by James Galvin
One by one App lifted them down and said, “Come on, boys. We’ve got a piece to go, and I want to get to bed tonight. Ray, grab hold of Jack again, and Pete, you shove him from behind when he needs it.” Then he turned and plowed into the snow again like a tugboat leaving the harbor.
As it turned out they were indeed not far from home. The snow stopped with eerie suddenness. The wind quit working on them. Suddenly the whole thing seemed like the jokes kids played on Jack at school, the kind that make you mad. The stars showed like holes drilled in a tin roof beyond which it was always day. The outline of Boulder Ridge proclaimed itself. It looked too big ever to lose.
When they reached the cabin App lit the heater and a piece of the matchhead stuck under his thumbnail and flared there, but he didn’t mention it. He tossed on a piece of split pitch pine, and they stood around the ticking metal box waiting for the steam to start rising off them again.
App took Jack in his arms and wrapped him under his own coat, waiting. Pete lit the lamp. The glass chimney was streaked with smoke, but in its light Ray could see the tears begin to stream down his father’s face. Tears dripped from the ends of his moustache like water off the eaves after the rain stops falling and fell into his son’s hair that was the color of late summer grass.
Ray hardly took notice of this, since he had seen his father cry often before at inexplicable times and he was used to not knowing why.
According to scientists who study avalanches for a living, snow has the widest range of physical properties of any known substance. What’s amazing is that the Eskimo language doesn’t have more words for it. Powder snow, corn snow, sugar snow, windpack. Neve, slab, spring powder, spit, and fluff. Thawing and freezing it changes with every degree of temperature, every passing second. Goose down, ball bearings, broken styrofoam.
Then there are the properties of snow that are not physical, or not exactly physical: its lethal whims, its harmlessness, its delicacy, its power, its relentlessness, its flirtatious disregard, its sublime beauty.
Harmless enough, the season’s first flakes arrive in the stubble of the mown field, in the spiked branches of pines. They vanish in the morning sun as though they never meant anything by it. And what do they mean in midwinter when the hard-packed drifts settle in, oppressing the foreseeable future? A little wind and spindrift makes them smolder.
All winter the drifts come and go. They have a sense of direction, but they aren’t going anywhere. The flakes come straight down or sideways, fast or slow; sometimes they don’t fall but swirl and hover and take off like swallows. The meadow fills, and drifts make bridges over the fences. Everybody waits.
The fences break under the weight of so much beauty. Who does the meadow belong to now? For half the year it belongs to the snow, not a thing you can do with it, and by April no one thinks it’s pretty anymore, though it is.
Lyle said, “If you want to know who really owns your land, don’t pay the taxes for a while. Then if you want to know who owns it even more, just look out the window in a blizzard. That’s the landlord’s face looking in, snooping.”
Ray, who didn’t own any land and never had, outside the lot his doublewide was on in Laramie, thought of snow as a beautiful way to die.
CLARA, 1949
1/1 I started two new pictures. Lyle put up his stove in the cabin.
1/2 I cleaned up around the house. Tried to fix hole where packrat got in. Lyle went to ditch camp AM, worked in shop PM. It’s cold and snowing all day.
1/3 Woke up this AM still blizzarding. 10 below. Willis won’t get home today.
1/4 Still a blizzard all day. Lyle braved it up to the ditch camp. Two above zero. Shows signs of letting up tonight.
1/5 At last it cleared up and the sun shown most of the day. Lyle worked in the shop. I painted. Mom read.
1/6 Another beautiful day. Mom and I cleaned chicken house. Spent all morning outdoors.
1/7 Cold again today. Wind came up from the east. Lyle visited Pat in PM. They looked with Pat’s spyglass. No one out to Marsh’s yet. Plains sure white.
1/8 Wind and blizzard from the east again today. Not so bad as before, not so much snow, but plenty cold. I did some painting. Lyle worked in the shop. Two more pictures done.
1/9 Mom did some sewing today. I painted.
1/10 I washed. Pat was over to dinner. Beautiful day. We had target practice with Pat’s pistol. I shot my clothesline in two—clothes all down in the snow.
1/11 Another beautiful day. We all went over to Pat’s for dinner. Took camera along, got some pictures. Found out Bill and Elbertine got back just yesterday, horseback.
1/12 Bill and Elbertine came down about 10:30 AM. Bill and Lyle butchered. Had a nice visit with them. Pretty fair day. Wind in east but warm.
1/13 Lyle, Pat, and Bill opened road to mailbox. Mom and I cut willows and smoked meat and I ironed.
1/14 Lyle, Pat, and Bill went to town. I painted. Turned cold and stormy.
1/15 I did some more painting. Lyle worked in the shop. Stayed cold all day. Down to eighteen below tonight.
1/16 It’s clear AM. West wind and 2 above.
1/17 Lyle went over to Pat’s to see about going to mailbox. Wind blew snow too bad. They didn’t go. I painted.
1/18 Mom sewing a shirt. Lyle working in shop making a beautiful stationery chest. I sewed most all day. Made a new dress.
1/19 It’s cold and snowing again today.
1/20 Snowy, cold, east wind.
1/21 I washed today. Lyle busy in the shop on some new project. It snowed an inch or so, sun shone at noon.
1/22 I wrote a letter, did some painting. It snowed some more.
1/23 Still cold, staying by the fire. Painting, reading. Lyle making a metal lathe these days.
1/24 Lyle spent AM digging out. Little warmer. Everyone busy inside. I brought out my watercolors. Made a fairly nice picture. Radio said our mail was at Marsh’s.
1/25 Lyle went to Pat’s and headed for mailbox. Mom and I cleaned the henhouse, dug out rye stack. Windy and snow blowing, but sun shining.
1/26 Been cold, wind blowing day and night. 4 below this AM, wind still blowing. So much electricity it puts the radio completely out.
1/27 More snow, little warmer. Wind left us a quiet night. I made a note box. Lyle still working on lathe, scooped a “ton” of snow out of the barn.
1/28 Wind!? began again after breakfast. What a day. Mom wrote letters, I sewed an underskirt. Lyle worked on the feeder and a while in the shop.
1/29 Did I say wind?! It was worse today. But it did get a little warmer. I patched overalls, we wrote letters.
1/30 Got up to 36 today but !-#?@ the wind! And what new snowdrifts overnight! Bill and Elbertine spent the day. I scooped out the chickenhouse doors.
1/31 Most awful cold and wind still at it. I put in the day painting. Mom sewed. Lyle and Bill went to town even though it was zero or 10 above all day. They went right over the snowdrifts.
* * *
5/16 Beautiful day today. Bob went to College rodeo. Lyle went to town and brought back two little pigs. I make picture frames.
5/17 Lyle repairing branding chute, Bob irrigating. Mom and I finish garden, clean springbox, hang screen door.
5/18 Boys brand, de-horn AM, fix fence PM. I work on Marie’s chair, Mom cleans wallpaper.
5/19 I washed and baked cookies. Mom baked bread. Boys took tractor up to sawmill and started skidding logs.
5/20 Boys worked in timber, skidding logs.
5/21 Lyle worked in shop. Bob and Mom went to Marsh’s AM. Bob brought back horse to break. I’m ironing.
5/22 Boys irrigating, hauling lumber, getting horses out of Pat’s. Williams brought cattle today. Mom and I take Elbertine down on Sand Creek and picked gooseberries.
* * *
8/2 Mom and I pick strawberries AM. Went down toward Sand Creek PM picked more ripe gooseberries. Bob still gone. Lyle worked on welder. Mom canned 10 pts. strawberry jam.
8/3 Mom and I canned 8 more qts
. of ripe gooseberries, made 4 pts. jelly. Picked more strawberries. Bob mowed hay across creek. Lyle made repairs to tires, etc. Made search for porcupine. Munds came for strawberries.
8/4 Started for town. Found Rhoda and dudes were coming for another pic-nic so came home. Rained so ate indoors. Bob trying to mow hay.
8/5 Went to town. Bob mowing hay, Lyle sharpening sickles.
8/6 I clean house, can strawberries Mom picked. Made 8 pts. Bob mowing hay. Mom gone to cook for Edith’s hay crew.
8/7 Mom didn’t get home till 4 PM. Boys got ½ day mowing done, rained out. I went to see Elbertine PM. We went with Bill up by Slick Rock. He fished, we looked for moonshine cabin.
* * *
10/1 Bob was skidding logs till the horses drug him over one—broke a rib. Lyle spent half day building cattleguard, then took Bob to town.
10/2 Mom and I mix cement, chink scratch shed. Lyle cut wood. Bob went to mailbox.
10/3 Roberts was here at noon. Said they were coming right over to help bale hay. Bob gone back to town for help at the sawmill but no luck. Dick helped Lyle saw.
10/4 No hay balers. Bob and Lyle hauled down load lumber. Axford came, brought 4,180 lbs. barley, got load of lumber. I did some chinking, sewed curtains.
10/5 It cleared this AM. Mom and I went to town. Got to see and hear Thomas Dewey, “the next President of the U.S.”. Took McM. their mail.
10/6 Cold rain, snow. I ironed. Lyle and Alferd put up snow fence. Bob finally rented a baler.
10/7 Bob gone for gas, wire, baler. Lyle and Alferd went for Johnson’s tractor. Got set to bale.
10/8 Started baling. Got one stack. McMurray’s, Bob and I went to dance at Virginia Dale.
10/9 I washed, washed my hair. Boys started to bale. Got two men from Roberts, then baler blew up.
10/10 Bob went to Ft. Collins for new gears. Got head for tractor, sold load of hay. I ironed. Mom dug turnips. Lyle and Alferd hauled a load of lumber, built baler blocks.
10/11 Dick helped bale hay till 3:00, I helped tie. Long, a horse buyer, and Slim Weeks all came at noon, hold up the works. Bob went to town eve. brought out three men.
10/12 Sure get the hay baled today. Cloudy, windy, raining tonight.
10/13 Finished baling hay in the snow.
* * *
11/8 Seven inches of snow. Boys brought saw belts and team home. I spent the day painting. It’s cold, it’s winter now.…
App’s leg felt like it was bandaged in barbed wire instead of his own shredded underwear. The wagon was heaped with deer and elk carcasses and hides, salted between the layers, so full that his old man had to walk while App, who couldn’t walk much, drove the wagon. Usually it was App who walked, and, despite the circumstance, the old man was getting angrier with every mile. App could hear him back there cursing under his breath and spitting. When the old man let loose with a jet of tobacco it sounded like piss on hot coals.
Coming down from the mountain known as Deadman the trail curved and contoured, maintaining its elevation on the mountainside as it followed the creek that hissed below. Then it threaded through a small stand of timber and began to sidle downhill. A stone under a wagon wheel here could dump the entire load into the frantic creek two hundred feet below.
They rumbled smoothly through the trees, which mapped the horses’ backs in sunlight and shade until they emerged onto open talus where the trail steepened and narrowed to negotiate a recent rockslide. Suddenly the horses caught the scent of something they didn’t care for—neither man ever saw what it was—and they shied and bolted, the fist-sized stones in the trail sending tooth-shattering shockwaves through the spindly wooden wheels (the springs were loaded down so that the wagon bed rested directly on the axle blocks). App reined in, wishing that his father had gotten oxen or at least mules for this, then the outside rear wheel splintered and the wagonful of once swift and beautiful bodies swung sideways off the trail and the rear end of the wagon swung like a compass needle pointing down at the magnetic tumble of the creek.
App went from reining in as hard as he could to whip-cracking and whooping and urging, trying to use the remaining momentum and the horses’ adrenaline to regain the trail, or at least not to loose the entire salt-and-bloody cargo into the creek below, which was all he could hear, or was that just blood rushing through his head?
He managed to keep three wheels on the trail, but the back of the wagon was cattywhampus, and one rear wheel was toothpicks and a hoop.
When the moment ebbed and the horses stilled and the situation bespoke itself in the silence that followed (even the creek’s roar was a silence now), the silence issuing from the old man overwhelmed it, and the creek became a noise again, and the roaring in App’s ears came out of it, and all the sounds together became the sound of his father’s wrath building. App knew what was coming so he just sat there waiting, still as granite, not from fear but from a calm prescience of the inevitable. Without turning he heard the old man’s breathing and the crunch of his boots punishing the gravel. He felt the back end of the wagon lift perceptibly, which was not what he was expecting, so he craned around to see the old man squatted down behind the wagon, heaving-to in a carnival-like attempt to lift the impossible back onto the road.
App stared in amazement for a full thirty seconds as his father strained under the load, which indeed he could move, but which no mortal could lift. The cords in his neck went taut, his face reddened, his eyes bulged, sweat sprang from his brow. App wondered if a man could explode himself, split his own skull open like that bear skull split by the axe. He had time to think, “I hope the old shit blows up now because when he finds out he can’t lift a ton of literally dead weight, he’ll still have strength to kill me with a handy boulder or wheel shard, even though it was me kept the whole works from upsetting and it wasn’t me spooked the horses, which should have been oxen that stop stock-still when they spook, and now we’ll have to unload the whole mess anyway—I will if I ain’t dead by then and here he comes.”
App felt himself lifted by the shirt and trousers like a marionette, up off the seat, and then he was airborne, sailing down the talus slope toward the creek, and the old man yelling, “Damn you, anyway.”
App knew from breaking colts that the best thing to do while flying through the air is to relax, so when he crumpled among the boulders he was no more bruised than he would have been from an ordinary beating at his father’s hands, and he thanked the stars for that. The toothmarks in his thigh still hurt more than the cuts and bruises, so he thought about how easy he’d got off as he set to work unloading the wagon, and his father even helped him lift with pry poles to where they could replace the wheel with a drag stick wedged like half a travois into the axle.
By the time they were loaded again it was almost dark and there was no hope of reaching town that night. Driving the horses on those rocky trails in the dark was too risky, and they felt as if they’d had enough catastrophe for one hunting trip. So instead of heading down Sand Creek for Laramie the old man had App steer around the sidehill toward Sheep Creek drainage. He knew of a low spot where they could lay over. The cold air that hung down there nights would keep the meat ten or twenty degrees colder so they might have something besides hides to sell when they finally reached Laramie.
Where they turned the hill was just below where the Wilson Ditch now lifts water out of Sand Creek and carries it around the hill into Sheep Creek and Eaton Reservoir. By the time they descended into the meadow App could feel the cold air already pooling there. He could not see that the meadow was ringed with low timbered ridges. There was no moon and it was full dark when they bottomed out. He smelled willow bushes and mint.
They dropped down into the trapped cold, and App shivered, more than from cold, but he didn’t know what. They hobbled the horses near the creek. They wrapped themselves in one blanket and slept under the wagon.
Sometimes the winter sun is so hot coming through the south-facing kitchen window, Lyle has to scoot his chair over and draw the cur
tain. But this morning the cold air hangs still down in the meadow, and there is enough haze in the air to filter the sunlight so Lyle can lean on his elbows over a cup of steaming instant and smoke a Prince Albert and gaze out the picture window he now spends most of his life perched in like a hunched up old raven. The air, so heavy-cold and striated with strangely floating frost, is like cotton candy. Hoarfrost builds and grows on the fenceposts and pickets like tropical ferns, but white. White.
He looks out across the meadow filled with snow, across the leafless, oddly orange willow branches along the stream and on over to the wind-bared hill that heaves itself toward the evergreen ridges of the National Forest. The woodcutting trail climbs the bald hill: two parallel lines like railroad tracks, but where the hill steepens, the road curves around the worst part of the grade so that the foreshortened trail looks like a question mark hovering over the meadow.
“I’ve been staring at that confounded meadow and those idiot hills and lodgepole stands for over forty years now. I’m about done for and I’m still not sure I’ve ever seen any of it. All I know is I’m damned tired of looking at the sonofabitch.”
He thinks about how completely the meadow changes with respective seasons, how much it can change under light and clouds between two times he raises his eyes from his book and looks over the top of his half-lens reading glasses.
When Lyle drives the Power Wagon to the top of the question mark and into the deep timber for firewood or to mow hay in the neck of the little side-draw, he can look back toward the house and outbuildings, and it always gives him a little start, as if he were looking into a mirror for the first time in a long time, like ten years, maybe. He can easily make out the old part of the house and all he himself added on. Then there’s the barn he built in the winter of ’74 just to more or less see if it could be done, the log garage and toolshed, chicken coop, root cellar, loading chute, corrals, garden fences, snowfences … A lot of damned fences, he thinks, like I was afraid I’d try to get away.