Montana Summer

I had been writing and calling the community college back in Portland. I had it all set up so I could pick up my studies where I'd dropped them. Terry and Bill (at Terry's urging, no doubt) suggested I might go to the college in Missoula or even the university there. I explained that the out of state tuition was too high.

So the last week in August my brother and his wife drove me to the airport in Helena. A short hop to Spokane and a longer jet ride to Portland brought me home. As I stepped from the plane (this was back when you actually walked down the portable stairs next to the plane) the humid air hit me. It felt like my skin began to soak it up immediately. The smell of the city and the once familiar noises hit me like a fist. I missed the ranch.

I went back to school but in those days, there was no draft lottery. If a student lost his deferment, it was gone. I had arranged to share an apartment with a friend from high school and I dove into my classes. In October I got a notice to report for a pre-induction physical. In November I found myself on the way to Fort Ord for basic training. Seven months later I was climbing from a plane into the much more humid air of Southeast Asia.

I survived the war but I came back a very different man. The sickness -- of all kinds -- I'd had to witness stayed in a special box in my mind. I tried to keep from letting it all affect me after I got home. I had to stay with my parents while figuring out what I was going to do next. I had even less patience with them than I'd had before. When he caught me smoking dope in my old bedroom, my dad wanted to kick me out. My mom, for once, intervened. She had been reading about marijuana and knew it wasn't the Devil's Weed, after all, just a relaxing smoke.

She convinced Dad to let it slide. I'd never have believed it then, but three years later, when my dad was dying, she asked me to share a joint with him. Mom even took a couple of hits. I started supplying him with his "pain reliever" (he never called it by name) and kept him supplied until he died.

But the blowup put a point on the fact that I needed to get out on my own. I went out and found a job (lots of spots empty because of the war) and started looking for a place to live. Between shifts at the paper mill, I began to hang out in a few bars nearby. It was in one of those that I met Jeannie. She was a single mother with two kids. We'd known each other for only a month when I found myself asking her to marry me. Over the years since then I've come to believe that my guilt over Terry had gone deeper than I realized. I think I felt like I owed Karma a debt. I think I saw marrying Jeannie and helping her raise her kids was some kind of karmic payback.

It lasted almost two years. Jeannie was genuinely crazy. She accused me of fucking around on her (and I wasn't even thinking about it). The night she claimed she'd seen a witch standing on a downtown corner and then claimed she could hear the witch on the roof, I'd had enough. After I got her calmed down and sleeping, I called her ex-husband. He said he wondered when she'd lose it again. He agreed she needed help and that he would come and get his kids. I called the hospital and took Jeannie in the next day. She went with surprising ease.

I divorced her while she was in the mental ward. That sounds cruel, but it would have been too late to make it work. Oh, I didn't do it without having some long talks with her, so she knew what was happening. Nevertheless, it was over.

Terry did eventually divorce my brother. He spent the next couple of years mourning her and trying to convince her he would change if she came back. But she knew better. She and I got together twice after their divorce, but things had changed too much. Our sex was still wonderful, but we both recognized the strain in our conversations. She didn't seem much different, but I knew the man I'd become was a long way from the nineteen year old kid she had seduced.

I've traveled a lot of miles since then and seen a lot of things. That summer in Montana was a major turning point in my life. A lot of rainy nights, lying in a rice paddy, feeling the fungus grow between my toes, I wished I'd stayed in school. Then I recalled the red wing blackbirds Terry and I used to feed on my little deck after we had made each other come. I recalled the high blue sky that arched over the ranch and for just a second I was back there in the sun on the grass next to the pool. I guess it was when I really stopped being a boy and began to learn what it meant to be a man.