“If it picks up like I think it is, I’ll build another summer kitchen.”
“Is the man with the dog involved with this new business?” asks Star.
“No,” says Mr. Copeland. “He’s just a friend of Zack’s.”
“He looks like he might be involved with funerals,” said Mrs. Copeland. “Zack said he used to live in Mumford Rock, but I don’t remember him, and he seems to be somebody you’d remember. Do you remember him, P.J.?”
“I can’t say as I do, but I tell you—about funerals—it’s a very respectable business. You need to see that school in Denver—and who all is going there to learn. A lot of people in the furniture business is going into it, and the sooner we get into it the better. When somebody else starts a funeral home in Mumford Rock, and you can bet they will, we want to have a top-notch one going already, and we got to advertise to get going fast and sure. Once you get this business into a family, they’ll stay with you if you don’t mess up.”
“Pass the dumplings,” says Brother.
“‘Please,’” says Mrs. Copeland.
“Please,” says Brother.
“Let me show you-all something,” says Mr. Copeland. “Bumpy, go get me that grip.”
“I ain’t finished eating,” says Mrs. Copeland.
After supper Mr. Copeland took off Grandma Copeland’s bonnet, braked her rolling chair, and leaned her back until she was almost flat down against the footstool with her knees up. Then he put a pillow under her head and started rubbing Glo-Tex on her face until she had some color like a person who wasn’t sick. Grandma is usually pale and kind of yellow. Mainly because she’s so far back in her bonnet and don’t get no sun.
When he got to her mole he rubbed around it, then he said, “I wonder couldn’t I take that thing off.” I thought he was just joshing. Mr. Copeland gets to joshing every once in a while.
“They bleed bad,” said Mrs. Copeland.
Then he wraps one of Grandma Copeland’s mole hairs around his finger like he’s pulling up grass and yanks it out. Grandma Copeland slaps his hand and looks at him like she’s been shot. I thought for sure she was going to say something. She don’t ever talk.
“Mama, I can’t fix you up,” he says, “lessen we clean you up a little.” He starts to pull the other one, but she slaps his hand again and so he gets out his pocketknife. “Whoa, horsey, calm down. I’ll do this.” He cuts it close to the mole. “We’re going to get you pretty enough to go to town, Mama.”
Mr. Copeland worked hard at rubbing in Glo-Tex and it took him a pretty good while, but Grandma didn’t seem to mind too much. He put a little line of red marking along under her lower lip, which he said would make her look like she was smiling, but it didn’t. Then when he was doing her neck she got one of her laughing spells and didn’t stop until he mixed some Remove-All with water and cleaned her up. “You don’t mix in water with that stuff, it’ll take paint off a wagon,” he says.
Then Sister rolled her out to her room with Star going along to see how to do it. There’s a ramp. You got half-inch hickory strips across the ramp so you can stop the chair and rest going up or down. If the weather’s bad, and we can’t roll her out there, she sleeps with Mrs. Copeland, and Mr. Copeland sleeps on a army cot in my room.
Mr. Copeland took him a chew of tobacco, and smoked a cigarette along with it, sitting on the porch steps. That’s one of his habits. He don’t like to sit in a chair except when he eats.
STAR
I have settled into my little cabin. And despite the atrocious English everyone out here speaks, I am adjusting merrily. I am inclined to think I may remain out West for a very long time because, in part, of the clean taste and feel of the air, the majestic beauty and encyclopedic range of colors of the mountain rock and soil (every shade of red, pink, orange, and brown imaginable), the availability of church services in town—and also, and perhaps in large part, because of my lovely cabin.
The cabin belongs to Mr. Merriwether and sits on a knoll between Uncle P.J.’s saddle shop and the Merriwether Ranch. The Merriwether Ranch is the normal one hundred sixty acres, with a long low sprawling house, a huge hay barn, two windmills, three other outbuildings, pens, cattle, sheep, hay, Mexicans, cowboys, horses, and occasional Mescadeys. Somewhere I got the idea that Mescadeys were little worrisome animals. I didn’t realize they were members of the Mescadey Indian tribe.
And beyond the ranch flows the wide, swift Bright Owl River, sparkling in the sunlight as it jumps among rocks and boulders.
And then across the river is the mighty Mesa Largo.
Behind my cabin runs a lovely stream with rocks and pebbles, Bobcat Creek. Trees grow all along the creek bank and up in the yard, cottonwoods, tall for this valley—short compared to the long-leaf pine back home—though some are gnarled and bent over. From the little front porch I can also see three mountain peaks in the distance—Johnson’s Point, the Steeple, and Captain’s Rock. Those are beyond the town to the north, and below their high bare or snow-capped peaks the mountains are green. Toward the mesa, the land is more bare, more desolate. It is all breathtaking, and produces in the viewer a sense of boundless, open, expansive freedom that speaks of the mysterious handiwork of God. And a kind of scary openness where anything can happen. It’s almost as if, out here, God is farther away than back home.
The cabin itself has two rooms. A bedroom and the main room, in which Uncle P.J. has installed a shiny new three-eye Premier cookstove. I’m almost sure Aunt Sallie sent him the money to buy it, because she and I had talked about the need for such a commodity before I traveled west.
When Aunt Ann and I finished our four-day task of setting up the cabin, the floor was scrubbed smooth and the windows shone clean and clear behind fresh, ironed pink-and-white checked curtains. In one window is an old blue cracked vase, filled with thistles, which like other dry things out west—like that ancient mesa visible through the same window—seem to possess an inward, cracked, and weathered beauty you thought not possible, but somehow find working on you, in a positive way. And how it is that the dry, the expansive, the cracked, the dusty, and the bright all work in a positive way I do not yet understand.
Also about the West I must say this: a new place makes a new person—if one but follows the lead of God. Somehow I feel that out west I am able to be more honest than I was at home, more open to the new. And I feel that as Aunt Sallie promised, adventure awaits. And it is a good place to heal from the sorrow and sadness brought by Mama’s passing.
Above the fireplace we hung a beautiful Indian headdress from the plains, and on the wall nearby we placed a match holder formed into the heads of two eagles.
In one corner is a washstand, and behind it hangs fishing tackle. Above the back door is a rifle on a gun rack and over the front door is a pair of antlers from a buck shot by Bumpy. Uncle P.J. insisted I have a rifle here, as I learned to shoot back home. I agreed without hesitation, and have already seen in these few short days that some activities considered unladylike in North Carolina are accepted without reservation in the West. What a relief, in a way. The greatest relief is that a corset is not mandatory daily wear, a relief I never dreamed I would live to experience. And women out here are not bound to riding sidesaddle.
In the bedroom is a narrow pine plank bed. We first scrubbed it, then filled it with fresh, soft pine boughs fetched by Bumpy, and over them spread canvas from a wagon sheet that Aunt Ann had washed and boiled and pounded until clean and sweet. Against the wall beside the bed is my dresser, and above that, my mirror, made of course by Uncle P.J.
Doesn’t it sound grand?
Aunt Ann had two spare rolls of light yellow wallpaper with a peacock pattern, and with that I have made a border about eighteen inches from the ceiling. This brightens the room considerably.
I have a set of shelves on which my china and glass treasures will be arranged, and a cabinet bookcase made from an old walnut bedstead that was a relic of the Mountain Meadow Massacre—or maybe it was the Mountain Mea
dows Massacre. In any case it was a horrid event in which wild Indians murdered people from a wagon train. It happened many years ago.
Uncle P.J. made the bookcase just for me. In it I have the few books I brought, but as I order more, it will fill up. And yesterday, after a long day of her own work, Aunt Ann brought me a set of dishes, a supply of coffee and tea, a cured ham, and two dozen ears of corn for hominy. The tea is for special occasions—it’s called “Afternoon Delight,” and is from England.
And just out back is a sturdy new outhouse. The old one was in need of repair, so Uncle P.J. simply hooked two mules to it, pulled it away, and constructed a new one.
I have written Aunt Sallie about all of this, much as I just described. I related to her Aunt Ann’s story about their early hardships on the trip out, hardships we had never heard about—the stillbirth of a child, and Grandma Copeland’s illness. Aunt Ann told me all about it while we set up the cabin. At first she was reluctant to talk about those hardships, but I persisted, and she told me these few details. I think Aunt Ann may be like Mama was. Mama never saw me as grown up, even after I got grown—that is, to talk to me straight on like a woman.
Uncle P.J. has procured for me an absolutely grand employment, as promised, on the Merriwether Ranch nearby—caring for Mr. and Mrs. Merriwether’s two little girls, Melinda and Elisabeth, ages four and eight. My care for the children will be in exchange for meals while I’m there, clothing made by a Mexican woman who works for them, and a small wage. No one has used the word “governess,” but that is almost what I will be.
———
This morning after chores around the cabin, I waited on my little porch for Bumpy. Although the Merriwether Ranch is within walking distance, Bumpy was to deliver me by wagon for my first day. He also works for Mr. Merriwether on occasion. I sat on the porch waiting, absorbing through my pores the energy of the wide-open blue sky and the thin Colorado air. God went to majestic geographic lengths in the West that He never attempted in the South. How could I explain other differences? In the South there is a loaming, a gloaming, a loss, a pain that allows us to laugh and scoff at the North. Out here there is no North.
Sitting beside Bumpy in the wagon, riding to the ranch, I asked him about these people by whom I was about to be employed. I already knew from Aunt Ann that they were serious, good people—Quakers. Bumpy told me about Mr. Merriwether’s quietness, his short stature, his “strutting like a bantam rooster,” and his large library.
“Do you like him?” I asked. I have already come to trust Bumpy. He is a wiry little fellow who blushes quite easily. Aunt Ann confided that he was an abandoned child. Someone left him behind in town when he was little more than a baby boy and he has yet to mention his past to me. Uncle P.J., in addition to feeling sorry for him, decided that he might be a good worker.
“I like him all right. He works hard. He don’t talk too much, and you ain’t supposed to talk when you eat at his table. Have you ever met a Quaker?”
“No, but I’ve heard that they like to just sit quietly without a preacher during their church services and that they refuse to fight in a war.”
“They’re different than the Mormons,” says Bumpy.
“I met some very nice Mormon missionaries on the train.”
“There’s a whole town of them across the river. Beacon City. Some people don’t think they’re so nice. Some people do. They come over from Beacon City and sell things.”
“I hear they’ve been unreasonably persecuted for a long time.”
A beautiful deer bolted across the road in front of us, then another.
When we arrived in the yard at the Merriwether Ranch, several friendly dogs rushed out, leapt across an irrigation ditch lined with cottonwoods, and met us. Beneath the tall cottonwoods hung two white rope hammocks and at the end of the line of trees along the irrigation ditch stood two large white tents. Bumpy said visitors to the ranch are not uncommon and often stay in the tents.
Mrs. Merriwether herself was waiting for us, standing on the porch—a low porch, right on the ground, running the entire length of the house. She stepped into the yard to greet us. She is a short, round-faced, happy-acting woman who straightaway insisted that I call her Libby.
Thank goodness Melinda and Elisabeth, with little round faces like their mother’s, are well behaved. They followed us playfully and happily, and I immediately formed an attachment to each of them.
I met the smiling, rotund Mexican cook, Juanita, who was busy setting the table in the dining room—a quite extraordinary dining room, long and narrow, rather like a large railroad car, with a bench running around most of it, coat pegs on the walls, and shelves with kettles and pots, and four big dark bronze coal oil lamps hanging from the ceiling.
The cookstove was in the corner, and beside a door leading into what appeared to be an office, a fiddle hung on the wall. “Who plays the fiddle?” I asked.
In charge of the sprawling Merriwether Ranch is none other than the energetic Quaker and well-rounded (fiddle, archaeology, horse breeding) Abel Merriwether. Merriwether’s family migrated . . .
“Mr. Merriwether,” said Libby. “Except only occasionally now. He’s gotten all caught up in exploring the mesa. He’s been drawing that map there—of the mesa.” A large, detailed map with numbers was on the wall. “But Juanita’s little boy, Jose Hombre, loves to sing and I’m sure you’ll have an opportunity to hear him before long.”
The dining room windows are deep set in light stone masonry, and the dark wooden walls are decorated with squaw dresses and sixteen Navajo Indian blankets. Libby explained that Navajo Indians are numerous in the area and long ago established sixteen different clans, each with a different symbol: bear clan, wolf clan, eagle clan, and so on. She said she had been unaware of the complexity of Indian customs and culture before she traveled west and met Mr. Merriwether, and through him, several Navajo and Mescadey Indians who are now her friends.
Then, in walked Mr. Merriwether himself, short and dusty, intense, hat in hand. He’s the first man I’ve seen out here who takes his hat off inside the house. A welcomed sight! He introduced himself to me. His eyes, under bushy brows, glitter with what can only be called intellectual intensity. He joined our little tour, along with the children, now in my care during the hours I am on the ranch grounds—and what a good place to find activities for children. Educational.
It is immediately apparent that Mr. Merriwether is an expert on the ways of Indians. There are, in fact—as he pointed out to me—many different tribes of Indians in the West, and he indicates that there are great differences among these tribes. In all my previous experiences at home in North Carolina and on the trip out here, Indians have been considered and pronounced as savages or worse and what I have seen supports this perspective. Mr. Merriwether says Indian culture is as complex as that of the ancient Egyptians, or any other culture.
At dinner, I fed myself and the children on the porch. A family with a library, I expected, would not allow eating on the porch. But such are the altered customs of the West, after all. The dinner was elk steaks, corn on the cob, string beans, butterbeans, and biscuits, while through the open window from the porch into the dining room I watched as about twelve people, including Mr. and Mrs. Merriwether—Libby—ate dinner in complete silence.
But oh, what a friendly and warm ranch it is—little Jose Hombre sang to us after supper—so much more . . . more vibrant than any place I remember back home, where our entire way of life still suffers the ravages of the sad, terrible, earth-and-life destroying war that none of us asked for, none of us wanted.
———
After dinner, while the children played on blankets under the cottonwoods, Mr. Merriwether strolled out on the porch and sat down. Staring out into the distance and talking almost as if to himself, he said, “Most locals believe the cliff dwellings hold only old Aztec potsherds and other worthless tidbits so for a few years at least, I’ll have the mesa to myself.” He turned to me then and he told me the st
ory of how he’d gone up on the mesa looking for missing cattle and discovered a cliff dwelling. Some Indians told him how to get up there, so he went up with his brother, Luke, looking.
“On the second afternoon,” he said, “a gray day, late, we were on top, had not seen a single cow, and it started snowing. We decided to camp instead of go back down.”
He started talking, looking off at the mesa, rocking in his chair, almost as if he were in a trance. He spoke about the quiet snow, great big flakes, the sun, just before setting beneath a blanket of gray clouds, shining onto the falling snow, making the flakes golden.
He said he hurried over to a ridge opposite his camp to look for cattle, and when he looked back at the cliff wall he saw a little city of stone carved into a long, shallow cave, up towards the top of the cliff. An entire lost city that nobody knew about, hidden away for hundreds of years. He said he’d never experienced anything like the feeling he had when he saw it.
“Next morning, we got down into the little city by dropping two tall dead pinon trees lashed together over the ledge and using them as a ladder. The place had not been bothered at all since it was deserted. We found pots, bowls, ladles, bows and arrows, some animal skins almost completely dried up, some well preserved. Those remains must be hundreds and hundreds of years old. You can tell by the way the pottery is painted.
“I’ve tried to get funds for expeditions from the Denver Historical Society and the Smithsonian, but so far all I’ve gotten is a letter of introduction to a young Englishman, a fellow named Collier. An explorer of sorts, I take it. We’re expecting him any day.”
At that, he seemed to remember my presence once more. “Having you here will be a big help to us,” he said. “Welcome.” And just like that he was gone.
I anticipate meeting the young Englishman. I’ve never met an Englishman—old or young.
As a backdrop to the savage elements that would unfold on Mesa Largo at the famous Eagle City Shootout in the spring of ’92, there were scientific and humanitarian advancements being made in the little mining town of Mumford Rock, ushered in by pioneers of the new age, as exemplified by William Blankenship. Almost single-handedly, Blankenship was bringing Progress, Profit, Sane Business, Capitalism, and a deep and abiding appreciation of Mother Nature to Mumford Rock . . .
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