These Stumbledown Corners

This is the kind of beautiful response that will get turned into atrocious spin. And it's all true.

A couple weekends ago, I was up in Butte. Not for the people (of which there are none) or the niceties (which is pretty much air), but because I need to do what any responsible parent does and train my children for the competitive world of business. In this particular case, drug muling. So we found my buddy Doc's cabin, which is so remote that even the two people who live in Butte said that it was "out in the middle of nowhere". Getting up to his place requires four wheel drive and a deep respect for those pointy-headed bull terriers, since he keeps seven of them on his property and has named them for the majority bands in the visible electromagnetic spectrum. Yeah, I know. He's weird like that.

This stuff is nothing new to my kids, and the Boy kept pointing out the window- "Look, it's Blue!" or "Green, Daddy, Green!" whenever one of those insufferable murder-weapons came yipping into the yard. Honestly, I have no idea how he tells them apart, since they all just look like giant mice on steroids to me. As soon as we parked the borrowed Jeep, they crowded around and started licking the kids' hands.

Doc was looking lively, but you could see a slight twitch- he was beginning to ration his marijuana input and so was starting to deal with the uncomfortable schpilkes which comes from not being thoroughly stoned. He had a prescription for Marinol- hell, half the people in Montana do- but he said that it was a far cry from the natural thing.

Anyways, we drove up to about six miles from the border, and then started picking our way down the familiar trail through the mountainous forest. The Girl was on my shoulders, and the Boy was jumping from rocky outcropping to stone, carefree as a goat.

Once we got to the place, Doc unslung his camouflage-green duffel and handed it to the Boy. I squatted down and reminded of his pointers while the Girl mercilessly pulled my hair. Don't go near wild animals. If you are attacked, drop the duffel and run. And for goodness' sake, stay away from the Mounties.

He was down through the thicket in a flash of lightning, even though the duffel was almost as big as he was. Doc and I sat back, that uncontrollable little bit of fear that you can never quite reason away biting like a mouse at the napes of our necks.

It seemed like eternity, and all the things a father can worry about started popping up in my head, when we heard the tripping feet through last winter's needles. Without a word, when he got closer, I picked him up and gave him a great hug while handing Doc the duffel. It was an automatic gesture, one that we'd done many times before, but this time the weight of the duffel sunk into my subconscious before I could really put a pin on it.

"They fucked us. Those bastards. I should go up there right now and cap that ignorant moose before he can get away," Doc griped. The bag felt almost half as heavy as it ever did, and now that I noticed, it had the dimples which signified vacancy towards one of the ends. Visions of Doc's shiny steel pistol popped up in my mind.

He dropped the bag to the ground, crouched over it, and unzipped it savagely. With practiced motions, he began sifting through the stuff like so much shorn alfalfa. The familiar scent filled the air. The Boy tensed up, and I could feel his fear at Doc's sudden angry outburst.

"Hold on, what's this?" I said, pointing at the plastic identity tag. Where before had been a blank "Name:____, Address:_____" and what have you, there was some crude writing. Right before Doc snatched at it, it decoded in my brain. 1 USD = .98 Canadian. Cripes.

"It's not right, it's not right!" Doc began to howl. "After all the time you know somebody. I should go give that ignorant loon a curbstomping."

He continued to rage, and the Girl started to cry. I grabbed Doc roughly by the shoulders and forced him to look me in the eye. "Look, man," I said. "This isn't a question of that poor dumb moose ripping you off, you got it? They've got different money over there. They have a completely different set of rules, you got it? They're not the ones who did this to you. It's those Californians, those ignorant, decadent Californians, with their Rolls-Royces and their backyard pools."

Doc nodded assent, though I could tell he had no idea how a state full of movie stars and liars could possibly affect something here, on the 49th parallel. He was a man whose life revolved around fixing motors and casual disregard for the laws of the land, and there were things he knew he would never understand.

Finally, he pulled a hundred-dollar bill out of his pocket and handed it to the Boy. "Here you go," he said, trying to sound jolly but coming out numb. "Don't spend it at the movies."