Giovanni's Gift (21 page)

With the blessing of Wesley Fulton, Henry's father, Giovanni Trentas had tried to restore the old homestead cabin at the bottom of the meadow, way back when he first came to live at the ranch. It would appear
tried to restore
was the operative phrase for his handiwork, because in fact there was no restoring the place, so unevenly had the walls settled down there by a freshwater spring which fed into the creek, and so green had been the timbers they'd originally used for building that when they dried they bowed and curled and pulled free of their square nails. Another, much smaller outbuilding, which dated from roughly the same period, stood on the far side of the creek, and though it was less convenient, Giovanni saw that he stood a better chance of pulling it into shape than the other, and so he began work there. Across the bridge he carried tools, and wood appropriated from old outbuildings around the ranch that had fallen into disuse. He planed and renailed, replacing boards that were altogether rotted or twisted beyond repair, battening the outer walls of the hut and laying fresh courses of shingles on its roof. He reglazed its broken windows, chinked up breaches in the frames, and did his best, with little money and in spare time, to make for himself a place of his own, a home. He brewed coffee on the small coal-fed stove way before the sun rose, well before anyone else on the place was up. He improvised for himself, with what was given him, a decent residence at Ash Creek. Whenever Henry and Edmé returned to the mountains, however, he was happiest, at least during those early years. With them, he became a different man altogether, came forth from his hermeticism, showed the capacity and even the appetite not just for hard work but pleasure. With them, he would go into town to sit on the trampled grass and listen to a summer-evening concert, say, at the band shell. Or attend a production of Shakespeare or Thornton Wilder at the little theater, put on by some regional company with good intentions if meager craft.

His sister, Paola, it seemed, disappeared from his life. In the box was a letter from her, which apologized, though not profusely, for her decision against making the journey with her two children and husband to see him. They wanted to come, she wrote. But money was tight and the children were too young for such an undertaking.
Forse anno prossimo,
she wrote. Maybe next year. But it would appear she never made the trip out. Nor, for that matter, did Giovanni journey to Coeur d'Alene. Two exiles, exiled from one another—these things happen. Despite this, his life at Ash Creek seemed embraced by contentment for some years, was of elemental simplicity, and any reconstruction of his biography through these years might best do no more than follow the seasons, painting his image into scenes of snow and first buds and summer heat and the brilliant dying of the leaves in anticipation of new snows. One cannot help but think he was at peace during those years, loved as a son by my great-uncle and aunt. But, surely, he was lonely.

Which is why I believe the entry of Margery into his life must have been monumental in its impact. One of the reasons we cherish being in love is that our paradoxical needs—for solitude, yet not to be isolated—are simultaneously satisfied when we
fall for
another person. We set ourselves apart from the world, but yet are rarely by ourselves, when in love. And what happens between lovers remains an inviolate secret if they wish it to be. The minutiae of Giovanni and Margery's passion are unknown to anyone now, except perhaps to Margery, and thus here is a fragment of the story I cannot narrate other than in broadstroke.

Suffice it to say, they met when two of Margery's brothers had been hired as temporary hands to help with autumn roundup, one of those last years when Ash Creek was still a working spread. Even as recently as thirty years ago, they would drive several hundred head of cattle from the lower fields down through a funneling gate, where they were counted, and then guide the animals along that narrow creek road. Past the place where the river widened, the noisy procession would flow, then out onto the paved highway, headed southward until they reached a crossing, dozens of miles distant from the T-junction of dirt and asphalt, where railroad tracks intersected their path. Here they recounted and loaded their living shipment, up steel ramps into livestock cars of a freight train that seemed to extend from horizon to horizon. This drive took the better part of a week to organize. The first few days of it were passed at Ash Creek itself, bringing together herds from different high pastures in the mountains.

And, as I understand, on one of those first days, appeared at the main gate a shy but vigorous young woman who had brought, in a basket, dinner for her brothers. Neither of them was about, however, and Giovanni, who by that time occupied the little creek house, noticed her in the early-evening light, perhaps casting a long shadow across the meadow, and asked her if he could be of any help. What a handsome figure he must have cut, with his soft-spoken, mildly accented eloquence and gentle bearing, so unlike anyone Margery had ever met; and she, this flushed beauty with her raven locks tumbling across her shoulders in lustrous counterpoint to a practical, simple, maybe even austere dress, maybe of gingham or maybe linen—though who knows now, now that he is gone and she would surely not remember.

They met during the next days, too. Her brothers, it would seem, ate well that week, even better than they usually did. After they took the basket and left to sit with the other men back in the bunk-house to eat, Giovanni would walk over from the hut, overcome his reserve, and continue whatever conversation she and he had begun the evening before. Their dialogue didn't end when the work was done and the brothers returned home to Red Hill. No doubt, Margery was forced to hide her friendship with Giovanni Trentas—not so unlike Helen and me—at least in the beginning, for fear of criticism or even worse, that they might try to forbid her from continuing to see him.

—But nobody
owns
you, I can hear him saying, as summer burned itself out and autumn hoarfrosts whitened the higher meadows some mornings, just as now they soon would here. —You are a grown woman. You can do what pleases you, no?

—You don't understand.

—Why don't I understand? You like me?

—Yes.

—You like to talk with me?

—Very much.

—You like to be with me, no?

—I do.

—
E
'
lloral?
and so?

Margery's excuses, the elaborate, tangling fabrications given to explain her more frequent and lengthy absences, must have begun to wear down to a sheer transparency at home. In due time, the brothers probably would have begun to talk among themselves about her odd behavior. Maybe, yes, she did still manage to look after the house in Red Hill and keep things running, more or less—but surely they noticed a difference in how she dressed now, how her patience with their overwhelming expectations had grown as tenuous as all these alibis that seemed to flow from the once-quiet lips of their Marge. The disharmony and the quarrels would continue for quite some time, once Margery and Giovanni discovered they preferred being together—even if only for a few hours at a time—than separated. Giovanni was thirty years old, Margery was twenty-three. The year was 1963. Each was the other's first love. It would make perfect sense that Helen was born in 1965, or so I might have thought. She was, too; though here the ambiguity darkened their personal histories and had never allowed of any bright regard. That dance recital ticket in the box came back to mind, as I reconsidered all this. But: no. It had no connecting significance that I could see. At least, it was nothing I felt able to ask my uncle about. Nor Willa, whom I didn't yet know. Nor Giovanni, who could not answer.

Let me not give a false impression about my uncle's architectural models. I may have done so, and I'd rather not.

This Utopia of his is not the project of some hopeless idealist. The Italian architectural visionary Paolo Soleri has his Arcosanti excavation down in Arizona, with its molded forms and dyed earth; Frank Lloyd Wright tucked Taliesin West against a range of mountains not so far distant from Arcosanti; Buckminster Fuller drew earnest plans for entire metropolises to be sheltered from the elements under massive geodesic domes of steel and glass. Examples surely abound beyond what little I know about such things. Though, then, my uncle's passion might seem odd to some, to others it was unremarkable. And there had always been talk of his raising the money to build, as did Soleri and Wright and others, scale versions of some of the structures, organic spaces that would fold themselves unnoticed into the landscape here at Ash Creek. It was a dream, he knew. But one with which he loved honing his mind.

What's more, Henry wasn't forever building fantasy cities. When one owns things—old truism—they break. As the poet put it, Things fall apart. On the ranch, given the harshness of the winters that visited these mountains, there was forever a new list of what required attention, what needed to be fixed. And since my arrival at Ash Creek, one of Henry's travails was to get that old jeep up and running, so that I would have the freedom to come and go without stranding them. When he first mentioned his intention to do this for me, I told him not to put himself out on my account.

“It's not a problem,” he'd said. “I've been meaning to get that heap going, anyway.”

The morning David Lewis brought his news, Henry, unable to concentrate on Utopias, finished his work on the jeep. I sat down in the barn with him, as he worked, half waiting for him to broach some serious subject with me. Helen Trentas, David Lewis, someone or something. But he didn't. He asked for a wrench and I handed him a wrench. When the engine turned over at last, there was visible a momentary sparkle in his good eye (the other, as always, gazed ahead into unknown distances). I climbed in and we drove over the western saddle, then down beyond that ridge, forging through the natural alleys in the forest. His fundamental knowledge of the lush and difficult terrain bespoke itself as he easily invented our path through the unmarked woods. Seeing his oneness with this rough geography, I understood implicitly and precisely why he would want none of these woodlands to be razed, rebuilt, ruined.

There may have been much more that ran through his head as we drove through a ravine, then doubled back, retracing our impromptu tracks, toward the house, but this was how I read the expressions on his face, right or wrong. Maybe he'd built enough in his life and had left his profession because he no longer had either the eye or the stomach for it. Perhaps his philosophy was more selfish, in that it had been fine for him to help others with their aesthetic devastation of this or that or the other natural landscape, just so long as civilization didn't darken
his
door. I wouldn't know, per se, and would not ask, at least not this morning.

He handed me the key, and patted me on the shoulder, my dear uncle. I did manage, “Is there anything I can do?”

“You can stay out of trouble,” is what he said.

“I'll do my best,” perhaps believing at that moment I would not follow through on what I had in mind.

My first venture was into town, to get gas. Thence directly to Graham Tate's offices, on the second floor of the bank building, where I told a hesitant secretary that no, I had no appointment, that no, Mr. Tate did not know what my visit was in reference to, and that yes, I would wait. While my demeanor may have been set to convey intensity, purpose, tenacity, nothing of the kind had any residence within me; oh, there was a decided
turbulence,
wrenching in its way, that played through my limbs, even made my hands quiver some, but nothing more resolved than that. I was shepherded here solely by instinct, the intuition that Tate
knew things.
How more plainly to express it? Tate had things for me, and like some gauche, grabby fool, I had come by here so that he could unburden himself of these things, whatever they were. Plainly, I wasn't thinking. That he proved to be engaged with prior commitments that afternoon but would be able to schedule something in a few days, he was terribly sorry etcetera, was of course a blessing. Even now, I can only imagine what might have happened in his wainscoted and bookcased office, had I been ushered in, shaken his hard hand, sat myself down to respond to his congenial if aloof question, What brings you here? None of this would have come to any desirable end. I made my appointment with heart darkening, and left, still tremulous.

As I opened the door that led from foyer to hallway and stairs, I found myself observing the molded brass handle, the insufficient locks, and even turned around to gaze at the corners of the ceiling for motion sensors or other evidence of an alarm system. What did I think I was doing? My recent excursion through the woods with my uncle had left fresh images in my mind, which somehow collided with this man Tate, and what he was about. I stared at his door, and couldn't help but feel a deepening hostility toward the man whose work went on behind it. But still, the question remained.

My face must surely have been pale as I descended the broad hardwood steps that led toward another windowed door and the street beyond. Within minutes I found myself back in the mildewed cab of the jeep, breathing shallowly and considering two other destinations to which I had not been invited: the homes of Helen and Margery. I had, in fact, a better idea where the latter was than the former. Margery lived over in Red Hill, about thirty miles due south, a negligible town at the upper end of the great valley. Helen, on the other hand, lived in town somewhere. It occurred to me I could look her up in the telephone book and arrive unannounced, just as she had in the middle of the night, not so many hours ago. But I didn't want to think through the possible responses she might have to my appearing at her door so soon after our encounter, didn't want to consider whether she'd be unnerved by my perceived neediness, by my evidently greedy appetite for more from her, more
of
her. Instead, the decision made itself. I would try to find Margery Trentas.