Almost imperceptibly, Chet nodded. I knew I was going in the right direction.
“We can’t talk about who Pete was without acknowledging his love for Chet, here. They were partners, mates. Lovers in every sense of the word.”
Chet’s lips parted in almost, but not quite, a smile.
I said, “His love for Chet was the truth that made Pete feel unique.”
I looked at Pud over against the window. His face was turned ever so slightly toward Maurey’s, and hers toward him.
“A person would like to think his or her life has significance,” I said.
Shannon’s face was turned to the window, as if she were listening to something outside the rest of us couldn’t hear. She was daydreaming.
“To me, significance means to love, and to be cherished, and to impact creatively the world—large or small —that one occupies. Pete found significance. Through his work and his love he left a legacy that will live into the future with each of us he touched.”
I turned to Father Jack. “Where’s the nearest phone?”
He shifted forward on the bench, confusion in his eyes. “The church offices. Next door.”
I left by the door behind the pulpit. Crossing the snowy yard, I saw that Dothan and the bimbo were gone. Love wasn’t everything. Neither was friendship and family. What I wanted and couldn’t get, even from the three legs of my support stool, was someone to take my dreams seriously.
Gilia answered on the third ring.
“Hello.”
“What do you think of a home for unwed mothers? We could run it. You and I.”
There was a long silence and quiet breathing, then Gilia said, “Where?”
One group of old-timers claims the early settlers of GroVont changed the spelling because they were sick and tired of correcting outsiders who pronounced it
Gro Vont’s population peaked in the mid-1920s at more or less fifty, then when the Depression trickled down to Wyoming, John Rockefeller’s agents bought all the land they could get their hands on for thirty-seven dollars an acre. Rockefeller gave the land to the government so they could form what is now Grand Teton National Park. Those who wouldn’t sell were forced to sign life leases. A life lease means when the current title holder dies, the land goes to the government and the children go elsewhere. As the old-timers died or were run off their ranches by the Park Service, Gro Vont’s numbers dwindled until now only Clark and Veda Moulton are left. The Mormon Church was hauled twenty miles closer to the ski area and made into a pizza parlor, the old school is now the shower house at a yurt village, and the last post office was taken to a nearby dude ranch. Interestingly enough, the Park Service is working on a plan to hire actors and actresses to go out on Mormon Row and pretend to do what the real ranchers were doing before the government chased them off the ranches. Only in America.
After finishing
Rebecca Stern
Reviewers have variously compared Tim Sandlin to Jack Kerouac, Tom Robbins, Larry McMurtry, Joseph Heller, John Irving, Kurt Vonnegut, Carl Hiaasen, and a few other writers you’ve probably heard of. He has published eight novels and a book of columns. He wrote eleven screenplays for hire; two of which have been made into movies. He turned forty with no phone, TV, or flush toilet and spent more time talking to the characters in his head than the people around him. He now has seven phone lines, four TVs he doesn’t watch, three flush toilets, and a two-headed shower. He lives happily (indoors) with his family (wife, Carol; son, Kyle; daughter, Leila) in Jackson, Wyoming.
