​            The sound of the Willys in four-wheel came from the woods below the house; the old pickup emerged into the sunlight and stumps of the slash and ground up the last pitch to the woodshed. Alex got out hoisting a case of Olympia beer onto his shoulder.

            “Something for you—” He scaled a letter up onto the roof and went inside.

            I laid the hammer down beside the bundle of shingles.

            “Dear Bert,” Trudy’s clear, open hand began, “I’m learning a lot about running an art gallery. Two of the grants I wrote came through. Mario has been letting me design the posters for shows, doing the art work and graphics. So, I’ve been pretty busy with hardly a breather to write. I haven’t written because I don’t know what to say. I’m involved with Mario. He put me in the group show at Asylum last year and we hit it off – that’s why he hired me. It seemed like a good working relationship. Neither planned for this to happen. I hope you are well. It sounds great out there, all the fishing and backpacking. I don’t know where this will go, Bert, I can’t think about it. Mario is married and it is very difficult. I haven’t felt this alive in a long time. I feel a little out of control, a little crazy. I don’t care about anything – forgive me. I love you, Trudy.”

            Alex came through the open skylight with a six pack.

            “Ran into Jeremiah in town,” he said. “Rainbows are hitting flies at sundown up by him.”

            I opened a can and took a pull.

            “Jeremiah got me started on the chimney,” Alex said. “Only outside help I used on the house. He’s a stone mason. But I finished it myself.” He was looking at the chimney, a massive, curved wing of fieldstone that soared up from the end of the house.

            “I don’t feel much like fishing,” I said. “You go ahead.”

            Alex’s red “Feed and Read” cap pinched his thick shoulder-length hair like a head band. With his overalls, untrimmed beard and wire rim glasses, he looked like an ageing hippy. Alex had looked that way studying at Yale. He was medium height and strongly built, walked lightly, sort of slump-shouldered like he was stalking something, and talked in a soft joking way that I thought of as ‘western’. I noticed his face had started to crease like an old cowboy’s.

            “Too fine an afternoon to spend shingling.” Alex had taken out a piece of dental floss and was working his teeth. “There are some bragging fish up—”

            “I don’t feel like doing a goddamn thing. If you don’t mind.”

            He looked at me.

            “She’s fucking this guy in Hartford.” I held up the letter. “How can she get any perspective about us if she’s fucking this guy?”

            Alex shrugged. “Maybe that’s what she needs to do.”

            “All I know is I’m out here two months, and I can see we’ve got a future. She goes and does this. It’s really finished.”

            Fireweed bloomed all over the hillside, among the stumps. Alex’s house looked out on Missoula Valley, and far across to the grey teeth of the Idaho Bitterroots. He balled the floss and tucked it into his pocket.

            “I sometimes wonder about Fay and me,” he said. “If it mightn’t have worked out . . .”

            I almost laughed. If ever there was oil and water.

            After a moment, Alex said, “Trudy would have liked it out here. She could have done some painting.”

            “Yeah, well, she’s into interiors these days. Light in empty rooms.”

            “I could see it,” said Alex. “Trudy would make that interesting.”

            It felt like she and I were the surviving pair of a subspecies. Find your way back together or become extinct. I loved her, but that had sunk so far into the grain I hadn’t been able to see it or feel it until I got away.

            “Let’s go fishing.”

            “For Chrissake, Alex—”

            “Jeremiah invited us to stay for supper. You can see their tipi.”

            Downstairs, he dug an elk roast out of the freezer as our contribution to the meal.

 

            The macadam off the Interstate followed a small river into hills thickly wooded with fir. The road turned to dirt and we overtook a gaunt man on a bicycle pulling a homemade cart full of groceries. Alex stopped on the shoulder and Jeremiah pulled up on the driver’s side.

            “Thought we’d take you up on your offer,” said Alex.

            Jeremiah was over six feet and sat on the bicycle seat with his boots flat on the ground. He had a reddish beard streaked with grey, thin lips and mournful eyes; a face for El Greco. And body odor that climbed into the cab.

            “They’ll be hitting about the time you get up there,” he said.

            Alex introduced me and I reached across to shake Jeremiah’s hand through the window.

            “Ever see a chimley like that?” he asked.

            It took me a moment to realize he was talking about Alex’s chimney.

            “Ain’t built for drawin’, curved like that.  You’re gonna regret that fancy idea come winter.”

            “We’ll see,” said Alex. The truck almost stalled and he gunned it. “Bert’s from New York City.”

            “Not quite,” I said. “Don’t rush it.”

            Alex offered Jeremiah a lift.

            “Na. I got this far, ain’t but a couple more miles.”

            

            Alex parked beside an old concrete abutment. The bridge was gone; a single rusty cable bellied thirty feet over fast water. Alex loaded our gear onto a wooden platform slung beneath the cable on pulleys. We climbed on. Kneeling on this cable car, he let go the strap that held it; we fell toward the river, swooping up the far side.

            I stuck the three six packs of Olys in the river. Alex was fishing already and had gotten rises. He tossed me his fly box and said tie on the grey and brown one with the yellow tail, and douse it with dope. We were fishing dry flys which had to float on the water like winged insects.

            I waded out. The bottle-green water, icy and fast, leaned into my legs; it felt like the bottom was cobbled with greasy baseballs. I rooted my sneakers as best I could and began whipping the long rod overhead, back and forth. The line snaked out over the river and dropped the fly onto quiet water behind a boulder. No sooner had it dimpled the surface than it was gone! I hauled back on the rod and it bent jerking like a bull terrier had grabbed on. The fish jumped – a foot and a half out of the river – and fell back with a splash. I whooped.

            I was playing the fish, backing onto the shore when I noticed Jeremiah squatting on the opposite bank, watching.

            Without a net I would have to lead the fish in and beach him. He hovered in two feet of water, nearly invisible in the shifting browns and golds of the river bottom. I could see the fly hooked through the white cartilage of his lower lip. Alex had filed the barb so the only thing holding the hook in place was the tension on the line. I drew the fish in until his nose almost touched sand – then dropped the rod and scooped with both hands! I pounced on the flipping fish and held him up, victoriously.

            “Fair brown . . .” came dryly from across the river.

            

            Jeremiah emerged from the brush behind me carrying a fly rod.

            “Keep it hid there,” he said. “Handy to fishing.”

            “You wouldn’t try that in New York,” I joked. I hooked my fly into the cork handle of the rod and laid it in the grass.

            “They’re hitting the grey-ruffed midge,” I told him.

            Jeremiah continued tying on a small all-black fly.

            “Give up already?” he said.

            “Thought I’d see how the natives do it.”

            “I don’t see no natives,” he said. “I’m a white man from Eugene Oregon.”

            Jeremiah had a fish on in three casts. He played it right to him, picked it out of the water by the gills, unhooked and tossed it up the bank. He moved upstream fifty yards and cast again. Another fish – up onto the bank. He could have been picking cabbages.

 

            It was twilight as we followed Jeremiah up a path into the woods, me then Alex. The air was warmer away from the river and smelled of pine.

            “You sure do love to fish,” Jeremiah called back to Alex. “Seven keepers.”

            “Some great action,” said Alex. “Too bad the sun had to go down.”

            “Yep, along with my four – and your friend’s one big one – ain’t a bad supper.”

            A tipi appeared through the dark boles, sitting in a clearing like a sepia photograph, with a woman standing in front of it.

            We all went inside, then Alex and Jeremiah left to clean fish and build a fire. I was shivering from being in the river. The woman, El, gave me a pair of moccasins and an old blue parka to wear.

            “I’ve never been inside a tipi,” I said.

            El stood sideways picking herbs from a basket and hanging them on a line strung between tipi poles. The old Crosby Sills and Nash tee shirt stretched tight over her large breasts.

            “All I know from these things is what I’ve seen in the Natural History Museum,” I said. “Those life-size displays with the tipi sliced in half? Same as yours – except they don’t have a stove and Kashmir rug.” Then I noticed the rug was threadbare, gone through in places.

            El was hanging sage to dry. It smelled like turkey stuffing in the tipi. Each time she raised her arms, tufts of armpit hair showed. She was strong and thickset, and looked like the picture of a squaw, even to the single heavy braid down her back. In the close space I was aware of her smell, compounded of woodsmoke and cooked food and sweat.

            “Have you lived here long?”

            She put the basket away behind the stove. “I started in the old logging bunkhouse till it fell down. Someone gave me the first tipi. This is the third.”

            “It’s yours?”

            She didn’t say anything.

            Alex came back with the cleaned fish.

            “You give her the elk?” he asked.

            I got the roast out of the backpack. It had begun to thaw and a pool of blood lay in the bottom of the plastic bag.

            “You guys keep it for later,” Alex said to El. “We got enough trout for supper.”

            “Meat won’t keep,” she said. “We’ll cook it up.”

 

            Jeremiah had a fire blazing a hundred yards from the tipi, against a stony hillside that rose steeply out of the light. Alex set a couple of heavy iron fry pans on top of the burning logs, cut some elk fat and put it in to melt. Then he laid the fish in, sputtering. Their tails curled up as they began to fry.

            “I’m bottling this smell to take back with me,” I exclaimed.

            “Why go?” grinned Alex.

            We settled our backs against a log and sipped beers, waited for the fish to fry. Sparks flew up mixing in with the huge stars. This is the life, I thought. Trudy would have loved this.

            El sat on the ground, leaning against a back rest she had woven out of green willow. An Indian design, she said.

            “You did some nice stonework on Alex’s fireplace,” I said to Jeremiah. “I guess you’ve built a few.”

            “Yeah, I worked for the professor, here. He paid good wages, but he cut the job short.” Then he added, “You learned off me and let me go.”

            “I intended finishing it myself. You knew that.”

            Jeremiah just grinned.

            When the fish were done, Alex put one on each plate and handed them around. He laid the extras on a clean slab of firewood, then cut the elk roast in halves and started each cooking in a pan over the fire.

            I’d never tasted better fish, firm and sweet, flavored faintly with a musky elk taste. I was hungry but Jeremiah ate like a starved man, eyeing the elk hunks while he chewed. He caught me looking at him.

            “Guess you’ve a good time out here,” he said.

            “I’ve got a few stories to tell folks back—”

            “Imagine what it’ive cost if you’d had to pay for it – first rate guide, canoe, camping gear, four-wheel drive vehicle. Bet that nice fly rod ain’t even your’s.”

            Alex turned the roasts;  fat spattered, igniting in little bursts.

            “How much you make?” Jeremiah asked. “Forty grand a year?”

            I laughed.

            “Bert’s a writer,” said Alex. “He hasn’t been discovered yet.”

            Jeremiah took a second fish and began gnawing it. Alex offered one to El; he and I each had another.

            “Jerry’s a writer.” El’s voice was startling. She’d hardly spoken since we’d come up to the fire. “Got a story this thick he typed in the tipi.”

            “What’s it about?” I asked.

            Jeremiah slung the fishbone into the dark. “A little something.”

            “About a murder,” said El.

            “Don’t give it away,” snapped Jeremiah. He took the last fish. “I don’t know how anyone can write with freezing fingers in that goddamn tipi.”

            “He brought it to the University, see what people thought—”

            “One of Alex’s asshole friends,” said Jeremiah. “Well, fuck him. I think it’d make a movie. The shit they make movies out of. You know how much movie-writers get? Beau-coo. Even if they don’t make the movie.”

            Alex went off to pee in the bushes.

            Jeremiah lowered his voice. “Hired me to learn enough stonework, then I’m gone. Had me pretty pissed there. He’s got the bread – works at the University – thirty, forty grand a year—”

            “He wanted to do it himself.”

            “He didn’t know how. He would have fucked it up, that big motherfuckin chimley. You know how much they weight? You gotta lay foundation. Select stone. You gotta do it right—”

            “I guess you’d be satisfied if the thing fell down?”

            Alex came back.

            “Got me a gig playing a road house to Hungry Horse,” said Jeremiah.

            “All right!” said Alex, “Bert ‘n me’ll come by.”

            “Thursday nights, ten on – come one, come all.”

            “Who’s for a taste of elk?” Alex grabbed a corner of one of the roasts like you’d grab an ear, and sliced it off.

            “That the one Jerry missed?” said El.

            Jeremiah frowned.

            Alex chuckled. “A nine hundred pound bull coming out of thick brush at twenty feet looking to mate with you can perturb the aim—”

            I let out a cackle.

            “I’ll get one this year,” said Jeremiah. He took a piece of meat from Alex. “Then I’ll bring you the roast.”

            We chewed the hot meat, juice on our hands. We ate like we’d just killed it with spears and rocks. It tasted like rich, tender beef.

            “Biggest damn animal I ever seen close up,” said Jeremiah.

            “Jerry shit his pants.” El was smiling at me. “Fired off five rounds and killed a tree.”

            “I wish you’d a been there, Ellybelle. That big fella would’ve had a ball.” Jeremiah looked at me. “Ever see a bull elk? Got a pizzle on him satisfy the worst woman.”

            “That why you fried and ate it?” said El. “Make you a cock like a bull elk? It got its work cut out.”

            I laughed. I didn’t even try to hold it back.

            At Alex’s urging, Jeremiah brough a banjo up from the tipi. He also brought a nearly full fifth of I.W. Harper. He tuned up standing back from the fire, the damp night air soaking up the plunks of the banjo. A heavy dew was glistening on the weeds and leaves when you looked away from the light.

            Standing with his weight on his back foot, Jeremiah played the banjo. He played jigs and reels, and Alex accompanied on spoons. I stretched out on the ground. El was sitting against her back rest, eyes half closed, lips shiny with elk grease. She could have been an Indian; she could have been thirty or sixty. When I drank and passed the whiskey, she drank without wiping the mouth of the bottle. Her feet were drawn up under the hem of her skirt so I couldn’t see them. I remembered the Indian story about Deer Woman. So beautiful no one ever looked at her feet and saw she had hooves. She appeared only at night during tribal dances, and would lure a young man into the woods. In the morning he would be found trampled to death.

            Jeremiah was singing in a toneless, nasal voice, a song about a cowboy betrayed by a whore and dying out on the ‘prayer-ee’. His thin voice slipped in and out of falsetto like a worn gear shift. Every now and then he yodeled. The whiskey kept going around. The song was endless. After a while El’s feet came out, fat and dirty as a child’s.

            “Know any Dylan?” Alex asked when Jeremiah had finished.

            He retuned and began ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’.

            El got up and went into the bushes. Jeremiah stopped singing, but kept the banjo going softly.

            “You want her, Hemingway?” he asked. “Ever had a squaw woman?”

            Alex stretched.

            Jeremiah passed me the bottle. “You’ve scaled peaks, run rapids, reeling in bragging fish—” He grinned showing his crooked teeth. ”You was lookin like you wanted to eat her ‘n lick the plate. No need apologize. Wide open spaces, all that – fella ain’t had full value till he shot his wad. Am I right?”

            I wiped the bottle mouth and took a drink. “You offering me your woman?”

            Jeremiah looked at me with a flat grin. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. I was too drunk to care.

            “My woman?” He laughed. “Not for free. Not by a damn.”

            Trudy was free, wasn’t she? We both were. Alex had gotten up to move the roasts away from the fire.

            “How much?” I said.

            Jeremiah looked like he was thinking. “Five hundred.”

            I laughed.

            “Fifty. Quickie in the tipi?”

            I was fumbling for my wallet when Alex stepped between us. Then we all stopped. El was standing on the other side of the fire coals.

            Jeremiah chuckled and picked up his banjo. He began slowly to pluck out ‘Irene Goodnight’. Then his queer voice started, “Last Saturday night I got married . . .”

 

            The driver-side wiper smeared arcs of dew and road dust across the windshield. The old Willys had no wiper on the passenger side.

            “I thought we were gonna take that goddamn cable car straight into the river!” I yelled over the wind.

            Alex grinned, guiding the truck down the mountain road. “Two of us on that thing at one time, with all the gear—”

            “I was expecting that bastard to start taking pot shots at us!”

            The moon was coming up somewhere; I could see a bone-white cliff turning above us.

            “I would have done it – I would have gone into the tipi with her—”

            Alex switched off the wiper.

            “She was ready, man. I mean, who gives a fuck at some point – right?”

            “It wouldn’t have been a great idea,” said Alex.

            “Can you imagine what’s going on back there? I hope she doesn’t slit his scrawny throat.”

            Alex chuckled.

            “You ever sleep with her?”

            His bearded features were soft in the dashboard light, eyes old and bright behind his glasses.

            “Trudy and me . . .” he began.

            Something small ran out in the road and hesitated. As if it had been thrown in front of us. Alex pumped the brakes; the creature whisked off with its tail up.

            “Time you went to California for your play,” he said. “She never told you?”

            “No.”

            The road had left the river, climbing, and came back, high. The water breaking below showed like silver.

            “I drove up to the cabin one weekend,” he said. “Something between friends, maybe a little more – in a way something to get past.” He glanced over. “I never felt bad about it. It felt like a good thing between us.”

            “Trudy?”

            He exhaled through his nose. “Yeah, I guess so. Someone we both cared for.”

            The moon, about half full came out from behind a shoulder of mountain. Alex switched off the lights and ignition and we coasted, just the skurr of gravel under the tires, wump of the chassis taking ruts. Alex with his big hands rolling the steering wheel.

            We hit the macadam and traveled in sudden silence.