Sarah Lynn was quiet for most of the drive. She'd come along only because we had such a short time together before I went back to Palo Alto, and we wouldn't see each other again until June. This wasn't a part of my life she liked. On the surface, that was because of the brutality, but there was a deeper aspect.
After Pete Pettyjohn had thumped me, I'd stuck with my vow to learn to take care of myself. I took tae kwon do lessons for a while, then segued into boxing because of my admiration for a coach named Jimmy Egan-a tough, salt-of-the-earth mick from the smelter town of Anaconda who taught English at the local Catholic college and shepherded young men into becoming respected and respectful fighters. His view of the sport was parallel to his steadfast religious faith. Dedicated training and clean ring work were along the paths of righteousness. Any kind of moral transgression was punching below the belt.
I trained with Jimmy my last three years in high school, then went on to Stanford. It had long since disbanded its politically incorrect boxing club, but I hooked up with an informal group who worked out and sparred together and sometimes got bouts at a gym in San Jose. I kept on with Jimmy during the summers and took every local bout I could get.
I had no illusions about achieving any major status. There were plenty of amateur light heavies out there who were faster, more experienced, and a lot hungrier. What kept me at it was a passion that had developed over the years. I was still always jumpy when I got into a ring, but fear had become outweighed by the electric charge of the experience. At its best, it thrilled me with a sense of power that nothing else I'd ever done could touch. I had also gotten plenty familiar with the downside-a soundless explosion in my head, then opening my eyes to the sight of another man's ankles, with my face on the canvas and the ref yelling numbers in my ear. But even that had a raw, real edge.
That passion was what troubled Sarah Lynn. She saw it as a threat, almost like another woman. It stood for a side of me that wasn't at all in line with what she wanted, which was to get married and start a family. She'd gone to college the previous year at Montana State, but left after two semesters to work for her father. Now she was just waiting for me to graduate.
I was having my own troubles, but I couldn't grasp why. I only knew that I was more and more restless. That must have been clear to her, and it didn't help any.
We'd brought along a six-pack of beer for the drive home. But as we got close to Rocky Boy, Sarah Lynn surprised me by opening one. She surprised me again by finishing it fast and starting a second. She wasn't much of a drinker. She pulled off her boots and leaned against the far door with her knees drawn up and her feet tucked under my thigh, sipping and watching me. It made me slightly uneasy.
The town of Rocky Boy was several miles east of the highway, a pretty drive along Box Elder Creek. The site was steeply hilly, with a small settlement of houses and a number of reservation agency buildings. The bouts were being held in the school gym, and the parking lot was crowded with pickup trucks and station wagons.
I felt the first real tingle of what was coming, and opened the pickup's door.
"Let's not go in yet," Sarah Lynn said. "Let's drive around."
"Drive? Where?" Havre, the nearest town big enough to have more than a gas station, lay halfway between here and Saskatchewan. There wasn't much else but snowbound prairie for a good fifty miles in every direction.
"We could go to Bear Paw," she said. "Daddy took us skiing there when I was little. I want to see if it looks the same."
Evening had settled in by now. It was around six, the scheduled starting time. But tournaments worked from the lightest weights up, and judging from the number of vehicles, there were going to be a lot of kids tonight. Most weren't big enough to knock each other down, so they usually went the full three rounds. For sure, I wouldn't be coming up for a few hours.
A swirl of the damp chinook breeze slipped across my face and high into my nostrils. I closed the door and started the truck.
I drove a couple of miles along the dead-end road toward the little Bear Paw ski area. The landscape was deserted. Sarah Lynn had gotten animated and was looking intently out the windows, like she was watching for something. Abruptly, she grabbed my arm and pointed at a dirt track leading into the woods.
"Turn in there," she said.
I obeyed, thinking maybe she needed to pee, although I'd have expected her to go into the school. I took it slowly, feeling my way, nervous about getting stuck. But the ground surface was firm and we only had to go a hundred feet before we were shielded by trees. I coasted to a stop and cut the headlights.
But instead of getting out, Sarah Lynn got all over me, her tongue hot and wet in my ear and her fingers tugging at my belt. Startled, I half embraced her and half tried to hold her squirming body still.
"Sarah, baby, we can't," I said. Sex before a contest was an old athlete's taboo, another thing I knew was superstition and yet still had a powerful hold. I caught at her hands, but she was determined, and maybe I didn't fight her all that hard. Then her mouth was on my cock, and I could no more have stopped than I could have walked home with the truck on my back. I pushed down her jeans and panties, with her hips wriggling to help. She straddled me, heaving and then yelping while I heard myself growl, and I came so hard my slamming boot heel pounded that dent into the opposite door.
The noise level in the gym was almost painful, compounded of shouting from spectators, loud conversations of others trying to be heard, and the thudding of blows. I guessed the crowd at about a hundred and fifty, standing around the ring or sitting in the bleachers. Young men and boys were getting their hands wrapped, shadowboxing, snapping punches at coaches who held gloves shoulder-high. Some, their ordeals already over, carried trophies.
Sarah Lynn spotted a couple of other women from Helena in the bleachers, mothers of young contestants, and went to say hi. I stood there a minute longer, watching the eleven-or twelve-year-olds in the ring flail at each other with melon-size gloves strapped to the ends of their skinny arms. It was a little pathetic and really dull. A lot of the parents wore boosters' jackets, made of shiny nylon of various bright colors and emblazoned with the name of their club. The fluorescent overhead lights cast a sheen on those and on human flesh that I'd never seen anywhere but at boxing matches. The yelling faces and the colors seemed magnified in a way that suggested a disturbing dream. Maybe it was because of all the aggression floating around. When I glanced up at Sarah Lynn, I saw that she and the other two women were talking with their heads bowed together. The gym was overheated and stuffy with the smell of sweaty bodies. I decided to take a walk.
As I passed the ticket table inside the door, the hearty black-haired woman in charge gave me a big smile.
"You running away?" she said.
"Damn straight. I'm getting out while I can."
She shook her forefinger at me playfully. "That's what you think."
The outside world was deliciously cool and quiet except for the gentle gusting wind. I scanned the license plates in the parking lot. A few were from other states or Canada, but most were from Montana, and most of those from the heartland. You could tell because the plate's first number, one through fifty-six, identified the county. The local boxing club would meet in the back of an Elks lodge or VFW hall in some tiny town like Geraldine that you'd drive through and barely notice. But there'd be a few kids out on those ranches who thirsted for something more, to prove themselves or just to break the monotony, and grabbed at this small glory as a means.