Brothers/Sisters

FISHING BRIDGE R.V. PARK, advertises a sign that hangs over the split road. Bright white letters stare boldly from a canvas from a black-painted panel of wood. Under this: the words SHOWERS and LAUNDRY, side-by-side. To the side is a cutout vector of a light brown grizzly bear in a white circle, rimmed in read. Bundles of pines stretch out to either side, cast in bright greens and dull yellows under the new sunlight; the clouds have, for the most part, cleared.

I’m not infatuated with the sign or anything, it's jut that I get a pretty good look at it, what with the whole buffalo in the middle of the road and stuff. And they always told us that bears were the problem faced by campers. Bison, Dave would correct, because he just loves being pedantic sometimes.

There are four of them: two in the middle of the road and two more on the edge, shuffling off somewhere else. They look like grizzly bear cows: they’re covered in mottled brown fur, the fluffiest and darkest of which covers their enormous heads, chests, and legs. Their shoulders and curved horns are larger than your average cow’s by a longshot. The closest—the one in the center of the road—is almost black with tufts of lighter brown fur clinging to its sides as a new coat grows in. It sticks out its big purple tongue and brays. The sound is a dog’s growl, but in the lower octaves of the average dog’s range. Then it begins to amble forward.

Jason puts the car in neutral and sighs.

“Oooh,” Carina says. Diving down into the passenger seat, she digs until she finds her phone. She hands it to Jason. “Take some pictures. It’s too hard to do one-handed.”

He sighs again, but rolls down the window and leans out slightly. “Pictures or video?”

“Stills are fine. Wish I’d brought my good camera.”

Slowly tossing its head back and forth, the buffalo moseys on by us, taking its sweet time. As they do. Jason snaps a few pictures as it comes close enough to touch. Some tourists do, but he pulls back a little, not quite that stupid. He does moo at it, though.

Ask sits next to me, wide-eyed.

“Never seen a buffalo?” I ask.

“Not until yesterday. You think the project people took me out on field trips?”

I’m struck with an image of Ask sitting in a small room, alone save the “project people” for nine months.

I don’t reply.

When the road is finally clear, Jason hands Carina her phone and pulls into a parking lot in front of a wide squatty building with dark green trim that offers the aforementioned SHOWERS and LAUNDRY.

So we pile up the change we have (except Ask, who has none) and agree to make an agreement to be quick about showering and such (except Ask, who politely requests that we not tell him “what to do,” like the very mature nine-month-old that he is). Then we break, get whatever necessities we need out of the trunk, and leave for showers and working toilets (except Ask, who sits in the middle of the back seat again and messes with the lighter until I pull a Boyd and drag him out of the car by his shirt collar, because he needs a change of clothes as badly as the other two).

Then we’re back in the car.

“Old Faithful,” I say, looking at my phone, which has finally loaded the map. I’m careful not to touch it, even if the smeared screen is bothering me, because I don’t want to wait for it to refresh again. “It’s closer. And, it’s Old Faithful. Didn’t you say you wanted to sightsee? Two birds, one stone.”

“True,” Carina replies. “But it’s not like none of us have been there. And...geysers. You seen one, you’ve seen them all.”

“Two birds, one stone,” Ask mutters. I can’t tell if he’s making fun of me talking for the sake of talking. “I’ve never seen Old Faithful,” he volunteers.

I shrug. “It’s your hand, Car.”

“I like West Yellowstone myself,” Jason says. “It’s bound to have a medical place of some sort, right? They’ve got a good pizza place…”

“I’ve actually never been there,” Carina says.

I look at my little map, carefully zooming in on Old Faithful, then on Mammoth, careful to keep the little marker over Fishing Bridge visible on my screen. Carina’s big paper map sits under her seat, folded wrong. She reaches behind the seat, searching. I gingerly set my phone down on the towel-covered seat next to me and hand it to her.

“You’re right, Old Faithful’s closest,” she concedes, trying to unfold the map one-handed. “But do they have a good hospital or something? Last time I was there, I was like eight.”

“So now you care,” I say.

“Garrett, not now. It’s really starting to hurt.”

“Ah!” Jason’s phone has finally loaded whatever he was looking for. “Yeah, they’ve got a clinic.” He turns to Carina and gives her a gentle sidehug. “We’ll get you there.”

Old Faithful it is.

“Garrett,” Jason says. “You know this area better than I do. Do you want to drive.”

“Sure.” It takes us another ten minutes to get fully situated, a fiasco that ends with me in the driver’s seat, Ask in the passenger’s, and Jason and Carina in the back. I’m somewhat grateful for Ask at this point; at least I have someone to third-wheel with me. Behind us, Jason fusses with making another splint for Carina.

At Jason’s request, Ask pops open the glove compartment to reveal at least five bottles of Tylenol. Ask stares at them for a few seconds before handing a bottle to Jason, who opens it and gives Carina a few pills. “Is this...common?”

“No,” he says. “I, uh, get migraines. I like to be prepared, because those things aren’t fun.”

“Okay.”

There aren’t any buffalo waiting for us in the middle of the road again at the entrance to the RV park this time, though there is one off to the side, along with a photographer who’s parked nearby and is so close to the animal that it stresses me out.

The route hugs the lake at first, over which patchy little clouds persist. Pines to either side for the first few minutes, but in some areas they thin out and the lake is completely visible. In these clearings, steam hisses up from the tan earth, telling us that we’re close to a geyser basin. It’s been two years since I was here last. The trees are also shorter and younger than the rest in little patches, with dead pine skeletons poking up around them, like masts in a pile of shipwrecks. This is what remains of fires here that happened thirty years ago. Then the lake and geyser basin are both gone and the trees rise up and overtake us. The dead trees are scattered the thickest around the initial turn, though, as if a hoard of beavers decided to fell enough trees for than a few dams, before deciding that they didn’t actually need that much lumber. We’re all quiet, with another of Jason’s CDs—Fleetwood Mac this time, courtesy of Ask—playing quietly in the background.

Then the trees rise, and so does the elevation—for a few minutes, Ask and Carina get a good look at a little body of water that Carina informs me is Duck Lake.

“We should come back to West Thumb,” I say.

“The one with all the geysers?”

“Yeah.”

“Smell like farts?”

“Very mature.” I snort in spite of myself and catch her eye in the mirror. Even Jason laughs, and I don’t expect the bubbly giggle that comes out of him. Ask just stares out the window.

On the stereo, Stevie Nicks sings about dreams and crystal visions in that husky voice of hers. Bernard always reminded me of her; maybe it’s the voice.

“So I had a weird dream,” Carina says suddenly.

I swerve. Ask hits his head on the window and glares at me.

“Elk,” I explain, even though there were no elk.

“You’re a bad driver,” Ask says.

“Matter of fact, you were in it,” Carina says, tapping Ask on the shoulder. She summarizes last night’s conversation and I can feel her gaze as she looks to each of us in turn for confirmation or—hopefully, or things have just gotten weird—denial.

Jason coughs. “I was hoping it was a dream, too.”

There’s a hot minute of silence.

“Uh—” I start.

“You weren’t dreaming,” Ask says. “Wish I was, though. That’d be cool. Do you get to fly around and stuff?”

“What?”

“In dreams. Can you pick what you dream about?”

I fix my gaze on the road. “Not exactly. I mean, sometimes, but...”

“Prove it,” Carina interrupts.

Out of the corner of my eye, I can see Ask giving me a tight-lipped smile. I start, “You really don’t want—”

Too late. A detached hand goes sailing towards the back seat.

Carina jumps. Shouts, “What—what—” No clicks this time; he was ready.

“You need to stop doing that,” I tell Ask.

“Why? It works.” He pauses, swivels around to address Carina and deadpans, “Haha, you thought you were having a bad hand day.”

“Jesus Christ,” Carina responds. I can’t see her, but I can hear her moving around the back seat, adjusting or something. Out the window, Duck Lake is gone, and so are the worst spots of dead trees. Green pines on both sides, now.

Next to me, there’s a fleshy tan blur and a smack.

“Ah!” Ask says, recoiling.

“You like that? Huh?” Carina asks, hitting him again with his own hand. “That hurt?”

“No and no.”

She smacks him one more time before he takes the hand from her and tries to reattach it, but I still don’t hear any clicks.

“You knew, Gar?” she asks me.

“You’re not going to ask the amputee question?” Ask interrupts.

“What?”

“The, ‘so, you’re an amputee,’ one.”

“I’ve never seen a prosthetic limb with wires sticking out. You should do something about that fraying.”

“Yeah,” I say. “Like, maybe you could stop taking your hand off and throwing it at people.”

“He did it to you, too?” Jason asks.

“Yeah.”

“This is weird,” Carina says. “Real weird. Gar, why didn’t you tell us?”

“I—”

“He was told not to,” Ask says. “But you know now.”

“Yeah, I just didn’t want to break my thumb before I did.”

Jason chimes in. “It might not be broken.”

“Fractured? Hurt? Is that better? What if I can’t draw play video games anymore?”

“You’re being melodramatic…”

Carina sighs. “I know. Must’ve rubbed off from this one.” She thwacks Ask on the shoulder with her index finger and good thumb.

“Stop hitting me.” But he’s in the middle of trying to solve the hand (or lackthereof) issue.

“That’s the first time I’ve hit you. It was all you before.” She thwacks him again.

“Gar-rett!”

“What do you want me to do, pull the car over?”

“She keeps hitting me.”

“Seems to me like you were hitting yourself before.” I bite my lip, and the others aren’t even trying to control their laughter.

There’s a pressure in my ears and I swallow to clear it; we’ve gone up in elevation. Sure enough, the trees to our right fall into a small valley, low green-tinted-blue ridges appearing on the other side. Everything is a carpet of varying shades of green. After a few more minutes, the road twists and it’s gone, only to reappear seconds later when the trees dip again.

I open the window and breathe in the crisp pre-autumn air. Fall is closing in, and still I have no idea what I’m doing with my life. If you asked me two years ago, I would’ve answered, College, college, definitely college, hopefully in California, to put my dual residence to good use for once. I wish I’d gone back when I’d had the chance; I wish they hadn’t all changed numbers.

When we descend into the valley, I know we’re getting close. Jason and Carina make small talk; Ask finally puts his hand back on, though a grunt from the passenger’s seat tells me that he’s not satisfied with it.

Like that area by the lake, the trees thin out in certain areas to tell us that there’s seismic activity going on there; park rangers and signs warn visitors off these areas, telling us to stay on the boardwalks. For good reason, since the earth is thin and one wrong step -could send you falling through. It has happened.

I’m also mildly delighted by the lack of bear jams. Jams doesn’t even cover it. Clusterfucks; where twenty to fifty cars are parked on the sides of the road so that everyone can get a nice look at the bear or wolf or whatever it is. Grizzlies get the highest traffic, but buffalo, elk, and even coyotes can stop traffic.

To our right, the Old Faithful Lodge comes into view. It’s a glorified multi-level log cabin, but a lot more mundane than the witch house. Between squatty and sparsely-spaced pines, the ground is white, streaks of dark yellow and tan running through it where dead grass and stable ground meets seismic earth.

“We’re here,” I announce drily. Ask repeatedly kicks the glove compartment like an excited toddler.

Steaming geysers ring the packed parking lot; there’s a wide boardwalk that leads straight to Old Faithful and forms a semicircle around the famous geyser. One look at it all tells me that I won’t be able to find a good spot, so I drive through it and up the band in the road until we’re right next to the Inn. The structure as a whole is not an A-frame by any means, but the design consists of triangles atop triangles, little triangular awnings that shoot out from the main building, which really does look like a glorified A-frame cabin that’s attached to a couple more squarish cabins. It’s all rustic and almost all dark wood, save a couple of little stone pillars and accents. Eight flags stick up from the roof, but I can only make out the American flag in the nearest corner of the roof from Jason’s car.

I stop the car under a large flat awning and patio, complete with stacked wooden pillars on either side that look like lincoln logs.

“You guys get out and find the clinic.” I say. “I’ll go park the car.”

“You sure?” Carina asks. “I thought you weren’t a fan of walking.”

Well, I’m not. “I can do it. You need to get your thumb taken care of.”

“Thanks, pal.” Jason smiles at me. “Don’t steal anything!” He gets out of the car and rounds the front to open Carina’s door for her. She gets out and punches him lightly on the arm with her good hand, but I don’t hear what they say.

Ask just looks at me.

“Aren’t you getting out?” I ask.

“Can I come with you?”

“No.” I’m half-joking, though. “Why?”

“To see Old Faithful.”

“You really want to see that dumb old geyser, don’t you?”

“Yeah.”

I back the car up a little to allow a kid in a wheelchair to cross. At this point, Carina and Jason are already in the lodge. “I’ve spent too much time with you, but all right.”

“Really?”

“I guess you deserve some fun tourist-y stuff after almost being shot and kidnapped.”

“Thanks, pal.”