"That'll piss off tomorrow's passengers."
"That's their problem. Just remember, if the pass is closed, and it may very well be, I won't be able to do that either. You'll have to get yourself to Gardiner and I can pick you up there on a different run. But call. Do you have a cell?"
I told her I did. Packed away and uncharged. I had decided to live without it for a while—an idea that seemed suddenly daft.
She looked at me, this time more quizzically than sympathetically. "No place to stay, no cell phone, no shoes. Are you sure you don't want to get back on?"
"I thought service here might be sketchy."
"It is that," she said, "sketchier still when the phone is dead."
She stepped back on to the bus, and returned with a handful of change. "You can probably make a credit card call, but just in case, there's an actual phone booth at the Exxon station. I don't want you dialing 9-1-1 because it's the only free call you can make."
"Do they even have 9-1-1 in Sage?"
"Oh they have it," she said. "There's a state trooper on call about eighty-five miles from here."
The math was sobering. Eighty-five miles. If he drove eighty-five miles-per-hour—hell, even I can figure that out. That's sixty minutes of CPR, or holding a gunman at bay, or stanching the bleeding from a serious wound. In Sage 9-1-1 seemed more or less theoretical. I took the change.
"I'll pay you back."
"Forget it, I find this much change in the seats every trip. Better see Walter Trucks first. He's right over there in that restaurant. He'll feed you."
"Trucks?"
"Like things you drive. If he's not there he's with Mrs. O'Leary—you can kill two birds."
"And Mrs. O'Leary is who?"
"She owns the motel."
"Is she Trucks's girlfriend?"
Brenda laughed. "Not hardly. But Walter will help you out. Don't forget to call if you change your mind."
She looked skyward. The rain had picked up a little and the shoulders of her white shirt were soaked through.
"You should really get going," I said. "I'll be fine."
"I didn't say you wouldn't be. Good luck."
"I'm Cal," I said, "Cal Hopper."
"Saw your name on the luggage tag. Good luck, Cal." Again she entered the bus, but again she stopped. Her passengers, at this point, must have been in the early stages of insurrection, but she held up an index finger to them—some indication of a momentary departure, then descended the steps, reopened the baggage compartment, pulled out a red paisley umbrella with a handle molded into the shape of a duck, opened it, and handed it to me.
"I collect five of these a week when the weather is bad. That kiosk looks a little leaky."
I thanked her.
"And don't sleep in that shed tonight. You won't, will you?"
"Jesus started in a manger."
"I don't think any wise men are coming to Sage, other than you of course. Remember, Walter Trucks."
Then as if suddenly realizing it was raining, she covered her head with her hands, hurried back into the driver's seat, closed the door, and drove off. The intensity of the taillights diminished quickly as the deep green of the VistaCruiser dissolved into nothing more than a slate-gray movement with a hazy red glimmer. Within seconds the glimmer was gone too.
Chapter 3
I had used a myriad of conveyances to get me to Billings, and only on the last leg of the trip did I opt for the bus, just to make a somewhat more traditional entrance into Sage. There's a certain respectability involved in arriving somewhere via scheduled transportation, though judging by the number of actual witnesses, I could have saved myself the $65.00 and Hanratty's abuse. I'd like to say I roughed it, but a wallet full of tens and twenties and an ATM card indicate a pretty sharp line between me and, let's say, Lewis and Clark. I wouldn't quibble over the $65.00: money was not really an issue. I certainly didn't need that $3.45 in change; in fact, I had set aside enough that I could justifiably call my own—money I had earned and Natalie didn't need. That perspective may appear a bit mean-spirited, but I came out of everything far from impoverished, and Natalie came out of it free of me and able to remarry Donald. the loser who had recaptured her heart, or if not her heart, at least the body parts surrounding it. That's as close to a happy ending as she and I were going to have, at least when it came to each other. I miss Leanne though, the daughter I sort of inherited. We got along pretty well, and I didn't even mind that she called me Cal—she told me once, without the slightest hint of unkindness, that she already had a Dad. In the end I was disappointed that she took her mother's side about Donald's return, but Leanne is a kid. I've reserved all the rancor for the adult who's old enough to have known better.
I stuffed my hands into my pockets and felt for Brenda's change. New money. The old money was back home in several banks so that one Howard Pearson Esq. could handle my financial matters. Bills would be paid and my responsibilities would be met; I just wouldn't be there to tend to them in person.
Howard Pearson and I went to college together, and he's been my attorney ever since he passed the bar exam on his fourth try. During the first three he had been a pretty heavy cocaine user, so I discount the significance of those initial failures. He's clean now, and frequently sober. I consulted him when my father got sick and my mother needed some legal advice; both my parents are doing okay now, and they actually supported my plans to go west. Not too many others did, including Howard, but he didn't share my folks' belief that Natalie was, as my dad said, a bit askew. They interpreted my distancing myself a positive step.
Howard became my lawyer by default when I had questions about long-term investments and retirement. I generally spoke with him once or twice a year, though that all changed overnight. He could probably tell you the exact night when, sometime after 3:00 a.m., I awakened him (and I presume Mrs. Pearson) with a vitriolic assessment of Natalie's future plans—the ones that didn't include me and nullified any need for those long-term investments. For nearly an hour he let me vent—that's the genteel, new age terminology for screaming obscenities at real or imagined villains over real or imagined insults—then told me to get some rest and be in his office at 9:00. And sober, he said. I tried.
I liked Howard, but even though he was on my side as a friend and legal advisor, the whole process of dividing up assets was so distasteful that I began to equate his presence with the misery itself. When it all ended and he wanted to buy me a drink, I refused. Then, before I could get five paces from him I began to weep. For a few weeks afterwards, he steered clear of me; then I called him, not so much to apologize but just to re-establish our friendship.
"Don't sweat it, Cal," he said. "Your reaction was normal."
"You mean crying?" I said.
"Yeah, that, and hating my guts."
"I don't…."
"Natalie went back to your house with your daughter and hung you out to dry. Please, feel free to hate everyone's guts."
It was Pearson who suggested my going away for a while, though his "while" was a week or two in the Bahamas. When I eventually settled on the California trip, he offered to buy my car—that 1999 Miata he always lusted after and could have bought ten times over with the money that had gone up his nose. I put it in storage instead, not to spite him, but because I didn't want to burn every bridge at the same time, no matter how bright and cheery those flames might seem.
I guess I'd burned enough of them to get me to Montana—not a direct route to California, but a route that worked sufficiently for someone not on a fixed schedule. Along the way I'd seen Rushmore, Crazy Horse, Devil's Tower, even the Custer Battlefield. I was checking off historical sites