“You have to meet him,” Jill told me. “He’s going to love you as much as we do.”
And they were right. Arnie loved me right away, and I was intrigued by him. Arnie was older than the other boys I knew—twenty-three! Almost a real man. I loved talking with him. I thought he was the most intelligent, gentle, and sophisticated person I’d ever met. And he never lost his cool, even with my dad. When Dad said, “I would never let my daughter get serious about a skinny wop from New York,” Arnie just gave Dad a respectful smile and said, “Jack, your daughter is in good hands with this skinny New York wop,” and he swept me out the door, my hand in his.
Life at Jill and Frank’s house was warm and full of family love and laughter. I spent more time there when Arnie was in town, visiting with his family, eating as a group around a big table, laughing, cuddling, and talking late into the night. Before he went back to the army base in South Carolina we went on a few dates, dressing up and going to see Ella Fitzgerald at a Miami hotel, a gift from cousin Joe. Our next date took us to a Miami nightclub to hear Lenny Bruce, the raunchiest comedian of the day. I blushed through the show, which amused Arnie. No matter how I tried to hide it, I was a Kansas girl at heart.
When Arnie left, I missed him badly. We lived for the letters we wrote to one another and for the occasional long-distance phone call. Over spring break, Arnie proposed. I said yes in a heartbeat. I was wanted! I was adored! For the rest of the school year I proudly sported my diamond engagement ring, to the envy of the other girls.
After my high-school graduation, Johnny and I moved into our mother’s apartment back in Kansas. As soon as I could, I would leave there forever. She was zoned out, smoked a lot, and didn’t do much to help me get ready for my wedding, although she did perk up to go with me to buy our dresses (mine was ice blue with a long train and lots of pearls and lace, hers was a mocha cream silk and lace). Arnie’s mother filled my hope chest with embroidered aprons, linen tablecloths and napkins, and monogrammed towels from Portugal, and Nank planned to walk me down the aisle. Dad wasn’t invited to the wedding, a revolutionary act for me. But how could I invite him? When I told him Arnie and I were engaged, he said, “You’ll never get into a country club married to that wop.”
Arnie’s family became mine as soon as we married, and when we visited them every year in Florida, I would take off alone to visit my father. I wanted to believe I had a connection to my family, too, even if it meant putting up with my dad showing me off at his country club and sitting through his third and fourth martini while he and Marty argued over the smallest things, and he criticized everything and everyone in sight. I didn’t like his macho style or how I felt with him or his comments about me—he liked to say, “You’re just a girl, you’ll never amount to anything,” as his eyes lowered to stare at my breasts—but I was determined to keep up the illusion as long as I could.
Now Arnie, Robin, and I were family, and that was not an illusion. But I was leaving them. I wasn’t going to get my father on the phone and tell him what I was doing. He would claim to have been right all along, and he wouldn’t have been right about anything. I didn’t want his or anyone else’s comments to mar the fragile foundation of my choice. My stability was essential as I pioneered the new landscape of my life.
Winter came hard and cold in the Rockies, but I loved the snow and the adventure of driving through it to work at the Little Bear. Live music rocked the tavern nights and weekends, and tips were good. For added income I pulled out my jewelry-making tools, bought some more silver and supplies, and started up a business I called Every Cloud Has a Silver Lining. Back in New York, jewelry-making had been a good time-filler. Now it would be part of my livelihood. A cook at the Little Bear built me a workbench using wood from old, abandoned sheds in fields nearby. That bench was the focal point of my living room, next to the big rock fireplace where fires roared all winter as I created hundreds of hollow silver beads for necklaces out of sterling, then set uneven rounds of turquoise stones for the pendants, belt buckles, and earrings. I fit right in with the locals and became one of Johnny’s favorite artists at his gallery.
Every mountain girl needs a dog, and it was time for me to get mine. I chose the pick of the litter, a Golden Retriever puppy I named Jeremiah Johnson, and we became inseparable right away. Any loneliness that crept in vanished when Jeremiah and I stepped outside under that starry sky. Some afternoons before work I’d jump into the Jeep with Jeremiah and drop by Johnny’s for a visit. He and Cherrie were supportive of me and my choices, and they never wavered in their love for Arnie and Robin. These were unusual times.
And every Sunday, I called “home.” Arnie and I talked long and deeply, like the friends we had always been. “Robin misses you a lot, Kernie, and I miss you, too, my blue-eyed Kansas girl,” he would say. “But I get that you have to do this.” I felt incredibly fortunate to have a husband so supportive of me. But eventually it was time to make agreements over visiting rights and put the divorce papers through with lawyers we hired. Our uncontested divorce would be finalized in about a year.
One bitter cold January day, two tall cowboys walked through the swinging saloon doors at the Little Bear. “Who is that?” I asked another waitress, as the doors swung shut behind them and the men looked around for a seat.
“Rick and Victor,” she said. “They come in from time to time.”
I hung back to get a good look. The men wore Stetsons perfectly perched on their heads, topping weathered faces. They looked like real cowboys to me.
I maneuvered my way into getting their table, introduced myself, and asked for their orders. Rick’s emerald eyes sparkled when he looked at me, and chatting with them was easy. I accepted Victor’s invitation to join them for a drink at the end of my shift.
Before we finished our second pitcher these cowboys invited me to join them on a road trip to Aspen the next day. They sold Western-style belt buckles for a living, twenty dollars apiece, and the bars in Aspen in January were good business. I was in. I traded shifts with another waitress before I left the tavern to go pack. The next morning I was back in Evergreen to meet up with my new companions.
I climbed into the front seat of Victor’s pickup, settling in between two men who smelled like hangovers needing a shower. I was quite the contrast in my sunshine-yellow down vest, clean Levi’s, and flannel shirt, my braids tied with yellow velvet ribbons. It would be a grand adventure.
Rick and Victor were friendly cowboys, good men with big hearts, but when it came to money, these two really lived on the edge. As we drove out of town in Victor’s camper pickup I realized that my new friends not only had a nearly empty gas tank, but they had no gas money. Victor said, “We’re pretty embarrassed, ma’am, but we wonder if it might be possible to borrow twenty dollars from you to git us to Aspen. We’ll pay you back, no problem.”
“It’s true, Miss Kernie. We are terribly sorry, but we’re not gonna make it too far on no gasoline,” Rick said. I pulled out a twenty and we were on our way.
About an hour down the road, another twenty bought more Coors, and the men entertained me without pause for the six hours over the Continental Divide and into the quaint ski village of Aspen. All day I wondered which one I would sleep with, Rick or Victor. Rick was the cuter of the two, and he was charming in that effortless way of mountain men. I thought it would probably be Rick.
It’s freezing in late January at 8,000 feet, and the long, winding road into Aspen was terrifying and exciting with two singing cowboys in an old pickup with questionable brakes and no heater. What joy it was to see the glow of lights through a window at the Hotel Jerome and a big parking place for our rig at the side entrance.
The moment we entered, the real fun began. Out of the men’s sacks came the leather rolls filled with brass belt buckles stamped with bucking broncos, horseshoes, pine trees, and “COORS.” In no time, these guys had sold enough belt buckles to the men at the bar to pay for the evening. I was ready for a hot buttered rum. After my drink I took a walk while they worked a few more bars, and we met up again in an hour for some elk and venison with “taters” and beer. They handed me a couple of bills to repay me for the help getting there and stashed rolls of bills in their wallets. It had been a good night. After dinner they taught me to play pool. We