I had a girlfriend that summer who loved to swim. We walked often barefoot down the creek-bed to the river. The soles of my feet were calloused. It was one of the more purely idyllic summers in my life. I felt a self-confidence and self-respect repeated occasionally since then but seldom before. I had graduated from the university and was free to go without shoes an entire summer, visit with whom I chose, my sister and her young daughter were high on the list. I earned money doing yard work, had my name in at Job Service, and I had 3 girlfriends.

One, Jerre, kissed me on a sandy beach, deer observed. And she would swim across the river while I watched. I was not a self-confident swimmer. Our friendship was an outdoor adventure. Often neighborhood children accompanied us on the swimming excursions. She didn’t fare so well when she took me horse back riding. Leading the horses into a gallop, she the expert, (I’d seen her often riding her horse round the barrels before I was officially introduced by her mother standing by the fence line one day,) fell off while I, the novice, galloped to her side. We loved the river days, but I talked more with her mother than I did with her.

Another, Vicky, had challenging conversations, went to movies with me, and I watched her play softball. One day Vicky’s team played Jerre’s team. I was polite to both. Vicky had a boyfriend in the military somewhere. I’d met her while at a friend’s house. He just handed the phone to me during one of her long conversations, and so it was for a time when I’d visit his house, just over the phone playful inquisitiveness; then we met. She’d survived a serious car accident; someone had been killed. She wore a neck brace. Our conversations led into forbidden territories; Bergman movies, and coffee shops where unconventional ideas were discussed. But how could she talk so irreverently about her boyfriend, take his ring and not abide by the implied fidelity? She called me church mouse, perhaps because I acted as a conscience for her. And those fantastic stories of hers – She wanted to be an undertaker. She had once dug up the grave of a child she used to baby-sit in Bab, Montana, not far from her family’s home. She said that she’d had a dream that the child wanted to be let out of her coffin.

She’d grown up some of the time being raised by her uncle and Aunt in Cutbank. Now she was with her mother and younger brother in a very small house on 6th street. (Just to put your mind at ease, we never kissed, it was not that sort of friendship.)