Catch & Release (15 page)

“If you look to your right at the crest of the mountains you will see Our Lady of the Rockies right up there,” says Odd. He sounds like a narrator on the History Channel or a teacher winding up to talk about a personal obsession.

It isn't obvious what I'm supposed to see. The naked rocks gouge out through the trees . . . and there might be something up there. The color is different.

“She's taller than the Statue of Liberty,” says Odd.

I've never seen the Statue of Liberty for real. It gives the impression of bigness in pictures, but from here this giant lady looks like a large grain of rice.

“Butte,” says Odd, continuing his voice-over, “The Mining City. A mile high and a mile deep and all on the level. The richest hill on earth.”

“A mile high and a mile deep—all on the level? What does that even mean?” I don't expect an answer. Little kids do it all the time. They just repeat stuff they think they hear. Odd's just like a little girl in the dress-up corner of the Kid-O-Korral singing into a hairbrush microphone, “There's a pair of flying eyes and a set of bees.”

“Almost a mile above sea level, that's your mile high. The copper mines went down almost a mile deep into the mountain. And ‘level'—that's a word play. There was levels in the mines, but it's also saying you can trust Butte. What you see is what you get,” says Odd.

We are surrounded by abandoned buildings, places for rent, mansions turned into bed-and-breakfasts, and rickety-looking black towers growing into the sky from weedy empty places.

“Why do you know so much about Butte?” I ask.

“Don't we all? Didn't you take Montana History?”

“No, Odd. I took AP History. Butte didn't come up much.”

“So you didn't get to go on the field trip?”

“No field trip to Butte.”

“Sucks to be you. The field trip was great. Saw the underground speakeasies, the brothels, Evel Knievel's jail cell. We went to Helena too. I met the governor's dog.”

“Didn't do that either. Never met the governor's dog. But I'm pretty sure that isn't on the AP test.”

“The stuff on the test is boring. The governor's dog is cool. And if you're friends with a guy's dog, you are friends with the guy.”

“Is the governor friends with Penny?”

“Who?”

“Your dog, Penny. Is she, like, a political dog.”

“Oh. Yeah. Right. The Dog. Penny. She isn't, like, really
my
dog.”

“Whose dog is she?”

“I just got her out of the pound the day we left.”

“You adopted a dog and then dumped it the same day?”

“Well, it's not like I shaved it and spray-painted it blue and threw it in a Dumpster. It's with your mom. It's fine.”

“My mom doesn't even
like
dogs.”

“Huh. Everybody likes dogs. She can always take it to the pound.”

“She isn't going to take it to the pound because she thinks it is
your
dog.”

“Alrighty then. I'll have to get that cleared up when we get back.”

 

Butte. Welcome to Butte. It's not like Butte doesn't make an effort to be good and pretty and sweet. There are flower beds shaped like Celtic knots. If the petunias are getting beat flat at the moment by the wind blowing grit around in the parking lot, that's not Butte's fault. She is totally doing her best. Look, petunias! But we didn't come here to see petunias. We came to see Butte's most remarkable feature, a monstrous, oozing gouge in the dirt. We came here to see the World Famous Berkeley Pit.

Welcome to Berkeley Pit. It's not just an environmental disaster zone; it's a tourist trap.

The gusts of wind in the parking lot are almost stronger than my legs. I am one delicate, ugly flower. I'm glad to duck into the tunnel that leads to the world-famous hole in the ground, but the wind is even stronger inside. The tunnel must focus it like a funnel. The walls are yellow; at least they look yellow in the fluorescent light.

“This would make a great bomb shelter,” says Odd.

Odd is wrong, again. And this time he is so obviously wrong I think it's not even worth mentioning. There are no doors on this tunnel, and the nearest water is poison even without radioactive fallout.

Odd spins around and faces me, “Ka-Chakk.” He loads an invisible shotgun. “Ka-Bloo!”

I'm used to being an imaginary gunshot victim. It's an occupational hazard. Every day was the Shoot-Out at the Kid-O-Korral. Bananas are guns. Fingers are guns. Naked Barbie dolls bent in the middle so the legs are the barrel: guns. Even guns are guns. But right now the real gun is in the bottom of my sleeping bag in a crusty sock. I'm invincible.

“This would be great place to hide out,” says Odd, then he turns and takes the last few steps out into the sunlight at the other end of the tunnel.

It wouldn't be a good place for a standoff for the same reasons it wouldn't be a great bomb shelter. But I've finally figured out my situation. I'm babysitting. Only I won't get paid. And this particular toddler is bigger than average. Babysitting. It is my damn depressing destiny I guess.

We're alone on the platform at the moment. I'm glad about that. I go and stand at the right edge. If anyone else comes, I'll look normal at first. My ruined side will be observed only by snarls of barbed wire and the hillside made of mine waste. There isn't even any grass on that hill. It is deader than the moon.

“This would be a great place to make a movie,” says Odd. “Look at that water.”

The water in the pit looks purple and dark in this light. The wind has roughed it up so much it doesn't even shine.

“Something would come up out of that water, out of that pit—” Odd continues.

“That water is poisonous acid laced with heavy metals,” I say.

“That's why it would be great. You know, monsters like that shit.”

He has a point. During my extended study of monster movies, there were plenty where the key was toxic
something
.

“Yeah, but how would anything even get in there?”

“Maybe somebody gets murdered and the body gets thrown in,” Odd says

I lean over the rail. “It would be hard to get a body all the way in. They've got chain link and barbed wire. It's not a straight drop. And humans make lame-ass monsters anyway. They are always sort of remembering being human and being all tortured about being monsters. ‘I don't
want to
drink blood. I don't
want to
howl at the moon.' Bunch of whiners. Except for zombies. Zombies have no memories as far as I can tell.”

“Well, OK, not human.” A raven flew past, on cue. “And not a raven,” says Odd.

“Why not?”

“Not fierce enough,” says Odd. “I mean, they peck out eyes, but . . . meh. An eagle—nope, I got it. Totally got it. An osprey.”

“Well, that's fiercer, but how would it end up in the water? The only reason would be if it saw a fish. It isn't going to see a fish. Not in that.”

“An osprey,” says Odd, “Is
carrying
a fish, a rainbow trout, and it drops it in there.”

“So then we have a dead fish in a lake full of acid. I think the story ends with it dissolving.”

“No. Like, a thunderstorm comes up.”

And it does look like there is a storm coming; dark sky is clotting up behind the mountains to the east.

“Wham! Lightning hits the giant Mary statue up there. And there is a shot where she explodes. Then lightning hits the water in the pit and Zap! The fish is alive, baby. It's alive! Shocked alive! Like Frankenstein, but it's
FrankenTrout
!

“There's already a movie called
Frankenfish
. And what's so scary about a zombie trout? It's kind of stuck down there. It needs to be bigger. But, hey, the electricity could do that too. You see the cells dividing really, really fast, and then, the next shot, the fish is the size of something. . .something. . .something huge.” I look at Odd. He totally gets it. He appreciates my genius.

“It's Troutzilla! And it jumps up out of the water,” says Odd, waving his arm in an arc like a rainbow, “and SPLOOSH!”

“Acid splashes fuckin' everywhere!” I yell.

At that moment a couple of little kids scamper out of the tunnel and onto the platform. They look at me. They scamper back to the door of the tunnel, back to their mom. She lasers a look at me. I'm supposed to know better. I'm not supposed to speak like that in public. She looks away. I'm not supposed to look like that in public, either.

The happy family moves over to the other side of the platform. The mom is teaching her kids how to ignore bad people, bad people like me. I head back to the gritty parking lot. I can hear Odd's slightly limping footsteps behind me in the tunnel.

 

Odd pulls into a gas station-liquor store. There are plenty of places that will sell you a gallon of milk and a gallon of gas. There are plenty of places where you can fill up the tank and buy beer by the case. It's a little unusual though, a place with gas and shelf after shelf of vodka and tequila. I suppose an argument could be made that it is a very bad idea, but the place seems to be doing OK.

“Hey, Polly, get us some chocolate,” says Odd. I'd rather just run the card through the machine. If I buy candy I have to go in. This isn't a freaking candy store, but the gas is pumped. I get my hat and the pink glasses of relatively less horror and go inside.

Odd comes in a couple of seconds later. He's got his pant leg rolled up so his robot leg is exposed. He heads for the bathroom, but on his way he stumbles, falls against a rack full of chips and snacks, and takes it down with him. In the process he knocks bottles down, off the shelf, thunking on the floor. Most of them just roll, but one of them shatters.

“Oh, shit, man, I'm sorry,” says Odd, and he's scrambling, crawling, trying to put bottles back on the shelves. In the process, he's makes a bigger mess. His robot leg flails around and crunches bags of chips. He gets the rack upright, but then it tips onto a different shelf and more bottles go down. Every time he sets one bottle up, three fall down.

The guy behind the counter moves fast. My card, receipt, and candy bar are in my hand and the clerk is beside Odd faster than I could be.

“You OK? Look, don't worry about it. I'll get it squared away. You sure you're OK? You didn't get cut?”

“I'm sorry,” says Odd again.

“Hey, just as long as you're OK.”

“I'll get out of your way,” says Odd, and he heads for the door. Somebody comes from the back with a bucket and a broom.

“Thanks,” I say, and walk out the door.

Odd is waiting like nothing happened. If he needed to use the bathroom, he forgot about it. I guess he just needed an attention fix.

 

I send a message to my dad, “All good.”

I delete twenty-three messages from my mom.