Joe smiled. Old small-town rivalries ran deep.
“I think that’s where it started,” Latta said, lowering his voice as if he feared being overheard. “They lost that fight with Cheyenne and the people here took it personally. They went around with a chip on their shoulder, and they were convinced the deck was stacked against them. Then damn if they didn’t turn out to be right.
“First it was copper. The owners of the mine and mill diversified into Montana and South Dakota and got so overextended their credit got cut off by the banks. The copper mines closed in the 1920s, followed by the gold mines in the 1930s. The coal mines were underground, though, and they seemed untouchable. Even when the companies learned they could strip-mine millions of tons of coal around Gillette a hell of a lot cheaper than digging it out of the mountain here, the coal mines kept chugging along. There are third-generation coal miners around here, and they are a tough bunch of hombres. But the EPA shut ’em down five years ago. The Feds put new clean-air regulations up and the power plants couldn’t afford to finance new scrubbers, I guess. The coal from here was too expensive to burn, and the low-sulfur coal from Gillette won out. All them mines shut down within a year, and folks were dropping off their house keys at the bank on the way out of town.”
Joe clicked his tongue in sympathy. It was a familiar story.
Latta said, “The tourism economy died when the interstate highway system routed I-90 north of here so the tourists could shoot right through the top of the county and not pass through these towns anymore.
“Then the only rail spur that could transport lumber from here east went belly-up ten years ago and the mill closed. That shut down the loggers. You know what loggers are like, don’t you? Loggers log. They can’t do nothing else. They’re used to months of downtime when the weather is bad and then balls-to-the-walls work when the snow melts. But when the good weather rolls around and they can’t go into the woods — damn. They get grumpy.
“It was one damned thing after another, is what I’m saying,” Latta said, looking down at his hands grasping the bottle.
“All we got left up here,” he said, “is what was here in the first place, meaning big game and some damned fine habitat, and a few really bitter people who decided to stay.”
He looked up. “Only sixty people still live in the town of Medicine Wheel. About eight hundred fifty hang on here in Wedell. And Sundance, which used to be the smallest town in the county, has twelve hundred. Them Sundancers keep to themselves and pretend they aren’t part of the rest of the county. So I doubt you’ll find nine hundred more miserable, angry, or bitter people anywhere in the U.S. of A.”
“Where did the people go who left here?” Joe asked.
“All over. A lot of them headed to North Dakota the last few years to get in on that Bakken play. They were the smart ones.”
Joe asked, “What keeps those nine hundred people here if there’s nothing for them to do?”
“They like it here.”
“How do they survive?”
“Hell,” Latta said, “transfer payments. They mostly live off the dole. Welfare, Social Security, you name it. There’s a doctor over in Sundance who will write a letter for just about anyone, saying he’s disabled. Half the men get disability checks. I see a lot of these disabled guys up in the hills during hunting season, and it’s just amazing what they can do: pack a quarter of an elk on their back, hike ten miles — it’s just, well, you know. Quite a few of them are employed as hunting guides for a few months, and about fifteen work at a wild game — processing plant that’s damned good — state of the art, in fact. Other than that, they do a whole lot of nothing.
“The thing is,” Latta said, “no one is ashamed of it. They all think they got dealt a bad hand from the companies, the state, and the Feds. They act like they’re owed whatever they can scam. And they’ve been doing it so long it’s a way of life.”
“We’ve got a few of them where I come from,” Joe said, thinking of Dave Farkus.
“Yeah,” Latta said, consumed with thoughts of his own that Joe couldn’t penetrate, as if he had something he wanted to say but wasn’t sure whether to say it.
“Like I said, the only thing going anymore is the hunting and fishing. There’s plenty of that. I keep busy.”
Joe thought about the poachers Latta had mentioned, but chose to steer clear of the subject. Instead, he asked, “Why do you stay?”
“There’s a couple bright spots,” Latta said, finally.
Joe looked around the bar, then said, “What bright spots?”
“I got a nice house here in Wedell. Did you see those old Victorians when you drove in?”
Joe nodded.
“I bought one of them at a fire-sale price ten years ago. Used to belong to one of the Wedell kids. I never thought I’d live in a house like that in my entire life. Six bedrooms, three bathrooms, a carriage house out back. I’ll have to show it to you.”
“I’d like to see it,” Joe said, puzzled. It was against policy for a game warden to own his own house and not have it be provided by the state, much less a six-bedroom mansion — old or not.
“Plus, my daughter likes it here,” Latta said. “She has friends she wouldn’t want to leave.”
“Your daughter?”
Latta looked up with a wistful expression and a hint of moisture in his eyes.
“My Emily,” he said. “Thirteen years old.”
“That can be a tough age,” Joe said. “I know.”
“Ain’t nothin’ bad about her, Joe. My wife couldn’t stand it here, and when she left she didn’t take Emily. She just packed the car and took off for Oregon and left me and a four-year-old girl with muscular dystrophy.”
Joe felt like he’d been punched. “Jim, I just can’t imagine what that would be like. So your daughter is doing okay?”
“She is now,” Latta said, averting his eyes. “It was so damned tough when she was trying to walk and she’d keep falling down. My wife said she was uncoordinated — a slow learner. But it was MD. The doctors at the time said she wouldn’t live past eighteen or twenty before her muscles got so weak she’d die of respiratory failure. But now they’re saying she might live to forty. Forty!”
“That’s great, Jim. What changed?”
“Emily got an operation over in Rapid City. She had scoliosis — sidewise curvature of the spine. Her muscles couldn’t keep her sitting up in her wheelchair, and she was a goner. The surgery straightened her out and prolonged her life by twenty years. I fought with the state insurance company for years about the operation, and they kept saying they wouldn’t pay for it. Then it finally happened.”
Joe smiled and glanced toward the bar to see if the drinkers were paying attention to Latta’s sudden burst of emotion. They weren’t. But Shawna looked over with sympathetic eyes, taking it all in.
Latta wiped roughly at his eyes with a bar napkin, and Joe didn’t stare.
“Shit,” Latta said. “I didn’t mean to get all gooey on you. It’s just, when I talk about Emily, I just fuckin’ lose it.”
“It’s all right,” Joe said. “I’ve got daughters of my own. I can’t even imagine what it would be like to be in your shoes.”
“It wasn’t easy. It still ain’t.”
Joe said, “I’m glad the insurance company came through.”
Latta looked up sharply. “Who said they did?”
Joe was confused. “You said you fought them for years…”
“It wasn’t them that came through. If it weren’t for a damned good-hearted individual, it wouldn’t be a good story at all.”