"Never could I have anticipated . . . a black man being at the top of the ticket"

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The Innocents at Home

In central Montana, one of the least racially diverse areas in the United States, residents grapple with the idea of voting for a black man.

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She's got four sons. Two have told her they won't be voting for Obama. She thinks she knows why. The other two, she says, may be undecided. "Actually, I never hear anybody else around say anything about Obama besides myself. But I think come voting day, when people walk inside the booth over at the school, there may be some surprises."

The town school -- all grades -- is less than 40 yards from her back door.

"The school was on lockdown the other day," she says, walking over to the school. "Some man shot his wife four times, then killed himself. She survived, though. Lives over in Lewistown."

She's in the school gymnasium. Every high school graduate is honored with a framed picture on the wall. "Look, not a single black person," Ahlgren says, waving her arm. "Or even an Indian. We've never even had a minority child in this school except for a couple exchange students from Mexico."

Uncertainty About Change

It's hunting season. A man holding a rifle over his shoulder stands by his pickup on the side of the road to Roundup. A sticker on the rear bumper reads "Nobama." The town, which lies about 40 miles south of Grass Range, used to be a booming oil burg. But the oil went dry and now there's fewer than 2,000 residents.

Gay Holliday slides into a booth at the Busy Bee Cafe. She's 72, elegant and dark-haired. She works in the casino next door and also manages a low-income housing development.

A former Democratic state representative, she's fascinated with the political landscape. "Montana is pretty redneck. And chauvinistic. I often wonder how my husband, Frank, would react with a black at the top of the ticket."

She's a widow now.

She and Frank took their three boys to Denver in the early 1960s to attend a big stock show. There was an ice-skating rink outside the downtown hotel where they stayed, and Frank and Gay let the boys go skate. Now and then they'd peek through the window, checking up on them. "It was where we first met black people," she says. "I remember looking out the window and two of my boys had this little black boy by his hands and they were taking him around the skating rink. If it weren't for Denver, I don't think my boys -- even as they reached the age of 50 -- would have had meaningful contact with black people."

She's got only one son left. One died after a long illness, after having been kicked by a cow and suffering a debilitating head injury. Another son had a heart attack.

She takes a sip of coffee.

In 1976, Holliday traveled to Washington, D.C., with a group involved in farming. "We had entertainment one night. The performer was James Brown himself. One of the farmers, a black man, asked me to dance with him. Oh, the flashbulbs went popping! Nobody in my group had ever seen a white woman and black man dancing together."

A man in a white cowboy hat -- hard-lined face, tough hands, wolfing down a thick burger -- has caught Holliday's attention. "He reminds me of my Frank," she says. Some tender and quiet moments float by.

She says: "Never could I have anticipated the current circumstances, a black man being at the top of the ticket. My Frank was around black soldiers in World War II. But it would have been hard for him to accept this ticket. I often think about it, wondering what he would do."

Soon, night will fall here, a big maroon glove enveloping the infinite sky and the tiny towns beneath it.