Jack Boulware

My version of Montana turns out vastly different than Tom McGuane’s. This was performed at the Litquake literary festival, along with a snippet of AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell.”This summer, I went back home to Montana to visit my family. Mom has been pretty ill. So one afternoon we’re watching Fox News, because that’s what people do in this part of the country. She hands me a newspaper article about the Montana state literary festival. She knows about Litquake, and thought I’d be interested. The article features a large color photo of novelist Thomas McGuane feeding his horses.

McGuane has lived in Montana for over 30 years, the state’s best known writer. Whenever anyone discovers that I’m a writer, and that I’m originally from Montana, I often hear: ‘Oh, I love McGuane. Have you read McGuane? Did you see his piece in the New Yorker?’

For most people, Tom McGuane embodies the image of the writer from Montana. Even though he went to Yale and Stanford, and is originally from Michigan. Whatever. Anyway, he owns a cattle ranch, and writes a lot about that world. Now my parents have operated a ranch for over 50 years. My mom has read a lot of books about the local area. So I ask her if she’s ever read McGuane.

She says, “I read one of his books. He didn’t get it right.”

So I ask, “What didn’t he get right?

And she says: “Oh, the horse stuff. The cattle stuff.”

Unbelievable. My mom has just sliced McGuane to ribbons.

So then I start thinking,
What is an accurate description of life in Montana?
What is it really like to grow up there?

No stop signs, speed limit
Nobody’s gonna slow me down
Like a wheel, gonna spin it
Nobody’s gonna mess me round
Hey Satan, payed my dues
Playing in a rocking band
Hey Momma, look at me
I’m on my way to the promised land

– “Highway to Hell,” AC/DC

I’m on a highway to hell. It’s a very slow highway, because I’m driving a tractor, doing three miles an hour around a hayfield. But it’s hell, just the same. It’s 110 degrees. I’m hung over, driving in a circle, getting attacked by sweatbees. Big Sky Country. This is it. Yippee.

The John Deere tractor is sun-faded green and yellow, with stuffing coming out of the seat. No radio, no air conditioning. My father’s too cheap to spring for a tractor with a cab. I’m pulling an antiquated mower that cuts down all vegetation for a six-foot width. In five minutes I will run over a rock and break one of the blades. I will keep going. I don’t have the proper tools to replace the blades. Nor do I have the skills. Because, for some reason, I haven’t inherited them.

All my cousins are cowboys. I never got the gene. I’m not very good at the horse and cow thing. There are a lot of things I don’t know. I don’t know that in the rest of America, it will be very important where you went to college. I don’t know that in one year an actor will become president.

And I have no idea that at this very moment, 250 miles to the west, Tom McGuane is sitting around with  neighbors like Richard Brautigan, Jim Harrison, and Richard Ford, writing books and movies about the rugged life in Montana.

I’m 18, and I don’t know much of anything. Actually, that’s not true. Because I’m 18, I know everything.

I know that rodeo clowns are never funny (even if they have a trained Chihuahua). I know that Coors beer is more expensive because they have to ship it refrigerated. I know how to make a pot pipe out of an apple. I know that if I don’t leave town, I will end up either in the military, or a drug dealer, or both.

I am also blessed with infinite knowledge about the world of music. Disco sucks. This is a provable fact. I know that KISS is for teeny boppers, and I haven’t listened to them in, like, four years. I know that the Rolling Stones are the greatest rock and roll band in the world, because that’s what the announcer says on the live album. I know that my dad thinks the Sex Pistols are disgusting, and that’s really cool. I know these facts, because it’s all I argue about with my friends.

And I am familiar with the curvy rump of Simmy Hafla, as she walked to class in those Britannia jeans without back pockets. One of God’s little gifts, or rather two gifts, placed before my eyes like twin muffins. If I were a dog, they would be kibble.

I am 50 miles from the nearest town. Round and round the field. The landscape goes on forever, a prehistoric underwater basin of fences and loping hills and droopy cows. An ice age didn’t kill off the dinosaurs here. They just died of boredom. I start singing songs, screaming over the noise of the tractor. “Seasons don’t fear the reaper.” Wait a minute. Isn’t putting up hay actually a form of reaping? There’s a coincidence.

Round and round. Slap another sweatbee.

I remember that time Tracy Lathrop bent over the teacher’s desk in science class, you could see all the way down the front of her sweater. She was a cheerleader. Did she sign my yearbook?

More hay. Hay as far as I can see. It’s a hay day.
“Hey, look me over, lend me an ear.”
“Hey hey mama, say the way you move, gonna make you sweat, gonna make you groove.”
“Hay-buh you-buh guy-buhs.”

After all the hay has been cut, it could be time to move on and get some new scenery. But it’s not. I disconnect the mower, making sure to burn my hands on the scalding hydraulic hoses, and hook up another exciting piece of farm equipment – the rake. The route is now back and forth, scooping up the mowed hay and depositing it into rows called windrows.

Pull the lever. Gather and release, back and forth.

“Hey Jude, don’t make it bad.” That was a good song, but it took forever to end. Who’s that girl who works at the Dairy Queen? June Carranza. Jesus, talk about the unattainable. She goes out with that doofus who drives the Trans-Am with Cragar mag wheels. Mr. Pencil-Dick.

My body moves through space. I didn’t ask to do this. Anyone who enjoys this is mildly retarded. It would be a lot better if I WAS retarded. I do this because I was asked by my father, and this summer I’m still living in his house, and that means legal white slavery. When I demanded to be paid, he offered a subhuman wage. I know he chuckles when he writes out the check.

Back and forth, underneath the cloudless sky and angry sun, over and over. I am all alone. I will die here. What if I did? What if, say, I fell off the tractor and my arm became caught in the machinery and I was dragged across the prairie until the tractor ran out of gas? Then they’ll be sorry. My family will discover my corpse, chewed on by coyotes, belly filled with maggots. A crowd will gather. Somebody will produce a thermos of coffee. Women will cry. Neighbors will shake their heads. My brother will load my carcass into the back of a truck. My father will sneak off and check the tractor to make sure the accident didn’t damage anything. And my uncle Jake will look back at the hayfield and say, “Well…I’ve seen rows that were straighter.”

When the sun is its hottest, my father drives up for lunch. We sit on the ground and lean against the pickup tires. The radio plays “I beg your pardon, I never promised you a rose garden.” That’s for sure. Lunch is same as yesterday: warm lemonade from a dirty plastic jug. Saltine crackers with a can of something called potted meat food product. Sometimes we have Vienna sausages. Today it’s potted meat food product. I look at the ingredients: beef tripe, beef hearts, partially defatted cooked pork fatty tissue, mechanically separated chicken. Natural flavorings. The label should have a photo of someone puking up their guts. I read the list aloud to my father. He stares out over the horizon, and with a mouthful of cracker, says “Then don’t look at it.”

I hate everything about this moment. The heat. The lemonade. The potted meat. The fact that I’m not in control of my life. There’s a big world out there, because I can hear it roaring in my ears. After sunset I will spend the rest of the night in a Chevy Blazer, drinking beer and listening to my friends argue about who’s the best guitarist – Jeff Beck? Or Jimmy Page?

Years later, I will read a book by Thomas McGuane. I have no idea what Montana he’s talking about. But I’ll bet he’s got a tractor with air-conditioning.

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