Day Out of Days (16 page)

The axiom goes: “No man with a promising two-year-old ever committed suicide.”

He hangs on the training track rail at 4:00 a.m. in the pitch dark, feeling the rumble of hooves through the turn coming right up into the hollows of his old knees. He sips on his hot chocolate and coffee mix and feels like a genius for breeding this blistering-fast colt. The whole rest of his life is a catastrophe; his marriage, his family, his dying friends, his lost opportunities. But this colt—even in the dark, as he flashes by—rippling sorrel muscle—the rhythmic blasts from the nostrils—this colt lights up what’s left of the man’s mind. That part that still lies vulnerable to brilliance and courage. It lifts him up like a love affair or the great ball of sun just now cracking over the backstretch.

First light. Outside the Super 8. Glass doors. Smell of weak coffee. Chattering of all the Mandan Indian cleaning ladies sitting on the curb of the parking lot like crows on a wire; giggling, hungover in red, white, and blue heart-patterned blouses. Uniforms issued by the motel, way too small for these women who like to eat. Belly rolls, flesh-colored bras, lacy black thongs can’t hold back the blood of their ancient ancestors. They crouch, puffing away on Marlboro Lights, gulping down the delicious gray smoke. Behind them, stacked on aluminum wagons—clean white fluffy towels smelling like Tide, small bars of pink soap, rolls and rolls of toilet paper, waiting; the day’s work in front of them.

Two hundred years ago on this very spot where the black parking lot sprawls out to the cottonwoods and these Mandan women nurse their hangovers, this is what Captain Meriwether Lewis jotted
down in his notebook concerning a baby boy born to a Snake woman called Sacagawea:

“(February 11, 1805) … about five oclock this evening one of the wives of Charbono was delivered of a fine boy. it is worthy of remark that this was the first child which this woman had boarn and as is common in such cases her labour was tedious and the pain violent; Mr. Jessome informed me that he had freequently adminstered a small portion of the rattle of the rattlesnake, which he assured me had never failed to produce the desired effect, that of hastening the birth of the child; having the rattle of a snake by me I gave it to him and he administered two rings of it to the woman broken in small pieces with the fingers and added to a small quantity of water. Whether this medicine was truly the cause or not I shall not undertake to determine, but I was informed that she had not taken it more than ten minutes before she brought forth.”

Seven young firefighters from the BLM Forest Service are looking for rooms in the War Bonnet Inn. I’m standing, waiting in line right behind them in the lobby. Their exhausted faces; red eyes, hooded in ash, the steel toes of their boots burned black. Montana’s on fire. Miles of open rangeland in flames right up to the shoulder of the interstate. That’s all anyone talks about around here. How to contain it. Where exactly the giant Caterpillars have cut the breaks. How often the planes are bombing the wild ridges with water canisters. How many new conflagrations have spontaneously erupted from Bozeman to Missoula and beyond; up into the High Line, threatening the ski resorts from Kalispell to Hungry Horse? Blame it on Big Bad Nature, touching down. Lightning from the Thunder Gods. They’re laughing at us from far away; watching us scramble in earthly horror. As soon as one blaze gets extinguished another flares up. We’re chasing our tails down here. By the time I step up to the desk all the rooms have been taken. More long pickups loaded with young firefighters are pouring into the parking lot as I come out of the lobby into the glowing red dusk. The air smells strong of burning pine and sagebrush. Your eyes sting of ash. Maybe Billings has a room. Down the burning highway. Maybe Billings.

Whiteout in Wichita. Stuck down deep in ice and snow. Wind blowing sideways, slashing forty miles per hour. Traffic, dead-stopped, both ways; four lanes bumper to bumper, far as the eye can see. It’s apocalyptic. People from all over America jumping out of their cars into twenty degrees, climbing up on their hoods trying to see what the holdup is. Nobody’s dressed for the catastrophe; some of them in pajamas, bellies hanging out, pants falling down their asses, knocking ice off the windshields, walking tiny shivering hairless dogs in doggy jackets. One guy gets out in blue sweatpants and a black T-shirt. Back of his shirt says in bold letters: “You may all go to Hell. I will go to Texas,” signed—Davy Crockett. Thank God for Guy Clark on my satellite radio.

Can’t you just sit still? What’s the matter with you, anyway? You’re driving me nuts. All this constant moving around. Look at you. You’re a mess. Even now your leg is jumping like a jackhammer. Your fingers are twitching. Your eyes, leaping all over the wallpaper. What’s going on? You’re not going to last very long if you keep this up, you know. You’ll burn yourself out. Can’t you just follow some sort of itinerary, at least? Some plan. What am I supposed to make of all this—all this crashing around? What in the world is so interesting about
not
having an objective? I mean, look at this map! Just take a look at it. You show up in Baton Rouge, then you’re off to Saskatoon, then down to Butte; Mountain Home. Pendleton. It’s insane. It makes no sense. How is anybody supposed to follow this? Look at these lines! These underlines. These pink, highlighted highways; roads I’ve never even heard of. Where in the hell is the “Little Dixie Highway,” anyway? I, for one, am not tagging along anymore. I’ve had it. I can’t keep up. My car can’t take it. All the wear and tear. Four-dollar gas and we wind up in some pissant hellhole like Winnemucca or Cucamonga. I mean, what the fuck? What’s the point? And what do we have to show for it after all these miles? A bunch of damn coffee mugs with place-name
cafés. A buffalo paperweight. What’s it all add up to? Nada, man. Absolutely nada. I’ve come to the end of the line. I really have. I realized that this morning. From now on you’re on your own. I’m walking out the door. Don’t try following me either because you’ll never find me. Oh—and don’t worry about the room. I got that covered. Least I can do after all we’ve been through. Are you listening to me? Do you understand what I’m saying! I’m walking out the fucking door! Right now. Adios! Here I go.

(Door slams. Silence. No movement of any kind.)

Is it actually true that Christopher Columbus gave false information to his sailors regarding the position of his ship so they couldn’t find their way back, in the event of mutiny?

From Culbertson to Cut Bank, all along the High Line, he ripped his voice out completely. At first he was just managing to sing along politely with the Howlin’ Wolf Chess collection; dodging in and out of feeble harmony attempts on “Back Door Man” and “Moanin’ at Midnight,” but gradually he became carried away in a frenzy of exultation. By the time he hit Kalispell his throat was actually bleeding but he couldn’t stop himself. Something had taken over. He kept desperately trying to find the shift from the high nasal megaphone pitch down into Wolf’s deep growling groans of lost love and tortured treachery but he just couldn’t find it. He was stuck somewhere smack in the middle. Torn apart. Truckers blew by him with American flags flapping from every possible fixture; staring down in bewilderment at his bloated purple face, screaming to the wind: “I asked her for water but she brought me gasoline!” He passed ranchers on three-wheelers gathering calves as he belched out “Smokestack Lightnin’,” torturing himself with the failure to make the transition into the shaky howls and terrible haunting swings of Wolf’s paranoia: “Don’t you hear me crying?” “Where’d you sleep last night?” The sky dipped into great bars of plum-colored clouds as the sun set behind the Bitterroots and he pressed on hypnotically toward Bonners Ferry. He checked into the Motel 8 there but his voice wouldn’t work at
all. Nothing came out but a faint wheeze. He kept smiling apologetically to the little gray woman behind the desk and pushing his credit card toward her so at least she’d know he was good for the rent. He took the Wolf CD with him into room #6, on the ground floor, but there was nothing to play it on so he sat on the edge of the bed and read the liner notes: How Wolf ended up weeping for his mother on his deathbed but she never came to visit. She had forsaken him a long time ago for singing the Devil’s music.

Richard Hugo’s astoundingly American poem, “Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg,” keeps coursing through my head up here, in this grim brick mining town:

You might come here Sunday on a whim
.

Say your life broke down
.

Roofs keep blowing off the meth-lab shacks sitting directly across the street from neat little Scandinavian bungalows, geranium flower boxes in the windows. Chemical explosions out of nowhere. Shirtless rapists, spiderwebs tattooed across their faces, sift through the wreckage; appearing and disappearing in black smoke. This is the childhood home of Evel Knievel and his “Days” are here; streets thronged with bikers, everyone cruising for a fight. Cops tell me someone’s always trying to grab their guns away from them every time they walk into a bar. Kid was killed just last night, down at the Wagon Wheel. Someone smashed his head against a toilet bowl, ran out laughing.

Back at the turn of some century, Carry Nation, the temperance reformer famous for her hatchet-wielding saloon smashing, made a pilgrimage to Butte. She was beaten to a bloody pulp by one of the whorehouse madams for trying to convert her clientele. Carry died on an eastbound train, heading back to civilization; bleeding to death from her wounds. Sitting directly across from
her on the hard oak seats was a U.S. marshal; twelve-gauge propped on his hip, ramrod straight and unsmiling. Beside him were four renegade Cheyenne chained together by their ankles and wrists. The warrior right next to the marshal had an iron necklace and a wide black stripe running down his forehead and nose, across his lips to the chin. His black eyes cut through Carry’s. He and the marshal stared straight across at her as she slowly bled to death. They watched her very closely, like they would a dying sparrow.

I pick up this common gray stone on the spot where Crazy Horse was killed; September 5, 1877. It looks a little like a hawk’s beak with a dark crooked ridge running across the back. It’s hot from lying out flat in the sun for who knows how long. No telling if it might have been kicking around back then; a dumb witness to the outrageous murder. Catholics might call this stone a “second-class relic,” since there’s no proof of its origins, only the association with the place. I drop it deep in my pocket, on top of my black jackknife. It’s warm down there. Who knows if it holds any power. I guess we’ll find out somewhere down the road.

I am crying in my heart, after the manner of white men.

—
KIT CARSON

The large metal sign on the dusty shoulder of Highway 27, explaining, front and back, the horrific events that took place here in December 1890, has been altered. The word
battle
has been covered over with a patchwork metal plate riveted to the sunbleached narrative reading
massacre
in bold black letters. “Massacre” replaces “battle,” as if that’s all the correction we need to alter our thinking about it. As if now we are able to digest the actuality of carnage, one hundred and twenty years in our past.

Pathetic little lean-tos roofed with pine boughs shelter wrinkled-up Lakota women selling beaded crafts and crude jewelry. It’s 103 degrees and the wind is swirling across the broken highway sending up dust devils. White plastic coffee cups and potato chip bags go whipping by. A dark hawk high above a field of burnt grass tumbles and swoops through the hot-air currents, hoping for some sign of varmints below. I decide to park beside a
line of glittering Harleys directly across the highway from the monument; thinking that driving up the hill to the sight might be disrespectful. There’s also some nagging notion that walking up the hill in this sledgehammer heat might be some slight form of penance. (I don’t know where these notions of guilt originate.) I’m staring down at my boots in the powdery clay as I climb toward the two brick columns, arched by a steel span with a small cross in the middle. “Walking through time,” I whisper. I reach the top and pull out my disposable Kodak that I’ve been using to record catch-and-release Rainbows. I’ve only got a couple shots left. As I’m trying to focus on the raggedy monument, a boy’s face jumps into the frame then darts back out. A skinny teenage Lakota boy with wide eyes and a crooked smile. He peeks out at me from behind one of the brick columns. I take my eye away from the lens and see two more boys hiding behind the structures. I call out to them and ask if I can take their picture in front of the monument. They shyly reveal themselves, barefoot in grimy T-shirts, clutching aluminum cans of Pepsi. I ask if they can bunch together under the steel arch. They giggle and line up facing me then, suddenly, as I raise the Kodak to my eye, they all throw their fists to the sky mimicking the Black Panther salute of the sixties. I have no idea what era I’m living in.