“You chose to?”
She nodded, gripping the armrest to keep from shaking.
“For the love of God, why?”
“Your son.”
“My son?” Peg was genuinely puzzled. Elizabeth saw where the woman’s lipstick was smeared, the gray roots at her scalp, and the white hairs Elizabeth’s mother called goat hairs growing from her chin. “Why are you bringing my son into this?”
“Your son made me touch him. While you and my parents played bridge, he snuck upstairs and unzipped his pants. He made me touch him. Over and over. And I hated it. Hated it. Hated it!”
Peg crumpled in the chair, her head in her hands, her back heaving.
When Peg came back a few hours later, she was wearing sunglasses that didn’t hide how much she’d been crying. Elizabeth felt strangely dry-eyed, but she slipped on the sunglasses Patrick had given her before she got into the car. They muted the day’s brightness but brought out other colors, subtle greens and browns.
The only sound on the ride back to Missoula was the tires crackling across the pavement as Peg piloted the car. Elizabeth saw that they were both driving away from who they had been, driving away from what the state had been, toward what it could become.
At MacDonald Pass, both of them were silent as the road snaked down through the mountains to the wide oxbows of the Clark Fork River. As the old car wound through the valley, the Garnet Mountains folded in on themselves like the Y of a woman’s body, their round flanks split by a coulee — a French word meaning to flow — the land bending toward water. Years later, Elizabeth would learn to love those broad flanks, the undulating plains of flesh, and the Y of a woman’s body, her body, with its mysteries, its givings and takings, but on that drive, she had to content herself with a weak spring sunlight warming her face and hands and the knowledge that, at least for now, they had crossed the Continental Divide and she was halfway home.
Ace in the Hole
by Eric Heidle
Great Falls
Civic-pride billboards and the drab county jail swept past the chilly Greyhound’s windows as it dropped down the hill into the night of Great Falls. Through frosted glass, Chance watched the town pull him in as the Missouri passed below, the bus thrumming over dark water and skiffs of ice. Beyond the bridge he saw the OK Tire sign was gone; its cinder-block building was now something new.
The bus pulled a lazy turn toward downtown, rolling through blocks of low brick warehouses before banking hard into the alley behind the depot. It settled with a hiss in the garage as the passengers roused and began filing off.
The snap of deep cold hit him at the door. The driver’s breath huffed with each suitcase he tossed from the coach’s gut. Chance only had his green duffel. He split off from the line shuffling into the warmly lit lobby. Ducking under the half-open bay door at the front of the garage, he stepped onto the street and walked toward Central Avenue.
He went into the first bar he found, easing past a gleaming line of poker machines gaily draining the life from their patrons. Finding a stool, Chance slid a twenty across the bar. The man behind it inclined his chin and Chance replied, “Whatever ditch.” When the drink came he held the brimming glass of whiskey and “ditch” water to his lips, toasted his reflection and a town he’d found a little less OK, and enjoyed a first delicious violation of parole.
Chance and his father leaned against opposite sides of the truck bed, resting on grimy forearms. The shop was quiet. It was Sunday and the town was in church.
“Battery’s fucked,” his father said. “Put the trickle charger on it but in this cold it probably won’t hold.”
The pickup, a great square International, had been Chance’s since high school. It was brutish and lovely and filled with garbage from the glory days. The engine idled, exhaling a fragrant plume of exhaust.
“I’d have picked you up at the station. Or Deer Lodge, for that matter.”
“I know. Thanks.”
“You ever hear from your mom over there?”
“Not once.”
“Too bad. So you know, I put the place up last fall. Sold it to Charlie Carter.”
Chance looked up, surprised for the first time. “Why?”
His dad glanced off toward the light. “No point keeping it since your grandma died. Charlie could use the pasture and I could use the pocket money. Kept the buildings, though. House is yours to stay in if you like.”
“Thanks. I might, for a bit.”
“Good. I threw something in the cab for you. Your granddad’s wool coat. Winter’s been a bitch.” He gave the truck an approving nod. “Come see me about a job in a couple days.”
“Sounds good.”
His dad drummed the heel of his hand against a rusty quarter panel. “Well. Let ’er rip.”
Chance drove the rifle-shot length of Tenth Avenue South under a cold overcast sky. The engine pulled grandly and he allowed himself a vision of swerving the steering wheel, plowing through burger chains and payday loan shacks, feeling their matchstick frames explode against the truck’s hungry grille. Goodbye, strip mall. Goodbye, Target. Sayonara, Tokyo Massage. He pulled off when he reached the east end of town with nothing but icy stubble fields and the towers of the air base beyond. The truck idled and the cab heater muttered its low sigh. He reached across the bench seat to a buffalo-plaid Pendleton he recalled his grandfather wearing at the ranch. He pulled it on and it fit, a bit snug but warm.
Sitting back, he felt a lump against his spine. Reaching into the coat’s rear game pocket, he found an envelope with CHANCE scrawled in pencil by his father’s crude hand. Inside was three thousand dollars.
The mermaid traced a slow, liquid curl through the turquoise pane of water, revealing a pleasantly bare midriff as she rolled into a sinewy loop. Her metallic tail chased behind, drawing gorgeous curlicues with each wondrous pelvic kick.
Chance lifted his drink and followed her silvery shape as she swam to the glass separating the bar back from the motel’s indoor pool. She gave him a bubbly grin from behind blue swim goggles.
“She’ll do,” said the big Indian sitting next to him at the bar, swiping the screen of his phone and sipping a High Life.
“But will she do me?” Chance added, just to be polite.
“Only if you’re lucky.” He offered a paw. “Amos.”
“Chance.” They shook.
“Lucky Chance. How could you lose?” Amos fished some bills from his Seahawks jacket and waved the barmaid over. “Another one for my lucky friend. Me too.”
Chance thanked him and they sat in blue vinyl chairs watching the mermaid flit in and out of view. Behind them a crowd of college kids and ranchers sipped Windex-tinted drinks beneath the bamboo-thatched ceiling as a small old woman at the organ crooned a gravelly “Mack the Knife.” Amos took a pull from his beer and stood, waggling the phone. “Have to check my stock portfolio.” He clapped Chance on the back and faded into the crowd.
Chance sampled his drink. A second mermaid had entered the pool and she entwined with the first, forging a heavenly double helix suspended in chlorine. He ran his eyes along her shape and realized that he knew her. Amy. They’d dated in school. He raised his drink, tilted the glass in a toast.
From behind the glass she threw a sidelong smirk, cocked a finger at him, and fired. Then she went up for air.
Chance grinned and watched her tail slip up out of sight.