by Jim Harrison
I was standing there in tall grass on the riverbank when I thought I heard the buzz of a rattlesnake and I jumped sky-high. It turned out to be the cell phone Marybelle insisted that I carry in my baggy pants pocket. I took it out and tried to figure what button to press, my heart still beating wildly from the fake snake. When I said, “Hello” she said “we don’t have a good signal” and hung up. I waved up at her where she leaned against the car drinking coffee. I was tempted to pitch the phone in the river but then I’d only have to buy another one.
On the way up the hill to the car it occurred to me that I might feel a vacuum after I dropped her off. She smiled then astonished me by singing a song in a high pure voice the end of which was drowned out by a semi carrying a load of Kohler toilet bowls. A few minutes later when we stopped at Reed Point for breakfast, an early lunch, because she was “famished” she explained that during her two years at Sarah Lawrence before she “stupidly” eloped she was a member of a choral group that sang ancient music. I told her that I admired her perfect pitch and the rare ability to sing so beautifully without accompaniment. Having no talents myself I was silly with admiration for someone who did. While Marybelle was eating her six eggs, sausage and potatoes, I told her about a little round girl who had been a student of mine, a ninth grader, the first year I taught. She was from a very poor family, “trailer trash” as mean-minded students called such students. Emma was her name and when we were studying Emily Dickenson she shyly offered her own versions which I thought were extraordinary. She always smelled like potatoes fried in bacon fat which I guessed was a major part of her family’s diet. By the spring of the year her family moved to south to Flint in hopes that her dad could get work and that was the end of Emma in my life. In June when I passed their ramshackle mobile home on the edge of the state forest the door was open and flapping and the ragweed, nettles, and thistles were three feet high in the yard.
The story infuriated Marybelle who said she “deeply” identified with Emma. I didn’t quite get the connection but said nothing. Marybelle’s anger passed into laughter when we left the restaurant and on the way out through the foyer there was a poster advertising a Reed Point festival called “The Running of the Sheep,” an evident take-off on the running of the bulls in Pamplona. There were photos of senior citizen men chasing sheep down an alley while spectators drank beer. Marybelle began to say something predictably nasty about Hemingway, dropped the idea and trilled a passage of a song from old time Italy. I mean it wasn’t loud but soft and dulcet and served to calm my mind though my tummy and lower down were a mess and I had to skip lunch.
A man in the restaurant explained that the immense size of the river was due to the melting snow in the mountains accelerated by the recent heat wave. He directed us to a park across the river and I felt uneasy crossing the bridge, doubting its stability. I was more than pleased to see the Porto-potty. To Marybelle’s credit she noted that I was feeling ill. When I had stopped for gas early in the morning the station had a self-service snack bar called a “Nuke feast” where I heated up a sausage sandwich in a radar range. The sandwich was currently attacking my gizzard and in between trips to the Porto-potty I lay out on a sleeping bag, drank a gallon of water, and at my request Marybelle kept singing the ancient songs accompanied by the turbulent music of the river in front of us. I greeted a floating cottonwood tree that passed by at top speed with a group of blackbirds sitting on the trunk for a free ride. Marybelle would glance at her cell phone in hopes for signal but lucky for me none arose.
My thoughts, a bit deranged by my semi-fevered discomfort, turned oddly to ice fishing with Robert. He had said that some of the neurotic unrest felt by actors and actresses came from the idea that they didn’t write their own lines. They were performing vehicles for someone else’s work. When the script was good everyone tended to be happy. When the script was bad chaos reigned through the best of the acting profession could even do pretty well with a bad scenario up to a point. What bothered me on the sleeping bag listening to Marybelle and the river was the idea that with my clumsy consent my own script and most of the human race’s had been written for them.
MONTANA IV
It was mid-afternoon before I was able to travel. As always with illness, however slight, I became a little tender-minded. In my youth the only time my mother was soft and kind and gentle to me was when I was sick. When I got measles she was a Sister of Eternal Mercy and Love. When I was well she saved it all for my little brother with Down’s. Dad joked that “Iron Greta” was made in a drop forge. Last year at our local voting place at the Grange Hall a rickety old lady in her late eighties teased me that in the fifties she used to be “sweet” on my dad down in Mancelona. I laughed and told her that I hoped they had a good time. When she tottered out with her sullen nose-ringed granddaughter she giggled and said that my dad was a “randy rascal.”
I couldn’t let Marybelle drive because her glances at her cell phone for a signal were relentless. In our three hours or so at the river’s beach in Reed Point she referred to herself as Nurse Nancy but back in the car she became brittle and petulant. When we stopped at a rest area so she could pee a small light bulb went off in my mind when it occurred to me that she was a cross between two women I had desired for years. I found that I uniformly liked the women in television lotion ads, and one Jergen’s lady in particular. My all time favorite was a young woman with an Irish setter in a mattress ad which Lola also liked because of the dog. Marybelle seemed a genetic fusion of these two sources of lust. There was a question if television made my lust artificial? My friend Ad said that sex in a non-traditional society was always up for grabs. It was like tennis with no net played in a gravel pit. The wisdom of this was moderated by what I had learned on the phone south of Minneapolis vis-à-vis Ad asking a woman to pee in his hat. Where did this come from?
A certain amount of shit hit the fan when I turned north on 191 in Big Timber bound for ever-distant Malta. We stopped on the far side of a bridge over the Yellowstone because Marybelle was bound to lose her signal farther on. Her first call to Minneapolis made her sob. She spoke to the husband of her dear friend and found out that this “sister” was in a clinic for severe depression and was presently unreachable. I fled the car having thought I could doze through a long chat about “issues.” I also felt squeamish knowing the next call would be to her daughter and husband up on their dig near Malta. Marybelle had said that this dig was far from her husband’s interest in possible Native cannibalism but he was helping out a friend from the University of Nebraska who was always struggling for tenure.
The day had turned warmish and there was a profuse bug hatch above the brown and roiling Yellowstone. There must have been a hundred swallows swooping around and feeding on the insects. It’s impossible to watch a swallow fly and not want to be one at least for a while. To the southwest of me were the snowcapped Absaroka Mountains and to the northwest the Crazy Mountains whose peaks were creamy with snow. I had the idea that on this trip I’d climb the first mountain of my life though I’d have to inquire about proper footwear and suchlike.
My sweat was coolish and I felt giddy lighting a cigarette, a habit I was able to quit when I quit teaching. Back then the teachers who smoked went down to the furnace room for a few quick puffs between classes. Though some now consider smoking the equivalent of baby raping it can be a contemplative activity. I was suddenly quite lonely for my workshop, a shed attached to the barn and calving shed. It was hard to leave my tools behind for the auction. I only saved my dad’s favorite hammer. So much of it as sentimental junk: half of a once favorite pliers, a broken fence stretcher, a nail puller, the head of an adze, a full can of paint with a label missing, a Mason jar of keys, used spark plugs in a wooden cheese box from Wisconsin that once held three year old cheddar, a tin can full of lantern wicks, a keg of bent nails I had meant to straighten and re-use. Once I had found a Prince Albert tobacco can full of dirty photos that Vivian’s father had hidden in the back of the drawer. O
ld fashioned erotic photos featuring real fleshy women in black stockings. I can’t say that they were a jolt to my noodle.
I had upset the swallows but now fifteen minutes later they decided I was harmless as they brought back bugs to regurgitate for their children. I had begun to wonder if age sixty was too late to change my life not that I had any choice. The other time of radical life change was when I quit teaching in my mid-thirties. I thought I was pretty resilient at the time but I wasn’t. I was only one of many of my generation of hippies and future yuppies who had a theory and acted it out. I was heartsick with books and teaching and wanted to simply live the “natural” life of a farmer. I let my mind life go dead. I was amused at the influx of city people in the seventies and eighties who also wanted to live a natural life in the country and who didn’t realize that farming was as technical in its own way as electrical engineering. They listened to Neil Young whom I liked myself but then I knew how to farm. Last month I even threw away all but two of ten rather tattered pair of bib overalls, and three pair of lined Carharts.
My cell phone buzzed unpleasantly and I stared at it a few moments as if I were holding a dog turd before I answered.
“Where are you when I need you?” she cried out so loudly the squawk box couldn’t handle it closely.
“I’m a troll under a bridge, you know like the Three Billy Goats Gruff.”
“What are you talking about you old dipshit,” she fairly shrieked.
“I’m under the bridge studying swallows.”
“My friend is suicidal in Minneapolis and my son is unconscious from malaria in Namibia. Help me.”
And so on. As a teacher I was never much of a counselor as I thought everyone was basically drowned in their problems and doomed never to rise to the surface. A couple of decades later I was no better. Luckily Route 191 from Big Timber to Malta, a matter of two hundred and fifty miles or so, was the grandest road I have even been on. It was comforting to leave the Alpine Crazies and Absarokas behind as they had a Swiss feeling that made you imagine Heidi or The Sound of Music. I preferred the rolling cattle country where any cow would be happy to live out their short lives with higher mountain peaks in the remote distance. The Herefords I had owned years ago were too lazy to climb a hill for good grass and I judged that that was one reason the breed wasn’t popular out here.
A couple hours later we were passing through Judith Gap when Marybelle decided she could improve her mood if we made love. On leaving Big Timber she had dropped the same kind of tranquilizer, Zoloft, that Vivian had used in dire straits. I wasn’t too enthused but drove off the highway onto a small gravel ranch road until we reached higher hills and I parked near a meadow and aspen thicket. We walked through a cattle gate with Marybelle shedding her summer shift and standing there in panties and sneakers. Suddenly she took off running up the hill and into the aspen thicket and I remembered she had been quite the track star in high school. There was no chance of me catching her so I got my camera out of the car and took photos of three Charolais bulls glowering at me from across the fence line. After about fifteen minutes an older woman came by on horseback with two Australian shepherds that weren’t friendly. She told me I was trespassing and pointed at red paint on the post and I apologized saying that we used signs in Michigan. I added that the bit of red paint was pleasanter to the eye than “No Trespassing” signs. I then explained that my girlfriend had run off up the hill and would she mind taking a look. We could see Marybelle about a mile up the steep hill beyond the aspens in a swatch of meadow. The woman and her dogs took off at an alarming speed. They were back in ten minutes with Marybelle semi-nude and grinning behind the woman who was angry and said, “Shame on you for being mean to her, you shithead geezer.” I couldn’t think of a thing to say in my defense.
We reached Malta in the last light after driving one hundred and thirty stupendous miles from Lewistown. When we crossed the Missouri I sang “Across the Wide Missouri” which amused Marybelle who had been in a good mood since her uphill run. However, the only line I knew was the title line. I also took a photo of a golden eagle on a fence post not thirty feet away.
I was still a little queasy from my rotten dawn sausage and this was added to by the idea of meeting Marybelle’s husband and daughter, Daniel and Sara, as we neared Malta. What would I say? Please to meet you. We found the shabby little motel with muddy old SUV’s parked in front. A group of men and one girl were sitting around a small campfire on the grass.
“Mom!” the girl yelled and came running to the car followed by a short man in khakis. The three of them embraced and I stood there as if fascinated by the mosquito near my nose. We were introduced and dad and daughter were direct and friendly which still didn’t calm my quavery mind and tummy. The husband, Daniel, and Marybelle walked off down an alley and I told the daughter I needed a drink. She pointed out a bar across the street.
“You were mom’s all time favorite teacher,” she said.
“I hope your brother in Africa is feeling better,” I said lamely for want of anything better. We were at the saloon door and I was desperate for a double.
“There is no brother.” She paused before opening the door. “She and dad split up for a year when I was three. I stayed in Kansas with dad and she went off to New York. She told dad she had an abortion and ever since then I’ve been blessed with an imaginary brother.”
I drank a double whiskey while digesting this, imagining there might also be something wrong with Bozeman. There was. The cousin giving her a car in Bozeman was fictional.
“Mom goes on these affection binges about once a year. Dad puts up with it. He’s from a Quaker family and wouldn’t think of divorce. Compared to other academic couples they’re not that unhappy!”
She sensed that I was completely knocked off my balance and put her hand in mine. I had a mediocre cheeseburger (frozen patty) and we played a few game of pool. She was a little shorter than Marybelle and very handsome. She said she had a few boyfriends but was headed for M.I.T. in the fall where she had been awarded a graduate fellowship. “I love rocks,” she said. “Naturally I worry about mom and dad but they’ve been doing this dance for twenty-two years.” She pointedly questioned me and when I said I had forty-five more states to cover she said “cool.”
I was mildly tipsy when she led me back across the street to the motel. They had rented a small room with a linoleum floor for me. It reminded me of my childhood. I loved it.
IDAHO
I awoke at 3 A.M. with the unpleasant smell of bourbon and onions in the room from my breath. I had an irritating hard-on when what I wished to be was a monk in a cool room reading a Latin text by candlelight. I struggled to reshape my mind to get rid of the image of Marybelle’s son in darkest Africa in a malarial coma, or her rich, unpleasant cousin wondering if she really should give Marybelle her old car. How do we truly get rid of untruths? When I stopped for gas in Lewistown yesterday late afternoon I saw an item in the Great Falls newspaper saying that eighty-five percent of our troops in Iraq believe that Sadaam was behind 9/11 even though this is demonstrably untrue.
While drinking three glasses of cold water which made my chest and head ache I had a craving for books that I hadn’t had in thirty years when I still believed that books might save my life. That was before I quit teaching and had decided that if I read one more book such as Norman Mailer’s Advertisements for Myself, my head would blow apart like John Kennedy’s. I went back to bed after looking out the window to the south where I hoped to see the constellation Delta Corvi but it was hidden by tall lilac bushes. Instead, in my mind’s eye I saw Marybelle running up the hill in her undies which gave a twitch to my meaningless hard-on. I only began to smile when I remembered that I was liberated from her.
It was almost but not quite that easy. I slid out of the room shortly after 5 a.m. when the first birds began to tweet. Lights were on in three other rooms and when I reached my car door Marybelle appeared from the shadows with a Styrofoam cup of strong coffee. I smelled
the coffee before I saw her.
“These fucking androids get up early,” she giggled. “I was hoping you’d stick around for a day and see the dig. You know you’re old and Daniel doesn’t see you as a threat.”
“I slowly figured out that you were the pansexual one not him,” I joked.
“You might say that. I’ll miss your dick more than your lame advice. And remember to keep your cell phone charged and on. That one attachment is so you can charge it in your cigarette lighter in the car. I know I’ll need to talk to you.”
It was getting lighter fast. Sara came out in her nightie and handed me another cup of coffee and a tortilla and beans in a napkin. I kissed Marybelle’s chastely proffered hand. Sara rolled her eyes. I noted that the tips of her titties under her nightie were a bit sharper than her mom’s and then I drove off with the unprofound thought of the hopelessness of sex to improve the human condition. Perhaps I should drive to New York City and announce this to the United Nations.
Driving west on Route 2 with the sun rising at my back I could hear the voice of my mom saying in an angry metallic voice, “Act your age!” A quick dawn glance in the mirror revealed a face that reminded me of what I looked like after ten days of booze and poker at deer camp. There was a strain around my eyes as if I had been hanging out at funerals. Ad liked to talk about how many older men drop dead in the adulterous saddle. With typical rudeness he had told me that Vivian had left me for partly biological reasons as Fred appeared to be a better provider for the coming winter of her life. Vivian wasn’t the type that kept a root cellar full of rutabagas, potatoes, and carrots like my mom who also canned too many tomatoes and dried too many apples. Vivian believed in money in the bank, my weak point. Ad was always close to bankruptcy but said that he attracted women under the illusion that all doctors are rich. You can’t fight biology, he insisted, and I mentally agreed having just lost out to my pecker in a big way.