“That was the worst parade I’ve ever been to.”
I wake up to a fully dressed six foot four cowboy in the doorway, thinking he's funny.
My current state is dire. I am in a log cabin halfway up the Bitterroot Mountain range, 45 minutes from home. I lack a vehicle and a steady signal to retrieve one, but even then, am confident that the town’s single, working father we rode with two days ago is likely off the clock. Supremely nauseous, I make some quick calculations. Three hours of sleep plus five whiskey ditches times two idiots - Emma and myself - who conjured up this idea in the first place. Conveniently, the cowboy has to head out - to move something, somewhere. As I roll over in bed to check my dying phone, I find my sticky body is evenly coated in two kinds of dog hair. It’s early. I get a move on.
At this exact moment, under the sherbert Montana morning sky, Emma is at our local watering hole, the Coffee Cup Cafe. She attempts to remain unseen behind a tall stack as a construction worker resembling the Big Lebowski kisses her on the mouth. It is 6:30 in the morning. She has spent the night sleeping in the beveled bed of our truck with him - not amongst the pines, gazing at the stars - but under the one clicking stoplight of downtown Hamilton. Through the night, pressed into its serrated ridges like a panini, she and The Dude fought tirelessly over the precious real estate of a flattened cardboard box.
We are scheduled for a 19 hour drive home today.
The parade is to thank for our current insufferable realities. Its origin, by our standards, is unsurprising. Hopped up on the hubris of our recent Montana celebrity, Emma and I threw ourselves a “Goodbye Parade’ in our own honor. It’s purpose : to memorialize the final leg of our road trip and bid farewell to new friends. The event was not a parade at all, which Montana’s non-existent COVID regulation would have absolutely allowed, but just a Tuesday night out at the one gay bar in all of Montana. We invited a motley crew of Montana men collected over the past week, provided just the two of us, and saw how it all shook out.
Kicking off with tears over burgers at Napps, the parade progressed as well as anyone may have guessed. We had one too many at The Rainbow, recreated the Notebook scene under the lone stop light, received some gifts (Panther Martin lures), and made out on two kinds of truck beds. The evening concluded with me abandoning her and The Dude with their cardboard to take back roads with the cowboy under the starlit sky, and howl with Shania during her usual 1:30 am time slot.
Back at the cabin in the morning, I scramble to collect myself as my window of opportunity for a lift down the mountain narrows. I wrestle my black silk slip dress on, slug a black coffee, and look, keep looking, but can’t find a boot. The boot is a roping boot borrowed from my mother, caked so authentically in cow shit by this point in our travels, that I can no longer return it to her, yet also can’t bear the thought to leave behind. It wasn’t with its mate this morning, which is now on my foot as I stomp loudly around the house, letting the cowboy know how inconvenienced I am by its elusivity. As I trace scenarios in my throbbing head of its whereabouts, I double take Doc Holiday, the puppy.
I refocus my gaze on the vast and endless expanse of Montana forest behind him, where he and Bat - now resembling a miniature Lewis and Clark - have been playing all morning. With what scant cognitive ability remains to my name, I deduce the following : my boot is in that dense, gorgeous, and potentially dangerous landscape. And it will take a search party to bring it back.
I stand in front of the cowboy in one boot, void of the capacity for critical thinking, irritated and tired. He has somewhere to be, but tells me to go back to bed. He’ll get it handled.
“....and Taylor.”
“Yes.”
“You have a beautiful smile.”
“...”
“You should think about using it sometime.”
---------------------------
