He expects nothing of anyone. He looks out into the dust of the world, scorching fallen bones to white stones. Water is perhaps days away and he does not expect to find it. The desert floor is scattered with the fallen, both man and beast have succumbed to their thirst in this vast yellow wasteland, all of them left there uncovered as food for the scavengers. He expects nothing and gives nothing. He takes what he finds, what he needs. Men have died beside him and he has stepped sideways as they fell. It is by chance that bullets and arrows have all but missed the target. He continues on, his face cracked and blistered and burning, an unrelenting sun high above that has no mercy for the weak. Sucking on stones as he stumbles over the few patches of withered grass, he has not lost the desire to live, just the expectation that life somehow belongs to him. There is no god above to save his soul, to pluck him from this dry bed of dust and wind. There is nothing, no one beyond his own skin, nothing but the determination to keep moving and follow the stars. Perhaps he will stumble upon a watering hole. He does not pray for rescue or grace, does not hope to find some other man along the path with a full canteen and dried meat. There are no friends in this place, not in this desert or in any town he has ever been. There is no sweet smelling woman that does not hold her hand out for coin or gift, no act of mercy ever granted without expectation of consequence. The men out here come as vultures and thieves and even those he has ridden side by side with watch him with suspicion, as he does with them. He expects nothing of them and he gives them nothing. Each man rides until he is unable to do so any longer. Then he is left and forgotten, stripped and left to the sun and rain, to the vultures and time. Scanning the ridges of far away mountains for signs of smoke and silhouette, for enemies and arrows and bullets aimed at his chest, he walks on, his mouth dry as the desert sand and cracked earth. The wasteland is for the solitary drifter, each man experiencing the earth with eyes colored by his path and choice.
The garden opens up to my small hands. With just an infinitesimal gesture the clouds move aside and let the ever-present blue canvas unfold for our eyes, moving into the palette of our entwined dreams. The sun, still a bit weak, greets us with that soft, gentle kiss of warmth that moves up and down my arms in long, lustful strokes. I move the window aside and flow out like the air. My pink chiffon dress made of fragrant rose petals laps at my legs like a gentle ocean wave upon the shore; calm, so silky in its movements. I am lulled by its touch, aroused, as though the gentle glide of fabric where expert fingers come to explore the shape of my thighs. Indeed, in that moment it is alive- or it always was and now, moving like the cool breeze, I can finally see it as sentient. I catch the eye of a thick-breasted song bird. The tips of his feathers are white and seem to gleam like hot light against the seemingly monotonous brown fluff covering the rest of his body. He turns his head ever-so slightly to a wide-faced white flower, dividing his attention in two. I know he has not lost interest, but rather is pointing me down the path. I turn to the bloom, not alone on the bush, yet standing out and rising higher, more full towards the life-giving sun. The white rose is unfurled and its multitude of petals, layers and layers of scented softness like an expert costume from the Bolshevik ballet. I move towards it, my body beginning to vibrate as the air pushes me along, speeding my new discovery. Entering the hollow between the white walls I find a comfortable spot on the yellow cushion in its center. The pollen stains my exposed toes and the bottom hem of my pink dress and I sink deeper into the pollen, knowing its marks will come out in the next rain, or perhaps I can visit the tepid bird bath later when the sun has warmed the few inches of water in the ceramic bowl. I pull a few of the petals around me for this sacred chamber. I lay back. This is my bed, my powdery yellow sanctuary. Several large stamens sprout from the center. I reach out and pull one of the thicker ones towards me, it is split in two at the very top, both ends curling dramatically in on themselves. There is a little bit of privacy while the bees are over by the rosemary bush. I spread my thin legs and push the stamen inside. The sun comes through the petals, covering me with a warm fuzzy haze. Sinking on the yellow pillow, dust covering me completely now, adrift in a sea of fluff, I can see the blue sky between the cracks of the petals where they don’t quite meet. The bees create a continuous drone as they work, I fall into its lullaby as the stamen moves inside me, becoming an explorer of dark places.
"The price would be heavy," La Mujer said with a mixture of certainty and skepticism, the black curls clinging to her sweaty, tanned and rough cheeks as she leaned closer to Rose, the young white woman who sat in a wooden chair by the old kitchen table.
La Mujer’s eyes seemed to wax catlike for a moment, glinting yellow with flecks of orange and black as she spoke. Rose trembled despite the heat of the nearby hearth and pulled her handmade shawl tighter around her narrow shoulders. In the next moment, however, she had regained her determination and answered forcefully, thrusting onto the small round table a leather pouch that jangled with the promise of gold and silver.
"I can pay," she said through clenched teeth. Her pale complexion immediately flushed with red undertones and her auburn hair, once neatly combed in a tight bun, had fallen slightly, leaving strands of wavy hair dancing around her temples.
Seeing the young white woman speak with fire, La Mujer threw back her head and laughed for far too long. Just as Rose was wondering if the full-bellied cackling would stop, La Mujer slammed her hands down on the rickety table.
"Gold is fine for me, but I’m not the one who will extract the payment I’m talking about."
The candle between them flickered, coins spilled from the pouch and the younger woman flinched.
"Don’t waste my time," La Mujer spat. "You say it was El Cuervo that took your sister? Nothing from this world can touch him. He has very powerful dark magic. That is what you will need to defeat him, AND THAT comes with a very heavy price."
La Mujer fixed her stare intently upon Rose, looking for something inside those pale blue eyes.
"I understand," the young woman said at last.
"Do you?" La Mujer asked doubtfully.
"I would give my life. I would give anything that was mine to give. My soul? Is that what you want? Take it. What good has it ever done me?" Rose was shaking, now with anger rather than fear. "You say he has dark magick? Then give me darker magick. Do you hear me? Give me the devil himself to ride El Cuervo down and carry him back to hell!"
La Mujer smiled a mirthless grimace. The fire of the hearth cast shadows on the deep etchings around her eyes and cheeks, the light crawled over her scars of battle and the marks of the burning sun. She tapped her finger thoughtfully on the table and regarded the other woman for a moment.
"I know just the thing," she said, scooping up the bag of glittering coins and carrying them to the worn straw mattress in the corner.
When she had stuffed the treasure out of sight she went to the hearth that crackled and burst with licking flames. Using a pointed dagger she kept tucked beneath her stained rope belt, she scratched a large circle into the dirt floor just in front of the flames.
"Bring me that hat," La Mujer commanded, her hand gesturing to a black hat that hung on the wall.
La Mujer kept her eyes on the thick line of the circle as the young woman rose tentatively from the creaky chair. Rose walked quickly to the hat hanging to the left of the wooden door. Beside it a black linen sack dangled from another rusty nail protruding from the adobe.
As the younger woman reached for the hat something moved within the sack. On impulse, she quickly jerked her hand away, hastily snatching the hat.
"The cup too," La Mujer demanded.
"And the pitcher?" the young white woman asked.
"Just the cup."
La Mujer beckoned Rose into the circle and put the hat on the young white woman’s head. Her old, wrinkled hands took the cup and spilled the water onto the floor, emptying it completely outside the circle’s ring. Her eyes closed slightly, taking on a somewhat detached, distant look as she began murmuring something unintelligible.
She took the younger woman’s arm and pressed the pointed dagger into the soft white flesh near the underside of her elbow. Rose stifled a cry as the blood began to flow. La Mujer, still murmuring, swaying gently, caught the warm liquid in the earthen cup. When the cup was nearly full of Rose’s blood, she released her arm and licked the edge of the dagger, then placed it back beneath the rope belt wrapped around her thick waist. The younger woman clapped her white lace handkerchief over the wound and applied pressure, chest heaving, eyes shifting nervously from her arm to the cup.
La Mujer took the hat from Rose’s head. Raising it and the cup high, her murmuring increased to a fever pitch. The walls began to rattle and there was a deep, almost guttural drone that moved through Rose’s ears into her stomach and then out through her limbs.
La Mujer was vibrating softly, then her chest began to convulse, her arms and legs moved spastically in bursts and fits of energy. She held onto the cup, not spilling a drop as her full body heaved with the heat of flowing energy. Just as it seemed the little makeshift cottage held together with crooked nails, crumbling wood and adobe could endure no more La Mujer fell silent and a with a sudden gust the candle and the once roaring flames of the hearth were snuffed out.
There was a momentary darkness and then green flames sprang to life within the hearth. The young white woman gasped as the eerie light revealed a ghostly figure standing in the circle with herself and La Mujer.
"Amara," it whispered tenderly to La Mujer.
"Si, Damon, soy yo." She grinned
"Why have you called me?" The specter rasped.
"Porque carino, la mujer blanca paga su precio." Teeth flashing as her grin widened, she offered the cup to the specter’s lips.
As it drank the form became more material, its colors growing vivid and clear. The green of the flames slowly transformed and within moments, the hearth was restored.
Standing before them was a muscular young man with dark hair and blazing green eyes. His complexion was tanned, like La Mujer herself, but his cheeks were smooth and undamaged by sun and time. His clothing and boots were black leather and his spurs gleamed silver.
La Mujer placed the hat on his head. He flexed his hands and arms and smiled wryly at the young white woman with wide blue eyes.
"So," he said, "how can I be of service?"
"I want you to hunt down the man called El Cuervo."
As she answered she felt her legs buckle. The man in black caught her and steadied her.
"Hmm," he said, "his kind don’t die easy."
La Mujer laughed. "Lucky for her, your kind don’t die so easy either."
He looked the white woman up and down, noticed the purple and white print of her modest dress, the white lace frill along her neckline, the slight disheveled curls at her temples, the wound on her arm.
"What do you want Cuervo for?"
"He has my sister."
"You got a name?"
"Rose Evans"
"And your sister?"
"Grace"
"You just call me Damon." He turned to La Mujer, "Amara, my guns."
La Mujer left the circle and fetched the black linen sack from the wall. Returning, she dipped her hand inside and withdrew two thick rattlesnakes and set them hissing into Damon’s rough, outstretched hands. The snakes coiled eagerly around each of his arms and writhed their way into his empty leather holsters where they transformed into gleaming six guns.
"They will need to feed and you will need to feed. You understand mi querido? Your power and theirs will wane unless you take life. For you, it must be her blood…while she lives. When she is gone…" La Mujer shrugged, looking away into the flames. "But your babies there, they will have to kill, one way or another. The greater the prey, the more powerful they become. Understand? Just like old times."
* * *
Under the moonlight they rode in silence, Rose and Damon side by side. The desert cold was still around them. The stars shone brightly.
After hours of quiet, many miles of desert were spread between them and La Mujer’s adobe hut on the mountainside. The spectral gunman made into flesh by chant and blood inhaled deeply and sighed.
"Smell that night air. There’s something special about the air at night. The stars and moon, the silver light, they change me somehow. Make me new."
Rose nodded silently, looking up at the sky full of light. She stared again at the black horizon, her body full of chill.
She asked, "Are you sure we’re going the right way? I mean," she said hesitantly, "there are no tracks."
"No, no tracks Miss Evans, but I’m sure."
"How can you be sure?"
"Because I used to ride with Cuervo’s gang a long time ago. I know where home is, way down past the border, beyond the river in the land of the dead. I know where Cuervo likes to roost. They wouldn’t have gone straight home after taking your sister. They would have gone east a bit first, grabbing more white girls, burning more farms, taking what they needed, having what they wanted… so we’ll meet up with them eventually in the canyon. All the routes home funnel into the canyon. We’ll get there first and wait in the caves."
"You were one of them then?"
"For a while after the war."
"Why?"
"Why not?"
"And how did you die? I mean, you are dead?"
"Was dead. Now, thanks to you, not so much. Cuervo’s woman; that’s how I died. I ran off with her and he came gunning for us."
"So you’ll have a chance for revenge," she said.
"Looks that way." They continued in silence for a while before he stopped by a tall lonesome mesquite and dismounted.
"Why are we stopping?" she asked scanning the deserted landscape for explanation. His answer stopped her cold.
"I need to feed."
* * *
Before crossing the Rio Grande they stopped in a small waste of a town. The dust covered buildings were rickety and slap shod. Light and noise roared from the saloon until they entered and then a hush consumed the place and all eyes fell upon the grinning hired gunman and sickly looking young woman. When the shooting started Rose Evans, already pale from blood loss, crouched under a table and covered her ears. When she came to again it was because Damon was pulling her from under the table. He put her on her dainty feet and pressed a decanter of brandy to her lips.
"You need something too," he said and led her to a wooden table where a round man in a vest sat gazing vacantly over a plate of meat and potatoes. A perfect bullet wound in the center of his forehead trickled blood. Damon pushed the corpse from the chair with his boot and gentle guided Rose Evans onto it.
"Eat up," he told her as she stared at the slab of meat.
She covered her mouth to prevent herself from retching and shook her head. The bloody scene came through to her in short bursts and she felt as though the room were spinning. Shoving the chair away from the table, she let it topple as she ran to the street outside and doubled over. It was starting to rain.
Damon joined her, un-tethering the horses and putting the reins of her mare into her trembling hand.
"I’ll be dead won’t I? By the time we meet Cuervo?"
Damon glanced at her and took a swig from the brandy, but said nothing.
"That’s the price," she continued. "You’ll take my life bit by bit and I’ll watch your guns take the lives of strangers. My soul, all that blood, on my soul. I never noticed I had one till now." Her hair was loose and wet and heavy under the weight of rain. Her face was pale, her blue eyes wreathed in shadow. "But you’ll save Grace, won’t you? Get her away from him. If you don’t kill him, at least get her away."
Damon lifted her onto the horse and took another swig before pressing the bottle into her hands. He looked radiant, almost godlike with his black leather clothes collecting moisture and clinging to his muscular frame. The six guns shone like lesser stars. They looked bigger and more menacing than they had in La Mujer’s hut. He swung onto his horse with one graceful leap and urged it forward as the thunder rumbled ominously overhead and a silver rod of lightning tore through the sky behind them.
* * *
They entered a short series of caves and waited. When Cuervo and his minions entered the narrow canyon, their raucous voices echoed through the red earth, stirring Rose Evans from troubled dreams. Damon pressed a finger to his thin, pale lips and they waited for the noise to die down. She drifted in and out of sleep for a while longer, waiting, waiting.
Was it a dream when she watched Damon un-holster one of his guns and let it slither onto the cave floor as a rattlesnake? Not a dream when he took a small drink from the tender wound on her arm? A scream. Then another.
"Vibora! Vibora! Aye!"
Gunshots ricocheting off the cave walls. Damon creeping away. More screams and gunshots. Terrible laughter. She pulled herself up and used the wall to steady herself as she crept towards the noise. The earth quaked and she stumbled to her knees, crawled a while, emerged into the main cavern.
There stood Damon, guns barking hungrily. Something was flying through the cavern screaming. A raven. A rattlesnake brushed against her hand, hissed at her and kept going. Against one wall a line of young women tied together in a train, mouths gagged, eyes wide.
And Grace. Not with the others, but standing among fallen bodies, searching for something, a pistol, pried from dead hands.
"Cuervo! La Mujer envia sus saludos!" Damon shouted with a grin. His gun barked and the bird fell from the air and landed with a heavy thud as a man.
"No!" Grace screamed, aiming the pistol at Damon and firing before running to the fallen man.
Rose stumbled towards her sister and tried to pull her away.
"Grace, Grace, it’s me."
"Rose? You?" Grace’s voice was full of disbelief as she hastily regarded her sister, then shoved her away. "Go home!"
"Grace, I came for you, to save you."
Damon and his guns were finishing the last few men. He seemed illuminated by shadow, if such a thing were possible, taller, more menacing than ever. Lightning flashed beyond the cave mouth.
"To save me? From what? From soaring above the world? From taking what I want when I want it?"
Grace was laughing, tears streaking her cheeks. Her pale hair hung loose over her shoulders as she kneeled to caress the face of the dead man before tugging his jacket off of him.
"I don’t understand." Rose said meekly as she watched her older sister.
"I’m Cuervo’s woman now," Grace said, "that’s all Rose." She continued pulling on the jacket and gently guided the dead man’s arms out of it. Without glancing at her sister she said, "you should have stayed home."
The jacket was covered in glossy black feathers that glistened as another flash of lightning illuminated the cave. Damon now stood silently as Grace slipped a ring from Cuervo’s tepid hand and placed it on her own. She kissed his cold lips, then bowed her head and shrank down.
In the blink of an eye Grace was gone and a raven leapt up screaming. It circled twice over Rose before flapping out of the gaping cave mouth into the canyon.
* * *
Rose awoke again on horseback, Damon’s arms encircling her.
"Grace?" she croaked.
Damon stopped the horse, slid down and lifted her off as well. He laid her gently upon the ground. The thirsty earth had already soaked up the rain, giving off a perfumed scent. It hardly felt moist against Rose’s back. The clouds were scattered like phantoms across the violet sky. The east glowed pink to herald the dawn.
"Grace is gone." Damon told her. "Soon you will be too."
"I know," she rasped through pale lips. "The others? The girls?"
"I cut them loose and pointed them towards the border."
They sat in silence for a time.
"You’ll fade too, won’t you?" Rose asked, her voice weak and brittle.
"By tomorrow night."
"What will you do till then?"
"I’ll say goodbye to La Mujer."
Pink was bleeding into the violet sky, seeping into it like ink from a spilled blotter, highlighting the clouds.
"She’s the one." Rose rasped after a moment. "The woman you stole from Cuervo."
"Yes," he said, his black eyes smiling, full of mischievous delight.
They sat in silence watching the sky slowly brighten. As the sun’s golden crown crested the horizon Rose pulled the soiled handkerchief from the wound on her arm and Damon took his last drink. A brown dove cooed softly in a nearby thicket of mesquite and coyote willow and a small shrew scampered to its den as the desert cast off the night and shone softly into wakefulness, brilliant, golden, and sharp.
Nights I lay under the wagon between Mary and Edith, listening to the fire crackle and the prairie grass rustle, the smell of earth all around me. Mary cried almost every night, and though she tried to be quiet, I could hear a whimper escape now and then until, sniffling, she drifted off to sleep. I would lie there listening, first to the breathing of my sisters growing slow and heavy, then to the sounds of the oxen snorting and shuffling their hooves within the ring of wagons. Edith had the tendency to grab hold of me and Mary throughout the night, so great was her fear that one of us might roll out from under the wagon and be trampled in our sleep. It was not an entirely unfounded fear as I was a wild sleeper, tossing and wriggling about as I dreamed, thus my sister’s had contrived to pin me betwixt the two of them so that I mightn’t flail away from them as they slept. Edith’s husband Morgan lay under the second wagon mumbling now and then in his sleep and beside him slept his younger brother Daniel and our father.
I listened to all of them drift one by one into slumber, the coughing of Mr. Beatie two wagons away quieting and turning eventually to snores. I’d lie there and wonder about the man on watch. I liked to scoot my head up for a view of the stars laid out over the velvety darkness like scattered diamonds, the white fullness of the moon filling me with such wonder. Edith complained of her weary feet and Mary tortured herself cruelly missing the fellow who would have been her sweet heart had we stayed in Missouri. I could never say to either of them what I felt as I lay there in an alien wilderness, enjoying the throbbing of my feet and the distance from those I had known.
There were three of them; Jerome Hill, Lee Tucker, and Casper Lassen, our guides. We met them at Fort John, a last outpost before the abyss of the American wilds would swallow us up in unknown terrain. We could know our route only via the vague suggestions of crude maps, and try as they might, those maps could never be the territory itself. My father learned from a conversation with Mr.Hill that he and his two compatriots had first hand knowledge of the trails that would lead us to and through the Sierra Nevada, and as luck would have it, they too were presently California bound.
Mr. Hill was most sociable and seemed to be the unifying factor in the trio of trappers. He had an Indian wife called Clementine whose eyes were the darkest I had ever seen. She kept her long black hair tucked up under a floppy wide brimmed hat. Mr. and Mrs. Hill, Mr. Tucker and Mr. Lassen all slept outside of the ring of wagons, laying under the open sky unless the weather was wet, and then they pitched a pair of tents. Most of all, as I lay there listening to the sounds of the night, I wondered about these four. I strained my ears to hear the murmur of words exchanged between them or the sighs of their slumber. Often I felt as though I almost could, as if the silence beyond all the other identifiable noises belonged all to them.
Morgan and Edith had a pair of ponies that my father had bestowed on them as a wedding gift before we left, but as Edith grew heavier with child she preferred to walk along side the wagon with the rest of us, the women and children. The rhythmic creaking and jouncing of the wagons lulled me as we went and I’d wander further a field to stare at the endless sea of grass meeting the horizon. Young Bill Beatie was 8 years old and strode alongside the back wheel of his fathers wagon counting each revolution with his eye on a bit of yarn tied to one spoke. He’d cut a notch in a stick for every ten turns shouting at his younger sister Sofie not to wreck his count by distracting him with her antics. This shouting would go on until Edith might take charge of the spirited little girl, or one of the younger Parker boys would come to take Bills place.
We broke a wheel in the Humbolt, long after the prairie had given way to cracked earth and the sun had parched the wood of the wheels until they were treacherously brittle. Though there were no suitable trees within sight, Mr. Lassen assured us there were some to be had just a half day away and took Mr. Parker, and my father ahead to fell a tree and fashion a new wheel. The Birdwell family took this opportunity to re-shoe an ox and it was no small feat getting the great dull beast turned onto it’s side so that Mr. Birdwell could fit the two tiny shoes on each of the creatures cloven feet. Most of the women and the children rested in the shade of the wagons, but I wandered a bit towards the marshy tributary of the river along whose course Mr. Lassen had ventured with my father and Mr. Parker.
As I approached the tall yellow reeds, pressing some sage leaves between my fingers to release the pungent odor, I heard a sharp loud sound that startled me. I stopped and listened and heard it again, a sound like the quack of a duck, but deeper. I thought it must be the call of some bird and pushed my way through the reeds to see if I might catch a glimpse.
What happened then confused me. I thought that I had become over heated or tired and so disoriented. For a second I saw a goose sitting on the glimmering surface of the water. It’s long black neck curved gracefully, flowing into a tiny head that tapered off into a glossy black bill. There was a white band of feathers around it’s neck, more white feathers peaking out from under it’s folded wings like a bit of lace. It turned it’s head and looked at me with one glistening dark eye and then it dove as fowl do after a fish, it’s tail feathers tipped up to the sky before submerging entirely. A split second later it was not a goose that re-emerged but the dark head of Clementine breaking the surface of the water. I stared in disbelief as Clementine’s tanned naked form rose from the tributary and her dark eyes met mine. She made no move to cover her nakedness, her black hair hung long and dripping behind her back, her breasts and belly glistened with moisture, water fell in tiny droplets down her thighs.
I was overwhelmed by the sensation of having done something forbidden. My head swirled dizzily. I was, of course, familiar with the female anatomy, being one myself and having seen my own sisters changing and bathing, but perhaps I had never had such a complete and immodest view. This was not one of my white skinned sisters, but an Indian woman, both strangely familiar and startlingly different. Blushing I turned my head away. “I- I apologize.” I stammered, “I heard a noise, I didn’t realize you were bathing here.” Clementine was silent, but that was not unusual. I had never heard Clementine utter a word in any language and I didn’t know whether she could speak or understand English at all. In truth, I didn’t wait for an answer, rather I ran away, back to the familiarity of my kin resting in the shade of the wagons.
All through supper I was in a torment amid the scrip and scrape of silverware against tin. Edith couldn’t help saying over and over that she hoped that father was all right. Morgan soothed her by reminding her that Mr. Lassen supposed they might not be back until tomorrow night or the morning after that. I was incapable of looking at Clementine, but by the same token she was all that I wanted to look at. I turned my gaze instead upon Mr. Tucker in his old weather beaten blue officer’s jacket, whittling and spitting while leaning against the Parker wagon. Nearby, but slightly removed from Mr.Tucker sat Mr.Hill and Clementine. I watched Mr. Hill rise from his place and go to confer with Mr. Beatie and some of the other men by the fire and turned my gaze away when Clementine passed near me carrying dishes for washing. Daniel came over to speak to Mary whose nightly crying had ceased in the wake of his attentions. I took advantage of my sisters distraction and joined Mr. Tucker in the shadows
He looked at me sideways as I sat down beside him then turned his attention back to whittling. The fire light flickered and danced casting shadows at our feet and the wind changed bathing us in the smoky smell of fire. Now that I was there I didn’t know what I intended to ask or say. I only knew that my interest in the three trappers and Clementine had moved beyond idle curiosity. I felt supremely awkward sitting there with my skirts tucked around my ankles and Mr. Tucker towering above me. I had never seen anyone outside of the group of trappers exchange more than two words with the man.
“Fine night.” I blurted out at last, and Mr.Tucker only glanced at me and gave his tobacco a slow chew. “Were you in the military Mr.Tucker?” I tried again, and this time the man dropped his arms to his sides, ceased his whittling and sighed. “Girl, is there no one else for you to trouble?” I felt the indignity flash through my body and answered hotly, “I much prefer to trouble you tonight Mr.Tucker. And you may call me Miss Miller.” Now he turned and glanced at me again and I took the opportunity to study his face. His eye brows were terrifically bushy, I had never seen the likes before, and his brown sideburns grew down over his jowls but stopped before reaching his chin. His eyes were round and seemed black in the shadows. They glittered and for a second something about them reminded me of Clementine’s. A growl rumbled from deep in his chest, or perhaps it was a groan. After a moment he said, “Fine, Miss Miller.” He put all the emphasis on the “Miss.” “I was in the military.” “Why aren’t you anymore?” I asked. “Because they ordered me to fire on my own people and I wouldn’t do it.” He was silent. I listened to the fire pop and then ventured to ask, “Your people?” “Crow nation.” He said and spat, “You don’t look Indian.” I said feeling my throat tighten. “Don’t suppose I do. Sioux killed my folks when I was 9. The Crow come by me and raised me up till I was twelve. Then some traders offered to take me to find my kin in Wyoming.” “Then you joined the military?” “Eventually.” He said resuming his whittling “Goodnight Miss Miller.” His tone was rich with finality and his eyes remained trained on his hands. I sat a moment longer feeling strange with embarrassment and other emotions I couldn’t name. He never looked up as I rose from the dusty earth brushing my skirts with my hands. I glanced back hesitantly as I left him, “Goodnight Mr.Tucker.”
That night I dreamed that a large animal passed near our wagon breathing loudly and making strange growling sounds. I lay still and saw its shaggy clawed feet pause near my head. I held tightly to Edith’s arm and tried to remember how to wake up.
I confess that I went back to the still waters at the head of that tributary the following day. Clementine was not there, I had seen her at the camp stitching together a small pair of leather booties. The sky was starkly blue and reflected off the surface of the water. There were no geese floating on the surface. I stared at the place where Clementine had stood and inched closer to the water until I could see my own pale freckled cheeks and green eyes in the water. I pushed back my bonnet and let down my wavy red mane. I listened carefully for the sound of approaching foot fall and when there were none, I stripped out of my blouse and skirt and drawers and stared with a heaving chest at the full measure of my 18 years reflected on the ponds wavering surface. There was a new chill in the air and my flesh puckered against it.
All in all we lost three days repairing the wagon’s wheel. When we resumed our course, Mr. Hill leading us Northward along the Truckee River, it was clear that the weather had taken a turn for the colder. The animals’ breath could be seen as puffs of steam expelled into the cold air. They resembled a train of dragons lurching along the rocky path. It was late morning when we spied a lone traveler approaching us on the trail. He was a black man, the first that I had ever seen, exceptionally tall, leading a mule heavy with beaver pelts. He introduced himself as Leland Smith. “There was a bit of snow on the summit day before yesterday.” Mr. Smith informed us, “And there looks to be more, though its come early.” The men gathered together and Mr. Hill proposed that a small party set out upon a Southern course along the Truckee. “Wagons can’t go that way, but a party on ponies will have no trouble, they’ll get through to the fort twice as quick as the main party going over the mountains. Provisions are low and the snows coming, there’s no doubt. Those on the ponies can meet the wagons at the peak with fresh animals and supplies from the Fort.”
After some discussion it was decided that the three trappers and Clementine should go as all of their ponies were Indian ponies whose sure feet had picked the way over those trails before. Mr. Smith agreed to lead our wagons back to the summit. Morgan volunteered to go as well, to ensure that the trappers would not forget us and the provisions would be sent. Edith sobbed loudly she was so afraid to see Morgan go alone with those peculiar mountain men and the silent Clementine. Suddenly I heard my own voice leap unbidden from my throat, “I’ll go with Morgan on Edith’s pony. I’m a fine rider.” If that had been the last word said I’m sure my father might have protested, but as fate would have it the eldest of the Parker boys, Keaton, chimed in. “I’ll go too. Seven’s a lucky number.” I suppose it was the number that sealed the deal, no one dared bust up the luck, so by noon I was promising my teary eyed sisters that all would be well and I’d see them at the summit.
The snow fell in a fine powder dusting the hat and overcoat of Mr. Lassen ahead of me. It drifted lightly down like confectioner’s sugar, twirling gracefully before coating the deep green pine boughs that overhung the trail. The cold stung my nose and cheeks and made my hands ache. Clementine had let her hair down from under the hat and it cascaded over her shoulders, glossy and black against the bright patchwork of her coat. There was a hush that accompanied the snowfall, the only other sounds being that of our horses hooves picking their way through the rocky pass and the ragged sighs of their labored breathing. The trail was jagged and steep and Edith’s pony nearly lost it’s footing once or twice. I clung close to the creature’s neck, my eyes squeezed shut as I winced through those moments of near catastrophe.
At dusk we pitched two tents on a smooth patch of earth near an outcropping of rock that overlooked a precipice. There was nowhere else to go as the other side of the trail was flanked at this point by a wall of rock. A single pine leaned in from the edge, as if it had been blown back by a giant but refused to relinquish its place, holding tight with stalwart root. It was this tree that sheltered us somewhat from the wind and what seemed to me like the edge of the world. The snow had stopped and left only an icy slush for us to crunch under our boots. We tethered the horses to the tree and sheltered them with blankets. A small fire restored our spirits and we supped on hard tack and hot coffee. I clenched the tin cup in my hands drinking its warmth through my frozen fingertips and letting the familiar aroma sooth my haggard nerves.
Between Morgan and Keat I lay awake, feeling the chill down to my bones. Already Morgan was murmuring bits of conversation from some dream. Fragments of, “Get...” And “Whoa” and “Ma’am” and “…no I didn’t.” and “Much obliged.” Emerged fuzzily from his lips. On the other side of me Keat had shivered himself to sleep and I listened to the soft rasping of his breathing, filled with a deep awe of the gentleness and softness of that sound coming from a man that I normally saw from a distance. His gravely voice and wild impishness had melted into a puppy like softness as he slept, and I suddenly felt very tenderly towards Keat. I was grateful he had come with us. My ears were reaching farther though, out to catch the sound of the trappers and Clementine in the other tent. Without the 11 wagons and 8 families about, I felt I was closer to them than had ever been possible before. The proximity to them excited me so that I thought I could never sleep.
I kept wondering if they were awake. If I were to slip out of the tent who would I find? I felt certain somehow that they were out there, at least one or two of them, Mr. Hill and Mr. Tucker perhaps, having a conversation under their breath by the fire, or Clementine staring alone at the moon from a shadowy place. At some point I realized that I had been asleep after all and I tried to stay that way. I found myself drifting near the surface of consciousness, rolling closer to my bed mates seeking warmth, hiding my face under the scratchy fibers of the shared blanket.
I came to full consciousness hearing that strange sound, the honking of a goose. I lay awake waiting to hear it again, asking myself whether it might have been part of a dream. Just as I began to believe that I had imagined it, it came again, the rolling bark of some bird. Carefully I crawled out from under the blanket and out of the tent, my hand brushing the canvass material as I passed out of its opening. I could see the tiny flames of a fire in the old pit, and beside it a crouched figure nurturing the new flames with a small square bit of wood. I couldn’t tell which of the trappers it was and knew I would have to approach the fire if ever I was to learn the identity. I went round to the other side of the tent to relieve my aching bladder. My nose, my fingertips were painfully cold, my body and mind felt numbed in the aftermath of sleep. I gazed up at the night sky, utterly clear now and filled with stars that glittered and shone over a back drop of deep dark blue. The moon was round and full, its whiteness gleaming bright in the icy air.
As I neared the fire the features of Mr.Lassen emerged framed in the orange glow of the flames. Our eyes locked as I neared and crouched by the fire too, outstretching my hands to the meager warmth. “Thought you might come.” He said and I felt a chill run up my spine as the honk sounded out and I turned my face up to see the shape of a goose pass over the moon. Something else passed close behind me brushing against my shawl, the sound of earth under paw setting my hair on end. I felt frozen to the spot, too terrified to turn, but I hear the loud puff of breath and felt it against the back of my head. Slowly I turned by head around and found myself face to face with a shaggy bear, the firelight sparkling against its familiar dark eyes. “Mr.Lassen…” I gasped, near hysteria, But still crouched near me he whispered, “Shhhh. You’ll wake the others.” The bear sniffed my hair and face before lumbering away into the shadows. I sighed with relief and turned back to find Mr. Lassen smiling at me, the creases of it at the corner of his pale blue eyes. “Don’t worry bout’ him.” He said, “He likes you all right.” And then he repeated, “We thought you might come.” His words were softened by his Danish accent. As he spoke a small grayish hare loped up around him and paused for a moment rising up on its hind quarters and turning one glistening eye in my direction. My eyes widened and the bubbling voice of the goose broke the quiet again for a moment. “We all lived with Crow nation for a while, at one time or another. Did Lee tell you that?” I shook my head. I looked up from the hare to Mr. Lassen in his coat lined with silver fur, his weather torn hat hanging floppy over his ears. “Your name is Mady right?” Mr. Lassen asked and I could only nod. He reached a hand out and fingered one of the red curls that lay tangled upon my cheek. “Do you like the moon Mady? Would you like to run wild under the moon with us? Is that why you came out?”
He gazed into my panic stricken eyes for a moment longer and let go of my curl. I stood up abruptly and backed away, tripping a little on a pebble. When I looked back up Mr.Lassen was gone. Where he had been crouched an enormous timber wolf now stood, silver coat shinning under the moonlight. I gave a little startled cry and clapped my hand over my mouth. The wolf stared at me, firelight dancing on its coat, blue eyes locked with mine. An eternity lapsed in which neither of us moved. I could go neither forward nor backward. It was as if my feet were stuck in tar. Then the wolf turned away from me with one quick graceful movement and faded into the night. Regaining mobility I fled back to the sanctuary of the tent.
We made the journey in six and a half days. Mr. Sutter gave us a hearty welcome to his fort, granted us the required provisions and sent two men along with the men from our party to give relief to our wagons. There had been a miraculous reprieve from the snow for three days. We prayed it would hold until all of the party I’d left behind made it to the fort. I begged Morgan to leave me behind with Mr. Sutter. I could no longer bear to be near to the trappers and Clementine. Mr. Lassen locked eyes with me as they left with the rescue party and that was the last that I saw of their group, until 49.
By then Keat and I were married and panning in the American river like most other folks at the time. We ran into Mr. Tucker in Nevada city. He was as short tempered and tight lipped in his conversation with us as I had remembered of him from those years before. After we said goodbye he whispered to me as I passed, “Why did you come outside Miss Miller?” but he wasn’t waiting for an answer. I turned and watched him stride away down the dusty main road, spitting as he went.
Thanksgiving is two days away. There is a roaring fire that spurts and flitters with life, providing a focal point of raw elemental force. A dog walks from person to person, collecting affection from each hand until they get tired of giving.
I try to keep most of my attention on the fire, remembering that there is life outside this room, but there is a struggle. The human and the raw pull at me, grabbing each arm. The big TV screen is on and we are covered in blue light, a type of light that can even trump fire.
My sister and mother are sitting on the carpet, just a few feet from the TV. “I’ve been saving this so you can see it mom.” Dorit points the remote at the TV, quickly changing channels and navigating her menu of saved shows. My sister and mother have shared a bond over the same TV shows for almost a decade now. They like the same sentimental love stories, the same big-budget romantic comedies and Oprah. “It’s Oprah’s favorite things,” my sister says with a small smile and turns to my mother.
“Ok!” my mom replies enthusiastically.
The next five minutes are filled with ecstatic jumping, near fainting, and screams of delight as Oprah fans hug each other and cry with each free gift that is carried out from backstage.
“I can’t believe I am watching this,” my dad says in an irritated tone from the couch. No one responds, but my mother gives him a dirty look before she turns back to the television. Ten minutes pass by, Oprah gives away $25 gift cards to McDonald’s for everyone in the audience, my sister’s small apartment fills with the screams of middle aged women as Oprah describes items from McDonald’s new menu. The audience is beyond enthusiastic, they grab each other, jumping wildly on their seats, the lone man in the audience is holding his head in his hands, tears streaking his face. My sister and mom are smiling, sharing in the raw emotion that pours in through the TV.
I turn to my dad, there is a look of disgust and mild amusement on his face, as though the spectacle is more emotion than he has ever felt, as though each one of them is insane for expressing it so blatantly. He shakes his head, his eyes narrow, “this is just an advertisement. You think she bought all these things? It’s just an ad.”
“I know,” agrees Maxwell, my sister’s boyfriend, whose disgust rivals that of my father’s. “Dorit already made me watch this once.”
“I can’t believe I am watching this,” my dad announces again. He grabs the newspaper that had lay abandoned on his lap and begins shifting through its pages once again, the newsprint blocking his line of sight from the TV.
“Fine, I’ll change it Yossi,” Dorit says to my dad with anger. She changes the channel, flipping it to Cougar Town. I turn to the fire and rub the soft fur on the dog's face. “Who’s this idiot?” my mom says, referring to a blond character standing next to a Thanksgiving turkey. She says it with such disgust that I am taken aback slightly. My sister sits closest to the television, a glazed smile on her face as the jokes roll by, “Who’s this idiot?” my mom says once again when the blond character reappears.
“Fine! I’ll change it!” my sister announces with annoyance. She flips through the channels and then eventually leaves it on a football game, which gives Maxwell something to dive into. Dorit turns to the dog, who’s laying next to me by the fire.
“Poo poo face!” my sister says with affection as she reaches out and twists the dog's pliable ear around her finger.
I give her a questioning look, “That’s sort of a weird pet name.”
“He is poo-poo face number 1,” she points to Maxwell, “and this is poo-poo face number two,” giving the dog a kiss on the nose.
“She didn’t start calling me that until the dog showed up.” He turns back to the TV, he’s the only one interested in the game.
“How is your job Maxwell?” my mom inquires. He takes his attention from the TV and begins to describe the window washing business in detail. I turn to my mom, who is sitting on the carpet. She is looking up at him on the couch and nodding, though I notice a slightly absent expression on her face, one she has often when people are talking. The corners of her mouth are moving, as though she wants to say something, as though there are sentences on the tip of her tongue that she does not allow to come out. Maxwell is in mid-sentence when she jumps up from her place on the carpet. She walks to the folding table that is set up by the sliding glass door and picks up the loaf of cranberry bread. “I know what I did wrong, I put two cups of water instead of one cup of oil and one of water.” She pulls on a piece of the bread and pops it into her mouth, she looks to the ceiling as she examines the flavor. She nods and then shakes her head, “it’s no good.”
When I turn towards Maxwell, he is already watching the game. Dorit is petting the dog again, my dad is still reading the newspaper. Thanksgiving is two days away and I feel the apartment getting a little smaller.
The sound of twenty small plastic wheels on pavement shook the narrow park path. Like a deep, elongated rumble, the sound traveled like a steady thunder that hid in the cloudless sky. They traveled in a herd this early Sunday afternoon, these five young men, all thin and lean and wearing baggy pants. They moved as they did almost every other day, together, in a pack that shook the earth with their sound. Five skateboards moved in near-unison along a tight curve in the cement path, a bend in the meandering walkway that cut through the city park for miles in each direction, going past small lakes and barely-blooming cherry blossoms and a circular equestrian field. Though the path was mostly dotted with pedestrians, the boys rode it with ferocity, unyielding in their speed. It was their highway, a lane between the bright fields of green grass and low shrubs. On either side of the path and all around them were couples on picnic blankets and young kids chasing after plastic balls and groups of people in their early twenties lounging beneath the open sky. It was a warm sunny day, an unusual day for a city famous for its fog. And though the people they passed basked in the sunshine, the boys paid no attention to weather. It was jeans, a T-shirt, a hooded sweatshirt and a baseball cap off to the side in the sun or fog. Their lives were not ruled by the sun like the girls in their neighborhood, the girls that lay out in small bikinis when the sun made an appearance and hid when it didn’t. And they would look at the girls as they rode by, but they had no patience to sit and talk. Like soldiers they combed the city. Skating alleyways and metal rails and stairs they came across. The people out strolling were merely obstacles. If someone could not hear the roar of their cumulative wheels, then they would shout, and soon the person would feel the impending doom of five skateboards at their back and jump off the path at the last second. Sometimes they would hear a yell fade into the distance as they skated on, someone who had not been quite fast enough, someone had not understood their urgent need for speed. On this stretch of path, there were no obstacles, no couples holding hands or young teenage girls laughing in a tight cluster. As far as they could see, a long stretch of concrete lay before them, open and inviting. A warm wind rattled the tree tops in the distance, long, tall pines that had grown for years. Twenty wheels rolled on, carrying with them the eagerness of escape, the ecstatic impulses of five young men to explode outwards, moving ever-forward. There was no time for the girls in bikinis and the little daisies they offered. No time to admire the colors of the rainbow they had vaguely heard about. No time to be still.
In Lake Elsinore, where I grew up, there was a bald hill hidden up behind the old downtown. This spot, which connected to the town via Franklin St., was known as the Rodeo grounds. From 1974 to 1992 a serial killer spent his time nabbing streetwalkers from the little community of 15,000 residents, and it was here among the pepper trees and low growing shrubs below the hills dusty crest that a number of bodies were discovered. This particular killer was so busy that many of his victims were never recovered and it is more than a little possible that their bones are buried under the layers of sun baked dirt upon which the carnival annually erected its tents. I knew nothing about the murders, of course. I was only a child, a dirty faced little darling with tangled blonde hair. I knew that lady bugs crawled on top of each other sometimes and that the cat, Tommy, killed gophers and left their bodies on the astro turf carpeting the front porch, and this was all that I knew about sex and death. I could not know that I stood with jellied sandaled feet over the mummifying corpse of a whore while my mother purchased a pink puff of cotton candy for my sister and I to share.
We attended the rodeo when I was very young and it upset me greatly, so much in fact, that I have buried all detailed recollections of it somewhere deep within the hills along the Franklin street of my own mind. I recall the metal bleachers and an overwhelming sense of horror, not for the cowboys, but for the animals being roped and dragged and dominated for sport. I have been sensitive to the point of madness since childhood. I remember seeing them chase and rope a frightened calf, pulling it right off of its feet with the rope around its neck. Watching this spectacle I felt suffocated and strangled, as though I were the one in the center of the ring of bleachers being handled by rough men for a crowd of uncaring spectators. People hollered and hooted and clapped. The disparity between the emotions they were expressing and the pain I was feeling confused me deeply. I think I asked my mother if we could leave. I can’t remember if we did. She might have made me stay because we had paid to be there and she didn’t like to waste her money. In truth, the child that went in never came out, something of me was mutilated then, something delicate and invisible from the exterior.
The Carnival I remember better. I remember it because I was a little bit older.
A little older. A little older.
Driving along Junipero Serra Blvd. in a far away land veiled in mists, I pass the parking lot of the local Bowling Alley and catch sight of folded carnival equipment under blue tarps. I suddenly turn the radio down and blurt out that the Carnival is coming to town, that maybe we should go. My two daughters are buckled in the back seats and listen to me tell them of the Carnival that came every year to the Rodeo grounds in Lake Elsinore, where I grew up. I tell them that the place where the Carnival was held was the place where the bodies of murdered prostitutes had been found.
The Carnival I remember better. I remember it because I was a little bit older.
It is also possible that I profess a clearer memory of the Carnival than of the Rodeo because we attended it more than once, and every visit has been pooled together in my mind to form a single memory. A memory of a place that exists separate from the world of stability, a conglomeration of rusty machinery and red and white striped tents that spring up over night in the eerie hills like the toadstools of a fairy ring. To my child’s eye these were unabashed delights; brightly colored helium filled balloons, sweet treats, big eyed plush animals stuffed with Styrofoam beads that hissed softly when the toys were moved, and live gold fish that could be won with the toss of a coin. But I saw more than what was being presented. I just couldn’t say what I saw.
(Humans and dogs are the only two animals on earth sensitive to misdirection. If you take two cups and turn them over and show a small child a cookie and then place the cookie under one cup and point to the opposite cup, the child will not believe its own eyes. It will turn over the cup to which you point. The same would occur if you repeated the experiment with a dog.)
There was a high curving yellow slide, higher than any slide that ever graced a school yard or common park. It captivated my attention. I wanted very badly to try it, so my younger sister and I waited in a long line, mounting one step at a time until we reached the top. Here there was a man setting the children down on empty potato sacks and launching them down the curvy slope. Him, I will never forget, him reaching towards me with his hands. I will always remember his hands. He had no fingers at all, just palms with stumps. I can hardly picture his face. It’s his hands that burn vividly in my mind, emblazoned within the word CARNIVAL. His flesh was glossy and marbled with red. I looked for his fingers and I became transparent. I felt myself as him, just as much as I had empathized with the calf of the rodeo. My little curious eyes scorched him. He felt horrible, dirty under my prying glance. It made him angry, in a subdued, directionless way. I stared at him and I felt him seeing me stare at him. Then he picked me up with those hands and set me on the sack and he pushed me so that I slid down, back into the bed of that garden of earthly delights stretched over its transient skeleton of rickety rides and mournful Carnies.
After school my daughter presents a black and white flier stapled to a pile of corrected papers. I look at it and I think of the blood and sweat soaked hills off of Franklin, of the empty dirt lot that screams with desolate quiet under sun and moon. I think of a nameless whore gestating in reverse within the belly of the parched lands of my youth. The ritual torture of animals tumbles forth from a forgotten corner of my psyche. It is all there in the flier that my daughter has provided, nestled within the words that are written in bold letters beneath a photograph of a Ferris wheel. I hold the dog eared photo copy in my hands and read:
One day the pet Anaconda in Mr. Wagman’s 1st grade class got out of its tank. The class had forgotten to feed him for a whole year, so he was very, very, hungry. He slithered behind Mr. Spooner who was mopping up somebody’s spilled milk. He slithered up the long stairway. He slithered past the 5th grade classes… And past the 4th grade classes… And past the 3rd grade classes… And right into a second grade class room. Room 22, to be exact. Nobody saw him wriggle by. Nobody saw him lift the latch with his nose, opening the guinea pig cage. Nobody saw the guinea pigs leap out past the big snake’s wide open hungry mouth. They ran right out of room 22 and into room 21 and leaped into the fish tank to hide. Would you believe that nobody saw them come in? Would you believe that nobody saw the Anaconda come slithering in either? He was on his way to drink up all the water and swallow both guinea pigs and all the fish when something better caught his eye. Cassandra and Olivia were cutting out paper apples. The Anaconda wrapped himself around both Cassandra’s and Olivia’s chairs and started to SQUEEZE! Then he swallowed both girls whole. Elizabeth screamed. Reem fainted. Kayla didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary. Joshua shouted, “Ms. Robinson, you should get them out like I would get them out!” “And how is that Joshua?” Ms. Robinson asked, but he didn’t answer so she called the office. Meanwhile, it was dark inside the Anaconda. Cassandra thought fast. She still had her scissors so she used them to cut the Anaconda open. Cassandra and Olivia sprang out of the Anaconda’s belly. Everybody felt sorry for the big snake so Ms. Robinson sewed him back up just like a surgeon, only she used purple thread. After that, the Principal, Mrs. Berk, called the zoo and they came to take Mr. Wagman’s Anaconda away. They put him in a cage and carried him past the 3rd grade classes… And past the 4th grade classes… And past the 5th grade classes… They carried him down the long stairway. They carried him out behind Mr. Spooner who was mopping up somebody else’s spilled milk. At last they stopped by room 4 and Mr. Wagman’s first grade class said goodbye to their pet. The kindergartners poked their heads out of the doors and waved goodbye too. Now the Anaconda with the purple stitches in his belly lives at the San Francisco Zoo and he is very happy there. The zoo keepers never forget to feed him.
We were driving down a gently twisting two lane road of paved black tar, slowly descending from a series of elevated hills down into a lower, flat valley. The land on either side of the car rolled with small supple hills; the gentleness of the hills was a reflection of the softness in the wind, which moved constantly like a controlled breath, cooling our skin with the grace and strength of a woman gliding across an empty dance floor. The unclouded sun was working to dry out each stalk of grass. There was still evidence of some green, although light gold was the predominant color of the landscape. The sun was high overhead and the light around us was bright white and crisp and we all wore sunglasses to protect ourselves against its radiation. The paved road was black and warm, it accepted us into its narrow passageway and we hugged the tight curves slowly, trying to capture every detail with our pens and lens. We were alone on this stretch of road. We passed pale colored houses every now and again. Light blue single story houses with white curtains, cream colored barns and small family-sized vegetable gardens. We passed a few large pickup trucks in the driveways of the houses and American flags on the porches, but never an actual person. In this small stretch of country road, we seemed to be alone. These were small farms, miles away from the large industrial farms that extended their tight geometric rows of almonds trees for miles. This was family land and the houses were long ranch structures, built years ago and slightly beaten by the elements. As we drove slowly along a tight curve in the road which veered to the right, I saw a cluster of decaying oak trees out the right back window of the car. I jolted upright and moved to grab my camera, but the vision went past before I could push the button. I couldn’t let it become a fuzzy thought in my memory, so we turned the car around and pulled the car over on the other side of the road, about fifty feet from the trees. I stepped out of the car and onto the soft earth. The ground was the color of white corn and fine as dust. The ignition was turned off, and we were left with the silence of the land. There were no motors, no voices or engines, just a soft buzzing of distant insects and my footsteps crunching small rocks on the pavement. I crossed the road and walked up the right side along a short fence. The fence was made of graying wood beams and barbed wire. As I walked closer to the trees, I saw a cluster of cows on the right that I had missed as we drove past the first time. There were at least three dozen, all of them were adult and a shiny reddish brown color. Some were standing and eating, others were laying down, making larger imprints on the grass. There was a large oak tree close to them and a couple of cows were resting in the shade. They were large and their strength was impressive and I felt small as I approached the herd. They heard my approaching footsteps and turned to locate the source of the sound. Three dozen sets of eyes turned towards me all at once, each one seeking eye contact. Those whose bodies were turned from me twisted their heads in my direction. Some, caught chewing, watched me with blades of grass spurting from their mouths. Whatever they had been doing, they all found me and watched me walk. I was an outsider, walking through their world. Like the new arrival in a country western movie just stepping into the town’s saloon, they all turned to size me up. They looked at me, silent, observant, and feeling no threat, because none of them made a move to flee. They swooshed their tails and flies continued to land close to their eyes. I kept walking, a bit nervous, a bit self conscious in front of so many eyes. They stared, I stared. Behind low barbed wire fence. I passed them by a couple dozen feet and walked past them to the cluster of oak trees. Last I saw them, they were still looking at me, still examining the strange intruder that trespassed the silence of their quiet lives.
