High Country : A Novel (25 page)

Fenton had wanted it simple—cremation, his ashes in Lost Bird Canyon. Cody Jo explained it as Ty drove her out to the pack station. She wanted Fenton’s ashes as far away from the undertaker as possible, and she left the urn there on the big mantle, huddling in her coat and telling Ty she wanted him to spread them in the canyon as soon as the passes opened. There would be a good-bye in the schoolhouse before he took them in, but right now she was going to Chicago. She needed to be away from all things that were Fenton until they settled in her mind.

They left the ashes on the mantle and drove back through the cold. It hadn’t snowed in weeks, but old snow was banked in dry drifts along the road or had settled, windblown and rippled, out in the meadows. It was moving still, holding behind clumps of grass before lifting and settling again—like winter’s dust. Cody Jo watched it and moved closer to Ty, taking his hand, holding it as she looked at the snow lifting and falling out across the meadows.

“We drove this a time or two,” she said finally. “I think he could do it with his eyes closed.”
“He could the trails. Most any of them.”
“He had Easter for those. Or Babe. They made it easy.”
“And he had you for these.You made that easy.”
She squeezed his hand again, watched the snow moving in gray sheets.
“I don’t think those ashes are Fenton, Ty. He’s somewhere, but he’s not in that awful urn.”
“I know.” He watched her looking out at the snow. “I know.” They rode that way, her hand in his, all the way back to Missoula.

The winter slid away. Ty gave up on his courses and moved his saddle shop out to the pack station, living in the big house, patching the sheds, helping the neighboring ranchers, organizing gear for the coming season.

Once a week he made the drive to Missoula, stopping at the library to get new books from Willie, staying sometimes to hear a lecture or to have a drink at The Bar of Justice, staying once because Willie had asked him to take her to the big dance.

It was the spring dance, and the students wanted their pretty librarian as one of the chaperones. It didn’t take Ty long to see they were interested in her as more than a chaperone. As soon as she picked up her card they gathered, writing their names for this dance or that. It was all new to Ty. He had on a tie and one of Fenton’s good coats, but he still felt out of place.

“Don’t you sneak off, Ty.” Willie seemed a little flustered by all the attention. “I’m saving the best ones for you.”
She introduced Ty to student after student, many of them veterans too, though none much like Ty. They were all surprised their librarian had invited a packer to the big spring dance.
There was a swing band from Denver, and it was easy to see why it was popular. The band opened with “Big Noise from Winnetka,” the floor of the gym instantly filling with dancing couples. It took Ty a moment to shake off his surprise, to realize he was dancing along with the rest of them—with Willie.
“Don’t know why you didn’t corral Bernard for this,” he said as they settled in with the music. “He’d be more presentable.”
They broke apart, Willie spinning, her dress whirling, her blue eyes on him as she moved back and broke away again.
“I wanted to teach you some new steps.”
She came back with such perfect timing he saw no reason to answer.
“Didn’t have such good bands here before the war,” Ty said as they waited for her next partner. “Or such big dances.”
“They had something, or you wouldn’t be able to dance this way.”
“Cody Jo. She taught me.” The band started in again, a slow number this time. “She dances the way you do.”
“Compliments from my packer?” Willie moved to the music as she stood there. “What girl wouldn’t want to be like Cody Jo?”
“I think your partner got lost.” Ty moved to her and they danced, the vocalist singing “I’ll Be Seeing You,” Willie easy in his arms. “Let’s keep dancing. This band knows the right songs.”
“They do.” Willie’s cheek was on his shoulder. “I wouldn’t mind if we danced this way all night.”
They were deep into the music when someone tapped him on the shoulder. “This one’s mine,” a voice said. “Now that I’ve found my partner.”
Ty got some punch and went outside. John Lamedeer was pouring whiskey into his punch glass. He poured some into Ty’s as well.
“You got invited too. This’ll help us through it.” Lamedeer tucked the bottle into his pocket. “Think they lost their standards during the war?”
“They lost some good people,” Ty said.
Lamedeer looked at him. He’d been in the army too, but they’d found out about his football early, and he’d spent his time playing for service teams. Ty had already seen him play for the university. It seemed to Ty he was faster than ever.
“Sure you can’t play with that leg?” Lamedeer asked. “We could use you.”
“Can’t run much anymore,” Ty said. “And I’m a packer.”
“So? I’m a Flathead. They let me play—go to their dances.” He poured more whiskey. “They don’t give a shit what we are.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
Lamedeer was quiet. “Hear Special Hands didn’t make it.”
“He didn’t. They sent back what was left.”
They stood, talking about high-school games, the coaches at the university, drinking more before they went back in.
“This ain’t my kinda dancing.” Lamedeer stopped at the door. “I’ll watch. See if you move good enough to play again.”
Then Willie was taking Ty’s arm. “Our dance,” she said. “I need more dancing with you.”

“Were you and that man Lamedeer drinking?” They were walking back to Bob Ring’s house just below the campus.
“Yes. And it sure helped when I danced with those others.”
“It certainly didn’t help when
I
danced with those others,” Willie laughed. “There were plenty of tipsy veterans in there.”
“The way you look in that dress, they’ll be checking out a lot of books now.” Ty felt her take his arm, hold it close.
The night was warm and they walked past the house, going around the block three times before they stopped. Ty refused Willie’s offer of coffee. He didn’t want to be sitting there with Bob Ring after having such a good time with Ring’s daughter. He thought it might show.
“Thanks,” Ty said. “I thought this might be an ordeal. It wasn’t— not at all.”
He leaned down to kiss her cheek. But she caught his face in her hands, held him away, looking at him.
“You are so much more than a packer, Ty.” Her voice was serious, almost stern. “Don’t you see that?”
Holding him that way, she pulled his face to hers, her lips wet, almost wanton. Then she was up the steps and onto the porch.
“Chaperoning with you gets exciting,” she said. “Should we try it again?”
But when it was time for the graduation dance, Ty couldn’t go. He had to salt the trail to the pass. He wanted it open so he could get the lookout crews to their fire stations. And there were Fenton’s ashes to take care of.
Willie took Bernard instead.

Ty had finished supplying the crews by the end of June. The country looked wonderful as he rode out: grass high, streams full, snow melting from the ridges—game everywhere. He was glad to have all his strength back and glad it was time to take care of the Fenton business once and for all. Willie had organized everything, even getting Thomas Haslam and Alice to come from San Francisco, the doctor to speak at the schoolhouse, both of them to be with Ty when he spread the ashes.

He left his horses at the Crippled Elk corrals and drove the pickup to the big house. Cody Jo had already been there a week, Angie and Buck moving into their old cabin so she could have the house to herself. She came out to meet him in the warm sun, hugging him and stepping back to look at him and not having it any other way but that he move his things in, take the guest room where he’d wintered.

That night Angie and Buck came with a big dinner. It wasn’t long before the others began to show up: Horace and Etta with the Murphys. Thomas Haslam and Alice in from San Francisco. Even Jasper and Gus. All of them having dinner together, Cody Jo making everyone at home.

She was still Cody Jo, talking about the labor movement, the dangers of the bomb, the United Nations, but none of it overshadowed how much she cared about them, how she’d opened the house to them just as she and Fenton had always done. They all felt it and opened themselves to her, the stories about Fenton becoming so alive it felt like he was there, sharing some special amusement with each of them.

It turned out not to be as easy to talk about Fenton at the schoolhouse. By the time Cody Jo and Ty got there it was almost full, some already settling for places outside, under the windows or along the porch where they could hear. All the Conners were there, and the Wilsons. The Jamisons were there too, with Sue, no longer a little girl now but married to Bump, her own little Conners lined up in a row. Tommy Yellowtail was gone, but his family came, the men big and dignified in their beaded vests, fresh feathers in their headbands; the children settling in with them, quiet as wood.

Everyone who worked for the Forest Service seemed to be there, some inside on benches, some under the open windows. Every trailcrew member who could wrangle a day off was there too. Bull Trout had driven out from Missoula. There were cowboys from Big Fork and Creston, packers from Ovando and Augusta—two who’d ridden across the mountains from Kiowa.

The Elkhorn piano player was just winding up “Lonesome Road” when Beth came in, ample in her black dress and sitting down quickly when two loggers jumped up to give her their places.

Wilma had convinced one of the Sisters of Providence to oversee things. She welcomed them with a prayer, her voice clear and lovely, her face perfectly framed by her habit. Rosie Murphy read a poem, her voice sounding harsh after the sister’s.

Gus Wilson followed. “I have something to say,” he started out. But he couldn’t say it very well, because what he wanted was for Tommy Yellowtail or Spec to say it—say how Fenton was most at home in his mountains. He got that much out, that he wanted Tommy and Spec there, but that was all.

Buck couldn’t say anything at all, though he opened and closed his mouth a few times trying. Ty, sitting with Cody Jo, sympathized. That’s why he’d backed off when Willie asked him to talk. He knew he couldn’t.

Bob Ring was next. He told the story about Fenton’s bringing him out of the mountains with a broken leg, saving the leg and saving Bob Ring too, as far as Bob Ring was concerned. “I don’t think I could have lived without that leg,” Bob Ring said simply. “I suppose there’s a lot of us here think we can’t live without Fenton. But I guess we got to learn.” He looked around, swallowing. “Won’t be easy,” he said finally.

Then it was Thomas Haslam’s turn. At first he didn’t speak so much about Fenton as about the kind of person Fenton was. But soon he focused right in. “The thing is,” he said, “I don’t think Fenton Pardee knew how to complain. Except when he thought you wanted too much money for a horse or a saddle. And that complaining was mostly for fun. As far as I could tell, he saw life mostly as interesting, a chance to figure things out.”

“With Cody Jo,” Thomas Haslam looked at her, the room still as a pond, “he figured he got more luck than a man deserves. Maybe that’s why he accepted dying so readily—the last chapter of a book he loved.”

His voice was low but clear through the deep quiet. “I don’t believe in this business of people being better in the ‘hereafter.’ It makes no sense. What does make sense is how Fenton made us better—here. How knowing him helped us . . . here.”

Cody Jo squeezed Ty’s hand so tightly he dropped the program they’d given him. As he picked it up, he heard someone begin to clap. He saw it was Buck, that Beth was behind him crying and clapping too. Lumberjacks near her stood, all of them clapping. Then everyone was standing and clapping, many crying too. Cody Jo held on to Ty as the Sister of Providence quieted them, got them all singing “My foot’s in the stirrup, my pony won’t stand, goodbye old paint, I’m leaving Cheyenne.” Willie had chosen it, picked the right verses, printed them on the program so they could sing them together.

Cody Jo was crying when they finished. Ty gave her his kerchief, felt the room quiet as they waited for her. He walked out with her, her whole body shaking as they went across the porch and down the steps. There were tables there, and food. Dan Murphy had made sure there was plenty to eat. He’d even put out a keg of beer from his bar.

Cody Jo smiled at Ty in a hurt, crooked kind of way. “I should be stronger. It was what Thomas said. And that clapping.” She handed him his kerchief. “You hold me together, Ty.”

And then she was saying encouraging things to the first people coming out of the schoolhouse, helping them through their awkwardness, the things they didn’t know how to say. The rest lined up, needing her to see they were there before they began visiting, sorting out what it all meant.

It wasn’t long before Beth came out. She turned away when she saw Cody Jo, but Cody Jo went to her. “You knew Fenton.” She took Beth’s hand. “He would be so pleased that you came. Drove all this way. Remembered him like this.”

Bernard Strait had come out of the schoolhouse behind Beth. He was shocked to see Cody Jo and Beth together and veered away, not wanting to hear anything Beth might say. But he needn’t have bothered. Beth didn’t say anything at all, flushing and crying a little and holding Cody Jo’s hand with both of hers. Cody Jo gave her a hug before she went back to the others, saying things to the children she’d taught, to their parents, to the cowboys and packers—paying just as much attention to the last people in the line as she had to the first.

Ty watched Bernard. It was hard to predict what he might do, and Ty figured Cody Jo had enough to handle on this day. She was talking with Buck now, Buck saying right out how much he wished Fenton could have been there: “He could of told Gus how to say what he had such a hard time with. Maybe got me so I could talk too. Hell, he might of even added some things to what the doc said.”

Buck hung his head, afraid he’d said too much. “He most always knew what to say.” His voice broke a little. “I never could get the knack.”
“Oh, Buck.” Cody Jo put her hand on his arm. “You have the knack. You do. It’s just ...a different knack.”
Ty thought Buck might start to cry, but he swallowed it away and walked over to Bernard Strait.
“Something pissin’ you off, Bernard?” Buck wiped his sleeve across his eyes. “Somethin’s wrong, I’ll sure as hell make it right.”
Someone handed Buck a cup of beer, and he took a big swallow. “Bet your fuckin’ ranger hat I will.” He took another pull before surrendering it to Ty, who took a sip and offered some to Bernard.
“I invited Beth,” Ty said. The sun reflected off Bernard’s glasses as he digested it. “Drink some beer. Let’s talk about old times.”
Bernard moved away, and Ty caught up with Beth as she was leaving. He walked with her to the car. Leonard was waiting there to drive her back.
“She’s nice, Ty.” Beth got into the car, a little teary. “Real nice. I can see why he didn’t come back....It sure hurts to have him gone.”
She wound down the window. “Not much meat on her. But she must of had somethin’ Fenton wanted.”
“You did too,” Ty said. “I know you did.”
Dan Murphy collared him as soon as he got back.
“Them Indians is into the beer,” he said. “That’s a worry.” But Ty looked and saw that the men were just as serious out in the lot as they had been in the schoolhouse, giving their children a little food, a few sips of beer. They stayed for awhile and were gone, slipping away as quietly as they’d come, some to Indian Town, others around the Missions to the reservation.
It was one of the packers and two cowboys that Dan should have worried about—and Buck. Gus and Ty cut the cowboy-packer problem off before it got started, Gus getting them more beer while Ty started them talking about the back-country rather than where the cattle should graze, what land the packers could cross getting to their mountains.
Jasper was a little drunk by the time Ty took Cody Jo home. He was telling Fenton stories to Buck, the two of them laughing and getting maudlin and enjoying each other. Gus told Ty he’d look after them. Dan said the same, that he’d clean everything up. Ty wasn’t sure of any of it, but he still thought he’d better leave. Cody Jo had had a long day.