Page 28 of Three-Inch Teeth

Population 683

Elevation 6,818

State Highway 72 descended into a swale pockmarked with scattered houses and other structures. Railroad tracks neatly split the town in two. A tall line of pine trees bordered the left side of the road and acted as a “living snow fence,” protecting the road by affecting wind speed and direction and causing snow to drift short of the blacktop.

They drove by the high school on their right, which was a brick building marked by a billboard with a painted figure of a heavily muscled man wearing a hard hat and swinging a pickax.

HOME OF THE MINERS, the sign read.

“They used to mine coal here,” Cates said as Johnson drove over the train tracks on a long overpass. “It looks like a mining town, the way the houses are built into the hills and they’re all over the place. But you know what happened to the coal industry. A few people stuck it out, I guess.”

“And that matters to me how?” she asked.

“Just giving you some background,” he said. “I used to rodeo with a guy from here named Cody Schantz. He told me all about it.”

As the sun set, it was obvious that only about a fifth of the homes they could see had interior lights on. A complex of apartment buildings up on the highest hill was totally dark.

“Lots of empty houses,” she said. “It feels real lonesome. Does your friend still live here?”

Cates shook his head. “He died in a car crash trying to get to the Pendleton Round-Up.” Then: “Nearly everybody I know is dead. Friends, family, everyone.”

Johnson’s eyes got moist and she wiped at them with the back of her hand. “You’ve got me,” she said.

“And I’m thankful for that,” he said. “Up there—that bar up on the hill. The lights are on. Let’s go there.”

*

IN THE GRAVEL parking lot on the side of Skinny’s Beer Garden, parked right in front of a faded painted mural of a tropical island scene, Cates asked Bobbi Johnson to go inside and get them a fresh bottle of Jim Beam and a six-pack of beer. He handed her two twenties.

“Don’t you want to go inside?” she asked.

“No.”

“Why the hell not? I don’t want to go in this place by myself.”

As she said it, she gestured toward the four muddy oil-field and utility trucks parked haphazardly in the lot.

He said, “You know what happened back there in that gas station, right? That guy recognized me. This is a little redneck town full of rodeo fans. I stopped by here with my buddy Cody once on the way to Steamboat. I’ve got to be low-key.”

“Why?” Johnson said. “What do you plan to do here?”

*

WHILE JOHNSON WAS in Skinny’s, Cates leaned against the passenger window and surveyed the town below. It didn’t take long before he spied what he was looking for. His rodeo buddy had described it as being almost directly below the overpass looking out at the train tracks.

The interior lights of the cab came on when Johnson returned and climbed back in. She seemed flustered as she plopped the bourbon and beer on the bench seat between them.

“You can only imagine the attention a woman alone gets in that place,” she said. “One guy wanted to dance with me and started feeding quarters into the jukebox.”

Cates smiled. “But you disappointed him.”

“Dude, I was out of there before the first song played.”

*

CATES DIRECTED JOHNSON to drive around the entrance to the overpass toward the tracks, through two blocks of clapboard houses that were dark and boarded up. Except for the ribbons of train tracks that reflected the moon out front, there was nothing in the field in front of the museum.

They took Front Street and slowly cruised by a neatly appointed white structure with three brick chimneys and brown trim around the doors and windows.

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