“As Time Goes By,” Louise Lamontagne, acrylic.
Lay of the Land: A series of essays on the spirit of Montana
I have never been so anxious to meet another kid in my life. My parents have told us for years about the family that is about to come and visit. They have a boy my age. And several years ago, this boy shot and killed his younger brother when they were playing in the family barn. I have been curious about this boy ever since.
They arrive, and our parents introduce us, and we nod shyly to each other. And I immediately try to imagine what it must be like, meeting new people, knowing that they are probably aware of this thing that happened. I wonder whether he can feel how differently people look at him. Maybe he was too young to notice that things changed. Or maybe they didn’t change. Or maybe it would be impossible for them not to change.
Even at my young age, I notice a tension within this family. As if they are bound together with a tight strand of wire. As if a single cut, and the wire would spring loose and every one of them would burst into a million pieces.
My parents encourage me to take the boy outside, and it’s a relief to get away from that tension. It seems to be a relief to him as well, as once we get outside, he talks a bit. We start to toss a football around, and he even laughs sometimes. I’m happy to see that he’s still able to laugh.
And the more we play, the more I realize that he is very much like any other boy I have ever met.
His father and my father met on the rodeo team in college. His parents are ranch people, and he wears ranch clothes. He has dark hair and kind of a pointy head. He’s a bit awkward, and tentative. But not unwilling to participate.
But of course the weirdest part about the whole afternoon is that the subject hanging over us never comes up. There are so many questions I want to ask this boy. I wonder about his brother. What was he like? And does he think about him? Does he miss him? Does he hate himself for what happened?
My parents explained that it was an accident. He didn’t know the gun was loaded. A pistol. They were playing like so many boys do. Cowboys and Indians, probably. And BANG, the gun did what guns do. It propelled a small piece of metal forward with such force that it broke right through his brother. It blasted right inside him. It killed him. One minute they were laughing, playing, with the kind of carefree joy of children, and a moment later, they came face to face with a cold reality. In an instant, this family entered a world that most people couldn’t possibly understand. One minute, he was a boy. The next instant, he stepped into a wilderness where even adults with a keen sense of direction get lost forever.
And then the most frightening scream comes bursting from her mouth. And all she can say is “No, no, no, no!”
Because it is her daughter. Dead from a motorcycle accident.
And it is only then, over the course of the next several months, that I get a slight glimpse of what it must have felt like to be this boy.
But on that day 35 years earlier, we play like regular, normal boys. And we act as if everything is just as it should be, connected by the simple arc of a football, and the delicate thread of a friendship between two men who met in college. As if this boy never had to experience the feeling of watching his brother die. We talk about everything but the fact that he killed his brother.
And I know now, all these years later, that the same thing was happening inside our house that day. Because in this time and place, in Montana in the ’60s, people did not broach uncomfortable topics with even their closest friends. And ranch people did not burden their friends with their problems. So I feel confident in saying that my parents talked to his parents about the ranch, about my dad’s new job, about old friends from the rodeo team, and of course, the weather. But not about their dead son.
We never saw these people again. We heard that the parents got divorced, which is not surprising. My wife and I didn’t last either, and I learned going through that myself that the percentage of married couples who survive the death of a child is very small. I don’t know whether my father and this boy’s father didn’t have as much in common now that they were grown and raising families. I don’t know what happened to that boy. But of all the boys I’ve met only one time in my life, he has occupied more hours in my thought life than any other boy.
Russell Rowland is a Billings native (West High ’76) who earned an M.A. in creative writing from Boston University. He is the author of three novels, “In Open Spaces,” “The Watershed Years,” and “High and Inside.” The latter two were finalists for the High Plains Book Award. He is currently working on a book called “Fifty-Six Counties: An American Journey,” which has him traveling to every county in Montana and writing about the issues around the state.
