Bitterroot Read Online Free PDF Page A

buzzards fall out of the sky but who went unnoticed by the locals for twenty years.
    “See, what you don’t understand is these people are very square and territorial. One time a bunch of guys like you decided to take over a town in the Gallatin Valley on a Saturday afternoon. They started shoving people around in bars, busting beer bottles in the streets, riding their hogs across church lawns, you know, like in the Marlon Brando film The Wild One.
    “Guess what? In two hours every mill worker, gypo logger, and sheepherder in the county came into town. They parked their log trucks across the roads so the bikers couldn’t get out. They broke arms and legs and bent Harleys around telephone poles. Some of the bikers got down on their knees and begged. The townies left enough of the bikers intact to take the wounded into Billings.”
    I went into the men’s room. When I came back out, Doc was still talking. The bikers smoked cigarettes and poured beer into their glasses and drank in measured sips, tipping their ashes into an empty can, occasionally glancing at one another.
    One of their girls was watching the scene from the cigarette machine, her arms folded in front of her. She was an Indian, perhaps part white, her long hair streaked with strands of dull yellow. She wore a lavender T-shirt and Levi’s that hung low on her hips, exposing her navel. She stared directly into my eyes. When I looked back at her, she tilted her head slightly as though I had not understood a point she was making.
    “The waitress is fixing to throw your food out, Doc,” I said.
    “Go on. I’ll be there,” he replied, waving me away.
    I went back out into the restaurant and sat down across from Cleo. A strand of her hair hung out of her baseball cap across one eye.
    “Where do you and Doc know each other from?” I said, glancing back at the bar area.
    “A support group,” she replied.
    “Pardon?”
    “It’s a group that meets in Missoula. For people who have—” She saw that I was still watching the bar area. “What are you asking for?”
    “I’m sorry,” I said, my attention coming back on her face. “You said a support group. I didn’t know what you meant.”
    Her left hand was turned palm down on the table. There was no wedding ring on it. “It’s for people who have lost family members to violence. Doc’s wife died in a plane crash. My husband and son were murdered. So we attend the same meetings. That’s how we met. I thought that’s what you were asking me,” she said.
    The skin of my face felt tight against the bone. The restaurant seemed filled with the clatter of dishes and cacophonous conversation about insignificant subjects.
    “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—” I began, but the waitress arrived at the table and began setting plates of steak and potatoes in front of us. Cleo had already lost interest in anything I had to say by way of apology.
    Behind her, the Indian biker girl from the bar walked between the tables, watching me, as though she knew me or expected me to intuit private meaning in her stare.
    “Why not get a new cigarette machine instead of putting tape all over it? It not only looks like shit, the cigarettes don’t come out,” she said to the woman behind the cash register.
    “Let me give you some breath mints instead. Oh, there’s no charge. Don’t they sell cigarettes on the reservation?” the cashier said.
    The Indian girl took the last cigarette out of her pack and put it in her mouth, her weight on one foot, her eyes staring into the cashier’s.
    The cashier smiled tolerantly. “Sorry, honey. But you should learn how to talk to people,” she said.
    “My speech coach says the same thing. I’m always saying blow me to patronizing white people,” the Indian girl said.
    She paused by our booth and momentarily rested her fingers on the tabletop and lit her cigarette.
    “Your doctor friend is in Lamar Ellison’s face. I’d get him out of here,” she said, her eyes looking