A River Runs Through It and Other Stories

by Norman Maclean

  I had been gone from my room for a long time, so when I got back I lay down on the bed and was still amused by my sugar sack when all of a sudden things fell apart. I say “all of a sudden,” but for a long time I had only been pretending not to know that I was going to take a hell of a beating when I reached across the table to pick up the money. I always suspected that Bill was looking for trouble more than for money, but from time to time I would cheer myself up by underestimating the crew and thinking they were just greedy, not fighty, and would take their winnings and go off and get drunk. I had not fully realized how I was doomed until I had seen that the oldest men in the crew, Mr. Smith and Mr. McBride, were counting on a fight just as much as Bill was and, independently, had worked out an almost identical plan. In fact, when I said a temporary good-bye to Mr. Smith at the corral I discovered that the crew’s fighting plans didn’t stop with the tin-horn gamblers. He said, “We’re going to clean out the town. First we’ll take those tin-horn gamblers, then the ranch hands, and then the whores.”

  If we did all that we sure as hell would clean out the town as we knew it. As we knew the town, there were houses in it, but we weren’t sure what if anything was inside them. The establishments open to us were inhabited by gamblers, ranch hands, and whores. Add a Chinese and a Greek restaurant and you have what the town was to us. You will note that Mr. Smith and I both said “ranch hands” and not “cowboys”—in the Forest Service we called cowboys ranch hands to show what we thought of them. I said to Mr. Smith, “The whores may be the toughest of all.” He laughed through his moustache that was darker than his white hair; he was hoping this would be the case.

  There shouldn’t have been any doubt in my mind, though, that we were in for big trouble. After all I was finishing up my third summer in the Forest Service, so twice before I had gone through this autumn rite at quitting time. Twice before I had seen a catch-as-catch-can bunch of working stiffs transformed into blood brothers by the act of Cleaning Out the Town. Everybody got cleaned in this autumn rite of the early Forest Service—we cleaned up on the town and the town cleaned us out. When the rite was completed, all of it thereafter could be solemnized and capitalized—the Crew, Quitting Time, and Cleaning Out the Town. Everything about us was bigger than before, except our cash.

  At the time, I thought the Big Fire was no longer important, but before all this became a story I realized the Big Fire is the Summer Festival and Cleaning Out the Town is the way it all ends in the autumn. It’s as simple as this—you never forget the guys who helped you fight the big fire or clean out the town.

  Lying on the bed, though, I couldn’t see how I was going to avoid a beating. There’s bound to be a fight, I knew now, and I’ll have to reach over the table for the money. I’ll need both hands to pick it up and put it in the sugar sack, which didn’t seem funny now, and there will be my jaw sticking out for anybody to bruise with brass knuckles. I lay on the bed for some hours and couldn’t think of any way to protect myself, and, worse still, I knew I’d thought often of this problem before and had kept burying it, because even in half-dreams no way came to me of defending myself. Now was my last chance to think, but after it became dark I still had no thoughts. Just sensations. Always I felt that in reaching for the money I was hit on the jaw from the side and couldn’t see who had hit me. Next, I felt blood from inside my head slide down my throat.

  I don’t pretend I liked the beating or the blood, but it was not being able to lift a hand that sickened me most. It was like being a child again and being sent to a dark room and waiting for your father to come and whip you. It was a place of no ideas. Finally I said to myself, “At least don’t lie here in the dark. Go over and take a look at the joint.” I don’t know whether I expected to get any new ideas, but at least I went to see.

  The Oxford was the combination billiard, pool, and card parlor which for many westerners was the home away from home. The entering door led past the bar and tobacco stand; the guy behind the bar looked like he was trying to look like the owner. I bought a bottle of homebrew beer, but if I’d asked for a shot of moonshine I probably could have got it. Then I sauntered through the big door into the game room. It retreated to the rear in geometric patterns. The farther back it went the higher the stakes, the deeper the sin and the lower the social order. The large rectangles of billiard and pool tables in front become shortened by distance into round card tables. The ceilings were concealed in darkness; each green cloth-covered table glared under its own light shade. The big room narrowed into one small, slightly raised room in which was one glaring green table surrounded almost by darkness. Here at the end of space was the poker table.

  I worked slowly to the rear, pretending to walk casually and trying to drink the flat beer. The billiard table was for the sporting elite who could pay twenty-five cents an hour. The table was in good shape and the two players were good and were playing three-cushion billiards. The spectator next to me clapped when they made a hard shot and in a whisper told me that one of the players was the best barber in town and the other was vice-president of the bank. Then, in an even lower whisper and in greater awe, he told me that by common agreement they quit playing every night at nine because each had a woman he spent a couple of hours with before going home to his wife.

  The pool players and tables were so bad nobody was watching. The balls must have been made of concrete and the rubber in the cushions was dead, so the players, to get any bounce, shot too hard, If you fired a rifle and jerked up your head and shoulder the way they did when they shot their cue ball, you’d have missed Grave Peak at a hundred yards. When they miscued, they said, “God damn it,” and chalked the tips of their cues. You can tell poor pool players anywhere—they’re the ones who are always saying, “God damn it,” and are always chalking their cues and always jerking their heads when they shoot—something chalk won’t cure. On the rifle range, it’s called “flinching.” I kept moving, and came to the first card tables.

  The Oxford was no exception. The first card tables are always for the regular local players—not the gamblers but the clothing-store clerks and delivery men who married when they were young and can’t afford to lose but can’t stay away from cards. So they pretend with the help of the house that they’re not gambling and certainly not losing. They play slow games in which they lose steadily but never, as in poker, lose a bundle of cash on a turn of a card. The ones I watched were playing “pan” and pinochle, and they were playing for “chits,” not chips. They had paid real money for their chits, as if they were chips, but when they traded them back the house would give them only trade tokens that would allow them to buy homebrew beer or play pool. The house was even pretending that it wasn’t charging them for using the table, but while I stood there a houseman came by and picked a chit out of the pot. If you count the number of times the houseman picks a chit out of a pot in a year, you’ll probably find that it’s not the gamblers but the deliverymen pretending they aren’t gambling who keep small town gambling joints going financially.

  I pretended to be drinking from my bottle of beer when I passed the poker room so that they couldn’t get a good look at me. There were three of them, also engaged in pretending. They were pretending to play poker against each other, and they were studying their cards and stroking their piles of chips with their left hands. It was a cinch they were all housemen and were just keeping a game going as a decoy for some working stiff with a pay check from the Forest Service or a sheep ranch. They were all dressed alike, and were all dressed like Bill Bell—black Stetson hats, blue shirts, and yellow strings from sacks of Bull Durham hanging out of their shirt pockets. I wondered if all the guys in the Bitterroot who thought they were tough wore some kind of uniform, because even the doctor wore a small black Stetson. They pretended that no one was standing in the doorway, as, faceless, they studied their cards under their hat brims; then almost as one the hat brims raised slightly and they peered from underneath. What made it a cinch they were all shills working for the house was
that nobody watched them play. Any westerner knows that when nobody watches the poker game, the poker game isn’t real. The poker game is Magnetic North, and when even a sheepherder with his summer’s pay is drawn into the magnetic field, a circle forms around it.

  Not wanting them to get a good look at me, I kept moving. But then I didn’t get a good look at them either—mostly what I saw down the sides of my tipped beer bottle were the brims of their hats and their hunched shoulders shielding their cards. Their black hats were black but not like Bill’s black hat, gray with dust. Hunched shoulders always look big, but one pair looked at least as big as Bill’s. I began to think of him as Biggest Brim, and the other two as Big Brim and Bigger Brim, just like olives, the smallest grade always being marked Large. Not much else of them was allowed to show except their hands, which looked as if they were trying to be clumsy to get me into the game.

  Something had made me crawl out of bed and go spying, although I hadn’t learned much. My first view of the tin-horn gamblers in the flesh wasn’t a great deal different from my mental image of tin-horn gamblers—they were faceless but had an eye on me. I had learned just one thing for sure—that it was a long way from the poker room in the rear to the front door, and I made a note, if we had to back out fighting, to watch sideways for anybody who might be swinging the butt of a pool cue.

  I was nervous and much too early and, although still not feeling well, I began to realize I hadn’t eaten much of anything since leaving Elk Summit. I crossed the street to the Greek restaurant with the waitress who didn’t like me. The waitress was on shift, gave my table a swish with her apron and said, as if there’d always been complete understanding between us, “You’re going to eat something tonight. You haven’t eaten anything since you came to town.”

  I said, “I was thinking the same thing myself.”

  “I’ll get some soup while you’re looking the menu over,” she said. “Be sure to order meat. It’ll make you strong again.”

  I thought about her all the time she was in the kitchen. I wasn’t exactly prepared for this sudden motherly change in events, and when you’re hurt you don’t forgive quickly. Looking at the soup, as she put it down, she said, “I think I know where Bill Bell’s dog is.”

  The soup came up in steam and I was glad it smelled good because that meant I was better, so for a moment I really didn’t hear what she said. When I did, I asked, “Do you know Bill Bell?” Then she didn’t hear. “You must order something with a lot of meat.” She helped me think things over, and after a lot of thought we decided on what anyone probably would have—a hamburger, rare and with onions, on a theory we both shared, that rare and onions make you strong. When she came back from the kitchen after ordering, she said, “I don’t know Bill Bell but I know where his dog is. Did you like your soup?” “It was good and hot,” I said, and left it up to her to go on.

  As she lifted the soup bowl and brushed off the bits of crackers from the table, she said, “I come from a sheep ranch near Darby, and I’ve heard his dog is on a sheep ranch near Hamilton. I can tell you where.”

  This time she was gone quite a while, waiting for the hamburger to get done. I knew that she was probably right about Bill’s dog. Like Bill himself, the dog was one of the legends of the Bitterroot Valley. He had a name, but everybody called him “Bill’s Dog.” He liked Bill best among humans but he had an even higher commitment—he was committed to sheep. He would follow Bill into the woods in the spring and he liked especially to be around Bill when he was working with livestock or twirling his rope in the evening, but by the middle of July he would get an inner call and be gone, and when autumn came Bill would find him at some sheep camp.

  As a sheep dog he specialized on coyotes. Coyotes are wily animals, but wily animals including ourselves and coyotes have more set patterns than we think. The sheep camp is usually on a creek bottom or near a spring, and one coyote usually appears on top of a nearby ridge and barks like hell and makes a big show of himself, and the sheep dog, following his usual pattern, takes out after the coyote and the coyote of course disappears over the hill. Then it so happens that when the dog comes sailing over the ridge with his tongue hanging out, there are three or four coyotes waiting to meet him. The first coyote didn’t know that just what Bill’s Dog was looking for was three or four coyotes.

  Bill’s Dog looked as if he were divided into two parts, his head and shoulders being pit bull and the remaining half with which he ran being greyhound. Probably nothing in the valley touched him for speed and ferocity. Actually, he wasn’t so much committed to sheep as he was to sheep camps where he could kill coyotes. Every sheep camp in the valley regarded it a privilege to entertain him.

  The waitress came back and asked, “When is Bill going to leave tomorrow for Elk Summit?” “It’s a guess,” I told her, “but I’d guess around noon.” “I’ll try to get his dog to him in the morning,” she said, “but if I don’t make it, here’s a piece of paper that tells the ranch where he is and how to get there. Will you give the note to Bill?”

  I nodded and put it in my shirt pocket. “So you don’t know Bill?” I asked. I cut the hamburger sandwich into four pieces and even then it was big and I had to open my mouth wide. She said, “No, I come from Darby and I ran away to go to Missoula.” Missoula was my town. It is the biggest town around, and is near the mouth of the Bitterroot River. Darby is a small town about seventy miles up the Bitterroot River, and Hamilton is in between in both distance and size, but closer to Darby than to Missoula. “But,” she said, “I got a job here in Hamilton slinging hash, and somehow I never got as far as Missoula.”

  Since I was still trying to open my mouth wide, she went on. “I’m a Bitterrooter, so even if I don’t know Bill Bell I know all about him and his dog.”

  She had dark red hair and perhaps her teeth were a little too far apart but she looked good and she looked strong and it was not hard to imagine her on a sheep ranch. Her face and neck were covered with outdoor freckles and they got even thicker as they disappeared toward her breasts.

  “I know you work for Bill,” she said, and then she said as if she’d tried to say it before, “and I know you’re in for big trouble tonight.”

  I put down the remaining quarter of the sandwich. “How do you know that?” I asked.

  “Men eat here,” she said. I looked at the clock and told her, “I have to be going.” She said, “You haven’t finished your sandwich.” I assured her, “It was good, but I have to be on my way.”

  “All right,” she said, “but don’t forget about Bill’s Dog.” “I won’t,” I told her.

  “Be sure now,” she said, “not to forget about Bill’s Dog. I want you to think about him tonight.”

  “You sound smart,” I told her.

  “No,” she said, “I haven’t been to Missoula yet.”

  The Bitterroot girl who followed me to the door was about my age, and we both felt it. “So long and good luck,” she said. Then she called after me, “Don’t forget to tell Bill that I gave him the slip of paper, but you’re not supposed to look at it.”

  “I’ll tell him,” I called back, and then I put all my life out of my mind except around a poker table.

  I focused so intensely I still remember all that happened as if it were last night.

  There was no one in the barroom except the guy behind the bar, who looked as if he were about to lose the place he may have owned. For a moment I thought there was no sound at all in the next room. Then suddenly a crash was followed by several thuds as the life went out of concrete pool balls when they hit dead cushions. Evidently one pair of pool players was left.

  “Hey, punk,” the barkeep snarled, “where do you think you’re going?”

  I was late and worried because there was just one set of sounds in the next room, so I tried to slide past by being polite.

  “I’m supposed to meet with some friends in there,” I said.

  “Come over here,” he said. Then I got really worried, because I should
have been standing right behind the cook, but I went part way to the bar, close enough to see a Smith & Wesson .38 on the lower counter where he washed the glasses. No revolver had been there when I bought my homemade beer. He stopped looking at me long enough to take a drink from a shot glass sitting by the revolver.

  “Have a shot of moonshine,” he said to me. “Thanks,” I said, and shook my head. “It’s on the house,” he said, and I said “Thanks” again.

  He said, actually pointing at me, “You’re with Bill Bell, aren’t you? You were in here not long ago.”

  I said, “I work for him.”

  “He’s in there,” he told me. “What’s he doing in there?” I asked.

  “Why don’t you look in there and tell me?” he asked.

  I could see that I would be here forever if I kept on being polite. I said, “Why don’t you look in there yourself? You’ve got a gun and it’s only twenty feet to the door where you can look.”

  He said, “I’m afraid to leave the front of the place alone. Somebody might come in and steal something.” I took another look and when I saw it actually wasn’t twenty feet to the door, I realized he was scared. I don’t like guys who look big and tough but aren’t and also happen to have a gun. When they’re tough all the way through, it’s easier to figure out what the gun will do.

  I walked those less than twenty feet softly and looked.

  Just as sound had said, in all the big room there were only two pool players, probably a couple of ranch hands who had worked with cattle so long they didn’t notice any more what went on among humans. Otherwise, it was as if the earth had tilted and everybody had slid into the back room. You could hardly see the poker table, but everybody was peering at it and watching in silence.