She believed writing to be an act of listening. It wasn’t logical, it was counterintuitive, but there it was. The magic of it. The trick of writing, she once told Ruben, was about shutting the fuck up and extending oneself, listening for something far greater than the sum of one’s individual inclinations and desires.
Ruben attended to his vet calls in the order they arose as he descended the mountain road. First was Lillie’s ancient cat, and he was grateful to Lillie’s no-nonsense acceptance of the death and yet her desire to have it done well and peacefully, grateful that she shooed him out of the house soon after the tabby was still, leaving him free of the obligation of consolation and friendship, free of the work of mitigating or deferring the odd feelings she seemed to have for him; Anya’s house, which he had to brace for and in which he felt like he was holding his breath the whole time, the kids gathered around the cancer-ridden cockatiel, listening to his instructions on how to make the bird comfortable during its dying days; Anya patting him on the back as he left and saying, “We’ll talk more later,” she not ready for anything more, either; the Vreeland horse was not yet ready to foal but while he was there he doctored a cow with pinkeye. He got a coffee at Moon’s, where he visited with Angela when she served it to him, and they also avoided talk of Sy except that she said, “That was a nice ceremony, wasn’t it? Gretchen did a nice job. She stepped up to the sudden task of that, and that wasn’t easy, I’m sure.” He waved to a few people and ducked his head and powered out, feeling both the need to have seen them, and the need to escape them.
On his way home, he drove into the national forest lands that overlooked the meadow, put his hands on the steering wheel, and stared at the clouds.
The one person he should visit, he knew, was Joe. It was Joe’s gun that Sy had used, just like it was Ruben’s pink juice that Jess’s grandfather, Ben, had used. Both he and Joe had inadvertently provided the means to end a life. In Joe’s case, it had truly been inadvertent; Sy had gone to the trouble of stealing the key to the lockbox. In his own case, well, that was still something he was struggling with. Jess believed it to have been a gift, when he left the bottle of pink juice next to the donkey he was putting down on the Cross Family Ranch, right after Ben had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, because he’d want someone to do that for him. Ben had had a full life, and, as the donkey huffed its last, Ben had looked Ruben in the eye and said, “I don’t want it, of course, but I’m ready for it, and I’m going to do it regardless. Sure would be nice to have a reasonable way.” And Ruben had averted his gaze to the mountain, pretended not to know that Ben had reached out and taken the bottle and slipped it into his Carhartt jacket.
But Joe would come later. They would share this odd bond later. First, he needed to get his own brain and heart straight.
Jess was too young. Needed more life experience. Should not, under any circumstance, get married. To him or to anyone.
But he loved her. She was perfect. There were so many things he respected: how she had a complete life of her own, that he did not at once become its center. Her preference for action over speech, but when she did talk, it was imbued with culture and oddness. How she pursued her best self. Engaged with the world with confidence and trust. He appreciated her desire in bed. But mostly her desire for life. He felt physically better when Jess was around, both less anxious and in less pain. She was a force to be reckoned with, but she was gentle. She did not seem like a person who would taper off, and therefore, it seemed impossible that they would taper off.
He rested his head on the steering wheel.
He was only seven years older, but it seemed like too much. He knew what he wanted to do—work with animals—and he knew he wanted to stay on the mountain. She was a siren, and he wanted to stay and listen to her music. But when she was ready to leave, he simply had to let her go. It was the right thing to do.
When he reached for his keys to return home, he felt a heavy cloud roll across him. He took a breath and was surprised to hear himself choke, and he knew a panic attack was coming. He heard his lungs laboring for breath, heard his mind racing and also tempering it away: You’re thinking too much, too much has happened lately, you’re scared, calm the fuck down, and his lungs listened a little bit and he held the steering wheel and closed his eyes and breathed, four-count in, four-count out, and when he opened his eyes, the sky had darkened considerably, but since it was cloudy, it lacked the blue twilight he loved and was just sinking into a low-contrast gray. His throat tightened again, and right as it seemed unbearable, and he promised the universe he’d go to the doctor, he would, he’d call on Monday, his phone beeped with a text. “You are Odysseus to my Calypso. The pilot to my Little Prince. The Athens to my Sparta. May we meet in Corinth.”
He started up the truck. Who knows what she meant, exactly, except the vague message of: Why the fuck can’t some stories have a happy ending?
When Jess had the log cabin built, she used the same design that her grandfather had once used for a simple cabin that he built on the back of his ranch. She’d put her writing desk so that it looked out a window at the meadow and the rise of the mountain behind it. From here, she was looking east, and somewhere down there, far past the rises and dips, beyond her sight but on the same longitude or latitude, or whatever it was, was the ranchlands of her youth at the base of the mountain. It felt close enough to offer some connection; far away enough that she could begin anew.
She would not lose what this cabin offered. Solitude and independence. The chance to pursue who she was and what she wanted to do. She would share this space only on her terms. It was the lighthouse to her past. To her biological mom, who was murdered by her father when she was a child, and her mother’s dream of someday building a house. To her grandfather and his poetry and his way of loving the land, which she believed she inherited from him. It was a place to shine a beam of light so that she might see her future. Perhaps she would get a job, the sort that involved getting up and dressed and to some place each day, or perhaps she would go to New York or Australia, or perhaps she would go to college. But first—just in case she wasn’t afforded much time—she would do her Realest Job, which was to write and thereby give her truest hope an honest go. She believed that the most regretful people she knew were those who never gave their main dream a chance. She believed that all people, but especially those in their youth, should do all they could, with all that they had, in all the time that they were allotted, in the place they most loved. She stared at the window, exhausted now, though she hadn’t moved in hours, and looked at a thin strip of pastel blue that opened up for just a moment on the eastern horizon, the last bit of glow before the sun set in the opposite direction.
She summoned her energy and stood. She wanted to help Ruben somehow, and the small good thing she could do was to make him some food.
It was only five but already dark when Ruben arrived home. Or rather, Jess’s cabin, which he was just starting to call “home,” but only after he’d heard her use the term—our home. Wind—very high winds—had come with night and it struck him as painful that air was literally howling—smashing into the mountain, crashing snow about, twisting into rock and wood and trees. He was going to go crazy, the wind was going to make him crazy. It seemed nearly unbearable; the only way to continue on was the knowledge that it would, at some point, stop. He was glad he couldn’t see the sky anymore. He’d had it with this winter, with his brain, but most of all, with the sky.
He kept his eyes trained on the small squares of light as he ducked his head and fought his way across the stretch toward the cabin, toward Corinth.
When he opened the door, she was there, pulling him in, laughing in the face of the wind. Behind her, he saw the rise of steam and he knew she was cooking something, and it smelled of salt, of trout, perhaps one from the meadow stream that they’d caught and frozen, and as he struggled to get the door shut he opened his mouth to ask a question but she was already saying, “There are hopeless romantics, an
d there are hopeful romantics, and you know that Tennyson poem? Better to have loved and lost, than never loved at all? Well. If you wrote that poem, you’d write, ‘Better to just have loved and won.’”
He tried to pull away from her arms and say something, but she was still holding on and still talking. “Remember in The Little Prince, when the pilot draws the snake that ate the elephant, and the Little Prince instantly recognizes it as something other than a hat? Remember that? Or when the pilot draws the box? With the sheep in it? And the Little Prince says that that drawing is the exact one he’s always been looking for?”
He wanted to say I don’t know what you’re saying, I don’t know what you’re talking about, but he was so grateful for her words, her gusts of air that blocked the wind outside, that he could not. She went on, talking, and he relaxed into it because he did not want to miss a word, could not, at this moment, afford to miss a word. Neither could she, it seemed. So they stood like that for a long time, heads bowed into each other, sharing.
Chapter Five
Recipe: Dandelion’s Devil
INGREDIENTS:
Ephedrine or Pseudo-ephedrine
Iodine
Red Phosphorus
Ether
Hydrochloric Acid
Sodium Hydroxide
Methanol
EQUIPMENT:
Jars with lids, Coffee filters, Eyedropper, Glass dish, Funnel, Balls—the stupid-brave kind
TO START:
Even at the very beginning I was always on a horse and I was a barrel rider in the rodeo and it might sound cliché but my horse and I were one creature and we would explode wonder. From Montana originally but I came to Colorado for the Steamboat Springs Rodeo and met HIM and got a crush on HIM. I did my first line of meth when I was fifteen after I’d won a race and HE was a bronc rider and invited me into his truck.
Take Sudafed pills and wash them in the ether. Crush up the pills and put them into one jar. Then put in the methanol and shake for twenty minutes. Let it settle and separate, which means that the pseudoephedrine part floats on the top and the wax and crap from the pills sinks to the bottom. Like how cream rises, or milk sinks, depending on how you look at it. I was going to go to the University of Wyoming and become a lawyer because they have a good law school, and so it was four years ago when that clusterfuck dream evaporated. Sometimes I can still see the mist.
I had nice parents and a nice brother on a nice ranch with nice horses so there is no excuse for this separation. (Who I am now rose to the top. Who I could have been sank to the bottom. Even I can see that. Crank does not make you stupid.) So: Separate. Then put one of the coffee filters into a funnel and hold the funnel over the glass dish. Pour the separated mixture into the dish. I used to cook with my mom of course, mainly oatmeal cookies and devil’s food cakes and so on. She had a lot of recipe cards. She was a hippie ranchwife and I do believe she was actually happy. I use an oven, not a hair dryer. It blows my mind. Happy.
Obviously the fumes from this are gonna make you sick. So wear a painter’s mask and go to the mirror and see how devil-crazy you look because it’s fucking hilarious. Remember how you used to look in the mirror and your mom would stand behind you and curl your dirty-blond thin mousy hair and how, with enough work and hairspray and love, could make it full and beautiful.
Me and HIM live in a trailer high up in the mountains which is of course ideal and if we drive twenty minutes down a dirt road there is one small grocery store and one restaurant and one post office and one vet clinic and one volunteer fire department. I have a cousin who lives down in the trailer park by Moon’s. But I like it up high on the mountain.
At first I did meth just before races. Because I could do anything and I would win. Then I started cooking with HIM. I am never not high. But I am never high enough. A never in both directions means I am fucked and my life has been a recipe on how to ruin perfectly good ingredients.
At the rodeo I used to fly around the barrels on Alma, my quarter horse. She was beautiful and frankly I was too. I would fly and fly and fly. Now I’m bruised from the needles and not the horse. If I am not cooking on my stove, I am shopping for ingredients. Violet’s Grocery which is on this mountain and thus is not the place to go unless for the occasional Sudafed or coffee filters. We get iodine from the vet. But we have to go all the way off the mountain and into town for the rest, and the law is in town. I hate that. Because while this mountain is safe, the rest of the world is not, a fact that is proved to me each day when I watch the birds—I love bird-watching, my mom knows them all—the crossbill and black-capped chickadees, the broad-tailed hummingbird, the yellow warbler, the yellow-rumped warbler, and the slate-colored junco, and the saw-whet owl, and the wild turkey, and the goshawk, and the nighthawk. If birds like that can fly (like I used to fly on Alma) and choose to live here, well, then I believe that this is a safe place to be.
HE shake shake shakes me sometimes and I hate the way he treats his dog, our dog, though he always says to me, Dandelion, get the fuck away, it’s my fucking dog, my dog not your dog, I can do what I want. I’m in charge here!
I told him: Please take a look at your ego and your humanity. One is too big and one is too small.
Once you have the pseudoephedrine all by itself, add it to another jar with iodine and red phosphorous and hydrochloric acid. Screw the lid on and shake the hell out of it. This is how you get your exercise, har har har.
HE sometimes leaves me for days with no food, car, phone. Just me and the dog. Still I’m never high enough. Once I was scared. I thought I had overdosed because I began bleeding out of my vagina everywhere. It would not stop. I ran past him and I drove myself to the doctor. It took forty-five minutes to drive down there, into town. I thought maybe I should call my mom and at least tell her I was in Colorado. I also thought about stopping at the veterinary guy’s clinic; after all, that guy, Sy, he knew more about being kind to people than most people doctors. But something about it made me ashamed. I’d seen him, once, out in the meadow beneath Blue Moon Mountain, and he was making cairns, all sorts of little cairns on the streambank, putting the darker rocks and the whiter rocks together just so, so that it was pure art, and I thought maybe he was calling to me: Be beautiful. So I couldn’t stop by the clinic, since clearly, in my state of blood and mess and general life, I was not.
It turns out, the miscarriage I didn’t even know about, which was months before, was not fully finished. I didn’t die so I didn’t call my mom. I miss Alma more than I miss my mom and there is no reason for that whatsoever other than I am a fuck. I did ask for birth control, so you can see that perhaps there is a tinge of goodness not separated from me yet.
I didn’t die, but Sy did, which makes his call somehow stronger. It echoes in my ears. I swear to god, he’s talking to me: Dandelion, be beautiful.
I do keep lists of the birds. Crack. Explosion. Ka-POW.
So let it sit for half an hour. Then open it back up, try not to breathe the fumes. Add in the sodium hydroxide. Now gently swirl it until it gets cloudy. This means the chemicals are reacting off each other. Then screw the lid back on, shake it for another ten minutes. Look for a middle layer in the jar.
Normal people do not look out the window to see deer and elk and think they might be spies. I saw a fucking bear once, no joke, but she is no spy. Too wild and beautiful. That was right before the blizzard hit. I hope she found a den in time.
You may think I am the devil, but I’m not. The devil has power, and I have none. Well. Consider this: I am giving you the power to fuck up your life by giving you this recipe. And like the devil, I am my own antagonist. And like the devil, I still have a soul.
Go in with the eyedropper. Be gentle, as if with a baby. Start taking the middle layer. Don’t get the bottom layer. Fill up the third jar with water and drop in ten drops of hydrochloric acid. The bottom layer is what you want to keep. Evaporate it by heating, which leaves behind crystals. Some people call this the c
old cook method and I call it “how to make a devil method.”
Remember that all the stuff can’t be left where the sheriff or one of the neighbors can find it. You can go to jail just for having the ingredients. You would think I might care about explosions. You might think, Oh, this stuff might blow up, in a minute I’ll be dead, and I should have called my mom and asked about my horse. But oh well.
I am going to live on this mountain forever (which probably won’t be that long, even I can see that) because it is fucking beautiful and even though I don’t know anybody I still know them the way we know people in our periphery. All kinds of crazies up here. The bald conspiracy theorist; he owns this trailer. His neighbor, a lady ranch hand who seems agoraphobic like me, but who is sweet on that horse of hers when she’s out checking cattle. Violet at the grocery with the big smile. Joe and Gretchen, the lovers. The handsome vet-tech dude who doesn’t like selling me iodine. My cousin whom I don’t know, a woman named Flannery who moved into the trailer park because it’s cheap and who emailed me about getting together—weren’t we relatives after all?—but I never responded because I want to be left alone, I want her to live some good healthy life, and I want to waste away by myself just watching the people who live up here, because they mostly do have good souls. Souls that have not evaporated.
Evaporated souls sometimes get caught in purgatory, but sometimes they get caught in the first circle of hell. Which is where I am. You can’t break past the barrier and move up once you’re caught.
My name is Dandelion, because my parents made love in a field of them. They’d been hiking, individually, in Montana, and both had stopped for lunch and to make cairns on a large boulder field, stacking rocks to show themselves and others the way. They saw each other doing that, and spoke of cairns and directions, and then fell in love. I was conceived the next morning in a meadow. I too was supposed to show them the way, which, they said, I did.
The Blue Hour Page 7