Walter was right about the snow. Though there remained a fairly even covering where the shade of the buildings afforded it some protection, whatever lay in the sunlight had grown thin and patchy, its whiteness already flecked with mud. The wintry landscape owed more to Jackson Pollack than Currier and Ives; but I was aware of its significance. Snow so early in the season gave credibility to Walter's warning that soon enough the sheer volume of it would make plowing impossible, transforming the streets into hard-packed tracks. Not yet though—I could explore with ease.
And I did have to explore, if for no other reason than to find work. Walter had not intimated the need for anyone at his service station, especially a person with no appreciable mechanical skills. As for his "restaurant," the preparation of eggs seldom requires a sous-chef. And a motel without guests probably has no real use for a greeter or a bell captain. I could perhaps be a valet at the hunting lodge, where the tips alone would permit me to starve to death by Christmas.
I knew something about menial jobs, having been through several of them after I resigned from teaching. In mid-June I sold appliances in one of the few stores that had not yet become affiliated with a large chain. I was terrible at it. It wasn't that I didn't believe in the products: I was convinced beyond question that every range on the floor would heat something and every washer would spin out clean clothes. But I just didn't care, and the customers knew it. When after a month my supervisor realized it too, I moved on to the lofty field of package delivery. Before you visualize me flying a FedEx jet with Tom Hanks, let me describe my position more accurately: I drove a seventeen-year-old greenish-gray rusted out Chevy panel truck with the front bumper missing and "Parcel's Delivered" shabbily stenciled on the side. It was not an awful occupation, despite my language sensibilities recoiling at the unnecessary apostrophe. Nobody bothered me, people were generally glad to see me, and it wasn't my vehicle so I could beat the crap out of it if I wanted to—though I was quite sure that, over the first 191,000 miles, a host of like position-holders had already disposed of most of that crap. In mid-August when the transmission on that, the company's only vehicle, stopped simply skipping gears and ceased transmitting entirely, the company folded and someone else delivered all those "parcel's."
Before I lit out for Sage, I was scheduled to begin the second week of my third job, ferrying a lazy and listless group of lawn care workers to their various autumnal assignments, then retrieving them again at some predetermined time. It kept me sane, and idle—in the first week I had so much leisure that I read half of You Can't Go Home Again, a novel for which I'd never found the time. I always loved the title and I thought, with Natalie gone and my life in shreds, it would all be more meaningful. I was wrong: Wolfe wasn't writing about me; he was writing about Wolfe, and I didn't care much if he could go home or not.
All those years of one job, now I was suddenly seeking my fourth. Objectively this was a good morning to look—a brilliantly clear day in the Mountain West with the wind barely a whisper and the air holding just the hint of a chill. The starkness disappointed me a little though. I had hoped to witness what I had seen in photographs—a sea of aspens in their fall splendor—but that splendor had been blown from the branches a month before, leaving the surroundings bereft of color—of both summer green and autumn gold. Unlike the previous evening, though, the town itself wasn't dead. As the morning wore on, the traffic on the streets and boardwalks became more and more vigorous; and even though people looked askance at me, I didn't perceive any hostility or suspicion, just a normal curiosity.
When I finally found the gas station—it was neither of the two I had seen on my arrival—I found Walter leaning over a table full of oily metal parts. His overalls were large enough to have held another similarly skinny Walter Trucks inside, but already I was growing accustomed to the way his clothes didn't fit.
"Snowmobile," he said. "Always get one in here after the first snow. Someone goes out to start it and it don't start. Or it starts and they screw it up running it on the rough ground. They tinker with it for an hour, can't get it right, then haul it down here and I get something to do."
I looked to my left and saw the rest of the machine, long, sleek, and painted the brilliant cherry red of custom cars in my childhood memories. "What's one of those go for?" I asked.
"More than the boots, probably more than you can afford," Walter said, "unless you're an eccentric of some sort. Are you an eccentric? A millionaire scrounging a room at old Mrs. O'Leary's?"
"She's not old."
"So you noticed. Don't go thinking about dating her now."
"Where would I take her, the bus stop?"
"Plenty of places—a few bars, lodge outside of town with a nice restaurant."
"I'm just saying she's not old, and while we're at it, I'm not a millionaire."
"So you don't have millions? What do you have, Cal?'
"Got thousands."
"Shit, today ain't nobody doesn't have thousands. Can't buy a goddamn car for less than twenty. You can't get one of these here snow machines for less than ten. Interested?"
"In a snow machine? Probably not."
"Ever ridden one?"
"No. They're all over the place in New Hampshire, but I never owned one, never knew anyone who did. I always found them noisy and obnoxious."
"Plenty of people like that," he said, "but we cut some space for 'em. Besides, out here it's about the only way to get from A to B in the winter. I'll take you out as soon as we get some real snow cover. Plenty of trails around. I'll try to keep the obnoxiousness to a minimum."
"You own one of these?"
"Couldn't afford it, but there's a company that tests the new ones here every year. They move in, set up shop for a couple of weeks, run those things all over the place, then pack up and go. They generally leave behind a few they've tested, kind of like a courtesy for scaring the wildlife and stinking up the air. We become post break-in testers, at least that's what it says on their books I suppose. Occasionally they pick up the old ones and leave a few new ones. So I guess yes, I have one."
"Who gets to use them?"
"Whoever needs to. If someone wants one for a weekend or something, they usually sign it out here. 'Course by then they're everywhere. Want to sign one out?"
I laughed. "Not yet, I need to find something to do."
"Oh yeah, like a job. Being an English teacher and all, you might want to work at the library."
"You have a library?"
"I think I take umbrage at that," he said, intentionally pronouncing the word with an extra syllable in the middle, "just because we're not one of your big east coast cities doesn't mean we can't read. Didn't you see my Dickens collection?"
"I saw Great Expectations on the table. Is there more?"
"In the library there is. Where do you think I got that one? At Barnes & Noble? Oh, I'm sorry, I guess I'm not supposed to have heard of a place like Barnes & Noble."
He started moving parts around, but it was just for show.
"You're enjoying this, aren't you?" I said. "All I meant..."
"I know what you meant—a town without a Starbucks shouldn't have a library. But we do. And we have almost a thousand books. If you want to put that in perspective, a medium sized library like the one up in Bozeman has about 100,000."
"What about Moose?"
"Well, Cal, you got me there. Don't know if I ever saw a library in Moose."
"Then, culturally, you're probably ahead of the curve. Where is it?"
"In the general store."