Roadkill

Some mornings are not just wonderful but nearly miraculous. A September morning in Montana can be like that. As far as Joe Service was concerned, this was one of them, a morning to remember. Driving east on the interstate between Deer Lodge and Butte, there was still a bite in the air at ten o'clock in the morning, and the air tasted delicious, as after a thunderstorm. But there had been no storm and there were no clouds, just a deep blue sky over the mountains and the broad valley floor, a degree bluer than Joe could ever remember seeing. The blinding sun of summer had gone. September's sun had declined to the south to create a mellower golden effect. The magpies swooped and swung along through the yellowing alders lining the creek bottom, deer lifted their heads out in the range, and high overhead the rough-legged hawk flexed his long primaries in the thin air and scanned the sparse grass for rabbits and mice.

It was a wonderful morning, a miracle, and Joe felt terrific. He was almost bouncing on the seat of a brand-new four-wheel-drive pickup. He was on his way home to his cabin in the mountains above Tinstar, a dusty little forgotten crossroads south of Butte. Helen would be there. She ought to be glad to see him, he thought. He'd been away for a few days, on business, and he knew she got bored and lonely in his absence. He had made some nice arrangements for them to take a little "toot," as he called it. He had finally resigned himself to the the fact that she was a city woman. The mountains didn't seem to interest her for long. She liked the country, but it was just a place to visit, to enjoy for a while. Now, he figured, a trip to Hawaii would cheer her up. His business was doing fine, she would be glad to know, although he really had no business except to "rinse funds," as he joked, and then find places to invest them, which he did very judiciously, very conservatively. She would be happy. Especially when she saw the truck, a present for her, a toy, just like one she had admired a couple of weeks ago. And if all that didn't cheer her up, to hell with her. He wasn't going to let it bother him, not on a morning like this.

He wasn't so much thinking about Helen as thinking around her. He was doing something he would have liked to call mind juggling, except that he didn't like the word "juggling." He liked the concept, the notion of many disparate things whirling around his head, being touched and propelled, directed, released, then touched again. It was better than holding something, clutching it and pondering it. That was too static for Joe Service. He much preferred juggling ... if only the word weren't so dumb, so clumsy sounding. How did such an oafish word become attached to such an airy art? He wanted something nimbler. Helen was nimble. Like him she was small, lithe, and quick.

On his left as he traveled toward Anaconda, he noticed again a huge berm, or mass of freshly piled earth, with a number of yellow machines grooming it. He kept meaning to inquire about this project; he was interested in everything that was going on around him. But he hadn't pursued it. Some kind of Superfund cleanup site, someone had said. It had something to do with a century of mining in the Butte area, plus the residue of the Anaconda smelter. The mining had stopped in the early eighties and only recently started up again, on a reduced scale. The smelter was gone now, but both processes had apparently left plenty of heavy metals and other toxic minerals in the river system that made up the headwaters of the Clark Fork River. Joe made a note, mentally, to drive back here soon and check it all out. He didn't like the thought of poison in this paradise.

The road swung to the east now, headed toward Butte. The brown hills of September were dotted with sagebrush and then many strange-looking evergreens that stood about in isolation, like little green monuments — they seemed vaguely funereal. Ground juniper? He didn't think so: They didn't spread out, but were quite vertical, like sentries. He'd have to ask someone, or look it up in his little field guide to Western trees.

The road rose up, nearly empty of traffic, until beyond the near horizon he glimpsed the first jagged tops of the Continental Divide beyond Butte. In a little notch on the ridge he could make out a white figure. That was Our Lady of the Rockies, an immense statue of the Virgin that was lit up at night. It was a little kinky, Joe thought, but ... what the heck. You could pull anything in Butte, it was a real joint.

At approximately the same moment, he saw the hitchhikers, a quarter of a mile ahead. Two men, one of them seated on a pile of duffel bags and the other standing with his arm outstretched. Joe didn't ordinarily pick up hitchhikers. In fact, he'd just left a zone around the town of Deer Lodge where stern highway signs advised motorists not to stop for hitchhikers because of the nearby Montana State Prison. But it was a beautiful day, Joe felt great, and as he approached he got the impression that these guys were dead beat — the seated one was slumped down like a man at the end of a long run, and the stander had that hand-on-cocked-hip look of someone who would prefer to be sitting.

He pulled over onto the shoulder and backed up to save them the effort of lugging their bags. There really wasn't room for both guys in the cab of the pickup, but he figured one of them could ride on the bags in the back.

The thumber was a lean fellow with long black hair flowing out from under a new cowboy hat with a tall crown. All of his Western garb looked brand new — the hat, a leather vest, a fancy fringed leather jacket, jeans, and tooled cowboy boots. He stepped up on the passenger side and peered in the lowered window. "How far you going?" he asked, smiling.

"The other side of Butte," Joe said, "over the pass. Where you going?"

"That'd be great," the man said. His face was narrow and dark, he needed a shave, but he looked okay, just a long-haired cowboy wannabe — not an unfamiliar sight in these parts. Joe himself was rigged out in a variation of this wardrobe, only more working class. This guy didn't look crazy or criminal, just temporarily afoot. Joe hadn't noticed any vehicle broken down, but the east- and westbound lanes were widely separated out here; possibly the man's car was westbound and hidden behind one of the rises of land that sometimes shielded the lanes from one another.

Joe started to ask the fellow if he'd had car trouble, when the man said, "I need a little help with my buddy. He's not feeling too good."

Joe suppressed a sigh of annoyance. It was always like this, he told himself. You go to do someone a simple favor and it turns out to be more complicated. Chances were he'd end up taking these guys into Butte, maybe even to the hospital. But it was too nice a day to complain. He turned off the ignition and set the parking brake before getting out and coming around the pickup to where the other man sat, still slumped on the duffel bags.

"What's the trouble?" Joe asked. A quiet breeze whisked roadside dust. Joe put his hand on the crown of his own Western hat. He looked at the seated man. He was bigger, heavier than the thumber and not so well dressed. He had a sweat-stained cowboy hat pulled down over his brow and he was bearded. He wore an old military overcoat that could have used a cleaning, a year ago.

"I don't know," the thumber said, "he won't tell me. Won't talk at all."

Joe squatted down...