Crazy for Trying

By Joni Rodgers

"Think Jane Eyre with Rock 'n' Roll"—Houston Press

In this brave and beautiful debut novel, star-crossed lovers, dysfunctional families, and comically flawed friends blaze a fresh trail through the romantic badlands and strident sexual politics of 1970s Montana. Zaftig late-night disc jockey Tulsa Bitters discovers the power of invisibility when the sound of her voice draws an intriguing stranger out of the dark. Vietnam vet Mac White Wolf MacPeters—half Blackfoot, half raging Irish—is smitten with Tulsa’s wry intelligence, and she’s won over by his careful courtship.

Friends and drinking buddies disapprove of the unlikely affair, but for a while, Tulsa’s love-struck tenacity allows Mac to pretend that things might actually work out. She holds fast to her belief in Mac’s threadbare sanity, knowing that ghosts and coyotes are just out of earshot, waiting to spirit him back into the shadows of a dangerous Western solitude.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Joni Rodgers
• Release date: Feb 2, 2022
• ISBN: 9798985549416

Book preview

1

Helena sprawled comfortably in all directions but nestled one elegant shoulder against the sloping body of her first great love; the recumbent mountain lifted its undomesticated face to the world on one side and held the city with a protective arm on the other. They lay together beneath a quilt of evening colors, listening to all this life they’d begotten.

Last Chance Gulch furrowed between the foothills. Born of a glacier, kidnapped by gold miners, and seduced for a bawdy business district, the gorge matured to an American Main Street but was later retro-renovated with cobblestones and old-timey storefronts. Meanwhile, modern civilization—a typical urban tie-dye of houses, stores, schools, suburbs, and salad buffets—seeped outward, all the way to the valley.

Trekking into town with her bulky purse and duffel bag slung over one shoulder, guitar case bumping against her knees, Tulsa Bitters was somehow surprised by the life-size laundromats, buildings, and Burger King. That’s not what the town looked like in her mother’s Helena: Queen City of the Rockies coffee-table book. When Tulsa fantasized about the bohemian, homegrown-tomato life she might someday live in Helena, she never thought about a twelve-hour train ride to Havre, dicey hitchhike from Havre to Helena, and a long trek on foot through the late-April slush before she arrived on the doorstep of her reinvented life. Now she was here, and for all its legends of copper kings and Chinese muleteers, Helena was, on a mechanical level, the same as any small city, including the one she’d just run away from.

Tulsa made a pit stop at 4-Bs Café at the edge of town and sensed she wasn’t wearing the journey well when the waitress said, You can’t use the ladies’ room unless you’re ordering something.

I’ll have a BLT with fries, said Tulsa.

The skeptical waitress pursed her lips and ticked her thumb toward the hallway. Tulsa went in, shifted the trash can to jam the door, and pulled her bulky sweater off over her head. Somewhere in the ceiling, a tinny speaker played a Muzak version of Ne Me Quitte Pas, and Tulsa hummed along as she went about her toilette.

Ne me quitte pas, ne me quitte pas

Don’t quit me, don’t quit me

After her mother died, Tulsa listened to this lachrymose Jacques Brel ballad over and over, belaboring the chords until she had it figured out on the guitar. For a while, during her college years, it drifted out of her repertoire; she was functionally happy and focused on Bach and Debussy. But Brel was always there. She never really unlearned it.

Tulsa was a conscious collector of favorite words, and she had met a man who added to her stash: zaftig, Rubenesque, acquiesce, maidenhead. Aaron eased her into her own body the first time he entered her. He spoke haiku during and sketched her portrait after. His love for her triggered a feeling of worthiness so novel it silenced her. She couldn’t tell him how it felt to be living, at last, inside a body that someone wanted to kiss, caress, possess. After years of feeling like a foreigner in her own skin, it was a moment of homecoming.

Aaron had several jointed wooden dolls—for figure-drawing, theoretically. He employed them as silent envoys who communicated things he was too well-bred to say out loud. Coming home after class to the apartment they shared, Tulsa would find the wooden figures on the kitchen table in a 69 formation or fornicating doggy-style—an abbreviated menu of the night ahead. One day, she came home and they were gone, and Aaron was gone with them.

Ne me quitte pas, ne me quitte pas

I’ll unbecome myself and become your shadow

Sitting alone on the floor of an empty apartment she could no longer afford, she played the song ad nauseum, feeding off florid memories of her first great love. Like a vampire, she sucked the life out of the day they met and three years of unchecked intimacy that followed.

Tulsa was about to graduate with a nebulous liberal arts degree, which meant the end of student housing and her work study job at the college radio station. The only thread connecting her to something that felt like next was the program director’s casual mention of a possible job in Montana.

My cousin is PD at an album rock station in Helena, he said. I sent him your tape, and he thought it was pretty cool. He said they need someone on overnights, if you’re interested.

Definitely, she said, recalling the old coffee-table book. She couldn’t imagine a place farther or further from where she was, and that appealed to her. The university station PD arranged a phone interview with the Helena PD, whose name was Joey.

How soon can you get here? Joey asked. I’m working my balls off to cover this shift.

She was hired. Just like that. It seemed too easy. Maybe an elaborate prank, like what happens in Carrie. She’d get there, they’d see how fat she was and pour a bucket of pig’s blood on her head. Tulsa generally hewed to this sort of reflexive fantasy; the mouth-watering sting of self-loathing tethered her to her spotty childhood and raw adolescence. It wasn’t a comfortable place to dwell, but it was as familiar as Brel’s weepy refrain.

the shadow of your shadow

the shadow of your hand

the shadow of your dog

The tinny Muzak version laid bare the melodrama, the impracticality of it. In the context of an arduous twenty-two-hour journey, Tulsa suddenly found it exhausting. Infuriating. Fuck that noise. Fuck Aaron and his fancy internship and his censorious parents and his stupid little dolls that ate up prime real estate on a perfectly good bookshelf.

Alexandra Firestein: We struggle to be that which we, in spirit, are not, until that moment when a woman’s only relief is a bold and specific gesture. Suddenly she must leave town, cut her hair, or kill herself.

Leaving Minneapolis did feel like a bold and specific gesture, comfortably in between the awkward growing out of impulsively cut bangs and the limbo of a jumper’s unhinged spirit.

She swabbed at the raccoon dregs of old mascara under her eyes, scrubbed her sweaty neck, and prodded her heavily padded bra back to semiroundness. When she raked a comb through the dry spray in her hair, it turned to an auburn whisk broom—a situation Tulsa’s mother called Jew-fro and Tulsa’s mom called bad night at the Ice Capades. Not a good look to meet her new employer.

She had her makeup kit and a change of clothes in her bulky purse: clean underthings, a pleated plaid skirt, turtleneck shell, preppy blazer, and black tights. She put these on and studied herself in the mirror, rehearsing a snippet of dialogue she’d prepared on the train: Hi, I’m Tulsa Bitters, the new overnight announcer. I’m grateful for the opportunity. I look forward to working with you.

Her voice sounded constricted and fake, not at all like the easy alto on her demo tape, which was composed of snippets from her late-night show at the university station, where she wore peasant shirts and jeans. The turtleneck shell was tight around her throat and rode up around the middle. Tights that were tall enough for her long legs were never wide enough for her voluminous hips. The skirt was cutting her in half, even with the top button undone.

Alexandra Firestein: If one’s style is not one’s self, made manifest, it is a symptom of greater malady: a febrile seizure of self-deception.

Like Alice’s Drink Me bottle, a little metal flap marked Waste Disposal caught her eye. Tulsa peeled off the overstretched tights and shoved them in, shoved the shell in, then the skirt, the blazer, and the squashy bra. The flap guzzled each item and snapped shut with a satisfying ta-shank. She took out her makeup kit and fed the flap a small pot of blush, eyeshadow palette, nail polishes and remover, lip gloss, liners, two camel-hair brushes, and then the little makeup bag itself.

The flaccid purse held nothing but linty Chiclets, loose change, and a tampon or two; Tulsa kept her wallet in her guitar case. She pulled on jeans and a clean T-shirt. Bowing over the inadequate sink, she washed her stiffened coif, scooping water from the tap and then blotting it dry as best she could with paper towels from the dispenser. She slid a wide-toothed comb through it, sweeping the wavy layers back from her face. She was not pretty, but, for the first time in possibly forever, she was herself, and much to her surprise, that felt fine.

2

Mac headed out of Helena, enjoying the fresh breeze of freedom that always flowed through him right after he got fired. He never lasted long on a job that kept him indoors, and the outdoor gigs were usually seasonal, so Mac’s résumé was a checkered fusion of manual and creative labor: ranch hand, road construction, overnight disc jockey, catalog copywriter, dishwasher, lawn mower, candlemaker, cook. He drove a truck for the Montana Bureau of Indian Affairs cheese distribution program, until they cut that, and spent a few holidays bell-ringing for the Salvation Army—two jobs that were not dissimilar. When he had the garage at Bev’s place, he supplied homegrown weed and magic mushrooms to a few trusted customers, but seven months had passed since she’d ejected him. Precious little remained of his final harvest, and he was reluctant to part with it.

Mac looked at the check to see if the bookkeeper at the farm implement store had taken child support out of his final paycheck. She had. At times like this, he seriously thought he might try to get Lorene back rather than keep paying through the nose until his son, Colter, came of age. Not impossible, he thought as he headed out into the dry heat of the parking lot. He’d been separated from Beverly for almost a year. Surely, she’d file the divorce papers any day.

Mac’s pickup was parked in a hilly part of the lot to facilitate a push start. He leaped in, popped the clutch, and fed a Hank Williams tape into the 8-track deck.

Whah doncha love me like ya use-ta do? Whah must-ya treat me like a worn-out shoe?

Hank drifted down the winding dirt road, a distant, scratchy soundtrack to the smell of whiskey and Montana’s evening-colored

mountains.

That wouldn’t be bad at all: Lorene again.

Mac had always loved her, loved the way she mothered their son, loved the private scent of her and the way her penny-red hair floated on the open air after he and Ben Sharkey used an acetylene torch to take the top off her father’s old yellow Caddy. Her father was pissed as a newt, but the Caddy’s black roof was peeling anyway, and Mac had always kept this secret vision of himself roaring across the back forty in a sleek convertible. True to that vision, the wind smoothed Lorene’s white blouse against her body. Her laughter trailed behind them like a long silk scarf.

The first time they were married, Lorene was young, doe-eyed and slender, fresh and delicate as a single lilac blossom. She was limber and willing, and Mac kept telling himself that this was a woman he’d be a fool to leave. He’d left anyway, but after being married to a weathered waitress named Cora for a few months, he started thinking how lucky he’d be to get that lilac blossom back. The luckiest SOB on the face of the earth, he told her on their second wedding night, and he remembered thinking the same thing a year later when they were stationed in Japan and he watched her give life to the small and wondrous creature they named Colter O’Donnel MacPeters. Mac felt himself born again at that moment, receiving a new and unspoiled life, free of all the regrets that had shackled him like Jacob Marley’s ghost.

Back in Montana, they had reveled in a moment of Beat generation bliss, wearing black pencil pants and plundering secondhand stores for treasures and necessities. Lorene macraméd a hammock for the baby, and they hung it near the Murphy bed, which they never folded up into the wall because they might want to make love on the spur of the moment.

But one night, Mac found he couldn’t climb the stairs to their apartment above the Sweet Grass Bakery. He sat in his truck, resting his head on the steering wheel, hoping people passing would think he was stoned. Toward daylight, he realized Lorene was looking down at him from the second-floor window. He ground the starter and let her watch him drive away. He circled the block to see if she was still there.

She was.

She was there at the screenless, wide-open window, her hair breezing back, penny-red and easy, the way it did after he and Sharkey took an acetylene torch to the old yellow Caddy. Lord, her father was pissed as a newt, but the roof was peeling anyway, and Mac had always kept his secret vision. Feeding off the memory, he drove out to Montana City, then circled back into town to fortify himself with a stiff drink.

The Joker’s Wild Bar ’n’ Grill was smoky and affable, full of guys with cowboy hats strutting for women with evening-red lips. First Edition blared from the jukebox, and Mac sang along as he bellied up to the bar.

just dropped in to see what condition my condition was in

Beryl Maclusky clapped a shot glass in front of him, drawing the whiskey bottle down close and then high above, finishing with a twisting motion at the very mouth of the glass, the only right way to pour a shot of Jack Daniels. Mac upended it with an equal and opposite reaction and zinged the empty glass down the bar to Ben Sharkey, who caught it with a rumpled nonchalance.

Beertender, gimme a bar, Mac said, and Beryl knew without asking that he meant the cheapest thing on tap, but—in the spirit of hyacinths that feed the soul—he had it in a frosted stein, which cost ten cents extra.

You’re the love of my life, Mrs. Maclusky.

Tell it to Yak when he asks why I haven’t beaten this bar tab outta you.

Ben Sharkey’s shoulders lurched in the fr-frmph that was as close to laughing as he came these days. He slid his bony frame over and took a cigarette out of the front pocket of Mac’s plaid flannel shirt.

How goes it, Shark?

It goes. His hands were shaking pretty bad, Mac noticed.

On Thorazine again?

Yeah. Sharkey’s voice inflected downward but didn’t sound desperate or even disappointed, really.

Maybe you oughtn’t to drink beer with it.

Yeah.

They sat smoking and tipping their beers.

Yup, Mac said.

Yeah, said Sharkey.

Beryl was back, refilling the now unfrosty glasses.

Why aren’t you at work? she asked Mac.

Due to an appalling lack of vision, the management of Quality Implements has decided to go a different direction with their catalog copy.

You got canned again.

I’m good for the tab, Bee. Mac withstood her laser gaze with good humor. Yak’s my blood brother. He knows if I can’t pay, he can carve a slab off my ass.

You could buy a round for the house if you weren’t so damn skinny, said Beryl. I didn’t mind your catalog copy. All that about the nobility of ranch life. I was moved by it.

Thank you. I appreciate that.

I do see their point, though. Sometimes you just need to know how many tons of shit that wagon can haul.

Not as many as you, I bet.

Sweet talker, Beryl deadpanned. I don’t suppose this’ll help your case with Anne Marie. She called here a while ago and said to tell you if you’re not out by five, she’s gonna haul your stuff down to the curb and let the dogs pee on it. Jesus. Who the hell gets fired and evicted on the same day?

Not me, said Mac. I got evicted several days ago.

She rewarded that with a snort of laughter and patted his hand. Mac hated it that she was suddenly being kind.

Need another? she said.

Another what, Bee? Are you offering me a job or asking me to move in with you?

I’m offering you a beer or a belt in the mouth.

I’ll take the beer. Put it on my tab, he added for the sake of dignity, but he was glad when she didn’t.

Mac downed the charity beer, clapped Sharkey on the shoulder, and took his leave. With any luck, he’d be able to grab his guitar and be out of the apartment before Anne Marie could lumber up the stairs. He would have gladly abandoned his scant worldly goods to avoid her, but he had to have the Alvarez. If he didn’t play his guitar at least a little every night, he couldn’t get to sleep. Sometimes it was hours, sometimes just a lick before he crawled into a sleeping bag on the ground.

Gotta scare off the bears, his mother, Sarah, said back when he was little and she was the one who needed the nightly ritual. It was the only thing that came close to being tucked in, in his experience. While Sarah played, she told him how his father, Hank Williams, would arrive someday from Nashville to take them away from the ranch where they lived with her parents: an angry Irishman called Pa Roy and his common-law wife, who was called Satchi—a shortened version of an Algonquian name that died in the mouths of parents she never knew.

Mac’s mother told him she’d give him the Alvarez for his own someday, and on his tenth birthday, she kept her promise.

She got up before daylight, covered her good dress with a flour-sack apron, and baked him a johnnycake—heavy and dark, rich with molasses, sprinkled with confectioner’s sugar—which was his favorite thing to eat. She decorated the cake with little stand-up cacti and singing coyotes cut from paper. She fashioned a little paper guitar and a fancy number ten and placed them in the center of the cake, surrounded by little candles.

As sunrise colored the dark windows, she went out the kitchen door, taking Pa Roy’s squirrel rifle from its brackets above the lintel. From the back porch of the big stone house, a person could see the whole hemmed-in universe: the MacPeters’ place ran all the way to the rocky ridges and high pines. It didn’t much matter what lay beyond that. Except for Nashville, maybe.

Sarah stepped down the rough log stairs, crossed the yard where the chickens scratched, and climbed the fence. Horses stamped and shuffled inside the corral. Mac wondered later if she paused to coo and touch their noses. All he really knew was that she knelt in the sweetgrass behind the stable, placed the rifle alongside her slender neck, and flew away with the covey of quail and starlings that rose up, startled by the blast.

Jarred upright by the sound, the boy was standing in the chilly morning of his room before he even realized he was awake. He knew without knowing. He felt her absence with the same sickening realization he felt when he stepped on a nail one time and had to be taken into town for a tetanus shot. The bedroom window was thick with dust on the outside, but he could make out the figure of his grandmother beyond the cloudy brown film.

Cheek and palm against the ice cold glass, the boy saw Satchi run out to the yard. She was naked. She scrambled over the fence and fell to her knees. He knew he should look away, but he stood there, transfixed by the sound of her keening. She clenched Pa Roy’s pearl-handled knife in her fist and methodically drew it across her copper breasts. She stroked it down her stomach in an ancient ritual of grieving, a primitive wisdom that released blood and anguish, understanding that human skin is too fragile to contain such an all-encompassing sorrow. He thought about breaking the window, taking glass to his own skin, but he knew Pa Roy would beat him.

Hired men still in their long johns stumbled out of the bunkhouse and ran up the hill toward the stone house. Pa Roy slapped the knife out of Satchi’s hand and wrapped her in a horse blanket. Her reedy wailing grew louder. She flailed and struggled until Pa Roy punched her in the face, and she crumpled, silent. He collected her in his arms, burying his face in the bloody black tangle of her hair, and staggered up the stairs to the kitchen.

Trembling, the boy crawled back under the quilt Satchi had made like sunrise on one side and sunset on the other. He rocked back and forth, gathering it around him like a