Dobro Dick, an amazing musician originally from the East Coast -- but who spends much of his life in the Paradise Valley near Livingston, Montana, spun this yarn around a campfire on the Dearborn River several years ago. He may also have put it in a book of short stories he was purportedly writing, but I have not seen it published. It may be apocryphal, it may be true. With Dick you never know.

Dick says that a few years back he picked up a ravishing Crow woman in one of the divey bars on Billings' southside. Both of them having a few drinks under their belts, they migrated to a cheap hotel room nearby. Dick was on one side of the room, stripped to his underwear, and she was getting in the same state on the other side when an enraged male voice started bellowing her name at the door. Before Dick could move, she had opened the door and there stood one big, mad, mean, dude. He pulled a knife, and Dick, not wishing to find out what for, grabbed the one thing he felt he couldn't leave without -- a nice indian style leather jacket with fringe and beadwork he had bought when he first moved to Montana -- and dove out the window of the hotel! Luckily, he was only on the first half-floor, about twelve feet up from the alley, and he lit on a pile of trash, hurting only his feelings. But there he was, at 3:00 am in the morning, with only his underwear and a leather jacket, and it was cold. Bundling up in the jacket, he started padding barefoot down the alley, trying to figure out what to do. His billfold with all his money was back with his pants in the room, so he couldn't just find another hotel.

As Dick got to the end of the alley, he met an old indian man who was tottering along, maybe from age, maybe from alcohol. The old man looked at Dick's bare legs, then took a long look at the beaded leather jacket, and said "Good jacket, you come with me." Not having many choices, and getting colder by the minute, Dick decided to follow. Shortly they ended up in a dingy apartment, which seemed to be home to the old man. The old man offered him a beer, and ultimately Dick curled up on the floor with the jacket over him, trying to sleep off the booze and the cold. Later, during what was left of the night, Dick heard the old man chanting and shuffling around him, like he was performing a ritual. In the morning, when Dick woke up, the old man was gone. But around Dick on the floor was a circle of odd little items, poptop tabs from beer cans, and other effluvia that might be fetishes of some sort. Dick had the feeling it all had something to do with the beaded jacket and what it might have meant to the old man. For some unknown reason, Dick reached out and picked up one of the fetishes, a completely flattened, fluorescent yellow tennis ball. Not knowing why, he stuck it in the pocket of the jacket and made his exit.

The jacket being long enough that he wasn't legally nude, Dick skittered through the streets back to the desk of the cheap hotel he had exited so quickly the night before. He was able to recover his boots, pants, and billfold, minus most of his cash, and considered it a lesson learned.

A few months later, Dick returned to New York city because of family matters. And, as those things go, after a couple of months he began to experience friction with his family, grow bored with the big city, and wish that he was back in Montana. Becoming more and more homesick for his adopted state, one night he pulled out the beaded leather jacket, which he hadn't worn for a long time, and put it on. It wasn't the kind of clothing one normally wore in the city, but he was just in that kind of a mood. Feeling better with it on, he decided to go out for a drink.

Dick hadn't been sitting long at the bar when a strikingly good looking woman approached him and told him how much she liked his unusual jacket. They chatted for a few minutes and Dick began to think he might get lucky. But then one of life's embarassing little moments got in the way. She had pulled out a cigarette and turned to Dick with that "light up my life" look in her eyes. Dick, eager to impress, automatically reached in his jacket for his lighter. What he pulled out, instead, was the flattened, garish yellow tennis ball, which by this time also smelled like stale rubber. When Dick wafted it under her nose, her eyes narrowed, she recoiled slightly, gave him an odd look and quickly moved away down the bar. Dick sat there feeling foolish, looking at the ball in his hand. He remembered where it came from, and wondered why he had felt compelled to pick it up.

Meanwhile, the woman had struck up a conversation with another man down the bar, avoiding even looking Dick's way. Not more than a minute later, a gent built like a professional wrestler came through the door, spotted the woman, walked directly over to the man she was chatting with, grabbed him by the hair and with a powerful shove cracked his head on the bar counter, immediately knocking him out and causing a great deal of blood to spurt. The big guy grabbed the woman by the arm and dragged her to the door, calling her a choice selection of names, "cheating bitch" being the most kind.

Dick sat and stared at the flat, yellow tennis ball in his hand. He now had a pretty good idea why it was there. He put it back in the pocket of the beaded leather jacket and caught the next flight to Montana.