by Chris Offutt
“He was a soldier, wasn’t he?”
“Reckon so.”
On the wall behind the man hung a prosthetic leg. It was old and heavy, with exposed springs and cracked leather straps, Joe figured it was an antique. It was colored to resemble flesh but had faded to the hue of a terrible burn. Joe pointed to it.
“Guess ITI know where to come if I need one.”
“I thought he’d be back the next day.”
“How long you had it?”
“Two years,” the man said.
“He must have been hard up,”
A small girl pushed the door open, carrying a man’s jacket over her arm. She placed the jacket on the counter and stared at the floor. She was very thin.
“Your daddy send you in?” the man said.
She nodded.
“He in the bar next door?”
She nodded again.
“Tell him I can’t take it today.”
She left with the jacket. The man’s expression returned to its hardened cast.
“That ain’t right,” Joe said. “Her coming in here that way.”
“It’s a free country.”
Joe went outside and threaded the belt through the loops of his pants, feeling closer to belonging in the West. The sun poured heat into the town. A tall woman wearing a fur coat and high heels emerged from an espresso shop. She sat sideways in a sports car, swiveled her legs into its plush interior, and drove away. Seconds later, a young man holding a straight razor backed out of a bar, forced by an older man who gripped the kid’s wrist. In a deft motion, the man disarmed the kid and sent him stumbling against a parked car. The man returned to the bar, which released a stream of laughter before the door shut again. The kid skulked away as if kicked. It occurred to Joe that a snakeskin belt didn’t make him belong here at all.
At a secondhand store he bought clothes, a sleeping bag, several blankets, and kitchen supplies. Many of the customers were Indians and he was careful not to stare. They appeared sad, rather than fierce, reminding him of people from the deepest hollows in Kentucky. They dressed the same, too—quilted flannel shirts, jeans, and boots.
He stopped for groceries and drove east on the interstate, past a sawmill pumping thick smoke into the pristine air. At the mouth of Rock Creek he headed south toward the Sapphire Mountains. Half the canyon was deep in shadow.
Outfitting the cabin required less than half an hour, and he washed the kitchen supplies twice to draw out the chore. He spent several minutes arranging his pillow and sleeping bag on the bed. In the kitchenette he changed the order of food along the shelves, stacking the cans in descending order of size. He distributed the clothes among the bureau drawers. On a nail by the door he hung a heavy coat with a phony sheepskin collar. His mother had always had a junk drawer in her kitchen, and he designated one as such, except he had nothing to put in it.
He granted the possum a place of honor on top of the refrigerator. Dust fell from, its pale fur. One eye was gone. He stroked its back. The bare walls made him sad, and he went outside and sat on a stump. The enormity of the decisions he’d made crashed against him like surf.
He rose abruptly, as if motion would blot the past, and looked around for somewhere to go. The woods at home had always served as solace and he decided to see Rock Creek. A faint path wove through the cottonwood and pine. Trees grew farther apart than in Kentucky, and groundcover was thin. The creek had no bank. The land ended and the water began. Orange moss shimmered on the bark of a cottonwood, the biggest tree along the stream, and at its base was a necklace of gnaw marks left by a beaver. Joe admired the beaver’s ambition, the boldness necessary to make such an attempt. He wondered if it was a bad sign to envy animals.
The water sparkled in the sun, running swift and black in the shade. The sun receded behind the mountain peak like an eye that abruptly closed and doused the canyon’s light. Joe remained by the water, soothed by its motion, as darkness moved through the valley like wind. The air became cold. Stars were bright and very close. A high-pitched yip echoed through the woods, trailing away in a mournful call. It came again, rising and falling in a lilt, repeating itself, and though he’d never heard the sound before, he knew it was a coyote. When it stopped, the woods seemed more silent than before. Full night had arrived. Joe headed for the cabin, quickened by a faint fear of losing his way. He undressed and went to bed.
He woke in a fetal ball, watching his breath turn white in the glimmer of dawn. His face was cold. Inside the sleeping bag, and beneath several blankets, his body was very warm. The thermometer attached to the woodstove read thirty-eight degrees, and the outside thermometer said forty-five. Joe gathered his clothes, stepped outside, and dressed in the sun. Larch flared in lines like candles along the higher slopes.
He fixed coffee and sat on the stump. A magpie’s black-and-white wings made a pattern that reminded him of rowing rather than flight. He washed his cup, then washed all the dishes he’d bought the previous day. He made his bed. He adjusted the possum. He felt the urge to tidy the cabin but there was nothing out of place. He sat on the stump and tried not to think of Rodale. His mind skipped to Abigail, then to his mother, Sara, Marlon, and Rundell Day. He didn’t want to think about them.
He went in the house and stood before the bathroom mirror, which framed his face in metal strips.
“Hi, I’m Joe Tiller,” he said.
He shrugged. It didn’t sound right.
“Name’s Joe,” he said. “Joe Tiller.”
“Nice to meet you. They call me Joe.”
“I’m Joe. Joe Tiller.”
“Just call me Joe.”
He looked over the cramped room, the narrow shower, the single nail for his towel, Sheetrock tape showed through the plaster where the corners met.
“I’m Joe Tiller,” he said, “and this is where I live.”
He walked around the cabin, checking sightlines. Anyone could easily see inside. He’d have to keep the curtains closed. Under the porch he found a shovel with, a split handle. The land glowed beneath a clean sky. He ate lunch. He wished he smoked for something to do.
A man arrived in the afternoon with two cords of firewood. His dump truck held dents on every surface, including the roof, as if it had been batted about by a giant bear. The side mirrors were fixed in place with wire. A small boy sat in the passenger seat. The man eased to the ground, talking before he got the door shut. An eye was gone and the skin sagged over the hole like a slack drape.
“You’re lucky,” he said. “I had wood left over. Not much call for a load this size. Demand’s went down in Missoula since that new law.”
“Which one was that?”
“It won’t let them burn wood half the winter.”
Joe laughed.
“I’m serious as a heart attack,” the man said. “New houses can’t put a woodstove in. They got an anonymous phone line to report your neighbor for heating his house with wood. About like a tip line for poaching.”
“What for?”
“Damn air’s no good. The same air stays in the valley till spring. Everybody just breathes each other’s old breath, about like being in the joint. I was at Deer Lodge for thirty-two months and ten days. You ever do any time?”
“No,” Joe said. “Why?”
“You got a look is all. I seen it before. Down the road from Deer Lodge is the old territorial prison from a hundred years ago. You know it’s a tourist place now. People pay good money to go in there.”
“I can’t see that.”
“Tell you something else I don’t get is being a guard. Every damn one was a registered son of a bitch. They spent all day in the same place as me, only difference was they went home to eat and sleep.”
“Maybe get a little fresh air.”
“Not if they lived in Missoula. Some days you’re supposed to stay indoors.”
“How do you know when?”
“It’s in the paper.”
“Well,” Joe said.
“Indians w
ouldn’t camp there in the old days. The fire smoke didn’t go nowhere. Then the white man came along and built a town.”
The man was becoming agitated. Joe jerked his head to indicate the child in the truck.
“Looks like you got you a helper.”
“My boy,” the man said.
“Family business?”
“Dad owns the land we log.”
“Must be nice to work together like that.”
“Right now I live half a mile from my folks,” the man said. “Sometimes I wish it was more like five or six,”
Joe paid in cash and the truck bed rose on its hydraulic stem, dumping the wood. The man drove in little jerks to dislodge the last of the load, leaving deep grooves in the grass. He circled the cabin and Joe waited for him to return and stack the wood. The sound of the truck’s engine faded through the woods and after a while he realized that the man was not coming back. Joe studied the wood, dismayed to find it was all the same—thin pine. There were no big chunks of hardwood for overnight, no hot-burning ash to take the morning chill off the house. The timber business was better in Montana than Kentucky. The wood cost more and weighed less, and the customer stacked it himself.
Inside, he stroked the possum’s back, wondering if they lived in the West, He wished he’d asked Morgan what had possessed him to stuff the ugliest animal in the woods. The cabin was dark. The walls seemed to be closing in on Joe like a cardboard box that was slowly being crushed. He hurried to his car and drove to town. Mountains ringed Missoula like the sloping sides of a giant bowl. A layer of gray clouds made a Ed that clamped in car exhaust and chimney smoke. His eyes stung. His throat hurt.
At the Department of Motor Vehicles he took a written test for switching to a Montana driver’s license. The majority of the people in line were newcomers from California who wore western shirts with button-down collars. Joe passed the test but decided to grow a beard before the photograph. He wanted the picture to look nothing like his face at home.
At the edge of town he stopped beside the mountain where he’d seen the herd of elk. He followed their trail as it wound through the saddle of a gap, then left it for the summit. Hard snow lay like web in the crevice of shade made by rock. At the top he rested, his breath gusting in the chilly air. Sweat cooled inside his clothes. He’d penetrated the haze that draped the town, as if he’d risen above a high-water mark left by flood. The air was clean, the light pure. Missoula sat below the surface like a city beneath the sea.
Joe lay on his back and remembered a boy he’d grown up with who couldn’t wait to leave the hills. He’d gone to Detroit and worked in the auto plants for ten years, and finally returned. He bought an old house on his home hill and put a mail-order skylight in the roof. Neighbors came to see it, astounded at the thought of someone cutting a hole in his own roof. After nine months the man left again, as if being gone had poisoned him for living in the hills.
Joe began walking down the mountain. Two hawks spiraled a thermal, rising in a column to the darker blue above. He wondered if he’d ever love this land strongly enough to be ruined by living away from it. Montana was similar to Kentucky except the mountains were higher and there was no oak. At home the poor people lived in the hills and the rich people lived in town. Here it was the other way around.
On his way out of town, he stopped at a used-car lot. He looked at a four-door pickup with twin tires in the rear and heavy bumpers. Another truck had aluminum siding over a plywood topper with a chimney flue protruding from its pitched roof. He bypassed the late model cars for an old Jeep Wagoneer. It reminded him of a station wagon crossed with a track, jacked high all around. The locking front hubs were alien to Joe, but it was the kind of vehicle a man wearing a snakeskin belt might drive. He traded for it, paving a little boot.
He drove home and sat on his stump. A zigzag shadow cast by the mountain split the canyon. The land was as alien to him as the inside of his cabin. The air turned gray, then black. The coyote called. Snow began to fall.
He had food but wasn’t hungry. He had a Jeep but nowhere to go. He had a new name and no one to call him.
13
* * *
November descended over the valley with a harsh freeze. Every morning Joe woke to a dead fire and the desire to stay in bed. Scales of frost covered the interior windows. The stovepipe made an angle that should have been an elbow but more closely resembled a dog’s hind leg. Smoke leaked around loose rivets at each joint. He opened the door of the cabin and wondered if cold air entered or warm air left.
After a month of evenings alone, Joe drove to Missoula at dusk, where people in light jackets walked on clear sidewalks. The inversion that held bad air close to the earth also kept the temperature high.
He parked beside a sculpture of a mountain lion that resembled a giant pile of cement manure and walked around the corner to the Wolf. He stepped aside for an elderly man who staggered toward the door, holding each stool for balance. An Indian woman slept at the bar, wearing a faded jacket bearing the name of a tavern. Beside her slumped a skinny cowboy with a dog at his feet. The back of the cowboy’s neck was scarred. His huge ears had several holes in them, and Joe realized they’d been hit with a load of small buckshot.
“Dad was in a rocky place,” the man was saying to the bartender. “He jumped from one rock to another. The rock went. Killed him. Big rock. They’ll kill you.”
A raspy voice announced Keno numbers through a speaker that hissed and crackled like a green wood fire. The smell of spilt beer, fried food, and cigarettes clung to the room. Computerized slot machines jingled and hummed, occasionally emitting the electronic music that serenaded a winner. The players stared at the screens as if hypnotized. Beyond them hung a tarp that served as entrance to a strip club. An extremely fat biker checked IDs at the door. Crude tattoos covered his hands.
Joe walked past the tarp to the last chamber of the Wolfs warrens—the poker room. It had its own mini-bar and bathroom. A TV was mounted on the wall, tuned to a channel of perpetual sports and no sound. Ribbons of smoke twined overhead. Two players wore sunglasses and headphones, and Joe wondered if blotting the senses aided gambling or was the ultimate goal. Above the cashier’s cage hung a hand-printed sign that said, “Not even Mom gets credit.”
The cardroom manager limped to a chalkboard on the wall.
“You’re first up,” he said. “What’s your name?”
“Joe.”
He wrote Joe’s name on the board. The dealer wore a multicolored hat shaped like a bottle cap that looked like it clamped to his head. A ponytail hung down his back. He waved a bill and asked for twenty hard, thirty soft and the manager carried the bill to the cage for chips and change. Joe sat on a stool and opened a gambling magazine. He enjoyed seeing his name on the board and having people know it referred to him.
The Wolfs primary game was Texas Hold’em, played at ten-dollar limit. The dealer placed five community cards in the center of the table, to which each player added his two hole cards to make a standard poker hand. There were four betting rounds. Hold’em moved faster than most other games and could seat many players. Joe studied the competition as the dealer shuffled. There were a couple of rocks who only bet on winning hands, possessors of enormous patience. A woman sat at the table with her top two buttons loose. She flirted openly. Joe recognized her as a very good player, made better by men’s underestimation of her. If she was in a pot, Joe decided that he would simply fold.
Hanging from the walls were portraits in oil and Joe recognized one of the players, who was eating biscuits and gravy and using hand signals to indicate his action. He was tall and lean, with a drooping black mustache. His hands were big enough to conceal ten chips, which made it impossible to gauge his bet. A wall of chips was stacked in front of him.
The game continued with a steady rhythm of cards and chips, the passing of the button that marked the player’s force bet. After half an hour, a player pushed his chair from the table and stood. His face held no express
ion as he slipped on his jacket and turned away empty-handed. He headed for the strip club, as if the sight of nude flesh in dim light would compensate for bad cards in harsh light. Joe pretended to read the magazine. He was waiting for the manager to call his name because he wanted to develop the habit of responding to it.
“Seat open, Joe,” the man said.
Joe moved to the low table covered by scarred green felt and laid his money down. He belonged. After a few hands, it became apparent that everyone was after the endless cash supply of a man with powerful forearms and large fingers that covered his cards like piled lumber. He drank steadily, bet each hand, and didn’t seem, to mind losing. When it was his blind bet, a new dealer asked if he was taking points.
“What for?” the player said.
“Tournament. That’s how you qualify.”
“When is it?”
“Saturday.”
“I’ll be in Hawaii.”
“Think of me,” the dealer said.
“I will. I just got back from Alaska. Six months on a boat. I never want to see snow again.”
No face registered the news, but everyone knew that the man from Alaska had ended the fishing season with a wad of cash. With a mark like him at the table, the game became a contest to see who got more of his money. Players only left if they got broke and were unable to borrow a stake.
Two hours later, the fisherman departed cheerfully after dumping six hundred dollars into the game, the price of reassuring himself that strangers liked him. Joe had captured seventy dollars and considered cashing out. Instead, he loosened his play and chased poor hands. Within thirty minutes, he’d lost his winnings and was making a rebuy. He concentrated on getting even.
After an hour of folding bad cards, he won three pots in a row. He tipped the dealer and stacked his chips. He was on a rush and could feel the luck surrounding him. Other players sensed his power and threw away cards they’d normally play. He won two small pots simply by raising in good position. He was playing well because he truly didn’t care if he won or lost. He understood why Boyd had been such a consistent winner.