Red Bluff

Stephen told me very few children grew up to leave Odanak Indian Reserve. He claimed he was the first man in a “long long time” to part from the reserve and attend an American university. I believed it. His real Abenaki name was Atian. He went by its American parallel though, because if people had heard it before then he didn’t have to deal with the sorry-how-do-you-say-its and the slow overemphasized repetitions of it once he said it how you say it. They usually took their time, sounding it out to themselves like a second grader, never catching Atian’s wince as they unthinkingly butchered the name his mother gave him. I was no different when I found him in my dorm room, my first college roommate.

Atian was Stephen in America, but especially in Montana. Bozemon was no exception. Maybe Montana State made it a little younger than average, probably a couple more intellectuals and independent cafes. Bozemon even had a progressive record store, which tempted window shoppers with posters of Bob Marley smoking huge Jamaican joints, Jerry Garcia’s soft voice floating onto the street, tempting customers inside. In spite of Bozemon’s progressive trends, Bob Marley was the only African face I saw in town not playing basketball for the Grizzlies. The void wasn’t exclusive to African Americans either. I could probably count on my fingers how many non-white faces I saw during my first couple months at Montana State University. I’m not sure if I ever saw anyone there who could claim to be more than a tenth Native.

Atian couldn’t claim to be anything less than what he was, a man of Abenaki. The tribe had gotten into his hands, his walk, his blood. I noticed it right when I stepped into the dorm room for the first time. My old Top-Sider had barely padded past the doorway and I found his black eyes alert, wary, but not at all hostile. He didn’t look; he stared. And his eyes fixed for a second longer than anyone else I ever met at Montana State. The extra second felt too long to me. I was used staring at strangers on the bus, getting caught, and breaking the eye contact as soon as I was discovered, whipping my eyes to the ground and keeping them there until I reached the stop. That extra second made me uncomfortable.

“Hey, I’m Robert, I guess we’re gonna be roommates huh?” I extended my hand.

“I’m Stephen,” he gripped my hand, never considering that my urban unscarred knuckles weren’t supported by the same sinewy forearms that his were. He didn’t see me wince. I don’t think he did. I could never tell, Atian’s eyes were always so solemn and black, I could never tell what passed into his head, beyond those deep unchanging stones. Maybe he saw me wince, I don’t know. I saw him wince though, once he told me his true name, and I had muttered it under my breath, mostly to myself, Americanizing Atian, making it comfortable. Atian couldn’t be comfortable; everyone else had home field advantage. Even Stephen couldn’t get comfortable, his rough hands couldn’t find purchase, they scrabbled helplessly against sleek white marble.

I could find purchase. It was hard; I’d been uprooted too. No family, no four-year concrete foundations of high school mischief to build a friendship on. Still we were all missing our comfort foods, and we could build on that, telling stories, exchanging slang. I missed Oakland. A girl on our floor missed New York. There were pieces of Bozemon on each coast, in each city. True I didn’t see the starkly contrasting colors and eyes and accents as I did back in the Bay, but at least my new home shared white with the old, so I started to dig my feet in and get comfortable.

I wanted to major in photography, maybe take pictures for National Geographic one day. That was mostly why I was in Montana. It was beautiful to me. I could never get tired of the dried out colors, rusted oranges, sun bleached greens, dusty, subtly sifting into each other. The creeks whispered. I walked in the tall pale yellow grass.  Countless grasshoppers jumped away from my advancing feet, living waterless waves. Atian came with me sometimes, on hikes, day trips into Yellowstone, fishing local creeks. He was different when we were outside and alone, he had a smooth confidence in him he never had in his studies.

Atian struggled in classes. He was clumsy and imprecise with his words. In his essays he disregarded facts, structure, and relevance to the assignment. I tried to help him, look over his essays. I scratched things out, changed words orders to make this more clear and he always nodded solemnly, his black eyes somehow respectfully attentive to my efforts while at the same time looking at things I don’t think I’ll ever see. At the end of one of these intensive editing sessions, I would give him his paper, scratched with red pen and he’d thank me. I knew his appreciation was true, but I saw his paper the next day, when he was shaving before going to class to turn it in. The ballpoint’s red marks didn’t move a single black letter; he had just printed the same copy.

We were fishing Bracket Creek. Montana’s fickle vicious winds had pounced on my lazy back-cast three times already, sending me cursing into the foliage to untangle my line. After the fourth time, I sat on the bank, frustrated by the attention to infinitely soft touch fly-fishing requires. My fourth encounter with Montana’s foliage had left me down a fly. My frustration flew around my head, trying desperately to attribute blame for four trips into the bushes and zero trout. I had slipped, distracted, I thought my clumsy mend upstream had revealed the floating grasshopper as an imposter. Still hitting mental pillows I lost focus and didn’t see the rise. I guess did see it, but a split second later than I needed to. I tried to catch up to the big rainbow’s bite and set the hook, flailing, jerking the rod to the sky, but it was too late, he had apprehended the imposter. A feeling best summed up by a dejected “fuck” hit me as I realized the rainbow had gotten away. The frustration unique to fly-fishing lies in that the fact that, as that bitter disappointment hit me, making me want to throw my rod in the water and take depressed shots, the line I had yanked up sailed over my head into the bushes behind. I saw red. I skipped untangling the line, electing to pull until something gave. Eventually my line flew off, without its grasshopper. I tossed my rod and sat on the bank. And I heard a deep laugh. In my frustration I had forgotten Atian.

My anger spoke before I could, “What the hell are you laughing at?”

Atian understood and his tone was sympathetic, “Nothing, maybe I’m just happy to be beating you at something.”

“Maybe.” He had caught two rainbow and a fourteen-inch brown already.

“You think too much Robert. I’m not sure how to explain it to you, but the creek doesn’t go by words, neither do the trout, not the wind. They don’t go by words or laws, they just do what makes sense. It’s simple.”

“It’s not simple Stephen, you have to know knots, and what flies to use, you have to know all that little shit.”

“I don’t know Robert. Things work differently here. A couple months ago before I came here I would’ve talked to you about just feeling it, but now that seems too vague. I would’ve told you that everything will come to you, if you pay enough attention. Bozemon’s different though. You have to win.” He looked frustrated, He knew I didn’t get it, couldn’t get it, because now even Atian struggled with trusting the world around him to give him what he wanted.

I thought I got it though. “That’s the way the world works Stephen, you have to go out and get shit done and get ahead. You gotta think about it like this: No one’s looking out for you, no one cares about you close to as much as you do. It’s like that job I applied for with the Chronicle; if I didn’t fight for it, if I didn’t go into that interview and look the part, I don’t get the job. But I did get it. I wanted it and I took it and some poor souls didn’t get it. You can’t feel bad about it though; there’s always going to be someone who could use what you have more than you could. So you just gotta kinda push, it’s like getting to the very front of a concert, through all those people standing and dancing and knocking into you. They are all out for themselves and if you’re not doing the same you’re gonna get eaten alive, just a skeleton. Vision and action. Stephen you just gotta keep your eyes on the prize and do whatever you need to do to get there.”

He’d been looking at me fixedly, almost fearful, his feet slipping for purchase on cold white marble “I don’t Robert. Let’s go back.” He picked up his rod and wicker basket full of three fish and headed back to my old Chevy Suburban. I wound up my rod and trudged back behind him, still frustrated about the rainbow I had almost caught.

Atian was always a fast walker. I usually just let him get ahead. By the time I got to the car he was slipping off his second soaked boot. I took my time. I had the keys; Atian wasn’t going anywhere. I sat on the edge of the drunk and changed back into my jeans and button-up. Atian had gone somewhere to relieve himself. He always went too far, out of sight. I usually called ten feet a decent distance away from others.

I happened to glance up at Montana’s big sky. The sun was setting. It was beautiful, all of it, soft purples, pinks, oranges, blues, all overlapping so perfectly together. This is why I came to Montana, pictures of things like this. I needed my camera. I thought I had left it in the passenger seat. It was a big clunky Nikon D2X. I even had to buy a new heavy-duty strap to hold its weight comfortably. I checked the back seat, maybe Atian had moved it there, he always moved my stuff around. I looked under the seats, starting to get frantic. I couldn’t see how I could’ve lost something so bulky, it didn’t make sense. Maybe Stephen moved it, he must’ve moved it; he did things like that. “Stephen!” I yelled his name; I wanted this sunset. “Stephen!” still no answer. That was a long piss. Maybe he put it in the trunk. The lights were broken in the back of the Suburban so I had to lean over almost double to make sure those indistinct blobs weren’t my D2X. I might’ve seen it, in the corner. The sun hadn’t set yet, its warm majestic rays shooting out from behind a cloud. I reached deep into the trunk for my camera, my mind racing ahead into the dark room and into a job offer from National Geographic.

I heard Atian coming back. He walked so fast, almost running this time. I grabbed the dark shape. It was just Atian’s useless wicker basket of fish. My deep frustration that had been building all day was paramount. I straightened up. If Atian really had my camera, he just lost me this photo, and a job with National Geographic. His footsteps were close and I turned, ready to light into him about respecting other people’s property.

The D2X, swung by its heavy-duty strap, smashed into my temple. An old American engine roared. Dry grass tickled my face. The hospital was clean. They found my Suburban in North Dakota, engine shot. I took a year off. College wasn’t for me. And the hospital was so white and clean.