Sidney

The Yellowstone River flows north from Yellowstone Lake, from the national park in the upper left corner of Wyoming up into south-central Montana to the town of Livingstone, where it bears right and heads northeast. The river eventually empties into the Missouri River near the North Dakota border, 692 miles from its source. It is considered the major tributary of the Upper Missouri. For a long stretch in Montana, from Livingstone to Glendive, the interstate (first 90, then 94) roughly follows the Yellowstone. But you mostly can't see it from the highway.

You have more contact if you get off and follow the local roads down the long valley, roads that are sometimes paved, sometimes not. They are not reliable, though, and when one of these roads heads off north or south into the big expanse of northern plains, or just ends, one must get back on the interstate, at least for a time. But there's enough of the two-lane roads to make this one of my favorite drives in North America.

I set off well before dawn, chastened by the previous afternoon and evening's heat.... I saw few cars in the early hours—driving on one of the two-lane sections—and when I did the other driver would lift four fingers from the top of his or her steering wheel in greeting. The first couple times I worried that my response had come too late to be seen, so I started anticipating, lifting my four fingers almost simultaneously with my interlocutor's. You find this brand of motorist friendliness throughout the west, but only on roads that are used almost exclusively by locals.

I passed through the small towns of Custer and Hysham, where the residents were just starting to stir, then the larger railroad town of Forsyth, then more of the tiny sort, Cartersville and Rosebud and Hathaway.... The broad, shallow valley was gold where the hayfields had been cut, and paler gold in the far fringing hills, pale green along the river where cottonwoods grow, darker green in the cedar-y folds of the hills....

I stopped at a small grocery store in Terry for ice, and eyed the museum across the street. But I had visited it last year and decided to keep going.... At Glendive the interstate bears east and leaves the river valley, but I continued northeast on state road 16, still with the river, an hour up to the town of Sidney.

Sidney was my main destination for the day, where I planned to spend the afternoon, but the town was something of a bust. Mostly because it was so congested, with trucks and construction and working men—as are all the bigger towns in northeastern Montana and northwestern North Dakota. The reason is the oil boom. In recent years thousands of wells have been drilled to get at the oil shale and natural gas in the Bakken formation, and thousands more are underway or planned.

Sidney first boomed one hundred years ago, when the Lower Yellowstone Irrigation Project was completed; the area became a big producer of sugar beets. Farming is still important, cattle ranching too, but it's the oil that's driving the change and that sets the town apart from others of its size in the west or on the Plains.... Economically, I'm sure all the hectic activity is a boon, but the aesthetic results are not pretty....

I found the library next to the county courthouse, always a good place to look first. It was time, with the one o'clock temperature up to 93.

I scouted the small library for the best place to sit—a table near an outlet—and found my spot in the back by a window. Along the wall in front of me a woman sat at a carrel and on a chair beside her sat a tiny baby.

Actually it was a doll. I'd thought it was a real baby because it was so realistic. But I looked again, as something didn't seem right—children two or three months old don't usually sit up on their own, and support their neck so well, even if propped in the corner of a chair with a pink blanket.

From where I sat I could see the doll but only the arm of the woman, who was working on a laptop. I figured the doll was her daughter's, maybe, and the daughter was occupied elsewhere in the library. But, no, this was not the case.

After a time, the woman rose from her chair. She took a corner of the pink blanket and pulled it over the fake child's head. Then she went off to the bathroom.... When she came back she carefully removed the blanket and tended to the doll. She sat it up a little better, fixed the collar of its onesie, and smoothed its dark wispy hair. Still standing, she studied the doll baby.... After a moment she reached out and removed a piece of lint from its right shoulder, smoothed its hair again, and then, apparently satisfied, sat back down at her computer.

Later, after I was finished with my work, I was standing in the portico of the library looking through a pile of free books. The woman came out to get a can of Pepsi from a vending machine. She said to me, "Anything good?"

She was in her thirties, dressed in mom jeans and a black t-shirt. Her eyes were small and weak behind her small glasses, her hair a bland brown but fashionably cut. She had a pale complexion, modestly pretty features, and a butt noticeably large for her thin frame. She made and held eye contact in an unusually forward manner.

I waved a Murakami novel in the air, indicating I had indeed found something good.

She asked me where I was from, and after I said "Minnesota," she asked where exactly, and when I said, St. Paul, she said, "My brother is the acting chief of police of Minneapolis." She spoke in the manner of someone who makes stuff up but doesn't really know she's doing it—rather earnestly and with a naive frankness. But I had no reason, really, not to believe her. "I love Minnesota," she said. "I take the train out there, but I get off in St. Cloud because it's closer to my brother. He lives in Monticello."

She asked if I'd been to Sidney before, and I said that yes, I had, and then we talked of its transformation. She said, "I'm married to a farmer, but he's in the oil industry too, in sales." She told me that she had lived in the area all her life.

"My internet connection at home is terrible," she said. "That's why I'm here at the library. At home I can only watch YouTube late at night, that's the only time the computer's fast enough."

While we were talking, I was thinking of the baby in the pink blanket, sitting over on the other side of the library. I wanted to ask her about the doll, but I was afraid the question would be too personal. Though she mentioned her husband a few times, she said nothing of children. Had she lost a child? Was she unable to have children? Was she crazy? Was I?

She told me that she had come to the library to work on the website for her business, but I was too distracted to ask what the business was.

"If you want to see more books, you should go over to Good Cents." A thrift store with a large book section, she said. "And cheap, just a dime or a quarter for the books. Sometimes, you know, for some books, I don't like to pay full price. Plus, I always like to see what other people have been reading. It's so interesting.”

She tried to give me directions to the store. "Do you know where the Penney's is?" No, nor any of the other businesses or landmarks she mentioned. "Well, anyway," she said, "it's on Main Street. That's not this big street out here, that's Central, even though all the high school kids say, 'Let's cruise Main' when they really are going up and down Central. Just go down Main until you cross the railroad tracks, down by the grain elevators, you'll see it."

I wanted to talk more, but we came to a brief pause, and then she said she'd better get back. She said, "It was nice meeting you," and I said, yes, good to talk to you....

I walked to a nearby grocery store and bought a tomato, an avocado, and a cucumber. I bought a bean and cheese burrito from a trailer with Indiana license plates, set down in a gravel lot, then repaired to the town park and a patch of shade to eat.... Afterwards I tried to visit the MonDak Heritage Center, but they were closing just as I walked in. "I'd stay and let you look around," the woman said, "but I have to pick up my grandkids." I found Good Cents but it was closed too. This was when I decided I was disappointed with Sidney.

Though I was only ten or so miles south of the confluence of the Yellowstone with the Missouri, I took a road east and crossed into North Dakota. The road was busy with trucks of all sizes, coming from the east, and piling up behind me and riding close on my tail.

It occurred to me that maybe the business of the woman at the library, the website she was working on, had something to do with that well-tended doll. I had assumed damage, but I didn't really know anything about her.