Free On the Right Side of a Dream by Sheila Williams

do. If I’d listened to every damn fool who told me I couldn’t do something, or shouldn’t do something, I wouldn’t get out of bed in the morning. It’s amazing how much you can get accomplished if you don’t give a damn about what other people think.”
    Millie was the kick-in-the-ass, get-up-off-your-behind match striker that I needed to push me into the arena with the lions. She didn’t take prisoners and she didn’t listen to excuses.
    “ ‘Shit or get off the pot.’ That’s what they used to say,” she’d say in a voice sharp as a whip.
    Yeah, that’s what they used to say all right.
    Now she was gone.
    I looked out across the ridge, past the town and the canyon, toward the red rocks. I tried to feel the vortex but I didn’t. I dabbed my eyes and blew my nose and prayed that the red rocks could spare just a little bit of energy for me.
    Too soon I was sitting in a cylinder made of steel and other heavy things zooming through space at an altitude high enough to make your nose bleed. If God had meant for folks to fly, wouldn’t he have made us with wings? I was on an airplane from Flagstaff to Missoula, headed to Paper Moon, Montana, just off I-90, east of Montana State Route 93, and at least thirty miles from anything else. When it comes to Paper Moon, it doesn’t matter where you are coming from, you can’t get there from anywhere.
    The captain’s voice came over the loudspeaker. Cheerfully, he told us that we were flying through the jet stream so there might be a “little turbulence.” Yeah, right. The next “little” bump nearly threw me into the seat of the young man next to me who had a spike in his nose. I had been wondering where else he had spikes.
    “Oh, excuse me,” I muttered, trying to get situated again and keep from wetting my pants. He grinned and said, “That’s cool.” Lord, he had a spike in his tongue, too.
    The plane swooped down beneath the clouds then banked to the left as it made the approach to Missoula International. It was a bumpy ride down but I didn’t notice the turbulence this time. I stared out the window at the snow and the patches of brown here and there, the ribbons of gray and white that snaked between. In another two hours, I would be in Paper Moon.

Chapter Five
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    I didn’t know how much I missed Paper Moon until Jess turned off at Exit 12A, Silver Spring Road. There’s no silver and there’s no spring. Somebody just thought that would be a nice name for a road. There is nothing like the cool, dark green of a western Montana forest and the beauty of the sunlight warming the snow-covered surface of Arcadia Lake. It was still winter and Montana wouldn’t throw off the cold and the snow for at least two months. Winter here is the real deal and not for sissies. There were several feet of snow on the ground and the wind felt as if it was visiting with relatives from the Arctic Circle.
    I stuck my nose out the window. The icy air froze my lungs and made me cough. It felt good. I smiled, closed my eyes, and enjoyed it.
    “Juanita, that desert has dried out your brains,” Jess commented. “Only the dog hangs his head out the window. What’s the matter with you? Silly woman,” he murmured. “Move your head.”
    I pulled my head back in and he raised the window. I snuggled into the multilayered coat that Jess had brought for me to wear. I had a winter coat, but Jess said it wouldn’t keep a buffalo’s butt warm. “An Ohio coat,” Jess called it, not heavy enough for the winters out here.
    We’d been riding in silence since Missoula. I was in a thoughtful mood. Jess would glance over at me once in a while, probably to see if I was still awake. I was getting to know this place all over again. And, after the scorching heat of Arizona, my bones had to get used to the bitter cold that seeped through coats and gloves and hats and settled in the marrow of your bones. I was comparing the wide open spaces of the northwestern plains with the wide open