The Eleventh Man - Ivan Doig [43]
"One size fits everybody," Ben said thinly.
"So, you have to hide me in plain sight." The idea seemed to intrigue Dex. "I'll be interested to see what you come up with."
So will I, Dex, so will I. Before turning to go, there was one more thing he had to tend to. "I'll bet an outfit like the Forest Service would have a jerry can of gas they could loan to a man. Particularly if they didn't know about it."
"Stuck your neck out to get here, did you?"
"Only about a hundred miles."
Dex clapped him on the shoulder. "Come on, there's a back door to the fuel shed."
The next day, his conscience objecting every word of the way, he wrote Dexter Cariston into undesignated war duty, a medic repairing men who parachuted into fields of fire, the type of fire not specified.
5
You're hard to keep up with, Ben. First time I've ever been on a date on an obstacle course. The painted stones spelled the way down the steep sidehill, the enormous lettering ghost-white in the bunchgrass. "I've flown over this rockpile a hundred times," Cass said over her shoulder, trying to watch her footing on the path pocked with gopher holes, "and always wondered, What goofball did this?" She and Ben were in civilian clothes, gabardine slacks that cheatgrass and other pestiferous plants theoretically could not penetrate, and good warm canvasback jackets, and battered fedora and granny scarf which they teased each other looked like missionary throwaways. He carried the heavy picnic basket and she had the blanket over one arm.
Shaking his head at the countless chunks of sandstone amassed and laid out side by side into a blocky 5 and 7, Ben answered: "A pickle salesman with time on his hands." Together the numbers took up what looked like half an acre of hillside, sitting prominent enough on the prow of the butte that the dubious eminence of Hill 57 could be read from several miles off. "One guess on how many varieties the guy peddled."
She laughed and skidded a little at the same time.
"Hey, careful," he chided. "I don't want to have to pick you out of somebody's junkyard down there."
"It's your fault, Romeo. I'm usually in a cockpit when I'm up this high."
The view of Great Falls stretched below them, the squarely laid-out city with the renegade river winding through where it pleased, the smelter stack like a monstrous chess piece at the farthest city limits, the university cozy amid its groves of trees at the closer edge of the street grid, and nearest of all, the stadium cuddled at the base of the butte across the way, with game-day flags flapping brightly in the breeze. "How do you like Homecoming so far?" he asked with a solicitous grin as he gave her a hand around a patch of prickly pear cactus.
"My hunch is, it'll never replace poker." Cass stopped short, staring ahead. "Ben?" she murmured. "Are you sure this is such a hot idea?"
"Let's find out what our hosts think about it."
There were twenty or so of the Hill 57 residents on hand as spectators, mostly ragged-looking men but a couple of families with kids in charity clothes, all sitting with their backs against the pale curve of rocks that made the bottom of the 5 and now all looking over their shoulders at two unexpected visitors. Ben tried to read the line of Indian faces, but the scatter of rough-built shacks and even more miserable lean-to shanties farther down the hill said enough; tar paper and gabardine would never meet comfortably. He clutched Cass by a tense elbow and they stood waiting a minute. Finally a chesty man at the near end of the group lurched to his feet and faced up the slope toward them. Tottering alcoholically or arthritically or both, he rumbled out: "You folks a little lost?"
"We came to watch the game, if you wouldn't mind some company," Ben called back. He gestured toward the stadium in the middle distance. "I played football with Victor Rennie, down there. Then we went in the service together."
"Are you that Ben friend of his?" The tone had changed markedly. "From up the country, at Gros Ventre? Vic talked about you plenty. Come on down."