by Jim Harrison
“Come and get it if you want it hot,” she bellowed, though I was only a few feet away. It was easy to see she was being brave. I reached for the Tabasco and got the usual “That stuff’s going to eat out your guts.”
“You might have noticed my dad is a little goofy?” she began.
“In a pleasant way.” I wanted to slow her down, for I saw tremors in her full face.
‘’I’m fifty-seven and I’m not getting any younger. My boyfriend, Gus, wants to marry me but he’s not sure he can put up with my old dad around the house. Gus has always been a hired hand, and in the back of my mind I’m thinking he might want our farm more than me. I just don’t think I could bear to put Dad in the county farm . . . .” The poor soul put her face in her hands. Her big shoulders began to shake as I allowed a fly to land on my last bite of omelet.
“Does Gus come from a good family?” I was buying time with this stupid question.
“He’s just a working stiff. He plays the banjo on Saturday nights. He’s sixty-two but he looks a lot younger. When Dad goes I don’t want to be lonely. I need someone to look after.”
“Deal from your strength, dear. Tell Gus it’s your farm and his conditions are unacceptable. If he won’t accept old Dad, tell Gus to take a fucking hike.”
She wiped her tears on my napkin. My advice seemed to stiffen her spine. “That’s what Dalva said. The son of a bitch is getting pushy. He already owes me thirty-five bucks. He might just be on probation with me!” She rushed to the phone and I made my escape.
I felt strong at my desk and resolved to locate the wife Northridge had mentioned, thinking it might be Aase, from the Swedish family he had helped find a homestead. I murmured a verbless prayer to the gods of scholarship not to confuse myself with my work, and after an hour of shuffling I discovered I was right!
May 20, 1876
I have been in bad humor as I was forced to ride five days southwest to Scotts Bluff to meet with the new Director of Missions, a porcine Reverend from Cincinnati who cannot mount a horse and finds carriages not to his liking, so is never found more than a block from the railroad. Our meeting is a short half-hour. He tells me of rumors that I have “gone over” to the Indians by my refusal to build the simplest church. I answer that I must teach them to grow food before I presume to build a church when lumber is in such short supply. I say that the Sioux are anyway nomads & it would be difficult to locate a church. He said he has it on good word from the government that in the coming year the Sioux will be moved to the southern part of the Dakota Territory & there to be confined. This news shocked me a good deal as it is in defiance of all previous treaties. He is of the opinion that the Sioux are dying of our diseases so quickly (including hunger) that I should busy myself with saving souls rather than with agriculture. He then advises me that I am the last of the church in free concourse with the worst of the Sioux, and the brethren all pray for my safety with little confidence. I thank him for his prayers & make a retreat to escape the heaviness of his talcum.
I find myself in the dry-goods store buying gifts, slow to admit my intentions other than to leave this foul place with Godspeed. I remember the man Jensen, his wife, two sons and a daughter by the name of Aase. Riding two days out of my way I hope to find them where I helped settle them last year at this time. At my first night’s camp I am embarrassed by the sight of the bundle of gifts as it seems not in my character, though I have made numberless exchanges with the Sioux. What if they are not there, having moved East or West out of despair and hunger? I sip a little whiskey after my evening prayers, and admit my heart wishes to see the girl again. I smile to think it is Spring and I am an aging swain of thirty-three & riding across the prairie to see a young lady with whom I exchanged but few words. It occurs to me I am carrying no mirror and am unsure of my appearance. He Dog said the medicine man told him that mirrors are bad as others should see us & we are not meant to spend time looking at ourselves.
I use my telescope to watch the Jensens far off in the afternoon. The father and sons are in a field with a team of oxen picking up the large stones & putting them on a stone boat. I have asked my friends among the Sioux to not harm these people or steal their animals. The mother is working in a garden. I see a cow and chickens. The small house is made of sod and timbers & the farm is altogether extraordinary, having been put together in one year. I stare until my eye waters but I do not see the girl. Perhaps she has married another, as seventeen is considered a marriageable age among these immigrant settlers.
The father is pleased to see me, also confused and embarrassed. He thanked me for registering his acreage and wondered how I managed to add two sections in the names of his sons. I told him the gov’t agent was a good fellow and I had bought him a fine dinner. Land this far from the rail head is considered worthless for speculation, and speculators are ignorant of the presence of springs here. Jensen looks away and tells me they used the gold nugget for a team of oxen, chickens, pigs, and food supplies. A great bear came in the last October and took the pigs. Jensen said he knew the gift was intended for the daughter but I shushed him. I said I was also in business and would bring him fruit root stock. I do not say I have no family and only a few acquaintances outside the Sioux.
We stand by the garden, the father & mother, two sons and myself. I am looking at new flowers from seeds brought from Sweden, but my mind and heart are wondering if the girl is still here. I look up from the flowers and Aase is standing by the doorway looking away from me & holding her hands at her waist. I am unsure how to proceed but the others seem to know more than I why I have stopped for a visit. I gather my courage and walk over to her, take off my hat and bow. I offer my hand & she takes it and curtsies. I tell her how good it is to see her and that she had been often in my thoughts. She says the same thing to me and we smile. We walk further away from the others to a spring in the cottonwoods. She is of surpassing loveliness but does not look in good health. I ask her if she is well and she shakes her head no. She says she has studied English all winter and now I have come to talk to her, so we speak of everything far from the subject of illness. My hopes are well founded & I find my heart drawn to her & finally I kiss her hand.
We have a fine dinner outside as these makeshift sod houses are badly lit. All settlers long for the time they will afford to build a frame house. They are quite taken aback by my gifts, but I learn the next day that my behavior constitutes a proposal of marriage in their country. I take a bottle of good whiskey from my saddle-bag, and Aase, her mother & two brothers go in the house. I look off in the twilit distance with Jensen for a long time. Finally he speaks and it is to give me the reasons why I may not marry his daughter. He says in his country gentlemen do not marry peasant girls. I answer that we are not in his country but in the United States where men and women may marry whom they wish. He then says his beloved daughter is very ill and will not live long. He has difficulty pronouncing “tuberculosis” and begins to weep. I feel that I have fallen from a horse but say I know she is ill & that I could help by taking her to doctors in Omaha or Chicago. He composes himself & asks me to spend a day with her to be sure & then a few weeks away to think it over. He could not bear her unhappiness if I should marry her and change my mind and leave. I said I would build a place a few hours away on the Loup River so that she would not be far from her family. We spoke no more but drank another whiskey & then washed at the spring for bed. In the house they had made me a pallet next to Aase’s bed as is their country’s custom I supposed. When the last candle was blown out she reached out and entwined her hand in mine.
I am not bold to say the next day was the finest of my life & that I do not dare hope for another to equal it. We left early on a lovely day with a picnic her mother had packed us & walked slowly, I should say strolled. along the creek northwards. The first few hours I acted the school teacher, giving the names of birds and flowers. She knew the habits of the birds but not their names. We found a badger’s den and she gave me the Swedish name for the badger. S
he said in the winter her brother had shot a deer & two Sioux happened upon him. Her brother was frightened but the Sioux showed him how to skin the beast and helped to carry it back on their horses. One of the Indians was especially kind & was missing an ear & spoke English. I said that was young Sam Creekmouth who was the first wild Sioux I had ever met & the old horse he rode was one I had given him ten years ago. Over the years when we met I taught him some English. He had lost an ear in a fight with a full grown Cheyenne when he was still Quite young. I told her that he is much favored by the great chief Crazy Horse. She tired easily so we put down the cloth & picnic by the creek in a grove of box elder & cottonwoods. She fell asleep then and I looked at her intently for a hour. When she began to stir I pretended I was asleep & then it was she kissed me. I put my arm around her & we lay there wordlessly for a long time merely watching the sun dapple down through the pale green leaves of the trees. It was near noon and all the birds on earth were still & our music was our hearts and breath.
I looked up at a noise to see Lundquist driving in the yard in his old truck. It was only fifteen minutes after Frieda had left, so I presumed he was lurking down the road, hidden in a grove of trees and waiting to cadge a beer. Frankly, I didn’t mind the interruption from Northridge and Aase, for the obvious reason that I knew how the story ended. Lundquist, meanwhile, was standing there staring at the missing goose. How would he have noticed such a thing, I wondered, because I had forgotten to mention it to Frieda? He glanced at the bunkhouse rather hopefully. I knew if he found me dead he would have a cold beer before he reported it. The renowned terrier, Roscoe, was scratching at my door. I let him in and cut him a chunk of Manganaro Genoa salami, which he lunged at, growling at me in thanks. It was nearly eleven in the morning, not an indecent time of day for a beer, so I grabbed two and went out to meet my wise friend, who was wearing the identical soiled denim outfit buttoned to the neck.
“It was Precious,” he said, gravely taking the beer. “She was the mother of all of them. She was the oldest goose in the county.” He showed me the coyote tracks in the moist earth along the creek, at which Roscoe made a wild display of anger. I decided at this point not to admit that I had heard the attack and failed to act out of cowardice.
“I think we should build a cage for the geese to sleep in,” I offered.
“Not unless Miss Dalva tells us to.” Now he was clearly imitating a black TV servant.
“Oh, bullshit. I’ll take full responsibility. Should more geese die because she’s off in the bloody mountains with a boyfriend? I say no in thunder, goddamnit. The geese shall not die!” Lundquist was a gulper and had already finished his beer. “I’ll set up the grill and we’ll have us a little barbecue we can tend while we work, get it? To be on the safe side we’ll have a beer only every half-hour.”
“Starting when? Does this one count?” he asked sagely, waving the empty can.
I became a little mean then, pausing in fake consternation, wondering if I might trade a few beers for some information I thought critical.
“Who is Duane Stone Horse? I saw the marker over in the graveyard?”
“He was a goddamned redskin who dropped dead on the front porch one day. We had to bury him somewheres. If I was you, I wouldn’t go in a family’s graveyard. It’s not a goddamned picture show. What kind of people do you come from?” Lundquist scurried away toward his truck in total umbrage, and I went through the indignity of chasing him down. I had been making the mistake of thinking that simple country people were actually simple.
We labored hard for an hour building the cage and drank not all that many beers. Lundquist was vastly inventive with the materials found in the barn and I mostly watched him while tending to our chicken on the barbecue. I had second thoughts about whether he would like the chicken, but I devised my sauce of “lust and violence” that is famous among my friends for renewing vigor on Saturdays after a dreary week in the classrooms. Before we ate, though, we had a rather tense time trying to convince the geese that we had their best interests in mind—they refused to be herded into our cage and, in fact, became combative, though not with Lundquist. He finally lay down in the cage with a heap of ground corn on his chest, and began cooing, clucking, and humming through his nose, which the geese couldn’t resist. He smiled a smile of triumph at me through the close-meshed wire fence.
We ate the chicken straight off the grill and weren’t disturbed when Frieda rammed in the yard—we were working folk and not subject to criticism. Lundquist explained the death of the mother goose, to which Frieda responded, “Precious wasn’t getting any younger.” Frieda snagged herself a well-sauced thigh from the grill—I was glad I had cooked two chickens—and pronounced it “good black stuff.” On questioning, she explained that after her unfortunate year with the Basque she had joined the WACs and had been stationed in El Paso, Texas, where they weren’t afraid of hot sauce. She then thanked me for my advice on how to handle Gus.
“That shitsucker got on the high horse until I gave him the bottom line,” she said.
“Frieda never swore until she got home from the service. She lost her religion in the service but she learned how to stand on her own two feet. That’s what her mother said. Gus was always a good boy, but he spent his money on clothes and cars, and now he don’t own an acre,” Lundquist explained.
Frieda left after inhaling another thigh and half a breast. She told her daddy to be home for a nap pretty soon and kissed him on the top of the head. She pulled Roscoe’s ear and the dog growled menacingly, guarding his cache of chicken bones.
“Duane was as good a shovel man as Paul was. In Paul’s time we had a team of shires that were brought all the way from England, and a ditcher, but Paul wanted to dig by hand. I won the State Fair horse pull with the shires in 1938. I shook the governor’s hand, if you can believe that. Duane made up stories. He told me he was born in a cave in Arizona and his father shot Kit Carson in the brain. Could this be true?”
I nodded yes to encourage any further revelations. We were sprawled under the tailgate of his old Studebaker truck to get out of the sun. I didn’t dare chance another question.
“Duane was quite a bit like Dalva’s father. That boy was tough. Those football boys learned not to bother Duane. He was built like pictures of Billy Conn. Both of them were. I’m going to show you a place, if you keep your mouth shut.”
I agreed and followed Lundquist out into the barn. He found the light switch and we climbed a ladder up into the enormous mow, which held a number of carriages and sleighs, also a large assortment of harness hanging from the rafters. Lundquist said none of the harness had been used since 1950 but he kept it in shape because “you never can tell.” In a corner farthest from light there was a big square stack of hay bales propped up with timbers. I was inattentive, watching the swallows swoop around overhead, and Lundquist disappeared. It was a perplexing joke and I waited a few minutes before calling out. His reply was muffled, apparently coming from inside the hay bales. Then he pushed out a piece of burlap to which a mat of hay had been glued. I went inside with a little trepidation, as if on the verge of a likely practical joke. It was pitch dark, with the cracks between the slots of the barn having evidently been caulked or battened. I heard Lundquist fumbling with a hinge or a latch; then the brilliant light of the sun was on us. I glanced up, shouted, and ducked. I thought a white boulder was falling on me, but the boulder turned out to be a huge white buffalo skull suspended from the rafter. I reached up and spun it around, then sat down on the milk stool that was the only other object in the enclosure. It was a fine view to the west, though the bright sun on the skull was a bit much for my taste.
“One winter day J. W. says to me, Find Duane, and he was nowhere to be found. So the dog Sonia leads me to the ladder. Still nothing. So I carry her up the ladder and she brings me over here and scoots in. Duane makes some ghost noises and scares the shit out of me. This was Duane’s mumbo-jumbo place for the dead of winter. He had other places for other times but th
is was the place for the bad months.”
“Did he call it his mumbo-jumbo place?”
“That’s what I just told you. Seems to me I got a schnapps coming.”
Lundquist waited outside the screen door of the bunkhouse, not wanting to enter, for unexplained reasons. I passed him a triple schnapps, plus a wedge of salami for Roscoe, who had returned from a mission of burying chicken bones covered with filth.
After they left I took a shower and set about my work. I hastily shoved the photos of Karen in a manila envelope and wrote a short note to Ted. On second thought, I kept one of the photos as a memento of a strategic but not altogether pleasant campaign in foreign territory—the photo was unsuitable for anyone but a young man bent on a path of self-abuse: a rear shot standing against a bed post, leaning over slightly, facing a poster of the musician Sting. The bottom of bottoms, said Bottom. Enough of this, and to be hidden between the pages of John D. Hicks’s seminal The Populist Revolt.
I picked out the three volumes from 1874 in hopes of not taking a walk with love and death. Love might set me off on one of my spells and certainly death will. Timor mortis conturbat me. In that Northridge didn’t maintain any scholarly distance, his redskins had also begun to get to me. I felt a distant envy for a friend who had busied himself the past ten years writing an uneventful history of the United Nations’ efforts in the Caribbean. He was always tanned.
July 19–25, 1874
I have made a long journey up near the Belle Fourche River so as to escape a great plague of grasshoppers & the smoke of prairie fires. My thoughts have been troubled by loss of faith & the doom of the Sioux brought about by the extermination of the buffalo. I have written the President, many Senators, also General Terry on this matter but none have deigned to answer in a year’s time. With few exceptions I have learned that politicians are to be purchased. Said Matthew “For they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers . . . . Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves.”