Three crosses stood on one side of the railroad track, and four crosses on the other side. The three happened when some Canadian cowboys lost a race with a train. It was too awful to remember, but on most nights those guys stood looking down the tracks with startled eyes.
The four crosses happened when one-third of the senior class of ’59 hit that grade too fast on prom night. They rolled a damned old Chevrolet. More bodies by Fisher. Now the two girls stood in their long dresses, looking wistful. The two boys pretended that none of it meant nothin’.
Farther out the road, things had happened before my time. An Indian ghost most often stood beside the ghost of a deer. In another place a chubby old rancher looked real picky and angry.
The dancing ghost continued unpredictable. All the other ghosts stood beside their crosses, but the dancing ghost showed up anywhere he wanted, anytime he wanted. I’d slow the DeSoto as he came into my lights, and he was the spitting image of Jesse.
“I don’t want to hear about it,” Jesse said when I tried to tell him. “I’m on a roll. I’m even gettin’ famous.”
He was right about that. People up and down the line joked about Jesse and his graveyard business.
“It’s the very best kind of advertising,” he told me. “We’ll see more action before snow flies.”
“You won’t see snow fly,” I told him, standing up to him a second time. “Unless you slow down and pay attention.”
“I’ve looked at heaps more road than you,” he told me, “and seeing things is just part of the night. That nighttime road is different.”
“This is starting to happen at last light.”
“I don’t see no ghosts,” he told me, and he was lying. “Except Miss Molly once or twice.” He wouldn’t say anything more.
And Jesse was right. As summer ran on, more graves showed up near Miss Molly. A man named Mcguire turned up with a ’41 Cad.
And Sam Winder buried his ’47 Packard.
And Pete Johansen buried his pickup.
Pete Johansen put up many a days work with her.
Montana roads are long and lonesome, and along the high line is lonesomest of all. From Saskatchewan to Texas, nothing stands tall enough to break the wind that begins to blow cold and clear toward late October. Rains sob away toward the Middle West, and grass turns goldish amber. Rattlesnakes move to high ground, where they will winter. Every creature on God’s plains begins to fat up against the winter. Soon it’s going to be thirty below and the wind blowing.
Four-wheel-drive weather. Internationals and Fords, with Dodge crummy wagons in the hills; cars and trucks will line up beside houses, garages, sheds, with electric wires leading from plugs to radiators and blocks. They look like packs of nursing pups. Work will slow, then stop, New work turns to accounting for the weather. Fuel, emergency generators, hay-bale insulation. Horses and cattle and deer look fuzzy beneath thick coats. Check your battery. If your rig won’t start, and you’re two miles from home, she won’t die—but you might.
School buses creep from stop to stop, and bundled kids look like colorful little bears trotting through late-afternoon light. Snowy owls come floating in from northward, while folks go to church on Sunday against the time when there’s some better amusement. Men hang around town, because home is either empty or crowded, depending on if you’re married. Folks sit before television, watching the funny, goofy, unreal world where everybody plays at being sexy and naked, even when they’re not.
And, nineteen years old is lonesome, too. And work is lonesome when nobody much cares for you.
Before winter set in, I got it in my head to run The Road Dog’s route. It was September. Winter would close us down pretty quick. The trip would be a luxury. What with room rent, and gas, and eating out, it was payday to payday with me. Still, one payday would account for gas and sandwiches. I could sleep across the seat. I hocked a Marlin .30-.30 to Jesse for twenty bucks. He seemed happy with my notion. He even went into the greenhouse and came out with an arctic sleeping bag.
“In case things get vigorous,” he said, and grinned. “Now get on out there and bite The Dog.”
It was a happy time. Dreams of ladies sort of set themselves to one side as I cruised across the eternal land. I came to love the land that autumn, in a way that maybe ranchers do. The land stopped being something that a road ran across. Canadian honkers came winging in vees from the north. The great Montana sky stood easy as eagles. When I’d pull over and cut the engine, sounds of grasshoppers mixed with birdcalls. Once, a wild turkey, as smart as any domestic turkey is dumb, talked to himself and paid me not the least mind.
The Dog showed up right away. In a café in Malta:
Road Dog
“It was all a hideous mistake.”
Christopher Columbus
In a bar in Tampico:
Road Dog
Who’s afraid of the big bad Woof?
In another bar in Culbertson:
Road Dog
Go East, young man, go East
I rolled Williston and dropped south through North Dakota. The Dog’s trail disappeared until Watford City, where it showed up in the can of a filling station:
Road Dog
Atlantis and Sargasso
Full fathom five thy brother lies
And in a joint in Grassy Butte:
Road Dog
Ain’t Misbehavin’
That morning in Grassy Butte, I woke to a sunrise where the land lay bathed in rose and blue. Silhouettes of grazing deer mixed with silhouettes of cattle. They herded together peaceful as a dream of having your own place, your own woman, and you working hard; and her glad to see you coming home.
In Bowman, The Dog showed up in a nice restaurant:
Road Dog
The Katzenjammer Kids minus one
Ghosts did not show up along the road, but the road stayed the same. I tangled with a bathtub Hudson, a ’53, outside of Spearfish in South Dakota. I chased him into Wyoming like being dragged on a string. The guy played with me for twenty miles, then got bored. He shoved more coal in the stoker and purely flew out of sight.
Sheridan was a nice town back in those days, just nice and friendly; plus, I started to get sick of the way I smelled. In early afternoon, I found a five-dollar motel with a shower. That gave me the afternoon, the evening, and next morning if it seemed right. I spiffed up, put on a good shirt, slicked down my hair, and felt just fine.
The streets lay dusty and lazy. Ranchers’ pickups stood all dented and work-worn before bars, and an old Indian sat on hay bales in the back of one of them. He wore a flop hat, and he seemed like the eyes and heart of the prairie. He looked at me like I was a splendid puppy that might someday amount to something. It seemed okay when he did it.
I hung around a soda fountain at the five-and-dime because a girl smiled. She was just beautiful. A little horsey-faced, but with sun-blond hair, and with hands long-fingered and gentle. There wasn’t a chance of talking, because she stood behind the counter for ladies’ underwear. I pretended to myself that she looked sad when I left.