Canyon Secret (10 page)

“David. Don’t call me again. Don’t follow me back inside. You’re family is in there. Your date can make her own way home. Stay away from me. I mean it. My husband is on to us. There ain’t no tellin’ what he’ll do.” She dried her tears with her blouse sleeve and started to walk away.

David grabbed her by the arm. “You won’t last without me. You will come beggin’ by the end of next week. It will be too late for you. I’ll have a new whore by then.”

Lila pulled away from his grip and hurried back into the building and into the ladies room. She closed the stall door and cried uncontrollably. The restroom door opened and she covered her mouth with the soaked blouse sleeve. “Lila. Are you alright?”

She managed to answer between sobs. “Hannah, I’ll be okay in a few minutes. Can you give me some privacy?”

Hannah removed her hand from the stall door handle and backed away. “Sure, I, I’ll be near the bar if you want to talk.” Lila heard the restroom door close. She sat on the stool and breathed deep as she realized she did it. It was over as suddenly as it started. It would be horrible whenever she’d see him, but she’d face her husband without the guilt. “Thank God summer season’s here. The tourists would keep her busy with the cabins. The Dam was going to be finished in a couple of months, and David would be gone. Hell with him. He’s such a selfish bastard.”

The McCartan Trio cranked up the loud speakers as they started to sing out the words to Guy Mitchell’s hit tune,
Pittsburgh Pennsylvania
. Each man wore the same red-checkered yolk shirt and black suspenders, and the Trio consisted of a piano, a trap drum set, and a country guitar. Mikhail watched as Hannah sprinted away from him in mid-sentence and joined her friends in front of the bandstand. He watched as they held arms and screamed out the words to the song. Those who weren’t yet dancing grabbed the nearest person to them and moved out onto the floor flinging their arms and singing whatever words to the song that they knew. It looked to him like everyone in the hall was laughing and singing.

Mikhail set his Pepsi down on the table once he spotted Tomas dancing with the blonde-haired lady with her shirt half open. It felt good to see Tomas enjoying himself like this. How he has changed in such a short time. As tough as it was to leave Butte, maybe it was a good thing for the family. All we need now is to get Anna well and move up here with Katya. His pleasant thoughts dimmed as he remembered seeing David drunk and falling on the floor with the lady that was dancing with Tomas. He sipped on his Pepsi as he wondered what would become of David.

Nolan danced with two older ladies at the same time. He cast a silly glance at Mikhail and mocked him, as he stood alone. Mikhail couldn’t make out the words Nolan was yelling at him because his attention shifted to Hannah. It pleased him that they were becoming friends even if he wasn’t sure what to do with her.

She waved at him as she danced with the ladies in her group.

After the song ended, Mikhail noticed some of the people went outside to catch some fresh air. Hannah and her friends wiped their eyes from tears of laughter as they walked toward the bar. She approached Mikhail and picked up her Great Falls Select can that she left on the table near him. He watched her gulp down a drink and smiled as he looked at the beads of sweat coming down the side of her face. He looked in her eyes and spoke, “You sing good.”

Hannah sighed deeply as she set her drink back on the table. “There you go again, talking up a storm. Talk, talk, talk. How about a dance so you don’t talk so much?”

“Oh, I don’t dance.”

“You mean, not until now.” She set his Pepsi on the table, grabbed his hand, and led him out towards the middle of the floor. “I’ll show you how to do it. Trust me.”

He stopped and forced a nervous laugh, “No. I don’t dance. Let’s walk outside.”

“Okay. Have it your way. You’re too big to argue with anyways.” She held his hand tighter as they joined the others outside.

They walked up and stood near Nolan and listened to him tell his dance partners that he once set a record for dancing with five ladies at once at the Columbia Gardens in Butte when he was a young lad. He turned to Mikhail and Hannah and said, “Ask the big Bohunk here if that ain’t the honest to God’s truth. Just ask him, but speak really slow because he has some problems following along.”

“They were his nieces.”

One of the gray-haired ladies laughed as she playfully slapped Nolan on the shoulder. “You’re such a bull-shitter, John. But we still like you. Let’s go get a drink.”

“Oh, I can’t keep up with you two. I better see what’s going on with the big Bohunk here.”

Hannah let loose of Mikhail’s hand and turned toward the door, “I need to go to the Powder Room. I’ll meet you back inside in a little bit. Maybe I can convince you to try a dance or two.”

Mikhail watched her disappear back into Rocco’s before he spoke to Nolan. “Did you see David?”

“Christ, you’d have to be blind and deaf not to see him. He was drunk on his ass. I don’t know how long I can take it before I punch him in the chops. I think Tommy’s half listenin’ to him.”

Mikhail wrinkled his face as he listened to Nolan, “Tommy told me Davey was a good guy and we should give him half a chance. I got pissed and told him Davey was a prick and to stay away from him.”

“Oh.”

“That’s it! Oh! Wake up for Christ’s sake. Don’t you worry about Tommy falling for that worthless prick’s happy horse-shit?” 

“He’ll be okay.”

Nolan walked away between two parked cars and then stomped back to face Mikhail. They had done this sort of thing a hundred times before when Nolan went on one tirade or another. Mikhail learned to let Nolan rant and rave and sooner or later he’d calm down. Nolan looked up at him, “I’m telling ya we got’ a keep an eye on him. You can’t let him take Tommy down the wrong road with him. If you don’t, I will.”

“We’ll keep a eye out.”

Mikhail watched as Nolan stalked away toward the alley waving his hands and arms in the air. He thought about following him but decided to go in and visit with Hannah. As he returned inside, he made a plan to talk to Tomas the next day about David.

T
he small community of Polebridge lies at the northwestern edge of Glacier National Park. It is nestled between the Continental Divide and the Whitefish Range of mountains. Polebridge consists of a scattering of houses, cabins, trailers, and small ranches up and down the North Fork of the Flathead River Road. At the center of the community is the Polebridge Mercantile.

This point of contact is a combination store, post office, and gas station. The Northern Lights Saloon serves beer and meals a few days per week. Polebridge has no traffic lights, no electricity, and guards the northern entrance to Glacier National Park and the North Fork Valley. It is home to wolves, elk, black and grizzly bears, eagles, mountain lions, deer, and moose.

The afternoon after the fundraiser at Rocco’s, Hannah carefully guided her 1949 Ford up the North Fork Road. She recently battled the reoccurring memories of the day she heard her husband died in a work accident. He plunged his bulldozer off the road into the North Fork of the Flathead River three-hundred feet below the construction site of the road. Hannah slowly pulled her car off to the side of the road near the spot where her husband slid off the embankment seven years earlier.

The pain that once shot through her heart each time she parked here in the past subsided with each passing month. She stepped out of the car and walked over to the edge of the embankment. The bouquet of lilacs she gathered that morning flew gently from her hand, and in slow motion, separated as they disappeared under the ledge of the cliff. Hannah thought of how much Ken loved the smell of lilacs and how he cut them fresh for their kitchen table most days in June. She whispered between her cupped hands, “Oh Ken, why did you have to leave me so early? We had our whole life ahead of us. We—” Small tears seeped from her brown eyes. She walked back and braced herself against the hood of her car.

A forest service pickup sped by her and the thick dust forced her to cover her mouth and nose using the side of her arm. “Bastard,” she yelled without looking up. She walked around to the car door, slid into the driver’s seat, and closed the door behind her. She pounded the steering wheel as she yelled, “I got to move on Ken, this is getting me nowhere! I can’t keep doin’ this to myself! I know you’d want me to get on with my life!” Tears again blurted out as she covered her face with her hands.

She started her car and continued the drive up the dusty, pot-holed road. As Hannah pulled into the empty parking lot of the Polebridge Mercantile, she took a quick look into the rear view mirror. She laughed at herself as she noticed dusty-like creases below her eyes and her lipstick smeared like a clown. “Oh, my mother is really going to think I lost my mind.” She laughed again at the thought of her talking to herself. A three-legged black and white dog limped across the porch of the Mercantile and carried a man’s work boot in his mouth. “There’s no place like home. This is just what the doctor ordered.”

The boards of the porch creaked as Hannah walked toward the door to the Mercantile. She stooped down and scratched the dog behind the ear before she entered the store. The over-sized wedge of cheese on the glass counter called her name. She grabbed the cheese slicer and popped a chunk of the cheddar into her mouth.

From the kitchen in the back came the static noise of her mother’s radio. Hannah quietly strolled back to surprise her seventy-year-old mother. Memories of doin’ the same thing as a little girl flashed by in her mind. Her mother acted surprised and swore at her for frightening the hell out of her.

June Holley rolled out the bread dough with the well-used rolling pin. Flour dotted her old overalls and gray sweatshirt. Splattered white flour covered the right side of her face. She listened to the radio and hummed along with Rosemary Clooney on the radio as she worked. The aroma of the fresh hot-crossed buns cooling on the rack above the wood stove filled Hannah’s nostrils as she stood in silence and stared at every move her mother made.

Again the cherished childhood memories sprinted across her memory and triggered thoughts of a much younger, much trimmer woman. Her hair turned completely gray, but the long ponytail reached well below her broad shoulders.

“Hi Mom, what’s cooking?” June Holley dropped the rolling pin, swung around, and barked at her smiling youngest daughter, “Goddamn you Hannah. You scared the living hell out of me. What in the world?”

Hannah didn’t let her finish her sentence and wrapped her arms around her and kissed her on the unfloured cheek. She laughed and said, “I heard you baked today and since I was in the neighborhood, I decided to stop by and make a pig out of myself.”

“I bake bread everyday but Sunday, so what brings you home?” She picked up her rolling pin and continued her work. “It don’t really matter. It nice anytime you come. Can you stay for the night or more?”

Hannah nibbled at a corner of one of the hot cross buns, “Ya, Mom I’d sure like to. It’s been a couple of months since I saw you.”

Without looking up from her dough, June spoke again, “You look like shit warmed over. Couple a days with me and I’ll have you up and runnin’ like you did when you raced all them neighbor kids on the Fourth of July.”

Hannah took a bigger chunk of the bun and talked as she chewed, “I did kick their butts, didn’t I. Don’t think I could now. I got ten or twelve pounds on me.”

“Keep eatin’ them buns like that and you’ll have lots more on ya.” She balled up the dough and kneaded it with her strong fingers. “How the show house doin’ these days. I imagine the dam workers and the kids out of school keep you hoppin’.”

“I been busy with lots of stuff. We had a fundraiser last night for the fire department. It went good and we cleared three hundred fifty bucks. Everybody had a good time too.”

June cut the dough in half and filled two baking dishes and covered them with a damp dishtowel. She placed them on the side of the stove and motioned Hannah out the side door. Hannah helped herself to a bottle of pop from the Pepsi icebox near the doorway. Once outside her mother placed her hands on her hips and breathed in the clean air of the North Fork. “You act like ya got somethin’ to tell me honey. What’s up?”

Hannah offered her mom the Pepsi bottle and inhaled the sweet air herself, “I might have met someone, Mom.”

“What ya mean? You either met somebody or ya didn’t. Which is it?”

“I met a fella from Butte who works at the Dam. Don’t know what to think of it though. Today on the way up, I stopped where Ken died and had some strange thoughts about everything. I mean—”

She moved closer to Hannah and returned the pop bottle after she swallowed her drink. “Honey. Kenny’s been gone for pert near seven years now. It’s time to think about movin’ on for your own self. It’s time.”

Hannah walked out into the tall grass facing one of the meadows in front of the North Fork River. She slowly turned toward her mother, “Mom, I know you’re right and I’m interested in gettin’ to know this new guy. Is that selfish of me to want to do it?”

She wiped her hands on her apron as she walked to meet her daughter, “No. It ain’t one bit selfish. See where it goes. You’re forty-three years old. None of us need a man around, but once in awhile on them cold winter nights, it ain’t too bad to snuggle up against their big bare asses and hold on tight.”

Hannah spit out the dark, sweet liquid as she sipped and laughed at the same time, “Oh Mom, you kill me sometimes with what you say.” They both laughed out loud and hugged each other one more time.

Mikhail shifted into third as he slowly passed Holy Savior Church after the five-hour drive from Hungry Horse to Butte. The hours flew by as he spent the trip recalling his days as a teenager following the accidental death of his father in the mine accident at the Mountain Con Mine. He quit school and worked for a glass company installing windows and glass doors just so his brother and mother could survive. The pain and loneliness of the months after his dad died roared into his mind as if it happened last week. He could see the school principal enter his math classroom and talk to the teacher. They both threw a glance toward Mikhail as the principal whispered to the teacher.