Trust Me

PART TWO of a three-part story about FREEDOM, Includes 29 photos by St.Clair

Montana Cowboys, North Dakota Bikers, Water Pirates and Tourist Towns, Zombi Sisters, Devilwoman Hacker Girl, Scoundrels and Ranch Families.

All these and more team up with Matt Jones on the second leg of his journey from a church town in Florida into the HEART OF AMERICA'S DREAM.

MONEY, ADVENTURE, PROPHECY, DEATH AND FRIENDSHIP

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Excerpts

1) WE ANGLED to the right at the bottom of the bluff. We're almost to the highway when the heat kicked in. Hank Williams playing this time, followed by a swig from a little medicine bottle of Tequila in my coat pocket. Town's next. A visit to the bars with Frog and the local guys. The new guys in Red Lodge call our bunch the 'old guys' -new guys being mostly real estate and business investors from out of town. Probably Colorado, California, maybe Billings. I love the old guys. I'm not one of them, but I know where they came from. They came from a world of wild cards, wild horses and choices, not a world of predictable outcomes. There's so much difference between good-natured horseshit and limp bullshit that I can't even begin to speak about it. What can I say? It's a preference. I guess that's all it is.

2) ZOMBI SPRINGS was painted on the sign next to an opening through a barbed wire fence. A cattle-guard pit lay across the entrance. I turned in, gunned my motor and rode up to see if I could locate people on the hill who'd dish out a low-grade sandwich -- zombi brains if that's all they had to offer. I was starved. They were up there waiting. I ride uphill four miles, and all I see is slope. Then a square building shows up outside a zone marked Zombi Compound. A tall fence and gate block the entrance to the hot springs. The young staffer seated behind a clean computer asked to see my driver's license. Then he went to work with the screen. He nodded, returned my license, and said okay. I said how much. Not too much. I said what about food? No food except what you bring in with you, and it's twenty miles to a store. I said okay, it looks like boiled brains tonight. He said 'say that again', and I said never mind.

3) EASTERNERS have been known to run around in circles and snap at their tails when the sage smell first hits them. Their brains start running full speed ahead to gain distance. But they're out of shape with the thin air. Feelings have it all over them. I saw a brain tackled by feelings once where the dust didn't clear for a week. Or you could stay in Maryland and never know the difference. Not Dorothy, she made the trip. Except like everybody back there her brain had long and sturdy roots in the dirt of responsibility. When I found her, she was dazed, out of control, and drinking in Saratoga, Wyoming, before lunch. And she was in the process of being tossed out of the fancy steakhouse on Main Street by a man practicing his grip on her upper arm. "Are you drunk," I asked her after she bumped into me. "Not yet!"