Desolation Angels (12 page)

Only seldom Fred talks, especially with old loquacious Andy the muleskinner from Wyoming, but his loquaciousness only takes a fill-in role—Today though as I sit smoking my first package cigarette, he talks to me, thinking I need talkin after 63 days in solitary—and talking to a human being is like flying with angels.

“Bucks, two bucks—does—one night two fawns ate in my yard”—(I'm shouting over the engine)——“Bear, signs of a bear—blueberries—” “Strange birds,” I add to think, and chipmunks with little oatsies in their paws they'd pick up from old corral fence rack—Ponies and horses of old 1935

where

Are they now?

“There's coyotes up on Crater!”

55

Desolate adventure—we go slowly three miles an hour down the lake, I settle back on the backboard and just take in the sun and rest, no need shouting—no sense—And soon he's got that lake whipped and turned Sourdough on our upright and left Cat Island way behind and the mouth of the Big Beaver, and we're turning in to the little white flag rag that's hoiked on booms (logs) that the boat passes through but a congestion of other logs that majestically took all August to idle on down from the tarn of Hozomeen—there they are and we have to maneuver and push them around and slip thru—after which Fred returns to his hour-long perusal of Insurance forms with little cartoons and advertising showing anxious American heroes worrying about what will happen to their kin when they pass on—good enough—and up ahead, flat on the lakebottom scene, the houses and floats of Ross Lake Resort—Ephesus, the mother of cities to me—we aim right straight for there.

And there's the bankside where I'd spent a whole day digging in the rocky soil, four feet down, for the Forest Ranger Garbage Pit and had talked with Zeal the quarter Indian kid who'd quit running down the dam trail and was never seen again, usta split cedar shakes with his brothers for independent pay—“Don't like to work for the government, damn I'm goin to L.A.”—and there's the waterside where, finished with the pit dug and the trail yawrked out of brush, twisty, to the latrine hole Zeal'd dug, I'd gone down and thrun rocks at little sailing can ships and Admiral me Nelson if they didnt get away and sail off and make it to the Golden Eternity—me resorting finally to huge plaps of wood and great boulders, to swamp the ship-can, but wouldnt sink, Ah Valor—And the long long booms I thought I'd make it back to the Ranger Station Float without a boat but when I got out to the middle boom and had to jump three feet over choppy water to half submerged log I knew I'd get wet and I quit and went back—there it all is, all in June, and now's September and I'm going four thousand miles down the cities of the rib of America—

“We'll eat lunch on the float then go get Pat.”

Pat has also same morning left Crater Lookout and started down a 15-mile trail, at dawn, 3
A.M.
, and will be waiting 2
P.M.
at foot of Thunder Arm—

“Okay—but I'll take a nap while you do that,” I say—

Tsokay with old Tokay—

We ease into the float and I get out and tie the line to the bit and he heaves my pack out, now I'm barefooted and feel good—And O the vast white kitchen full of food, and a radio on the shelf, and letters waiting for me—But we're not hungry anyway, a little coffee, I turn on the radio and he goes off to get Pat, 2-hour trip, and suddenly I'm alone with the radio, coffee, cigarettes, and strange pocketbook about a used-car hero salesman in San Diego who sees a girl on a drugstore stool and thinks “She has a neat can”—Wow, back to America.—And on the radio suddenly it's Vic Damone singing a tune I had completely forgotten on the mountain to sing, an old standard, hadnt completely forgotten it but no work over, here he goes with full orchestra (O the genius of American Music!) on “In This World,

Of ordinary people,

Ex-tra-ordinary people,

I'm glad there is you,”

—holding the “you,” breath, “In this world, of overrated pleasures, and underrated treasures,” hum, “I'm glad there is You”—Twas me told Pauline Cole to tell Sarah Vaughan to sing that in 1947—Oh the beautiful American music across the lake now, and then, after choice amusing charming words from the announcer in Seattle, Oi, Vic sings

“The Touch of your hand 

Upon my brow,”

at middle tempo, and a gorgeous trumpet comes in, “Clark Terry!” I recognize him, playing sweet, and the old float moans gently on her booms, mid brightlight day—The same old float that on choppy nights blams and booms and the moonlight ululates the water a splashing sheen, O hoar sorrow of the Last Northwest and now I have no borders more to go and—The world out there is just a piece of cheese, and I'm the movie, and there's the pretty singing trap—

56

Rapple trap me, if it aint them old mountains stickin clear up from the lappylap lapis lazuli lake-shore, with still old Spring snow on em, tops, and those woe moreful ole summery clouds pinkmopping the Emily Dickinson afternoon of peace and ah butterflies—Twitting in the brush is bugs—On the float, no bugs, just the lily lap of the water on the underslaps of booms, and the constant pour of the kitchen tap which they had plumbed to an endless mountain stream, so let it run cold all day, so when you need a glass of water there it is, tune in—Sunshine—hot sun drying my socks on the hot warped deck—and Fred's already given me a new old pair of shoes to get down on, at least to a store in Concrete to buy new shoes—I've hangled their nailpoints back in to the leather with big Forest Service tools in the toolhouse barge, and they'll be comfortable with the big socks—It's always a triumph to get your socks dried, to have a fresh pair, in mountains and war

Angels in Desolation—

Visions of Angels—

Visions of Desolation—

D e s o l a t i o n
A n g e l s

And by and by here he comes, old Fred and the boat and I see the little puppet figure beside him a mile away, Pat Garton the Crater Mountain lookout, back, gasping, glad, just like me—Boy from Portland Oregon and all summer long on the radio we've exchanged consolements—“Don't worry, it'll soon be over” it'll even be October soon—“Yeah, but when that day comes I'm going to
fly
down that mountain!” Pat'd yelled—But unfortunately his pack was too heavy, almost twice as heavy as mine, and he'd almost not made it and had a logger (kind man) carry his pack for him the last mile down to the creek arm—

They bring the boat up and tie the little rope bit, which I like to do because I used to do it with vast hemp cables around freighter bits as big as my body, the big rhythmic swing of loops, with a little bit it's fun too—Besides I wanta look useful, still getting paid today—They get out and from listening to his voice all summer I look at Pat and he looks like somebody else—Not only that but soon as we're in the kitchen and he's walking beside me suddenly I get the eerie feeling he's not there and I take a good look to check—For just an instant this angel had faded away—Two months in desolation'll do it, no matter what mountain's your name—He'd been on Crater, which I could see, right on the hem of an extinct volcano apparently, snowbound, and subject to all the storms and shifts of wind flowing from any direction down there along the groove of Ruby Mountain and Sourdough, and from the east, and from my north, he'd had more snow than me—And coyotes howling at night he said—And was afraid to go out of his shack at night—If he'd ever feared the green face in the window of his Portland suburban boyhood, he had plenty masks up here to mince in the mirror of his night-hooling eyes—Especially foggy nights, when you might as well be in Blake's Howling Void or just an oldtime Thirties Airplane lost in the ceiling-zero fog—“Are ya there Pat?” I say for a joke—

“I'll say I'm here and I'm ready to go, too—you?”

“All set—we got another stretcha trail to make down the dam tho, damn—”

“I dont know if I can make it,” he says honestly, and he's limping. “Fifteen miles since sunup before sunup—my legs are dead.”

I lift his pack and it weighs 100 pounds—He hasn't even bothered to discard the 5 pounds of Forest Service literature with pictures and ads, tsall stuck in his pack, and on top of that a sleeping bag under his arm—Thank God his shoes had bottoms.

We eat a jolly lunch of old porkchops re-heated, wailing at butter and jam and things we didn't have, and cup after cup of strong coffee I made, and Fred talks about the McAllister Fire—Seems so many hundred tons of equipment were dropt in by plane and's all strewn over the mountainside right now—“Oughta tell the Indians to go up there and eat,” I think to say, but where are the Indians?

“I'm never gonna be a lookout again,” announces Pat, and I repeat it—for then—Pat has an old crew cut that's all overgrown from summer and I'm surprised to see how young he is, 19 or so, and I'm so
old,
34—It doesn't disturb me, it pleases—After all and old Fred is 50 and he doesnt care and we fare as we fare and part forever as we part—Only to come back again in some other form, as form, the essence of our 3 respective beings has certainly not taken 3 forms, it just passes through—So it's all God and we the mind-angels, so bless and sit down—

“Boy,” I say, “tonight I'm gettin me a few beers”—or a bottle of wine—“and sit by the river”—I dont tell them all this—Pat doesnt drink or smoke—Fred has a snort every now and then, on the way up in the truck two months before old Andy'd uncorked his quart of Marblemount-bought blackberry 12 percent wine and we'd all slupped it under before Newhalem at least—At that time I'd promised Andy I'd buy him a great quart of whisky, in gratitude, but now I see he's somewhere else, up on Big Beaver with the pack, I sneakily realize I can sneak out of all this without buying Andy that fourdollar bottle—We get our things together, after long talk at table—Fred putputs the boat down past the Resort floats (gasoline pumps, boats, rooms for rent, tackle and gear)—down to the big white wall of Ross Dam—“I'll carry your pack Pat,” I offer, figuring I'm strong enough to do it and I wont give it a second thought because it says in the Diamondcutter of the Wise Vow (my bible, the
Vajra-chedika-prajna-paramita
which was supposed to've been spoken orally—how else?—by Sakyamuni himself) “practice generosity but think of generosity as being but a word and nothing but a word,” to that effect—Pat is grateful, hoiks my rucksack up, I take his immense topheavy packboard and sling on and try to get up and cant make it, I have to push Atlas away to make it—Fred's in the boat smiling, actually hates to see us leave—“See ya later, Fred.”

“Take it easy now”

We start off but right away there's a nail in my flesh so we stop at the dam trail and I find a little piece of fisherman cigarettepack and make a bulge in my shoe, and we go on—Tremble, I cant make it, my thighs are gone again—It's a steep downgoing trail winding around the cliff by the dam—At one point it goes up again—That's a relief on the thighs, I just bend and upsweat—But we stop several times, both exhausted—“We'll never make it,” I keep saying and babbling on all kinds of talk—“You learn pure things on the mountain, dont you?—dont you feel that you appreciate life more?”

“I sure do,” says Pat, “and I'll be glad when we get outa here.”

“Ah tonight we'll sleep in the bunkhouse and tomorrow go home—” He has a ride for me to Mount Vernon on Highway 99 at five
P.M.
but I'll just hitch hike out in the morning, not wait—“I'll be in Portland afore you,” I say.

Finally the trail levels off down at the water level and we come thwapping and sweating thru sitting groups of City Electric dam employees—run the gauntlet—“Where's the boat land?”

His sleepingbag under my arm has slipped and unrolled and I just carry it that way, dont care—We come to the boat landing and there's a little wood walk we clomp right on, woman and dog sitting on it have to move, we wont stop, we slap the gear on the planks and presto I lie down on my back, pack underhead, and light a cigarette—Done. No more trail. The boat'll take us to Diablo, to a road, a short walk, a giant Pittsburgh lift, and our truck waiting for us at the bottom with Charley drivin—

57

Then down the trail we'd just sweatingly completed, racing to make the boat, here come two mad fishermen with gear and a whole outboard motor slung on a 2-wheel contraption which they roll and bounce along—They make it just in time, the boat comes, we've all got on—I stretch out on a seat and start to meditate and rest—Pat's in the back talking to tourists about his summer—The boat goes churning down the narrow lake between boulder-cliffs—I just lie on back, arms folded, eyes closed, and meditate the scene away—I know there's more than meets the eye, as well as what does meet the eye—You know it too—The trip takes 20 minutes and soon I can feel the boat slow up and bump into dock—Up, at the packs, I'm still luggin Pat's big pack, generosity right down to the end?—Even then we have a painful quartermile dirt road to walk, turning at a cliff, and lo! there's a big lift platform ready to ease us down a thousand feet to little neat houses and lawns below and a thousand cranes and wires connecting the Power Dam, Diablo Dam, Devil Dam—the devil of the dullest place in the world to live, one store and no beer in it—People watering their prison lawns, children with dogs, mid-Industrial America in the afternoon—Little bashful girl at her mother's dress, men talking, all on the lift, and soon it starts grinding down and slowly we descend to the earth valley—Still I'm countin: “Goin one mile an hour towards Mexico City on her High Valley Plateau four thousand miles away”—snap of a finger, who care?—Up comes the big weight of unsoldered iron that's holding us poised precarious downcoming, a majestical ton upon ton of black mass, Pat points it out (with comments) (he's going to be an engineer)—Pat has a slight speech defect, a slight stutter and excitement and burbling-up, choke, sometimes, and his lips hang a little, but his brain is sharp—and he has manly dignity—I know that on the radio all summer he's said some very funny boners, his “oopses” and excitement, but nothing on that radio was madder than serious evangelical Jesuit student Ned Gowdy who, when visited by a gang of our climbers and firefighters, screamed a crazy tittrous laugh, the wildest I've ever heard, his voice hoarse, all from talking so suddenly with unexpected visitors—As for me, all my record on radio was “Hozomeen Camp from forty-two,” beautiful poem every day, to talk to Old Scotty, about nothing, and a few curt exchanges with Pat and a few charmed talks with Gowdy and a few early concessions of what I was cooking, how I felt, and why—Pat was the one who made me laugh most—Somebody called “John Trotter” was referred to, at a fire, and Pat made these two announcements: “John Trot Scoop will be in with the next drop load, John Twist did not make it in the first plane load,” actual fact he said that—a completely mad mind—