Dalva

by Jim Harrison

  “This Burgundy is a little fancy for Henry’s carne seca, but then I rarely get to see my nieces at the same time. Maybe I’m getting Alzheimer’s. I sat down on a rock up Sycamore Creek last week and lost track of five hours. If Daisy here hadn’t started barking from hunger I might still be there.” He patted the yellow Labrador beside his chair and fed it a tidbit of meat.

  “Maybe one of your abandoned ghosts kept you there,” I said.

  “Probably. When you’re old you tend to stick to a place if you like it. I saw a girl in the museum in Nogales the other day and that upset me. She was very beautiful and I was sure I had seen her in Tucson in 1949. Ruth, will you play something morose and sentimental?”

  Ruth gave Fred a friendly pat, got up, and went to the piano with an un typically crazy smile. She began with a harpsichord imitation, lapsed into a polka, then slid into the Debussy she knew Paul favored. In turn he laughed, closed his eyes, then smiled. When I looked at him I couldn’t help wondering what sort of man my father would have become.

  I slept badly and got up just before daylight to leave for Nebraska. In my dreams I had been chased around the desert, finally escaping to the high country near Paul’s ranch, where my invisible pursuers had trapped me at the spring I had visited with Paul the day before. I was relieved when the sound of the first rooster drove them away.

  A small stovelight was on and coffee was made. In the first bit of light I could see the outline of Paul at a table out on the small veranda that adjoined the kitchen. The birds had become very loud and the roosters down the valley sounded as if they were trying to fight the wild birds with sheer noise. It is out of fashion now but there is something endearing and absurd about the way a rooster behaves, the comic indomitability of his walk.

  We had a pleasant half-hour and then said goodbye. He thought he might drive up for a visit in late July or August, partly to give Michael a hand. He laughed softly when he mentioned Michael’s name, saying there was something of Petrouchka in his character. Paul wanted to show me a few things in the basement of the farmhouse and wondered if I knew they were there. I said I did but Grandfather had asked me to wait until this summer to take a look. Paul had wanted to make sure in case he “kicked off” because they were so well hidden they wouldn’t otherwise be found.

  My drive north was wonderful because I had taken the trip many times and was anticipating favorite places with pleasure. I cut off at Lordsburg for Silver City and the Caballo exit on Route 25, making Socorro by evening and checking into the same dreary but favorite motel. I drove a few miles south to the village of San Antonio for dinner at a cafe that I had discovered with Charlene twenty-five years before. It was near the Bosque del Apache bird refuge that Naomi loved so much. Over dinner I took out the envelope from Paul and Douglas.

  Dear Woman of the World,

  Here are a few notes from two thoroughly irresponsible men who study things that won’t buy you a drink. Come back, little Sheba!

  LORETO AREA

  Standing on the coarse sand beach of Loreto, even when heading north, the eye is drawn south along the increasingly rugged coast and out to the midrift islands, past Isla Carmen to turtle-shaped Monserato and beyond to Isla Catalina. In the calm of daybreak the islands and headlands shift in the sea, mirages, making the actual landscape impossible to tell even half a mile off shore. The colors run a wider spectrum than the Pacific, rose and mauve of dawn turning royal purple then more shades of gold and crimson at dusk. Along the south coast the Sierra de la Gigante dominates the landscape; there are desert bighorn sheep and deer and lion in these rugged mountains and mysterious rock paintings in hematitic ocher splashed by ancient Indians on an overhang of granite fifteen to twenty feet overhead of life-sized and bigger figures and animals as if slapped on with pole-sized Matisse brushes by giants.

  If the mountains are an intimidation (a wall of rotten barren rock rising along an escarpment 1,500 feet high perhaps totally without water) the islands to the east are inviting; it’s hard to resist checking them out by sea. Not so much Carmen, the biggest; Monserato though low has rocky coasts and pirate gold buried somewhere among the bursera (elephant trees), torote, cholla, and barrel cactus. By midday the early calm is replaced by mild breeze and choppy water. Even if out of your way you want to head for Catalina, best known for a species of rattleless rattlesnake found nowhere else. The truth is that everything living on each of these islands is a bit unique having evolved on volcanic peaks sinking in the waters filling the San Andreas Fault, which slipped violently, creating the Sea of Cortez some 15 million years ago. South of here melanism has prevailed in a species of jackrabbit living among gray andesties and scabrous vegetation—also unique. On Catalina, barrel cactus reach ten feet and nothing is like anything else. The only things familiar are feral goats released by 19th-century whalers in hope of future fresh meat.

  Everywhere are birds, gulls of three species and terns and boobies, particularly around seamounts and dolphin-slashing schools of herring, which you can see dive-bombing the baitfish a mile distant. Along the coasts brown pelicans and cormorants perch on rocks and headlands.

  In these open waters you see manta rays, the biggest maybe fifteen feet, leaping perhaps to dislodge parasites and hammerheads checking out the boat. Finback whales are resident and before the sea grows rough dolphinfish cruise by. Sometimes you see roosterfish, yellowtail, or bonito ripping into balls of baitfish the size of baseball diamonds accompanied by the diving birds which turn the ocean surface greasy.

  Underwater the mass of critter life boggles the mind. The upwellings teem with plankton making the sea a bit cloudier than the crystalline Caribbean. Swimming along any of these islands you see triggerfish, parrotfish, needlefish, grouper of several kinds; close up scorpion fish, blowfish, and gobies, and rafts of smaller fishes everywhere. Ten feet off a cliff of Catalina you see a school of yellowtail in April beyond the 4-inch spines of sea urchin covering the rock you cling to in the surf. To eat there are cabrilla and black sea bass. Cruising the sandy bays you see 5-foot-wide eagle rays so numerous in four feet of water you can barely find standing room in between; deeper are brown electric rays with a spot on their back and smaller rays closer to shore. Garden eels wave like grasses growing out of the sandy ocean bottom. Among the rocks there are moray eels, some spotted, who look frightening when caught in the open. Three miles south of the yellowtail is the best shallow-water spiny-lobster area in the gulf.

  At night you burn driftwood, which often flames green and red or orange from trace elemental metals, because the local bursera and paloverde make poor firewood. During the long nights of winter’s new moons you might learn the constellations as never before, beginning with the great square of Pegasus and waking every three hours to identify the new ones swinging in on the celestial clock from the east until Sagittarius fades in the light of dawn. In a tiny cave on the side of a wash 4-inch black scorpions by the dozens mate combatively by flashlight. The unique species of rattlesnake is aggressive by Arizona standards and shakes his rattle less tail under a huge native fig tree whose big green leaves seem out of character next to the jungle of sweet-and-sour pitahaya cactus overgrown with a thick cobweb of dried vine on the slopes above; close up the live strands of vine lacing the spines of a pitahaya dulce have tiny bell-shaped white flowers.

  Heading north of Loreto the coast is gentle with coves separated by headlands and small rocky islands. There are palmas in the larger washes and an occasional rancheria. Sometimes you see wild burros on the beach and in protected coves and on secure wave-cut benches sleep herds of sea lions whose racket can keep you awake two miles away during the full moon. You find clams and mussels most anywhere though especially in the mangroves rich in shellfish and red snapper, huachinango al mojo de ajo broiled over root of saltbrush which is fished by green and black-crowned night herons and egrets; the call of the mangrove warbler is distinct once you see one chipping; fortunately the more distant males do the singing. Oysters are not as abundant as t
hey once were though the beaches are covered with winged oyster shells fished out by 19th-century pearlers.

  Reaching the mouth of Bahía Concepción the same is true of butter clams and Pacific crayfish. This intertidal zone was once known for powderhorn-shaped pinshells whose hinge muscle eaten raw with a picante sauce of tomato is a treat. From earlier trips you mjght notice the depletion of large sailfish, marlin, and tortuava though the gulf still feels like Nebraska maybe did in 1870—there were still so many of them.

  The ocean can be rough, sometimes for days in winter and spring, though the big chubascos are in summer. Except for rare mornings there is always a breeze, important in summer when clouds of gnats and mosquitoes hover along beaches and mangroves.

  Walking the beaches, you see grunion in spring or late winter a few days before those big tides of the full moon and roosterfish-slashing baitfish in the breaking waves only a few feet from shore. Tiny gastropods, clams of several species, and shells of cowries require worm-eye viewing. Some beaches are covered with pink murax shells. On calm March mornings a thin line of krill might lie at the high-tide mark. Larger relatives, six-inch Pacific-type shrimp, swim along the boat in deep water and hide under piers. At night you can always see dinoflagelates phosphoresce in the surf, seasonally blooming as red tides. On the rocky shores and islands the easiest way to travel is often at low tide on the wave-cut benches below the cliffs and headlands, being careful not to get caught below sheer cliffs with rising tides. . . .

  Peach nuzzles me. Thunder in elongated cracks. I am swimming on hard ground. I reach up into the rain and touch her soaked muzzle. Jesus, but I’m a wet girl. The rain just came because the fire still hisses. “To Know Him Is to Love Him,” they sang long ago. “Tunkasila, mato pehin wan!” “Oh, grandfather bear, here is some of your hair!” That was from a childhood game and the last thing she said. Rachel took the “Wanagi Canku,” the Ghost Road. Will I drive that far to feed her ghost? she asked. Of course. Then she’ll stay around for a year. My dog ran away and was eaten by coyotes so I knew I was going to die, she said. I called you and here you are. Could you bring my old sister Blue Earth Woman? So I drove to Pine Ridge and picked her up, then a doctor who was young and pleasant and said nothing was terribly wrong, she was just dying. He had seen it before. The thunder so loud I sat up which made Peach happy. Rachel said Duane’s spirit had become part horse and part fish, a fish that breathed through its back. What a fine thing to call it, the Ghost Road.

  The fire had withered too far to make coffee. I was startled to see the railroad watch in the saddlebag said ten in the morning. I had stayed up thinking until I heard the first bird. The violent part of the storm was passing and hard rain set in, so hard I couldn’t see the river. I packed in an ankle-deep puddle, feeding Peach a few handfuls of oats. She wanted the hell out of here. I always wondered what horses and dogs thought thunder was. Barn cats, as ever, pretend they are bored. I tucked my chin down and let Peach trot me the hour home, wondering what day it was. Before Paul had kissed me goodbye he bet that Fred would call Ruth in Tucson by noon. He hadn’t meant to chide Fred the night before, but it seemed to him that you never detected the spirit or soul of a landscape by purposely looking for it as if it were a Grail to be acquired and coveted. That sort of spiritual greed seemed to produce life as a linear nightmare: I acquire, then move on, and acquire more. After you learned what was actually in any landscape, including cities, you might finally perceive the character of the soul life of the area. He was not prepared to mock human effort by saying that the Sonoran wilderness had more virtue than Florence. I remembered reading that Geronimo hadn’t cared for the New York World’s Fair but then he was a captive visitor, summoned as he was in chains.

  I have spent the last three days in bed with a slight fever and a bad cold, and haven’t minded it a bit. This has happened before—a modest illness becomes a welcome relief, tempered a little in this case by another semi-legal problem: Frieda’s boyfriend, Gus, has slugged her and she can’t make up her mind whether or not to press charges. She is embarrassed to appear in public with a black eye and will miss the last two evenings of the pinochle tournament. She has sent Lundquist over with a pot of the best chicken soup in the world, with the possible exception of that made for a mogul aquaintance of Ted’s who has a private club in Hollywood. You can eat anything you wish at this club and drink the finest wines, but it is peculiar how soothing this chicken soup can be in Los Angeles.

  This morning I watched Lundquist feed the geese under the watchful eye of his dog Roscoe. I have a Kennedy rocker drawn up to the window and wear my favorite twenty-year-old robe. Roscoe becomes a little irritable when Lundquist sits down, as he always does, to pet the geese. When he entered the kitchen with the mail I called down for him to come up for a chat. He is always a little formal, beginning with the same question ever since I can remember: “And how is my little girl doing today, heh?” He hands me a thickish letter from Michael, about whom he is deeply grieved, along with the recent situation with Gus and Frieda. Lundquist feels that if only Michael and Frieda would read the teachings of Swedenborg they wouldn’t be susceptible to the “fruits of the devil” as personified by Karen and Gus. Lundquist points out that when he was sixteen Karen’s grandmother tried to seduce him after an all-night threshing party “not three miles from where we sit.” The fact that this happened seventy years ago does not disturb his notion that lust probably runs in that family.

  All the dominant events in Lundquist’s life could have happened earlier this morning so vivid are they to him. Grandfather, John Wesley, and his own wife are merely absent rather than dead. Seven years ago or so this July I had him drive up to Livingston, Montana, with a horse trailer. I flew in from Los Angeles and bought a filly out of a famous stud, King Benjamin, who was standing at a ranch up Deep Creek Road. There were two fillies for sale and it took all afternoon for me to make up my mind. I was having iced tea with the owner and his lovely wife in the ranch house which was full of books, the walls covered with impressive landscapes. We heard a voice through a screened window and discovered Lundquist talking to their three ranch dogs about Nebraska, as if to explain why he was there. The owner and his wife were impressed because the dogs were rarely manageable and now they were sitting in an attentive row listening to a stranger. On the two-day trip back to Nebraska I asked him about this and he said it was a common courtesy since he could tell the dogs were very curious about what we were doing there. I decided to let the problem of language go for the time being, but he continued by saying he had never met an animal that didn’t know if your heart was in the right place. Humans could develop this ability with each other if they would only study the works of Emanuel Swedenborg.

  Before Lundquist left I could see that he was anxious about the contents of the letter from Michael so I opened it, and fibbed by saying that Michael was fine and wanted to be remembered to him. I also said that he could have a bottle of beer on the way out which brought a beam to his face that must be described as radiant.

  “A single bottle of beer can bring on a flow of great thoughts,” he said, without irony, as he waved goodbye.

  Michael’s letter kept me rocking at the window for quite some time. There was a tinge of longing in me to be back in Santa Monica working with disturbed young people. Back in the sixties and early seventies it was faddish to say that certain people were troublesome but “worth the trip.” His letter was boldly titled “The Conditions of Life During the Plague Years,” and the handwriting was uncharacteristically even and readable, which I attributed to his unintended detoxification.

  Dearest D.,

  We all know the end but where is the middle? It occurred to me this morning that this mess I’ve been trying to extricate myself from all these years is actually my life! A circadian sump where every day is Monday morning. The time of spring floods when my dad and I would spend half the night bailing the muddy water out of the basement until a better-heeled uncle made us the gift of a Briggs-Stratt
on motorized pump. Your kiss of forgiveness technically meant the world to me two days later, on Monday, when I really woke up. It was evening and I was hungry, thirsty, and in pain. I reached over to the buzzer, then hesitated, trying to remember if I had felt all three before simultaneously—hunger, thirst, and pain—not counting self-imposed hangovers. This acute gestalt of sensations opened a tiny door to the world, like the little door of a cuckoo clock, with me shooting out and seeing the briefest of glimpses of the world. I thought of Northridge, Aase, the Sioux, the pathetic settlers lost in the sea of grass. I thought of their hunger, thirst, pain. I thought of Crazy Horse on the burial platform, his arms around his daughter on a bitterly cold and windy March night. I thought of Aase burning with fever on a cot beneath the tree at noon & Northridge sitting beside her body in the rain. The incredible, physical bitterness of it all. I still held off from the buzzer on the pillow. I remembered my father coming home from the night shift at the steel mill just as I was getting up for school. I would sit there toying with my bowl of cereal while he drank a quart of beer and ate an enormous meal, the vulgarity of which offended me. I was an aesthete, a young fan of James Joyce and Scott Fitzgerald, and resented having to go off to the eleventh grade smelling like sauerkraut and pork, or whatever gargantuan pile of low-class slop he was eating. One morning his eyebrows and hair were singed and one hand was heavily bandaged. He wasn’t eating but there was a bottle of whiskey on the table and he was weeping. Mother sat next to him and rubbed his head and arms. A furnace had blown, killing two of his friends—I knew the men from watching their horseshoe games on Saturdays, and sometimes they came over with their wives to play euchre. I went into the bathroom, looked at myself in the mirror, and tried to figure out what my emotions should be. I hated the oilcloth on the table, the linoleum on the floor, the coal-company calendar on the wall, the Christmas trip to our relatives down in Mullens, West Virginia, who were even poorer than we were. I hated the stories from World War II that I had loved when younger. I suppose that part of the problem was that we lived on the border of the school district and I was a poor kid at the rich high school, rather than being with the mill kids where I belonged. I was amazed when I went to dinner at a friend’s house and his parents ate fried chicken with knife and fork! Anyway, I was a contemptible, whining little snot, and perhaps I still am in some respects.