Travis, B .Chet Moran grew up in Logan, Montana, at a timewhen kids weren’t supposed to get polio anymore. InLogan, they still did, and he had it before he was two. He recovered,but his right hip never fit in the socket, and hismother always thought he would die young.
When he was fourteen, he started riding spoiled and un-brokehorses, to prove to her that he was invincible. Theybucked and kicked and piled up on him, again and again. Hedeveloped a theory that horses didn’t kick or shy becausethey were wild; they kicked and shied because for millionsof years they’d had the instinct to move fast or be lion meat.
“You mean because they’re wild,” his father had saidwhen Chet advanced this theory.
He couldn’t explain, but he thought his father was wrong.He thought there was a difference, and that what peoplemeant when they called a thing “wild” was not what he sawin the green horses at all.
He was small and wiry, but his hip made it hard for himto scramble out from under the horses, and he broke hisright kneecap, his right foot, and his left femur before he waseighteen. His father drove him to Great Falls, where thedoctors put a steel rod in his good leg from hip to knee.From then on, he walked as though he were turning to himselfto ask a question.
His size came from his mother, who was three-quartersCheyenne; his father was Irish and bullheaded. They hadvague dreams of improvement for their sons, but no ideasabout how to achieve them. His older brother joined thearmy. Watching him board an eastbound train, handsomeand straight-limbed in his uniform, Chet wondered whyGod or fate had so favored his brother. Why had the cardsbeen so unevenly dealt?
He left home at twenty and moved up north to the highline.He got a job outside Havre feeding cows through thewinter, while the rancher’s family lived in town and the kidswere in school. Whenever the roads were clear, he rode tothe nearest neighbors’ for a game of pinochle, but mostly hewas snowed in and alone. He had plenty of food, and goodTV reception. He had some girlie magazines that he got toknow better than he’d ever known an actual person. Hespent his twenty-first birthday wearing long johns undertwo flannel shirts and his winter coat, warming up soup onthe stove. He got afraid of himself that winter; he sensedsomething dangerous that would break free if he kept somuch alone.
In the spring, he got a job in Billings, in an office withfriendly secretaries and coffee breaks spent talking about rodeosand sports. They liked him there, and offered to sendhim to the main office in Chicago. He went home to hisrented room and walked around on his stiff hip, and guessedhe’d be stove up in a wheelchair in three years if he kept sittingaround an office. He quit the job and bucked bales allsummer, for hardly any money, and the pain went out of hiship, unless he stepped wrong.
That winter, he took another feeding job, outside Glendive,on the North Dakota border. He thought if he wenteast instead of north, there might not be so much snow. Helived in an insulated room built into the barn, with a TV, acouch, a hot plate, and an icebox, and he fed the cows witha team and sled. He bought some new magazines, in whichthe girls were strangers to him, and he watched Starsky andHutch and the local news. At night, he could hear the horsesmoving in their stalls. But he’d been wrong about the snow;by October it had already started. He made it throughChristmas, with packages and letters from his mother, but inJanuary he got afraid of himself again. The fear was not particular.It began as a buzzing feeling around his spine, a restlessnesswithout a specific aim.
The rancher had left him a truck, with a headbolt heateron an extension cord, and he warmed it up one night anddrove the snowy road into town. The café was open, but hewasn’t hungry. The gas pumps stood in an island of bluishlight, but the truck’s tank was full. He knew no pinochleplayers here, to help him pass the time. He turned off themain street to loop through town, and he drove by theschool. A light was on at a side door and people were leavingtheir cars in the lot and going inside. He slowed, parked onthe street, and watched them. He ran a hand around thesteering wheel and tugged at a loose thread on its wornleather grip. Finally he got out of the truck, turned his collarup against the cold, and followed the people inside.
One classroom had its lights on, and the people he hadfollowed were sitting in the too-small desks, saying hello asif they all knew each other. Construction-paper signs andpictures covered the walls, and the cursive alphabet ran alongthe top of the chalkboard. Most of the people were about hisparents’ age, though their faces were softer, and they dressedas though they lived in town, in thin shoes and clean brightjackets. He went to the back of the room and took a seat. Heleft his coat on, a big old sheepskin-lined denim, and hechecked his boots to see what he might have dragged in, butthey were clean from walking through snow.
“We should have gotten a high school room,” one of themen said.
A lady—a girl—stood at the teacher’s desk at the front ofthe room, taking papers from a briefcase. She had curly lightcoloredhair and wore a gray wool skirt and a blue sweater,and glasses with wire rims. She was thin, and looked tired andnervous. Everyone grew quiet and waited for her to speak.
“I’ve never done this before,” she said. “I’m not sure howto start. Do you want to introduce yourselves?”
“We all know each other,” a gray-haired woman said.
“Well, she doesn’t,” another woman protested.
“You could tell me what you know about school law,”the young teacher said.
The adults in the small desks looked at each other. “Idon’t think we know anything,” someone said.
“That’s why we’re here.”
The girl looked helpless for a second and then turned tothe chalkboard. Her bottom was a smooth curve in the woolskirt. She wrote “Adult Ed 302” and her name, Beth Travis,and the chalk squeaked on the h and the r. The men andwomen in the desks flinched.
“If you hold it straight up,” an older woman said, demonstratingwith a pencil, “with your thumb along the side, itwon’t do that.”
Beth Travis blushed, and changed her grip, and began totalk about state and federal law as it applied to the publicschool system. Chet found a pencil in his desk and held itlike the woman had said to hold the chalk. He wonderedwhy no one had ever showed him that in his school days.
The class took notes, and he sat in the back and listened.Beth Travis was a lawyer, it seemed. Chet’s father told jokesabout lawyers, but the lawyers were never girls. The class wasfull of teachers, who asked things he’d never thought of,about students’ rights and parents’ rights. He’d never imagineda student had any rights. His mother had grown up inthe mission school in St. Xavier, where the Indian kids werebeaten for not speaking English, or for no reason. He’d beenluckier. An English teacher had once struck him on the headwith a dictionary, and a math teacher had splintered a yardstickon his desk. But in general they had been no trouble.
Once, Beth Travis seemed about to ask him something,but one of the teachers raised a hand, and he was saved.
At nine o’clock the class was over, and the teachersthanked Miss Travis and said she’d done well. They talked toeach other about going someplace for a beer. He felt heshould stay and explain himself, so he stayed in his desk. Hiship was starting to stiffen from sitting so long.
Miss Travis packed up her briefcase and put on her puffyred coat, which made her look like a balloon. “Are you staying?”she asked.
“No, ma’am.” He levered himself out from behindthe desk.
“Are you registered for the class?”
“No, ma’am. I just saw people coming in.”
“Are you interested in school law?”
He thought about how to answer that. “I wasn’t beforetonight.”
She looked at her watch, which was thin and gold-colored.“Is there somewhere to get food?” she asked. “I haveto drive back to Missoula.”
The interstate ran straight across Montana, from the edgeof North Dakota, where they were, west through Billingsand Bozeman and past Logan, where he had grown up, overthe mountains to Missoula, near the Idaho border. “That’s anawful long drive,” he said.
She shook her head, not in disagreement but in amazement.“I took this job before I finished law school,” she said.“I wanted any job, I was so afraid of my loans coming due. Ididn’t know where Glendive was. It looks like Belgrade, theword does I mean, which is closer to Missoula—I must havegotten them confused. Then I got a real job, and they’re lettingme do this because they think it’s funny. But it took menine and a half hours to get here. And now I have to drivenine and a half hours back, and I have to work in the morning.I’ve never done anything so stupid in my life.”
“I can show you where the café is,” he said.
She looked like she was wondering whether to fear him,and then she nodded. “Okay,” she said.
In the parking lot, he was self-conscious about his gait,but she didn’t seem to notice. She got into a yellow Datsunand followed his truck to the café on the main drag. Heguessed she could have found it herself, but he wanted moretime with her. He went in and sat opposite her in a booth.She ordered coffee and a turkey sandwich and a browniesundae, and asked the waitress to bring it all at once. Hedidn’t want anything. The waitress left, and Beth Travis tookoff her glasses and set them on the table. She rubbed her eyesuntil they were red.
“Did you grow up here?” she asked. “Do you know thoseteachers?”
“No, ma’am.”
She put her glasses back on. “I’m only twenty-five,” shesaid. “Don’t call me that.”
He didn’t say anything. She was three years older than hewas. Her hair in the overhead light was the color of honey.She wasn’t wearing any rings.
“Did you tell me how you ended up in that class?” sheasked.
“I just saw people going in.”
She studied him and seemed to wonder again if sheshould be afraid. But the room was bright, and he tried tolook harmless. He was harmless, he was pretty sure. Beingwith someone helped—he didn’t feel so wound up andrestless.
“Did I make a fool of myself ?” she asked.
“No.”
“Are you going to come back?”
“When’s it next?”
“Thursday,” she said. “Every Tuesday and Thursday fornine weeks. Oh, God.” She put her hands over her eyes again.“What have I done?”
He tried to think how he could help her. He had to staywith the cows, and driving to pick her up in Missoula didn’tmake any sense. It was so far away, and they’d just have todrive back again.
“I’m not signed up,” he finally said.
She shrugged. “They’re not going to check.”
Her food came, and she started on the sandwich.
“I don’t even know school law,” she said. “I’ll have tolearn enough to teach every time.” She wiped a spot of mustardfrom her chin. “Where do you work?”
“Out on the Hayden ranch, feeding cattle. It’s just a winterjob.”
“Do you want the other half of this sandwich?”
He shook his head, and she pushed the plate aside andtook a bite of the melting sundae.
“I’d show you if you could stay longer,” he said.
“Show me what?”
“The ranch,” he said. “The cows.”
“I have to get back,” she said. “I have to work in themorning.”
“Sure,” he said.
She checked her watch. “Jesus, it’s quarter to ten.” Shetook a few quick bites of sundae and finished her coffee. “Ihave to go.”
He watched as the low lights of the Datsun disappearedout of town, then he drove home in the other direction.Thursday was not very far from Tuesday, and it was almostWednesday now. He was suddenly starving, when sitting acrossfrom her he hadn’t been hungry. He wished he’d taken theother half of the sandwich, but he had been too shy.
Thursday night, he was at the school before anyoneelse, and he waited in the truck, watching. One ofthe teachers showed up with a key, unlocked the side door,and turned on the light. When more people had arrived,Chet went to his seat in the back of the classroom. BethTravis came in looking tired, took off her coat, and pulleda sheaf of paper from her briefcase. She was wearing agreen sweater with a turtleneck collar, jeans, and black snowboots. She walked around with the handouts and noddedto him. She looked good in jeans. “KEY SUPREME COURT DECISIONSAFFECTING SCHOOL LAW,” the handout said acrossthe top.
The class started, and hands went up to ask questions. Hesat in the back and watched, and tried to imagine his oldteachers here, but he couldn’t. A man not much older thanChet asked about salary increases, and Beth Travis said shewasn’t a labor organizer, but he should talk to the union. Theolder women in the class laughed and teased the man aboutrabble-rousing. At nine o’clock the class left for beers, andhe was alone again with Beth Travis.
“I have to lock up,” she said.
He had assumed, for forty-eight hours, that he would goto dinner with her, but now he didn’t know how to makethat happen. He had never asked any girl anywhere. Therehad been girls in high school who had felt sorry for him, buthe had been too shy or too proud to take advantage of it. Hestood there for an awkward moment.
“Are you going to the café?” he finally asked.
“For about five minutes,” she said.
In the café, she asked the waitress for the fastest thing onthe menu. The waitress brought her a bowl of soup withbread, coffee to go, and the check.
When the waitress left, she said, “I don’t even know yourname.”
“Chet Moran.”
She nodded, as if that were the right answer. “Do youknow anyone in town who could teach this class?”
“I don’t know anyone at all.”
“Can I ask what happened to your leg?”
He was surprised by the question, but he thought shecould ask him just about anything. He told her the simplestversion: the polio, the horses, the broken bones.
“And you still ride?”
He said that if he didn’t ride, he’d end up in a wheelchairor a loony bin or both.
She nodded, as if that were the right answer, too, andlooked out the window at the dark street. “I was so afraidI’d finish law school and be selling shoes,” she said. “I’msorry to keep talking about it. All I can think about is thatdrive.”
That weekend was the longest one he’d had. He fedthe cows and cleaned the tack for the team. He curriedthe horses until they gleamed and stamped, watchinghim, suspicious of what he intended.
Inside, he sat on the couch, flipped through the channels,and finally turned the TV off. He wondered how he mightcourt a girl who was older, and a lawyer, a girl who livedclear across the state and couldn’t think about anything butthat distance. He felt a strange sensation in his chest, but itwasn’t the restlessness he had felt before.
On Tuesday, he saddled one of the horses and rode it intotown, leaving the truck. There was a chinook wind, and thenight was warm, for January, and the sky clear. The plainsspread out dark and flat in every direction, except where thelights glowed from town. He watched the stars as he rode.
At the school, he tethered the horse to the bike rack, outof sight of the side door and the lot where the teacherswould park. He took the fat plastic bag of oats from hisjacket pocket and held it open. The horse sniffed at it, thenworked the oats out of the bag with his lips.
“That’s all I got,” he said, shoving the empty plastic bagback in his pocket.
The horse lifted its head to sniff at the strange townsmells.
“Don’t get yourself stolen,” Chet said.
When half the teachers had arrived, he went in and tookhis seat. Everyone sat in the same seat as they had the weekbefore. They talked about the chinook and whether it wouldmelt the snow. Finally Beth Travis came in, with her puffycoat and her briefcase. He was even happier to see her thanhe had expected, and she was wearing jeans again, whichwas good. He’d been afraid she might wear the narrow woolskirt. She looked harassed and unhappy to be there. Theteachers chattered on.
When the class was over and the teachers had cleared out,he asked, “Can I give you a ride to the café?”
“Oh—” she said, and she looked away.
“Not in the truck,” he said quickly, and he wonderedwhy a truck might seem more dangerous to a woman. Heguessed because it was like a room. “Come outside,” hesaid.
She waited in the parking lot while he untied the horseand mounted up. He rode it around from the bike rack—aware that he could seem like a fool, but elated with thefeeling of sitting a horse as well as anyone did—to whereBeth Travis stood hugging her briefcase.
“Oh, my God,” she said.
“Don’t think about it,” he said. “Give me your briefcase.Now give me your hand. Left foot in the stirrup. Now swingthe other leg over.” She did it, awkwardly, and he pulled herup behind him. He held her briefcase against the pommel,and she held tightly to his jacket, her legs against his. Hecouldn’t think of anything except how warm she was, pressedagainst the base of his spine. He rode the back way, throughthe dark streets, before cutting out toward the main drag andstopping short of it, behind the café. He helped her down,swung to the ground after her, gave her the briefcase, andtied the horse. She looked at him and laughed, and he realizedhe hadn’t seen her laugh before. Her eyebrows went upand her eyes got wide, instead of crinkling up like mostpeople’s did. She looked amazed.
In the café, the waitress slid a burger and fries in front ofBeth Travis and said, “The cook wants to know if that’s yourhorse out back.”
Chet said it was.
“Can he give it some water?”
He said he’d appreciate it.
“Truck break down?” the waitress asked.
He said no, his truck was all right, and the waitress wentaway.
Beth Travis turned the long end of the oval plate in hisdirection, and took up the burger. “Have some fries,” shesaid. “How come you never eat anything?”
He wanted to say that he wasn’t hungry when he wasaround her, but he feared the look on her face if he said it,the way she would shy away.
“Why were you afraid of selling shoes?” he asked.
“Have you ever sold shoes? It’s hell.”
“I mean, why were you afraid you couldn’t get anythingelse?”
She looked at the burger as if the answer was in there.Her eyes were almost the same color as her hair, and ringedwith pale lashes. He wondered if she thought of him as anIndian boy, with his mother’s dark hair. “I don’t know,” shesaid. “Yes, I do know. Because my mother works in a schoolcafeteria, and my sister works in a hospital laundry, and sellingshoes is the nicest job a girl from my family is supposedto get.”
“What about your father?”
“I don’t know him.”
“That’s a sad story.”
“No, it’s not,” she said. “It’s a happy story. I’m a lawyer,see, with a wonderful job driving to fucking Glendive everyfifteen minutes until I lose my mind.” She put down theburger and pressed the backs of her hands into her eyes. Herfingers were greasy and one had ketchup on it. She took herhands away from her face and looked at her watch. “It’s teno’clock,” she said. “I won’t get home before seven-thirty inthe morning. There are deer on the road, and there’s blackice outside of Three Forks along the river. If I make it pastthere, I get to take a shower and go to work at eight, and doall the crap no one else wants to do. Then learn more schoollaw tomorrow night, then leave work the next day beforelunch and drive back here with my eyes twitching. It’s betterthan a hospital laundry, maybe, but it’s not a whole fuckinglot better.”
“I’m from near Three Forks,” he said.
“So you know the ice.”
He nodded.
She dipped her napkin in her water glass and washedoff her fingers, then finished her coffee. “It was nice ofyou, to bring the horse,” she said. “Will you take me back tomy car?”
Outside, he swung her up onto the horse again, and sheput her arms around his waist. She seemed to fit to his bodylike a puzzle piece. He rode slowly back to the school parkinglot, not wanting to let her go. Next to the yellow Datsun,he held her hand tight while she climbed down, and then hedismounted, too. She tugged her puffy coat where it hadridden up from sliding off the horse, and they stood lookingat each other.
“Thank you,” she said.
He nodded. He wanted to kiss her but couldn’t see anyclear path to that happening. He wished he had practiced,with the high school girls or the friendly secretaries, just tobe ready for this moment.
She started to say something, but in his nervousness hecut her off. “See you Thursday,” he said.
She paused before nodding, and he took this for encouragement.He caught up her hand again and kissed it, becausehe had wanted to do that, and it was soft and cold. Then heleaned over and kissed her cheek, because he had wanted todo that, too. She didn’t move, not an inch, and he was aboutto kiss her for real when she seemed to snap out of a trance,and stepped away from him. She took her hand back. “I haveto go,” she said, and she went around to the driver’s side ofthe Datsun.
He held the horse while she drove out of the parking lot,and he kicked at the snow. The horse sidestepped away. Hefelt like jumping up and down, in excitement and anxietyand anguish. He had run her off. He shouldn’t have kissedher. He should have kissed her more. He should have let hersay what she wanted to say. He mounted up and rodehome.
Thursday night he drove the truck in, no cowboyantics; he was on a serious mission. He was going toanswer her questions honestly, such as the one about why hedidn’t eat. He was going to let her say the things she intendedto say. He didn’t wait for the crowd to arrive beforegoing into the classroom; he went in early and took his seatin the back. The class filled up, and then a tall man in a graysuit with a bowling-ball gut came in and stood behind theteacher’s desk.
“Miss Travis,” he said, “found the drive from Missoula tooarduous, so I will take over the class for the rest of the term.I practice law here in town. As some of you know, andthe rest of you would find out soon enough, I’m recentlydivorced and have some time on my hands. That’s why I’mhere.”
While the man talked on, Chet got up from his seat andmade his way up the aisle to the door. Outside he stoodbreathing the cold air into his lungs. He let the lights oftown swim in his eyes until he blinked them clear again andclimbed into the rancher’s truck. He gave it enough gas sothe engine wouldn’t quit, and it coughed and steadied itselfand ran.
He knew Beth Travis lived in Missoula, six hundred mileswest, over the mountains, but he didn’t know where. Hedidn’t know where she worked, or if she was listed in thephone book. He didn’t know if it was he who had scared heroff or the drive. He didn’t know if the truck would make itall that way, or what the rancher would do when he foundout he’d gone.
But he put the truck in gear and pulled out of town inthe direction he had three times watched the yellow Datsungo. The road was flat and straight and seemed to roll underneaththe truck, dark and silent, through a dark and silentexpanse of snow-covered land. He stopped outside of MilesCity, and again outside of Billings, to hobble around on hisstiffened-up leg until he could drive again. Near Big Timber,the plains ended and the mountains began, black shapes risingup against the stars. He stopped in Bozeman for coffeeand gas, and drove the white line on the empty road pastThree Forks and Logan, to stay out of the ice that spreadfrom the shoulder in black sheets. Somewhere off to hisright in the dark, his parents were sleeping.
It was still dark when he reached Missoula, and he stoppedat a gas station and looked up “Travis” in the phone book.There was a “Travis, B.” with a phone number, but no address.He wrote down the number, but didn’t call it. He asked thekid at the cash register where the law offices were in town,and the kid shrugged and said, “Maybe downtown.”
“Where’s that?”
The kid stared at him. “It’s downtown,” he said, and hepointed off to his left.
Downtown, Chet found himself in dawn light amongshops and old brick buildings and one-way streets. He parkedand got out to stretch his hip. The mountains were so closethey made him feel claustrophobic. When he found a carvedwooden sign saying “Attorneys at Law,” he asked the secretarywho came to open the office if she knew a lawyernamed Beth Travis.
The secretary looked at his twisted leg, his boots, and hiscoat and shook her head.
In the next law office, the secretary was friendlier. Shecalled the law school and asked where Beth Travis had goneto work, then cupped her hand over the receiver. “She tooka teaching job in Glendive.”
“She has another job, too. Here.”
The secretary relayed this information on the phone, thenwrote something down on a piece of paper and handed itto him.
“Down by the old railroad depot,” she said, pointingtoward the window with her pencil.
He pulled up at the address on the piece of paper ateight-thirty, just as Beth Travis’s yellow Datsun pulled intothe same parking lot. He got out of the truck, feeling jittery.She was rummaging in her briefcase and didn’t see him rightaway. Then she looked up. She looked at the truck behindhim, then back at him again.
“I drove over,” he said.
“I thought I was in the wrong place,” she said. She let thebriefcase hang at her side. “What are you doing here?”
“I came to see you.”
She nodded, slowly. He stood as straight as he could. Shelived in another world from him. You could fly to Hawaii orFrance in less time than it took to do that drive. Her worldhad lawyers, downtowns, and mountains in it. His world hadhorses that woke hungry, and cows waiting in the snow, andit was going to be ten hours before he could get back to getthem fed.
“I was sorry you stopped teaching the class,” he said. “Ilooked forward to it, those nights.”
“It wasn’t because—” she said. “I meant to tell you onTuesday. I’d already asked for a replacement, because of thedrive. They found one yesterday.”
“Okay,” he said. “That drive is pretty bad.”
“You see?”
A man in a dark suit got out of a silver car and lookedover at them, sizing Chet up. Beth Travis waved and smiled.The man nodded, looked at Chet again, and went into thebuilding; the door closed. Chet suddenly wished that she hadquit teaching the class because of him, that he’d had any effecton her at all. He shifted his weight. She pushed her hairback and he thought he could step forward and touch herhand, touch the back of her neck where the hair grew darker.Instead he shoved his hands into his jeans pockets. Sheseemed to scan the parking lot before looking at him again.
“I don’t mean any harm,” he said.
“Okay.”
“I have to go feed now,” he said. “I just knew that if Ididn’t start driving, I wasn’t going to see you again, and Ididn’t want that. That’s all.”
She nodded. He stood there waiting, thinking she mightsay something, meet him halfway. He wanted to hear hervoice again. He wanted to touch her, any part o
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