Montana Noir, Page 3

  I knew what his price was: a demand that I confess to the MPs I’d shot an unarmed civilian the day before. If I could just get Marlowe out of the way for a little bit, off the base and out on patrol for one afternoon, maybe I’d have some time to think this situation through and see my way clear to the end.

  So I begged him to swap with me.

  No, I wouldn’t tell Chloe all this. I’d just let her go on thinking her husband died a hero’s death, earning his medals without so much as a piss stain on his pants. I’d let Chloe enjoy this parade and cheer this evening’s fireworks because after this, she’d have a new man to think about, and she would be worth my coming back to Butte.

  As three men roared at my back, I ran to catch the white convertible. I was almost there. I reached out to touch the taillight.

  Then the driver stepped on the gas, the white convertible pulled away with my Chloe, my waving Chloe, as the parade crowd cheered and clapped, and I heard footsteps charging closer behind me.

  Constellations

  by Caroline Patterson

  Helena

  “I’m sure she’s a lovely girl,” Mrs. Neal said as she peered over the scarred wooden desk at Peg Thompson. Mrs. Neal’s face was lined, her bosom wrinkled with cleavage that dove into folds of gray flesh and undergarments, the thought of which made Elizabeth vaguely sick. She wondered why Mrs. Neal held her playing cards fanned out in front of her, why the lights weren’t turned on, why the halls of the Helena YWCA were empty. Addressing the shriveled woman next to her, Mrs. Neal added, “Lillian and I just love the young ladies, don’t we?”

  Peg studied the two women. “Elizabeth gets straight A’s. Her father’s a lawyer in Missoula, her mother’s on the symphony committee, and Elizabeth plays the piano. Mozart.”

  Moe-zart? Elizabeth winced.

  Mrs. Neal set down her cards and struggled to her feet. “All the way from Missoula,” she told Lillian. “A college town.”

  Peg lifted her chin and straightened her shoulders. “I was elected delegate to the constitutional convention. Elizabeth is my page.”

  “How educational.” The YWCA director studied Elizabeth’s shirtdress as it rode up her thighs.

  “We’re making a new constitution,” Peg continued. “And this one is going to be written by the people, not the Anaconda Company.”

  “We the people,” Mrs. Neal said. “Indeed.”

  “Elizabeth will be working hard and her mother wants her in bed by ten.”

  “I can put myself to bed,” Elizabeth said. “I am sixteen.”

  “We understand about young ladies.” Mrs. Neal looked from Peg to Elizabeth to Lillian. “I’ve been in charge here for thirty years, and Lillian’s been here for seventeen. We can just tell by looking at this young lady that she is simply a lovely girl.”

  Elizabeth was sure she’d be murdered there.

  * * *

  “This will be the experience of a lifetime,” Peg had said as they drove to Helena through a canyon lined with cottonwoods and threaded by the Little Blackfoot River. She glanced over at Elizabeth in the passenger seat. “You’ll see how a constitution is built.”

  Elizabeth studied Peg’s red hair, pug nose, and cat’s-eye glasses. She didn’t approve of Peg. Even though Elizabeth was a tomboy, she had strict standards for grown-up women: they should clean house, bake delicious meals, tuck their feet in at their ankles, and be quiet. Peg’s house was a jumble of political posters and wobbly stacks of magazines and newspapers. Her standard contribution to the Methodist Church potluck was beans and weenies. When she and her husband played bridge with Elizabeth’s parents, Peg ignored Elizabeth’s mother’s attempts to discuss hairstyles and hemlines, turning the conversation to the Domino Theory. Nevertheless, when Peg said she was abandoning her son and husband to six weeks of hot dogs and dirty laundry to “cook up a constitution,” and asked Elizabeth to be a page, Elizabeth was thrilled.

  She would be 114 miles away from her parents. She would be on her own for an entire week. And she planned to have sex.

  It was 1972. It was time.

  Everyone who was anyone was doing it. There was woozy, sex-oiled music on the radio with lyrics about kissing and free love and opening your mind. She didn’t have a partner, but that was irrelevant. Sex was the key that would unlock the door between her and the great throng of human life. She’d had the standard boyfriend experiences: going-steady rings wrapped in yarn, movie theater make-out sessions. She’d even examined her vagina with a hand mirror as Our Bodies, Our Selves instructed, but she thought it was a hideous, drippy piece of flesh, disfigured by masturbation. This was different.

  She wanted shock, a bolt of pure pleasure to blast her out of her paralysis. Paralysis stemming from bridge nights, when the Thompsons came over and as the adults studied their cards, Peg’s son crept upstairs, opened the door, unzipped his pants, and shoved her hand onto the thick, knobbed head of his penis, the bumpy swollen shaft, moving it up and down until he ran to the bathroom next door where she could hear his grunting release.

  “We’re making history, Elizabeth!” Peg said as they drove past beaver slides, large contraptions farmers used to stack hay, and pastures of dreamy cattle with newborn calves curled in small bundles of black or brown, their mothers licking their coats. “Aren’t you excited?”

  “I can’t wait,” Elizabeth replied, thinking of an empty room and some boy she would meet, the image of his face blurred and indistinct. She looked out the windshield at the larch logs, round and raw, on the truck ahead of them as it roared through a mud puddle and fanned dirty water over the side of the road.

  * * *

  The room at the Y was the color of canned salmon. The bed frame was iron. There was a window, a rickety chest of drawers, and a closet with a pipe to hang clothes on. Elizabeth stacked her underwear in a drawer lined with newspaper and set her patent-leather loafers on the closet floor. She hung her dresses hemmed to four inches above the knee—as specified by the Dress Code for Pages—on the pipe, grimacing at the scratchy ping! of wire hangers against the metal. She set her cherished Yardley Slicker lipstick, paid for with weeks of babysitting, on the dresser.

  She stood at the window and looked out past the filmy curtains, the kind her father called Band-Aids, as the cathedral tower in the distance rang the hours with slow, dolorous chimes. Behind that was another sound: skittering footsteps somewhere in the YWCA.

  She opened the door to walk to the bathroom and in the dim hall came face to face with Lillian dressed in a nubby, stained robe, holding a dented pie tin.

  “My God!” Elizabeth’s heart banged against her chest. “You scared me. I didn’t realize you were here.”

  Lillian looked at Elizabeth like she’d never seen her before and hurried down the hall as if she were being chased.

  From the direction of the old woman’s room, Elizabeth smelled the tang of cat piss. She put her coat on and locked the door behind her. As she walked down the hallway, she heard tinny music from a distant radio and the thud of her footsteps on the floorboards.

  Outside, she took gulps of cool air until her heart settled, until she felt the quiet of the streets enter her. She felt close to the great, mummified heart of Helena. There was something ghostlike about the town, with echoes of its former glory days when rich people built mansions here to have a presence in state government. She imagined parties spilling onto elegant porches, waiting carriages, women in muffs, piano music slicing the frosty night. Her parents, who loved turn-of-the-century novels, longed for that world, not the one her father cursed each night on television.

  She felt lonely as she walked, but lonely in a new way; not the weak, piercing abandonment of the playground, but the loneliness of dark streets, of looking in at lighted windows, of watching trees toss their armloads of leaves in the wind, a loneliness pure and singular and strong.

  As she headed down the hill into the Gulch, she walked past bars named the Gold Dust, the Claim Jumper, and the Mint, where men peered at her
through open doors with vague curiosity. She saw herself through their eyes: an unaccompanied girl walking the street at dusk, no doubt on her way to ballet or piano lessons, a girl with family connections, a girl who meant trouble.

  How would she make this happen? She wasn’t old enough to walk into a bar. Would she stand at the door until someone suitable came out, and then just ask him point blank, Hey, mister, want to have sex?

  The thought was erotic and terrifying.

  When she imagined having sex, she pictured herself and her lover wearing wool sweaters and making snowmen, walking in leaves and crying a lot because they were so in love.

  She headed back to the Y, down sidewalks lined with dirt-crusted snow. As she pushed open the heavy door, a voice said: “Where have you been?”

  When her eyes adjusted to the dark, she saw the large shoulders of Mrs. Neal rising above the sofa.

  “For a walk,” Elizabeth said.

  With a grunt, Mrs. Neal heaved herself up. “Let’s keep our breaths of fresh air to the daytime, shall we, dear? Walking at night is not something ladies do.”

  * * *

  At the Hen Haus, Peg gave her name to the receptionist and steered Elizabeth to a flank of green leather chairs. The beauty parlor was a riot of pink sinks and blue and green curlers, the air an overripe tang of hairspray, shampoo, and perming solution.

  Peg patted Elizabeth’s knee. “This is nice. It’s like having a pretend daughter.”

  Her ears buzzing with the patter and slice of women’s voices and scissors, Elizabeth didn’t know how to respond. She felt suddenly superior to Peg, with her creepy son and her husband who hid behind a newspaper wall. Maybe Peg was lonely. Maybe her politicking was just a way to escape.

  Elizabeth startled herself by asking, “Did you want a daughter?”

  “I lost twin girls.” Peg flipped the pages of Screen Star then turned a pained smile on Elizabeth, leaning in so close that Elizabeth could see the large pores on her nose and the reddened tear duct in her left eye. “Some things just aren’t meant to be.”

  The words were right there on Elizabeth’s lips: Your son. Made me. Touch him. She saw him standing by her bedside, pants pooling at his knees. “Did you know?” she blurted.

  “Know what?” Peg asked.

  Elizabeth’s face felt numb. The room receded.

  “What?”

  “I want to go on a protest march.” Those words seemed to arrive in her mouth on their own. The creak of his foot on the stairs, the triangle of light widening across her bed.

  “Against the war?” Peg stiffened. “With hippies? Honey, they’re killing Communists over there.”

  “I don’t believe in the war.” Elizabeth hated Peg’s glasses, the cat’s-eye shape, the thick lenses, the way her eyes seemed magnified and blind at the same time. She thought of telling those glasses about the boy and how they’d shatter, shards flying in a million directions.

  Peg stood when the hairdresser called her name. She patted Elizabeth’s leg. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell your parents.”

  * * *

  A thin blade of nervousness propelled Elizabeth through the Capitol rotunda where, as people moved about, talking, their voices grew whispery and ancient. She met the other pages—she and the boy from Dawson County were the only ones who didn’t live on a ranch. The pages tried not to stare at one another as the legislative coordinator explained their duties: fetching newspapers, copies of amendments, cigarettes, and coffee, gallons of coffee.

  In the assembly hall, pages sat in black mahogany chairs facing the one hundred delegates, who were seated alphabetically to encourage fraternization. A lighted board featured their names. When a delegate pushed a button at his or her desk, the corresponding number lit up on the board, and the pages went quickly to help.

  There was a comfortable, early morning ease about the room. Aides handed out papers while the delegates milled about, chatting, drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes, or tipping back in their chairs behind newspapers. Elizabeth only half-listened, absorbed in the smell of cigarette smoke, the red swirled carpeting, the long windows, and the huge painting by Charles Russell of Lewis and Clark meeting the Flathead Indians.

  There was a dark, Serbian delegate from Anaconda with slicked-back hair and a pinstriped suit. The oldest delegate was an elfin librarian from the University of Montana who was rumored to have an encyclopedic memory; the youngest was a graduate student with frosted hair and a Southern accent. Peg was an anomaly: the housewife with shooting-star veins was a Missoula Republican who hailed from Butte and hated the company. Handsome research analysts scurried about, with their array of sideburns—neat college-boy sideburns, curly mutton-chop sideburns, and narrow Elvis Presley sideburns—handing out research ranging from Supreme Court rulings to Montana statutes to copies of Plato’s Republic.

  President Graybill pounded his gavel to open the session and announced the date: Tuesday, February 29, 1972. The members of the Natural Resource Committee walked to the podium, where they stood and congratulated one another on having created one of the strongest environmental-resources amendments ever written.

  The delegate from Glendive, the committee chair, tapped the microphone. She had a mane of wild black hair held back from her drawn-in face with barrettes. “We have failed this state,” she said. “The amendment that this committee is so busy congratulating themselves about is weak, watered down, and basically useless.”

  The other committee members looked shocked.

  “We are facing a future of strip-mining. This committee has failed to defend Montana’s right to a clean and healthful environment. They voted it down in committee, folks. And now they are congratulating themselves on what a fine job they’ve done. Let me ask you this: Will you be proud that you failed to support Montana’s right to a clean and healthful environment? Will we still be congratulating ourselves after we’ve destroyed our land and air and rivers?”

  She started crying. The room erupted. President Graybill pounded his gavel and shouted for order. Peg and several others rushed over to comfort her.

  The page next to Elizabeth handed her a note that read:

  You have red hair.

  I think I’m in love with you.

  Patrick

  That night, as they ate cabbage and corned beef in Dorothy’s Cafe, Peg told Elizabeth that her father left the house each morning before dawn to work in Butte’s Alice Mine.

  “He took an elevator 5,000 feet into the earth,” she said. “Can you imagine? Rock walls, just a candle for light, coming up once a day for lunch, and then going back into the dirt and the dark again? The horses that worked down there went blind. That’s what that woman is fighting against with clean and healthful.”

  Elizabeth looked at her stringy corned beef. If horses went blind, wouldn’t people, too? “It seems like they would have just killed themselves.”

  “I can’t believe you said that.” There was an edge to Peg’s voice. “They didn’t kill themselves because it was a sin. They had families and they were tough.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that,” Elizabeth said, stung.

  Peg’s smile looked like a grimace. “I know you didn’t, honey. But think about what you say.”

  As they walked outside, Elizabeth wished she were anywhere but here, on this brick sidewalk, making torturous small talk. She thought about Patrick and the way his hair curled over his collar, the way his nose tipped up slightly at the end.

  “My father was killed in a mine explosion,” Peg said as they continued down the deserted street. “He left my mother to raise seven children. That’s why, when Mr. Thompson asked me to marry him, I told him, I’ll marry you if you don’t work for the Anaconda Company! You know what he said?”

  “What?” Elizabeth couldn’t imagine Mr. Thompson having the nerve to ask Peg out for coffee.

  “He said: Let’s take the next bus to Missoula! And we did!” She held her arms open, her purse hanging from one of them like an ornament.

&nbs
p; “That’s a nice story,” Elizabeth said, wondering why grown-ups assumed younger people were interested in old folks’ origin stories. She followed Peg down the narrow streets of Last Chance Gulch. They stopped in front of a store called Mr. Dash’s Haberdashery, looking in at the window display.

  “Funny beings, men are,” said Peg.

  Hilarious, Elizabeth thought, wondering exactly how many steps lay between her and the Y.

  Four mannequins stood in a shaft of light from the streetlamps, dressed in suit coats and sweater vests, in dress shirts and ties, headless and waiting.

  * * *

  The next day, the Anaconda delegate tried modifying the natural resources amendment so the state of Montana could preserve a clean and healthful environment as a public trust.

  The delegate spoke for an hour about trusts and how environmentalists were trying to take over public lands for the government. This was socialism, he explained.

  The room grew hot.

  Peg stood up and turned to the delegates. “We all know who this delegate is really representing—right, folks? It’s a company named for a snake. The company created our first constitution, and if you wonder how people felt about it, think about what they called it: the copper collar.”

  Her opposing delegate rose and began reading the Magna Carta.

  Elizabeth jumped up to answer bell number 46.

  This delegate was from Poplar. “Jesus H. Christ,” he said. “Nobody told us the Anaconda Company was going to filibuster this. We’re gonna be here till next goddamn Christmas.” He told her the last page he had was from Missoula. “Kid was a hippie, but you know what? He was the smartest page I ever had.”

  Elizabeth resolved to be smarter. “What can I get you?”

  “The paper,” he said, and handed her a dime.

  She headed down to the newspaper machines in the basement. She put in the dime, pulled up the glass box, and took out a newspaper.