Page 5

4.

We’d been having intermittent rainstorms for weeks; the meadows were vast seas of sludgy mud and there were already patches of ice in the shadowy recesses under the trees. The sky was the color of a damp stone. November was the saddest month, in my opinion, even though it was my birthday month. Or maybe because it was my birthday month, and birthdays always felt so anticlimactic. November was also the month that my mother died, my father had told me once. Which made it unbearably sad, even though I had no memory at all of her death.

My father drove the truck. He always did, despite the fact that I was a perfectly capable driver. Ever since my legs grew long enough to reach the pedals—at age twelve—my father would regularly stick me behind the wheel of his rusting Chevy pickup and have me drive up and down the dusty dirt roads that surrounded our property. Just so you’re prepared for when the worst-case scenario happens, he’d say. Believing, it seemed, that it was an inevitability that it would happen. He never elucidated the precise scenario that he had in mind—clearly, one in which my father himself was incapacitated—so I filled in the gap with my own imagination. A forest fire sweeping in, me fleeing before a wall of flame. A hunting accident; me behind the wheel racing my father to the hospital, blood puddling up in the passenger foot well. And of course, government agents in black vests, surrounding our house, my father in handcuffs while I fled in the truck.

The feds were the shadowy threat that loomed over us at all times. My father wasn’t particularly clear with me about who the “feds” were, exactly—the FBI, for sure, but other times this seemed to also include the state police, U.S. marshals, the ATF, and pretty much anyone who worked as a government authority of any sort. Nor had my father ever given me a clear answer to the question of why we were so concerned about them, just that the government was always looking for a reason to target the good guys. As in, “We represent a threat to the feds, we’re smarter than them, and so it’s just a matter of time before they come after us.” This was supposed to be a sufficient explanation for why we’d lived out there in the woods for thirteen years, as far from the authorities as humanly possible; and it was also why I would never submit to a driver’s test administered by some limp-mustached DMV stoolie.

Only on our property, far from the arbitrary rules of government and authority, did my father ever seem truly comfortable.

A few miles down the road, we passed the worksite, where the inoperable bulldozers sat idle inside the cut. The slash in the forest was quiet.

“Score one for the good guy,” my father said, and we smiled at each other. The old Chevy truck rattled down the dirt road, rutted from the rain, the pines thick on either side. After twenty minutes, the track spat us out on a paved highway, with the beginning signs of civilization—a few houses, a small market, a shack selling smoked jerky.

We stopped at the intersection there, where a grille of mailboxes signaled the existence of the homes hidden in the woods beyond. It was a surprising number. Ours was a rusty steel oblong that locked with a deadbolt, as if there might be communication of true value stashed inside and an abundance of mail thieves nearby.

My father idled the truck and handed me a stack of letters. “Pop these in the box, will you?”

I glanced at the addresses on the envelopes as I shoved them in the mailbox. New York Times Op Ed. Harper’s—Editor in Chief. The Washington Post Submissions . Reason. National Review. The usual suspects.

Our box was empty except for a dead spider. I blew the spider away and left the stack of envelopes for the mailman.

“Nothing in there?” my father asked when I got back in the passenger seat.

I shook my head. “I don’t get it. I thought that last essay you sent in was really brilliant.”

“It’s because they’re morons.” He spun the steering wheel hard, throwing us back on the road so quickly that I nearly fell off my seat. I ignored his darkening mood, because my own was lifting with every mile closer to town.

Bozeman was still a modest college town back then, not at all the overpriced yuppie destination it was doomed to become. Main Street was a stretch of brick-faced buildings, many of which dated back a hundred years or more—a hotel, a theater, a hardware store, your standard small-town staples. Even then, though, there were already a few upscale boutiques and restaurants catering to the college students and ski bunnies who were building themselves mansions out at Big Sky.

We parked on the street outside the Country Bookshelf. My father pulled the paper sack of Libertaire from the bed of the truck, and together we went inside.

Heidi was waiting for me. Before I even made it through the door she threw her arms around me in a straitjacket embrace. “Happy birthday, Janey-Jane,” she squealed in my ear, her breath smelling like strawberry candy. “You’re so old!”

I was unpracticed when it came to hugs from people who were not my father. Each one I received—and I could count them on one hand—had come burdened by a minefield of unanswerable questions. How long were you supposed to hug someone back? What did you do with your hands, squeeze or pat or just let them lie there limply on the other person’s back? Was it weird if you took a big sniff of the person you were hugging, to see what they smelled like? What about if your boobs got mashed against the other person’s chest? If the other person let go first, did it mean they liked you less?

I went with the pat-and-release-first method. “Practically dead. Better prepare the coffin.”

“God, you’re so mordant . What are you doing to celebrate?”

“Visiting my favorite bookstore?” I looked around the shop. It was a pleasantly cluttered two-story space, open at the center, the shelves bristling with handwritten recommendations. You could buy a calendar, or a coloring book, or a fishing guide; there was a children’s section with beanbags, and a long wall of magazines. At the far end of the room was a modest wooden shelf, jammed with self-published zines. They were hand-stapled and time-faded and curling at the edges, decorated with hand-drawn graphics, priced at a buck or two apiece. Somewhere on that shelf sat copies of Libertaire, issue7 .

Lina had emerged from the stockroom, drawn out by Heidi’s squeals. She had a blue apron tied over her jeans and T-shirt, frizzy curls anchored on the top of her head with a Bic pen. “Well, if isn’t the birthday girl,” she said.

“Hi there, Lina.”

“Call her Mrs. Murphy,” my father muttered under his breath. “Be respectful.”

Lina tucked her hands in the pockets of her apron and smiled at me. She was a round woman, who walked belly-first as though her soft paunch was a source of great pride. “Oh, no need to be so formal. Not that I don’t appreciate it—good manners are hard to come by these days. But Lina is fine, Jane.”

“Thank you, Lina,” I said.

The four of us stood there awkwardly. Lina smiled brightly at my father, as if he were just an average customer and not a curmudgeonly recluse who lived in the woods. “You know, I was thinking of you two the other day. My cousin converted the barn on his property into a sweet little guesthouse, and he’s looking for tenants. I thought, maybe this would be the year you two would want to move a little closer to town.” I couldn’t see my father standing behind me, but I could glean his reaction to this from the way Lina widened her eyes and held up a finger to slow his objections. “Wait, now, listen—you could try it just for the winter. I know how hard it is out there, once you get snowed in. Don’t tell me it’s not. And, Jane, you could enroll in a few classes at Gallatin High. Or even, Montana State, they have some extension courses for advanced learners like yourself. Now, Saul”—the finger was waggling in alarming circles—“I’m not saying that you’re not giving Jane an excellent education at home. But this might be a nice change of pace. And Jane would get to meet some more local kids.”

I knew there wasn’t a chance in hell my father was going to take her up on this. The waggling finger wasn’t helping matters. “Local kids? You’re talking about the thugs that I see wandering around this town, plugged into their Walkmans, their jeans hanging down below their underwear? Tattoos and pierced noses and the intellect of a flea? What business would Jane want with them?”

“Oh, now, I wouldn’t call them thugs. There are some very nice girls at the high school—”

“Who will fill Jane’s head with frivolous nonsense. No thank you.”

I could see Lina’s expression deflating in the way that people’s expressions sometimes did when my dad started to really get going. “No, you’re right, we certainly wouldn’t want that, ” she said. It was painful to watch other people try to argue with my father; didn’t they know they’d never win? “Anyway, it was just a thought! Heidi’s considering giving the high school a shot this spring. She’d love to have a friend with her.” She put out a hand and caressed Heidi’s cheek, lifting a stray hair with one finger and tucking it behind Heidi’s ear. Heidi swatted Lina’s hand away, but she smiled at her mother as she didit.

The intimacy between the two of them made something ache inside me. I had a vague memory of my own mother’s hands in my hair, combing it into braids; but it was possible that was just cribbed from a scene I’d read in Little Women, Marmee fussing over Jo’s locks . Whenever I was around Heidi and Lina, I couldn’t help wondering what it must feel like to have a mother like Lina. Did Heidi’s mom teach her what to do when she got her first period? Or did she just leave her a box of sanitary pads next to a dog-eared copy of The “What’s Happening to My Body?” Book for Girls, like my father had?

I couldn’t help wondering who I would be, with a mother of my own. How much easier my life might have been.

“We’re just fine where we are,” my father said. “We don’t need any thoughts .”

“I’m sure you don’t,” Lina chirped. “Now, Saul, how do you feel about letting the girls go get some coffee by themselves? It’s a little early in the day for cake, but they have cinnamon rolls down at the diner that will do if they want a sugar fix. Besides, I have some business matters I need to discuss with you.”

My father looked at me. I stared back at him, trying not to beg. I could see him making calculations in his head. Then he shrugged. “It’s a free country, or so they like to say, though God knows most of its citizens are eager to throw away that freedom and hand it straight over to…”

I tugged Heidi toward the street, tuning him out. “I’ll be back in an hour, Dad,” I called and let the door slam shut behind me before he had a chance to respond.