Tailwinds Past Florence Read online

  The stench of rancid meat intensified as he neared the shelter. He zipped up his jacket, tucked his face inside the collar to filter the smell.

  In the corner of the three-sided shelter, atop a scratchy bed of grass dried into a rotten brown, lay the remains of a man, naked aside for some cellophane tied around his waist. An empty bag of Cool Ranch Doritos, fashioned into a loincloth of sorts, was held in place by grass twine.

  Edward gagged, then took a hesitant step closer. The man’s skin had frosted over, turning blue in spots. His eyes were sunken and elbows frozen in place at hard angles across his chest, hands burrowed in his armpits. Only his stomach appeared bloated. The winter cold must have slowed the decomposition, Edward thought. Metallic green flies perched atop the face.

  That the man was dead was not surprising. Nobody could survive a night out in this weather clothed, let alone naked. What Edward found most astonishing was the man himself. He appeared to be at least six feet tall, and those parts of him not blue were deep bronze in color. The man was broad-chested and lean, despite his distended stomach. Even in death, his limbs appeared taught and rope-like under the blotchy skin. He had very little body hair, but a tuft of stubble on the chin and a head full of shimmering black silk that disappeared beneath his shoulders.

  Edward trembled, nauseated by the sight and the smell. He had never seen a corpse before. There was no telling how long the body had been there, but he was thankful for the refrigerating benefits of winter. In the distance, Kara’s voice called to him, but he couldn’t pry his eyes from the body.

  Edward inched closer and saw the toes, black as night, poking from a layer of straw. All nine of them.

  The missing digit, an oblong hunk of charcoal flesh, lay several inches away.

  Edward convulsed as the revolting stench brought his lunch to a boil. He doubled over and vomited onto the untamed grass of the makeshift morgue. As he wiped his mouth, he saw Kara waving near the fence. He took a final glance at the body then sprinted back to her.

  “Took you long enough. What were you doing?”

  “There’s a body. A Blackfoot,” he said, panting. “Must have died from hypothermia. Frostbite all over.”

  “So close to the road?”

  “He’s naked.”

  “What? All the way out here?”

  “I can take that,” Edward said, grabbing his bike by the handlebar and seat.

  “You think somebody dumped him on the side of the road?”

  He had no idea how the man got there. “He had a Doritos bag tied around his waist with grass from the field. Nice twine, too. Like he had made it before.”

  “If he was sober enough to get crafty, you’d think he would have flagged down a car.”

  “That’s what I thought at first, but there’s something else. You’re going to think I’m crazy, but he looks …” Edward looked back to the shelter, carving his thoughts into something that wouldn’t sound crazy. “Never mind. It doesn’t make any sense.”

  Kara cocked her head. “Looks like what, Edward?”

  “Like the real deal. I mean, he doesn’t look like any of the Native Americans I’ve ever seen. Not modern ones, at least.” He said it flatly, as if coming clean from a horrible deceit. “He’s not watered down.”

  “What?” she said, her arms akimbo.

  “He looks like he fell out of one of the dioramas in those Ben Stiller museum movies, like a drawing from a history book.”

  Edward matched Kara’s stare as she scrutinized him.

  “I’ve got to see this,” Kara said.

  “No, you don’t. It’s bad. It’s starting to smell. I threw up. Kara, just no.”

  “You’re telling me there’s a guy over there who looks like he fell out of the history books, I’m taking a look.”

  Edward grabbed her by the wrist, “No.” It came out more stern than he’d intended. “You’re gonna have nightmares.”

  Kara’s eyes dropped to the hand holding her in place. “That bad?”

  Edward nodded.

  “Okay, but we have to tell someone.”

  Edward looked away.

  “We have to at least let the police know he’s there,” Kara repeated.

  “Or maybe we call someone from the tribe. Or a historian.”

  “And tell them what, Ed? That you found the body of a time-traveling native? I know you’re shaken up, but there are plenty of pure bloods still around, especially out west.”

  “So you just think—”

  “I don’t know what to think,” she said, cutting him off. “Wait here.”

  Edward watched her approach the road, waving her arms overhead. Several truckers passed, ignoring her, but eventually a pickup truck filled with welding equipment pulled over. The driver lowered the passenger-side window and asked if they needed help.

  “We’re fine, but there’s a dead man in the barn over there. We were taking photos of the horses and spotted it on the screen,” Kara explained. “My husband said he’s practically frozen solid.”

  “Noooooo shit? Well that’s a new one. Ya think he’s homeless?”

  “Maybe. Probably. I don’t know. He’s naked, though.”

  “In this weather? Sheeeeeiiit.”

  “We don’t have a phone and were hoping you could call 911 for us.”

  “Yeah, sure. I’ll give the sheriff a call after I take a look. You two headed to Cut Bank?”

  Kara gave the man their names and told him the motel where they’d be staying in case the sheriff had any questions. The man nodded and pulled the truck further onto the shoulder, hazard lights blinking.

  Edward watched the man head for the barn, then yanked his bike in the direction of Cut Bank. He threw a leg over the saddle and glared at Kara. “Still think I should lighten up? That everything always works out? Tell it to the guy who froze to death.”

  Chapter 5

  Monday, April 6 — Circle, Montana, USA

  The temperature plummeted as winter dug in for its final stand. Bundled against the frigid air by day and forced to forego camping in favor of heated motels at night, Edward and Kara paralleled the Canadian border eastward through a string of no-light depot towns left to fade into history with barely a tub of Skippy on their store shelves. Diesel locomotives rendered the High Line’s old coal-and-water stops obsolete and the wheat industry swept the landscape clean, depositing people and places into larger piles with names like Glasgow, Inverness, and Zurich. Not one showed a whiff of the splendor suggested by its European name.

  They had the wind at their back and flat roads ahead. Each day’s sixty miles went by in a blur of blue skies and golden fields. Trains, one hundred thirteen cars long (or was it one hundred twelve?) were the only distraction, oil-filled eels racing across a calm sea.

  Thoughts of the peculiar Blackfoot body retreated from Edward’s mind, the image shrinking in the mirror of his consciousness with each passing mile. Kara hadn’t mentioned it since the night after they found him, and even then only to express surprise that the sheriff never called.

  Five days and three hundred thirty miles later, Edward led the way south from Wolf Point, across the Missouri River, and into a raging headwind—no good fortune lasts forever. Barbed-wire fences lined the sides of State Route 13, ensuring nobody strayed onto the lolling waves of tilled wheat fields. Thousands of sun-burnt, amber acres of winter grain stretched uninterrupted in every direction, the expansive western edge of the good ol’ American breadbasket.

  There was no escaping the monotony.

  Edward folded himself as small as he could while pedaling into the wind, encouraging Kara to imitate his time-trialist posture. She wasn’t comfortable drafting, but she needed to keep her front tire inches from his rear if they were to maintain their pace, sluggish as it was.

  “Want me to take a pull?” she asked, yelling over the wind.

  Yes, he did, but shook his head no. He wanted to be done. Warm. Having Kara lead would only slow them further—she being too weak to battle th
e wind, too petite to block it.

  Edward rode on, head down, staring at the odometer, watching as the mileage ticked by with agonizing lethargy. They had their chance to stop early in the day, to cut their losses and hope for a tailwind tomorrow. But no. The woman running the last motel they had seen, overstuffed in her mismatched tracksuit, ruined that option. Unwilling to budge from her recliner until a Price is Right commercial break, she had a room available, then asked why they were cycling in the cold. “You lose your license?” she said with unmerited disdain.

  Kara laughed. “Not at all. We’re cycling around the world. Left Seattle three weeks ago.”

  The woman scoffed as she straightened, then stared from Edward to Kara, her eyes drawn into pinpricks of blackness. “What are you, a couple of trust-fund babies?” She said it with such venom, even Edward felt the sting.

  Kara spluttered an indecipherable blend of denial and anger, the hurt burning in her surprised face. She had grown sensitive to anything concerning her upbringing, the sacrifices her parents made to send her to college, her lack of contact with them. Her leg twitched beside him. “Come on. We’re not staying here,” she said, yanking open the door and nearly knocking the little bell above it from its hook.

  Edward shook his head at the woman. “On second thought, the tent will be just fine tonight.” He followed Kara out the door into the frigid, gusting emptiness of eastern Montana.

  The map hinted at a town—a flea speck of a dot—but he was determined to reach it. And soon. It was midday, their water was turning slushy in their bottles, and the wind was cutting him like a scalpel.

  The bleach white steeple of a countryside chapel soon rose above the horizon. It was the first structure he’d seen in over twenty miles since the motel. A fertilizer depot sat opposite the church, a barn lurked in the distance.

  Edward felt his heart sink at the absence of a diner or store. He needed shelter. Gesturing for Kara to slow down, he rode up the driveway of the chapel, right to the front door flush with the asphalt, and gave it a tug. It didn’t budge.

  “So much for warming up inside,” Kara said. Her face melted in pity as she sensed his discomfort when he turned. “How bad is it?”

  “Bad. Can’t feel my fingers,” he said, shivering, “and my feet are frozen solid.”

  “Let’s go around back, out of the wind.”

  They pushed their bikes to the leeward side of the chapel and leaned them against the peeling paint. Edward flopped to the grass and drew his knees to his chest. He wrapped his arms around his legs and rocked, trying to generate warmth.

  “Do me a favor,” he said. “Get my bag of winter gear.”

  Kara retrieved the orange stuff sack and gave it a squeeze. “You should be wearing your mountaineering socks.”

  Edward shot her a look. “What do you think I’m wearing? The wind cuts right through the shoes.”

  “Too bad we don’t have any of those plastic baggies like the guys in Browning,” Kara said, positive, as usual.

  Edward’s mind galloped twenty miles east of Browning, to the body. All alone in that field, naked, the cold piercing him, turning him black, knuckle by knuckle. Edward was neither naked nor alone, but he wrapped himself in the other man’s desperation.

  “I need to put the sock liners on,” he said, trying to untie his laces. It was no use. His numb fingers were on strike. “Can you help?” he asked, his frustration rising.

  Kara squatted at Edward’s feet, tossed her cycling gloves to the ground, and deftly untied his laces and eased the shoes off, her Wisconsin upbringing having left her impervious to the cold. His feet warmed in the exposed air as blood returned to his toes. He tugged the Gore-Tex socks on over the thick wool and asked Kara to retie the shoes loosely.

  “I’ve never seen you like this. You look miserable,” she said.

  Edward opened his mouth to speak, then looked away. He stared at the dancing grass until his eyes went cross, wondering if he was really built for this.

  He wanted to confide the truth, only he didn’t know what that was anymore. Should he tell her he never truly wanted to do this trip? That he enjoyed being on the bike every day, but spent most of those hours struggling—and failing—to not think about the home and career they left behind? The earnings he suspected would one day be needed to provide for her parents, assuming they ended their estrangement. Was he miserable? Yes, today he was.

  “It’s the wind. It’s beating me down, that’s all.”

  She looked at him with such tremendous sympathy, it was as if she personally took the blame for the wind. Her eyes fluttered, half-closed, as she kissed him on the cheek. “You can do this.”

  He nodded, despite his misgivings.

  The remaining twenty-five miles to the town of Circle were grueling, but they made it before sunset. With ten miles to go and Edward’s strength all but depleted, Kara pulled around him, patted her hip as if calling a dog to heel, and accelerated. She didn’t just hold his pace, but quickened it. And he warmed in her draft.

  Kara led the way to a motel off the highway that blended Old West ruggedness with Victorian fragility. Crushed velvet and lace lined the lobby, while wispy pastel cameos of the town’s elders, framed in gold-leafed ovals, adorned the walls. It reminded Edward of an old-timey train car, the kind the Carnegies or Rockefellers might have sipped a brandy in. The thought warmed him, body and soul.

  Edward paid in cash, no need to see the room. He’d have slept in a Burger King to escape the cold.

  The clerk slid the room key across the counter. Its large, plastic keychain was good for a free drink at the local American Legion.

  Kara smiled as she dangled it like a charm. “Thirsty?”

  That night, after showering and a quick dinner in their motel room, they went to the American Legion. Edward hesitated before ringing the doorbell, believing it a private club for veterans. “You sure we’re allowed in?”

  She waved the chunk of plastic in front of him and grinned. “According to the magic key we are.”

  He made a face, unconvinced.

  “It’s gonna be fine. You’re a conversation chameleon, I’ve seen you work a room.”

  “A chameleon in civvy clothing. Look at us,” he said, stepping back for the full effect. They didn’t pack much for going out and each wore their lone pair of tan hiking pants, gingham ExOfficio button-down, and soft-shell Patagonia jacket. As if it wasn’t bad enough that he was about to lead his young, attractive wife into a veteran’s bar in eastern Montana, he looked like he stepped straight out of an REI catalog. “We look ridiculous.”

  “You’re overreacting. At least our jackets aren’t matchy-matchy.”

  Sticking out would be bad enough, but there was more. It didn’t matter how much of a guy’s guy you were, being the one non-military guy in a room full of vets was emasculating. Dressing up in yuppie hiking gear only made it worse.

  Edward swallowed his insecurities and rang the bell. He felt the security camera judging him unworthy, just as his active-duty cousins did during family gatherings. He averted its gaze as Kara smiled upward at the lens.

  The door buzzed and a small light flashed green. Kara pulled the door open. “Ready to make some friends?”

  Her smile comforted and frightened him in equal measure, all love and trust. Trust in the world around her, that wherever she went only good would follow and, if not, that Edward would keep her safe. Could he? Her beauty never failed to turn heads when they went out, but he didn’t worry about other men in Seattle. Most were too shy to make a move, and the few who did backed off when they saw the ring. But here? He wasn’t so sure.

  Edward stopped the door with his foot and put a hand on her shoulder. “Be careful, okay.”

  “We’ll be fine,” she said, then pecked him on the lips. “Besides, I’ve got you to defend me from any grabby jarheads, right?”

  The forgotten stench of the nightclub trifecta hit him instantly: equal parts spilled beer, cigarette smoke, and Lysol. His eyes ad
justed to the dim lighting as he followed Kara to the bar, wondering how long it’d been since he was someplace that allowed smoking indoors. They claimed two empty stools at the far end, alone.

  Edward had no idea of the town’s population, but figured at least half its residents were present, keeping the two bartenders busy. Couples tearing through a small mountain range of pull tabs lined the rest of the bar. Elsewhere, wind-burned ranchers played darts and shot pool to a cacophony of high fives and trash talk, while their kids circled around pitchers of soda and bowls of popcorn. Everyone seemed to know everyone. And above the conversation and cracking of billiard balls was the elevator soundtrack of a television tuned to The Weather Channel. Local on the 8s reported what they already knew: it was damn cold outside.

  The faux brick wall behind the laminated bar was plastered with beer advertisements, shelves displayed a collection of dust-covered domestic beer bottles, and a menu tempted the inebriated with frozen pizzas unlikely to be mistaken for delivery.

  A thin man in his fifties approached. He wore a striped, wrinkled dress shirt with a bar rag draped over his shoulder, and a smile that betrayed his nicotine-stained teeth. “How can I help you two?”

  Kara slapped the plastic keychain on the bar. “I was told this gets us a couple of free drinks.”

  “It does, but you gotta buy the first round. Second round’s on the house.”

  Edward scanned the taps and thought better of it. “I’ll have a Beam and Coke.”

  “Make that two,” Kara added.

  “Coming right up.”

  Edward couldn’t conceal his surprise. “No cosmo?”

  “I figured I’d tone down the whole city slicker thing since you’re worried about us fitting in.”

  “That’ll be four dollars,” the bartender said and slid the two highballs toward them.

  “Each?”

  “Total.”

  “My kind of bar.” Edward gave him a five and left the dollar as a tip.

  The man turned on the television nearest them and clicked through the channels. “Let me know if anything catches your eye.”