Two Lawmen & A Bear

I am in First Bank on Ski Road in Breckenridge with Zack who is opening a savings account. The bank officer is Zaa, a fiftyish slender woman with peroxide white teeth and mussed up short blonde hair sprayed to hold that way. She has a photo on her desk of a girl Zack tells me later looks exactly like his sister, Cristina. She has just told us that the bank serves bagels, donuts and coffee Saturday from 9 to12, and to come by. She will tell us then if Zack gets his ATM card. Because he is 14 there is a question as to whether they will issue one, but Zaa says she will do her best to see that he gets it. She has gotten to the part of the application where she has to put in a dollar amount of the deposit, and Zack hands over $200 in cash.

The idea of a cup of coffee has me hankering now so I ask Zaa where the nearest coffee bar is. She says Starbucks has opened on Main Street in a yellow house up around the 200’s. She adds that she can’t understand why people are willing to pay that kind of money for a cup of coffee, but the high school kids won’t drink anything less. For Zaa a 7/11 cup is perfect. Her own daughter pays $3.50 for a Mocha Java Slushy, and thinks nothing of handing over almost two bucks for a small cup of coffee called a Grande. It’s a status thing.

Zaa needs Zack’s social security number and I have to call Marilyn at the cabin to get it. We tease him that he hasn’t memorized it yet. Zaa says how he will need to give it to everyone in sight having to do with schooling, education, work and banking for the rest of his life.

As Zack is signing his name to multiple 14” long legal documents pouring out of the computer printer now, and initializing clauses releasing the bank from multiple responsibilities and acts of God having to do with his money being deposited in their bank, I tell Zaa about finding bear tracks on my hike out east on the Colorado Trail the day before, and how our dog Pebbles took one sniff and lit out back the way we came at a full out run, hackles up so high it looked like she had on a back pack.

Zaa says that not too far from the Colorado Trail where I was, a couple of miles up Tiger Run Road near the mining barge, two lawmen were killed by a black bear, one two nights before, the other just last night. My first response is visceral, that it could be the same bear, and she agrees. I should have been right there beside Pebbles with my own hackles up. She says that the rancher that found the lawmen was really upset, and I can understand this. I am also thinking why would the lawmen be out there two nights running in the first place, and what a coincidence to be killed by the same bear.

I say to Zaa, “Two lawmen were killed?” just to make sure and she tells me yes, the first one was bad enough but the rancher was really stricken when it happened again. Well, of course he would be, but what about the police force and the lawmen’s families, and what was this special connection with the rancher? And how come this didn’t get into the paper? There had been a story about a drunk on the front page who was suspected of stealing a computer from a parked police car, and when apprehended said he didn’t do it, while the arresting officer asked him then how come the computer was in his hands? And the drunk said he didn’t know, someone must have put it there.

Zack finishes up signing his name and initialing the sheaf of documents that are almost as thick as a mortgage loan package. He asks Zaa if he can deposit his paychecks from his summer job in Hawaii through the ATM, assuming he gets the card, and she says No, because the bank is only in Colorado, with a single, lonesome branch in Palm Desert, California. We all stand up and shake hands, Zaa must be well over six feet tall because she is looking down on my six foot two-ness. Zack gathers up his papers and we leave, get into the car and drive up the street to Starbucks in a little yellow clapboard house. Zack orders what Zaa’s daughter usually does, and I order the small coffee, called the Grande. I notice the medium sized coffee is called the Macho Grande, and the big coffee is called The Maximo Grande Grandissimo. Three teenagers are seated at a round table with their drinks and I wonder if the girl with the Mocha Java is Zaa’s daughter.

Zack and I sit and I start talking about the bear and the lawmen and how weird it all seems, only the rancher feeling so bad, and the coincidence of their being at his place two nights in a row, and the bear killing them and there being no news and... Zack interrupts, “Dad, they were llamas, not lawmen!” He looks at me as if I am considerably unhinged. I can’t help smiling with relief. Oh, is all I manage to say. Zack sucks his mocha through a straw and tries to figure out how to appear to not know me although we are at the same table. The other kids might recognize him when he goes to 9th grade in September and spread the word.