Chapter 2: Violet, MT
Hailing a cab at Billings–Logan International Airport proves significantly more glacial than flagging one of the aggressive, tourist-hungry cabbies in Times Square. When one finally comes around the bend and drifts to the curb, the old, paunchy man who gets out valiantly heaves my suitcase into the trunk, though it clearly leaves him winded.
“Where to, partner?” he wheezes.
“You know a town called Violet?”
His face changes. “I’ve heard of it. Must be a ways, though. Gotta warn ya—the fare won’t be cheap.”
“That’s fine.”
“Look, mister, I don’t usually go out that way. Nothing personal.”
I fish a twenty from my wallet and hold it up. “How about now?”
He eyes it, sighs, and takes the bill. “Alright. Get in.”
We’re driving for about thirty minutes, during most of which the driver—Bart—goes off on a tangent about the state of the national park system. I smile a couple of times and nod at him in the rearview, mostly turning my attention out the window to the vast expanse of big, empty country—a stark difference from the urban jungle I’ve lived among, or around, for almost all my life.
The absurdity of it all strikes me again. Granted, I never knew much about my biological family, but it was never on my bingo card to inherit a general store in what feels like, at least the closer we get, just might be the Old West.
“So, you visiting family?” Bart asks.
“Not exactly. Just tending to an estate.”
“Ah. Well, my condolences.”
“Appreciate that, Bart, but none needed. I didn’t really know him.”
I explain I was adopted, and Bart seems fascinated.
“Well, heck of a thing that you still came up with a little inheritance. A windfall, I’d say.”
“We’ll see,” I say. “You know anything about this town?”
“Not much, and don’t care to. Just stories.”
“What kinds of stories?”
“Violet,” he says. Not a question. A diagnosis.
“That’s what it says.”
“Ain’t been out that way in a while.”
“Is there a problem?”
He doesn’t answer right away, just pulls out onto the two-lane highway that stretches toward the horizon like a gray ribbon laid across an unmade bed of brown and gold. The sky is doing that thing Montana skies do—being too big, too present, too much of itself. I feel like an ant under a magnifying glass, except instead of a cruel kid focusing the sun’s rays, it’s just the sheer indifferent vastness of the American West reminding me how small I really am.
“No problem,” the driver finally says. “Just don’t get many folks heading out that way. Town’s not much.”
“I’m not looking for much.”
What I’m looking for is an escape hatch from the slow-motion car crash my life has become. A deadline I can’t meet, a bank account running on fumes, and a second novel that’s metastasized from supernatural thriller into the kind of navel-gazing family drama that would make my agent weep and my publisher demand their advance back. The letter from Room, Whitaker & Stone LLP had arrived like a life raft thrown to a drowning man. I had a great-uncle. Said great-uncle had died. Said great-uncle had left me property—a general store in a town called Violet, Montana, population not enough to matter.
We drive in silence for twenty minutes. The landscape shifts from open plains to rolling hills, the road climbing and dipping like a lazy sine wave. Every now and then we pass a farmhouse or a rusted-out barn, but mostly it’s just grass and sky and the occasional cluster of cattle watching us pass with the blank disinterest of creatures who long ago accepted the meaninglessness of existence.
I’m starting to drift off—the redeye from JFK and the layover in Denver have left me running on fumes—when the driver speaks again.
“You a writer?”
I blink awake. “What makes you say that?”
“I seen your picture somewhere. Then I remembered. The newsstand in the airport.”
“Guilty as charged.”
“What kind of stuff you write?”
“The kind that’s apparently not selling well enough to keep me in New York.”
He actually laughs at that—a real one, dry and rasping. “Well, Violet’s got stories alright.”
“What kind of stories?”
The driver’s eyes meet mine in the rearview again, and for a moment I see something there—a flicker of something that might be warning, or might be the simple wariness of a man who’s lived long enough to know some questions are better left unasked.
When we finally pull into town, it’s like a Hallmark card with the warm, shiny veneer stripped away. Lining the main road—which is also the highway—are an array of buildings that shift from brick to wood-sided, some looking like they’re old enough for a wagon off the Oregon Trail to have made a pit stop at. There’s even a building with a simple sign reading SALOON that could’ve been lifted right out of an Eastwood movie set.
A red-brick city hall with a white dome sits proudly on the corner, and across the street, a little white church with a rising steeple.
Bart pulls up to the side of the road, and I realize several pairs of eyeballs are on me as I step out of the cab and stretch. Bart heaves the suitcase out, then hastily gets back in the driver’s seat and shuts the door.
“Hey, what about the rest of the fare—”
He speeds off. Whatever I’d paid him upfront, it wasn’t worth sticking around.
The locals tell me when I stop into Bank’s Saloon (following the six-and-a-half-hour air travel debacle) that the Breaker General Store had once been the shining center of commerce in this dusty little town in the middle of nowhere Montana.
Not their words, mine.
“So you’re a famous writer, huh? Not often we get one of those in our town.” The bartender’s name is Gary, and he smiles a toothy grin with several gaps when I tell him I write books, like it’s the funniest damn thing he’s ever heard.
“Yeah, or at least I try to. Sort of why I came here. That and my little estate I’ve been left.”
“Boy,” says a plump woman balancing on a barstool, what should be precarious given the sheer optics but somehow moving with the grace of a Russian ballerina as she swivels to face me, “if you’re looking for a muse to strike you I’m thinking you came to the wrong place.”
“And why’s that...” I see on her gray oil-stained uniform that there’s a nametag in red that reads Rusty’s Auto Care and below it: Paula.
“’Bout the only thing that strikes here is the lightning.”
“Lots of storms, huh?” I say, looking out the window into a mostly sunny big sky country sort of day.
“Not many,” says Gary. “But the ones that do come in tend to pack a wallop. Town’s never quite the same after.”
He’s wiping down the same filthy mug with a rag and doesn’t seem to be making any progress. I finish my beer and slide it across the counter, and start fishing around in my wallet, which doesn’t take long because aside from my American Express teetering on the edge of overcharged, there’s only a five and a twenty to choose from.
“So about that lawyer? Mr. Room?”
“Right,” says Gary. “You should be able to find him in his office. Down at the Cheyenne.”
“Another bar?” I say, half joking and slapping down the five.
“That’s the motel,” says Paula. “I’d imagine that’s where you’d want to stay, unless you want to be sleeping with the critters that have taken residence in your little ‘estate.’”
“Right,” I say. “I’m a nature lover and all but probably a good idea.” Though I swallow inwardly wondering just how I’ll pay for that.
Gary eyes the five, puts a hand on it, narrows his beady eyes. “Change?”
I swallow again. “No, keep it.”
“Much obliged, Mr. Author.”
“Just Jack is good.”
I turn to walk out. Some of the other locals—who I assume are the sort of regulars who darken the doors of this place on maybe a constant basis—give me sidelong glances. One particularly cheerful drunk man chortles into a laughing fit and raises a glass, and a gaunt-faced, emaciated woman holding a cigarette between trembling fingers winks.
“Helluva place,” I mutter. When I reach the swinging saloon doors (a novelty as they lead immediately to an actual glass swinging door, with all sorts of stains and dirt so that it’s barely translucent) I turn back for a moment. Paula and Gary are muttering to each other.
The Cheyenne Lodge Hotel is a three-story building at the end of Main Street, and across from it a church with a little white steeple. Or mostly white. Two sides of it facing the road are blackened, like it’s been burned at one point. Maybe folks in a town like this don’t like dealing with insurance companies. Hard to say, I guess.
When I walk in, it’s like stepping into even more of a time warp than the bar. There’s a coziness to it, like I’d imagined a frontier lodge, but themed and decorated with a smattering of overly gaudy Native American trappings. For a second I wonder what kind of offense an actual Native might take, but when I see the girl working behind the counter—a tan-skinned, pretty-looking thing with jet-dark hair—and the bigger man walking down the hall toward me in the lobby with deep, varied wrinkles and long braided hair resting on his shoulders and a cowhide jacket, those wonderments are displaced.
“Afternoon,” he says. “You passing through?”
“Staying for a while, I think.”
He seems surprised. “I see. We’re a little short on rooms at the moment.”
The town thus far hasn’t exactly seemed to be bustling with tourists or commerce or any corporate business retreats.
“You got room for a writer? I’m low maintenance, I promise.”
“A writer? You’re here for Room.”
“That’d be great.”
“Wait here,” he says, flashing a smile.
The girl at the counter catches my gaze and then looks away.
What is it with these people?
A moment later a voice calls my name. All of it.
“Jackson Breaker-Sanchez.”
Down the stairs comes a dark man in a dark suit—Armani, maybe. I recognize the type from some of the highfalutin parties I’ve had the pleasure/displeasure of getting invited to as a burgeoning author, primarily on the Upper East Side. And the suit seems to deepen the smoothness and complexion of his face and his whole manner. He’s tall, moves confidently, and could have been a retired linebacker for all I know. Short black hair and a finely tuned and trimmed black mustache.
He comes close, and I smell cologne like smoke and ash. He extends a hand.
“I’m Theodore Room. We corresponded about your great-uncle’s estate.”
I shake his hand. His grip is firm, his palm dry, and something about the way he holds eye contact makes me feel like I’m being assessed. Measured.
“Mr. Room. I tried calling your office a few times—”
“Yes, I apologize for that. Phone service out here is unreliable at best. I find it’s easier to simply wait for clients to arrive. Shall we?” He gestures toward the Lodge. “I’ve taken the liberty of arranging a room for you. We can discuss the particulars of the estate after you’ve had a chance to settle in.”
“Actually, I was hoping to see the store first.”
Room’s smile doesn’t waver, but something behind his eyes shifts—a flicker of something that might be surprise, or might be satisfaction. “Of course. Initiative. I appreciate that in a client. This way.”
He sets off down the main street without waiting to see if I follow. I grab my bags and do, feeling the weight of unseen eyes on my back. When I glance at the diner windows, I could swear I see faces there, watching. But when I look directly, there’s nothing but condensation and the dim shapes of empty booths.
“Violet has an interesting history,” Room says as we walk. “Founded in 1879 as a trading post, incorporated as a town in 1885. The general store—your store, now—was established by your great-great-grandfather Paul Breaker that same year. It was the commercial heart of the community for nearly a century.”
“What happened to it?”
“Fire. Electrical, they believe, though the investigation was never conclusive. Your great-uncle James was... not in the best of health toward the end. The store had been struggling. Some theorized he let it go deliberately.” Room shrugs elegantly. “Insurance investigators found no evidence of arson, so the matter was dropped.”
“And my great-uncle?”
“Heart attack. Three days after the fire. The stress, they say.”
We reach the store—or what’s left of it. Up close, it’s worse than it looked from the Lodge. For a writer who cut his teeth on his fair share of clichéd short stories, many of which involved some haunted locale—and one which actually did center around a literal haunted house—maybe I shouldn’t be so surprised upon seeing the macabre, ramshackle pile of studs and boards that may as well be bones in a rotted-out casket. The fire has gutted the interior, leaving only the skeleton of the structure standing.
The sign above the porch is half-intact: Violet Convenience, and beneath that, faded into the wood, older letters spell out Violet Sundries and Goods.
“While it is technically condemned at the moment, I’m told the structure is sound. Mostly,” Room says, reading my expression. “The Sheriff mainly closed it off to stave off vandals, and a group of townsfolk with a particular historic interest. The foundation, the load-bearing walls—all salvageable with proper restoration. The lot alone is worth a fair amount, given its location on the main thoroughfare. You could rebuild, or you could sell.”
“Who would buy?”
“There’s a gentleman in town—Rudy Armin, runs the Storm Front Diner—who’s expressed interest in the past. The families have history. I could facilitate an introduction, if you’d like.”
I’m not really listening. I’m looking at the store, trying to reconcile this charred skeleton with the inheritance I’d imagined—some quaint small-town shop I could flip for enough money to buy myself another year of scraping by.
“For now, why don’t you get settled in. I left the key to the store in your room for you.”
Cold resignation settles over me. I flew out here with the hope that whatever I’d inherited would be something worth selling, something that would keep me afloat for a while longer and pay my parents’ mortgage for at least a few more months—until I can get the next contract signed.
I follow Room back across the road, looking back at the general store. I think to myself maybe I can revert to writing cheesy R.L. Stine–esque stories for kids, and make it some horror tale about a twisted store owner.
“I imagine you have plenty of questions. I find the best answers come while in motion.”
I do have a lot of questions, and start cataloging them in my brain like a Rolodex as we stride back out onto the main drag of town, a handful of cars passing by.
“Well go ahead. Shoot.”
“I barely knew my dad. Didn’t even know my great-uncle was still alive and never met him. So why do I inherit this family business out of nowhere?”
“I’d say by default... but Mr. Breaker had a few different relatives he could have chosen instead. He was insistent that you have it. Why is one question I don’t have a good answer to. He was self-assured and not known for explaining himself from what I can glean.”
“Uh-huh. So you’re not from around here?” I figure as much, but now I have the leeway to ask.
“I’m from a little of everywhere, Mr. Breaker. But no, I got called in to handle his legal affairs after his former legal adviser, a local man, kicked the proverbial bucket right in the throes of getting the estate prepared.”
“Lots of bucket kicking going on around here lately then.”
“No more than any other aging population, Mr. Breaker.”
When we swing back around the corner I see the store again, looking all the more like a soulless husk of a building beneath a gathering expanse of light gray overcast sky and the rolling hills beyond. It sits lonely, apart from the main row of buildings. Room explains that when it was built it was meant to be the central hub of town, but a rough storm one year took out the buildings surrounding it in a lightning-sparked fire. The general store was spared.
“Doesn’t seem all that promising,” I say.
Room nods thoughtfully. “You could tear it down, sell the plot of land it sits on. Though I don’t think you’d get a handsome sum by any means. Plus the locals would roil to see it go.”
“Why’s that?” I ask. “Seems like more of an eyesore than anything else.”
“It represents something, Mr. Breaker. Resilience. Remaining when everything else changes.”
Room glances behind him, and then up to the sky. I follow his gaze, trying to listen for something in case I missed whatever it was. Nothing.
“I do have another appointment, Mr. Breaker,” he says suddenly. For some reason I don’t buy that either, but figure maybe he’s just had enough hemming and hawing over some writer’s quandary about what to do with his dead great-uncle’s burnt-out business.
“Let me know what you decide, and I’ll see what arrangements I can help make. Though if I might offer you one piece of advice, sleep on it.”
“Thanks for the advice, but the most sleeping on anything has ever done for me is give me a crick in the neck and a penchant toward early drinking.”
“You’d be surprised, Mr. Breaker,” Room says, walking away now and calling back over his shoulder, his pristine Armani suit looking terribly out of place against the backdrop of the main drag of the little town. “Violet has a way of changing people’s minds.”