Alone in Wolf Point

It's dusk by the time the train reaches Wolf Point. I'm the only passenger getting off and nobody else is getting on.

“Good luck now,” says the conductor, as I jump down onto the gravel. I look back up at him and he smiles apologetically, like, sorry we have to be leaving you here, ma'am.

The station is deserted. Across the road, in the fading light, I can make out a tyre shop, a saddlery, and a bar. Further up, the pink neon light of the Wolf Point Motel. I turn and watch the carriages as they begin to shunt off without me, off on the long, slow journey through North Dakota.

This is what you wanted, I remind myself. You're the one who said you wanted to be alone.


* * * * * *


But being alone in Wolf Point is harder than you'd think. At eight-thirty the next morning, the phone rings.

“Mornin' ma'am,” says a man's voice. “You about ready to go?”

Ready to go? I only vaguely remember the night before. I remember walking into the bar and finding it full of Mexican people. I remember the barman laughing when I realised, ignorant and confused, that I was in an Indian reservation.

“You thought we were Mexicans, lady? Guys, the lady thinks we're Mexican!”

I remember the men at the bar laughing, trying to remember the last time they'd met a tourist. I remember staring at one man's long, black plaited hair in awe. I remember the white guy in the trench coat, his arm replaced by a metal claw. I'd telepathed my mother back in Ireland: Mama, you'll never believe the things I saw!

I remember Sam, too, this cowboy on the phone this morning, who'd been so taken aback at the thought of a stranger in town he'd said he'd take me on a tour. I look at the clock and groan and hold my head. “You drink like an Indian, lady,” an Indian lady had said.

Sam is a solemn man: a wheat farmer in a baseball cap with land near the Canadian border. As we drive over the plains my hangover kicks in and paranoia convinces me that this is where I'll meet my maker: murdered and abandoned on a railway line. I chatter on inanely. If I show enough interest in my surroundings perhaps he'll let me live.

“Not many birds in Montana,” I say.

“No ma'am.”

“You've got a lot of wheat in Montana.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“You know I never learnt to drive, Sam?”

“I find that mighty hard to believe, ma'am”.

We drive all day, past wheat field after wheat field. Sometimes the road is so straight and the sky is so big and the wheat is so still that I wonder if we're even going anywhere at all. I stare straight ahead and think about my family back home. I can see my father's face caving in when he answers the phone. “She was found face down in the corn...”

On a particularly long stretch of empty road, my stomach lurches as Sam pulls over. It's been thirty miles or more since we passed another car, I'm sure.

“Why are we stopping here, Sam?”

He unbuckles his seatbelt and looks at me. Then he opens the door.

“I think it's about high time you learned to drive a car, ma'am...”