Cry Wilderness

by Frank Capra

  “‘Okay, I’ll bandage him,’ as I open the kit. ‘I can’t take him that way when I’ve got real bandages.’

  “‘Take him where, sir?’

  “‘To the station.’

  “‘Why, sir?’

  “‘Because…sir! I’m a policeman. That joker may’ve stuck up forty banks… Hey!’ I’m pointing at nothing. The man’s gone. Up and disappeared while I yakked with No Name.

  “Well, I run around hollerin’ and bellerin’ into the woods…shooting warning shots…looking for footprints, which made me madder ’cause footprints’re all Greek to me.

  “So I run back to the car to report in, yellin’ to No Name that if I got my tail in a crack over this I was gonna run him out of the county.

  “I call headquarters. The chief himself answers. Cornhouser was his name, ‘Pop Cornhouser’ we called him, a wonderful guy, he was—almost eighty. I reported how this scarecrow suspect had lammed out on me while getting bandages, described him, and so on…when Pop starts to laugh.

  “‘Relax, Lefty,’ the chief says. ‘The Inyo County Sheriff told me last week this egg might be headin’ our way. Said he’s been hanging round Bishop Creek for over a year…soiling worms and grubs to fishermen. Wouldn’t give his name or nothing, so they checked out his fingerprints… No record… Got all his marbles, too. Just a harmless nut who wants to live with squirrels. Well educated too, but he likes the bottle. He’s clean, Lefty. Don’t bother him unless he starts breaking laws.’

  “‘Okay, Chief.’ I hang up the mike. ‘Well, Mr. No Name,’ I says, ‘got ourselves another stray cat for my wife to worry about. Here.’ I hand ’im the pecan pies. While he had a pie in each hand I drop in a quick question:

  “‘No Name…were you a doctor once?’

  “‘No!’ he gave me back fast. Then slower, ‘I think I worked in a butcher shop once.’

  “‘Where?’ I shot back.

  “‘Oh, I forget where…’

  “Then I asked him point-blank: ‘No Name, I’m your friend. What’s eatin’ you? Why do you want to forget everything?’

  “And, Frank, he stands there,” Lefty pantomimes it, “a pecan pie in each hand, blinking his eyes fast on account they’re startin’ to wet up.

  “‘Mr. Lefty,’ he says, ‘I wish to God I could forget everything…if there is a God.’

  “Then he says the nicest thing anybody ever said to me:

  “‘But one thing I won’t ever forget…your kindness. You and your wife. Thank you, sir.’

  “Well…I gunned that motor and got out quick.”

  •••

  The deer were cleaned inside. Now to skin them…a long, tedious job. That gave me time to think of my experiences with No Name—I mean Bear Bait, because that’s the only name I knew him by.

  I’d heard tales about Bear Bait. Ex-college man, some said…from Yale, Stanford, what have you. Others said he was a black sheep prince… Most said he was just a drunken bum.

  But when I first met him, he was fast deteriorating into an animal. His once curly black hair had grayed, knotted, and clotted into a mane of mops. The dirt on his face was old enough to interest geologists. Two boozy, red-lined eyes peering out through matted hair were all that proved he had a face. His clothes, which he never took off, hung heavy with the weight of grime. No one could get that dirty in one lifetime.

  And yet…and yet…he fascinated me as he did many others. Underneath the filth you sensed a gentleness…even a nobility. Who is this pathetic wretch…or rather who was he? What was it he was trying to forget, alone in this beautiful wilderness—and failing?

  Many a time when I was fishing on a lake or a stream, Bear Bait would find me. I was one of his pet patsies. Like the time on Rush Creek when I suddenly became aware of his standing behind me, swaying from side to side. He startled me, because at first glance he looked more like a pint-sized Abominable Snowman than a human being; his little red eyes smiling and blinking, his chapped mouth making sounds that only those of us who knew him could translate into: “Clean your fish, Mister? Clean your fish, huh, huh?”

  “Oh, hi, Bear Bait.” Calling a man by that debasing name always made me wince. “Sure, go ahead.” His body jerked in small fits. I knew the dreaded craving for alcohol would soon rack his tortured nerves.

  With a happy grunt, he squatted down to my creel, took out a sharply pointed, bone-handled knife, half the bone of which was gone, and began cleaning fish. I cast out aimlessly but observed him closely. He held the knife like a good calligrapher holds a pen. After opening each fish, he expertly slit the stomach to minutely examine what the fish had fed on.

  Suddenly I had a hunch. I spitballed it out as carelessly as I was casting my fly line.

  “Bear Bait…was it at Stanford or Yale that you learned to hold a scalpel like that?”

  He froze, still peering into the fish, a silent statue. A pause. Then he abruptly dropped everything and, stumbling, hanging onto branches, he scrambled away along the riverbank.

  “Bear Bait!” I called, “Wait a minute… Come back!”

  To him I was throwing rocks, not words. Then I yelled out the clincher.

  “Bear Bait…stop…I’ve got a whole bottle for you!”

  He froze again, his back still to me…with one hand on a limb and one foot in the water. I imagined the agony of his struggle…one last shred of dignity against a whole bottle of whiskey. The shred lost.

  He came back smiling and bowing to finish the rest of the fish. There is nothing that can choke you up more than to see the degradation of a human being. Was I helping or hurting him? I wasn’t sure.

  The fish cleaned, he took my rod, jacket, and creel, and like a puppy dog leading you on to play, he went ahead of me up the bank, holding branches back, giving me a hand up steep places, until we got to my car on the road. There he opened the car door for me, giggling, dancing, and urging me in…a child anxious to get to a picnic.

  I had auditioned this pitiful little act before. I knew what it meant. His shaking body screamed for liquor. The craving was on: a thousand little devils gnawing his insides for alcohol…alcohol.

  I put him in the back seat and opened all the car windows in order to survive. But it didn’t help much since he leaned forward on the front seat and chortled Frankie Fontaine noises into my ear.

  The smell of Bear Bait was not one to kid around with. It was gargantuan, classic, and so royally offensive that goats and skunks have turned tail and fled. In fact, the story has it that it was this miasmic aura that earned him his moniker in his early hermetic days. The June Lake Postmaster bumped into him on the street and stopped short, his lungs paralyzed. Turning, he rasped out:

  “Jesus, man…you smell like bear bait.”

  To which the un-fragrant eremite had replied with a flash of unexpected wit:

  “Oh, no, Mr. Postmaster…in the words of Samuel Johnson: You smell, sir…I stink.”

  It was this crack that set the locals off into a rash of conjecture about his past. Anyway, the name stuck. Bear Bait. And some twenty years later he was in the back seat of my car with all four windows open as I drove him back to my cabin for a bottle.

  It had been thundering, and now the rains came, as they can only come in the mountains. The peaks turned on their firehoses, while the angry winds tried to blow the water back up to them. I didn’t dare put up the windows for fear of being anesthetized. So I got drenched—and so did Bear Bait.

  Well, if you think a dry Bear Bait was tough to take, you should have tried him wet. I breathed out only…never in. I stopped the car some fifty yards from my door and told Bear Bait to wait, while I walked slowly toward the house hoping the rains would wash me clean. I got a bottle of scotch and came back out. There was Bear Bait at the door, bouncing eagerly up and down, his paws in front of him for balance, like a wet sheepdog just learning to stand on his hind fee
t.

  I handed him the bottle. As he took it, he made a sucking gasp of happy surprise. A whole bottle! He bowed and bowed his thanks, then, hugging the liquor to his chest, he disappeared into the wet night, gibbering as happily as a potted Mortimer Snerd.

  This childlike, nameless, repulsive, disintegrating human flotsam, having lost man’s most priceless possession—his dignity—would now stupefy himself and pass out blissfully and soggily under a dripping tree…and nobody cared—not even he.

  I remember silently asking God to bless him and all the other Bear Baits in the world.

  •••

  “What blood?… Oh…”

  Think fast, man… Then, from left field, that magic pasture of instant creativity whence spring full-blown ideas, inventions, alibis, and immortal phrases such as MacArthur’s “I shall return”… Bastogne’s “Nuts I”…Whistler’s “You Will”…Churchill’s “Blood, sweat, and tears”…the fight manager’s “We wuz robbed!” came:

  “Oh, I mean aye…’tis the blood of charity. Wist thee not that I am Robin Hood?”

  “Go on…I’m wisting.”

  “There’s hunger in the land, me wench. So bearding the Sheriff in his lair, me and Friar Tuck, Lefty to thee, we ventured bold in Sherwood Forest. Risking all, we caught two stags with our bare hands, dressed them deftly, wrapped them in cheesecloth to foil ye flies, then secretly hung one on a tree for Bear Bait, and t’other oyer a hollow log for Dry Rot. A noble deed I wot…what wot thee, Pigeon?”

  “Between wisting and wotting…I’m worried, that’s what I am.”

  “A fig for thy fears, Maid Marion,” as, playing the stout of heart, I made a pass at her derriere. She swished so neatly I missed completely. I sat down, faint with my good works.

  “Aye, ’tis thirst that marred my aim. So prithee, fetch me a goblet of nectar, ’ere I plant a kiss upon thy ruby lips.”

  “Prith to thee, Master Robin. You were bringing the nectar from the store… Doth remember?”

  “ZOUNDS!! A pox upon me for a clumsy lout!”

  I rushed to the door and turned to wow her with my curtain line.

  “I left the flagon in the Friar’s car. I’ll have the varmint’s hide!”

  •••

  Several days later I was drifting along in my boat on Silver Lake, casting a fly toward shore under the willows, when I heard a bell clanging furiously—the little ship’s bell on our front porch. Looking up, I saw my wife urgently waving me to come in. Something was up.

  “What’s on fire?” I asked as I leaped out of the boat.

  “Just the phone. The sheriff’s calling from Bridgeport.”

  “Sheriff! What’s he want?”

  “Just a female hunch…but you did throw a stag party last week.”

  “Ha, ha…funny,” I said as I ran into the house for the phone. “Hello?… Yes, Mr. Sheriff, this is Frank Capra talking…”

  As with all sinners, a guilt complex comes over me when speaking to the police. I give it away by being overly polite.

  “…You’re having a what?… An informal hearing?… Oh…internal discipline. Well, how can I help you, sir?… I see… Not over the phone… Yes, sir… I understand. Two thirty this afternoon… No, no trouble at all… Second floor, Supervisor’s Room, Courthouse… Yes, sir, I’ll be there…”

  My wife had been listening, of course.

  “So?” she asked.

  “So nothing. They’re having a hearing.”

  “Should I blow the horn and round up your merry band, Robin?”

  “Lay off, willya? This may not be funny, you know. What suit shall I wear?”

  “Your Lincoln Greens, of course…”

  Chapter Two

  As I backed out of our red-cindered driveway for the forty-mile trip to Bridgeport, I began to speculate on why the sheriff had called me. Had to concern Lefty, I was sure. His prediction that he might get his tail in a crack over Bear Bait and Dry Rot had probably come true. Interesting man, this Lefty. As a deputy sheriff, he enforced the law in isolated Mono County with Javer-like tenacity. No one had enough “pull” to sidetrack Lefty—not even for the pettiest of misdemeanors. And he was fearless. So fearless he once sailed single-handed into a tough gang of black-jacketed motorcycle hoodlums bent on terrorizing June Lake. Using only his fists against chains, clubs, and knives, he knocked so many of the toughs galley-west they finally took to their roaring cycles and fled, with Lefty harassing the bullies out of town with his car—like a sheepdog running sheep. Yet this fearless giant was determined to champion the rights of two other apparently worthless tramps against all the powers of Mono County, if necessary.

  Yes, I thought—a strange guy, this Lefty—and then, coming out of a leafy tunnel, I topped the rocky knoll on our back road, whose granite ledges have all been staked out, claimed, and “worked” by juniper trees, now as old and gnarled as ancient sourdoughs. And there it was, spread out before me. Our meadow. Beautiful even in daytime. But at night—my wife, my children, my grandchildren, all must stop at the meadow after dark. Why? To catch a performance of the “Ballet of the Green Eyes” as we call it; a fantasy only Scheherazade could have described to the Sultan.

  With a station wagon bulging with hushed but highly excited moppets, and my headlights high and my spotlight mobile, we’d turn the car toward the meadow and gape out the windows. There they are! A dozen pairs of large luminous green eyes—poised on Nature’s stage, waiting for my baton. I count the rhythm—one, two, three—and I tap the horn. The ballet begins…green eyes in slow motion…moving, crisscrossing, leaping, bounding…executing ethereal choreographic patterns with the poetic motions of deer. For they are deer!

  What beauty there is in the world. And the admission price? Only that the beholder stop, look, and enjoy. I reached the paved road and began circling Silver Lake. Through the tremulous, coquettish, last autumn leaves of the toe-dipping aspen, I catch glimpses of our cabin. Across the smooth waters, the ribbon of its reflection keeps pointing at me as I roll along, tying me to my home. Home! And nostalgic pains. Of all the places I’ve lived in, from the ghetto shacks to the Bel-Air mansions of affluent film years, this home in the high Sierra is the one I cherish most.

  Here our children learned to fish and hike and love the mountains. Here I came for healing when torn apart by the frustrations of filmmaking. Here should come all the beats, the acid-heads; all the sick of heart and mind; all the walking dead, and let Nature renew their ideals, their courage, their manhood. It is impossible to be despondent in the Sierra wilderness. For here there is “Balm in Gilead.”

  As I circled Silver Lake and passed the Edison powerhouse—whose spinning turbines tamed the wild power of Rush Creek’s roaring falls (that plunged over 1,200 feet of glacier-burnished granite cliffs) and domesticated that power into California’s obedient lamplighter—and then as I passed by Silver Lake Lodge with its acres of trailer parks, and by campers and trailers jammed “hub-to-hub” along Rush Creek’s noisy two-mile frolicking jaunt from Silver to Grant Lake, Lefty’s intransigence was becoming more understandable. The primitive wilderness of Mono County had been “discovered.”

  If the reader is mildly surprised at the unpredictable behavior of some of the characters in this tale, I can only say they were reared in an environment as unpredictable and poly-behaviored as the Los Angeles Dodgers. In 1963 (the year I was answering the sheriff’s summons to Bridgeport), Mono was the only county in the state, and perhaps in the nation, that was without a bank, a movie house, a dentist, an incorporated city, a boxcar, or a single foot of railroad track. It was a 50-by-150-mile stretch of wall-to-wall paradoxes—half hot, half cold; half Swiss Alps, half Mojave Desert.

  Mono County mines rock that floats (pumice) and grows wood that sinks (iron wood). It has the freshest of waters and the saltiest (Mono Lake); the youngest of volcanos (Mono Craters) and the oldest of rocks. (Near Co
nvict Lake some reddish rocks contain fossils of graptolites—tiny marine animals four hundred million years old!)

  Here the closest peak to heaven in the continental United States (Mount Whitney, 14,494 feet) looks down on the lowest hellhole (Death Valley—282 feet below sea level). Here the Arctic cold of the Sierra peaks meets the burning heat of desert valleys, and in between the few miles separating these two environmental extremes, one finds complete sequences of flora and fauna. From arid Owens Valley one does not have to travel thousands of miles to reach the Arctic tundra; one climbs a few miles up the Sierra wall. Many of the plants that grow in the hot valleys also grow in the cool mountains, but with notable differences. Desert plants have become ingenious at coping with hundred-degree weather and years of little rainfall. They developed small leaves, some like thorns, to prevent evaporation. They grew far apart to reduce competition for moisture. Their mountain cousins, however, have much broader leaves to catch the sun’s rays, and huddle close together in warm spots since they have plenty of moisture.

  In fact, Mono County is a child of paradox. “For here is a land,” writes Genny Schumacher in the Sierra Club’s handbook The Mammoth Lakes Sierra, “born of fire and sculptured by ice…for millions of years fire and ice have played their antagonistic roles, shaping the landscape as we see it today—the one forcing up mountains, building, adding; the other quarrying, carving, grinding down, carrying away…”

  Here, nature must have put on its grandest fireworks show—erupting volcanoes, hot rivers of lava, gargantuan earthquakes; here, the violence of nature must have fulminated at its most terrifying fury, as the lava rivers cooled and solidified, only to have other rivers flow over them, layer upon layer as the hot innards of the earth shot up through the cracks in fiery roars and spread bubbling molten magma over areas deep with former spewings, all under a hellish pall of hissing steam and raining ashes.

  Then came the Ice Ages (four of them) and the great glaciers, those powerful rivers of ice that scoured the uplifted granite mountains and gouged out the Sierra’s valleys and bowls. There are some fifty glaciers still active. John Muir wrote that from the glaciers on the northern flanks of Mr. Ritter flow the beginnings of four of California’s major rivers—San Joaquin, Tuolumne, Merced, and Owens—their sources all within a radius of four miles.