Local journalism throughout Montana leaves an information hound starved. Headlines wreak of vacuous tales of life in small-ville. The best stories are those bits of micro-non-fiction in the police reports, which often include a dog and so much so you wonder if they shouldn’t just convert the entire department into animal control officers that have the power to hand-out speeding tickets. Somehow, from these snippets, an entire world unravels, at least in my imagination, bringing at least a bit of color to an otherwise drab rag.
Every now and again there is a clip that stuns and not for it’s journalistic merit or it’s beauty in prose necessarily.
A few weeks ago, I picked up some random section of the paper while waiting (the only time the paper seems appealing) and happened upon a 3 paragraph story. Three paragraphs giving a vague outline of a story, the kind that drops an idea and leaves you wanting for more.
To back-up just a bit, wandering around the remote country of Montana, mostly off the path most followed, I’ve often wondered when I would come across the remains of a body. When, mind you, not if. For whatever reason in my twisted consciousness the idea that some turn of events, be it foul-play or a casual stroll gone awry, the probability of death on the edges of a Montana wilderness and deep in its heart was entirely possible. Pair this notion with a predominant “type” of person often drawn to Montana– the loner recluse, seeking respite from a society gone awry (a la the Una-bomber)– and, yea, the idea of coming across an ‘unknown’ body in the woods seems less a figment of a morbid imagination.
So, when I randomly picked up the paper and read those 3 paragraphs about a year-old skeleton found on the banks of the Clark Fork by a man walking his dog, my imaginative story was suddenly reality. The skeleton was, no surprise, that of a transient whose death went unnoticed. For an entire year his body sat, decaying. No family was wondering why they hadn’t heard from him, no friend went to the police worried. He simply vanished from the planet one day.
It left me wondering. When this skeleton was an animated, live human being, was he ever a happy, sweet little boy with all the world and life in front of him and a mother who loved him, worried after him? Was there some distinct moment when he began to disappear from the world, slowly slipping off or was he never truly afforded any of that? Could some chance encounter with the right person along the way have pulled him back, saved him from slipping? As a highly social species and, I believe, one capable of caring altruistically for one another, there is a ripe fear in this ‘disappearance’ concept for me. That someone could just die one day and no one has so much as a fleeting thought or a pause of longing for that soul; just ain’t right.
It all sits heavily with me. This concept. Those three paragraphs. A life lost down by the river.