“It’ll be crowded,” Red said when they pulled into town. “Me and the boys got a table in the back, though. There’ll be two seats open.”
She nodded but wasn’t really listening. The last time she’d been in Stanley was with Zack, five years ago.
Bree and Zack drove from Colorado, up through Wyoming, and into Montana before they went to Idaho.
The night before they got to Stanley, they’d been in Butte, Montana. Which, in its heyday, between the late nineteenth century and about 1920, was one of the largest and most notorious copper boomtowns in the American West, home to hundreds of saloons and a famous red-light district.
Driving in, the desolation of the city shocked her. The earth had been ravaged by mining. The disparity between it and the extraordinary beauty of the rest of Montana and Wyoming, was heartbreaking.
They spent that night at a bed and breakfast called the Copper King Mansion. It was originally built by William A. Clark between 1884 and 1888. The thirty-four-room, Tiffany-decorated, multi-million dollar home incorporated the most modern inventions available at the time, including a shower which the innkeeper referred to as a plumber’s nightmare. It looked more like an instrument of torture, with water shooting from all sides.
Without a wide range of options for dinner in such an economically-depressed place, she and Zack ended up at Mahoney’s Bar, where they spent the rest of the night talking to the authentically-Irish bartender.
Their drive to Stanley, the next morning, had been miserable because they were both so hungover. It was pouring rain, and they barely had enough energy to stop for lunch before they stumbled into another bed and breakfast.
That night they were lulled to sleep by the sound of the rain hitting the old tin roof of the one-time boarding house. The bed was small and the box springs, creaky.
“Everything okay?” Red asked when he came around to open her door.
“Zack and I spent time in Stanley,” she answered, hoping he wouldn’t ask anything else. If she closed her eyes, she could remember the feeling of the two of them being as close as two people could be.
As he’d predicted, there was a line out the door at the bakery. He took Bree’s hand in his big one and pulled her past the crowd to a room in the back, where the locals had their permanently-reserved table.
“Boys,” Red began, “I’d like you to meet the woman I spent the last few mornings fly fishing with. Who, I humbly admit, typically out-fishes me two to one.”
The men stood, and Red introduced her to them one by one. “Zeke, Emmet, Virgil, Branson…”
Bree lost track of the names, which sounded as though they could be a list of characters in an old Western. Each one shook her hand before sitting back down.
“Where did Red take ya this mornin’? I’m bettin’ mile marker 189,” said the one she thought was Zeke.
She looked over at Red, who was grinning.
“To his secret spot you mean?”
Her answer was met with laughter. “I take, it isn’t a very well-kept secret,” she continued.
“You got it, girl,” said the one named Virgil.
Red chuckled and ran his hand over his whisker-covered chin. “I’m curious about somethin’.”
Oh, no. Would he bring up her husband here, in front of all these strangers? “What’s that?” she stammered, hoping he wouldn’t.
“Every fish you catch, right before you release it, you hold it up real close to your face, so close I could swear you’re kissin’ the damn thing. What’s that all about?”
Bree’s cheeks flushed. “It’s a little ritual. I tell them I’m sorry for hurting them before I send them back.”
She supposed every man at the table figured she was bat-shit crazy after that story, especially given the way they were still staring at her and not saying a word.
“Well, ain’t that cute?” Zeke laughed.
She couldn’t tell whether he was confirming her insanity, or if he truly did think it was cute.
She looked at Red who was shaking his head, but still grinning. If nothing else, she’d just given them a story they could repeat for the next twenty years.
“What’s good?” Bree asked.
“The sticky buns are world famous,” answered one of the cowboys.