugged and agreed to come along. His experiences were few, not very successful, and altogether rather disastrous. He didn’t think this would turn out much better.
When Hannah came out of the Royal Theater, Mikhail immediately knew the outing was to be one involving fishing. She struggled with a bulky, cumbersome tackle box, a vintage looking rod, and an oval, cane woven picnic basket. Mikhail wished he had his own fishing equipment.
Instead of following her in his car, Mikhail accepted Hannah’s invitation to ride with her. The ride to Lion Lake was not exactly filled with conversation. They measured each other up and tried to get a sense of how this day was going to turn out. “You don’t talk much, Mikhail.”
“I spend a lot of time thinkin’ about talkin’. Then just decide not to say anything.”
“I could probably take a lesson there,” she answered. “I never mull over what’s on my mind. Weighing my words seems like such a waste of time.”
They arrived on the north shore of Lion Lake, away from the traffic and construction of the dam. It delighted Mikhail to see a stout rowboat tied off to a log on the shore. Somehow he felt the playing field would be leveled if he were on the water. Fishing was a skill he had acquired and felt a sense of relief that he could do something with his hands and show off a skill.
Hannah tugged the picnic basket, tackle box, and rod that had seen better days down to the boat. She reached under the bench of the boat seat and removed an old mesh bag. Her hand slid into the picnic basket, grabbed some brown bottles and stacked them into the opening of the mesh bag. “These are my good friend Maggie’s homemade brew,” she stated while securing them to the side of the boat. “We’ll be needin’ these soldiers to be cool when we want them. Sippin’ on Maggie’s milk is just the ticket when the sun crests those hills.”
Mikhail pondered. He took time to physically notice his partner for the day. Most items were freshly laundered denim that had turned a softened pale blue from repeated washings. The denim jacket was cut short with sleeves that needed to be rolled so her hands were unencumbered. Hands. Mikhail stared at her hands. They looked like the hands of a woman who did little physical work. The pedal pushers rode low on her hips. Hips. Where did those come from? She wore freshly bleached Keds on her rather large feet. Her hair was loosely tucked neatly behind her ears. No baseball cap or ponytail for today. Hannah owned little jewelry, costume or otherwise, and her only adornment was a gold choke chain around her thin neck with a cross dangling down. The piece of jewelry looked like something she never removed. Most men would ask just to make conversation. Mikhail decided not to. She pulled out a floppy straw hat and tucked it into her tackle box while she marched back to the truck to retrieve her cigarettes.
Mikhail stood by the boat and waited for her to return. He didn’t want to put anything in until she identified the location for everything piled on the shore. His breath caught in his throat and speech was next to impossible. Apparently, the temperature was warming up. She cruised down the path while simultaneously removing her well-worn blue jean jacket. Underneath, Hannah casually wore a paisley patterned, pale yellow halter-top that she had fashioned from one of her late uncle’s oversized bandanas. Her breasts were small without a hint of having suffered from the hands of gravity.
Her soothing-looking skin had obviously seen past summers on just this lake. The pale yellow material of the skimpy halter-top and dark brown sunspots blended beautifully into a pattern that Mikhail wanted to play ‘connect the dots on’ with his hands. She reached into the boat and exchanged her Keds for single strapped, brown leather sandals. This Pygmalion-like transformation from a lady running a show house to an irresistible temptation left Mikhail backing up and bumping into the log that held the rowboat fast.
Mikhail needed to think fast or he was going to fall into the lake. He avoided looking at her, any part of her, and hurriedly piled the gear wherever there was room. The hell with where she wanted it. She wasn’t playing fair. He headed full bore into unfamiliar territory for him. Hannah sensed his urgency and attempt to hide his feelings of male wantonness. She had intended on a reaction, but this was greater than anticipated. “I’ll row,” he briefly gruffed.
“Great, I’ll have a beer,” she nonchalantly answered. “There’s an anchor of sorts up there by you when you’ve decided on a good spot. It’s just an old coffee can filled with cement, but it’s always done the trick before.” Again she grinned to herself thinking that Mikhail was probably engrossed in her other ‘tricks’.
His thoughts humored him and calmed him at the same time. A beer sounded just like what the doctor ordered and he wanted one. “No thanks. I don’t drink. But you go right ahead and I’ll fish.” He found a semi-sunny spot, gently placed the anchor over the side, and prepared to fish.
Hannah popped the top of the brown beer bottle with a metal opener she kept tied to her belt loop. She opened her tackle box and revealed the contents. Books and magazines filled the tackle box. “This is what I do when I come here on weekends to be alone, all alone. Are you interested in hearing about this or should I shut up and let you bait that hook you’ve been holding for twenty minutes?”
“No, no go ahead,” he encouraged. He was left speechless anyway and as long as she talked, he didn’t have to say a word.
“There’s basically three kinds of reading material here. I have hundreds of old National Geographic magazines that my uncle saved. When I want to travel around the world to all parts beautiful and mysterious, I read them. When I want to improve my mind, challenge my thinking, and expand my circle of thinking, I read the Classics using my library card in Kalispell. Catcher In The Rye and Les Miserables are a couple of my all-time favorites. I’ve read each of them several times. When I’m horny and just into a good quick read, I choose these trashy novels written by unknowns but a hell of good time regardless.”
He looked at her and back down to the worm in his left hand and the waiting hook in his right. “Well, well okay then. I’ll just fish and let you read.” This was the first time he ever heard a woman use the word horny. He thought how this last hour with her was the first time for a lot of things.
CHAPTER EIGHT
On Monday morning, Mikhail and Tomas walked into the quonset hut and waited for the bus to take them up to the dam site. The predicted June rain started during the night. The mood in the hut matched the dreary weather outside. A large group of men sat on benches and read the June 19th Hungry Horse News. Tomas picked up a discarded copy of the local newspaper and started to read the weekly Dam progress page.
To facilitate the rapid clearing of the dense forest area, the clearing contractors used a method which involved using a two inch steel cable dragged by two heavy tractors to snap and uproot brush and small trees on the steep sides of the reservoir. A four and a half ton hollow steel ball, eight feet in diameter, weighed down the cable and supported it at the most effective height. The balls are constructed of one-inch boilerplate with a steel shaft in the center that connects to the heavy cable. The cable is kept about four feet off the ground. Contractors cleared dense forest with trees up to twelve inches in diameter as fast as a man could walk. Two hundred acres were cleared last Tuesday in four hours.
As the reservoir filled with water, contractors constructed a ferry made of four pontoon boats lashed togethe
r that hauled men and equipment across the South Fork River. Logging and clearing crews worked seven days per week and ten hours per day and earned as much as $1,000 per month.
Mikhail interrupted Tomas and handed him the bulletin regarding a worker who accidentally died late Sunday afternoon. The man was killed just fifteen minutes before quitting time while working with a logging and clearing crew in the reservoir area. He worked as a signalman and a choker setter. The crew worked in a swampy area near Graves creek on the west side of the reservoir when a tree fell on him crushing his shoulder and breaking his back and leg and several ribs, and puncturing a lung. He died about forty-five minutes later. Mikhail spoke quietly, “We’ll each be giving one days pay for the man’s family. I signed us both up. It’ll come out of your next check. Your brother-in-law will take the money over to the widow.”
“Oh Dad, I can’t imagine what it will be like for that family. I don’t know what we’d do if anything ever—”
“Just pay attention. Watch what you’re doin’ all the time.” The bus honked outside and the men paraded out the door. Their heads were down and no one spoke a word the entire ride up the road to the dam site. Mikhail took a brief glance at Lion Lake as the bus passed by. A brief thought of Hannah entered his mind but quickly disappeared as he thought about the young man killed yesterday in the logging accident. He also thought about Tomas’ comment about what the family would do if anything happened to him. He glanced at Tomas and treasured the closeness of him.
CHAPTER NINE
W.R. Scalf, General Superintendent of Contractors GSM reviewed the final draft of his memorandum for the craft department heads, shift foreman, and walking bosses the June 27, 1952 payroll information for the Hungry Horse Dam Project.
Payrolls reached their 1952 peaks with 1,834 jobs or about 150 more jobs than last year’s peak. Payrolls are now about $2,480,000 a month.