THENEWYORKER,SEPTEMBER23, 2019 51
T
he small-bore politics that I’ve
been caught up in for the past
thirty years has provided, be-
yond the usual attractions of graft and
corruption, a vivid lesson in regional ge-
ography, as I’ve had to make sure my
constituents would keep showing up to
vote. Still, it had been a very long time
since I’d last visited Prairiedale. Back
then, the town was known as Wide Spot;
it wouldn’t have had a name at all if it
weren’t for the filling station there, and,
had anyone thought about it, would
have been called something more dig-
nified, like Fort Lauderdale. In the old
days, the Indians led their cattle to the
freight yards many miles away on horse-
back; their wives awaited them in Model
T Fords, pulled their saddles off the
horses, and drove them back to the res-
ervation. The horses turned up on the
res within a week, grazing their way
north on unfenced grass. But, when
the Northern Pacific laid a spur from
the east-west line to pick up cattle and
grain, Wide Spot boomed, became the
county seat. It got a courthouse, a sprawl
of frame houses, a fire station in a quon-
set hut, a baseball diamond, and its un-
imaginative name.
Lately, the combination of agricul-
ture and local mining had made Prai-
riedale a politically divided town. I de-
cided to visit my half of the divide as
part of my sweep—and just to feel the
sweet ache of old days (mine) gone by.
I’d been there in my youth, when I played
keyboards for the Daft, during our short
heyday as a regional band. Once the
band decided to pack it in, we felt that
Wide Spot would be the perfect place
to celebrate the end of our inconsequen-
tial run. We were delighted to see the
Rainbow Horizon Bar fill up with cow-
boys and country girls, but then, Wide
Spot was the only place to go within a
very large radius.
Now, when I drove into town, noth-
ing had changed, except that—I was
quick to notice—the old Rainbow Hori-
zon Bar had become an appliance store
and secondhand-clothing drop. There
was a dog sleeping in the doorway that
did not appear anxious to move.
The first side street in town seemed
abandoned. There were small houses—
possibly the homes of former laborers at
the defunct talc mine nearby—but no
sign of life, except for the crows pecking
along the street and around the trunk of
a sagging linden. I thought this street
might have been where we’d bought that
pot that gave us all a headache and a
slight sense of dislocation. Its only value
was that it entitled us to say that we were
smoking pot. It stank up our van so badly
that we threw away the tie-dyed cur-
tains. Halfway down the street was a nar-
row three-story brick building, with a
sewing-machine store on the first floor,
probably an apartment on the second,
with Tibetan prayer flags in the window;
the third floor was filled to the ceiling
with mattresses that pressed against its
window. In front was a chopper bike with
Sturgis stickers and expired New Mex-
ico plates. Of the next seven houses, four
appeared empty and one had broken
windows. I was looking for the county
chair of my party, who, the notes on my
phone said, was one Cornel Bowen, an
official with the savings and loan, which
I could see at the end of the street.
In the great river of American poli-
tics, I am no more than an endangered
snail darter, but like other politicians,
big and small, I’m to some extent mor-
tified to even have the job. Getting along
by going along is what got us all here,
but as my dad, an alcoholic dentist, used
to say about staring into dirty mouths,
“It’s a living.” The first political speech
I ever gave, on the virtues of Western-
ers, up at Fort Peck, went over quite well
with the crowd, though my cousin Earl
came up to me afterward and said, “You
sounded like ten pounds of shit in a six-
pound sack.” I should have quit while I
was ahead, but public respect trumps
self-respect in my book.
A vulture standing amid the flowers
in front of the savings and loan was un-
deterred by an irate employee shouting
and waving a clipboard. Whoa, some-
thing new! I stepped in to flush the bird
and found that it was dead and stuffed.
Clipboard pressed to her hip, the woman
cried, “Why would anyone do such a
thing?” I said, “It’s a vulture. Do you
know what vultures stand for?” I’m al-
ways saying the wrong things to women,
or maybe it’s how I say them. She shot
me an annoyed glance, and, as she started
toward the front door of the building,
I called out, “I’m looking for Cornel
Bowen.” She gave me the same wintry
smile my ex-wife used to save for quiet
evenings by the fire.“No longer with us. Goodbye. Take
the bird with you.”
She shut the door before I could ex-
plain that I hadn’t put the dadgum vul-
ture in the flowers. Then she popped back
out. “I suppose you’re with the papers.
This S.&L. doesn’t need your explana-
tion of what vultures stand for. Bowen is
at the courthouse treasurer’s office. No-
body here understands how he got from
here to there. You can drop the bird off
at his office with our compliments.”N
othing bespeaks times gone by—
good times that won’t come back—
like courthouses in towns like this, all
the slate, sandstone, granite, marble, cop-
per, and nostalgic European architecture
towering over a residual population with-
out the wherewithal to fix the pipes. In
the corridors, desks whose occupants
never look up, a smell of mildew and old
wood, ghosts at their rolltops—the pleas-
ant melancholy that Civil War buffs must
feel on the blood-soaked killing grounds.
Bowen didn’t acknowledge me. He
looked like an aging surfer dude, or what
I imagined an aging surfer dude might
look like. He was tanned, handsome,
and his gray hair had a hint of blond.
He stared at his paperwork with parted
lips and an air of despair befitting some-
one torn from better days.
“Cornel,” I said, after introducing
myself, “I’m making my way around the
state visiting all the good folks”—when
you campaign in Montana, it’s “folks,”
not “people” or “persons,” folks, folks,
folks, and more folks—“all the good
folks who supported me the last time,
hoping that what I’ve accomplished will
have them on board for the next cycle.”
“I didn’t support you.”
“Do what?”
“Nor would I.”
I examined my phone as though it
might explain the mistaken entry in my
notes. “I thought you were running for
state auditor.”
“Not running for state auditor,” Cor-
nel recited.
“Is that a real Rolex?”
“Oh, hell, no,” he said, as though I
were an idiot.
“And you’re no longer at the savings
and loan?”
“No!”
“Did you leave the stuffed vulture in
the flowers?”