by Rinker Buck
When my father had arrived at the bar I was overwhelmed by a sense that he had been wandering the streets for a while, almost secretively. This wasn’t an impression that I could grasp very well and I forgot about it. But then, I knew. As I played with the lenses that he had given me, experimenting with inserting them into the aperture ring of the camera and then twisting the lens shut with a snap, I noticed that they were all labeled with fresh, shiny stickers. CASH FOR GOLD, the stickers read, above an address on Forty-Seventh Street. The camera box itself had the same shiny stickers, one on each side.
I probably wouldn’t have figured this out, except that two of my best friends from college were photography majors, and they often made trips to New York to buy the best camera boxes and lenses—Nikons, Leicas, and Minoltas—at the steep discounts offered in the Forty-Seventh Street pawnshop district.
Oh, I thought, my father had been artful about smoothing this over, but not quite artful enough. His best camera had not spent the last few weeks in a photo shop for cleaning. He had hocked it for cash on his previous trip to New York and had just retrieved it, for me, from a pawnshop. Along with everything else that day, the discreet way that he had fished the pawnshop receipt out of the bottom of the shopping bag, and then stuffed it into a side pocket of his sport coat, made it all fall into place. It was that bad for him now. He was pawning his possessions to get through the month. His gifts for me, his buying habits, had always been so extravagant that I’d taken his carefree life for granted. Now I tried not to think about where he’d found the cash to spring his camera for me, let alone to buy gas for the long drive from Pennsylvania to New York.
The welter of emotions that coursed through me then—guilt, love, empathy, fatalism about his future, and pining for the past—felt like a turbulent ocean inside. I couldn’t even attempt to disguise my feelings because there were too many feelings colliding at once.
Oh, fuck me, Dad. Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me. You’re such a great person, so blindly altruistic and beguiling, and look at the trouble you’re in now.
By the time he finished his second beer, with a bourbon chaser—“just to give the brew some taste”—he was slurring his words. I had already told him that I had to leave by early afternoon to get back in time for my evening shift at the truck stop. I didn’t like the way he was fumbling for money in his pockets so I spent most of what I had in my wallet to pay the bill, which at least gave me something to feel good about.
Out on the street, my father wished me well at my first job, encouraged me to work hard, and said that he was planning on taking out a subscription to the Eagle, so he could follow my progress as a reporter. If it was all right, he would call once in a while to make suggestions about making my copy better.
“Okay, Dad,” I said. “But just go easy. You’ve got your own stuff to worry about.”
We shook hands and, before he turned to go, I thanked him for the camera and threw my new camera case over my shoulder at a rakish angle. I wanted him to have an image of me dashing off to report my first story. He smiled at that, winked, laughed quietly, and started down Tenth Avenue. I noticed again how thin he was. He walked with a stoop, his neck and his wrists were no longer buffalo-brown and brawny, and he didn’t try to hide the limp from his wooden leg anymore. Ah, shit, Dad. Shit. Watching him walk away and then disappear around the next corner felt like the loneliest moment of my life and I worried that I would never see him again.
There were broken cumulus clouds over northern Manhattan as I drove up the West Side Highway, and I liked the way that the sunlight pushing through the holes in the overcast made glittering patterns on the Hudson. Instinct told me to be greedy and not sad about the day, and I was manically happy about my new camera. Don’t concentrate on him, I thought. Don’t think about him. It will kill you to worry about him. Throw yourself into learning to take pictures. I decided to find a photo shop on the way north, buy some film, and start taking pictures at work that night. The sky opened up north of Peekskill and I wanted to put as much distance as possible between me and New York. I pushed the bike hard and reached my new refuge in the mountains in under three hours.
• • •
We stopped the mules at a lovely spot high on the ridge where the ruts curved into the shade of an aspen grove. This was probably one of the spots where the pioneers had scrambled up the trees with carving knives in their teeth to leave behind their initials or names, but of course time had erased any evidence of their inscriptions. As I stepped down from the wagon to explore the route off the ridge, the darkness of the white bark pine groves below looked spooky and treacherous. This was another place, like California Hill or Rocky Ridge, where the difficulties of a modern crossing seemed condensed at a single obstacle. Once we started downhill, the steep canyon walls below would prevent us from turning back. I wouldn’t enjoy the advantage of a large wagon train and its labor pool of men to restrain my wagon. Nick would have to trust me to have made the right decision, even though there wasn’t really a choice at all, and I would have to trust him to drive us out of the certain hazards we faced below.
“The Rock Slide, Nick. It’s our only way down.”
“Do we know what’s there?”
“A two-thousand-foot drop to the Bear River.”
“Fuck, let’s go. I can’t wait to do this.”
At first, dropping down through the shade of the whitebark groves was refreshingly cool and peaceful. But as soon as we were off the summit and rounding the first corner of the trail downhill, a canyon wall of loose sandstone and rock rose to our right, higher than the wagon top. The spring rains had distributed a thick scree of gravel on the ledge in front of us. The rear legs of the mules slipped out from underneath them and they couldn’t hold the wagon back along the ledge. But by pushing the brake back and forth and judging the distance ahead to the slippery gravel beds, I found that I could jolt the wagon back against the mules and pull them upright at just the right moment, forcing them to pull the load downhill and gain their footing.
I was grateful then for a lifetime of fear about moving wagons downhill. It was like driving a heavy truck over hills. Never coast. Never let the gravity of the load apply on the team. Pivot the weight of the wagons against the mules, pulling them aft, so that they will be held upright by the load and can enjoy the stabilizing effect of the harness pulling backward on their shoulders.
Coordinating our descent was difficult for Nick and me, but it was also very athletic—this was distracting and helped a lot. There were places where the trail curved downhill at a 20 percent or 30 percent slope and we were looking almost straight down at the mules. When I locked the wheels, we were both thrown forward and fought with our thighs and our feet, wedging against each other to remain on the wagon seat. Each time, Nick could feel my hips tensing for stability before I threw the brake.
When he felt me tense for the next push of the brake, Nick called the mules.
“Yup, Team. Yup. Pull!”
But I corrected him.
“Don’t call the team,” I said. “Don’t slap the lines. No excitement at all. Hands. Talk to them with your hands. Calm, calm.”
Nick looked annoyed but he was willing to give up his vestigial driving self.
“Fuck. You’re giving me a driving lesson? But you’re probably right.”
We reached a place then driving mules that was beyond all experience or training. Wordless intuition and shared physicality joined us. Reach right with my arm for the brake and tense left against Nick on the narrow wagon seat. The mules felt the brake retard the wagon and gently lowered their necks into their collars and pulled downhill. Nick held the lines sharply back and then slightly released pressure to move the team forward. The communication passed from my brake arm through my hip to Nick and then down the lines to the mules, five minds fused to manage the load down the steep pitch.
We were out of the wind now and there was no breeze to cool us or carry away the sound of the wheels. The iron rims screeched against
the rocks while the harness chains cracked against the load. The high wall on our right held in the acrid smell of the smoking brakes.
We were just a descending cauldron of shrieking brakes and burning thresher belt now. When the mules felt the brakes land hard they held their legs rigid, skimming along on the gravel for a few feet. The dust raised by their hooves billowed up past their bellies and spread sideways, completely obscuring our view. There was no terra firma now. I could feel how the wagon was doing only through the muscles of my brake arm. It was a magic carpet ride behind mules gliding through clouds of dust.
• • •
When we reached Rock Creek Ridge, the trail curved sharply to the west and then disappeared around the cliffs, and we couldn’t believe what we saw. The grade plunged steeply down across a slick rock face of brown slate that would be a children’s slide for the mules. I could imagine holding the main wagon off the mules—perhaps just barely—but the heavy cart behind us would probably jackknife across the slate and overwhelm us, pulling us backward into the canyon below.
But Nick had an idea.
“Hold these mules for a minute,” he said. “I know what to do here.”
Nick reached underneath the seat for a heavy chain, threw it onto his shoulder, and then slid down the wheel and disappeared behind the wagon. I heard the rattling of the chain back there for a minute or two and then he climbed back on and took the lines.
“What did you do?” I said.
“I roughlocked the cart wheels. It’ll work fine.”
I had heard about roughlocking, but would never have thought to do it here. By wrapping the chain around the spokes of the wheels on both sides of the cart and then hooking the ends onto the running gear, Nick had locked the wheels so they wouldn’t turn. Now the one-ton cart acted as a drag on the rig, to which I would add the braking power of the main wheels. We had converted our provisions cart into an anchor.
Still, I didn’t like the look of the slick table of slate plunging downhill and around the corner of the cliffs. There was no way of knowing from above how much longer the ledge was, or if it got steeper.
“Jesus, Nick. I don’t know.”
Nick looked at me, grimaced, shrugged his shoulders, and then gently elbowed me in the ribs.
“I’m glad you’re afraid,” he said. “At least I’m doin the trail with someone who knows this can be dangerous. Are you ready?”
I took a deep breath and exhaled.
“Let’s do it.”
“Ease-A, Team,” Nick said, quietly, slightly pulling the lines. “Team, slow. Hold ’em back, Jake. Hold ’em back. Team, slow.”
I released the brake handle and quickly adjusted to the rhythm of sledging downhill. The roughlocked cart provided tremendous drag on the rig, but the Schuttler still wanted to race ahead as soon as the brakes were released. Brake, then release, let the wheels roll a quarter rotation. Brake again. Release. Gravity has never impressed me so much. My shoulder was already thrown out and aching from the braking above but I was fixated on the tug chains, keeping them tight so the team was always pulling downhill. The iron rims screeched over the slate, the brake pads smoked, and the pole banged between Jake and Beck every time the front wheels hit a bump on the ledge.
The mules were even farther below us now, but I didn’t dare look forward to judge the slope. I had to lean way out on the brake handle to see the tug chains, and then look straight back for the cart. Brake and release. From nowhere, aspen branches suddenly appeared, whipping my face. I felt a bump from behind and quickly looked back. I had jackknifed the rig with the brake and the right wheel hub of the cart was scraping the cliffs. But this was good, providing more drag on the load. I jockeyed the brake to keep the right wheel slightly hung up on the rocks and we left a deep gash where the hub dug into the shale cliff.
It seemed to take forever. Release, lock the wheels. Release, lock the wheels. Keep those tug chains tight. Skid the cart up against the cliff embankment. I didn’t know that we had reached the bottom of the ledge until the screeching of the wheels over rock stopped and we began to push up dust. We were level again and I could see the backs of the mules.
Nick was smiling broadly on the wagon seat, ecstatic to have roughlocked his wheels and managed a team down a Wyoming mountain like this. It was a moment of supreme triumph. Wordlessly, never really expressing to each other what we had to do, we had lowered several tons of mule and wagon down one of the steepest wagon slopes in the West.
“Jesus,” I said. “Roughlocking. It really worked. How many times have you done that before?”
“Oh, this is the first time.”
“Jesus. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Rink, think about that. If I had told you, you would have shit your pants.”
• • •
The trail disappeared uphill as a switchback that curved northwest again, around even higher cliffs. Nick took the chain off the wheels of the cart but when we reached the top my heart stopped again. The pitch down over gravel and dust was almost as severe as the slate tables above and the trail had now dramatically narrowed. The canyon gradually coming in from behind us had grown into a deep gorge and, off Nick’s side of the wagon, we were looking down at the tops of mature pine and aspen trees that were a hundred feet below us. It was a sheer drop-off, and the width of the trail provided just enough clearance for the wagon.
I was terrified about staying on the wagon and briefly tempted to climb down the wheel, squeeze between the team and the cliffs, walk down to scout, and see if the trail became even more narrow. My excuse would be that if one wheel went over the edge and pulled the whole rig into the gorge, one of us needed to be alive to go for help. Nick could sense my fear and offered me an out.
“You should be off the wagon here,” he said. “We need you on foot to check if the trail is wide enough. I can manage the lines and brake with my foot.”
It was an act of will—where the determination came from, I don’t know—to turn down his offer.
“Shit, I really do want off this wagon,” I said. “But I’m not doing that. I’ve got this brake routine now with the mules.”
We both looked forward to study the trail again, and the physics of our descent were clear. There were curves ahead where the gorge beside us dropped more than a hundred feet straight down. One mule jumping to the left, one bad jackknife of the cart, and we would be pulled over the edge. We both realized that if the wagon started to fall, I would probably be able to get off in time on my side. But Nick would plunge with the rig into the gorge.
“Shit,” Nick said. “This is goin to be fuckin great.”
As we started to inch down, I wasn’t really aware of my surroundings, and I didn’t have time to be afraid. All I could do was lean out over the side of the wagon with my hand on the brake, staring ahead at the tug chains to make sure they were tight, and then quickly looking back at the cart to make sure it wasn’t jackknifing. The instant the cart wheels started to jackknife out of sight I released brake pressure, waited a second for them to straighten out, and then faced forward again to reapply the brake.
Brake, release. Brake, release. Our American flag scraped against the cliffs and Nick held the team so tight against the wall that I couldn’t see any space between the rocks and the hubs. My face passed just inches from the boulders on the ledge and my cheeks were whipped again by aspen saplings growing out of the rocks.
There were moments of panic. Two or three times as we descended Jake and Beck reached high with their necks to snag an aspen leaf from the scrub growth hanging from the cliffs. This pushed the pole almost into the rocks. We passed several cone-shaped piles of elk scat on Beck’s side and I knew that if she got a strong whiff of unfamiliar wildlife she might bolt and try to run away. But Beck quietly sidestepped each pile and I could tell that the team sensed how hard I was working to keep the weight of the wagons off their shoulders and backs.
I was nervous, too, about the trail suddenly narrowing, or the left side of t
he ground suddenly giving way from the weight of the wagons. But I was still looking backward to keep the cart straight and couldn’t see for myself. Almost involuntarily, I begged Nick for resassurance.
“Nick, the trail. How wide?”
“Wider. We’re good.”
I tried to discipline myself not to ask again, but then I did.
“Still wide,” Nick said. “We’re almost to the bottom.”
When I felt Nick pull up the team and call “Whoa” I could hear water running. I slowly turned around to face forward and waited for the dust from our descent to clear.
We had reached the bottom of the elevation, but ahead of us the creek had washed out the trail. There was a two-foot drop to reach the creek bed, then a natural corduroy of driftwood and logs. In the middle of the creek there was a deep pool of moving water, and then a steep climb through river rock and mud to regain the trail. It was the kind of obstacle that would have worried me five hundred miles ago, but not now.
My arms were shaking and my heart was still racing but I needed something to do. I took the lines myself, eased the team one axle at a time into the creek bed and across the logs, and then slapped the mules’ rumps through the water and up through the muddy banks to the trail. Moving uphill again and being able to call the team felt like salvation.
We stopped in the shade slightly uphill of the creek and sat for a long while, speechless, drinking from our canteens. I was still shaking several minutes later.
From our uphill position I looked back and saw our fresh wagon tracks on the trail. There were spots where I could see that we hadn’t had more than a foot of clearance. We were that close to falling sideways into the gorge.
“Nick, you told me the trail got wider. But look at that spot, where the cliff juts out. We were almost over the edge.”