Gloryland (32 page)

Who would go to all the trouble and effort of coming up here to graze livestock if they didn’t have to? It was Mr. Emanuel’s livelihood, his profession, what put food on his plate and maybe his family’s, but this open country was now a national park, and there was no room up here for him and his sheep. So we did the job. I separated that man from everything he owned, from his property.

Escorting Mr. Emanuel down to the foothills took a few days, cause it was a long, hard ride and there was no reason to be in a hurry. The longer we took, the better his sheep would scatter to the winds. We didn’t talk. What was there to say? I felt really bad, but I had a job to do, and the rules don’t take into account how a soldier might feel about enforcing them.

I had plenty of time to think on that ride, and one thing I thought about was that even though Mr. Emanuel was poor, he owned more than I did. I didn’t have a house. Most of the time I lived in a tent. I didn’t have a wife. I had soldiers who’d never tell me outright that they cared if I lived or died, but they’d take a bullet meant for me, and I’d do the same for them, and that made them my family. Sometimes I didn’t have much hope that people would get better, but I believed tomorrow would be better than today.

When I reached into my pockets and pulled out what was there, nothing came out but my hands. All anyone saw when they looked at me was what I’d been given. They were looking at the army. My mule wasn’t mine at all, or my saddle. Satan’s bridle and reins and the bit in his mouth, all that was given to my care, but my name ain’t on it. There was nothing but one thing in this world that belonged to me, and one thing only.

My memories. That’s all I owned. No bank knew me or had anything of mine inside it. When I enlisted, when I signed that piece of paper, I became U.S. property, something listed, marked down, put down, written in, stamped on, everything you could think of shy of branding. From the time I woke up to the time I went to sleep, I was just a body with a name and a rank. Even the clothes on my back were issued to me, on loan till the day I died or my time was up. I sometimes wondered if even God could see Lucinda and Daniel’s little boy hiding beneath this uniform.

But when I slept, I remembered Mama’s voice, her face, her hands, her step, the sound of her walking or talking, her eyes when she was squinting in the sun, and her shadow falling on the ground.

I remembered how soft her hands felt on my face the time we came home and I was crying cause a white man had called me “nigger” and I felt “nigger” burn for the first time in my heart and my gut, and my anger was swallowing me whole until there was nothing in the world but my rage and me, so hot that if you touched me you would’ve burst into flame.

And my mama put her cool, damp hands on my face, and with
her voice she put out the fires inside me, and she told me that I was her child and no one’s nigger, that I was beautiful, and that her day began and ended with me. And I believed her.

Well, I own that, all of it. Her voice belongs to me. Her love is still part of me. Her hands have never left my face, I can feel them still on me. This is all private property. This is what I own.

Her name was Lucinda, but I only ever called her “Ma’am.” I say her name, and something deep within me answers. I own that. And my daddy so far away, his hands so far away, hands black as dirt, cracked like a creekbed at the end of summer from working that hot field, cracked with pain he rarely let me see. When he held me nothing could ever be wrong, and nothing bad could ever happen. He’s still holding me, and I can still feel the grip of his arms, how hard it was to breathe, and when he let go, how the air felt rushing inside me like the first breath.

I remember all of it, and that’s what I own, and if it’s in me, no one can take it away, escort it to some far-off boundary and let it go. No fire can ever burn it down.

Who am I? I’m their child. They made me out of their love for each other. I’m their Elijah. I belong to them and they belong to me. We’re each other’s property. Folks who don’t have anything only got themselves, and you can’t put that in a bank, but it’s yours, you own it and no one else.

Before we left Tuolumne, Mr. Emanuel had said, “It’s not easy to work in these mountains because of the black soldiers! It’s not easy to live and work in Yosemite! I don’t like it! Ah, my family! There’s nothing, there’s nothing!” I could’ve said the same thing, and so could most of my men, except we’d take out the part about “black soldiers” and put in “sheepherders,” “poachers,” or “timber thieves” in its place. Otherwise, I agreed with the man, but he was wrong that there was nothing. Even Emanuel in his despair spoke of his family.

I’m poor, but it’s a peculiar kind of poverty. The world just sees a poor soldier more full of pride than silver dollars, but it’s not so clear
that you can be rich with the people who love you. That’s the kind of wealth I have. That’s my currency, and it’s the best kind. I spend it and spend it but my account never goes empty, it just keeps filling up every time I remember a smile or a laugh or a whisper or a cry or an embrace.

By the time I get old and eligible for a pension, I’ll own so many memories, good ones and bad ones, that I probably won’t need it. I’ll be rich with what I’ve done and what’s been done to me, cause wealth ain’t what you have, but what has you, like how Ma’am and Sir and Grandma Sara have me, I belong to them and they to me.

So I ain’t worried about death at all. By the time that darkness comes, I’ll know its face, its voice, the shape of it, how it feels, and it won’t be a stranger but an old dear friend, carefully removing from his pockets and gently handing over to me every single word I once spoke to God when I was trapped in pain and anger. And in the other pocket he’ll have all of God’s replies.

Then I’ll own those too.

A
fter my journey with Mr. Emanuel, I made my way back to Camp Wood. It took a few days, but I needed the time to myself. The weather was fine, but the nights were starting to get cold. It was good to be back in the company of soldiers, good to hear a little news, good to be out of that saddle.

But once I stopped moving, I started thinking about what had happened to Mr. Emanuel. How somebody’s life could change completely in an afternoon of meeting up with some soldiers in a mountain meadow. Thinking about him led to thinking about how my life had changed when I left home all those years ago, where I’d been and what I’d done since then. How meeting up with that officer who enlisted me near Fort Robinson changed everything. How my life was broken up into memories, and those memories were like pebbles, little pieces of me, scattered in a creek. Most of those pieces were caught up in the current of that creek, so they kept moving downstream, but some pieces were heavy enough that they dropped into the dark and sat there at the bottom.

I figured there must be bits of me all over. All those places where a creek slows and drifts, gets caught up round the roots of trees and sunk down in hollows, the places where too much was taken away, pieces of my life have fallen like stones dropping down to the darkness under a creek.

A few days later I made my last patrol to the edge of the sky. I was high up near Devil’s Postpile, and had just ridden up from Sotcher Lake the night before. It’d been a clear night, and the moon just past full lit up everything so well, you never hungered for the day, so I
just packed up and started heading out and up to the patrol cabin in Reds Meadow.

I was by myself, and wanted it that way. I figured if this was going to be my last journey through the Yosemite, then I’d do it alone. You come into this world by yourself, and you go out of it the same way. Of course, now I was riding a mule named Satan, so I wasn’t completely alone.

There had been a fire through the area, which made the going a lot easier. The moon had no trouble getting past all the branches above me and finding a place to rest on the forest floor. The red firs were creaking in a wind I couldn’t feel, but I could see it rock the tops of the trees back and forth, and the treetops seemed to be brushing the backs of the stars.

It was a quiet, peaceful night, the kind of night you long for when you ain’t got it and you hope will never end when you do. I was getting to that place inside, the quiet place you get to when you’ve been in mountains a long time, so long that you feel you know them. Not just their names, which you can find on a map, but the names that are secret, and within your own silence you slowly begin to unlock, letter by letter, what God must call them in the night.

I think I was even dozing a bit, watching Satan’s head rise up and down, feeling the rocking of my mule as he walked and the coolness of the summer air on my face and hands.

I should’ve known it wouldn’t last.

I remember a kind of stiffening up in Satan. He slowed a bit, moving his head from side to side, and then with a snort he swiveled his butt upward and sideways in one motion, and just like that I was in the air. That mule bucked me off so easily, I might’ve been able to call it a fancy dismount if someone had been watching, but you can’t lie to God, and God knew Satan better than I did. That mule was mean and spiteful, but he had a soft spot for me. We got along just fine, and that left me wondering, as I went up, over, and down to the ground, what the hell was going on.

The ground rose up faster than it had any right to and smacked me on the butt, and as I looked up I saw more stars lighting up the sky than there’d ever been before. I heard Satan bucking and dancing back down the trail, but when I looked over my shoulder all I saw was his shadow, draining away like black molasses.

Speaking of asses, mine wasn’t doing too well, and as I struggled to get back up over my feet, I could feel how my legs had been left out of the plan to stand up. They were as outraged as I was and wouldn’t cooperate. Eventually I was upright, standing on a steep, rocky trail in the middle of red fir forest, with moonlight clearly illuminating my bruised and scratched hands. I was thinking bout all the things you could do to a mule short of killing it, and how I was really looking forward to trying out every idea that came to me, when I saw movement up the trail about twenty feet away.

Two, no, three fairly large animals were running cross the trail, cross the very spot I probably would’ve been except for the disagreement with Satan over direction of travel. Peering closer, I could just make out how one of the three animals was a lot bigger than the other two. That one broke off and ran a bit toward me, fully out of the shadows into moonlight.

It was a grizzly.

And since I personally have never heard of grizzlies roaming round in herds, I figured the other two were cubs, which meant that Mama was the one taking particular interest in me. I had surprised them.

Now I was really irritated. First my mule bucks me off, probably cause it caught the scent of the bears, then it runs off, the sound of which probably spooked the bears, who likely were just trying to get away. Leaving me standing there alone, staring foolishly at my bleeding hands.

Furthermore, Lieutenant Resnick told me once that no one had seen a grizzly bear in the Sierra in nearly ten years, so I needn’t worry too much about meeting one. I trusted him.

I trusted an officer. I trusted my mule.

Ain’t it peculiar how the people you trust usually aren’t around when you really need them? That’s what I was thinking when the grizzly rose up off the ground, using her forelegs to push herself up into the air.