Two Medicine (18 page)

Sometimes I would go off
trail, and just meander up into the mountains, always on the
lookout for bears who avoided the trails, and I’d take photos of
the landscapes with my cheap camera I had bought from the store. I
never hiked with anyone else except with Katie a couple of times,
since we all worked different shifts or covered each other when we
were off, and I knew no one else in the park. But I liked being
alone on the hikes the best, anyway.

The views from the trails
were often breathtakingly beautiful – like walking into a postcard
– especially from the higher elevation points, which gave you a
wide panorama of sheer rock mountains and almost dyed-blue lakes,
surrounded by thick evergreen forests. Sometimes I would sit for
hours in the sun, listening to the sounds of pigeon-like ptarmigans
clucking in the bushes, or watching eagles floating overheard,
probably eyeing the ptarmigans. Sometimes I’d write in a journal I
also bought in the store about my days. Sometimes I would just
stare out at the distant mountain peaks and do nothing at
all.

Around Two Medicine
Lake three main mountains dominated. Foremost in
front was of course Mount Sinopah, pointed out to me by the jammer
bus driver on my first day, rising above the far shore of the lake,
perfectly framed from our view out the windows of the store. To its
left was Painted Tepee Mountain, which had a cone-shaped top that
got its name. And to Sinopah’s right was Rising Wolf Mountain, a
big, hulking, angry-looking mass of rock jutting up in the air,
crowned with snow throughout the warm summer days. Sinopah was the
king, for sure, and it dominated every view.

On these hikes I would
sometimes feel a spiritual-like reverence come over me, while
following a trail that wandered between tall cedars and short,
scrubby hemlocks, or while high up in the grassy shoulders of the
mountains. The land was dryer and dustier than I expected, and most
of the trees were the kind that liked the dry: bushy Douglas firs
where it was rockier; tall and spindly lodgepole pines where they
could get a deep foothold. But there hardwoods too, in the shadier,
moist areas near the lake, big, lush trees with roots down to the
center of the earth – the only thing deeper were the mountains’
roots.

More than all of that, I
loved best to walk through the aspens, tall and naked in their thin
white bark, standing meekly and pristine next to the dark and rough
pines that surrounded then like predators. I also sought out the
groves of their cousins the birch trees, which were harder to find
– strong too, but growing not so straight as the Aspen, yet
strikingly beautiful with white-paper bark peeling off in perfect
cuts, streaked with black cracks and woodpecker holes.

One day I
started out on the trail, audaciously determined
to reach the peak of Mount Sinopah, who top I had been eyeing
enviously for days. Eventually, to my own surprise I reached the
top, but only after eight solid hours of non-stop chugging,
scrabbling, stumbling and cursing up its side.

When I finally reached the
summit I was awarded with a view of the dark-indigo waters of Two
Medicine Lake down below, where Alia and I had glided across in the
canoe, and the surrounding forests like a thick carpet of green.
Further on I could see the small, thin, Lower Two Medicine Lake,
which our lake fed, and which lay in reservation land near
Browning. And beyond all that? The eastern prairie sprawled
seemingly forever into the horizon till it was lost in the haze of
the evening light.

I was late getting back
from the peak, because I had seriously and naively underestimated
its distance. By the time I found the lake trail, the one that
meandered around the edge of the lake in a lazy circle hidden in
the trees, and which ended at our store, it was already ten p.m.
and I was exhausted, dirty, scratched by branches and … immensely
satisfied. Another forty-five minutes to my bed, I thought as I
trudged down the trail.

I hiked in the dark, with
no flashlight or even my phone’s light to aid me. Phones didn’t
really work up in Glacier anyway, and I hadn’t used mine in weeks,
so I had long ago stopped carrying it on hikes. I could barely see
down the trail except for some moonlight palely showing through the
trees. I felt a calm exhaustion and I fell into a rhythm of walking
only the shadowy trail. Suddenly I felt an eerie presence near me,
like something was following, and as I walked I heard steps behind
me, a slight sound of crunching as feet fell on the path. I stopped
and stood still, listening, and trying to pinpoint how far it was.
As I listened I could tell it was close, and coming closer.
A bear?
I thought of Greg
and what he would have thought of my night hiking.

I grew worried as the sound
got even closer, and it sounded heavier than a human. I edged back
onto the trees next to the trail, becoming enveloped in branches
and perfect darkness. A dark shape approached. I saw a light break
through the trees, peeking out between branches as the shape now
came into view around a bend in the trail. I could see a fat, hairy
figure, holding an old lantern in its right hand, and something
long and silvery in the other.
Bigfoot?

I peer out from the trees and the figure
emerged into view in the weak glow of the swinging lantern.

“
Thunderbird?” I said, now
recognizing him with relief.

He looked over sharply at
me, not seeing who called him. I stepped out and looked at what he
was holding – three or four long, lake trout.

“
Will?” he asked. “What
are you doing out here?”

“
I could ask you the same
thing. Aren’t you worried about bears with that smelly catch in
your hands, out here alone?”

He looked down at the fish
confused for a moment, and then back at me, one of his eyes glinted
in the reflection of the lantern light.

“
Oh, they won’t bother
me,” he said lightly, shrugging and looking around in the dark, as
if bears were standing in a circle out there watching us. “They
wouldn’t bother me,” he said again, louder, into the
dark.

I noticed that there were
no night sounds anymore as we stood there, no crickets, no wind
rustling the branches, no coyote calls. I felt a chill run up my
spine as I watched him stare into the dark. I noticed he didn’t
have a fishing pole.

Then he turned and smiled brightly to me as
if we had just ran into each other on the street. “Walk back with
me!”

He sauntered off again and
I caught up with him, his lantern casting swinging shadows before
us in the trees. I pictured a big bear rumbling around a corner and
roaring a challenge as it stood on hind legs in that pale lantern
light – but none came as Thunderbird predicted.

The whole was back we
didn’t say a word; it felt wrong to make a noise.

Fourteen

Alia didn’t come
back until the week after, on a Tuesday as a
matter of fact, and I was off. I was spending the morning fishing
on the shore near to the store – rather trying to fish. I used to
fish a lot as a kid so I had purchased a rod from the store and had
taken up the sport again – hoping to catch some trout like
Thunderbird did. But I had found something out that I hadn’t
encountered before in my sojourns as a kid, and that hadn’t been
mentioned in any of the articles, websites or other glitzy
propaganda about my little valley in Montana (intentionally no
doubt), and that was that each summer in Glacier, in the first
couple of weeks of June, so right when the park opened, all of the
valleys throughout the park were plagued by thick and hungry swarms
of mosquitoes.

They hatched in May, and
developed on the wing, voraciously ready to bite in June. They got
so thick at times that they would look like a cloud of smoke around
a person’s face; and I would resort to wearing long pants and a
hoodie sweatshirt to avoid their swarms, even though it was often
warm in the sun, and even though I used repellant that we sold at
the store – which didn’t really work on these
mosquitoes.

On that particular
Tuesday, however, I was out fishing and wearing my makeshift
mosquito uniform when Alia suddenly appeared. To avoid the flurry
of the bloodthirsty swarm I had cinched down my hood of my
sweatshirt to where only a hole about the size of a baseball was
left open that I could stick my nose out of to breathe and to see a
little; and I had pulled my sleeves down over my hands as I gripped
the fishing rod and tried to turn the reel. Thus, there wasn’t one
patch of skin exposed, except for my nose on which I had slathered
a heavy layer of repellant like a lifeguard with a dab of sunblock.
My system was starting to work when Alia suddenly strode up out of
nowhere, walking along the lakeshore to where I was sitting on a
log, not far from the store.

My body was hunched over
the fishing rod, working the reel with awkward jerks. Alia laughed
as she saw me. “You look like some homeless guy under a bridge,”
she said, smiling at me.

The surprised grin on my
face was concealed by my hood, but I got up and dropped the pole. I
walked over to her without saying a word, and gave her a little
hug. I pulled down the hood and stood up to meet her, brushing the
mosquitoes swarming in from my eyes.

“I was wondering if you
were gonna turn up again,” I said. She hugged me a second time, the
top of her heard only coming up to my chin. I saw that she was
wearing the same little, metal arrowhead earrings again.

“I’ve been around, but I’m
working a lot” she said as we parted. “I’ve been trying to save up
some money – I need to get a car. I’m tired of hitching
rides.”

She had on some kind of
mosquito repellant, natural stuff they had in Browning she told me,
and it seemed to work perfectly. Since I didn’t want to wrap myself
up like a mummy in my hood again now that she was there, we decided
to go into the store and hang out in my room for a bit. It was the
only place I could think to go that was indoors. It was looking
like it was going to rain, anyway.

“So now you now,” she said
to me as we walked, towards the store. “Here we have two weeks of
mosquitoes, then two weeks of black flies, then we’re done.” Our
feet make crunching sounds on the pebbles and stones lining the
shore.

“
The black flies don’t
bite though; they just buzz around, in your face.”

I didn’t want to stare at
her too obviously, so I casually watched her out of the corner of
my eye as we walked, watching her little lips move as she spoke. I
suddenly felt such a deep rush of longing as we walked up those
stairs to the back porch of the store that almost tripped up the
steps. I pulled her close and hugged her again, smelling her hair,
a sweet, flowery fragrance.

“You’re trouble,” Alia
said in a voice muffled in my shirt.

I looked up at the screen
door. Like last time, I didn’t want to hassle with Larry in some
embarrassing encounter with his “no guests” mandate, so I peeked
into the kitchen and saw that no one was there. Alia and I crept,
holding hands, over the kitchen floor to the stair case leading up
to the rooms when I heard Ronnie’s voice booming out.

“
Hey bro! Who ya got
there?” he bawled.

He was up on the floor
above where it looked down at the kitchen, and he was almost naked,
wearing only a small pair of tight white underwear and showing not
the slightest bit of self-consciousness or self-constraint – not
even as he trotted down the stairs and bee-lined it over to the
stairs to shake hands with Alia.

“Well, well, well, what
have we here?” he asked. “Will? Maybe I should go get Larry and see
what he things about
this
!” He winked at me, then turning
to Alia and extending a hand, “Hi, I’m Ronnie. Who are
you?”

Alia was amused, and
laughed openly at the spectacle.

“
Nice tighty-whiteys…” she
said, shaking his hand. “I’m Alia.” She turned and buried her face
in my shirt in mock embarrassment. “I think I just saw his wiener!”
she said into my chest.

I laughed too, but warily,
giving Ronnie a warning look as we walked over to my door. He
followed us over with a big grin on his face.

“
Nice to meet you, Alia!”
he said as I slammed the door shut in his beaming face.

I could smell
a faint sweet perfume rising off of her again, as
I closed the door and she walked over to the bed.

“So you got any ‘tighty
whiteys’ in here, Will?” Alia asked as she opened one of my dresser
drawers and playfully poked around in it with her hand.

“Come sit over here,” I
shook my head. “I want to show you something.”

Worried now about
intrusion at any minute, from Ronnie, Larry, or whomever, I wanted
to make the most of any private time I had with her. That was
really the main downside to the living situation at the store – you
had very little privacy. My bedroom door had a 2-inch gap between
the floor that transported every sound out in to the hall, and vice
versa. More than one I had heard Ronnie rutting like a hog in his
bedroom with some poor girl he had picked up who knows
where.

I pulled out my acoustic
guitar from the beat up case and tuned it as she came over and sat
down close to me on the bed, close enough for our shoulders to
touch and her thigh to touch mine, close enough for it to have been
on purpose to sit so close. She smiled as I finished tuning the old
guitar.