Having Everything Right (5 page)

A century collapsed into this moment of ground, where generations of private celebration grew outward from one story. This square yard of pine duff bound a guest register that could never be tallied, only renewed, only inhabited by the night-faithful memory that walked in the form of the people. Twenty steps east from the tree with the ribbons a ton of granite, hewn to a block and polished, was carved with the story as the U.S. Army had lived it through. That was one way to remember 1877: carve the truth in stone and draft a platoon of guardians, write books and print brochures and script slide shows and build a hall to house them all, then carve a trail with numbers like a tattoo on the hill. I was grateful for all that. All that can make a visitor ready to know. But that public way is not knowing in itself, only a preparation for knowing. Knowing is a change of heart, physical, slower than the eye's travel across a page of text, or across a stone dressed with words.

The books, the message on stone, the trail's configuration would all have to be revised by an act of will; the ribbons were either renewed or lost by the very nature of their fragility. Sun and rain destroyed them. Pine budded, and grew. Flowers withered, and the ribbons.

Suddenly in the heat a kind of fear chilled me—fear about my fellowship with the sometimes acquisitive tribe of patriots named America. Even in small things, we wish to map our conquest of the planet and the past. My own childhood collections flickered through my mind: stamps, stones, leaves pressed in a Bible, insects stilled by cotton soaked with alcohol and pinned to styrofoam in a box. And arrowheads. Smoky obsidian and blood-red flint. Modern habit is to lay such things away safe behind glass, and I had learned that habit well. I knew how to lift each bead with tweezers, plot and take each bullet up, sift them all out from the dust and alter them from a part of the world to an illustration of it. Could I leave the bones of the story still, and carry only its breath away in my mouth? Or would I thread five beads on a pine needle souvenir, saying softly to myself no one would know them gone?

I heard the girl's voice reading along closer through the grove, as she led her family toward the story of Five Wounds. His promise to Rainbow, sworn brother, to die the same day in battle. If one died, the other would die before day ended. And Rainbow had died. The ribbons were a part of Five Wounds' promise. He was a hundred years dead and they were new.

From wooden hats staked to the ground I could see where soldiers lay flat to earth in knots of two and three across the slope. The thin grass of pine shade moved, and wind made the trees glisten as sunlight shifted in them, but the hats held still as skulls, each where a soldier lived out his one day's bright terror or luck. But then Five Wounds came sprinting out from the willows into the slot of a shallow ravine, dashing his death-alley straight into the guns of these little hats in crossfire. He knew they had him before the one long breath of his run turned to blood in his mouth, but he lurched to the brow of the ravine to fall at my feet beneath these ribbons, beneath the bullets scattered later by night to heal his name, and now beneath the low voice of this girl practicing the ceremony of literate culture with a paper in her hands:

“Five Wounds charged up the gulch and was killed without a doubt. . . .”

“What are the ribbons for?” her little sister asked, interrupting. Leaning on each other, the parents stepped back, gentled by fatigue. The girl stopped reading and looked up.

“What ribbons?” Her eyes squinted for distance, then focused on the paper again. “It doesn't say.”

Driving on, I was tipsy with gratitude. Fenceposts passing fast out the open window were pine with the bark left on, and they chirred like insects—whisp, whisp, whisp, whisp—down the long straight road heat blurred. The mountains stood up in a blue ring distant around the valley. Sage entered me, then a hint of cut hay, then the wind-twisted fragrance of smoke and manure from a little clutter of ranch buildings at the long, tapered end of its drive. After a few miles, Wisdom itself was a truck filled with horses saddled and stamping fitfully, a wall of deer antlers below a TV satellite dish, country music aching from loudspeakers nailed to the trading post façade, and a poster at the bar advertising a rodeo memorial for two teenagers killed in a car wreck: “Only working cowboys within a hundred-mile radius of Wisdom will be eligible for the purse.”

Then Wisdom was behind, and I was sailing out the highway banked on the long curves the river led east, past fields where ponies put their ears forward to the passing snap of my fingers in the wind, and on into the open country that somehow forgot to get changed from plain gray sage and rocky bluffs, from ravines dark with willow shade and stone litter glittering down a hillside where hard rain scattered it, and the trees getting scarce for the long dry of days like this.

I was changed. The ribbons had pulled the sky right down to the ground, and tethered my soul to a story. If I was not changed, not wise, I had a way to become so. I possessed a vision-book of one moment, a story small as the pitchy pith of juniper seed to nibble for the rest of my life.

Then I saw the bear, and stopped the car. It was a young bear, about my size and black as lightning's footprint, rambling northeast along the south-facing slope of the river gully, in the direction the Nez Perce survivors of the battle had taken toward Canada, toward the place called Bear Paws where they were finally stopped. When I climbed out and the car door made a sound, the bear didn't shy suddenly off to the side like I've seen bear do, or coyotes feeling the bullet-blast of human sight graze their shoulders. Wind riffled the bear's fur, and it turned slowly to look over its shoulder from about a hundred yards off. Even at that distance, I could see the close squint of eyes, the nostril-flare of pertinent curiosity. She lifted her nose to know me by the thin ribbon of scent wind trailed out. Not in haste but not wasting daylight, she turned away, head swung down, and she ambled away over the open slope of sage, climbing toward the bluffs at the crest of my sight.

The afternoon still: a wisp of wind-whistle in sage, and the little rattle of stone where the bear's paws swung along. I felt history receding with the click and scatter of her steps, as if I saw the last run of a river trail away down the geologic trough of its bed. What made seeing not enough? What made me want to meet that shaggy woman, not merely see her sip the wind over her shoulder and turn away?

In the car I stared at the choke, the odometer, the radio. The paltry pleasures of speed and distance were mine. How had exhilaration evaporated so fast? The dwindling hummock of the bear was approaching the ridge as I turned the key and swung out, cruised a half mile out of sight around the bend, killed the engine and coasted to a stop, left the white car's pod, the road's gray vine, and climbed on foot toward the ridge. A need for quiet now—now that the bear's scent would follow the wind toward me as her path met mine. She would not know I was there. Now she would come close enough with her poor eyes to see my shape rise up.

At the brow of the ridge, along her natural way, I crouched breathless among sage scrub abuzz with insect tremor and sound. The ground
fell away to my left toward the river's long curve. To my right stretched miles of open sage. The only hidden ground lay before me, toward the afternoon sun. There, I had seen the bear aim straight this way. There was no alternative for her but to come up over the hump of ground to meet me. If she turned, I would see her on the open ground to either side. From here, I would see first the black hackles of her back like a ruffled wave over the sage horizon, then the bobbing rims of her ears, then her small, close-set eyes, her lips pulled back to pant—and then I would stand up slowly.

My fear brightened the hillside as with sweat. Every tongue of sage leaf glittered, and the sand before me was exact with sunlight. I faced west, where the breeze at my face trembled cool with rumor and scent: the smoky scent of bruised stone, the thin sweet fragrance of crushed grass. Soon, it would be bear. Soon my heart would stop its percussive haste. I would stand, and speak. Some compliment. Some respectful word.

Wind rattled the dry sticks of the sage. My bones held an old juniper's arthritic stance. The sun moved, and an ant came toward me, crossed a fathom of epic sand, and disappeared into the shade I cast. Blank wind chilled my face. Somehow, the bear slipped past my vision by some private tunnel of her own power.

The risk I took to meet the bear was a responsibility greater than being husband, father, or son. But it was not enough. I was no true citizen of wisdom, but spent all I had on being afraid. So busy with fear, I had not enough hospitality for danger and change. There was only dwindling light on the place itself.

I stood up dizzy with regret, stumbled back to the car, slid in the key, drove on, drove two hundred miles east by a path of dash-lined curves, of skid marks and guard rails dented with rust, of gas-stop exits numbered monotonous, of passing and being passed by wind-tailed trucks made brazen by their size, drove miles of signs promising greater distances to Bozeman than Butte, to Billings than Bozeman, and miles of travel
without change. And Change was my sworn brother—that we would die the same day, as Five Wounds swore to Rainbow, and fulfilled.

The day ended in Billings, where the librarians were meeting. They had come by air and car from Missoula, Boise, Seattle, Portland. They talked about change, and tradition. After the banquet, I stood at the podium, the microphone one breath's distance from my lips, and spoke: The Role of the Humanist in a Technological Age. I was not able to tell what I was learning, only what I had learned—too long before to be true. There was kind applause, and draining of the last wine. At the end, at midnight in the twenty-third floor conference suite, among the swirl of my smart companions, good people of my tribe holding their drinks in clear cups that tingled with the buzz and din of talk—at the end I saw the crowd divide when lightning began to play over the city below us. Some drew back against the wall. “Should we really be up here? Is the basement safer now? The stairwell . . .?”

But some set down their champagne cups to press outward against tall windows, as lightning came faster toward us over the grid of streets, the jagged light that started fires that night all over Montana. I stepped toward the bright hot ribbons hanging down, and the din of our talk was hushed. One light on every thing: antenna, automobile, hilarious newspaper debris rolling through the streets below, the dark distant hills. In a flash our party's reflection in the window eclipsed—the ribbons hanging down, and a girl's voice telling the story, the burnt ozone scent of change come through sage to meet me.

Still, I am afraid. A man of my own tribe trusted me with the story of the ribbons, and I trust you with the beads. He may have been wrong, and I may be wrong. I would let the place alone, but it will not let me alone.

They say in Japan stands a building filled with national cultural treasures so valuable no steel door, no lock is strong enough to protect them from thieves. Instead of such a door, the state has hired an old man to
watch the building in case of fire. He slowly walks about the building, then rests in the shade. Tied by thread to the simple door-latch, a note from the Emperor explains the supreme value of the treasury inside. There is no other lock.

I would make such a note for a square yard of ground in Montana, a few miles west of Wisdom.

T
HE
S
TORY
T
HAT
S
AVED
L
IFE

Memory is made as a quilt is made. From the whole cloth of time, frayed scraps of sensation are pulled apart, and then pieced back together in a pattern with a name: Grandmother's Garden, Drunkard's Path to Dublin, Double Wedding Ring. Call this, The Story That Saved Life.

On the way into Wallowa County in northeastern Oregon, just at the edge of the quilt, the hem of the story, you come over a rise. The wheat and hayloft blocks of the farms look about the same, the hill-patch pines and long seam of the road dashing on into a swale. But there are signs. One sign warns that no potatoes, hay, or wheat are to be carried into the County. The place is disease-free. The ground is pure. Take a deep breath, and listen.

There is a town called Elgin. They say one night the door of the doctor's office jangled open. There was a woman full in her form, expecting. Behind her stood a thin rail of husband with a hard glint to his eye.

“Good evening. What can I do for you?” The doctor rose up from the rocking chair.

“We're ready for the baby.” The husband stepped around his woman. He wasn't from town. Mud stiffened his pants to the knees.

The doctor turned to the woman. “How long have you been in labor?”

“I'm not.” She bobbed and rolled before him, trying to curtsy. “Not yet, sir.”

“But we're ready for the baby.” The husband moved behind her and nudged her forward, his boots nipping her heels.

The doctor stepped back. He should have turned on more light, but it had been almost time to close. The woman was a dim silhouette against the evening snowlight of the window.

“If you're not in labor yet, there's not much I can do. Can you stay with friends in town?” The doctor looked at her. Then from behind the woman a knife glittered in the husband's hand.

“I said we're ready, now.” The husband came around his woman again and faced the doctor, the canopy of light from the desk lamp coming up only as far as his hand and its hunting knife. There was grease under his fingernails. “I got to leave for a while—elk season. Don't want none of this happening while I'm gone.” The woman whispered a long breath.

“Okay,” said the doctor. “If it's that way, let me get my bag.” Staying in the pool of light, he turned and snapped open the black case on the table beside. His hand went inside. When it came out, there was a pistol—not exactly aimed anywhere, but part of his gesture.

“You folks are just going to have to wait. Now go on home, or somewhere. Let me know when it's really time. I'll be glad to help you then.”

Old Joseph was born before anyone wanted to raise hay in the Wallowa Valley. When the first whites came, Old Joseph planted a row of poles along the divide where the signs about pure seed potatoes now stand. The poles were not a fence, but a mark of understanding. But only the Nez Perce understood what that boundary meant.

After the Nez Perce were driven away, Old Joseph's grave at Wallowa Forks happened to coincide with a gravel quarry. The Indians came back, loaded his bones in a buckboard, and carried them south to Wallowa Lake. A bronze plaque there tells about it. At the lake is a mound of stone. At the Forks, where the bands used to gather, there is only the damp pit of the quarry.

Past Elgin, along the Minam Canyon rim is a place where people scan the far slope for elk. Some do strange things in elk season. Some do strange things all the time. The mountains let you be that way. Beyond the Minam Canyon into the canyon of the Wallowa, every curve in the river road has a story, and every straight run is the pause before a story. Story, story, story, the map-quilt gets made, gets folded for the pocket of the mind: that house with the three little cabins strung out behind, where the Civil War colonel, fled from Louisiana to Oregon, planted his slaves. Story. That road out Bear Creek where a logger stole a cement highway bridge from the U.S. government, loaded it on his truck somehow, and disappeared. Story. That single grave of the Indian girl. Story. School children heard the story and built her grave a picket fence, painted it white. In the bluff over town a cave is carved with children's names. Dusk erased them. The cave is a stone telescope, and Wallowa glimmers far away. Measure that distance in years.

How many generations to work a story down to size, to rub away the burrs and sawdust of its making? You have to forget 90 percent of what
happens if you want to tell the story right. So said Wilma, substitute teacher in residence at Wallowa School. She was a teacher by story, story alone. Something about the way her dress, softened by a lifetime of washings, hung down. Something about the spark her eyes kindled. Something about her hands held up to shape a face that's been long buried but burns in the air:

“My uncles, they all had handsome faces, but Earl was the darling—dark hair, chin like a pretty little axe, but he could talk blue. Those eyes. Had to leave West Virginia in a big hurry. We never did know why. But he made the best white lightning you ever dreamed. Kept a Mason jar full in the refrigerator. Liked his cold.

“Well, he comes home pretty looped one night, along in the spring, shouting about the cabbage maggots. We hear him slam the car door and shout, ‘Damn you, maggots! I'll fix you!'

“We hear him fumbling around in the hall, stumbling around. I remember I figured he was just trying to make it to his bedroom. But no. I hear the snap of his shotgun action getting loaded.

“‘You think just because you're little, you're safe!' That line wakes everybody up. I can hear Mama call out, ‘Earl! I want you calm!' But then he starts for the back door, and I sit up in bed. It's just starting to get light. I pull the curtains back when I hear the screen door bang shut and the dogs whimper as they get out of Earl's way.

“‘Your time's come, so stand up all of you and take it!'

“‘Earl!' Mama's in the hall, but I can see she's too late. Earl's in the garden, raising the shotgun toward the east. And just as the sun's first rays flicker onto his face, he fires off both barrels level over the garden into the trees out east.

“BOOM! BARRROOOOM! He has a wild, satisfied grin on his face, and all of Mama's calling from the back porch can't make it go away.

“You know, we never did have trouble with the cabbage maggots after that. I know it sounds crazy. It is crazy. Gardening is like that.
And Earl's white lightning makes things like that too. We took it for a saying in the family, whenever things got so impossible we didn't have any logical thing to do, we'd say, ‘Fire two shots toward the rising sun!' And after we said that, and thought about Earl standing there so happy his pants were about to fall down, nothing seemed quite so bad.”

Before I came to Wallowa County, I was warned by a city friend: “You've got to watch it out there. That's real gun country, you know. Did you read once there were these two Wallowa brothers bagged elk out of season, and when this cop went out to arrest them, they shot him? They had to call out the National Guard and surround the place. Sure enough, through binoculars they could see that cop car shot full of holes and dragged into the barn. Had a big shoot-out, before they finally nailed those two guys. That's still the real West out there. You better watch it!”

When I had been in Wallowa for a few weeks, I asked a friend, “What's this about the two brothers who did some poaching, then shot the cop, and the National Guard surrounded their place and shot them down?”

“Oh, sure. It's true, except it didn't happen quite like that. You see, there were these two brothers who had some ground in wheat, and the elk got to grazing in there every day, just like it was their own private pasture. Brothers figured since they'd fattened that whole elk herd, they had the right to slaughter one, just like it was their own stock. So they bagged one and hung it up in the barn.

“Well, these two cops drove out there to arrest them, but it was kind of a joke.
Everybody
poaches. But the two cops go out to give them a warning or something, anyway, and one of the brothers gets so upset he hooks a chain to the rear axle on the cop car, drags it into the barn, locks the door, and the cops can't do a thing but walk back to town.

“There wasn't any shooting, though. This is the West, but it's not
that
wild.”

When I had been in Wallowa several months, I asked an old-timer, “What's this about the two brothers who did some poaching just like everybody does, but then they dragged a cop car into their barn with a tractor and locked the door, and the cops had to walk back to town?”

“Where'd you hear that? It's true, all except the part about the barn. There are these two brothers up on Alder Slope. They've got a nice little piece of wheat ground up there against the mountains, you know. Up where the elk will get you if the cold snap don't. It ain't hardly poaching. It's more like taking a cut off your own herd. But say, that reminds me about this hunter one time came out here from Portland—brand new squeaky hunting clothes he got out of some catalogue, some fancy spit and polish boots, and a new gun that didn't hardly have the sale tag cleaned off it.

“Well, this Portland hunter stops in at the market—you know that little market in Enterprise, on the left just before you head out toward Joseph? He stops in there to buy a little beer, and the clerk boy starts in admiring his outfit:

“‘Mister, you look like you're about to get yourself an elk.'

“‘I sure hope so,' says this Portland hunter. But then he lowers his voice and says, ‘Only trouble is, I've never seen one.'

“‘Golly, mister!' The clerk boy looks around, and then leans forward with his hands on the cash register. ‘I'm really glad you mentioned that, mister, because there could be some real problems if you made a mistake.'

“‘Anything you could tell me,' says this Portland hunter. ‘I'd really appreciate it.' A line is forming up behind the hunter, and the boy has to lower his voice even more.

“‘Well, here goes. You drive on out of town, you'll start to see herds of these elk in the pastures beside the road. They have big red and white patches on their sides, little bitty short horns that curve up like this by
their ears, and when you stop your rig, they'll all turn around and look at you. That's a pretty good time to get off a shot.'

“‘Hey, thanks for the tip,' says this hunter, wanting to shake the boy's hand. ‘I really appreciate it.'

“So the hunter goes out, but the next morning he comes back in all excited, says to the boy still standing there at the cash register, ‘I got my elk, thanks to you! Want to see it?'

“‘Sure,' says the kid, jamming his dusting feathers into his back pocket. He gestures toward some men to leave their shopping carts and follow along.

“‘I got him right out here in the pickup—nice rack on him, too.' The hunter leads them all out to the parking lot, where the kid looks over the side of the long box on that shiny new truck. Sure enough, there's a nice big steer lying there shot all to hell. And the kid's about ready to bust out laughing, when he notices his own daddy's brand burned into the hide.