Dalva

by Jim Harrison

  The upshot of the day was navy-blue shame, memory loss, minor recriminations, and what a scholar (the fabled Weisinger) called “the paradox of the fortunate fall,” which (in short) means that if the hero (me) doesn’t fall from grace because of his “hubris,” there can be no reaffirmation of the common good. The bottom line was a little mayhem and public drunkenness. The downfall began with the miniature fiddle Lundquist kept under the seat of the pickup. Our intentions were still good at the grain elevator and feed store where I passed for white, was generally ignored and invisible like any bumpkin in bib overalls. We loaded up with bags of horse feed, then looked at each other and up and down the summery main street, which was crowded with farm families doing their Saturday shopping. There was an unworded agreement that it was a shame to leave this festive scene for a quick turnaround back home.

  Our first stop was at the Swede Hall, where several dozen extremely old men were playing pinochle and drinking beer and schnapps. Lundquist went to the head of a big room and rapped on a table. Everyone stood with a certain irritation, which changed to applause and bows when I was introduced as a professor from “the coast of the Pacific” writing a history of the Northridge family. The room was acrid with the smell of cow manure, chewing tobacco, and kerosene. We made our way from table to table back toward the entrance, accepting gracefully little “snoots” and “snits” from bottles of low-grade whiskey such as Guckenheimer, which I had never seen outside of a steeltown.

  Back on the street Lundquist rubbed his tummy and offered that he sure would like a hamburger to cut the raw whiskey if he had the money. I suggested the biggest steak in town but he said he couldn’t chew steak, a hamburger would be fine. Off we went to the Lazy Daze Tavern for a massive burger with fried onions and a few cold beers. This bar was full of the largest men I had ever seen assembled in one place short of the San Francisco 49ers I had once studied at the airport lounge. Several of the men turned out to be from the posse that had rescued me, including the man who had hoisted me aboard the horse. He bought me a shot and said he hoped I had “got my bearings.” A drunken wag insisted that Lundquist fetch his fiddle, which met with general agreement in the form of table-thumping.

  It was an extraordinary performance, and I would not have traded the experience, though I would gladly have given the hangover to a television evangelist. Lundquist began with the Swedish national anthem (Du gamla du fria, du fjällhöga Nord,” etc.) with a few of the old men from his club who had filtered in joining him. It was really quite touching the way these codgers sang about a motherland they probably had never seen, looking upward at an invisible flag or vision with moist eyes. Lundquist continued with songs I hadn’t heard since the Steelworkers Union picnics of my childhood: the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” (the whole room rowdy), “Red River Valley,” “Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes” (ironically), “Juanita” (“Soft o’er the fountain, ling’ring falls the southern moon,” etc., with everyone coming in on the chorus, “Nita! Juanita! Lean thou on my heart,” etc.), and others. I’m not by nature sentimental but became quite moved by it all, the way Lundquist would crane his prunish neck, his wavery voice being joined by all those farmers in their longing, as we all feel, for an imaginary Juanita. Then, as a sign-off, Lundquist played a few jigs, with several spry octogenarians dancing in unison, after which they all collapsed, quite parched, in a booth, where they resumed their pinochle game.

  Up at the bar I was introduced to a younger man, about thirty, an outsider like myself, who was referred to with good humor as “Nature Boy.” I am aware enough of bar etiquette to know that “Nature Boy” would normally be an overt term of ridicule, but exceptions could be made: every village in America owns a huge oaf named Tiny. In this particular case the sobriquet was used in a light, jocular way, because the man in question, though only a little over average height, was well muscled and had an air about him of the bounty hunter or soldier of fortune. We played several games of eight ball and I found out he was doing a survey on a large piece of federal land north of town on the effect that surrounding farming practices had on the flora and fauna. He mentioned his sponsor, one of a dozen nonprofit environmental groups, the activities of which have confused me for years. My ex-wife was forever trying to save, from a distance, everything from mountains and whales to rivers and baby seals. In my conversation with Nature Boy there was a little of the embarrassment of being the only two educated men in the tavern, though he seemed oblivious to this.

  Our pool game was interrupted by a tussle between two behemoths over one selling another a group of calves with something called “shipping fever.” They were bent on squeezing each other to death and knocked the heavy pool table against the wall. Everyone in the area tried to stop them by piling on when they hit the floor, and it reminded one of those nasty incidents in a professional football game where control is only tentatively reestablished by referees. The ozone of violence pushed me to drink a little quickly, and I was forced to doze in a booth with Lundquist and the odorous pinochle players. After I don’t know how long, Lundquist actually yelled “Yumpin’ Yiminy” and we were out of there in a trice. It was getting late—twilight, to be exact—and Frieda would be angry if he was late for dinner. Drunk, he drove twice as fast as sober, and halfway home we caromed off into a soggy ditch. I remember we argued about the next course of action and apparently agreed on falling asleep. At some point we were located by two sheriff’s deputies, Dalva, Naomi, Frieda, a wrecker, and various concerned folk. I was taken home and put to bed without supper in the bunkhouse, waking in hysterics in the middle of the night because I was being chased by an Indian who resembled a minotaur in Ghirardelli Square. I wrapped myself in a sheet and stumbled out into the serene moonlight, curling up on the ground, where I discovered myself in the morning covered by flies and surrounded by geese feet.

  This woeful experience kept me on the straight and narrow for several weeks. I worked like a demon for days from dawn to dusk, as if I were trying to save my life and good name, which was the point. My first few days in Nebraska, I realized, had been a bit trying, to myself and others. Dalva, by never uttering a word of criticism, allowed me to stew in the juices of self-knowledge. For instance, under my white sheet tent, and guarded by geese, I was trying to think of a way to put a good face on a top-ten hangover when Dalva arrived with ice water, aspirin, a wet washcloth, a glass of fresh orange juice, and a thermos of coffee. She was dressed prettily and on her way to church with Naomi. Rather than saying, “Michael, Michael, Michael,” then lacing into me as my ex-wife would have done, Dalva merely said, “I hoped you weren’t dead,” wiped my face with the washcloth, helped with the water and aspirins, poured the first cup of coffee. I could see under her skirt, which bore the same infantile excitement as seeing up the teacher’s dress at school. Oh, to be a groundhog, burrowing there, searching for health. She did say Lundquist had walked over early that morning to apologize for letting me drink. It was a seven-mile round trip on foot, and sometimes he had to carry the dog, who tended to lose interest in walking. Frieda was denying him use of his pickup for the day. The dog, out of sympathy, had kept the geese away from my sleeping body, and had even fetched me a stick to play with if I ever awoke. She handed me the stick and drove off for church. In my own friendly circle of louts and abrasive intellects I didn’t know anyone who went to church. I could see her singing hymns in her white underpants. There’s a sexual pathology in severe hangovers that I never quite understood; booze in large quantities acts as a shock treatment, and the unlived sexual life hits you pretty hard in the morning. My ex-wife, who was a truly horny soul, tended to take advantage of my Sunday-morning illnesses. Now I became meditative, as if the white sheet were the Himalayas—I reminded myself to call a Jungian I knew and ask him where the redskin minotaur came from.

  When I threw off the sheet the second time Dalva was home from church and busy digging out the barnyard spring that led into the creek. The day had become hot and she was wearing shorts, halter,
and knee-high rubber boots, an incitement for me to help out. I chugged the thermos of coffee, went to the bunkhouse and put on my coveralls and boots, and joined her. I was a little dizzy but dug vigorously by her side, waiting for her to say something complimentary about my efforts. Instead she prattled about the humor in the sermon—in these Last Days we are all hostages to our doom, whether in Beirut or Omaha—so I dug even harder until suddenly the sky darkened and I pitched backward into the cold creek, which just as quickly revived me. She stood over me with more than a trace of concern, and, looking up at her from this vantage, she reminded one of an S&M Valkyrie. She said I probably had forgotten my high-blood-pressure pills, and also needed something to eat. I admitted it had been twenty-four hours since my hamburger. I rolled over and used my hands to drag myself into the shallow current and wash off the mud, a fully clothed fish, possibly a carp.

  After lunch and back at the desk, I began to brood about the nature of time and how it is involved with the private struggle, usually in silence, with public life. Memoirs, especially those that attempt to sum up an entire life, tend to gloss over this struggle: the utterly wrong turns, paths, marriages, decisions, time as a flood of vertigo sweeping all of us over the edge of being, time, which never forgave anyone a single second. A little girl I loved, who used to proudly make me snow angels on January hillsides in the sooty Ohio Valley, drowns in suspicious circumstances, after three marriages, in tropical waters. I see her long hair floating, her body tumbling in the tidal rush.

  At lunch I had asked Dalva about the Indian wonder boy Lundquist had mentioned. And that’s what I mean. It was thirty years ago but she bridled, reddened, became cross.

  “There’s no such thing as an Indian. You know that, for Christ’s sake. There are Sioux, Hopi, Cheyenne, Apache . . . .”

  “What about this magic Sioux boy Lundquist talked about?” I repeated.

  “What did he say?” Her back was turned at the stove.

  “Nothing much. He rode horses at night and talked to animals and scared people. That’s all.”

  “I barely knew him. He was just another sorry cowboy who stopped by for a few months of work.”

  “There’s a few months missing in the 1860s,” I said, sensing that a change of subject was in order. She relaxed and continued making one of my favorite hangover remedies (linguine in a sauce made of fresh peas, julienned prosciutto, a mixture of fontina and asiago cheeses).

  “When you read on you see that after he delivered a letter to a widow in Sault Sainte Marie in Michigan, he boarded a schooner for Duluth that wrecked in a storm between Grand Marais and Munising. He seemed pleased that the rest of the widow letters were lost at sea.”

  She poured my ration of wine as if nothing had happened the day before. Those not in the know vis-à-vis alcohol fail to understand that after a serious day of boozing the drinker can’t simply quit, but must taper off and enter a temperate glide pattern. As she served lunch there was still a trace of flush on her face from my initial question. Of course I realized it was pointless to test the dimensions of her hospitality. Also I loved her. Also I was somewhat frightened of her.

  “I’ve got a few days of horse business in Rapid City. I’m sure you can take care of yourself? Naomi will get you to your Rotary speech.”

  “I’ll bury myself in my work. If you’re going away perhaps we could have a date tonight.”

  “Perhaps.” The phone rang and I looked at her remaining food, having finished my own. I had reached over to nail a forkful when she shrieked and I dropped my fork, feeling like an asshole.

  It turned out that the caller was her uncle Paul and he had managed, with the aid of the Mexican detective, to find the abused boy. Despite her joy on the phone she noticed my discomfort and gestured to me to finish her lunch. She began speaking in rapid Spanish to the boy, then back in English with Paul. When she hung up the phone I gave her a hug, smelling the sunlight absorbed by her neck. Then she returned to the phone to call her brother-in-law, Ted, and his employee Andrew, and I went out the door and back to work.

  What I mean with time: it is more the phone call that doesn’t come than the one that did. The rage for order doesn’t create a concomitant space in which order might occur. As Angus Fletcher quips in his powerful piece on Coleridge, “Time in our world displays an instantaneity so perfect in its slippery transit—its slither from one temporal fix to another—that there is nothing to mark, let alone measure, its being, its at-homeness.” And this, of course, is why some folks expire from dread. Coleridge is described as “a solitary haunted by vast conceptions in which he cannot participate.” He is a hero of consciousness, always standing at the threshold, an edge at which participation in the sacred and the profane are always simultaneous, always possible. This is not less poignant for the fact that the knowledge drove Coleridge batty, though the definition of “batty” has recently been redefined by a hyperthyroid Englishman named Laing.

  To bring all of this down to earth, old Northridge devotes twenty-five years, from 1865 to 1890, trying to help the defeated native population adapt to an agrarian existence, but the native population is being driven hither and yon by the government and has never had a good piece of land that hasn’t been removed from them instantly. And the effect of the Dawes Act in 1887 was, intentional or not, to further the swindle, so that within thirty years one hundred million acres of their initial one hundred twenty-five had been taken from them. To be sure, much of it was “purchased,” as if these nomads were cagey M.B.A.’s striking a tough bargain.

  But this all is on the record, though largely ignored, and Northridge isn’t. We academics are known for creating artificial questions to which we give artificial answers, thus ensuring our continuing employment. Northridge is interesting because of his consciousness and his conscience, just as Schindler alone is fascinating while millions of Germans who didn’t give a fuck are lost to history. . . .

  Jesus Christ! There is a face peering in the window above my desk! It is Lundquist and I slide open the window, closed because I’ve been using the air conditioning. He is sweating but still wears the jacket buttoned to the neck. He wonders if I might have a beer for him? I ask him in but he doesn’t want to be discovered by anyone. I pass a beer through the window and a small chunk of salami for the dog. Lundquist finishes the beer in a moment, then scurries off through the burdocks with the terrier backward over his shoulder giving a farewell bark. That means the old fool will be covering altogether fourteen miles on a hot June day. I caution myself against pitying the man—he is a full fifty years older than I am and it is apparent he is enjoying life, a matter at which I haven’t proved myself. I mentally dismiss the idea that I could get family secrets from Lundquist by bribing him with booze. There are ethical considerations. Or are there?

  December 26, 1865, Chicago

  I have been here two weeks now and in the morning will set off for La Crosse, Wisconsin to learn more of my mission about which I have the gravest doubts. Chicago is a prison though a great deal less onerous than Andersonville. Traveling over five months I have avoided cities from Georgia to Sault Ste Marie at the nether end of Michigan, where there were snowflakes in early October, though when the sun came through roiling clouds there were the deciduous golds and reds of New England autumn. I wished to see the shoreline so I bought a ticket on a trading schooner that would stop at various ports rather than a steamer that would traverse Lake Superior directly from the Soo to Duluth. The schooner, Ashtabula by name, was manned by drunken fools, and the Captain, Ballard by name, the worst of a sad lot. This man would not be a third mate out of Boston. He brought the boat about suddenly & it broached, capsizing near the harbor mouth of Grand Marais, a trading post in a charmless swamp. All of us survived by God’s grace & shallow water. It was there I lost two precious journals of my trip north, saving a small one in my pocket from prison and month afterwards. From Grand Marais I made a two-day walk some forty miles to Munising, and I should say the moment I was beyond reach of the
despicable crew I entered country that has few equals on God’s earth. I studied this land at Cornell through the work of the great Scientist of Harvard Agassiz who made an expedition here many years ago. The Boston poet Longfellow wrote of this land in Hiawatha though I am unaware if he travelled there, poets out of tradition being of tall imagination and little good sense. Since the War I have lost my taste for Emerson but the good man should have walked here in country beside which the woodlots of New England are pale. I saw great bears, heard wolves howling in chase through trees three men could not have encircled with their arms. Before I left the Soo and the ingenious locks for which many men died in cold and cholera, I met an Ojibway at the local mission of the unlikely name of Chief Bill Waiska, who stood a full six and a half feet and weighed a little short of three hundred, though there was no surplus flesh on him. He was witty, kind, and tolerated my questions with humor. It is certain that if given enough land these vigorous people will endure and thrive despite living in the foulest climate in the United States. The Chief told me that two hundred years ago just west of here his people battled an Iroquois war party and in total a thousand warriors died. He is a reader and said with a twinkle that poor Indians could not match the magnificent numbers of Antietam, Gettysburg, Vicksburg. These people understand us with a clarity no one has supposed.