Motional Blur

by Robert Eringer

  “No way, man. Don’t even start the engine, it might crack. Hold on.” Bart trots off to the garage, returns with a flat board on wheels, rolls himself face up beneath Abe, twists and turns. After about a minute he resurfaces. “It’s your lucky day, man. Loose oil filter. I tightened it. If you’d needed a pan, you might have been stuck here a few days to order parts. And if you’d kept driving …”—he shakes his head—“… you would have needed a whole new engine. But we’re not out of this yet, let’s see what happens.” Bart pours another quart of oil, then gets down on all fours to watch for dripping. “So far so good.” He waits, tests the gauge. “Getting better.” He goes back inside the shop, buys another quart, drains it, waits, tests again, nods. “Yep, your lucky day. We’re good to go.”

  Gearhart is watching me, smirking.

  I go pay for engine oil, the best $71.41 I ever spent.

  Posted on the wall, Elk Creek Station’s creed:

  Life’s journey is not to arrive

  at the grave safely

  in a well preserved body,

  but rather to slide in sideways,

  worn out and shouting

  “Holy shit, what a ride!”

  I rejoin Gearhart and Bart in the car and pull off.

  “That could have been catastrophic,” says Gearhart, “but it got resolved without hoopla or much money. Well done, Bart. How old are you?”

  “Thirty-three.”

  “Where did you learn about cars?”

  “I got raised on a farm. Tractors, mostly. Woulda stayed there, but my family lost it.”

  “How?”

  “New government regulations on how we could farm and how we couldn’t. Next thing, my dad died and inheritance tax nailed us. Government’s taking over everything, one way or another.”

  “You think Canada is the answer?”

  “I don’t have the answer, man. I’m looking for it. What are you looking for?”

  “Right on, Bart,” I say, “that’s what I’d like to know.”

  Gearhart shrugs in that whimsical way of his, looking out the window. “The only way to understand something is to see it up close,” he finally replies.“Right now I’m trying to understand my country.”

  “But why with me?” I ask, reinforced by Bart.

  Gearhart turns in my direction. “You know what Clint Eastwood says to actors who ask him what their motivation is supposed to be in the roles they’re playing in movies he directs?”

  Bart and I exchange puzzled glances through my rearview mirror.

  “No, what?” I ask.

  “He says, your paycheck.”

  “That’s it?”

  “It,” says Gearhart. “I want to see my country, and you’re getting paid to drive me.”

  11.

  Route 20 takes a sharp right into Montana, through West Yellowstone, and back into Wyoming, where it hugs the border for a stretch.

  Gearhart sees the sign like he sees everything, even when he’s reading.

  “Do we need to change places?” I ask.

  He shakes his mane. “The business I was in, rules were made to be broken.”

  “What business?”

  “Uncle Sam.”

  Bart finally comes to from the backseat. “You work for the government?”

  “Retired.”

  “Who killed Kennedy?”

  Gearhart chuckles sourly. “Which one?”

  “Both of them, but I meant JFK.”

  “Does it matter anymore?”

  “Matters to me.”

  “Why?”

  “That was the day—November 22, 1963—this country started its steep decline.”

  Gearhart shifts, takes one of his deep nose breaths. “Can’t argue with that.”

  “So do you know?”

  Gearhart chuckles sourly. “I was too busy doing what I was doing to delve into anything like that. What I found, generally, is that there’s less to most things than meets the eye.”

  Bart nods his head vigorously in my rearview mirror. “That’s right,” he says. “That’s where the magician’s sleight of hand lives. They ruse us with the more, so we don’t look at the less.”

  “Route 191 North is certainly the road less traveled,” I say, weary of this dialogue. For me, the truth exists in the Pope’s Living Room, which is to say, inside the curl of a breaking wave. “There’s nobody on it but us. And we just crossed back into Montana. Look.” I point to a sign that says BIG SKY, 18 MILES. “It exists as a real place.” Turns out it’s not a town, just a resort. “So we’re here,” I say to Gearhart. “Big Sky, Montana. What now?”

  “We need an overnight. Let’s drive on to Bozeman and see what it’s like, and then on to Livingston, twenty miles east. I’ve been told that’s the real Montana.”

  Route 191 leads us smack through the center of Bozeman.

  Bart bails on West Main Street in front of the Lewis and Clark Motel’s grand marquee.

  I don’t think Livingston is so bad, just quiet. But Gearhart seems disheartened.

  “This is the real Montana?” he says more than once as we circle around for the full experience. “I’m not staying in this rinky-dink town.”

  “We can double back to Bozeman,” I offer.

  “I’m not staying there, either. I wouldn’t see why.”

  “Maybe run into Bart. I kind of miss him.”

  “You ought to,” says Gearhart. “He saved your ass. I need to see a map.” Gearhart turns and leans into the backseat, rummages around in his satchel. “Butte,” he says after surveying the situation. “It’s not too far, maybe an hour.”

  Not far is important at this juncture, because it is now around 4:30 and I’m accustomed to Gearhart’s rituals, namely, cocktail hour at 5:33.

  Butte looks appealing as we approach, set on a hill next to another range of hills stripped bare—all orange and raw from copper mining.

  We ascend the hill in search of this city’s downtown historic district and soon discover it has not been renovated and re-gentrified like historic downtowns elsewhere.

  “How depressing.” Gearhart shakes his mane with disdain. “This was one of the richest towns in America. Anaconda copper. Is that how they thank it for providing so much?”

  We cruise past pawnshops, tattoo parlors, consignment shops, and discount nail salons; abandoned buildings and decrepit dive bars; decay and dilapidation.

  “There’s supposed to be a famous old hotel around here.” Gearhart cranes his neck. “The Finlen.”

  We find it, on a street that could be nicknamed Desolation Row. If there’s any activity at all, and there isn’t, it’s in the Finlen’s motor inn, adjacent to the once grand hotel.

  “I’ll be damned,” says Gearhart. “There must be a newer part of town. Let’s find it.”

  The newer part of town turns out to be an area near the airport, where Route 393 and I-15 intersect and motels like Best Western and fast-food shacks like Wendy’s fill out an assortment of strip malls.

  This bothers Gearhart even more than the pawnshops and tattoo parlors of old town.

  “Dear, oh dear,” he despairs. “What has American culture become? The moneymakers rape a lovely town of its natural resources and leave behind shoebox rooms and processed food. Makes me think the American dream has transformed into a nightmare.”

  It is now nearing 7:00 p.m.

  “We could stay at the Best Western,” I suggest.

  It looks fine to me. The only other high-end hotel, the Copper King, is boarded up, chained off, and abandoned.

  “I’m not staying here. Makes me think humanity is a cancerous tumor trying to kill Mother Nature, and that’s not why I came here, not what I want to see, think about, or know.”

  I only later discovered that Gearhart was more right than he knew: The Berkeley Pit, where Anaconda mined minerals, is reputed to be the most toxic place on earth.

  “Let’s at least get Abe fed.”

  I pull into a service station in the middle of Gearha
rt’s definition of hell and I pump gas while Gearhart studies his map, muttering, “Options, options.”

  I climb back in.

  “Okay, I’ve figured it out,” says Gearhart. “The right place to stay in Montana is not in a town or a city, but at a resort. There must be one within an hour of here.”

  I pop resorts near Butte into my smartphone.

  It responds with Fairmont Hot Springs Resort.

  I click into it: twenty miles west of Butte.

  “Yes, let’s go there,” says Gearhart.

  A dog suddenly barks from somewhere so close, it scares the living crap out of me. I turn around and come head-to-head with a Chihuahua—though it could be part weasel and part bat—and maybe, with white face and black markings around the eyes, part raccoon.

  “What the … !”

  Incredulous, Gearhart turns to see what I see.

  “How the hell did a dog get in here?”

  Gearhart has it figured. “Bart.”

  “Bart?”

  “He must have had it with him.”

  “What do we do with it?”

  Gearhart shakes his head, already discombobulated by our circumstances.

  “We can drive back to Butte, try to find Bart.”

  “You can if you want. First take me to the resort.”

  We practically fly to Fairmont as clouds above us darken, unleashing a torrent of rain upon our arrival.

  Gearhart gets out, goes in, and reappears, clothes drenched. “Not much charm, but we’ve run out of options. Here’s a key. I’ll be in the bar.”

  “What about this dog?”

  Gearhart either doesn’t hear or doesn’t want to hear.

  12.

  Gearhart isn’t in Whiskey Joe’s. And that doesn’t surprise me when I see how drab and sparse it is. I think maybe I’ve begun by now to understand something about aesthetics, at least as Gearhart perceives them.

  I find him on the other side of the catering zone, a patio with high-top tables, each with its own mini gas fire pit in the middle. He has a midget martini glass in front of him.

  “Bombay Sapphire,” he says. “Just a one-ounce pour, like that tavern in Cedar City. No problem, it just means I’ll have two.”

  Beyond the patio is a large pool of thermal spring water and a monster slide.

  “I’ve never seen a resort for the middle-class,” says Gearhart. “That’s what this is: a vacation getaway for whole families. A shoebox of a room, fluorescent light fixtures—I can’t even see into my suitcase—and paper cups in the bathroom. But anything beats Butte.”

  Me? I think it’s awesome, all these pretty young things in bikinis by the pool. “I could tap into some of that,” I say.

  And with my penchant for big behinds, I think the babes tending bar aren’t so bad either.

  Gearhart is more interested in the Mile High Dining Room menu.

  “This place looks okay,” he says. “I don’t understand why everyone is eating over there.” He points to the Springwater Café.

  “Easy,” I say. “Middle America likes burgers and fries and onion rings. Come to think of it, I wouldn’t mind a burger and fries myself.”

  Gearhart shakes his head. “Go to it. You’re not my prisoner.”

  Truth be known, I was starting to enjoy hanging with Gearhart—and even the kind of food he eats.

  “What did you do with the dog?” says Gearhart.

  “Snuck him into my room. No name tag, nothing. Not even a collar.”

  “Probably a stray Bart picked up.”

  “You think he left him in the car on purpose?”

  “Maybe. Doesn’t matter, either way,” says Gearhart. “All that matters is what we do with him. Finding Bart is not an option.”

  “What do you suggest?”

  “The pound?”

  “He wouldn’t last a week in one of those places!” I say.

  “What’s your option?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’re not thinking of keeping him? You can barely look after yourself.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  “Sleep on it. Problems are best assessed with fresh eyes.”

  “Where we headed tomorrow, boss?”

  “I had it in my mind to head east, maybe Devil’s Tower, then Colorado, the Rockies. But we’ve already turned west and I hate to backtrack.”

  “Okay …”

  “Boise, Idaho. Never been there. After this …”—he gestures around—“… I’ll be ready for a city fix.”

  “Boise? How do you know it won’t be like Butte?”

  Gearhart shrugs. “I don’t. And if it is, we’ll keep moving.”

  At least Boise is south, so we’re probably at the farthest point we’d get.

  After a second mini martini, Gearhart shifts to the Mile High Dining Room and orders us the chef’s special, Huckleberry Buffalo: grilled buffalo tenders, pickled cauliflower, garlic and horseradish mashed potato, and grilled asparagus, and a bottle of Elk Cove pinot noir from Willamette Valley, Oregon.

  I’ve never before experienced a chef stopping by to ask my opinion about his cooking. But here he is, Chef Joshua, from Wyoming, standing over me.

  “How’s everything tasting?” he asks.

  My mouth is too full to answer so I just nod, and try to hide the grilled buffalo I’ve stuffed in a linen serviette for the rogue dog in my room.

  Gearhart says all the right things, and we finish up sharing a hot chocolate brownie à la mode before he says, “I’ve had enough for one day,” and he gets up to go. He must be reading my mind, because he looks me in the eye and says, “Don’t stay up too late—you need to be fresh tomorrow,” and he’s gone before I can ask him how old he thinks I am.

  Of course, I’m not done, not with Whiskey Joe’s nearby, a piano player named Danny Roy, and a bar server from Butte named Monique—maybe I’ll get lucky.

  13.

  After we close the bar, Monique wants to show me her favorite dive, so I follow her back to Butte, somewhere near the historic district Gearhart and I circled hours earlier.

  I drink a beer, then another, and maybe a shot of Fireball, because that’s what everyone else in Pissers Palace is drinking, like everywhere else in the country, God knows why. And don’t you know, right under my nose Monique hooks up with her ex-boyfriend—using me to get him re-interested. It results in a scuffle, initiated by the ex to prove his worthiness, I guess.

  I bolt and, not five minutes after pulling onto the barren interstate, I have bacon on my tail.

  Easy does it. Slow down. But not fast enough.

  The cruiser’s lights flash bright; I pull to a stop on the shoulder.

  An officer of the Montana Highway Patrol gets out, a flashlight in one hand, the other on the butt of his holstered revolver.

  I lower my window only partway.

  He nods at me, flashes his light around Abe’s interior. “Please turn off your engine.”

  I kill it.

  “Where are you coming from?” he asks.

  “California.”

  “I mean this evening.”

  “Butte.” Talking to a cop is the same as giving a deposition: use as few words as possible. They only get used against you.

  “Where in Butte?”

  “I don’t know Butte.”

  “Have you had any alcoholic beverages this evening?”

  “Don’t you need reasonable cause to pull me over, officer?”

  “Speeding is reasonable. How many drinks have you had this evening?”

  “Just one beer, officer.”

  “License and registration. And your engine key.”

  “My key?”

  “Yes.”

  I fumble around my wallet, glove compartment, hand them over.

  He returns to his cruiser, does his checks, comes back. “Please step out of your vehicle.”

  Standing before me, he flashes his light into my eyes. “Follow my finger from left to right and back again.”

&nb
sp; I do.

  “Okay, now I want you to take nine steps straight ahead, pivot around, and take nine steps back toward me.”

  I do this, reasonably well, I think.

  “I’m going to ask you take a breath test,” he says.

  “Aww, come on. Maybe I had two beers, but it was over a few hours. I’m in control.”

  “In Montana, if you refuse to take a breath test we take away your license for six months.”

  I shake my head. “So let’s get it over with.”

  He holds his gizmo to my mouth. “Blow hard into this.”

  I do. Gently. Alcohol sits at the bottom of the lungs.

  “Blow harder!”

  I pretend to blow with greater force.

  “Harder!”

  I disengage. “I’m blowing as hard as I can.”

  He consults his digital readout. “You’re under arrest for driving under the influence.” And then he reads me my rights.

  As if to reinforce his point, reinforcement turns up: another cruiser with another patrolman.

  They cuff me, dump me in the backseat of the first cruiser; back to Butte we go.

  The officer politely tries to engage me in conversation, as if he’s my buddy, about where I’d been drinking—more evidence—but I gently assert my right to remain silent.

  The large round clock in the police station says 1:03 as I get checked in.

  “I’m thirsty,” I say.

  “Haven’t had enough to drink?” quips the check-in sergeant.

  “Water.”

  He points to a drinking fountain.

  My hands are still cuffed but I go for broke. Dilution. Until the arresting officer depresses the button while I’m still leaning in, hydrating myself.

  “Wouldn’t want you messing up my blood test results,” he says.

  Must be a quiet night in Butte. I’m it.

  Half an hour later, the vampire shows up. He seems hip, just cutting a life in this sad town. He finds a vein, sucks my blood.

  After that, the sergeant says, “You can sleep it off here or get someone to pick you up.”

  “What about Abe?”

  “Who’s Abe?”

  “My car.”

  “Impounded. You can collect it when you’re sober.”

  “Okay, I’ll call someone.”

  “We do that for you. Name and number?”