“I don’t believe in the war.” Elizabeth hated Peg’s glasses, the cat’s-eye shape, the thick lenses, the way her eyes seemed magnified and blind at the same time. She thought of telling those glasses about the boy and how they’d shatter, shards flying in a million directions.
Peg stood when the hairdresser called her name. She patted Elizabeth’s leg. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell your parents.”
A thin blade of nervousness propelled Elizabeth through the Capitol rotunda where, as people moved about, talking, their voices grew whispery and ancient. She met the other pages — she and the boy from Dawson County were the only ones who didn’t live on a ranch. The pages tried not to stare at one another as the legislative coordinator explained their duties: fetching newspapers, copies of amendments, cigarettes, and coffee, gallons of coffee.
In the assembly hall, pages sat in black mahogany chairs facing the one hundred delegates, who were seated alphabetically to encourage fraternization. A lighted board featured their names. When a delegate pushed a button at his or her desk, the corresponding number lit up on the board, and the pages went quickly to help.
There was a comfortable, early morning ease about the room. Aides handed out papers while the delegates milled about, chatting, drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes, or tipping back in their chairs behind newspapers. Elizabeth only half-listened, absorbed in the smell of cigarette smoke, the red swirled carpeting, the long windows, and the huge painting by Charles Russell of Lewis and Clark meeting the Flathead Indians.
There was a dark, Serbian delegate from Anaconda with slicked-back hair and a pinstriped suit. The oldest delegate was an elfin librarian from the University of Montana who was rumored to have an encyclopedic memory; the youngest was a graduate student with frosted hair and a Southern accent. Peg was an anomaly: the housewife with shooting-star veins was a Missoula Republican who hailed from Butte and hated the company. Handsome research analysts scurried about, with their array of sideburns — neat college-boy sideburns, curly mutton-chop sideburns, and narrow Elvis Presley sideburns — handing out research ranging from Supreme Court rulings to Montana statutes to copies of Plato’s Republic.
President Graybill pounded his gavel to open the session and announced the date: Tuesday, February 29, 1972. The members of the Natural Resource Committee walked to the podium, where they stood and congratulated one another on having created one of the strongest environmental-resources amendments ever written.
The delegate from Glendive, the committee chair, tapped the microphone. She had a mane of wild black hair held back from her drawn-in face with barrettes. “We have failed this state,” she said. “The amendment that this committee is so busy congratulating themselves about is weak, watered down, and basically useless.”
The other committee members looked shocked.
“We are facing a future of strip-mining. This committee has failed to defend Montana’s right to a clean and healthful environment. They voted it down in committee, folks. And now they are congratulating themselves on what a fine job they’ve done. Let me ask you this: Will you be proud that you failed to support Montana’s right to a clean and healthful environment? Will we still be congratulating ourselves after we’ve destroyed our land and air and rivers?”
She started crying. The room erupted. President Graybill pounded his gavel and shouted for order. Peg and several others rushed over to comfort her.
The page next to Elizabeth handed her a note that read:
You have red hair.
I think I’m in love with you.
Patrick
That night, as they ate cabbage and corned beef in Dorothy’s Cafe, Peg told Elizabeth that her father left the house each morning before dawn to work in Butte’s Alice Mine.
“He took an elevator 5,000 feet into the earth,” she said. “Can you imagine? Rock walls, just a candle for light, coming up once a day for lunch, and then going back into the dirt and the dark again? The horses that worked down there went blind. That’s what that woman is fighting against with clean and healthful.”
Elizabeth looked at her stringy corned beef. If horses went blind, wouldn’t people, too? “It seems like they would have just killed themselves.”
“I can’t believe you said that.” There was an edge to Peg’s voice. “They didn’t kill themselves because it was a sin. They had families and they were tough.”
“I didn’t mean it like that,” Elizabeth said, stung.
Peg’s smile looked like a grimace. “I know you didn’t, honey. But think about what you say.”
As they walked outside, Elizabeth wished she were anywhere but here, on this brick sidewalk, making torturous small talk. She thought about Patrick and the way his hair curled over his collar, the way his nose tipped up slightly at the end.
“My father was killed in a mine explosion,” Peg said as they continued down the deserted street. “He left my mother to raise seven children. That’s why, when Mr. Thompson asked me to marry him, I told him, I’ll marry you if you don’t work for the Anaconda Company! You know what he said?”
“What?” Elizabeth couldn’t imagine Mr. Thompson having the nerve to ask Peg out for coffee.
“He said: Let’s take the next bus to Missoula! And we did!” She held her arms open, her purse hanging from one of them like an ornament.
“That’s a nice story,” Elizabeth said, wondering why grown-ups assumed younger people were interested in old folks’ origin stories. She followed Peg down the narrow streets of Last Chance Gulch. They stopped in front of a store called Mr. Dash’s Haberdashery, looking in at the window display.
“Funny beings, men are,” said Peg.
Hilarious, Elizabeth thought, wondering exactly how many steps lay between her and the Y.
Four mannequins stood in a shaft of light from the streetlamps, dressed in suit coats and sweater vests, in dress shirts and ties, headless and waiting.
The next day, the Anaconda delegate tried modifying the natural resources amendment so the state of Montana could preserve a clean and healthful environment as a public trust.
The delegate spoke for an hour about trusts and how environmentalists were trying to take over public lands for the government. This was socialism, he explained.
The room grew hot.
Peg stood up and turned to the delegates. “We all know who this delegate is really representing — right, folks? It’s a company named for a snake. The company created our first constitution, and if you wonder how people felt about it, think about what they called it: the copper collar.”
Her opposing delegate rose and began reading the Magna Carta.
Elizabeth jumped up to answer bell number 46.
This delegate was from Poplar. “Jesus H. Christ,” he said. “Nobody told us the Anaconda Company was going to filibuster this. We’re gonna be here till next goddamn Christmas.” He told her the last page he had was from Missoula. “Kid was a hippie, but you know what? He was the smartest page I ever had.”
Elizabeth resolved to be smarter. “What can I get you?”
“The paper,” he said, and handed her a dime.
She headed down to the newspaper machines in the basement. She put in the dime, pulled up the glass box, and took out a newspaper.
When she returned, the same delegate was talking about how his grandfather had taken the train to Yellowstone and toured the park in a buckboard and how, with these socialist ideas of a clean and healthful environment, everybody would be suing the state.