Catch & Release (16 page)

We're thirty minutes outside of Butte before Odd reaches into the kangaroo pocket on his hoodie and pulls out a pint of whiskey.

“During Prohibition,” says Odd in his history-narrator voice, “Butte moonshiners sold their liquor in small bottles like this labeled as furniture polish.” Then he drops the voice, “Let's get polished, Polly. Let's get polished.”

I reach out and take the bottle from his hand. A car passes. There is a little girl in the backseat. She waves a naked doll at us and sticks out her tongue.

“I think maybe we should wait on the getting polished until later, maybe,” I say. What-to-do-what-to-do-whatto-do to distract him? “I'm going on a trip to Albuquerque, and I'm taking my alcohol,” I say.

“No. You're going to Bonner and you're taking your booze. Hey! That's it. That's what you should do, Polly. Write a book for kids. You know, ‘A is for . . .'”

“Not alcohol. That's never going to fly. I'll tell you that.”

“Well, monsters, Polly! The little boogers would love a book about monsters.”

I'm not so sure about the little boogers' parents, but the distraction is working. I put the bottle into the Caddie's glove box and say, “A is for . . .”

“Aliens!” says Odd. “Aliens are great.”

 

“A is for Aliens

From dark outer space.

They come here to probe you

And laugh in your face.”

 

“That's it! That's it! Do another one,” says Odd.

“OK, let me think. It isn't easy to be all rhymey.

 

“B is for Bugs

Of gigantic size.

Their blood is called ichor.

Their mouthparts have eyes.”

 

“Bug blood is called ‘icky'? I'm disappointed. Meh,” says Odd.

“Not ‘icky,'
ichor
, i-c-h-o-r. Bug blood is called ichor. It's, like, poisonous, oozy stuff that comes out of festering wounds or giant bugs.”

“Alrighty then. Ichor. What's C for?”

C is for Cyclops, the one-eyed monster. I'm not ready to tell the truth. I'm not ready for C.

“What's C for?” repeats Odd, “Blowing shit up! Highly explosive! C4!” He thinks this is hilarious.

We drive. I think. I take an easy way out.

 

“C is for Creatures

There's plenty of those

That live underwater

And have webby toes.”

 

“Again, not your best work. Is D going to be for Dracula?”

“No, Odd, no D for Dracula. No V for Vampire. No W for Wampyre. No W for Werewolf, either. You know how I feel about humany monsters. Just give me a minute, I'll think what D is for.”

We cruise by a sign, Deerlodge. D is for Deerlodge, home of Montana State Prison, but that doesn't work. Another sign warns about picking up hitchhikers, the prison again. It's going to be dark in a couple of hours. We can find a place to camp, and I can give the bottle to Odd and he can self-medicate himself to sleep.

 

“D is for darkness

Where monsters might hide,

But they're out in the daylight,

Hitching a ride.”

 

“I thought you said no humany monsters. Murderous hitchhikers are pretty humany.”

“That's not what I was thinking about,” I lie, because that
was
where the thought started, but I'm also telling the truth, because the thought is changing, right now, in my head. “I was thinking about this parasite that infects mice and makes them find cats attractive—because the parasite needs to be in a cat to reproduce. So this parasite moves up into the brain of the mouse and screws around with its brain chemistry and makes it love the smell of cats. So it's like a murderous hitchhiker . . .”

“Bullshit,” says Odd. “You were talking about homicidal hitchhikers.”

“No. The parasite thing is for real. My dad knows about it because he's a vet. My mom knows about it too. It's another reason we don't have a cat. The parasite doesn't just move from the mouse to the cat, it moves from the cats into another host—like humans. That's why pregnant women shouldn't clean cat boxes. It can cause miscarriages and brain damage. Sometimes it doesn't seem like there is anything wrong and the baby grows up just fine until it's an adult. Then the person just goes blind.”

“Polly, you have a dark, dark little mind,” says Odd, and he reaches for the radio.

 

That parasite is pretty disturbing. A thing that rides in your brain and steers you right into danger, because that's what it needs. And what you need doesn't matter, not even to you. You just go along with the parasite's plan.

 

God gets a lot of airtime on the radio. More than I thought. Way more.

“. . . unless you accept the talking snake and the burning bush! Examine your heart! Look into your heart! Is there doubt there? Doubt is an offense . . .” says the radio. But Odd's not in the mood for talking snakes. He turns it off in midsentence.

“Maybe we don't need jobs. Maybe we should start a religion. People are godaholics. We could sell god on the radio,” says Odd.

“There's already people selling god on the radio.”

“That just proves it works. We just have to make sure that we offer new and improved product.”

“Like what?”

“Well, it doesn't have to be totally new. Just different. My Norwegian ancestors had a one-eyed god. What you got?”

“My ancestors believed in magical talking trout.”

“Well, there it is,” says Odd. “The god is a one-eyed trout.”

“But what's in it for the customer? What did that one-eyed god thingy do?”

“All the usual god stuff: made shit up, lived in the sky, stole things, wandered around. How about the trout?”

“It mostly inspired poetry.”

“Crap. One-eyed god did that too. What's with the poetry thing? I think we need to leave that part out. Who is going to worship that? Seriously. There is no money in poetry. The one-eyed trout doesn't give a shit about poetry.”

“Does it live in the sky?”

“Well, duh! Ever see a rainbow?”

“This could actually work. I mean, a rainbow is pretty convincing.”

“But it is also a cutthroat, because of the sacrifice. There's always sacrifice. And it's a golden too. That's why they need to send us the money. ”

“And if they don't?”

“That sacrifice thing goes both ways. It's an eye for an eye. In a game like that you don't want to piss off the one-eyed god.”

“It would be a mighty, mighty god,” I say, “And the name of that god . . .”

“. . . Troutzilla!” We say it together because we both know it.

A car passes. It has a Jesus-fish sticker on the back.

“Look,” says Odd. “We already have converts.”

 

We are off the interstate and driving up the Blackfoot. It's rising twilight by the time we come to a campground and pull off the road. When I open the door, I can hear the sound of the river. There's a cinder-block toilet a little way beyond some trees. There is a picnic table and a fire pit with a grill.

The door on the toilet is heavy and the little room behind it is full of flies. A sign on the wall says, “NO TRASH in the TOILET! PLEASE!!! KEEP lid CLOSED!” The lid is wide open. Nobody plays by the rules. When I'm done, I use the toe of my shoe to close the lid. Not that it matters. The flies don't even notice.

 

Odd is sitting on the table with the bottle he swiped in Butte in his hand. The plastic milk crate is beside him. The chocolate is gone. The chips and salsa and beans and cheese—all gone. The only thing in the Lucky Charms box is Odd's prescription. We have half a roll of Nekko wafers we found in the glove box, a mushy banana, and a can of Crisco. I'm not sure there's any reason to get a fire started in the grill pit. The best plan may just be to drink myself to sleep. Odd seems to have worked that out already. The vodka flask and the pint of whiskey are on the table, too. It's going to be a three-course meal—four if we eat some Nekkos.

“Why'd you swipe this, Odd?” I ask when he hands me the flask.

“No reason. Just wung it,” he says.

“You just wanted it?”

“Naw. I wung it. Wing, wang, wung it. I just wung it.”

I open the Crisco and scoop some up with a gray Nekko. Licorice grease. It's what's for dinner.

 

I check my phone. No bars here. The canyon is steep and there's nothing to do about it. These things happen.