High Country : A Novel (27 page)

It was a relief to Willie when Ty would walk into her library. He was always working with colts or green mules, and she was afraid one might plunge off the trail, dragging the rest behind him. But she knew Ty was good at his work, gentle with his animals—as she was sure most packers were not. And she liked it that the life didn’t harden him, not the inside of him. She made sure of that, giving him books that offered some balance.

Bernard Strait came in to see her too, but not for books. More and more of his work was with the Missoula office, and he would come with big Forest Service reports under his arm, studying them in the reading room and looking up to smile at her, making no bones about being there to enjoy Wilma Ring. He would take her to movies, to lectures and basketball games. The pretty librarian was well known on the campus, and Bernard was happy to be with her, enjoying her popularity, proud of her and pleased to see to whatever needs she had.

With Ty it was different. He was always polite, but he hardly knew what her needs were. He would grow quiet with her friends, stand a little apart, meeting them willingly enough but reticent—as though not sure it was right to intrude on her world. She liked it best when he took her dancing. She liked the way he relaxed to music, knew almost all the songs, humming them, sometimes speaking the words, his voice just a whisper. She didn’t even mind the drinking. It didn’t seem to change him much, just make him relaxed. She liked it most when Angie and Buck would join them, Buck laughing and dancing with her in his big, open way; Angie making over Ty, her energy contagious. Sometimes Buck would order shots of whiskey with their beer. Willie would sip hers, her eyes watering, but liking its warmth, liking the way Ty watched her as she drank.

“I’m not sayin’ Bernard’s the pick of the litter,” her father told her one morning after she’d come home from Mass to cook him a big Sunday breakfast. “Just that he’s a better bet than Ty. Not likely to leave you for half a year to moon around the mountains lookin’ at sunsets.”

“I like them both.” Willie was surprised to hear her father being critical of Ty. The trail crews swore by him, called him the most reliable packer from Missoula all the way into Canada. She got out eggs, thinking about the night before at the Elkhorn—the music, the people. “Ty’s just more fun to dance with.” She broke the eggs into a skillet, stirred them.

“Probably fun to do more than dance with.” Bob Ring still couldn’t get used to how pretty his daughter had become. “It just might be fun that leaves you blue as night . . . after he’s had his.”

“Ty’s not interested in me.” She was flustered by the way her father looked at her. “He lost interest in a lot of things after Cody Jo went away.”

“Healthy man like that doesn’t lose interest in
some
things. You better be thankful that’s not what he’s after.”
“Why be thankful?” She put eggs and bacon and toast in front of him and messed up his hair. “Librarians need excitement too.”
“Watch your damn step.” He pointed his fork at her. “Ty’s not one of those altar boys down at that church of yours.”
“Maybe that’s why I like him.” She laughed as she watched her father’s face redden. “That old library gets pretty quiet.”
“Ty does too,” her father said. “Which might be when he’s most interesting . . . and dangerous. Stay in your library. It’s quiet
and
safe.”
“Fathers! I think you’d like to lock us all up in a tower.”
“With reason,” Bob Ring said, getting it all out and starting to eat. “With damn good reason.”

None of it was lost on Willie. She knew Ty didn’t always stay with Horace and Etta in Missoula. And it was clear that the people he’d say hello to in the street weren’t the kind you’d find at Mass—or anywhere near a library. The truth is she was glad he knew them, glad to see he had a life outside his mountains.

It troubled her that that was where he was most at home. She tried to accept it, tell herself it was just a young man’s affliction. But it nagged at her. There was a firmness in the way he looked at things, a finality that made her wonder if he could ever be comfortable outside them, where to his way of thinking people were caught up only in what they could own.

It made their times together unpredictable, not so much because of Ty but because of something in her. There were times when she was startled by her own response to something he would say or do, or the way he would look at her. Sometimes she’d feel a flutter in her stomach and want to put her arms around him, other times she’d feel something close to fear, a rush of blood that frightened her.

Everything,
everything
, about Bernard was different. He was as predictable as coffee, polite, careful to seem thoughtful but still as stubborn as a mule, which hardly bothered her. She had so many ways to get around his intransigence that it almost seemed endearing. She would see it coming, watch him put his tongue in his cheek, considering before shaking his head as though answering some higher logic. And she would back away, come at whatever it was from a different direction a day later, enjoying his acquiescence, smiling as her idea became his invention.

She knew Bernard wanted her for more than his partner at university gatherings. But it wasn’t difficult to hold him at bay. And there certainly was no shortage of interested men. There were all the veterans stopping by her desk for help. There were the young professors, shy and awkward in their pretensions, asking her for coffee or to go to some special lecture in their field.

And she was in no hurry. She liked her courses in the English Department, enjoyed moving from one class to the next, coming to grips with the literature—the authors and the different approaches her professors would take to them.

And of course there was Ty. More interesting than any man she knew. And despite his rough profession, perhaps the most tender. She would watch him watching her, see that look on his face as though he knew getting close to her might be both the best and the most painful thing he could possibly do. It perplexed her. And it drew her to him.

In the summer Ty got another letter from Cody Jo, this one from Italy. Then some cards. Then another letter, describing where she’d been, the hikes she’d taken. And always there was something that sent his blood rushing, made it hard for him to swallow.

“I watched a sunset with you last night,” she wrote in a card. “ Yo u were inside me.” In another: “Morning coffee. My moment with you. I taste you. Feel your warmth in the early sun.You surround me.”

One of the letters was from Switzerland. “We are hiking in these wonderful mountains,” she wrote. “You are everywhere, in the peaks and flowers. But civilization has climbed too high here. What we have is higher than civilization can go.” She crossed something out. “Is that possible? Am I too filled with you to make sense?”

But he had no way to answer. All he could do was read her words. It was easy to see his letters weren’t reaching her. She answered none of his questions.

He got a manila envelope for the letters and carried it in the bottom of his duffle, reading them over on some sunny rock after an icy bath. Or reading them before dinner, taking a drink and walking away from the others, reading them in the late sun and wondering where Cody Jo might be at that moment, what people she would be making happier, more alive.

His life fell into a pattern. He’d read a lot over the winter, pacing his trips to Missoula with the books he needed. Willie had helped him more than he deserved: suggesting books, cooking dinners, getting him to go dancing at the Elkhorn or at the big dances at the university. He liked the dancing, Willie always a little reticent at first then relaxing, dancing more and more like Cody Jo. One night after Buck got her to drink a jigger of whiskey, he closed his eyes as they danced and it seemed she
was
Cody Jo.

There was no more kissing. He was too immersed in his sadness. He even thought Willie might be happier without the kissing. She seemed to be content—watching him as though waiting for something.

“You keep looking at me,” Ty said to her one night between pack trips. There was a good band at the Elkhorn and Ty was glad to be in town for a night so they could go dancing. “It’s enough to make a man jumpy.” The band was playing a novelty number, a polka. They were watching Angie and Buck try to dance to it, Ty not ready for a polka.

“You can be pretty amusing,” Willie said, “with some drink and good music.”
“You like to laugh at me, don’t you?”
“I like it when you laugh.” She was part playful, part serious. “When you have a good time.”
“Maybe dancing with you is what makes for a good time.”
And then Bernard Strait was there, wanting to polka with Willie. They went out on the floor, and Ty could see right away that Bernard was good, fast—his leg coming up and banging down with each step. Ty watched them, Willie catching the rhythms perfectly but willowy and giving as she moved to Bernard’s energy. He saw that Buck was watching them too, Buck’s face red from all he was putting into it. Ty thought Buck was going to dance over and give Bernard a good bump, but Angie cut it off, heading them in another direction.
Ty was glad she did. He knew how much Bernard liked Willie, and though Bernard didn’t seem the right man for all her generosity and liveliness, Ty knew he had no business saying so. He felt lucky Willie was so good to him, uncomplaining when he would sweep down out of his mountains and rush into town for supplies, new books, conversation.

Once that spring she’d even offered to break a movie date with Bernard so she could go down to the Elkhorn with Ty.
But Ty wouldn’t have it. Something about Bernard was troubling him more and more. He didn’t want to make it worse. He’d stopped in at The Bar of Justice that night instead, not wanting to go upstairs so much as to have someone to talk with before he drove back to the pack station.
“ Yo u’re looking a little better,” Beth told him. “It ain’t been pleasant watchin’ you walk around sober as an owl.”
“Got all my gear ready for the season,” Ty answered. “Got to pack lumber to those Forest Service cabins tomorrow. Too busy to be sad.”
“But you are.” Beth patted his arm. “It ain’t hard to see. Go on and take Loretta upstairs. She’s slowin’ down on the AA. That ought to perk somethin’ up.” She poured him a drink, pleased by that one.
Loretta came over. She’d been drinking and there was a lot of color in her face. She looked as pretty as she had that first time he’d seen her.
“I give up on that AA turd. I might marry a cowboy.”
“Can one afford you?” Ty asked. “They aren’t high income.”
“Try them Forest Service boys,” Beth suggested. “Uncle Sam pays regular.” She laughed, mopped at the bar. “Those boys is still talkin’ about when it took all of them to throw Spec out.”

Ty hadn’t gone upstairs with Loretta that night, which was probably a good thing. But watching Bernard and Willie polka, he couldn’t help thinking of some of the things he
had
done that winter. They didn’t make him like himself very much. He’d gone upstairs with Loretta while she was still “letting go and letting God” and dealt with her as silently and roughly as though she might have given him his wound.

He’d even gotten drunk one day and gone by the cheerleader’s house. She’d made over him, given him coffee and been sweet to him. But he’d just said bad things to her. He couldn’t remember exactly what, just that he’d made her cry, that it hadn’t bothered him when she did, that he’d left not even remembering why he’d come.

And when old man Conner’s cattle got trapped by a big snow he’d pushed Smoky so hard she’d almost foundered. Her legs shaking, icicles hanging from her bit, steam rising from her as he swore at the Conner boys, pushed her so hard there was no way the others could keep up. They’d led their horses back only to see Ty bring the cattle in at dawn, save them and almost lose the best mare in the valley. Ty saw it too, but said nothing, just looked at them in their silence, spitting and rubbing Smoky down in the shelter of their barn, his hands shaking because of what he’d put her through—the madness that had driven him in the night.

The dancers had been so enthusiastic the band played a second polka. Ty watched Bernard and Willie swing back into the music, watched them dance only a little before Willie turned and came back to the table.

“Bernard has worn me out,” she said. Bernard stood there, still breathing hard from the polka, unhappy the dancing was over.
Ty saw it, asked him to sit, offered him a beer. Bernard did, talking politely even after Buck returned to the table, Buck looking a little sour because Bernard was there. But it wasn’t long before Willie and Angie had Buck laughing, their talk so animated it even made Bernard smile.
Things stayed a little edgy until Bernard left, and Ty knew it wasn’t all Buck’s fault. Bernard always had trouble when the Forest Service listened to the packers; he had even more when Ty was the packer. And it wasn’t lost on him how much trouble Bernard had when he saw Ty having fun with Willie. He just didn’t like to think about it. It was too complicated.
By the time Bernard left the evening was almost over. The band played a last set: “Satin Doll” and “S’posin’” and “That Old Black Magic.” Willie had had some sips of Buck’s whiskey while she and Angie were fooling around, and as far as Ty could tell it made her dancing better than ever. The band finished with “Stars Fell on Alabama,” and it was as though he
were
dancing with Cody Jo. Only this time he knew it was Willie in his arms.
When they got back to Willie’s, he got out of his truck and walked her to the porch. “I’m sorry about this past winter,” he said. “I haven’t been much of a friend.”
She watched, her eyes deep in the faint light from the porch.
“Things pass,” she said. “If you give them time.”
“ Yo u’ve helped with that.You and the music.”
“Your mountains helped with that.” She lifted her hand, touched his cheek. “Your mountains and their music.”

Ty didn’t get out to the pack station until almost two in the morning, and he had to get up at five to start saddling. He drank a glass of milk and went to bed in the big guest room. Angie had fixed up Cody Jo and Fenton’s room so it could take guests. This one was pretty much his by now.