oil pastel, ink, acrylic, and collage, 22 ½ x 47 ½ inches
Great Plains Art Museum, University of Nebraska – Lincoln, Great Plains Art Collection
Gift in memory of George M. & Helen G. Buffet
Two blue hiking poles stood upright in the snow. Two stories up, dark hair spilled over the balcony. The apartment complex looked deserted, yet there he was.
“You came back!” Cash called down to me.
“I had no choice. They closed the campgrounds.”
“Want to unload the truck?”
“No. I just drove through the night.”
“How about tomorrow?”
“No.”
“Okay, then the next day.”
“Sure, why not.”
He would keep pressing until he nailed down a date. The negotiating tactics he practiced on me would no doubt prove useful later in life. I knew he would show up on the agreed-upon day and make short work of the three months of gear and supplies I had packed into the truck for the high desert. Cash had helped me load the truck just two weeks before. In return, I gave him two bottles of Gatorade and his choice of hiking poles from my gear closet.
When news of the pandemic reached the Moab BLM Field Office, an email was fired off to all camp hosts with instructions to pack up and drop off all keys and uniform items at the front door. With sketchy cell service at my campground, I received the message a day later while I was on a water run, leaving me with one day to tear down camp, load the truck and get out of Dodge, without Cash’s help. Unpacking now was the last thing I wanted to do. I wanted to wallow in my pajamas and binge-watch true crime shows.
When Wednesday arrived, I tried to get out of it.
“Isn’t it too cold?”
“No, I don’t mind.”
This was true. He didn’t mind. Cash was out in all manner of Montana weather and wore only a pair of basketball shorts from May to October, sometimes with shoes. He was, of course, right. The tent taken down after a brief desert rain would need to air out in the sun before mildew set in and it was only a matter of time before some critter discovered the bags of instant rice and dehydrated fruit.
***
It’s hard to say when Cash began appearing on the hill where I took Kimmi for Frisbee sessions. It had to have been less than three years ago because we were in Kansas City before that. I was aware of him skirting the edges of my throwing capacity for days. When he approached, I handed him two Frisbees.
“You know how to throw?”
He shrugged. I sat in the grass. His first throws veered off wildly as he put as much power into it as he could muster. He quickly self-corrected and began to throw with finesse.
Anywhere else, Kimmi was a conversation starter. She was glossy and muscled and never failed to put on a show. At the campgrounds, in parks, at rest stops, people would take the time to ask what kind of dog she was and tag on appraisals: she can sure jump, good lookin’ heeler, how’d she learn that, wow. Not in Missoula, Montana. If anything, people averted their gaze as they walked/ran/biked by, checking their wrists. Kimmi and Cash? Running across the bright dense green of the hill? That was a vision! But it was a rare Missoulan who stopped to take notice. The young plumber who installed my washer spontaneously volunteered his insights: Missoula people love Missoula. They want it to stay perfect, like it is. They do not want Californians or Foreign Exchange Students changing things. I would hear many versions of this during my Missoula tenure. I witnessed apoplectic conversations about out-of-state license plates in grocery stores and cafes.
“You could qualify as a Californian or a Foreign Exchange student,” I told my Chinese-American husband.
He brushed this off, saying he had never fit in anywhere, least of all Missoula.
“You might fit in with the Indians,” I told him. “There are plenty of books saying Native Americans were Chinese people who crossed the land bridge during the ice age. Maybe the ones with a sense of humor,” I mused.
“No,” he insisted without reacting to my ribbing. “I don’t fit in with anyone, but that’s okay.”
Not exactly true. My husband fit in with his patients. He loved going to his clinic. He would happily work for free, and in fact had worked for free for three years before the accountant caught up with the billing discrepancies. The private practice, the new office with walls of glass and my newly renovated mid-century house were casualties. The temporary job in Montana was my idea. I had never been to Montana, but thought that a change would be good.
My husband settled in at his clinic, signed up for extended learning classes, located the best bar-b-que takeout and nested in the ground floor apartment. Meanwhile, I woke up in the apartment seized with headaches and agitation. Our furniture was too big. I missed my kitchen and studio and the windows that looked out on the trees we planted, each of our children choosing a tree: Charlie’s blue spruce, Ray’s Japanese maple, Clara’s willow, Fran’s dogwood.
This was not the Montana I had imagined. The gray cinder-block apartment complex was reminiscent of Soviet Cold War architecture and the view outside was blocked by the hill, so one could never see the angle of the sun and never get a fix on the time of day. My circadian rhythms were scrambled. It wasn’t just the hill; there wasn’t much sunlight to track in Missoula due to the inversion and the smoke from seasonal forest fires.
Our apartment became a pit stop as I crisscrossed the country, visiting the homes of my grown children and volunteering for increasingly-remote BLM camp host positions. I made tidy homes in tents and the back of my truck, storing my things in plastic bins tucked under a cot. On one job application, I listed my address as I-90 & I-94.
***
I did not know his name for months after our first few encounters on the hill. I wondered if he was drawn to me because I was Indian, too. But I was not Indian like Cash was Indian. His people were from the Flathead reservation and he would be able to tell legit Rez stories and create Twitter profiles with cool indigenous names like RezDog_Manifesto. Around here, people would be drawn to him or they would hate him because of his unambiguous Indian-ness.
I am an enrolled member of an oil-rich nation that was so wealthy my grandfather drove a new Model T north from Oklahoma to a private college and majored in English Literature. The government got it all wrong. Starvation is no way to get rid of a people. Make them rich and they will scatter and assimilate, problem solved.
My husband discovered Cash’s name in passing one day. He found us sitting in front of the apartment and asked all the questions I was not yet prepared to ask like, what is your name? How do you spell it? Where are you from? Are you Salish? Not unlike the beginning of any intake he would do in the course of a day. From his work at the clinic, he knew more about the Montana reservations than I did. I would have learned his name in time. Up to that point, my conversations with Cash were brief and action-oriented: Want to play with Kimmi? Want to go up the trail? Need help with anything today? And the one that always got me: Can you come out? Said with a straight face and eyes that did not betray any trickery.
“Can you come out?”
The last time I heard that was fifty years ago. Can you come out might as well have been can you wake up? Can you stop being sad? Can you be alive, for heaven’s sake! I began to look forward to the knocks on my door.
“Want to ride bikes?”
“Where did you get that bike?”
“Somebody left it by the dumpster.”
“Does it need air?”
“No, it’s okay.”
The sun was shining. We rode the empty sidewalks, weaving in and out of the string of apartment buildings. I was well aware of the visual: the odd, masked duo, the nine-year-old man-boy already shirtless in 55-degree weather, hair flying, followed by the chubby old lady with a salt-and-pepper braid held in place by a bandana in a style my children had pointed out was on trend with the gang members in the restorative justice documentary we were watching at the time, down to the color of the bandana. It’s not a costume, I countered. I get migraines if my forehead is exposed to the wind, and cotton is more comfortable than microfiber.
“You don’t have school anymore?” I asked Cash.
“No, I might never go back.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“What about the other kids?”
“My cousins stay inside all day playing video games. Their moms won’t let them come out.”
“You don’t have video games?”
“No.
Good mom, I thought. No strawberry kids for her.
***
I spent parts of most days with Cash and as the weather warmed, other kids emerged, their moms weary of keeping them quarantined in dark apartments. Cash showed up with siblings and other kids in tow, all introduced as cousins. I began to think of myself as the apartment complex elder.
There were days when Cash did not make an appearance, prompting my husband to ask where my friend was. After one such absence, Cash turned up with an old toy bow and one arrow. A worn string dangled from one end of the bow.
“Where did you get that?”
“Some guy on the other side gave it to me.”
“Make sure your mom always knows where you are.”
“You are the only one I know who can fix it.”
I ballooned with pride and, thanks to a long-ago family road trip to Colorado involving many stops at souvenir shops, I did know how to fix it. I positioned the bow on a chair and bent it, affixing the string to the other end. For three days, the bow kept Cash and several cousins busy until he was back at my door.
“Can you come out?”
On certain evenings, it was enough to sit in the camp chairs watching things. I wondered at Cash’s ease and ability to sit still. We discussed dogs and politics. Cash wanted a German Shepherd. He tested me with riddles from the Big Book of Riddles he found in my bookcase. We answered the yips of the coyotes up the hill and planned a trip to Coeur d’Alene to get sushi. Sitting in the fading light, my restlessness began to subside.
After the bow and arrow fell out of favor, I pulled my bocce ball set out of a moving box marked OUTDOOR THINGS.
“Want to play?”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a game I used to play with my kids.”
“Sure, okay.”
“First three wins for the match.”
Cash lost the first two tosses, then won the next three. Cognizant of the four ball colors, Cash returned the next day with three cousins. Cash won more times than not. If there was an open slot, I played. If not, I sat in a camp chair and drank coffee. Cash added increasing protocols and challenges to each match. He decided the target would be moved to a new location after each round. He also decided the players would stand in a row with their backs turned while the target was being moved. He placed a tumbleweed in front of the target adding an extra element of chance.
Cash adopted an elaborate throwing technique that looked something like pro-bowling. He would hold the ball to his chest, exhale, then move up to the designated stick-line, tossing the ball up and out while flinging his left hand behind him in counter-balance. He held this position until the ball rolled to its resting spot close to the goal.
During one match in which I was a spectator, I was called in to referee. Cash lost, I could see this right away, but for show I got a tape measure to check the distance of the two balls from the target ball, or in this case the target coke bottle because the grass was too thick for the little white ball to be visible. Cash wanted the win and everyone involved was willing to make this happen. I announced my decision and Cash began to protest, mumbling something about the interference of the tumbleweed.
“I’m calling it for Conan.”
“But the ball moved after it landed.”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s farther away.”
“But …”
“You always win. We are all tired of you winning. It’s Conan’s win.”
No more was said. He will be a tribal councilman someday, or a governor, I thought. The others look up to him. Being fair will be important.
The Irish contingent—my name for the white kids of the apartment complex because of the preponderance of gingers—began to lean over the balconies and stand on the sidewalks, observing the sporting events. More than once I offered up my balls to kids who ventured close, but this was always met with a shake of the head and a no, that’s all right.
No, that’s all right.
No, that’s all right.
No, that’s all right.
As summer waned, I began to think about what I could do with Cash when the snow made lawn games impossible. Would the moms let the kids come inside my apartment if we all masked up and sat six feet apart? Crafts? Movies? Should I offer to tutor? I saw my role expanding.
I considered enlisting the help of my husband, but I never did. He was relentless in helping our own children, scheduling up their free time, pushing them. Their accomplishments and sensibilities were a testimony to our yin and yang parenting. They did not hold this against him, but I did.
Then, a medical recruiter called with a locum opportunity in St. Louis. Missoula was always a temporary stop-gap. I would leave and scout out a new apartment and my husband would follow, after transitioning his patients.
***
“I’m moving.”
“You are?”
“Yeah. Can you help me pack again?”
“Yeah. When?”
“Next week when you see the U-Haul.”
Occupying a closet in my storage unit bedroom were pieces of driftwood collected from the banks of various rivers west of the Mississippi. In exchange for the driftwood, Kimmi and I left hundreds of footprints in the brown, yellow and red banks. I piled the driftwood on a large tarp in front of the apartment and added scissors, twine, spools of ribbon and some of the snacks I picked up for Cash’s visits.
Cash was the first to see the tarp out front and he ran back to get the cousins. By day’s end we had a floating fortress with ribbons flying from every available mast. The structure was given the name Super Griz, which I wrote on a piece of ribbon in permanent marker. Under Cash’s stewardship, Super Griz was loaded into the back of my truck and the kids who had garnered permission from their moms rode with me to the river for the launch.
We watched our creation float downstream towards the setting sun. I picked up a stone and threw it. Cash needed no encouragement. He ran along the water’s edge, grabbing stones and lobbing them stylistically at Super Griz until it disappeared in the rapids.
“I think I got it.”
“Probably.”
“That was fun.”
“Yeah.”
On moving day, Cash brought the biggest of his cousins and took charge, positioning one at the U-Haul, one with the dolly and one with the wagon. The loading was quick and efficient. When they had secured the last box, Cash pulled a pink and purple beaded keychain from his pocket.
“It’s from my mom.”
“She made it?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s beautiful. Thank you.”
A signal from the second floor sent the boys off in a run. I watched. I wanted to keep watching and see it through. I had witnessed Cash at this moment, bright and open and hurtling towards the next phase. I wanted him to be okay. I wanted only good things and not bad things to happen.
I placed the U-Haul key on the keychain and hung it on a silver chain around my neck. The beaded fob landed on my chest. I touched it to slow my heartbeat as I drove through an early snowstorm that obscured the highway and only lifted as I crossed into Missouri. The sun broke through and I tilted my head out of the window of my truck and untied the bandana, my hair flying loose.
Chris Potter (illegally) lives in a camper on her patch of land a stone’s throw from Lawrence, Kansas. Home can also be Montana or Utah, depending on the season. Non-degreed, enrolled Osage, artist/craftsman-mother/grandmother, camp host, Chris Potter is fortunate to have many wonderful children in her life who refuse to allow her otherwise cynical outlook to take root. “Missoula Stop-gap” is her first completed and published story.
***
Chris Potter is the creator of the artwork included with this essay, which belongs to the Great Plains Art Museum at the University of Nebraska. Learn more about the collection that includes the artwork on their website.