Five Skies

by Ron Carlson

  “It’s a solid piece of work,” Darwin said. “Your footings are tight.” They had assembled the railroad ties, sledging the housing joints firm and flush and then securing them each with two of the ten-inch carriage bolts. When the entire assembly was bridged, they leveled each side with tire jacks and poured concrete into the eight footing holes.

  “Yes, they are.”

  “Those treated ties will outlast the rock face,” Darwin said. “You ever build anything to last?”

  Ronnie had retreated from the edge and was now standing halfway back, contiguous with the cliff line.

  “Not like this,” Arthur Key said. “Most of my work goes up and we take it down. I never once built a house. Years ago, we did a film in Aspen. We made a sliding roof on a cabin, so you could look down in, like a dollhouse. It was a sort of joke; you could see the folks in there in their pajamas, like that. It ended up being about nine seconds in the movie, but it took us almost four weeks, and then when we were done, we took it apart and put the roof back right. That place still doesn’t leak. But while we were there we built a pretty big deck out of flagstone and redwood for the producer’s mountain house. That’ll be there five hundred years, snow or sun. Is that coffee ready?”

  They could see the corridor of steam coming from the big enamelware pot. Key loved the sight of that steam. He knew it had been part of what had saved his life. Now, for Arthur Key the mornings were slightly different than they’d been for almost a hundred days. He knew he was sleeping now, because he woke ready to dress and get his boots, and it wasn’t until the second hour when the floor dropped and the friction of his memory began. But even then, there was daylight in the day, and sometimes not even the work, just a coffee or a talk could keep him there. He knew he was less of a ghost, but he didn’t know the measure.

  The men walked down the grade of their creation and back onto the sandy earth, across to the cook table. Ronnie went in the tent to dress. The sky had blanched and patterned out in a checkerboard of insubstantial white clouds now, appearing in sections and fading as the day opened. Ronnie looked east and west for more birds, but there were none.

  Darwin poured the coffee and cracked eggs onto the skillet. He quickly sliced four potatoes and started frying them in butter.

  “Cream in coffee is a privilege and double out here,” Arthur Key said. He said this every day at the river gorge.

  “Amen,” Ronnie said.

  “What about you, Mr. Darwin?”

  “I built a house, as you well know. I believe you’ve seen it.”

  “You did? Where?” Ronnie asked. “That house at Diff’s ranch?”

  “Did you go from the ground up?”

  “I bladed the hillside with Diff’s little D-six, a war surplus antique.”

  “I’ll bet that was fun.” Arthur Key sat across the blue table now. Ronnie sliced three thick pieces of bread and laid them by the griddle for Darwin.

  Darwin’s face lit a little and he said, “It was. It took all day to start that old diesel and then only ten minutes to cut our site. That machine is still out back of Roman’s shop somewhere.”

  “But you did the plumbing and electrical?”

  “Who else was coming out? There’s not much to it, and we had time.”

  “Where’d you mill the logs?”

  “Right there in the back of the shop.”

  Arthur Key spoke to Ronnie. “He notched them just like we did, right?”

  Darwin said, “We did.”

  “Did you number them?” Ronnie asked.

  Darwin smiled. “We did.”

  “God, that’s good work. A house.”

  “Did you build the place for your wife?”

  “She wasn’t coming out from Elko if it was life in a tent. She’d lived in a tent and had had enough. You should see that place inside, what she made there.”

  “It’s a fine property,” Arthur Key said.

  His friend understood him and answered: “I can’t go back there.”

  “You can do the next thing, like everybody else. Diff needs you and it’s a good place.”

  Darwin turned the nine eggs over one at a time and dropped the bread onto the hot surface. He waved his spatula at the ramp. “What do you think they’re going to think about it in a thousand years?”

  Arthur Key looked off toward the massive wooden ramp and after a moment he said, “What do they think of it today?”

  By noon they had the rail erected, except for one ten-foot section, and the sun had polished Ronnie’s shoulders a remarkable high brown.

  SIXTEEN

  THEY MADE THE QUICK TRUCK RUN for firewood early in the day. At dinner the night before, Darwin had said that with the ramp construction complete it was about time for a turkey. They were eating spaghetti, which steamed in the dark. Darwin had opened a bottle of Chianti and poured them each a coffee cup of the thick red wine. “We’ll dig a pit and throw in a turkey and bake some potatoes.”

  “And this is Idaho,” Key remarked.

  “And what does that mean?” Ronnie said. He was sampling his wine experimentally, his first taste all summer.

  “What does it mean?” Key said right back to him.

  The spaghetti was too hot and Ronnie pulled it apart with his fork. “This is the dinner lesson again?”

  “People associate Idaho with potatoes,” Darwin told him. “You knew that.”

  Ronnie tore a fistful of bread from the end of the French loaf, waving it in a half circle, over the rocky river gorge, the sandy plateau, the sage in random squadrons to the horizon. “Potatoes,” he said. “With this place?” He took a bite and, chewing, continued: “No offense, but I saw more potatoes in Illinois. This, if in fact it is Idaho, is the rabbit state. I associate this place with rabbits.” He threw a corner of his bread at the corner of the lumber pile and the five rabbits that crept near every night anticipating what he’d treat them with dashed away.

  “Don’t feed them, Ronnie.”

  “Do you like a baked potato?” Darwin asked the young man.

  “Yes, I do. And I like this spaghetti.”

  “Your mother could cook,” Arthur Key said to him.

  “She could. But she didn’t have much time. She worked two jobs all the time I was a kid. But she made some stuff.” He looked at his two friends. “Cannelloni.”

  “That’s beyond us.”

  “She made lots of bread.”

  “You should have eaten some,” Darwin said. “Although you’re plenty strong for a skinny guy.” He continued: “Tomorrow’s Sunday and we’re baking a turkey. We’ll need wood.”

  “In what oven?” Ronnie said. His mouth was ringed with red sauce. Catching the two men looking at him, he added, “Or do I want to know?”

  Now in the daylight, Ronnie Panelli held the big truck in second gear and drove with his hand on the vibrating black Bakelite shift knob as he steered slowly along the packed dirt farm road. He and Arthur Key had been south along the two-track for firewood, which now was piled—half a cord—in a knit interleaf on the center of the broad truck bed. If they went twenty miles an hour, it wouldn’t scatter, and it was only a four-mile trip. They’d found a section of twenty jack pine standing dead from beetle kill, and Arthur had oiled up Darwin’s well-worn chainsaw and shown Ronnie how to drop a tree.

  “We’ll leave the ones with nests,” Arthur told him, pointing to the large straw balls where ospreys had claimed the top forks of three of the pines. He chose a tree at the perimeter and started the saw and knelt to his work. He talked over the saw as he went through each cut, notching the front fall line and kicking out the pretty wedge of wood, oddly yellow against the flaking gray trunk. Ronnie stood away twenty feet. “Why doesn’t it just fall down?”

  “Stand over here,” Arthur said. “You’re safest right near the base, unless there’s other trees already down.” Then with Ronnie behind him, he drew the backcut down at forty-five degrees and the tree stood and Arthur put his finger where the kerf widened a quarter in
ch and then a half as the dead tree cracked and dropped exactly where he’d said it would. He handed Ronnie the sputtering saw and had him limb that tree and buck it up to get accustomed to the saw, its weight and the centrifugal drag. Ronnie later knelt and cut down a tree then, cut by cut, hanging up only on the wedge, which wasn’t cleanly met and which he had to kick and kick until Arthur took the idling saw from him for a second and notched it out.

  Each of the fallen deadwood sections came apart with a single ax blow, and the two men split about half the logs, enough to make their temporary load ride well. They piled the slash by the farm road, a small haystack of sticks which would be a home for field mice until it was burned in the winter.

  In the truck Ronnie checked his unbound freight with every short dip in the road, and Key noted the care he took. Ronnie stopped twice to jump out and re-sort some of the pieces drifting to the edge. He had wanted to figure a way to use the comealong, but Key had talked him out of it, pointing back to the plateau and reminding the boy it was only a few miles. Ronnie had a way of overdoing all the things he’d just learned. They drove with the windows down in the warm day, and Arthur Key saw even in the late morning that the light had shifted, and the cant of the shadows of the sage and the waving block shadow of the truck as it pressed along the broken margin of the old road made him feel that summer had crested and would recede now even by inches.

  When they topped the rise south of camp, Ronnie honked the horn twice. “My god,” Ronnie said. “Look at that. Just what the hell is that?” The raw wooden flying ramp jutted out over the canyon like some rectangle the artist had forgotten or mistook. “Who did that?”

  Arthur Key scanned the installation as they approached. They were at the point in the road where the girl would sit and adjust her helmet, both legs on the ground and the motorcycle idling.

  Ronnie hauled the large truck through the open gate on the plateau and eased it up to where Darwin stood with his shovel. He had spaded a five-foot circle in the soil well away from the campsite.

  “Lumberjacks,” Darwin said, appraising the load.

  “Where do you want it?” Ronnie said. He lifted himself onto the flatbed by stepping in the rear tire.

  “Right here,” Darwin said, stabbing the ground with his spade.

  Ronnie kicked the tangled load back a stitch at a time until it fell in tangled bunches into a pile. He sat quickly on the edge of the truckbed and pulled off his workboots one at a time and poured half a cup of yellow sawdust from each. As the flakes fell he looked at Darwin and said, “We’re rich.” Tying his boots up again, he jumped to the ground and pulled on his work gloves. He took Darwin’s shovel and said, “Okay. Now, about this hole.”

  He dug a round pit almost four feet deep at the center in the red-brown earth, standing in the thing at the end, scooping the last crumbs as if making a big cup. Then he walked over to the blue table where Darwin was closing a second layer of heavy foil on the turkey. There were six double-wrapped potatoes glistening silver on the table.

  “This is key to this operation,” Darwin said, going to the little jeep and bringing back a loose-rolled sheet of chicken wire.

  “Okay,” Ronnie said.

  “Lift our bird onto this,” Darwin told him, opening the screening on the blue table. Ronnie laid the shiny package in the center, and Darwin began to coil it in the wire. “We’re going to need a way to get this guy out of the fire.” He crimped a metal paintcan handle into two segments of the chickenwire and held it all aloft.

  Arthur Key was at the fresh pit filling it with the firewood, tepeeing the longer limbs to contain the stacked split wood as the mound rose. “This is your deal, Darwin,” he called. “Come say if we’re good.”

  The two men joined Key, and Darwin said, “Let’s burn it.”

  Ronnie retrieved a paintcan of kerosene from their five-gallon bucket and laced it in loops around the base of the firewood. Key handed him the box of kitchen matches. “This is going to be some little fire,” Ronnie said.

  “Stand this side, Ronnie,” Arthur told him, “or you’ll singe your outfit.”

  Ronnie lit the match and dropped it on the wooden pyramid, and in a minute a clean yellow flame stood before them seven feet tall, flashing in the daylight, and after the black kerosene burned off, the conflagration was almost without smoke, just a white afterthought shooting from the flames.

  “People are going to think we’ve been struck by lightning,” Ronnie told Darwin. “You are going to burn that little turkey right up.”

  “We shall see,” he told the young man. “We shall see.”

  As the fire burned for the next half hour, Key and Ronnie added limbs and logs to it, consuming most of their wood. Between times, they cleaned the tent, and Darwin loaded the back of his open jeep with three and then four bags of laundry, including the sleeping bags and pillowcases, detergent and bleach.

  When the firepit brimmed with pulsing red coals, glowing white and swollen, Darwin brought the turkey over, holding it by the handle he’d clipped in the chicken wire frame. Arthur shoveled a space in the middle by scooping the knotted embers out onto the dirt bank. When the cavity was sufficient, Darwin speared the paint-can handle with the pitchfork and leaned over quickly and set the wrapped turkey onto the coals. Key packed coals around and over the bird, four and then five inches, until it had disappeared in the glowing fire pit.

  “Let’s bury it now,” he told Ronnie and he threw a shovel of dirt onto the fire and then another until they both moved the spaded earth back into a dome over the hot pit.

  “It’s got to be perfect,” Darwin said. “When you finish patting it down, wait and watch.”

  The men had sealed the pit and tamped it with their shovels.

  “Rest in peace,” Ronnie said. “You cowboys know some things. If this works, I’ll eat it.”

  “There it is,” Darwin said, pointing to where a fissure had appeared and white smoke streamed from it. “One of those and we’ll have nothing for dinner but cinders.”

  Ronnie shoveled and patted it closed. “What about those potatoes, those famous Idaho potatoes?”

  “I’ll dig them in at four o’clock,” Darwin said. “For now we are all set.” He took Ronnie’s shovel and handed him the keys to the open jeep. “It’s laundry day. You be back by five-thirty,” he said. “That bag of quarters is under the seat.”

  Ronnie looked around the camp. It was noon and he was going to town. It felt like a holiday. He walked to the jeep and climbed in. “Don’t go off from the Laundromat to see that girl and get all our gear stolen.” Arthur Key pointed at Ronnie. “Go to her house first and she can come and have a nice visit downtown while you both watch our clothes tumble dry.”

  “And don’t you eat down there,” Darwin added. “We’re having a turkey.”

  SEVENTEEN

  THEY’D EXTRACTED THEIR TURKEY from the baking sand, along with six roasted potatoes, at half past six, taking their time. Arthur Key had never seen it done this way before, and they lifted the bird with a pitchfork tine thrust through the paint-can handle. Darwin set it on the cutting board still wrapped and covered it with a dishtowel. He had his red-handled wire cutters right there and he showed them to Key. “Any meal you start with the wire cutters is top drawer. We’ll wait for Ronnie.” The boy was already an hour late.

  They sat and poured a glass of the George Dickel as the sky gave up light and the ground began to glow. They had another half glass. Arthur Key felt well. Through his arms and chest, he owned a new ease, and for a week or two his eyes had been open wider than before, or so it seemed. His thoughts came but they did not assail him. And now he opened a discussion with Darwin, one he had been waiting for. They had been talking about Ronnie, what he was doing, how he was vexed at the Laundromat, still pairing the socks, folding the shirts, or how he was having Traci help him, the kind of help which would take twice as long. “You ever fold clothes with a woman?”

  “Many times. I am highly skilled in the domestic
trades.” Darwin watched Arthur’s face in the gloaming. “Oh my. You never have.”

  “No, I have not. I came close a time or two, I think.” He smiled. That he could make a small joke again pleased him, but he corrected it. “I was never close.”

  They were silent in the changing light; the particularity in the evening shadow was distinct. The two men sat six feet from the turkey that marked the end of their summer, and Key asked Darwin what really he was going to do and added, “Roberto’s off and running in Idaho Falls. You’re going back to the ranch, certainly.”

  “Certainly,” Darwin said with only the lightest touch of bitterness. “You say certainly.”

  “Look, Darwin, I can’t measure what happened to you. My life has no equivalent. I’m sure it broke part of you. All I know is what we’ve done out here, and talking to Roman and Diff. That ranch feels right. The days there.” He looked in his glass and shook his head slowly. “You aren’t serious about this argument with God.”

  “You aren’t serious about it,” Darwin said. The twilight allowed the men to turn toward each other and talk across the table, using their glasses to touch the blue wooden surface as they spoke.

  “Just tell me of it,” Arthur Key said. “Forgive me, but I think it is a bad idea.”

  “It is not an idea.” Darwin looked at his friend. “It is what I was left with. It was a life and then it was taken, and there was no help. There is no help. You think I haven’t thought about fixing it? I was surprised myself as if struck from behind. It is all a surprise now, but it is real.” Darwin drank his whiskey off. “You’re a man who thinks he can fix things, I guess. I don’t know you very well. Maybe you are strong enough to hold God up, but I am not. And I will not. I don’t know what I’m going to do. You’re right about Roberto; he’s on his way. I don’t really like the way they act around me when I’m up there. Arthur Key, maybe you can hold things up while they get fixed. I found out; there is nothing to hold up. That’s all.”