Helena Flats, Montana felt as if it had fallen out of tune.
After being away a few years, the changes in town seemed inescapable. New construction, heavier traffic and all the other predictable accompaniments of growth.
And something else, unpredictable and uncomfortable. He couldn’t put his finger on it but the town struck him as less graceful, perhaps more intense. Fewer angels fluttering about.
He had been back two months now, working in real estate. Fortunately, he hadn’t let his Montana real estate license lapse.
Business was feverish. All those people moving in from far afield, he’d never seen anything like it.
Those newcomers all told him, invariably with the same tone of grave conviction, that they were looking for what America used to be. Some were proud, some almost boastful to have found such a fine spot in Helena Flats, Montana.
They sounded like they were reading off the same limpid script.
Most folks told him they were thrilled to find a place where the America they stepped out into every day felt like the America they had grown up in.
They enjoyed the idea of being far away from a big city. Lots liked being close to Glacier National Park.
At first he was tempted to let these folks know there was no going back into yesterday’s America. At least he didn’t think so. Might even be dead wrong. But he felt it best to respect the opinions of the hidebound so smitten with the past.
Thinking this over one day at the DeSoto Grill in Kalispell, he remembered the conversation between Nick Carraway and Jay Gatsby in The Great Gatsby.
Nick told Gatsby he could not repeat the past. Gatsby’s response…
“Can’t repeat the past? Why, of course you can!”
The Great Gatsby reminded him it was best to cut some slack for these folks moving in.
Maybe they were just looking for a place to take it easy, a halcyon spot where they could step off the battlefields of the culture wars. Maybe Helena Flats, Montana seemed to fit the bill.
And maybe he was one of them.
Down in Lone Pine, California where he’d holed up for a year during COVID, he’d been anxious to get back up to Montana.
Such a chilling year watching his mother die and his stepfather methodically strip mining his inheritance.
He thought about that ammo box stuffed with his mom’s jewelry he’d buried down there. One of these days he’d dig it up.
But the real estate business was good and he’d ride it for a while.
