I woke to the sound of a firing squad.
Rifle shots cracked the air and brought me out of a swamp of bad dreams. I lifted my head and looked at the clock beside my bed at the Finlen. 10:32.
Another round of gunshots echoed through the empty brick canyons of the city. I tumbled from bed and crouched on the floor, panting. Then I remembered I was in Butte, not Baghdad, and I had a mission this morning.
I dressed quickly, sloppily, and raced down the Finlen’s stairwell. When I came out onto the street, I heard the amplified voices of city officials, one after the other stepping to the microphone and extolling the virtues of the brave and selfless Chandler Marlowe. Those lies only made me run faster up East Broadway.
I followed the off-key blats of the high school band warming up and, turning onto Granite Street, found myself surrounded by big men zipping around in tiny cars. They wore maroon fezzes on top of their heads and big Shriner grins on their faces. Cowboys on horses clopped up the street behind me. I stepped to the side, walking in the gutter as stooped veterans marched past, struggling to stay in step as they recalled their drill-and-ceremony training from fifty years ago. Four of those wrinkled warriors had buckets of candy. Every half block, they reached in and tossed taffy to the kids along the parade route.
I dashed alongside the parade until I saw it gleaming ahead of me: a white 196 °Cadillac convertible, the fins above its taillights sharp and polished. It crawled along the stained and potholed street like it was visiting from another world, carrying a diplomat from a faraway planet.
She sat on top of the car’s trunk, slender legs dangling into the backseat. She had one hand propped behind her while the other cut the air with nonstop waves. The hand gently turned back and forth to the crowd with just the right balance of grief and greeting: Yes, I’m a widow, but I thank you for this honor.
I stopped to catch my breath, hands on my knees. The Richest Hill on Earth was proving hard to climb.
“There she goes.”
“She can keep on going and not stop until she gets to Missoula for all I care.”
I half-turned to my right. Two women who looked like they lived on a daily diet of Pork Chop John’s watched the Caddy roll down the street.
“Poor gal,” the first woman said. “All that trouble with her sister and that drug money.”
“Poor nothing,” the second lady said. “That family made their bed.”
“Well... that one there’s got a nice bed now.” She snorted a laugh. “Mattress stuffed with all that insurance money from the army. I say good for her, shaking loose of her druggy sister.”
The second lady looked sharp in my direction. “Do I know you?”
“No, I guess you don’t,” I said. Answering the beckon of Chloe’s cupped palm, I started forward. I could almost hear the crisp scrunch of all those hundred-dollar bills as the two of us rolled across that mattress — a clean Chloe, not a vacant-eyed skank like I’d been led to believe. Things just kept getting better and better.
But then three men stepped from the crowd and blocked my way: Byron and two guys who looked like they got their full money’s worth from their gym memberships. Byron’s head was swaddled in a bandage. It clamped his head together and would have been perfectly white if it weren’t for three brownish-red stains that bloomed like flowers along his jawline.
I heard Byron mumble-yell something approximating, “That’s him!” and then they were rushing me.
Once upon a time, I’d soared down the field at Naranche Stadium to cheers of hundreds, carrying the ball to victory. I was older and a little slower now, but I gave it my all, dancing and dodging those three dudes on Granite Street.
I had a convertible to catch and when I reached it, I would touch Chloe on the elbow and make her turn to face me. I wasn’t sure what I would say, but I knew what I wouldn’t say. I wouldn’t tell Chloe the truth of what went down in Baghdad that day, how her husband was supposed to be off-duty that afternoon, how I hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before, how I made a deal with Marlowe to take my shift on that patrol, and how he looked at me dead in the eye and said, “Sure, I’ll swap with you. But it’ll cost you.”
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.”