"Do you know that most of these houses have a golf hole on them?" Alex asks.
"No, I didn't."
"Yeah, when you went up to the firehouse yesterday the owner of the bar told me that they play a round of golf on all of them. I think it's happening today, maybe tomorrow. They just drive from house to house playing the holes."
"How cool!"
We get into town and when I say town I mean to the intersection of the main road with a dirt road that has on its corners a bar and a park. "Did you know that the guy the park is named after died last month?"
"No."
"Yeah he left here awhile ago and went to California and made millions of dollars. When he came back he gave the extra money away to the community. It was his money that built the park, and fixed up the schools and helped a lot of people out."
"Wow!"
"Well, I guess every town has one."
"That reminds me of my grandfather, I wonder who'll replace them."
In the park, people are setting up for YorkFest, a yearly festival whose highlights are a duck race, silent and live auction and Bratwurst! Get your Bratwurst! I know you want one!
When we got there, at about 8:30 in the morning, I found Naomi. "Let me get you your papers."
"So, where would you like me to set up?"
"Oh, wherever ya like. You could take the gazebo if you want or one of the picnic tables."
"Okay, I'll look around and then I'll bring you back the paper."
Alex and I bring my stuff to a picnic table near the entrance, bratwurst lady and YorkFest T-shirt selling table. I look at the paper and see that I need to donate $20 to the fire department in order to set up. "I hope I make back the 20" I say to Alex as I fill out the paper.
Company Name: (Crap what do I write) Elliott Enterprises
Address: Big Sur, Ca (?)
Service Rendered: Tarot Card Reading (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
I give Naomi the money, Alex leaves to go back to camp and I set up my table. I duct tape the Tarot Reading sign, that I made last night on the back of a Pabst box, to the front of my table. On the right-hand side of the table I lay out the various "hippie" books that I have: one on tarot reading, the one on past lives that I bought in Portland, and two aromatherapy books. In the middle I lay out the rectangular green and black scarf; on top of this I place my tarot cards.
Then I set to work writing down some information about the readings I'm going to offer, random things I'm going to put on the table, and a short description of what a Tarot deck is. The readings are a simple 6 card spread for $3, a middle 10 card spread for $5 and a 24 card yearlong spread for $7. The simple and middle spreads are for answering specific questions: the first giving limited information, the second giving in depth information. The things on the table that I explain are aromatherapy, the healing properties of a few stones that I have (celestite, crysacolla and jade), and my pendulum. My description of the cards explains the different suits, the governance of astrological signs on the cards, the combination of many different religions' symbols and how I relate
the cards to each other to explain them to the enquirer. These explanations I put to the left of the scarf along with the stones, pendulum and aromatherapy oils I've mixed together in the past: things for sore throats, coughs, muscle pains, depression and a few perfumes.Then I sit and shuffle the cards, turn them around so that none are upside down and wait for a customer. The people start trickling in at about 10. I say hello to everyone: some of them give me a dismissive hi, some ask how my morning is going but all pass on. I decide to order the cards by suit; in the middle of doing this an older man walks up to the table with his wife and son. He wants me to read his year. During the next few hours I get about 10 people, most wanting me to read about their upcoming year because they can't think of a good question. They are mostly women in their 40s. A lot of them are going through divorces. I have three children, each ones reading is very accurate according to their parents.
After the other stands close up I have a line of 10 people waiting for a reading. Alex keeps them all interested and talking: one is a young mother from Helena who asks me to make some medicine for her. She doesn't have health insurance and she's had a cold for months. I make an oil for her to rub on her face and neck that I really hope helps her heal. There is also an attorney from Helena who has a pet chicken and wants to know what will happen with his work in the next few months. Three of the important women from the town, one of which is going
through a terrible divorce all want to know about their upcoming year. They tell Alex and I that we should take some Bratwurst for free since there's extra.(Everyone was exceedingly kind. Some were desperate, some were skeptical but most were just curious. They'd all avoided tarot readers because they seemed like scary people or because it was just too expensive.)
When I'm doing my last reading Naomi tells Alex that people want to buy us drinks at the bar and that I can set up down there if I want to read some more. Alex and I pack up all my stuff and head to York Bar, home of the best cheeseburgers in Montana; I don't know what they do to them but they're amazing! A band is playing good rock music on a stage in back of the bar. We walk in and the bar, which used to be a post office, then a store, then a restaurant, and it's filling with people, local people being as all the people from Helena have left by now. As we're ordering Fat Tires, Bob whose family has been in York since the late 1800's, starts up a conversation with Alex and I.
"So how'd your readings go? I hear you'wer the most popular table!"
"They went really well" I say, "I think they made sense to most of 'em."
"Well good!"
"So which house is yours?" I ask.
"The last one before you get down d'the campsite."
"Are those your cows? The black ones?"
"Oh yeah, I've got 40 cows out there but they're knockin' down my fence- I just cut al'la hay 'n they're real anxious d'get down there d'the other field."
He talks about the cows and the fence posts and his other property down the road for a bit and Alex asks, "So, do you know anyone around who could use some help?"
"Well, whatdya know how t'do?"
"I do everything except electrical."
He thinks for a moment or two, "Well I've got a cabin that I wanna get finished b'fore the winter."
"I was thinking that people might have things they hadn't gotten done."
"Well I can take you on for about a month, maybe six weeks. I wouldn't pay ya that much."
Alex looks at me, and I say, "Oh we wouldn't ask for much, just $20 a day and some lunch would be good."
"Oh!" he says knowing that's too low, "I was thinking more like eight dollars an hour."
"That'd be fine" I say.
"And I've got a trailer down in Helena that my son could bring up. You could sleep in that, might be nicer'n a tent."
"So should I come see you on Monday?" asks Alex.
"Well, why don't I come up to the camp tomorrow and I'll find you guys."
"Sounds good."
"You don't need anything now do you?"
At the same time we say, "Oh no! We're fine."
"Oh yea, you've made all that money reading the cards" he smiles to me.
Some of his friends show up about then and we stay on and talk for a bit then we go outside to smoke. Out there we meet Danny who's moved to Montana after 20 years of trying to get here. He's in his 30s, owns 40 acres out by the Missouri River and works out at the Blue Gem Mine, mining sapphires. Somehow I get myself signed up for the wet t-shirt contest that's happening at 9:00 so I go back to the car and put on a little black skirt that just shows from under the big white YorkFest shirt they've given me.
When I get back to the bar it's filled with more people. I meet the people Danny works for: a tall thin man and a woman also tall and thin with long white hair. The man shows me some of the raw sapphires that he's carrying in his pocket and also a little bit of gold that they've found. "So how did you decide to mine sapphires," I ask.
"Well" he says, "I mined so much gold that it lost its shine. But sapphires are amazing, they come in all different colors. Do you know that a ruby is a sapphire that's in the shade of red?"
"I didn't know that. The ruby's my birthstone."
Sometime between meeting them and me doing more tarot reading, is the wet t-shit contenst. (Sadly I didn't win: I think my boobs were just too small. The winners were an Asian woman with fake boobs, Naomi who I think totally deserved to win after all her hard work, and a younger girl with a piercing.)
After that, a few women want their cards read, and I shouldn't do it cuz I'm drinking but I do anyway. I read for the white-haired woman and afterward she askes if I might like to come up to the mine sometime next week. I tell her that I'd love to come on Tuesday. Tuesday is fine with her. I read for some of the other ladies and then I start getting really cold because I'm still wet and Alex and I decide its time to go back to camp and sleep.
All in all it was a productive day. I made us about $120, Alex got a potential job and I got an invitation to go to the sapphire mine.
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