The Yellowstone Conundrum (31 page)

 
Ideas were running through Cam’s brain like he was on a Vulcan mind meld. He’d never thought such things.

 
The people of Wright, including their leaders, surrounding the fallen bison, to a person were amazed.  Here was this nobody truck driver telling an established hard-rock Eastern Wyoming community to shit or get off the pot, and by the way, here is the pot.

 
Wade McGriff nodded his head, like an iguana bobbing before announcing his presence, then said “Anyone who is planning on going and needs gas, line up at the station.  Tell your neighbors. Trucks have priority.” Wade started, and then kicked into gear. “Most of us are gun owners. Get your important papers and pack an essentials bag, like you were going to Denver for a week. Lock your doors. Dress warmly. There is no electricity. Bring camping equipment and be prepared to share,” Wade looked around, his black cowboy hat firmly in place over his balding head. To Cam the man still looked cool. 

 
“It’s not going to do any good to bring a television set or furniture. Instead bring the essentials to keep you and your family alive in the cold weather. “Wade looked around at the crowd. There was a general lack of enthusiasm. “I need help. I need cooks. I need someone to help us with sanitation. Do we have port-a-lets we can take with us?”

 
“Are you telling us we’re leaving Wright and never coming back?” shouted a man in the back row.

 
“If that cloud comes over here, there’s going to be nothing but mounds of black ash to say that anyone ever lived here. A hundred years from now—a thousand years from now—no one will know this even existed,” Wade spread his arm out toward the outskirts of town.  He paused. “But, if we’re wrong and the black cloud goes away and the sun comes out tomorrow; then we have a Wright to return to and re-start. We’re stupid if we don’t heed what is right in front of our faces.”

 
“I think we need to talk about this, Wade,” said a tall man with callused hands, to a small chorus of ‘that’s right’ and ‘amen’. His name was Hank Wright, of the early Wrights, now a rancher and a member of the family that settled the area. “I don’t think we should just leave our town,” he said simply.

 
The Wrights had been in Wright since the town was named.  That ranchers and city folk had gradually taken over, prospered the town, made things “Wright” was actually “all good.”

 
There was a lot of quiet talk, murmuring, but not much enthusiastic agreement, not more than you would get in an average town. While growing up in Wright was no picnic; the city had fought to upgrade amenities and had done a good job. The sky was tall and the wind relentless. Hunting and fishing were family activities

 
Cam shook Wade’s hand and climbed back inside his cab, powered up the engine and headed toward the Exxon station.  Siphoning gas was always a major pain in the ass, and this would be no different. He looked at Betsy in the cab; she’d been crying again.

 
Can’t blame her.

Montana State Highway 42

McCone County

 
Ain’t never seed that before
.

 
Charley Lame Deer, 42, slowed his 1992 red Chevy Blazer to a crawl; the Blazer was thoroughly beaten to death, nearly all of its color gone; massive tires balder than the famous eagle, yet it managed to haul tons of crap here and there, in and out of gullies and mud slogs, and managed to project a mid-life kind of spirit, even though it was well into retirement age. The hardtop cover was crusty with mud, some ageless.

  Today he was late for work.
It wasn’t the first time. In fact, he was late for work most days, hired by luck and the Indigenous Peoples Act and the set-aside clause that required Federal agencies to hire a portion of unemployed Native Americans in the surrounding area. While Charley was two generations removed from the Assinboine and Sioux  Reservation in Eastern Montana, he’d turned out barely better than his father who had rebelled and moved off the Reservation in 1970 to the town of Circle, county seat for McCone County Montana, and married a low-life white woman whore who bore a half-breed named Charley Lame Deer in 1972. 

 
Both James Lame Deer and his wife (the slut) had passed due to consumption, liver failure and the ability to understand the internal combustion engine, the latter dying as a result of driving while drunk on highway 200 between Brockway and Jordan at 2:00 a.m., filled with sperm from a two-on-one dalliance outside Red’s Bar, and loaded to the gills with Captain Morgan, his mother (the whore) had headed home to Circle.  The following morning the police determined that her car had left the road at a bend around a rock formation at 125 miles an hour. 

 
Except for the rock formation, there wasn’t much left of either Charley’s mother (la puta) or the car.

 
Getting from Circle to Fort Peck required a thirty-mile trek on a mostly macadam but as often dirt road, first a yee-haw ride on Horse Creek Road, followed by a nut-buster on a gravel Weldon Road through farmland, and switchbacks up Cutting School Road to McCone County route 24. His Chevy Blazer would simply die one day from too many rocks pounding its undercarriage.

McCone County Montana

 
Whatthefuck

 
Ahead in the road were three bison, two resting, one standing. Bison didn’t rest much. Crow Indian by birth and a city-dweller-drunk-like-his-father-and-mother by choice, Charley Lame Deer figured this was God speaking to him directly, telling him to relax. Bison remained in a position somewhere between revered and holy, even though it had been a hundred and fifty years since the Great Slaughter.

  Charley came to a stop.
The ground beneath him shuddered lightly, kind of growling; yet, the bison didn’t move.  Animals don’t care much for earthquakes, he thought.  Yet these three didn’t move. Weirder yet, they also didn’t move when he had approached in the Blazer. Bison always get out of the way of The Man. 

 
Getting out of the cab Charley slowly approached the circle of large animals. The wind whipped around him. High prairie was like that; nothing in between. The morning was a brisk 12 degrees, elevation 5,200 feet. The sky and earth were as advertised, Big Sky. With the wind chill it felt like minus 13. Damn bison could stand out there all winter and never give a shit; because they’d always stood out there, and always there would be a Spring and wildflowers and grass to eat.

  But this was just plain odd.
As Charley approached the bison he noticed something was in the middle between them.  It was a man! He slowly wriggled his way through the two large smelly animals that were resting. In between was a man, perhaps 50 or so, wearing a suit coat, no parka, filthy dirty, as opposed to clean dirty. The stench was overpowering. He was being partially covered by one of the animals’ flanks. Kneeling down, Charley immediately understood that the animals had cut the cold wind off from the comatose man. The bison gave Charley a warning kind of grunt. Putting his right hand on the ground so he could reach with his left, Charley could feel the earth shaking every few seconds. It was a rumble-rumble shake, a soundless version of the shake when the Tyrannosaurus Rex escaped its boundary in
Jurassic Park
. 

 
A white man with no coat surrounded by three 1,500-pound buffaloes, out on the high prairie in the middle of fucking nowhere; Charley always knew he lived in the middle of nowhere, CNN had told him that; and the earthquakes continued to shake the ground like the earth had Parkinson’s.

 
Charley slowly reached for the man’s back pocket.
Just checkin’, boss. After all, we want to know who you are, dude. If you’re dead, you probably have a credit card or some twenties in that wallet of yours that you won’t be using in the hereafter. 

 
The second bison turned and gave Charley an evil eye, then made a sound that was half-way between a growl and a bite. There was no mistaking the bison’s intent.
Hands off or I’m going to bite your fucking head off
. Charley’s hand quickly withdrew. The bison, however, were in no mood for Charley Lame Deer; they rustled around, making grunting noises and circled their wagon ever so tighter.

 
“Mister!” Charley shouted, then reached his hand over Bison #1 and shook the man’s leg. The standing buffalo turned and snorted.
 

 
Is it possible these bison think the man they discovered is God? Do bison believe in God? Is the man they found responsible for the earthquakes?  Can he stop them?
To a bison, or to a half-drunk 42-year old-late-for-work, would finding a strange human on an open highway be equally inexplicable, a logical leap to God?

 
Charley shook the man’s leg hard. “Dude!” he shouted.  “Please wake up!”

 
Robert O’Brien woke from a slumber where he’d nearly reached death, then been slowly drawn back.
His path had taken him down a frozen ramp with brilliant light, like tumbling down an icy waterfall, no handholds, just cold; really, really cold. But there was light (and warmth?) at the end. No Jesus, just brightness; nothing identifiable.   Then the light subsided as he went back up the icy waterfall; this time the sides of the waterfall were warmer, yes more comfortable, yes, even warm. Nancy was there!

 
Dude! Please wake up!
Robert heard the shouting in the background; Nancy was there, the icy waterfall further away behind her.

 
Then the smell; Nancy in the background, the icy waterfall and what (?), dog shit, fresh dog shit. He was buried in dog shit; tubs of it, rubbing against his legs, warm but still dog shit. It smells terrible. Dude! The voice shouted. The earth vibrated beneath him. Put another quarter in, Nancy,

 
“DUDE!”

 
Robert O’Brien came back from the dead.

 
Heart racing, Robert opened his eyes; the visions of icy waterfalls and dear Nancy still just on the other side of his eyelids.

 
The head of a buffalo is roughly four-by-three feet, with a set of sharp horns; just what you want to see when you return from Death. 

 
“Shit!” Robert screamed, the sound of which tailed into a wail. The primary buffalo, heretofore referred to as Bison #1, was just as surprised at the human’s re-birth that it snorted and moved backwards a foot or so. Robert’s eyes scanned his New World. He was surrounded by three large animals. His last thoughts were of dropping to the pavement of highway 24 with a prayer to His Nancy.

 
On his back, Robert could feel the ground shaking ever so softly. Earthquake! The Fort Peck Dam, the Missouri River, all of the memories came back quickly. 

 
But, how in God’s earth did these animals come to save him?

 
Someone was on the outskirts of the bison.

  “Hi.
I’m Robert O’Brien. I’m the Director of the Bureau of Reclamation--”

 
“You’re fucking kidding me,” replied the voice. Robert couldn’t see the man because of the beasts.  

 
Slowly, he got to his knees, sore as an old man’s knees always are, then to his feet. The wind and cold began to re-sting him. The bison began to re-circle closer. Robert knew the moment was magical, but didn’t understand how or why. The prone Bison scrambled to her feet. Robert put his hand on her back, which was head high on him; fur on the beast’s shoulders, but thick rubbery skin down to its shanks.

 
Thank you
he thought.
Thank you thank you thank you thank you
as he touched each of the bison.

 
There was no explanation for it.

 
The bull, who had been standing the entire time, gave a snort, a signal that the love fest was at an end, that the mysterious human was all right. One-by-one the three bison click-clacked across highway 24, then softly padded onto the high prarie dirt.

 
Robert turned to his left.

 
“Jesus and all that is holy. Charley Lame Deer, are you late for work again?”