Road to Bountiful Read online

  He walks briskly to the front of the store, our bounty in hand. We purchase two five-day fishing licenses as well. The total comes to well more than three hundred dollars. Levi doesn’t blink. He hands the yellow credit card to the clerk, a young man whose name tag reads, “Jason,” who affably rings up the purchase.

  “So where would you go if you were in our place—my grandfather here and me, generally heading to Utah, but we wanted to fish Montana along the way. Creek or small lake, something that we can wade into. Nothing difficult. Nothing too far out of the way. Gramps, here, has never been fly fishing.”

  Interesting, I think, that I had been elevated from Great-Uncle Loyal to Grandfather Loyal. I take it as a promotion. I nod agreeably toward the young man, Jason, who is eying me with the knowing look of an experienced appraiser of mountain fisherman potential.

  He probably was thinking this: An old, round man with an oval face. Not in the best physical condition. Little hair, so he must wear a hat. Somewhat short legged, he should steer clear of water with boulders or swift currents. His age, seventies, maybe early eighties. A greenhorn in the mountains. No stiff hikes, not far from the road. Ah, the place. I have just the place. And then he said those very words.

  “I have just the place,” says the sagacious one, Jason. “I’ve got a map. I’ll show you. Less than two hours from here. In one of the most beautiful mountain areas in the country. Up on the Beartooth Pass.”

  “Beartooth. Beartooth. I like the name,” Levi bubbles. “Cool. Are there bears up there?”

  “Bunches. Grizzlies, black bears. All over the place. You gotta be careful, or you can end up lunch for a bear.”

  “Excellent! I love this state.”

  Excellent is not the word I had in mind, but I think, at my age, meeting my demise at the jaws or paws of a grizzly bear probably would be preferable to meeting my demise at the hand of a disease that chewed away my bones and organs while I lay blank-faced and chalky in the Glad Tidings facility. And perhaps it was excellent in Levi’s world. After all, if Mr. Bear should show up in our pursuit of Mr. Trout, hungry and slavering and testy, Levi needed only to outrun me, a feat he would most assuredly accomplish without so much as breaking a sweat. And the scene was not without some humor as it passed by me, this encounter of men and bear, fishing poles flying, and a mad scramble toward wherever safety might be.

  For Levi the torment was tornadoes. For me it might be a hulking bear. I like it. So I nod and say, “Yes. Excellent,” to the approving looks of my young companions.

  Jason and Levi get down to specifics. Take this highway there. Look for a dirt road in such-and-such a place. Follow it about a mile. Watch for a trailhead marker. Bear to the left at the first fork, to the right at the second. Walk ahead another hundred yards, and the creek comes tumbling down the hillside, and it’s not large and has good holes, and the trout will be biting because it is not even close to a full moon and rain hasn’t fallen in a week. Levi soaks this all in, his eyes fiery with excitement, his head bobbing up and down, almost feverish in his enthusiasm, an intermittent “Yes, yes, yes” and “Okay, okay, got it” punctuating Jason’s instructions. He ends by telling us a good place to stay. “Way out there, off the beaten track, for sure, but the cabins are cool, and if you mention my name, they’ll cut you a break on the price.”

  The transaction and the talk come to an end. Jason and Levi exchange an elaborate handshake, consisting of slaps and knuckle punches and fist grazing, brothers now and forever, brought together by time and circumstance and the love of the mountainous watery world where trout dwell. Jason wishes us good fishing and beseeches us to come again.

  I turn as Levi and I push our way toward the door and ask, “Who is Chuck? Is he the owner of this store?”

  Jason grins slyly. “There is no Chuck. I’m the owner, but I figured that not many people would come to a fly shop named Jason’s.”

  With that, he reaches into a nearby bin and takes out a floppy, blue-brimmed hat and tosses it to me.

  “You’ll need this up there, Grandpa. Lots of sun. No charge. Good luck.”

  Levi winks at me, and we walk back to the shiny red car simmering in the sun.

  “First we stop at a grocery store and get the basics of life. Chips, water, juice, and jerky. Lots of jerky. You can live off a bite of jerky for days. Boy Scouts. I learned it there.”

  So we stop by a grocery store, and Levi is in and out in less than five minutes. He comes back with four bags of food, two of which are completely filled with jerky. “I went back for a second bag,” he tells me solemnly. “Can’t ever have too much jerky.”

  The rest of that day passes pleasantly and mostly uneventful. We stop and have lunch at a small restaurant: chicken salad sandwich for me, Levi partaking of a roast beef sandwich with double fries and a tall milkshake. He chatters endlessly about fishing and our good fortune to have met up with the redoubtable Jason.

  “That Jason, he’s a good man. A real good man. Took to us both, told us the primo places to fish. Not everyone would do that. Most people who are really into it don’t tell you their best places. But I think he was straight with us. That was a break. A big break, Uncle Loyal.”

  With that, he happily sucks up the last of his milkshake, making a loud gurgling sound through his straw. “Let’s go. Let’s get close to those mountains. Tomorrow, we fish.”

  We point the car first to the west, then to the south.

  I keep my eyes on the low-slung ridge of blue-gray mountains to the south as we pass through the sleepy small towns of southern Montana with their fading main streets and architectural styles of bygone days.

  With each passing mile, the mountains seem to grow larger and more imposing. An hour into our afternoon drive, I begin to see. I begin to understand these tall sentinels of the valley, how steep they were, their old rugged faces gouged and chiseled by millennia of wind, rain, frost, and snow. They seem to beckon me, as one old friend to another. “Come,” they said. “Come and see us, Loyal. We will show you, old man, who we are, and you will show us who you are. We have both survived a good long time in our respective spheres; we have weathered what has come our way. Our faces are those of character. We understand each other. We know of each other’s secrets. We all are cracked, and we show the strain of our time, of what we have experienced. But we are not broken. We are made of stone.”

  The mountains begin to look brighter as we drive closer. They take on the fine sheen of a pine green as the timber on their slopes takes form before my eyes. I feel a jolt of excitement as we get closer to the tall, solemn, wise mountains.

  Levi talks on, talks on and on as we get closer, about fishing flies, matching the hatch and fishing tales and how he once got a big fish and how he let some other big ones get away. He tells me about turning back some fish and casting his line until it was dark outside on many occasions. He says that if you slapped the water with your line, the fish would hear it and they wouldn’t bite. I nod. I’m only half paying attention as he rambles on about men and fish.

  “Uncle Loyal? Are you listening to me?” he finally asks.

  “Yes, yes. Of course, Levi. I’m listening. It’s all very pleasant,” I say. “The drive, these mountains, good company. I’m eager to get into these mountains. I have lived on flat land my whole life. It is time to see the sunrise or the sunset from another point of view.”

  We drive to the base of the mountain range and begin looking for the side road that will take us to the cabins that Jason told us about. After a great, curving bend in the two-lane highway, a stream rushed into view, and for some reason I was comforted. Here was proof that nature had worked her miracle—the combining of elevation, clouds, rain, snow, sun, and gravity gave the stream life. Only a God could think of it and make it thus. And it all came to this—clear, fast water dancing over rocks in a blind rush toward the valley.

  And in that blind rush, certainly, there were fish. Their world, our world. Different worlds among us.

  I am a f
latlander, I remind myself. I am a man of the prairie. This world is a new world to me. I want to enter it. “New worlds,” I say softly, so softly that Levi doesn’t hear me as our car rumbles down the road. New worlds at our fingertips.

  I think of Daisy, which I often do when I am about to experience something new.

  Then I look up at the mountains, most of them cresting beyond ten thousand feet in the now-golden early evening sky, snow still lying in the deep, craggy pillows in the highest elevation. Mountains, I think. Mountains.

  Excellent.

  Tomorrow I would be among them.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Fish. We Are Fish. They Are Fish. We All Are Fish

  That Jason, he was awesome. We connected. We bonded. He even gave us a tip on where we could stay: a cabin, away from the highway and the tourists and the summer rush of old people with bad legs in loud shorts and young parents looking stressed and little kids running everywhere out of control. Then he said he’d call ahead—the guy who owned it was a friend of his, someone named Marty—and that he’d make sure we had a place to stay, even if it was in Marty’s house.

  Marty was ready for us. He was a silver-haired man, trim as a triathlete, with blue eyes and a nice way with words. He greeted us as if we were long-lost buddies, showed us to one of the clean little cabins and told us to enjoy ourselves. He asked how long we planned to stay, and Uncle Loyal piped right up and said, “Oh, two days, most likely, but more if the fishing is sound.” Marty smiled at that, and I could tell he was digging Uncle Loyal.

  The sun was dipping behind those tall, rugged mountains, and my favorite time of the day in my favorite time of the year is at hand. The shadows are long, the air crisp and fresh smelling. The wind shuffles through the trees, and the best feeling of all, that wisp of chilly air, whirls down the canyon. It causes me to shiver. I know I will sleep well tonight.

  I also know I’m hungry. Lunch seemed like a long time ago.

  “Where would you go to grab dinner, Marty?”

  “What are you in the mood for, amigo?”

  It was the easiest question I’d been asked in a long time. “Meat. Red meat. I need meat. Thick, drippy red meat.”

  Of course, I hadn’t talked over the subject of dinner with Uncle Loyal. I didn’t know what he had in mind. But a big old beefsteak with a gob of mashed potatoes sounded perfect to me. Filling. Very western. Fitting. Very manly.

  “Well, there’s a place not far from here, my friend. Howie’s, not much to look at, not much for atmosphere, but they have the best steaks between here and Denver. Only the locals really know about it. Incomparable T-bones. Heavenly prime rib. If meat is what you want, Howie’s is where you need to be. As I said, a little rough hewn, but an unforgettable stop for a steak lover.”

  “Perfect.”

  Marty gives me directions, and a half hour later, after a ten-mile drive, we pull into the dusty parking lot of a roadside grill with a red neon light blinking, “Howie’s for Steak.”

  I see a bunch of big motorcycles in the parking lot, all in a line. A couple of men, huge guys with bandannas, stare at us when we pull in. That should have been a clue. We were not in for a Relief Society kind of dinner at Howie’s. Blue smoke curls up from a small chimney.

  Uncle Loyal raises an eyebrow.

  “Are you sure this is the place? It looks to be, I would venture, on the shady side. And I’m not much of a red-meat eater. I wonder if they have chicken. Or a nice Caesar salad.”

  “Marty said it was the best place for steak in the entire country, if not the world and universe. These places, they have character. It’s the ambience. It’s local culture. It’s what makes them stick out. It gives them atmosphere. Besides, what are they going to do? Not serve us? Beat us up? Make us dance in pink tutus? This, Uncle Loyal, is part of the western experience. Remember, we are mountain men who will walk upon the turf of grizzlies tomorrow. What can these guys do to us? We’ll be fine. Let’s go.”

  He shrugs his shoulders and says softly, “As you wish.”

  We walk into the restaurant. Or bar. Or both. Or something. It’s filled with a smoky gray haze and loud music, and the air smells sweet and funny. It takes my eyes a few seconds to adjust. When they do, I’m taken aback. Describing the place as “rough hewn” was generally equivalent to saying that Frankenstein could use a face-lift. The crowd, and it was a crowd, not customers, not a clientele, more like a mob, all sort of swings around to look at us. It seemed that every available inch of bare flesh—of which there was way too much—was adorned by a tattoo. Every earlobe, eyebrow, and most lips had wondrous displays of body piercings, and there appeared to be only two clean-shaven people in the entire business establishment, me and Uncle Loyal, a generalization that carried over to some of the female patrons.

  Not that I was going to point out that fact to anyone there.

  So there we stand, Uncle Loyal and me. I have on khaki shorts and a T-shirt with a cute little blue sailboat on it and sandals with no socks. Uncle Loyal, chilled by the evening mountain air, had buttoned up a beige cardigan sweater over his plain white shirt and dark blue trousers.

  There we were. Peter Pan and Tinkerbell. Squared up, face-to-face with the mob, in a biker bar. I wonder how long it had been since Marty had actually stepped inside this place.

  I whisper to Uncle Loyal, trying not to move my lips or show my white teeth, “We’re in a biker bar. These guys are in a motorcycle gang. Call me crazy, but I don’t think anyone here has a temple recommend.”

  In the midst of this gigantic stare down, Uncle Loyal smiles and perkily says, “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Quite a lovely sunset outside.”

  I wanted to somehow slip through a crack in the old wood floor. How could we squirm through this mess? We could turn and run, although I had doubts about Uncle Loyal’s ability to make a break for the red car, and I couldn’t leave him behind, although I did feel a nanosecond’s worth of temptation to do just that.

  What I took to be a waitress—oh, how I missed my sweet Evelyn with her big hair, her thick makeup, the jangling of a single set of hoop earrings the size of hubcaps, the fairly sick smell of her cheap, heavy perfume—saunters up to us, and with a sly smile asks, “What’ll it be for you boys? Come to get a little something to eat?”

  I glance around again. The din of only a minute ago had all but disappeared. I’m not kidding: someone slapped the jukebox, and it stopped playing. This was like a bad scene in a bad western movie. I gulp. Make it good, Levi. Or this could be your last supper. This is a place where knives were used to cut meat but were also occasionally, I guessed, inserted between someone’s ribs. What did I just say to Uncle Loyal? They won’t beat us up? I wasn’t so sure now.

  I lower my voice and take my best shot at a Clint Eastwood growl.

  “Yeah. Me ’n Pete here want meat. A big old piece of red meat. Can you fix us up?”

  She eyes me again, top to toes, with what seems to be X-ray vision. I wish the little blue sailboat on my T-shirt would take on water and sink. I wish my legs were hairier and my voice deeper. I wish I had a scar on the side of my nose and breath bad enough to drop a horse a quarter mile away.

  “We might be able to do that. Depends.”

  Depends? Depends on what? How could you walk in to a restaurant and ask for a meal and the waitress says, “Depends”? It was time for quick thinking. It was time to get culturally acclimatized in about one thumpy heartbeat. I look at Uncle Loyal. He is taking in the whole scene, smiling sweetly. He nods at the stiff, ugly, mean faces and then goes into his plains-polite mode again. “We understand the food here is wonderful. I hope you have low-cal dressing.”

  This is not the time, Uncle Loyal! This is not the place! I wanted to die. No, check that. I thought I would die. I had to change the subject. I had to change the feeling, the atmosphere, and I had to do it quickly. Manly. I needed manly fast.

  “Well, see here, Miss. Me ’n Pete here, we like our meat rare. Once over the flame, and that�
�s just about perfect. We like it so that it’s just this side of mooing.”

  “Actually, I prefer chicken, if it’s on the menu,” Uncle Loyal chirps.

  The waitress/gatekeeper/head thug either didn’t hear him or ignored him. In any case, I’m relieved.

  “We can do that for you boys. Glad you put it that way. We don’t take to no one who says ‘well done’ here. The ‘depends’ part was all about the kind of meat we got and how you want it served.”

  She chews her gum, at least what I hoped was gum, although it’s brown, and I notice a faint streak of something coating her teeth. She tosses a glance over a shoulder toward what I took to be the kitchen. “’Cause we only got red meat here. Lemme find you a table.”

  I begin to think that we might live after all. At least Uncle Loyal is smart enough to not press his hope for a chicken dinner with fresh greens.

  We take a few slow steps behind her. I say in a loud enough voice for most of the crowd to hear, “Did I tell ya I got pulled over in Salt Lake, Pete? Yeah, the boys in blue did it to me.”

  Uncle Loyal finally gets into character and says, “That right, Butch? You need to be careful. They know you in Salt Lake. Am I right?” He is grinning like a five-year-old in front of the Christmas tree. He is living out a fantasy, I assume.

  “Yeah. That’s right. Me and blue. We don’t get along so good.”

  We slide our way toward a small, plain wood table with two rickety chairs off in the corner of the restaurant. Uncle Loyal goes out of character again when he sees a couple of men with a dazzling array of tattoos portraying things that I had never imagined, staring at us. “Oh, excuse me. Good evening to you, gentlemen,” he calls out cheerfully.

  “Stay in character!” I hiss at him after we pass the tattoo kings, and Uncle Loyal nods absentmindedly and continues to look around the restaurant and smile and wave at people.

  There isn’t a menu, as such. The waitress comes by after a while and says, “Okay, you want steak, is that with a potato all trimmed out?” I do my best at growling again, “Yep, that’ll be fine here for me and Pete,” and she disappears again into the blue haze and dimly lighted part of the restaurant.