LIKE MOST days in Great Falls, Montana, it was windy on Wednesday, February 19, 2014. Fifty-mile-an-hour gusts made the mid-thirties temps bite even harder than usual. Under mostly cloudy skies, authorities leaned over the rails above the Missouri River spillway at Black Eagle Dam, using long poles to break apart ice so they could reach the frozen body of 24-year-old Graham Macker. Nearly three months earlier, Macker had walked off from his pre-release program, escaping a manhunt of sheriff’s deputies, police dogs, and a Homeland Security helicopter. But he did not escape the Missouri River.
I spent a lot of time in Great Falls as a kid. Seasonal stocking of nub-finned, pellet-fed fish destined for a cooler was the extent of the trout fishing in my native Austin, Texas, so the annual family road trips to Montana were compelling. My mother was born in Minot, North Dakota, but grew up in Great Falls. Specifically, Parkdale: three square blocks of government-subsidized housing, excessive streetlights, and dedicated 24-hour police surveillance made semi-famous by an episode of MTV’s True Life documentary series: “I Live in the Projects.”
After my grandfather died from a heart attack in a duck blind, my grieving grandmother left Minot for Great Falls with half a dozen kids in tow. My mother was 7 years old. The triplets were in preschool. They ended up in Parkdale, where they all
