Wasatch
Mormon Stories and a Novella
by
Douglas Thayer
Zarahemla Books
Provo, Utah
For Dean and Gayle
© 2012 by Douglas Thayer. All rights reserved. Published in the United States of America by Zarahemla Books, Provo, Utah. Smashwords Edition.
The previously published stories in this collection appear by permission: “The Red-Tailed Hawk,” “Brother Melrose,” “Ice Fishing,” “Wolves,” and “Carterville” first appeared in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought; “The Gold Mine” and “Dolf” in Mr. Wahlquist in Yellowstone, published by Peregrine Smith Books; “Crow Basin” in Proving Contraries: A Collection of Writings in Honor of Eugene England, published by Signature Books; and “The Locker Room” in Irreantum.
Table of Contents
3. Wolves
4. Carterville
5. Crow Basin
8. Ice Fishing
10. The Locker Room
11. Fathers and Sons
12. Dolf
1. The Red-Tailed Hawk
I remember how icy the alarm clock was that morning when I jerked it under the covers and fumbled for the button. I didn’t want my mother to hear it and get up too, because she would make me eat a cooked breakfast, fix me a big lunch. She would tell me again I shouldn’t kill birds, insist how dangerous the river was for me alone, especially in winter, even if I was fifteen, and say that it was almost Christmas. I listened. Then, glad when I couldn’t hear her door down the hall, I put the clock back and pulled my Levi’s and shirt under the covers to warm. I was going after geese, ducks too, but mostly geese, Canada geese. Standing in the south field after chores, I had seen them twice that week coming up off the lake to feed in the fields. The great grey Canada birds were fantastic, huge almost, wild and free, with a clamorous gabbling that made me shiver. Yet I had never killed one.
“Let me go with you.”
I turned to face Glade, the oldest of my three younger brothers, his head just raised off his pillow. How I hated to sleep with him, feel his warmth beside me in the bed, hear him breathe, wake in the night to find his body touching mine. “No, you can’t go. I told you last night.”
“I’ve got some shells. Please, it’s Christmas.”
“No. Shut up and go back to sleep.”
His face pale in the dim light from the frosted windows, he stared at me, then lowered his head and turned to the wall. Glade followed me everywhere, swimming in the summer, fishing, hunting, on hikes. My mother made me let him go, said I should want him to go, that we were brothers. We fought at night. Straddling him I held my pillow over his face, him bucking and twisting, sucking for air; or I jabbed him savagely under the covers until he cried, when my two youngest brothers would holler from their bed that we were fighting. I could hear my father coming. He cuffed me, threatened to lick me, said, “You’re not too big yet for a damned good licking.” And I hated him for that, for grabbing me by the collar, for kicking me in the butt hard, for always shouting that I was a fool. But I never cried. He couldn’t make me.
I wanted to be left alone, wanted that fiercely, didn’t want anybody around me, touching me. I wanted to be alone like the birds. Birds were alone. I loved birds. I took a taxidermy course, two dollars for each mailed lesson, my haying money, and out in the barn I skinned the birds I killed and made their cotton bodies. I hung them from the barn rafters on long wires, suspended them in flight, meadowlarks, robins, magpies, crows, ducks, hawks, and hanging from the ceiling in my room on a wire, a large red-tailed hawk, wings spread, soaring. Birds could fly wherever they wanted, could be alone. Nothing touched them but the air.
At night, Glade asleep, I would sneak out of my T-shirt and undershorts, curl tight under the blankets but not really feel them in the darkness because they were warm like my skin, like air. And the previous summer I sometimes lay on top of the covers that way, stared up at the hawk, lifted my arms. I fell asleep once, and Glade, waking before I did, told my father.
“You’re going to go crazy with that stuff!” my father yelled at me. “What the hell’s got into you lately anyway?”
But it wasn’t sex, not that kind. I wasn’t innocent, for no farm boy could be. But I didn’t know girls then, not at fourteen and away from town, and my loins and heart would not burn then as they would two years later, although even at fourteen I dreamed and woke in the darkness, my sleep become frantic with a boy’s passion. But mostly I dreamed other dreams, dreams of flying, soaring, lifting away from the earth, being an eagle or a hawk, vanishing into the yellow sun.
My Levi’s and shirt got warm under the covers. Feet curled against the cold linoleum, I dressed. Kneeling to feel for my heavy wool boot-socks, I looked up at the redtail. At first, a sailplane I had built, “The Albatross—Six Foot Wing Span,” had hung there. Proud of me for once, my father said I should enter it in the county fair. But I didn’t. Carrying the five-foot detachable wings, Glade carrying the body because I couldn’t carry both, I climbed into the hot summer cliffs, where I sailed it into the afternoon thermals, watched it soar to disappear into the sun. Then I stepped to the very edge, raised my arms. Glade screamed, and he told my father. “You trying to kill yourself, you little fool?” my father yelled at me that night, called me a fool again for losing the plane. Younger, I would let my kites go, hold them until the ten-cent ball of string ended, then let them go, watch the wind carry them.
Careful not to let my drawer squeak, I got my shotgun shells. More than anything else I wanted a room of my own where I could lock the door, be alone, sleep alone, not hear anybody at night, not be touched. And I would have my birds in my room, the soaring hawks and eagles, and the giant grey-white Canada geese. Hanging above my bed on wires, they would be flying, and I could lie there at night looking up at them in the moonlight from the windows or use my flashlight, and perhaps the summer breeze through the open windows would stir them. I would be in a flock of birds.
I remember how I crept down the dark hall, my hand flat against the wall. I closed the hall door and walked through the cold front room past the Christmas tree and into the kitchen. After I ate a bowl of cornflakes I fixed me a sandwich and got my shotgun and other gear. It was two days before Christmas. I hated that too, hated the glittering tree, the music, everybody laughing. But mostly I hated the presents, getting them, people handing me things, putting their arms around me, patting me on the back, wanting something in return. I cringed, wanted to jerk away, run. I wanted the tree down, the ornaments, lights, and Christmas music put away in the cupboard. I wanted the house silent.
I did not dress warm against the cold, although the evening paper had said a big snowstorm was due that afternoon. I wasn’t afraid of the cold. I pulled on my hip boots, put my brown canvas hunting coat on over my sweater, fitted my scarf. I didn’t build the kitchen fire or turn up the oil heater in the front room. My mother might wake up and, because of the storm, change her mind about me going, or make me take Glade. Through my cotton gloves I felt the cold metal of my shotgun, a double barrel. I didn’t care if they all woke up to a cold house. My father was on graveyard shift at the dairy, but my mother would be up long before he got home a little after eight o’clock.
Closing the back door, I walked down the porch steps, my breath rising in plumes in the icy air. Over the west mountains the moon was a yellow glow behind the clouds. To the east the sky grew white over the mountains. I stopped at the fence at the end of the second field, the crusted snow a foot deep where I stood. My father’s small farm was on a bench. Below me were the river bottoms, narrow, then wider where the river neared the lake five miles to the west. Black against the snow, a wide band of cottonwood trees lined the river, a high clump at the swimming hole two miles below the mouth of Spring Creek. In the summer the bottoms were all planted to wheat, oats, sugar beets, and hay, the houses and barns all a mile or two back from the river because of the spring high water. It was another ten years before they built the dam in the canyon.
I loved that belt of trees and willows, the river. The school, church, my father’s house were all alien to me, prisons. I lived my real life there in the bottoms, wore only my soft cotton cutoffs, no belt, T-shirt, socks, undershorts, wore my Keds without laces. I hunted birds, killed them, climbed in the high trees, embraced limbs, swam, soared on the great rope swing, lay spread-eagled under the sun.
I was always hiding from Glade and the others, the sheriff when he came down in his pickup to tell us again not to chase horses.
“And don’t be running around these fields bare-assed either. Swim all you want, but stay out of the fields. These farmers’ wives don’t like seeing that.”
Driven, I reached out for something infinite, not knowing what it was, but feeling myself drawn to it, some final feeling beyond the earth in the yellow sun.
One set of car lights moved along the bottom road, but I knew I would be the only hunter so late in the season. Those who still hunted had boats and decoys and hunted the open holes on the lake. I climbed between the frosted fence wires and started down the slope. The cattle gathered into the feedlots near the road, all day I would see only the few starved-out horses left in the fields to winter. Sometimes the horses died, froze icy, the legs sticking straight out. When the snow melted, the magpies flocked out of the willows to feed on them.
I would jump-shoot Spring Creek to the river and then blind up on a sandbar and wait for the storm to push the geese and big ducks off the lake. Strung out for a mile in the new light, a flock of crows was already coming off the roost. Cawing, black against the snow when they dipped down, a thousand of them maybe, they headed for the cornfields on the bench. Already my hands were cold in the thin gloves, but I shoved only my right hand under my coat. I liked the cold. It was clean and kept people inside. In April and May I swam in the cold river. I liked storms. My mother wanted me home early to help get ready for Christmas, but I would stay late.
I climbed through the last fence and came around a clump of willows. A blue Ford pickup stood parked off the lane near the wooden tractor bridge over Spring Creek. I cursed, the words steady and half-silent, like a hiss. A flat sneak boat with two men in it drifted into the first bend as I stepped on the bridge. I watched it vanish into the vapor, the creek just wide enough for it, the voices coming back to me on the water. I cursed them again, loud now, cursed them for the ducks, for being there, for not letting me have it alone, cursed them for their voices and their noise. Then I heard shooting, and I cursed them for that too, even as I loaded my own gun.
I hoped for stragglers out of the small flocks of ducks I saw rise over the willows just ahead of where the boat must have been. But none came. One or two would fall out of the flock, I would hear the dull boom of the shotgun, but no ducks flew close enough for me. I saw no geese. A mile below the tractor bridge I stopped to warm my hands. Too high for a shot, a magpie flew over me and dropped into a field with a dozen others and some crows on the partially snow-covered skeletons of three cows killed by lightning that summer. Because it was swampy the farmer hadn’t been able to drag them out. We had walked the two miles up from the swimming hole to see the cows the day after the storm. For a month, if the wind was right, you could smell the heavy watery stink across the fields.
My hands still cold, I hunted on down the creek. Magpies were smart. I killed very few of them with my shotgun. I killed them in the early summer with my .22 rifle when, just out of the nest, the young birds couldn’t fly far. Tired of swimming, I sneaked from tree to tree, shot the young birds, watched them fall in puffs of feather from the high limbs, the screeching old birds too smart to light. Then, because I knew what my mother would say if I brought too many birds home, I tied them with pieces of wire to the fences or climbed to wedge them back in the trees.
The sneak boat was tied up where Spring Creek emptied into the river. The two men sat drinking coffee, the ducks piled on the bow. I crept closer through the willows.
“How about that triple, Fred? Three mallards dead before they hit the water.”
I aimed first at him, centering the bead on his head. A little closer, I could have blown big holes in the boat the same way I blew holes in sheds and wooden fences.
“Best shooting I ever saw you do.”
I clicked my safety back on, turned and started down the river. Later I heard their motor and knew they had gone back up Spring Creek, knew they had limited out, knew then, too, I was on the river alone.
There was no trail in the snow. I broke my own, cut in and out to the river bank, but jumped no birds close enough for a shot. Nothing was flying. The wind hadn’t really started, wasn’t strong enough yet to force the ducks off the lake, keep them low. I stopped often to look for geese against the black mountains and dark clouds, watched until my eyes watered, listened, strained for a sound I could not hear. I knew the storm would bring them. I’d hunted them since I was twelve and my father let me carry a gun, but I’d never shot one.
I saw small flocks of crows and solitary hawks. Sandbars fed out into the river from the steep banks, but the channel was still full. I had been first across the swimming hole that April, Glade shouting for me to come back, not to try it, that it was too cold, too swift. They had to lift me out, build a fire for me. I vomited, blacked out, but I had been first across. I told Glade what I would do to him if he said anything.
I shot a crow that flew over, and it fell into the river. It beat its water-heavy wings and kept lifting its head, but the slow current took it. I liked to touch the birds I killed. A marsh hawk flew by but not close enough. I watched for the wind in the tops of the trees. Finally, stomping my feet against the numbness, I built a blind on a sandbar where a week earlier I had seen goose tracks and droppings on the edge ice. Warming one hand at a time in my crotch, I ate my lunch and watched the river. A few yellow willow leaves drifted slowly by.
In the summer, alone, I liked to stand in the wind-blown willows and let the fluttering green leaves touch me. Rifle in hand, I hunted unseen, alone, shouts drifting to me from the swimming hole. When a thunderstorm came over the west mountains, and the farmers, afraid of being hit by lightning, left the fields, I sneaked out to stand in the belly-high green wheat, watch the great flashes of light, hear the roar and rumble of thunder, feel the wind, the wheat waving against me. Or I climbed high in the bending trees, wrapped my arms and legs around the limbs, squeezed until the rough bark hurt, felt my body inside my shorts, rode the trees. I loved trees.
And if I tired of hunting birds I shot the surfacing carp, watched them fade into the deep grey water, set my rifle on my Keds and shorts, followed them, walked slowly into the river from the sandbars until the water was over my head and the slow summer current carried me. I spread my arms and legs to touch the flesh-warm water, became nothing, only part of the water. Eyes open I sank down from the grey-blue to the green and then the black, the light disappearing above me, completely alone, touched the cold bottom mud, then rose back again into the light. And I kept doing that until the vomit stung in my throat and I got dizzy. Then I lay in the yellow sun, looked at it through the cracks between my fingers, tried to see what it was. When Glade hollered that we’d better be home in time for chores, I wouldn’t answer. Days later I saw the dead carp near the edge of the water, bleached yellow-white and pecked by magpies.
Small flocks of teal kept flying upriver, but I didn’t shoot, didn’t want the small ducks. A lone greenhead mallard came up. Watching it through the piled brush, I stood, shot, dropping it dead, ragged, where I could drag it out with a stick, glad it didn’t float away out of reach. Sitting in my blind again, I arranged the feathers, stroked them, touched the velvet green head. It was a big northerner with bright orange feet. The winter before on Christmas afternoon I had killed a mallard banded in Alaska. I made a ring out of the aluminum band, which I touched in school, in church, took off, read the letters and numbers. Ducks could fly wherever they wanted to, up above everything, just in the air with nothing else around them, never touched by anything except water and air.
It was colder. Blowing across the river from the northeast, the beginning wind scattered a few leaves out of the willows and onto the rippled water. I stomped my feet, rubbed my numb fingers, remembered the story of the Alaskan gold miner who tried to kill his dog with his knife, put his hands in the warm guts to keep them from freezing; but the dog wouldn’t come close enough and the gold miner didn’t have a rifle. Finally I decided to move farther downriver, run part of the way, get warm and blind up again. The wind hit me when I left the willows, and I heard shooting from toward the lake. A few ducks flew against the black clouds; the growing wind would force them down. I heard geese once, pushed back into the willows, saw them off to the south, big, black, five of them, high, their gabbling faint. I remember how I spoke to them, “Turn, turn,” I said, but, heart slamming, had to watch them vanish, just stand there.
I already knew I would stay until dark, knew it before I left the house that morning. I didn’t care about my father; maybe he would be asleep, because he had to go on shift at midnight, wouldn’t be waiting for me. My mother would just worry, not cuff me, not shout, just look at me, shake her head, talk, her eyes maybe filling up with slow tears, tell me it was Christmastime. The geese would come if I waited long enough. In my mind I saw them, five or six maybe, coming up the river, the great moving wings, necks out, the gabbling louder and louder. And I would kill one, maybe two, bring them crashing down with perfect head shots, the great wings all ragged in the air.
Three times I cut back in to check the river but jumped nothing, the last time walked through the little grove of six-foot blue spruce. Twice my father had asked me, “Can’t you get us a Christmas tree down on the river this year, save me buying one.”
“No,” I said, “there aren’t any.”
“You sure? There used to be a few in the willows if you kept your eyes open.”
“No,” I said, all the time staring at Glade.
I didn’t want to cut a tree, drag it up to the house, hang it with tinsel and lights, didn’t want the smell of it in the house away from the river, didn’t want to watch it turn brown. A hundred yards back from the spruces, under the snow, were the bones of a little spike buck I had killed a year earlier in August. He had followed the river out of the canyon. I shot him through the eye with my .22, watched him until he was quiet, and then turned him over so he didn’t look hurt. I went back three times that day, squatted down by him, brushed off the ants. The second day the magpies were on him.
Except for a few horse tracks the snow was clean, and I broke my own trail. Way ahead where the river curved I saw the high cottonwoods at the swimming hole. It took five boys just to reach around the biggest tree, the rope tree. It was an old rope, two inches thick and frayed. We had board platforms nailed in the trees to swing from, but I liked to climb higher, up into the green leaves. The others watched me, faces upturned, Glade shouting for me not to go any higher, maybe bawling. Sometimes, standing on a limb, I let go and stood just on one foot to have the feeling, then grabbed the overhead branch again when I tipped. I liked the feeling, the shiver.
Holding the rope, chest tight, I lifted up, and it was like in my dreams when I flew over houses and trees with just my arms outspread. The warm air rushing against my whole body, the trees blurred, I waited until just before I hit the top of the sweep before I let go. And for that one moment I flew, saw everything below me, soared, hovered. Then I dropped, felt the tingling in my crotch, felt the air, the rushing heavier water. And I stayed under until they all thought I had drowned. I was both bird and fish. If anybody climbed as high as I had, I climbed higher, swinging again and again, falling until my nose bled, and I let the blood fall on my chest and stomach so that I looked wounded. The letting go, the soaring, was the very best part. I wanted to feel like that forever.
I built another blind on a sandbar above the swimming hole. The wind made the cold worse. I couldn’t see my breath anymore. I kept my hands under my armpits, stomped my feet on the packed snow. Walking home I would be facing into the wind all the way. I knew that it was nearly four o’clock, that I should have been at least back to the tractor bridge on Spring Creek. People would be turning on their outside Christmas lights. The steady shooting from toward the lake meant more birds were flying. Teal kept slipping up the river in easy range, but I didn’t shoot. I dropped a hen mallard out of a flock of five on the second shot. She was easy to reach. She was big, an orange-footed northerner, and I decided I would mount her too when I did the goose, put her near a big greenhead I had hanging in the barn, make a pair. I liked the wind. I liked to go out in the barn on windy days, leave the door open and watch the birds move.
Later I climbed the bank to look for geese. Under the low heavy clouds everything was dark grey, even the snow. Willows clicked. Lower now, the ducks came in against the wind in singles and doubles and small flocks. Dipping down, wings whistling when they flew over, they came on, the wind forcing them lower. I saw two small flocks of geese, strained to hear them above the wind, stared them out of sight, hoping all the time they would turn, come my way, talked to them. But they kept on, drawn to some other place, left me empty.
Below the geese white points of light burned in the houses along the bench, the outside Christmas lights not visible from that distance. My mother would be pushing back the curtain at the kitchen window to look out. But I didn’t care. In front of me, black against the grey snow, stood a starved-out old horse, head down, tail to the wind. Beyond the horse, only a black dot, was the big haystack at the end of Miller’s lane. The horse was the only thing in the fields I could see alive. Swaying the tops of the trees, the wind brought the first scattered flakes of snow.
Just after I got back in my blind two big greenhead mallards flew by in easy range, but I didn’t shoot. More big ducks came. But I was waiting for geese, only geese. They liked to rest in the shallows along the sandbars, leave their sign. But they came late, and I, afraid of my father, had never dared stay. They would come though, I knew, if only I waited long enough. I listened against the wind, strained my watery eyes to watch down the river, watched, stomped my feet only when I couldn’t stand the numbness, pounded my gloved hands against my knees, sure the geese would come, absolutely sure.
The big haystack at the end of Miller’s lane was where we left our bicycles when we went down to swim. August was very hot, and I remember one night, my brothers asleep, how, uncovered, I slipped out of bed, pulled on my cutoffs, stepped into my Keds, and climbed out the bedroom window. I intended only to ride my bicycle up and down the road in front of the house to get cool, but I turned off on the bottom road and then onto Miller’s lane, parked my bicycle.
At first I walked but then began to run down the sandy path, leaping, watching my legs flash in the moonlight. I wanted to scream and yell, run through the fields of ripe August wheat, but I didn’t because I knew a farmer might be out with a late water turn. The cows and horses did not shy as I ran past them.
The cottonwood trees shaded the moonlight from the swimming hole. The dark air suspended me, and I floated, tried not to move, the water joining with the darkness. When I climbed the trees the leaves were like hands against my whole body. The second night in a wind I rode the trees, the high limbs, heard a million leaves, screamed into the sound. And when I swung on the rope it was fantastic, my body fusing with both air and water. The tingling went from my crotch clear to my skull, and I reached out to a world I had never known, something inviting me, as in my dreams.
I left the house four times at night, until on the fourth morning at three o’clock my father was waiting for me in the yard. “What the hell you doing out at this hour?” he said, spun me around, felt my damp hair. “You young fool, you trying to commit suicide down there swimming alone at night?” I didn’t answer. He backhanded me, told me what it was like to drown, shouted, said he’d beat me next time. I had to stay on the place for a week. “Fool,” he said. “I’ll send the sheriff after you if you try it again.” At breakfast Glade kept snickering.
More ducks flew up the river, flocks. I knew it would soon be dark. And then I heard them, that gabbling, the sound at first like the wind. I listened, already reaching for my shotgun, as if by instinct I knew the sound was geese. They were on the river. My breath caught. Heavy loads already chambered, I crouched on the snow, pushed the safety off, smothered the sound with my glove, tightened my legs. Low, gabbling, three great Canada geese flew out of the greyness below me, shadows, but then blacker, coming right at me in good range. Big, bigger than I had ever thought, beautiful, somebody pounding me over the heart. I watched through a hole in the blind. “Wait, wait,” whispering, “not too soon, not too soon. Big. Wait, wait.” The gabbling grew louder—marvelous the wings, the long necks, the rhythmic birds.
Just as they came abreast I stood up. Flaring, they lifted with the wind, moving away. I shot, missed, shot again and the lead goose turned completely over and fell, broken-winged, crashing into the water. Even as he hit I was out of the blind, mindless of the other geese, ready to dance and scream. Uprighted, trailing the wing, the goose swam toward the far side. Cramming in a shell, I aimed carefully on the head and fired. The long neck collapsed and the head pushed forward into the water under the force of the shot. The pounding in my chest died. The wind and the slow current moved him. He was too far out.
I didn’t hesitate. I set my gun on my coat. When I pulled off my clothes, the cold wind stung my body. Puffs of mud rose around my feet when I stepped into the river past the edge ice, the water colder than the wind. I swam sidestroke, the goose bobbing ahead of me on the waves I made. I wasn’t afraid, though I knew I could cramp, sink, fade down into the grey water and yellow leaves. It didn’t seem strange, not unreal, not dangerous. I reached out and took the goose by the neck, glad, wanting to shout, the feathers warm. And then, not feeling my body under the water, frozen, I turned back. When I touched the mud under me, I stumbled out and dropped the goose. Yellow, the broken wing bone stuck out through the feathers. I picked up the goose again and hugged it to me, felt the still-warm body against my numb skin.
The wind had blown my shirt and left glove into the water. My body was white. My head buzzed. I kept gasping for breath, and acid vomit rose in my throat as I tried to dry myself with my undershirt. When I tried to pull on my undershorts and then my Levi’s, I stumbled, covering my feet with the white snow. Dressed, I put the stiffening wet glove, shirt, and undershirt into the rear game pocket with the ducks, picked up the heavy goose, my shotgun, and struggled up the bank. The wind hit me square, blew the snow hard into my eyes, took my breath.
After ten minutes, fumbling, I stopped to brush the snow off my coat and to wrap my scarf around my face. Still my face slowly stiffened and it was hard to open my mouth. My forehead ached; the snow filled my eyes. I carried the goose over my shoulder, my bare left hand had become wood or stone. Everything was black, even the sky, the only light coming from the grey snow under me. I couldn’t see Spring Creek or the river. At first when I stumbled the snow was colder than the wind, but only at first. I kept trying to brush the snow off my coat so I wouldn’t be white. A magpie rose screeching from a willow clump, and was whipped away by the wind.
I pushed on and on against the wind and driving snow until I could not feel myself walking. I kept stumbling and falling. I wasn’t carrying the Canada goose over my shoulder; my shotgun also dropped somewhere. I didn’t know where I was. I seemed not even to breathe. I floated, left the ground, rose, hovered, and it was a sensation I had never known before. I expected to see the fences, willows, and trees vanish under me. I was becoming something beyond myself. I felt no limits, nothing stopping, nothing touching me, as if I were rising alone into light, rising, never falling back, the sensation never ending, filling my whole body.
I stumbled a last time, fell forward into the soft snow, where I lay on my side not caring, the snow not cold anymore. Relaxed, sleepy almost, I stared at the white snow falling on my coat, saw then the horn and half-head of one of the summer lightning-killed cows. I raised my head, saw behind me the mound I had stumbled over. I crawled. Mechanically with my lower arms and dead hands I pushed back the snow from the horn, saw the black empty eye socket, the bone skull. I looked down. Snow filled the wrinkles of my coat; I was turning white.
All summer the dead cows had been vanishing, the fence-hung birds too, the carp, the little buck. And I had no name for it, only vanishing, knew only that it was not swimming, not soaring, not running in the moonlight, not embracing trees. It was not feeling. I grew whiter, saw myself vanishing into the snow. I watched, and then slowly, like beginning pain, the terror seeped into me, the knowing. I struggled up, fled.
But I could not run, could not feel the ground through my feet to balance myself. When I fell I got up, pushed with my elbows, feeling no pain, my hands and feet gone. I found low places in the fences and fell forward, the wire tearing my clothes. I thought the posts and bushes were people rushing up to help me.
I could only see, not smell, hear, even my tongue cold in my mouth. And I wanted to raise my arms around my head to keep it warm so I could go on seeing, for I was afraid my eyes would freeze and I, sightless, would fall down and be covered by the snow. But I couldn’t raise my arms.
And then I stopped, stood.
A light flashed through the driving snow. It was red. It flashed again. I saw headlights, and I began to run. I stumbled and I got up. I climbed up a bank. I fell down on my knees and hands. I looked at tire tracks filling with snow. I was on the lane. Slowly I stood up. I waited.
The headlights turned and came dipping, disappearing, a spotlight sweeping ahead and to the sides through the driving snow. The spotlight hit me and didn’t move. The car came ahead and stopped, the red light on top flashing. It was the sheriff’s pickup. The sheriff got out. He pulled his broad-brimmed hat tight against the wind. He buttoned the collar of his heavy coat. He stopped in front of me. He asked me my name. I stared at him. “Hell, kid, you’ve got your mother all upset. Your old man’s out searching the fields with half a dozen neighbors in this storm. He’s mad too, I can tell you that. You could freeze to death in no time out here with this wind blowing this hard.”
The sheriff blocked out the lights.
Again he asked me my name. “What’s wrong with you, kid, can’t you talk?” He played his flashlight up and down me. “Where’s your gun?” He stepped closer. “Where’s your glove?” He shined the light into my eyes, and I couldn’t close them. “Good hell, kid, we better get you in where it’s warm.” I felt him take my arm, grip it tight, and I fell toward his hand.
I was in the hospital three weeks. The surgeon cut off three fingers on my left hand down to the first knuckle, and afterward my hand was a white ball raised on a wire frame. I had pneumonia. The oxygen tent was like being under water. When I rose up out of the blackness, I saw my mother or my father, sometimes both. My father sat in a chair and slept with his forehead resting on my bed. Then I would sink back down into the blackness again, spiral down into the not-knowing, vanish.
I was terrified of sleep. When I was out of the oxygen tent and could talk again, I told the doctor my hand didn’t hurt so he would stop the shots for that. At first he said no, but later he told the nurse. The pain wouldn’t let me sleep too long. I cried sometimes at night because of the pain, but it was better than sleep.
Across from me in my room was an old man with yellow skin who slept all of the time. At night I listened to him breathe, his mouth a black hole in the dim light from the small lit Christmas tree on the stand by his bed. The nurses kept putting his thin yellow arms and legs back under the covers. The nurses hurried to put a screen around my bed the night he died, but through the cracks I saw what they did. Later after the nurse took the screen away I watched two women turn over the mattress and put on all fresh bedding. They whispered back and forth across the bed and looked at me. A nurse made me take a sleeping pill.
When the doctor released me, my father wrapped me in a blanket and carried me from the hospital door to the car in his arms, the corner of the blanket over my face. It was late afternoon when we got home. My mother and brothers came out of the house as we pulled in. My brothers were dressed in their Sunday clothes; my mother wiped her eyes with the bottom edge of her blue apron. My father carried me into the warm house that smelled of roast turkey and put me on the couch in the front room. Blazing in the corner was the Christmas tree with everybody’s presents under it. They had saved Christmas for me, which I hadn’t known. I bit my lip and turned away. Glade wanted to know what was wrong. “Nothing,” I said.
Several neighbors came by to bring me presents, then we had supper, and after that, Christmas. My little brothers brought me my presents, helped me with the ribbons, stacked my presents for me. Later my mother said that I’d had enough excitement and needed to rest, so my father carried me down the hall to the bedroom. The bedroom was warm from a new oil heater. Warm under the covers in my new heavy flannel pajamas, I lay and listened to my brothers playing in the front room. Above me the red-tailed hawk still hovered, the tail fanned, the wings spread to hold the air, beak wide for screaming. The yellow glass eyes looked down, the bird motionless, dusty, suspended from a wire. Out in the barn the hanging birds were dusty too, some of them splotched with pigeon droppings.
That night Glade was supposed to sleep on the couch in the front room, where I could be during the day, but I didn’t want him to. I told my mother he wouldn’t hurt my hand, so she let him sleep with me. Later, just before he went on graveyard shift, my father came and stood in the doorway, the hall light behind him. He could see I was still awake, everybody else asleep.
“You all right, son?” he asked, quietly.
“I guess so,” I said.
That was all he said. He stood there for a moment, then, leaving the door half-open, turned and walked down the hall. He didn’t turn the hall light off.
My presents were stacked on the dresser in front of the mirror. Over the sound of the heater I heard the wind outside. It was snowing. I raised my arm to turn the white ball of my hand in the light from the hall. I hadn’t seen my hand yet. When I did I cried like a baby in the doctor’s office. At school I kept my hand hidden in my pocket, or carried my books in that hand, and I quit gym. I couldn’t stand being dressed in a gym uniform, my arms bare, couldn’t stand it in the showers, without even a towel to cover my hand, couldn’t stand the other boys seeing me. Clutching my hand I prayed at night, even out loud, promised God everything, then woke in the early morning afraid to look. But my father made me start gym again.
“You can’t hide; you have to live with it,” he said.
And he made me do my chores, no matter how hard, no matter how many things I broke or spilled, and although he shouted at me sometimes, swore, he never again hit me.
I stared up at the hawk. It was indistinct now, black, a hovering silhouette, a dark still shadow above me. I moved closer to Glade, felt his warmth. Green, blue, white, red—the colored Christmas boxes and wrappings glinted on the dresser in the shaft of light from the half-open door.
2. Brother Melrose
The old man walked out from under the line of high, heavy trees bordering the cemetery. He stopped. He looked up, blinking his eyes. He held his hands palms up to the fading April sunlight. It was early evening the Saturday after Easter.
“Well,” he said. “Well.”
He nodded his head and then started down the dirt road toward the town, which was not far away. It was not a large town. He did not walk fast. He stopped to look at a horse in a field. He whistled, and the horse raised its head and walked over to the fence.
He rubbed the horse behind the ears and petted his neck.
“Good old Red. Good old Red.”
The horse raised and lowered its head.
At the next field he stopped to look at a cow and her calf. The cow walked toward the fence; the calf followed. He stopped to watch a flock of pigeons flying about the trees. When he crossed the bridge just outside the town, he stopped and looked down at the water.
“Well,” he said.
Looking down at himself, he brushed off his suit jacket and pants with the flats of his hands.
He was dressed in a new black suit, white shirt, and dark tie. He wore shiny new shoes. He did not have far to go; his house was on the edge of town. He left the road and got on the sidewalk. He stopped to smell a rose.
Across the street an older woman out hoeing her peas waved to him. He waved back. She stood and watched him as he passed. She put up her right hand to shade her eyes, pushing her head forward like a chicken. She rested her hoe against a gooseberry bush and walked to the fence, but the old man had passed by already.
“I could have sworn . . .”
She stood there looking at his back. She shook her head and turned toward her garden. She stopped and turned once to look after the old man and then went on. She took up her hoe again; she stood there holding it.
A brown dog came out to bark at the old man, but then walked up to him sniffing and wagging her tail.
“Well, hello, Iris,” the old man said. “How are you?” He reached down and petted the dog. Iris whined. “Good old dog, Iris. Where’s Joey?” Barking and jumping, Iris circled the old man and then ran down the sidewalk ahead of him.
A pickup truck coming in the opposite direction passed the old man and then stopped suddenly in the middle of the road. The driver got out and stood looking at the old man. The driver walked to the back of his pickup and watched the old man approaching the gate of a comfortable-looking white-framed house set deep in the yard.
Another pickup stopped behind the first pickup. A heavy-set man stuck his head out the open window.
“You out of gas, Heber?”
“No, no, George. I just thought I saw old man Melrose.” He nodded toward the old man entering the gate.
George looked toward the white house. He shook his head.
“Better drive into Springerville to the clinic and get your eyes checked, Heber. Old man Melrose’s been dead and buried for nearly a year. Don’t expect him back either. Probably a bum looking for a handout. Stole himself a nice suit of clothes somewhere. See you, Heber. I’d make that appointment.” He laughed.
“No, I . . .”
Iris leading the way, the old man walked up on the porch of the white house.
“Grandpa! Grandpa! Grandpa!”
The screen door flung back and a blond-headed boy came running out of the house.
“I knew you’d come back! I knew you would! I just knew you would! I told Mom you would! You just had to. I prayed you would all the time. I prayed and prayed.”
“Yes, Joey, I know.”
The old man bent over to hug the boy. Barking, Iris jumped up and down.
Joey put his arms around his grandpa’s neck and squeezed tight.
“Oh, Grandpa, it’s so good to see you.”
“You bet.”
“Mom will be so happy. Mom! Mom! Grandpa’s back! Grandpa’s back!”
Joey let go of his grandpa’s neck, jerked open the screen door, and ran into the house.
“Mom! Mom!”
The old man walked into the house. He stopped to breathe in deep the smell of fresh-baked bread.
“Joey, I’ve told you your grandpa isn’t coming back. He’s dead. Now what is this nonsense?” The woman came out of the kitchen and into the front room wiping her hands on her apron. “I’m making pies for Sunday and your father will be home for supper. I haven’t got time—”
Looking up, the woman screamed, sharp and piercing. She fell into an overstuffed chair near where she stood.
“Now, Elsie, there’s no need to act like that.”
The old man leaned down to take the woman’s hand.
“What’s wrong with my mom, Grandpa? Is she sick?”
“You go get your mother a glass of water. Now, Elsie.”
“No, no, no, no.” Lying back in the chair, the woman rolled her head from side to side like she was taking a fit. She seemed to hold her eyes closed intentionally.
“Here, Grandpa.”
“Thank you, Joey.”
The old man took the glass and held it to the woman’s lips.
“You’ll feel better.”
The woman opened her eyes and closed them again.
“Nooooo,” she said, like a woman shouting down a tunnel.
“Come on now, Elsie. It can’t be helped.”
Staring at the man, the woman sipped the water.
“Dad?”
“Yes, Elsie, it’s me I’m afraid.”
“But—”
“I know. I know. It can’t be helped, right now anyway.”
“Are you okay, Mom? What’s wrong with you, Mom?”
“It’s just not possible. It’s not. What are people going to say? You had such a lovely service. Everybody came. They all saw you. Everybody said how nice you looked. You had a new suit just like you wanted, and new shoes too, although why a person would want new shoes I don’t know.”
She took the glass from the old man. “Here, I need the rest of that.”
She emptied the glass and then sat holding it with both hands.
“The whole family was there, even Kenneth and Ruth and their kids, and they don’t usually come to anything in the way of family, not even weddings. You know that. The sisters fixed such a nice lunch afterward. The flowers were so nice. People went out of their way to say such nice things about you even though you weren’t buried in temple robes. You looked so peaceful. Mom must have been waiting at the veil when you got there. Your service was so nice. I can’t believe it. I can’t. I can’t. It’s too much.”
Elsie kept her head pressed against the back of the chair for support, as if she was afraid her head might fall off.
“I know.”
“You know? How could you know?”
Elsie shook her head.
“I can’t believe it. I won’t believe it. I was to get this house when you died. We’ve been painting and fixing up things till I’ve got a decent roof over my head finally for the first time since I married Fred. I used the money you left me for that. Of course it was Mom’s money to begin with. The Melroses never had a dime and never will have. It was the Thatchers had money.”
“I don’t want it back, Elsie. You don’t have to worry about anything.”
“How in the world?” Shaking her head, she closed her eyes, and then opened them again. “Where’s Bishop Johnson? Off somewhere of course. Never around when you need him and always standing at the door wanting you to do something when you don’t.”
“But, Mom, Grandpa’s come. Shouldn’t we be happy?”
“I know he’s back. If anybody would be coming back it would be him. He was the most stubborn man I ever . . .” She looked at the boy, as if noticing him for the first time. “Now you go out and play. Your grandfather and me have things to talk about. What your aunts are going to say about this, I don’t know. Of course it wasn’t them that took care of him for ten years either.”
“Oh, Ma.”
She raised her head and looked down at the boy.
“Go on now, and take that dog with you. That wretched animal is on my new carpet. Why the Wilsons can’t keep their dogs chained up or build a fence I’ll never know. They have a dog, but they want me to take care of Iris of course.”
The dog was lying on the brown carpet, her head between her paws. Hearing her name, she stood up.
“Oh, Ma.”
“Just do as you’ve been asked. You’ve got to have a bath too. It’s Sunday tomorrow, don’t forget.”
“Gee whiz. Come on, Iris. Good-bye, Grandpa. See you later.”
“Good-bye, sonny boy.”
Joey pushed open the screen door, and he and Iris went out on the front porch.
“Fred. I’ll call Fred to come home early. He’s your son-in-law. It’s his responsibility too. You’d think he might be of some use in a situation like this.”
She stood up from the chair.
“Well, while you’re doing that, I need to go to the bathroom.”
“Bathroom. I didn’t think people . . . Well, go on then while I call Fred. He’ll just have to come home early, that’s all, whether Mike Jones likes it or not.”
“That bread sure smells good, Elsie. You always made good bread.”
“It does, does it?”
“It’s nice to be back.”
“Nice? I would think . . . Oh, well.”
Elsie walked to the phone on the wall just inside the kitchen door and dialed the number. Listening to the ring, she looked down at her unfinished pies. She shook her head.
“To think that . . . Fred? Is that you, Fred? Well, I want you to come home right now.” Elsie held the telephone cord with her free hand as if hanging on for support. “I know you’re supposed to stay and lock up that store. Don’t you do that every night? I know what you do, Fred Williams. This is an emergency.” She looked at the wall. “No, the house isn’t on fire. I wish that’s all it was. Now listen, Fred. Just listen for once in your life. Your father-in-law is back.” She closed her eyes and opened them again. “No, I’m not crazy, but I may be if you don’t get home here as fast as you can.”
Still hanging on to the telephone cord, she sat down on the chair below the phone. “No, he hasn’t got wings and he didn’t land on top of the roof. This is no time for your humor, Fred. Just get home here. I need you. What are people going to say? This is terrible.” She shook her head. “What’s he doing? He’s in the bathroom.” She listened. “Well, how would I know what he wants with a bathroom? What a person usually wants, I suppose. You can ask him when you get home, if you think it’s important.”
Elsie stood up.
“No, you don’t need to come home and take me to see Doctor Rogers. What good would he do me now? You’d think eighty-seven years would be enough for anybody. He was just like a child the last three years. Wandering all over town talking to people, and horses and cows if he couldn’t find anybody, and even chickens. How could a man talk to a chicken? Joey was the only one who could talk sense to him. I’m not going through that again. Now you just get home, Fred Williams, as fast as you can.” Elsie hung up the phone. “You’d think a man could find a better job after thirty years than just being a clerk in a hardware store.”
She shook her head. She listened to the toilet flush down the short hall and then the tap run. The old man came out of the bathroom and into the kitchen.
“You’ve fixed the bathroom up real nice, Elsie.”
“That’s one of the things we had done.” She turned on the kitchen light. “We got a new furnace too, and a new roof. The house needed a lot of fixing up. Every dime you left me we spent on the house. I didn’t let Fred get his hands on any of it, you can be sure of that. There’s none left.”
“I don’t want the money back, Elsie.”
“Well, that’s good because there’s none to give back.” She looked at the old man. “Why don’t you go in the living room and sit in your rocking chair there by the big bay window for a few minutes while I think. You used to like to do that. I’ve been going to paint that chair, but I haven’t got around to it yet. There’s so much to do around here you never get done. I’ll pull it over where you used to like it.”
“You’re making pies.”
“Pies. Of course I’m making pies. Tomorrow’s Sunday.”
She led the old man out of the kitchen, through the dining room, and into the sitting room. She pulled the rocking chair into the alcove formed by the window.
“This is nice.” The old man sat looking out the window and rocking just slightly. “Where’s the rest of the children, Elsie?”
“Of course Fred junior and Billy are married and gone, and Ellen is married now and living in Springerville. Thank the good Lord for small favors.”
“Yes, we knew about Ellen getting married. He seems like a nice boy.”
“Well, how could you know about that? It was three months after you . . .”
“Well, your mother and me kind of keep track of things. Important things anyway.”
“You do?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t she come with you if you had to come?”
“I didn’t know I was coming.”
“Why did you have to come at all?”
“Well, because of Joey, I guess.”
Elsie shook her head.
“If it isn’t one thing with that child, it’s another. How is Mom?”
“Just fine.”
“How’s her arthritis?”
“It’s all gone, Elsie.”
“Well, at least there’s some benefit to dying. I sure hope she’s enjoying herself finally. Worked herself to death. Yes, and she tried all her life to get you to go to the temple, but she might as well have talked to a wall. It’s a wonder you and Mom are together. I would have thought you would be somewhere—”
The phone rang. Elsie walked back into the kitchen.
“Yes, Liza.”
Holding her hand over the receiver, Elsie turned to look through the kitchen door at her father. There was no wall or doorway between the dining room and the living room.
“It’s Liza Campbell.” Elsie spoke loudly so the old man could hear. He nodded but didn’t turn to look at her.
Elsie took her hand off the receiver.
“You were out in your garden and you thought you saw who?” Elsie sat down on the chair. “You thought it might be a tramp bothering me? Well, I guess that’s who you did see. What? No, not a tramp, Liza, my father. Yes, he’s sitting right here in his rocking chair.” She listened. “Yes, Liza, I’m feeling just fine. And, no, I haven’t been out in the sun. But thank you for asking. Yes, yes, I know, Liza. Yes, yes, Liza, I’m just fine. Nothing wrong with me. No, of course not. Thank you for your call, Liza.”
Elsie reached up and hung up the phone. She didn’t stand back up. She turned toward the old man.
“Now she’ll phone everybody in town to tell them I’ve finally gone crazy. It won’t surprise very many people, I expect, and they’ll be over here poking their noses in. There’s not much peace in this life, I know that. You think things are going to settle down, but they never do. There’s always something. I’ll never get those pies finished now, or anything else I suppose, and tomorrow’s Sunday again already, and I’ve got a Sunday school lesson to get. Teaching those eight-year-olds is no joke, I can tell you that. Bishop Johnson thinks because I’ve got Joey, I can handle ’em, but I can’t. Joey was a big surprise, I can tell you that. Fred and his grand ideas about what can’t happen. Well, it did happen.”