Two Medicine (7 page)

Even despite my move to
Montana, the finality and decisiveness in her words hurt
me.

“
You think Jonathan’s a
better match?” I asked, an edge creeping into my voice.

Another pause. “I don’t know. I mean we are
in agreement on a lot of things you and are weren’t.”

“Have you had sex with
him?”

“No.”

I pondered the carpet at
my feet. “Taking him out of it, I think what we had was a
one-of-a-kind thing, don’t you think so?”

“I know. But the closer we
got, the more wrong it felt, in a way,” she said. “I just don’t
think we’re meant to be together forever. We’re too different.
That’s why I didn’t want to come on this trip to Tennessee this
weekend. My sister told me you might propose and that I had better
only go if I was ready to say ‘yes.’”

Lisa was her older sister
and best friend, and Holly was always Lisa asking what she should
do about anything in her life.

A small burst of painful
angry boiled up in my chest. “Well I’ve had this job lined up in
Montana; I’m moving there in a week.”

“What? Montana? What are
you talking about?”

“I’ve been offered a
position up in Two Medicine Valley, managing the area and working
in Glacier National Park.”

I realized I wasn’t making
any sense to her probably, but I plugged on, now just eager to get
away from this whole conversation.

“
I’ve quit the magazine
and am packing things up as we speak,” I said hurriedly. “I’ll do
some writing up there…” I trailed off and just listed for her
reaction.

“Will, what are you
talking about? What’s up in Montana for you?”

“It’s complicated – don’t worry about it.
I’ll send you your stuff that’s over here.”

She was silent a moment
more. “Ok. But we should talk about this more.”

“Yea, look, I’ll explain
it more… later.”

I hung up as fast as I
could, and set the phone down and stared at it. I had just
completely separated from a girl I loved more than any other I had
been with, for more than two years, a girl I had wanted to marry.
It was the quickest and most sudden break up I had ever experienced
with the deepest relationship I had ever had so far. I probably
would never see her again, it occurred to me, and that made me feel
so empty and very, very lonely.

Yet I still felt at that
moment, behind all of that dreaded emptiness, like I was rushing
finally towards a new life, like I was caught floating in a fast
river rushing towards an unseen waterfall that led to… what?
Disaster? Whatever it was it felt right.

I took my eyes from the
phone and looked across the room at my apartment, which now seemed
small, too small. This rushing river was strong, unstoppable, and
it was running faster and faster each moment.
Maybe a little disaster is what I need.

I barely slept
again that night – a rushing sound in my ears kept
my heart racing.

A week later, after
forcing through a few more days of work at the magazine office in a
zombie-like state, I received confirmation that I had the job. That
was on a Tuesday, and I booked a flight for that Sunday to
Montana.

I wound up my affairs and
turned in my notice at work, which caused less fanfare than I had
expected. All the better. In those days leading up to leaving each
time someone reacted with a questioning look and mild shock when I
told them where I was going caused a small crack of doubt to form
in my choice to leave, in a tiny but nagging way. But it was
inevitable and unavoidable now, no matter what. Scott had said I
was nuts at first after I called and told him but, of course, he
ended up saying he was jealous and knew that I’d made the right
choice. He told me he was going to drive me to the airport, no
matter how early in the morning it was.

As I packed my final
things, I let the rushing water take me further towards the edge of
the falls, not knowing how long or how hard the landing may be. I
was just about to tip over the edge.

Six

Scott picked me up Sunday
morning to drive me to the airport. I could see that he was
horribly hungover, hair disheveled and bloodshot eyes, and he
hardly said a word on the way. He sipped a Miller Lite tallboy beer
out of a brown bag with one hand as he drove with the other,
staring grimly out the windshield at the oncoming traffic, barely
moving his head. He seemed to regard the world ahead of him through
the windshield with disdain mixed with a tired boredom. I, in the
other hand, felt a charge of excitement and optimism, as I had
gotten ready that morning and rode with him on the way. His dour
mood and horrible hangover were just more confirmation that I
needed a change, too, just one more confirmation.

He pulled up to the
departures bay at the airport and I got out all my worldly
possessions I was taking with me, which all fit in one suitcase and
a guitar case, I had decided to bring my old Yamaha acoustic guitar
with me just for kicks. I pictured myself playing it on some
grassy, sun drenched mountainside, maybe a pretty hiker girl lying
next to me, listening in rapture, a bright flower stuck in her
hair...

But I thought of Scott as
I unloaded the back seat, there he was sitting silently in his
hungover, painful-looking haze, sipping his now-warm beer. I
wondered what he was feeling, what he was thinking of my move. I
knew that not being around anymore, at least for a while, was going
to be… not good for him. Besides Brooke, I was the closest thing,
and probably the only thing, he had to a reasonably-good influence,
for what that was worth. I bent down at the passenger window and
looked over at him, “Scott, you gonna be okay?” I watched him,
trying to read his thoughts on his face.

He looked over at me and
said, “Are you?” He smiled slightly.

“
I am,” I said, “and when
I get situated, you need to come out there for a weekend or two and
hang out – get out of this town for a while and get some fresh
air.”

He chucked briefly and
said, staring back out in front of him. “Maybe I will, but don’t
worry about me in the meantime, I’ll keep on truckin’.”

I slowly stood back up
straight as he accelerated and drove off. I saw him light up a
cigarette as he drove, the car swerving slightly before he jerked
the wheel back and corrected it. The sun was rising higher in front
of him, but hidden a bit behind a haze of fog. I had a feeling that
I would see him again – it didn’t feel like a permanent goodbye,
this, despite the fact that I had no specific plan to return to
Atlanta, ever. But, as I watched Scott go, I wondered sadly if he
would survive much longer, and I surely hoped that he was going to
get a hold of his demons and find some peace before a permanent
“goodbye” finally did happen, the last goodbye.

Seven

I arrived at the entrance
to Glacier Park, Montana by the use of all mechanisms of travel
available to mankind at that time: via a plane from Atlanta to
Billings, then a smaller plane from Billings to Kalispell, then a
train from Kalispell to Whitefish, then a bus from Whitefish to
Glacier, and then a cab from Glacier to Two Medicine.

I didn’t make it all the
way to Two Medicine the same day I left; it would take two days in
fact, and by the time I actually got to Glacier Park on Sunday
night I was completely exhausted. My new employer had saved a room
for me at the huge, hotel-like Glacier Lodge that housed tourists
who arrived at the southern end of the park. The Lodge was the
entry point for all locations north in the Park, but many tourists
who preferred a bed, shower and air-conditioning to camping in the
backcountry would stay at the Lodge the entire time.

It was the first time I
had ridden a train, that mode of transportation being largely used
only for carrying freight in the South – public transportation
trains had never caught on down there. I enjoyed the rattling
smoothness of the ride and the large windows that introduced me to
a surprisingly flat and prairie-like Montana. Most of Montana, I
had learned by now, was as flat as Kansas, and filled with farms,
oil derricks, or just empty prairie. But as the train sped
northwest I could start to see mountains looming off in the far
distance, past endless miles of rolling prairie grass dotted with
barns and separated by small roads and cattle fences.

As I travelled through the
Atlanta airport, as I rode on the wind 30,000 feet above the
country, and as I flew along the metal rails on the prairie, I felt
a creeping, nervous apprehension growing in my mind. The rushing of
the waterfall had changed to a slow drifting down a dark tunnel.
Not having the familiar Atlanta around me now felt worrisome, and I
began to really doubt my decision. I felt, at times, like I was
lost, drifting aimless now. But also, at times, I felt a
reemergence of the rushing excitement that I was final living the
right way! So, I repeatedly pushed down my doubts and hesitancies –
my endlessly-repeating question of
had I
done the right thing?
I sat back in my seat
and focused with a determined eye on the landscape
instead.

The bus I was to take
after the train was a Greyhound and was almost completely empty as
I boarded it. Someone had told me, as I was waiting for the bus in
the station, that most of the visitors to the park didn’t know what
was in store for them, that it was a much more rugged and wild
place than people thought, and wasn’t like Yellowstone as many
expected, with Yellowstone’s wide roads, easy beaten-down paths to
fenced-off attractions, and numerous easily-findable restaurants,
rest areas and slick hotels. No, the man had said, Glacier “was a
huge freaking mass!”

I liked the sound of that
word “mass,” it denoted a weighty, unchangeable, and nonnegotiable
force. I needed something heavy and unchangeable now, to calm my
doubts, as I rocked back and forth on the highway riding the
swaying movements of the big bus. The weightier the better for me,
since I had just ripped my life up by the roots and was about to
plant it in unknown and wild soil.

In any event it was dark
for the latter half of my trip to Glacier, and so, as I approached
those looming mountains that I had read so much about, I lost them
in darkening sky the nearer I got. The land was getting higher and
more patches of forested hills were rushing past me in, but soon it
was too dark too see much of anything outside of the edges of the
road we were on. I saw, instead, only my own reflection in the big
window of the bus under the little lights above my seat as we sped
along, and I thought to myself that I already appeared a little
younger now, wilder, rougher like I used to be.

I sat back in my seat and
I imagined that in shrugging off the chains of society, I had
shrugged off some of the weight on my shoulders and the bags under
my eyes. I didn’t really believe I looked any different, but I
enjoyed the fantasy, and I did feel better knowing that I was
living the old way I had.

Later that night I
disembarked from the bus and checked in at the big Park Lodge,
which I could barely see beyond the dim streetlight at the edge of
the parking lot. I walked over to the desk and gave them my name,
and then up the elevator to my room, which was disappointingly very
hotel-like, and I collapsed onto the bed as soon as I had dropped
my bag on the floor. I fell asleep within minutes, barely
processing the fact that I was now but a few miles from my wild new
home, somewhere out there in the dark.

The next morning
my phone rang early, and the hotel clerk’s voice
on the other end of the night stand’s phone told me that a “jammer”
would be by in 30 minutes to collect me to take me to Two Medicine.
I mumbled “what’s a ‘jammer?’” was in a groggy voice, but he had
already hung up.

I dragged myself out of
bed, showered quickly with cold water and threw on some clothes,
shoving my old clothes from the day before back into the suitcase
with my clean ones. I rushed downstairs, worried I might miss my
ride, whatever it ended up being, and went out onto the sprawling
wooden deck that encircled the Lodge.

I was feeling a cautious
tenseness but I also felt a thrilled jolt shoot through me – I
would soon see the place I was going to live – in Montana! And
there, at the bottom of the Lodge’s big staircase leading down to
the road was my ride, it had to be – my own “jammer.” It was a very
old-looking, long, multi-door bus, painted bright red, something
from the ‘40s or so it looked like. It was about the size of the
old VW vans from the 60’s, but sloping in the back, and with a long
Rolls-Royce-like snout serving as the grill on the front – a very
odd-looking, slightly European-esque, archaic vehicle.

As I walked toward the bus
a young guy with a big head of blonde, bushy hair stuck his face
out of the driver’s window and leaned an elbow out and
nodded.

He smiled as he said, “You
must be my ride… Going to Two Medicine?”

“
Yeah,” I said as I walked
over, cautiously surveying the jalopy.

“
Nice suitcase,” he said,
nodding at my gear with a not-unfriendly smirk, and then told me to
throw my things in the back.

I tossed my bag in a back
seat and then climbed in the front next to him. The bus actually
had four passenger doors on each side and five bench seats, not
counting ours in front. Besides me it was otherwise completely
empty as we started off down the street.