Ian Frazier

I did not know one person in Montana. I sat in the house and tried to write a novel about high school; I went for walks, drank quarts of Coors beer, listened to the radio. At night, a neighbor’s horse shifted his weight from hoof to hoof out in the trees, and sometimes cropped grass so near I could hear him chew. The first snowstorm blew in from the north, and crows crossed the sky before it like thrown black socks. For years in New York I had dreamed of Montana. Actually, I had also dreamed of joining the Army, going to truck-driving school in New Jersey, building a wooden sailboat, playing the great golf courses of the world, and moving to Fiji. I had examined all those ideas and then rejected them. Montana made the most sense to me.

Whenever I stopped for gas, I always asked the name of the local high-school team. I never found a person working in a gas station, convenience store, or truck stop who didn’t know. In Deer Lodge, Montana, the team is called the Wardens; Deer Lodge is the home of the state prison. In Havre, Montana, the team is the Havre Blue Ponies. In Newcastle, Wyoming, it’s the Newcastle Dogies. In Brush, Colorado, it’s the Brush Beet Diggers. Beaver, Oklahoma, has the Dusters; Oakley, Kansas, the Plainsmen; McCamey, Texas, the Badgers; Tucumcari, New Mexico, the Rattlers; Matador, Texas, the Matadors. Colby, Kansas; Eads, Colorado; Hondo, New Mexico; and Pecos, Texas, all call themselves the Eagles. Chappell, Nebraska; Rush, Colorado; and Chugwater, Wyoming, all are the Buffalos. At a gas station near an Indian reservation in Montana, a white gas-station attendant told me that Indian basketball teams are easy to beat. He said all you have to do is punch one guy, and then the whole team will attack you and get kicked out of the game.

Joy! I leaned against the sturdiness of the McGhee sister by my side. From the wooden floor came a dust that smelled like small towns. Thoughts which usually shout down joy in me were nowhere in sight. I read in some magazines once that the most important word in American movies is “home”; that Americans, being immigrants, have strong associations with that word. The Robinson sisters turned and did a move that was mostly from the knees down. I was in the middle of America, in the middle of the Great Plains, in the midst of history, in the valley of the Solomon River, in the town of Nicodemus: in my mind, anyway, home.