At the Jim Bridger: Stories (4 page)

“There it is,” she said, pointing at the menu. She was euphoric. She’d been euphoric for days. “T-bone steak with a baked potato.”

“There it is,” he said.

The door opened and the conversation noise roared in like a draft and then people followed it in, one and two at a time. Donner saw Rusty right away holding the door for a couple of his buddies, and Donner turned his back and faced the woman until he was sure they had passed through the room and back to the bar.

The waitress was the owner’s wife, Kay. Donner knew her name, but she didn’t know his. He was here once a year at most. She appeared in a big flannel shirt patterned red and black and a shiny tiara clipped on her head that in rhinestones read
Happy New Year!
and she kept the pencil, as he
had described to the woman, behind her ear until she’d heard both their orders and then she wrote it down.

“What was that?” Donner asked her about the people coming in.

“Big Jess our bull moose made an appearance across the pond,” Kay told him. “He’s still over there pulling tall grass off the bottom and eating like there’s no tomorrow.”

“A moose?” the woman said. “We saw a moose.”

“We did,” Donner said.

Early the second day, still hiking toward their lake, they had passed through a willow break, and in one of the beaver dams a cow moose was feeding. She was standing to her shoulders in the water, and her huge head would descend and disappear and then emerge in a tremendous splash and her mouth would be full of dark green reeds and she would chew and drip. It thrilled the woman, and she covered her face with her hands. She looked at Donner with a radical amazement, as if her understanding of the world had been reset, and she pulled him over a hillock and dropped her pack. They came together in a way that shocked him, none of it something he could easily describe, not voracious and not tender, but seriously perhaps, and it sobered him and offered the first caution as to the nature of what he was actually doing.

The waitress brought back a bread basket and two plastic flutes of champagne. There was a little stone fireplace and Donner stoked the struggling fire with two fresh sections of split log. When he sat back down, she said, “So this is New Year’s.”

“It is.”

She scanned the room. “And they’ll close the shutters and all be gone tomorrow.”

“Right, until May first. But even that is early. The season here doesn’t start until June.”

Her eyes were on him, and she lifted her glass and held it until he touched it with his. She was waiting for him to say something, make a toast.

“Moose,” he said. “God save the moose.”

Now he saw her first confusion, and he worried she could read his face. He felt drained, but he smiled.

“Is that really Scout?” she said. “Isn’t that amazing?”

“Yes it is, my dear,” he said.

“So, is your friend in here?”

“Yes,” he said. “He’s sitting at the bar.”

“Rusty?”

“That’s his name,” he said. “You remembered.”

He didn’t want to talk about this, but he would if she wanted, because he realized that he didn’t want to talk about anything at all. From the moment the dog had touched him, everything was all gone. Donner was happy for the fire; if the grate had been dark, he feared he would have wept.

One year ago in September on Donner’s annual fishing trip, he’d gotten trapped by a surprise snowstorm in the Cascades, and he’d made a bad decision. It was now his favorite story, though he’d only told it twice, and when he told it, he told it carefully and honestly, owning all of his errors in the event. When he told it, something in him knitted up taut and he felt centered and ready. He had told the woman who was not his wife the story over dinner at an Italian restaurant seven months ago, and it was the story that had kindled all of the rest.

The big mistake Donner made while fishing the year before, larger than going into the mountains late in the year and getting caught by the four-day storm, was breaking camp late in the afternoon. He should have stayed put, as he had for three days while the snowfall continued without
pause, steady and serious as if trying to put the year out once and for all.

He had arrived in a thick dusk and set up camp—the tent, the little cook station and grill, the log bench, the clothesline. He always had a clothesline, and on the clothesline he always hung a thin cotton dish towel bordered by a blue and green stripe. His mother had given it to him years before. He woke the first day in the strange quiet and even light and his tent half in on him. The snow was eight inches deep, and Donner had to dress carefully and search through the site for his gear. He broke dead limbs and made a small fire; he was a scrupulous fire maker, and he laid in wood for two days. He made a cup of coffee using the little press his wife had given him, and he brushed a space on the log and sat down and let the snow gather on his shoulders.

He had the wrong shoes for such weather, but by being prudent and drying them each time he returned to the fire, he was still able to fish in Native Lake. He was mindful of the wet rocks and stood with his legs angled on the last two and cast a series of flies into the blizzard. It was mesmerizing watching the snow in its vast echelons disappear into the dark water, and he had the rich, high feeling that comes from being alone in real places. He caught no fish on his flies.

He did, however, take several cutthroat trout on his smallest Mepps spinners, something they could see. These fish he fried slowly in his old pan with olive oil and a little tarragon, and he ate them with his fingers right out of the pan as snow still fell. At night he banked the fire with larger logs, and in the morning snow would cover them all but one small space where smoke would still be working its way into the cold new day.

He fished every year of his life, camping alone or with a partner, because, he said, it pinned everything else in his life
in place. He came home tight with the regimen of sleeping on the ground and eating fish, and with a new effulgent appreciation for his house, the roof, the way the doors worked, chairs.

The year of the mistake he’d gone into the mountains under special pressure. Andrew, his fourteen-year-old son, had run away that spring and then come back, and then run off again. It had been a poisonous season of recrimination and fear. He had been a drummer in the school marching band, and then he was just gone and they did not know where.

In twelve years this had been the first snow, and though he wasn’t fully unprepared, it vexed him. He wished he had his gaiters. He ate cutthroat trout for three days, drank coffee, and on the fourth day, he made his mistake. In the low, even snow light, which was the same at nine
A.M
. as it was in mid-afternoon, he decided that he could no longer wait out the snow. Even if it stopped, it would be a week melting in the best of Indian summers. He would hike down halfway to the highway, seven miles, camp there overnight, and then continue down another seven to the highway where the bus had let him off.

He waited and waited, and then for some reason he broke camp late in the fourth day. He should have waited for morning, but he could not. When he pulled the tent and packed it, the little rectangle under it was green as summer, the grass and wildflowers pressed and vivid there like a window onto another world.

He knew he’d made the mistake immediately because of the difficulty locating and keeping the trail. There were yellow blazes hacked into trees at the proper intervals, but the pack trail was impossible to see in the two-foot snow. The rocks tripped him, and he learned in the first mile to simply
fall when he stepped on the side of the angled rocks rather than struggle for balance. Game trails confused him and many times he’d follow an elk path and then fifty yards later come face-to-face with a tree the animal would have walked under; he’d have to backtrack in the growing gloom to locate the proper path. He was wet, but moving and warm. When dark took the sky, the snow persisted. He used his flashlight to find the marked trees.

As he had told the story to the woman in the Italian restaurant last February, it lived in him, each word, and he evoked the dark and the night and the snow. He told the next part with complete precision, how he’d followed the trail, breathing into the new night, and suddenly plunged into the huge open meadow. He had forgotten about it. The expanse glowed at him, offering no marker; the trail was lost. He walked into the snow field for some reason. Was he looking for a clue? He moved slowly now, regretting having left the trees, tramping through the powdered snow. A moment later he came to a rivulet he seemed to remember, the water amber and clear, and he walked right into it and watched the water flow over his boots. He was now somebody else, somebody he was curious about. It was a beautiful night, the snow now tiny dots still wandering, floating all around the man. Habit, he supposed, not a decision, but habit made him walk on into the snow toward the distant trees. He was trying to take care. He looked at his watch, which he was trained to do when confused or lost, but a moment later he couldn’t remember what it had said. He looked again, wiping the crystal with his gloved first finger. He swore at the instrument and walked on, each step a kick into the deep drifts, listening to himself cursing. He fell frequently on the uneven ground, and the falling filled his collar with snow and then his ear. Sometimes he’d stay down; he wasn’t cold anymore.

He didn’t remember getting up, but he was up and in the woods, his pack off, breaking dead limbs from trees, and he was on his knees with his fire kit, starting a fire with a little snarl of twigs, a fire that he nursed into the biggest fire he’d had all week.

As the fire grew in his story, the woman’s expression, which was already serious in the restaurant candlelight, grew grave, her eyes on his face, glistening.

His fire worked its way down through the snow to the green forest floor and grew out in a dry circle. He pulled a downed limb over and hung his wet clothing on it piece by piece until he was standing on his towel before the vigorous fire naked, the dots of snow burning on his shoulders. He made some soup and set up his tent while his clothes dried. Hunkered down in the circle of warmth he had created, sipping the steaming tomato soup, he felt as alive as he ever had.

It was about one minute later a dog burst into the bright ring, throwing a splash of snow before putting his iced muzzle onto his paws on the only patch of green grass in this whole world. The dog eyed the naked man. There had been no noise in the arrival, and Donner was sure at first that a coyote had made a mistake, but he stood his ground. When he saw what it was, he said, “Hello, boy,” and his voice sounded strange. Donner found the tags and collar frozen, and by the time he’d separated them and read
Scout,
and a Wyoming phone number, he heard a deep voice call from the dark, “Hello, the camp!” When Rusty Patrick stamped into the light, he looked at Donner and pulled his snow-crusted glove off to shake hands. “Well, here’s Adam. Is Eve in the tent?”

Donner pulled on his cotton pajarna bottoms, which he always took camping. This last week when he erected their camp clothesline and hung up the dish towel, he had also pinned the pajamas to the line and the woman had taken the
fabric in her hand and Donner could see her remembering the story.

But in the Italian restaurant last February, when she first heard about the snow camp, the ring of snow, the way it melted, she said, “I want that. I want to have that.”

The steaks in the Jim Bridger were big, an end over each side of the huge paper plates, and the baked potatoes were monstrous. The only real silverware was the three-tined fork Kay brought them and pocketknives. It was a trademark of the Bridger to give pocketknives for steaks. They were thick black Forest Master knives with three blades, but the nameplate on each read
Bridger Club
. l he woman loved this, and though she didn’t look comfortable with the pocketknife, she went at the food with an energy and delectation that Donner envied.

All night long they’d shared the fun of the place, diners getting up and throwing their plates into the fireplace and toasting, “Happy New Year!”

“They’re not doing any dishes the last night of the year,” Donner had told her.

When she talked now, her mouth was full, chewing, smiling, and Donner knew he had done it double. She was a woman who didn’t talk with her mouth full, ever. She was in love and it was his doing. When Kay passed with the bottle, the woman held out her glass for more champagne, and Donner could see her beam. She was beaming.

A three-piece band was setting up in the corner, wiring the keyboard, as Donner and the woman finished their dinner.

“Are you going to speak to him?” she asked Donner. “Do I get to meet Rusty Patrick?”

The second thing Rusty Patrick had said to Donner a year ago in the snow camp was, “I’ve had a pretty weird month all
around.” He worked a black revolver from his jacket pocket and showed it to Donner. There were frost starts in the bluing. Rusty hefted the gun and then lobbed it out over the fire into the snow. “I was dead for a while, but I guess I’m back. Do you know how fucking strange it was to see your fire? I came out of the trees and there’s this fire. Come on. Whose idea is that?”

After he’d had a cup of soup, he added, “But we’re still in plenty of trouble here.” His Levi’s were frozen in stiff sheets and his boot laces were welded with ice. He kicked and beat at his clothing to peel it off, hanging it to dry. He’d been out to climb Mount Warren and had hit it way too light. Both of his little toes were patched white with crystal frostbite, but he stood by the fire in his damp long underwear and toasted the falling snow with his coffee cup. “People in Sun Valley pay a thousand dollars a day for shit like this.”

Donner did not mention the gun when he told the story, and he did not tell the woman or anyone else what happened the night he met Rusty Patrick in the snow camp. As the snow continued, they had another cup of coffee with a lick of whiskey in it, and they decided to walk out in the morning. With two of them, they reasoned, they could take turns breaking trail. They were above eleven thousand feet, and they were still ten miles from the road. Donner had set his tent on the snow, not bothering to kick a clearing for it, and none of the tree wells were large enough for the little two-man spring tent.