Distinctly Montana Magazine

fields pale remnants of light pulled at the world's rim. As he drove, the headlights opened the night. Nathan tried to push his thoughts down. He knew the most difficult part lay ahead, over a rise and around one broad swell. Down there the neon glow of Jimtown Bar was a weak pulse in the expanse of prairie. Descending the broad curve he lost sight of the bar for a time. He felt the pull of the engine, and heard the noise of it rapping out behind him. Then He could nearly taste the bite of the alcohol in his mouth, the hot spiral in his throat as the whiskey went down. He tried to remember his daughter, the baby smell of her breath, the way she touched at his eyes with her tiny fingers. he rounded the hill and bearing down he saw Jimtown bright as bone. An ugly place, dark inside, lit up outside by the fluorescent bloom of the roadway sign. The build- ing was a small raw square on the rez line, discolored, into which Indians and Whites descended together, mostly Northern Cheyennes and some Crow, and in with them the White boys who worked the fields, or came out from Lame Deer. Last year a man had been knifed to death be- hind the building. Nathan and every man he worked with liked the feel of the place, always had. They're all inside, thought Nathan, laughing and drinking at a table just in- side the door. Jed's cheeks would redden as he cackled, his large head would nod back to put another one down. For a moment Nathan recognized how odd it was, how crazy in fact, that all this was so attractive to him. Then the notion died and he was caught again wanting to burn, wanting to throw off every resistance. The daughter he loved seemed distant, something faint, and far beyond his reach. He envisioned himself pulling into the parking lot, walking in the pseudo light of the neon sign as he hurried toward the door, his shirt half open, his eyes turned down. Thinking this way, his own face became foreign to him, the deepset lines of his forehead, the tightening of his countenance. With his palm he tried to unfurrow it all, to push it up and back, but before he noticed, his hand was at his lips again, brushing at the shape of them, thumb- ing the smoothness there. Losing himself to the feel of it he knew the movement was no help. In the midst of it he was struck by the desire to press a bottle to his mouth and down liquor, as much of it as he could lay his hands on. He pounded his fists on the wheel and commanded himself aloud, "Right now. Knock it off!" Back in early May he had come home late again and found his wife asleep on the couch, tired from the preg- nancy. He had watched her for a moment, the way she lay on her side in one of his t-shirts, her small body round and tight from the baby. He approached her and smoothed her hair from her face. She turned to him. She He could nearly taste the bite of the alcohol in his mouth, the hot spiral in his throat as the whiskey went down. He tried to remember his daughter, the baby smell of her breath, the way she touched at his eyes with her tiny fingers. kissed his mouth, and she asked him, "Nathan, will you name our daughter?" These words. Even after they had cursed each other when he called from the bar that night. In a bent tone he asked her, "Why me?" "Because," she said openly, "you're a good man. You're her father, and I'd like it if you would." Almost without will he said, "Okay." Face to face like this, she could do that to him, call him to a ground he'd have never taken alone. He carried her to the bed- room and wrapped her neatly in the down comforter her mother had given them. Over the covers he lay next to her and held her and gently pressed his cheek to her face, feeling against his own face the bones of her forehead, the circlet of bone around her eyes, and underlying her eyes the cheekbones. When she had fallen asleep, he whispered, "I'll be her father." And he knew the name he'd give. IGNORING the bulky feel in his chest and back, the labor it was to breathe, he set his face to the road and stepped the gas to the floorboard. To avoid drawing his thumb to his lips he consciously gripped the wheel in his fists. Quietly, but aloud, he said his daughter's name— "Noel." At the sound of it something increased in him, and as he drew near to Jimtown he kept the pedal down. Neon flashed in the cab for a moment before it died behind him. In the rearview mirror he watched it narrow and fade, then disappear. Just like that, he thought, more simple than it seemed. But long after the bar had passed he looked in the mirror, eyeing the road ahead only for a moment at a time. More than 10 miles on, the sky had opened and Nathan shut off the headlights before turning on the dirt road that led to his home. He entered the trailer and closed the door softly behind him. Pausing, he rested his hands on the back of a metal folding chair at the kitchen table. He heard the rhythm and the stillness of his wife's breath, this with the breathing of his child, quiet like the whisper of willows and wild rose. DISTINCTLY MONTANA | DIGITAL Go to www.distinctlymontana.com/shann121 to ask Shann a question. www.distinctlymontana.com 39 He walked the hall and stopped at the open doorway, the last door, the master bedroom. The moon was full in the room. A slight breeze from the window touched him. A cedar chest made by his wife's father was at the foot of the bed. In the bed, his wife slept beneath the down coverlet, only the black sheen of her hair visible up near the headboard. Words came to him that he'd heard her whisper on occasion when the babe slept in her arms: "The garment of praise instead of the spirit of despair." He thought he remembered her reading

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