High Country : A Novel (29 page)

And then that fall it happened. Not in the mountains, where you can drop off a cliff or run into a grizzly at any moment, but in Missoula, where there aren’t those dangers. Ty never was sure he had the story straight, but he never talked about it as anything but an accident. That much he could do for Willie.

He’d heard from Beth what happened down at The Bar of Justice. It was so out of keeping with anything she would make up that he knew it had to be true, or close to true—as true as Beth could see it.

There had been a lot to put away after the passes closed, the season so busy Ty had to buy what was left after a packer out of Ovando rolled his string and cashed in. That got them through the season, but it all needed rerigging, which kept Buck busy until Angie left to tend to her mother in the Whitefish hospital. That’s when Buck moved into town to be with the kids, doing some work for Horace but mostly rattling around as lonely as an old bear.

“And just about as touchy,” Beth told Ty after the fight. “At least that’s the way he got when he saw Bernard. The man had never come in here once, but he come in like he owned the place, drunk as his Forest Service buddies and mean enough to start a war.”

Ty pieced it together. Bob Ring’s retirement was a big one. Forty years in the Forest Service meant a lot to all of them; Bob Ring did too. They liked to have him limp into one of their stations and cheer everyone up. He knew the packers, and he knew the rules, and he had a way of bringing them together so no one got rubbed the wrong way. Except Bernard now and then. Bernard was probably the hardest working ranger in the Forest Service, and the least bendable too.

Bob Ring had tried to put a little more bend in him at the goingaway party the men gave him, saying that he was likely to be the last of an old school of rangers and Bernard was likely to be the first of a new one, that if he could leave a little of the old around it might make life a lot easier for the new.

The rest of them picked up on that, toasting Bob Ring and Bernard with such good humor they became as drunk on what was said as on what they drank. And they drank plenty, Bob Ring thinking he could sleep his off on the train to San Francisco, Bernard hardly thinking, just happy to be appreciated. Happy at first, that is, before he felt the numbness come over him. But the toasts went on, Bernard’s numbness disappearing into a haze of fellowship and wild promises as they sent Ring on his way, waving at the train before going off to the Elkhorn for more.

It was there, Ty figured, that they hit on the idea of taking Bernard to The Bar of Justice, thinking the drinking had done him so much good they might as well take him the whole way and do him even better.

They didn’t know that Buck would be there, lonely and sober. They didn’t know what went on deep in Bernard either—things Bernard couldn’t see himself. They just knew that it was fun, that they were laughing, that they had Bernard swearing and vowing crazy things and that for once he wasn’t looking disgusted when they mentioned The Bar of Justice.

Buck was having a beer and talking with Beth when they came in, rowdy and swearing and full of liquor. Beth didn’t like it from the outset, which made Buck try to calm things down.

“You boys better settle,” he said, “or Leonard’ll read you the riot act.” A Sun River ranger wasn’t too drunk to understand the warning.
“If you’ll hold your horses,” he told them, “I’ll buy a round.” That quieted everyone but Bernard.
“I see you’re down here where you belong,” Bernard said to Buck. And the way he said it wasn’t so much drunk as mean.
“You come down here more often, you might improve too.” Buck seemed to enjoy how angry Bernard was getting.
“I got no need to come down here,” Bernard said. And then it just popped out of him, as though it had been waiting there to be challenged.
“I’m marryin’ Wilma Ring.”
Hearing something like that about Bob Ring’s pretty daughter quieted them all. Buck’s voice broke through, nothing amused in it now.
“You asshole.You couldn’t fuck Willie with Ty’s cock.”
Bernard came at Buck so fiercely his own momentum did most of the damage. But the moment Buck landed the blow, he knew he couldn’t have done better.
“Shit.” The Sun River ranger looked at Bernard, sprawled across a collapsed table, blood flowing from his nose. “No need. He would have fallen if you’d stepped aside.”
“I wanted to,” Buck said. “It done me good.”
Leonard came in, his big assistant looking ugly while Leonard shooed them out the backdoor, helping the last two pick Bernard up and giving them a rag to sop up the blood. “And good riddance.” He looked at Buck. “You too. You’re trouble drunk or sober. Oughta make you and the ranger boy pay for the fuckin’ table too. It ain’t fixable.”
“No need to hit him like that, Buck.” Beth was mopping at the bar. “Drunk as he was.” She threw the rag at him. “Quit smilin’ and get the hell out. If they come lookin’, they ain’t gonna find you here.”

Ty had heard the first speeches at Ring’s party before he went up to the university to join Willie for the lecture about Lewis and Clark. He was always impressed by how much they’d done, knowing so little about what was ahead. His guess was that in the early days few could see very far ahead, and even when they got to where they could, they were probably so far along the road that got them there it was too late to turn back.

He talked with Willie about that, eating ice cream after the talk, saying he guessed everyone’s life was like that—a little.
“Only some people start out on rockier roads than others,” Willie said. “Like one of those trails you use that no one else can find.”
“I just steer clear of your ranger friends. They’re gettin’ so they want to do all your seein’ ahead for you.”
“I think you want to steer clear of everyone,” Willie said. “Angie told me you’ve got little trails in there a goat couldn’t find.”
“I just go where the mountains let me,” Ty said. He enjoyed the way she mocked him, pointing her spoon at him. “Let them do the choosing.”

Ty was getting into his pickup to start the long drive back when a sheriff’s car pulled alongside.
“Your buddy got himself into a scrape tonight,” the officer said.
“Buck? Where?” Ty knew how restless Buck had been and what trouble he could get into if he put his mind to it.
“Down there,” the officer said. “I’m not supposed to know.”
That’s when Ty went to see Beth, learning all he could before going off to look for Buck. But Buck wasn’t in any of his usual places, and hadn’t been—though most everyone knew something had happened.
Ty finally found him asleep at home, not nearly as worried as everyone else seemed to be. He got up and had a beer with Ty.
“Caught him right, Ty. Don’t think you—or Fenton—could of done better.” He took a long pull at his beer. “Sure made me feel good.”
“No need to hit a drunk. Doesn’t prove a thing.”
“He
was
right drunk,” Buck said. “Nice to have two good things happen to Bernard on the same night.”
Ty slept there that night. In the morning he walked over to see Willie, buying her a paper on the way and hoping he could talk her into one of her Sunday breakfasts before he headed back for the pack station.
It was all over when he got there. And not long ago from what he could tell. She didn’t answer his knock. He went in to find her collapsed on the floor in her own vomit. When she saw him she retched again, nothing left to come up now—just the retching, the fighting for air.
He lifted her onto a kitchen chair, wiped the vomit from her face, her blouse, found a towel and mopped at the floor. She tried to speak but couldn’t. He brought her water, wiped at her face again. Waited.
It came slowly. But he got it. Bernard had been there, his face bruised and swollen, wanting her to marry him. She’d laughed, kidded him. Told him not to be silly. It was a beautiful day. He should enjoy it.
Then he’d left. And she’d heard it. Gone out. Seen it. She reached out to hold Ty, her face tortured.
Ty cleaned her. Took off the soaked blouse and put her in one of Bob Ring’s old ones. Mopped the floor and wiped the cabinets. Then he went out.
Bernard’s truck was backed into the drive. He could see it before he got there—hair and bone, the orange-red of drying blood smeared across the rear window. Bernard’s body was over the steering wheel. His hand was under the collapsed torso, the Colt still in it.
Ty went back in.
“It wasn’t that,” he said. “He was cleaning it. It was an accident.”
He went to the phone and called. “There’s been an accident,” he told them. “ Yo u’d better come.”
Then he took a bucket of water and more towels and went out.
He’d cleaned most of it when they arrived. One of them the same one who’d told him about Buck the night before. They made him stop, told him he shouldn’t have started. They asked Willie questions, but it was no good. They had to turn back to him.
“He told her he was going to clean it,” Ty said. “I got here just after.” Again they told him he shouldn’t have touched anything, made him sit while they checked, talked with Buck, went to the corner store where he’d bought the paper.
More of them came, some from the Forest Service. A doctor from the Catholic hospital gave something to Willie. Ty covered her, let her sleep as they turned to him again, asked more, verifying things all over again.
“Checks out,” the sheriff finally told him. “No thanks to you. And you aren’t foolin’ anyone.” Bernard’s body was under a sheet now. “The Forest Service boys want it that way too. No skin off my ass. You’re the ones got to live with it.”

“Don’t leave,” Willie said, waking. “Stay with me.”
“I will,” Ty said. “I will.”
He made her bacon and eggs, everything on end now. Ty cooking. A

She wouldn’t go to bed, so he sat with her on the couch, held her through the night. Two days later he drove her out to the pack station, not wanting to leave her and having a horse to doctor. He gave her Fenton and Cody Jo’s room, but in the night she came to him.

“Hold me, Ty,” she said. “I . . . it keeps coming back.” She got in with him and he held her, thinking how different it had been with Cody Jo.

“Will you take care of me?” She sat up, looking at him. “Keep me from thinking this way?”
“Yes.You know I will.”
She didn’t feel safe to leave him until Bob Ring came back from San

Francisco. But by then everything was pretty much decided. Bob Ring took the news calmly enough, more surprised that Ty would go off to listen to a priest than he was that Ty was getting married. He was sure any man would be lucky to marry his Wilma. He still felt that way, fragile as she was after what Bernard did.

Ty left everything up to the priest—and Willie, acting on his own only to get Buck to stand up for him, Jasper and Gus to help people get settled in the little Catholic chapel on the last day of the year. The ceremony was somber, but everyone was taken by how lovely and serious the bride was, how acceptable the lean packer, wearing a suit Cody Jo had bought for Fenton years before.

There was a reception, that somber too until the gin Dan Murphy and Buck had put in the vestry punch began to take hold.
After he’d had some of it, Bob Ring took Ty aside.
“She’s as good a person as there is, Ty.” Bob Ring watched him. “And she was always the happiest. This thing will pass.” He looked across the room at Wilma as she said what she had to say to each guest, looking lovely and pale.
“I know.” Ty was not sure he knew at all, not sure of anything since that long day with the police. “It will.”
“Well,” Bob Ring held up his glass to Ty, “here’s to the two of you. I hope you’re married to her—not to those goddamned mountains.”

If loving Ty and keeping busy could have driven away her demons, Willie would have shaken them in a few weeks. But they hung on. Ty would watch a cloud cross her face and know she needed touching, holding. Not that that was all she wanted. He was surprised by how naturally she took to lovemaking—from the start. Her church certainly hadn’t driven that from her.

They drove to Helena for their honeymoon, if four days in a blizzard can be called a honeymoon. Willie didn’t complain. She made the big room their own, discovering room service, exploring Ty’s long body— her fingers tracing his roped muscles, the deep wound high on his thigh.

On the third day he found her looking out at the swirling snow, hugging herself into her robe as that lost look came over her. He eased her away, out through the storm to visit the capital building, look at the Russell mural, explore the cavernous rooms. Later, with coffee, she was Willie again, teasing him, her eyes smoky.

“Was I worth waiting for?” She smiled as Ty tried to recover himself. “My father told me I would be.” She moved a finger across his chest, studied his face. “Is this what he had in mind?”

But in his heart Ty suspected he had Bob Ring to thank for Willie. That her father had somehow freed her for him, made her unafraid of the rough edges Ty couldn’t hide. Maybe it came from how comfortable Ring was with himself. Maybe it came from his giving her a world balanced and safe. And maybe it came from her having no mother to shade that world with darkness, the unknown. That had to count too. Willie hardly ever mentioned her mother, taken from her so long ago—the woman who might have warned her that someone like Bernard could turn her world on end.

But that mother might also have kept Willie from being so complete right here in his arms. And he was taken by how complete this Willie was. If at first he hadn’t loved her the way he’d loved Cody Jo, he found himself loving her even more as their winter days opened into spring. He loved her candor and optimism, the way she could bring light into the darkest corners. Which is why he would pale when he saw her thinking of Bernard: what she could have done to hold that off, what she might have done to bring it on.

That first year Bob Ring had a lot of traveling to do. Willie and Ty alternated between his house in town and the big house at the pack station. It gave Willie a chance to do what she did more easily than anyone Ty had ever known: provide order and clarity and a generous pace to life. She rehung pictures and moved furniture and organized drawers. She scoured the kitchens, checking things off one list as she added to the next. She straightened out Ty’s affairs too, paying the feed stores and suppliers and reviewing the packing accounts. A few more good seasons, she told him, and he would be sitting at a desk sending others out to pack. He enjoyed watching her so much it hardly troubled him. He couldn’t imagine owning the pack station anyway.

At least he couldn’t until Willie took him to the banker and he learned Cody Jo had already deeded half of it to him.
“You have equity now,” the banker said. He was not much older than Ty, but so careful and proper the two seemed from different worlds. “You could borrow against it or just discharge the debt.” He shuffled the papers. “I believe that’s what Mrs. Holliwell would prefer.”
That name jarred Ty back to life. “I ...I’d just like to make sure I help Cody Jo’s income.”
“Mrs. Holliwell understands that. Getting it free of debt is her priority too. Then we’ll discuss the distribution of profits.”
“She wants you to have it, Ty,” Willie said. “It makes sense. It could mean more money for her. In the long run.”
“If you have more years like this, it won’t be a very long wait. Twenty percent of the debt paid off.” The banker looked at Ty approvingly, his face so smooth he looked as if he’d shaved minutes before their meeting.
“Is it true that you are the best packer from here to Canada?” he asked suddenly, unsettling Ty.
“Oh, much farther than that,” Willie said, smiling. “I’d say on up into Alaska.” She seemed so delighted the banker had a hard time looking back at Ty.
“Could you take some of us into those mountains? I’ve heard stories about pack trips. We all ride. We wouldn’t be much trouble.”
“Well.” Ty tried to ignore the smile Willie was giving him. “That’s something to think about.”
“We’ll keep working on the debt.” Willie turned her warmth back on the banker. “We do want to pay it all off.”
“ Ye s.” The banker was a little undone by the awkward packer, how pleased the pretty wife seemed. “That’s the smart thing.”

It was a happy time for them. Ty surrendered to how well Willie did things: supper each night at dusk, town each Sunday for her church and a dinner with her father. She even scheduled a few minutes each morning, right after breakfast, for kissing.

“Just kissing,” she would tell him. “Practicing up for the night.” And if it went too far, if they wound up on the couch or back in bed or someplace that surprised them both, she would say “Oh, dear! We’ll have to abstain tonight.” But by night it would be different. “It won’t hurt,” she would say. “This once.We’ve been so good. Let’s have a little reward.”

Buck was around a lot that winter, Angie helping out at Murphy’s store or in town with the children, the last of them almost through high school now. Once Willie got blue so suddenly she went out to the saddle shop where Buck and Ty were working. Ty saw the look on her face and took her in his arms right there, talked to her until it went away and she began to smile, kidding Buck about staring at them.

“You can just turn your back. Perfectly normal for newlyweds.” She kissed Ty again and gave Buck a little hug. “Bet you were even worse with Angie.” She headed out the door but poked her head back in, wagging a finger at Buck. “Probably had no restraint at all.”

“Hell.” Buck sighed, watching the door close behind her. “Ever tell you about Pa givin’ me that sack of jelly beans when I married?”
“For the sugar?” Ty examined the leather he was about to cut.
“Nope. Just told me for that first year ever’ time we made some love I was to take one out and put it in a jar.”
“Did Angie know?”
“Nope. But I damn near emptied that sack.”
“Then what?” Ty saw Buck wanted to make a point.
“After a year I was to take a bean
out
of that jar after each time.” “Cause now you needed the sugar?”
“Not to eat. Just to take out. And I’m beginnin’ to think Pa’s right.” “About what?”
“About I might never empty that jar.” Ty saw how blue Buck was getting just thinking about it. He went to get two beers from the snowbank and gave one to Buck.
“How long you and Angie been married now?”
“Goin’ on twenty-three years.” Buck took a pull at his beer. “Lotta beans still in that jar.”
“Maybe you miscounted.You count that time during the quarantine?”
“Yes. And other times you might not know so damned much about.” Buck didn’t like how sweet Angie had been on Ty after that night.
“You know for a fact I been workin’ at it, Ty. It’s just that seein’ you and Willie made me think I ought to pick up the pace.”
He took another pull on his beer, thinking about it.
“We sure had some good times, me and Angie.” Buck watched as Ty turned back to his work.
“Hard not to have a good time with Angie.” Ty checked to make sure his cut was true. “She’s got so much life in her.”
Buck decided once again not to try to apologize for what happened to Bernard. Ty would only say it was an accident, that Bernard had just been cleaning his Colt. Buck guessed it was pretty important for Willie to think that. And he didn’t figure it was his business to make anyone think different. But he
was
sorry for his part. He had been from the minute he heard what happened. He was sorry even after Ty married and seemed happier than he’d ever been. Buck saw it as a sorrow he’d live with always.

And Ty
was
happy. He didn’t think he’d ever been so happy—happy with Willie’s schedules, happy with her planning, happy with the laughs she would have with Buck and Angie and Jasper, even happy with her ideas for how to pay off the debt.

But he was happiest of all with their times alone—at least when she wasn’t blue. Only now and then did he think of what they’d do if she found herself pregnant. And each time he mentioned it she shushed him. “I know exactly what I’m doing,” she would say, sometimes kissing him, sometimes putting a finger to his lips. “Don’t you worry your packer head.”

Ty wasn’t so sure she knew what she was doing. And he was sure her church didn’t, worrying that it might require things of her she wasn’t ready for. But he kept his mouth shut. Willie was so certain about how to go at things he felt awkward when he questioned her.

That’s why he wasn’t so surprised when she told him she was going to have the baby. And he wasn’t surprised at all that that’s when her moments of sadness began disappearing.

She was taken with the whole thing from the first day, cheerful even when she found herself queasy. She got books from the library about pregnancy and child care; she looked up names for boys and for girls; her dinners became more and more elaborate.

“We must build our strength now,” she would say, lighting candles and feigning a deep seriousness. “You’ll need to be the hero—very soon.”
There was no slacking off in the kissing schedule. If anything she found ways for Ty to break the “just kissing” rule more often than ever.
Happy as she’d been before Bernard, Ty could see she was happier still planning for this baby. And he saw from the start that she’d known better than Ty or Bob Ring or anyone else that shaking the blues was her business—no one else’s.
He just hoped that having the baby was the right way to do it.

In December of 1949 in the delivery room of the Catholic hospital in Missoula, Wilma Hardin’s daughter drowned in her mother’s blood. The doctors could neither save the child nor halt the flow from the ruptured uterus, the mother dying moments after her child’s lungs filled. One life extinguishing the other as though fulfilling the terms of a larger plan.

At an age when most men use what they have learned to fashion their future, Ty Hardin found himself seeing no future at all. Everything became a blur. The mountains that had given him life no longer seemed the ones that had taught him about life, filling with people they didn’t need at the same time the people he needed left him.