What was in the box that Duane taped inside the saddlebag was a deed, a letter and a small brass key, and Lloyd Haugen handed it to me at his kitchen table near Sturgis with a cup of coffee going cold between us. He had not opened it. He is a retired lineman, and he told me that a man who climbs poles for thirty years learns that some things are not his to touch. The deed was for forty acres on a creek outside Hill City, in the name of Norma Jean Riggins, bought in 1994. Duane had told me once that he liked to drive there on his days off to look at the sky.
The letter was in his block capitals, the same ones he used on every work order for Black Hills Power. “NORMA. IF YOU ARE READING THIS THEN CODY OR BRANDI HAS SOLD THE BIKE, AND I AM SORRY FOR BOTH OF THEM. THE LAND IS YOURS. THE KEY OPENS BOX 77 AT THE FIRST FEDERAL IN RAPID. THERE IS EIGHTY NINE THOUSAND DOLLARS THAT I SAVED FROM OVERTIME AND NEVER TOLD YOU ABOUT. CODY BORROWED AGAINST OUR HOUSE TWICE. I PAID IT BACK AND DID NOT TELL YOU. I WAS A COWARD ABOUT THAT. FORGIVE ME.”
I read it three times and then once more out loud, and Lloyd, who had his hat in his hands, said quietly, “Mrs. Riggins, your daughter in law has called me four times about those saddlebags.” I thought of Brandi in my kitchen in a good blouse saying she wanted to clear the garage, and Cody next to her at the lunch after the service looking at his shoes. Duane had known his son. He had spent years building a quiet bridge under me in case the river rose. I folded the letter into my purse next to my dispatcher whistle and told Lloyd I would be back for coffee on Sunday.
A taped box gave one daughter in law the length of a Sunday to bring her mother in law back to the truth in Rapid City.
I gave my terms to Cody and Brandi on Sunday at the kitchen table of Lloyd near Sturgis, with Lloyd in the corner holding the saddlebag, a lawyer named Teddy Running Bear with his briefcase, and my dispatcher whistle on the table. I said the house papers would be signed back over to me, that every loan against the house would be paid off by them, and that the money from the sale of the Harley would be placed in a trust for the first grandchild of Duane. I said that I would not mention the box, the key or the land. I did not need to.
Brandi talked first. She said Duane had told Cody, in his last week, that there was a hidden compartment on the bike, and that Cody believed it was cash. Cody owed money to a buddy in Spearfish, and Brandi had decided to move fast. She said she told herself it was only a motorcycle and an old man would not mind. “I offered Lloyd five hundred dollars for the saddlebags because I thought the box was in there and I thought he would sell,” she said. Then she added, small, “I did not know it was for you.” I said, “The label says so, Brandi. In capital letters.”
Cody lunged across the table, snatched the saddlebag out of the arms of Lloyd, meaning to run to his truck with it and drive off, and he bolted out through the porch door and down the steps with the leather bag held like a football. Lloyd, who is eighty, said, “Well, I will be.” Teddy dropped his briefcase. I stayed in my chair, because I had already handed the letter, the key and the deed to Teddy that morning, and the saddlebag held only a box of tools and the sun hat of Duane.
Cody was almost to the road when the bison came. A ranch neighbor of Lloyd keeps a small herd, and that afternoon a few dozen had wandered through a gap in the fence and were strolling down the gravel in the slow stately way of a church choir. Cody stood in the middle of the road with a saddlebag, and a bull of a thousand pounds lowered his head to sniff it. Cody set it down very gently. He backed away, one step at a time, hands in the air, and the bull put his nose in the bag and came out with the sun hat.
Teddy Running Bear had the house papers signed back to me by the end of the week. Cody and Brandi repaid both loans, over two years, from the wages of Cody at a plumbing supply in Box Elder and the pay of Brandi at a dentist office. The sale of the Harley was undone: Lloyd Haugen, who never wanted to profit, sold it back to me for one dollar, and I keep it in the garage under the tarp of Duane. I went to the bank on Monday and opened box 77. The money was there, in neat bundles, held with the same rubber bands he used for work orders. I cried at the counter.
In the name of Duane, who passed in 2022, I started the Duane Riggins Open Road Fund. It pays for lawyers and title searches for widows whose family sold or borrowed against their property without asking, in Pennington, Meade and Lawrence counties. In the first year we helped fifteen women, and the first was a retired school bus driver from Box Elder named Mrs. Two Bulls, whose son had sold the truck of her husband while she was in the hospital. Lloyd Haugen drives them to appointments in the old pickup. He says that is what linemen do. They get the lights back on.
On the first Saturday of summer, I put on the leather vest of Duane, which is three sizes too big, and Lloyd rode with me on the back of the Road King to the forty acres outside Hill City. I do not ride. I sat on the back and held on and laughed the whole way. We parked by the creek and spread a blanket and ate sandwiches and looked up at the Black Hills sky, which was just the shade of blue Duane always said it was. I read his letter aloud one more time, to the creek. It sounded like he was right there, correcting my pronunciation.