I remembered from the time I'd been in Shelby with my parents that the train station was behind the main street, in an older part of town, where there were bars they'd visited. I wasn't sure where this was, but I crossed Main and went between two stores, down an alley away from the Christmas lights and traffic and motel signs, and walked out into a gravel back street, beyond which was the little switchyard and the depot itself on the far side, its windows lit yellow. Down the rails to the right I could see a row of grain gondolas and a moving engine light and, farther on, a car crossing the double tracks. The yard was dark, and it was colder and still snowing. I could hear the switch engine shunting cars, and as I stepped on the ties I looked both ways, east and west, and could see the rails shining out away from me toward where yellow caution lights and, farther on, red lights burned.
The station waiting room was warmer than the drugstore, and there were only a couple of people sitting in the rows of wood benches, though several suitcases were against the wall, and two people were waiting to buy tickets. Doris wasn't in sight. I thought she might be in the bathroom, at the back by the telephone, and I stood by the bags and waited, though I didn't see my suitcase or hers. So that after the other people had finished buying tickets, I decided she wasn't there and walked to the ticket window and asked the lady about her.
“Doris is looking for you, hon,” the lady said, and smiled from behind the metal window. “She bought your tickets and told me to tell you she was in the Oil City. That's across the street back that way.” She pointed toward the rear door of the building. She was an older woman with short, blond hair. She had on a red jacket and a gold name tag that said Betty. “Is Doris your mom?” she asked, and began counting out dollar bills in a pile.
“No,” I said. “She's my aunt. I live in Dutton.” And then I said, “Is the train going to be on time?”
“Yes, indeed,” she said, still counting out bills. “The train's always on time. Your aunt'll get you on it, don't worry.” She smiled at me again. “Dutton rhymes with Nuttin’. I been there before.”
Outside on the concrete platform, I saw Doris's Cadillac in the little gravel lot and, across the street, a dark row of small older buildings that looked like they'd been stores once but were empty now except for three that were bars. They were bars my mother and father had gone into the time I'd been here. At the end of the block a street began, with regular-looking houses on it, and I could see where lights were on in homes and cars were in the driveways, the snow accumulating in the yards. Beyond the corner, a fenced tennis court was barely visible in the dark.
The bars looked closed, though all three had small glass windows with lighted red bar signs and a couple of cars parked outside. When I came across the street I saw that the Oil City was the last one before the empty stores. A cab was stopped in front with its motor running, its driver sitting in the dim light reading a newspaper.
I hadn't been in too many bars, mostly just in Great Falls, when my father was drinking. But I didn't mind going in this one, because I thought I'd been in it once before. My father said a bar wasn't a place anybody ever wanted to go but was just a place you ended up. Though there was something about them I liked, a sense of something expected that stayed alive inside them even if nothing ever happened there at all.
INSIDE THE OIL CITY it was mostly dark and music was playing and the air smelled sweet and thick. Doris was sitting at the bar, talking to a man beside her, a small man wearing a white plastic hard hat and a canvas work suit and with a ponytail partway down his back. Drinks were in front of them, and the man's work gloves and some dollar bills were on the bar. He and Doris were talking and looking at each other straight in the eyes. I thought the man looked like an Indian, because of his hair and because there were two or three other Indians in the bar, which was a long, dark, almost empty room with two poker machines, a booth, and a dimly lit jukebox by itself against the wall. Chairs were scattered around, and it was cold, as if there wasn't any heat working.
Doris looked in my direction but didn't see me, because she turned back to the Indian in the hard hat and picked up her drink and took a sip. “That's entirely different,” she said loudly. “Caring and minding are entirely different concepts to me. I can care and not mind, and also mind and not care. So fuck you, they're not the same.” She looked toward me again, and she did see me. She was drunk, I knew that. I'd seen her drunk before. “You could be a private dick the way you come sneaking up,” she said, and glanced at the man beside her. “You just missed the Shelby police on a sweep through here. They said they were looking for you.” Doris smiled a big smile, then reached out, took my hand, and pulled me close to her. “The two of us were just discussing absolute values. This is Mr. Barney Bordeaux. We've only been informally introduced. He's in the wine-tasting business. And he's just told me a terrible story about his wife being robbed at gunpoint right here in Shelby, sad to say, and all her money and rings stolen. So he favors honesty as an absolute value under the circumstances.”
Barney frowned at her as if what she'd just said was stupid. He had narrow, dark eyes and a puffy dark Indian face under his white hard hat, which had a green Burlington Northern insignia on the front. “What's this cluck want?” he said, and squinted at me. One of his teeth in front was gone, and he looked like he'd been drinking a long time. He was small and thin and sickly, and had a little mustache at the corners of his mouth that made him look Chinese. Though he also looked like he could've been handsome at one time but had had something bad happen to him.
“This is my sister's child — Lawrence,” Doris said, letting go of my hand and putting hers on Barney's arm as if she wanted him to stay there. “We're going to Seattle on the train tonight.”
“You forgot to mention that,” Barney said in an unfriendly way.
Doris looked at me and smiled. “Barney just got out of Fort Harrison. So he's celebrating. He hasn't said what he was ill with yet.”
“I'm not ill with anything,” Barney said. He turned straight and looked at himself in the mirror behind the back bar. “I can't see where this is taking me,” I heard him say to himself.
“It's not taking you anywhere,” Doris said. Fort Harrison was the government hospital in Montana. My father had told me crazy Indians and veterans went there and saw doctors free of charge. “I had just said,” Doris went on, “that loyalty was more important than honesty, if honesty meant always having to tell only the strict truth, since there're always different kinds of truth.” She had taken her car coat off and piled it on the stool beside her. Her red wool dress was up above her knees. Her purse was on the bar beside her keys and the dollar bills.
Barney suddenly turned and put his hand right on Doris's knee where her legs were crossed. He smiled and he looked right at me. “You're in trouble when people younger than you are seem smart,” he said, and his smile widened so his missing tooth was evident. I could smell sweat on him, and wine. He laughed out loud then and turned back to the bar.
“Barney's starring in his own movie,” Doris said.
“Where's my suitcase?” I asked, because all at once I thought about it and couldn't see it anywhere. I wanted to put my mother's watch in it.
“Oh, let's see,” Doris said, giving Barney a look to make sure he was paying attention. “I gave that away. A poor penniless colored man came through who'd lost his suitcase and I gave him yours.” She picked up her car keys off the bar and dangled them without even looking at me. Then she reached in her purse, brought out my ticket, which was just a little white card, and handed it to me. “Hold your own,” she said. “That way, you're responsible for yourself.” She took a sip of her drink. She had switched from schnapps to something else. “What about your absolute values?” she said to me. “What do you think? I'm not sure loyalty's a good one to stay with. I may have to choose something else. Barney thinks honesty. Now you choose one.”