Blue God

Kamryn Pitcher

The sky was wide, the earth was old, and the heat rising from the asphalt seemed to meld the two together in aged harmony. In this part of the country, it was hard to tell where one person’s property ended and another’s began. Fields upon fields, cattle upon cattle, and a ubiquitous blue god that governed over them all. This god, unyielding in its beauty,  demanded nothing of its subjects but to thrive within the given nature of their surroundings. To thrive in love, to thrive in health, but above all, to thrive in perfect, earthly fellowship with one another. 

Thus was the spirit of Montana. Everything had its own place, its own pain, and its own time to change or stay the same. When one thing shifted in this land, everything around it warranted that shift, and when one thing stayed the same, the land was comfortable and content in the quiet constancy allowed them. If anyone ever left Montana, it was never for long—for everything inside oneself would draw them back to the mountains forever. It was behind those rocky giants that lived the ghost towns and small towns, geysers and glaciers, tractors and trailers, women and girls, and the same, unchanging, immortal cowboy. The cowboys, being the most ardent worshipers of the blue god, were clergymen, and the land beneath them their parish. Though their vestments were made merely of denim, leather boots, and a cowboy hat to top, they were considered holy in their own right. They lived in complete confidence knowing that they had found heaven or at least a piece of it. It is true they had been weathered by some time and some taxes, and that the larger part of the country had forgotten their existence. Still they held the state together like some invisible, almighty barbed wire fence, and never faltered in carrying out their duties faithfully. 

If anyone ever left Montana, it was never for long–for everything inside oneself would draw them back to the mountains forever.

The women, fearfully and wildly made, were the quilt that covered the men and the scripture by which they lived, for their love was as surrounding and persistent as the Montana winter. If a man were to fall, the woman would lift him to his feet. And if a man were to cry, the woman would never speak a word of it, for a cowboy’s tears were secret and sacred and they never reached beyond their women for they knew just that. The women were magicians, for they could conjure happiness from frying pans, warmth from sewing machines, and laughter from their multitude of lively stories. Their strength was matched only by that of the cowboy, and they wielded their wisdom upon the children in the same way the men loosened their lasso upon the calves. All was right by their making and all the strength of the cowboy could be found in their hands. 

The children were also conjured by the women and considered the greatest of all her marvelous tricks. Their beauty was rivaled only by that of the blue god, and their gap-toothed smiles were the crown jewels of the country. When one baby would cry, the entire state would weep, and when one baby would giggle, the entire state would erupt in laughter, for they were the inheritors of this land, and they carried the spirit of Montana more keenly than the rest. 

The animals never changed, bison and coyote alike. The cows could always be seen stretched out across the land in every direction, scattered across the earth like freckles on a child’s cheek or the spots of an appaloosa. The horses were as much a part of the land as the rivers and the sheep dog a most loyal companion to every man, woman, and child in want of a friend. Nothing could ever separate one from the other. Nothing would ever come between. For as long as the blue god lives, so shall Montana.