I know it. You’re the only one I’ll mention it to.
Perhaps I could take you to that place. The Mayo Clinic. Just check you in and not let them get rid of you till they help. You don’t look so good.
I feel old. I feel about a hundred years older than I am. A lifelong bout with insomnia and pain will do that to a man.
But it seems they can fix most everything else.
There’s not much to be done. There’s a surgery on the brain. But it often doesn’t work, and besides, the gods advised me against it. I’m tired. Somehow this life wore me out. But you know what? All the hours we leave behind are so ordinary. You ever consider that? All those dishes washed, all those miles driven, all the cattle fed, all the cats saved. Ordinary but not unloved. I have loved my life so much. He looked at me and his eyes flickered, from dull to just-barely-coming-alive again. You know that, right? I love life so much.
I’m not ashamed to tell you that now that the fire is going, I am weeping. Openly, and not quietly. Thinking of him saying that. And for all kinds of other reasons. Although I consider myself a good man, I often feel I’ve made a mess of it. I feel like I’ve made a mess of it when Violet cries or when my daughter sasses me in her teenage way, or, even worse, ignores me altogether, as if we haven’t gone through life together in the most intimate of ways, me changing her diaper and putting food in her mouth and teaching her to fish and to cook that fish, as if we were now only strangers. I feel I’ve made a mess of it when I lose my temper, which happens from time to time. I feel a mess when my friend kills himself, when I see my neighbors suffering in their own various ways, when I see a deer hit on the side of the road. I feel like I’ve made a mess of it and all I want, with this fire, is maybe the seed of an idea that maybe I’ll get a chance to do it right. Or do it better. Because it seems that life is like this: This will happen and then this will happen and then I become an old man and this will happen and then this and then poof. It’s over. And did I do it right enough?
Did I?
Did I?
Fire eats even ice. The flames are licking it now. Once in a while the whole fire tilts, or sinks, as it falls into a new layer. It tries to go out on the edges, but I add the hay, the dried tinder, and it reluctantly flares up again.
I can’t see it, but underneath the fire, Sy’s blood must be melting. Turning to liquid. Evaporating or sinking into the earth, I don’t know. No longer frozen tight, tense and bound up, just like the look I saw on his face that day of hunting, the day he collapsed. I want him to be free. I want my own heart to forgive him. For doing this to us and our meadow. I want to forgive myself, too. What a gift that would be.
Let it go, let it go. I hear him saying it to me now. Tell everyone to let it go.
The ache of my sorrow. I can hear it pounding hard inside my ears. I imagine Sy alone out here on that last moment, gun held to head, the snow coming down fierce, the dark of night. The fire pops one very loud shot, taking a big bite out of dry wood.
So let me tell you about this meadow. I see two figures in it now, walking toward me, bundled up and without snowshoes, which means occasionally one of them sinks to the knee when the layer of ice at the top doesn’t hold.
Violet, hair pulled back in a gray ponytail, Korina, hair pulled back in a shiny brown ponytail, both without hats, for heaven’s sake, and I watch them like they are a mirage, not real, and I assume that is the case, in fact, until Violet walks up and hugs me, her body solid and human. She says, Ollie. How are you?
Better. Some better, not much better.
She looks at the fire. We thought we’d come see if you wanted company.
Korina is staring at her feet. Or the fire. But she looks up, meets my eyes. Hey, Dad.
I gently put on the last log and stand up. I appreciate it.
Korina clears her throat. I love you, Dad.
I look at her: long hair with just a touch of curl to it, both in her bangs and the ponytail hanging over her shoulder, and her youth and beauty, her freckled nose, and best of all, her face isn’t closed up, like it sometimes is. It’s open and young and true. She walks over and takes my hand and holds it, just natural, like she did when she was eight, and I close my eyes and let the tears drip and tell myself not to forget this, my daughter holding my hand, her skin on mine, to remember the sheer joy of this moment when I myself am dying, whenever that might be, I want this memory.
I feel like I’m standing at the edge of a precipice, the kind I’ve not known in years, and I have perhaps forgotten what it is like to have so much at stake. Oh, Korina. Oh, Violet. Oh, Blue Moon. Oh, meadow.
I reach out my other hand, so that Violet takes it, and I turn us all around. The fire cracks even as we turn away from it and start walking the other way. It will burn itself out, now, just like he did.
We walk and stumble and walk and stumble, and I wonder how we must look from above, a group of us, parting a snowy sea. In front of us, the crystals sparkle from whiteness of snow, crackles of small bits of color, which is how, I’m supposing, our lives must appear to god.
Chapter Thirteen
Smoke’s Way
The snow was rotten. Much of the time, Wyn’s feet sunk, snowshoe and all, especially her left one since that was on the downward-facing-slope side most of the time. Though there were switchbacks, the bear den was far to the south, and so the climb was not only three thousand feet but to the south by several miles. Her left hip was roaring. It was just dawning on her that this wasn’t the sort of injury that would require a few days of soreness, but the other kind, the kind that would require a broad expanse of time to heal, perhaps more than a lifetime.
The mood was rotten too. It had started out sweet, with early-morning bursts of banter when the group had left the parking lot in the dark, right before sunrise, but the situation was fucked. Snowshoes were not supposed to sink, that was the point of snowshoes, and the world was too warm, snow this time of year should be frozen, and it was only noon and they had at least another hour to go, and so on, and all Wyn could think was, This is not Paris.
Someone up ahead stopped to adjust straps, so Sergio turned around. “It’s not Par-is. Just Ursus american-us. I’ve been making a little ditty out of it in my head. Rhymes, you see.” He swiped the snot off his face with his arm. There was already a layer of salt right at his hairline, something she knew would expand as the day went on. She’d never known anyone who sweated so much; he drank electrolyte powder all day to keep himself going. She first noticed it during the one August month years ago when they’d been lovers, and seeing it on his jawline always reminded her of the way he looked when he orgasmed, his lips pulled back, like a bear. She’d never told him that, that he looked so oddly animal, so salty.
She swooped her arm out at the treed mountainside, as if to say, I have this view, don’t I?
He looked at her, unconvinced. Perhaps aware how close she was to tears, he said, “I’m really sorry. It’s not December in Paris. But at least it’s out here, in the wild.”
She tried to smile. It was the least one human could do for another.
“The bear will be great. We know she’s up there. Been quiet and sleeping for a few weeks now. The two yearlings, not so sure, they were never collared.”
She nodded and tried out her voice: “An adventure is an adventure.”
“Cutting off the GPS collar will be the boring part. But—oh, just seeing her, Wyn—that’s the part you came for. Hang in there.”
“And I can climb in? Thanks for letting me come, Sergio. Really, I mean that.”
The others were starting up again and so he turned back around and said over his shoulder, “Just don’t tell anyone. Or sue. Especially CPW.” He turned around briefly, caught her eye, started to say something, then stopped, then started again. “We didn’t expect this, for the snow to be rotten. It was already a push. Let me know if you’re not okay. You can turn back.” He looked close to tears himself; she supposed that they were
all close to their physical limit. The men were breaking trail, after all, and each of them had heavy equipment in their packs. Her pack was light, and she had the benefit of going last, but she was the oldest, and although she was in good shape, she was not in big-hefty-guy huge-thighs shape.
“Sorry, I should be more encouraging.” Sergio said this to the air in front of him, starting to move ahead now. “The bear will be great. Keep thinking of the bear. Touching the pads on her feet.”
Then they were off, the four of them in a single line, ducking their heads against the snow that whipped off the mountainside during the gusts. She raised her eyes, sometimes, to watch the men. She wondered if they too were focused on each footfall, if each of their steps was imbued with the expansive hope that the snow would hold their weight for this one, this one, this one.
It was so steep. Even the aspen trees looked as if they had a hard time hanging on, their trunks emerging from the snow and curving ninety degrees, upward to sunlight, and the four humans were not so different from those trees, Wyn thought, all leaning hard toward the mountain, trying to root there as well.
After a while, Sergio took front position, and Ruben took second, and then it was Kevin, the guy from Colorado Public Radio, the stranger, who was directly ahead of her. He looked like an insect, all that padded radio equipment poking out of his pack like antennae, jammed in alongside the avalanche shovel and beacon. It gave her something new to look at, but it didn’t distract her from the pain. Tears leaked down her face, and once in a while, she gathered the snot in the back of her throat and quietly hawked it to the side.
“I’m not sure we properly met.” Kevin addressed this to the air in front of him, but said it loud enough that she could hear. His voice broke the silence of the mountain, the swishing of their fabrics, the crunching of their snowshoes. “At least, it was hard to see you in the dark this morning.”
“Wyn,” she said to his back.
“What brings you out here?”
She didn’t want to answer, to add noise to the mountain, and she wasn’t sure she could keep her voice steady anyway. “Hemingway,” she finally said, and when he turned his head with a quizzical eyebrow that raised his woolen hat as well, she added, “As ridiculous as that sounds. It’s a long story.” They went on like that, long after even Ruben, the strongest of them, had started to slow significantly, had even dropped to his knees a time or two, and, once, had bowed his head in what looked like prayer, or perhaps a plea.
This difficulty, she told herself, was nothing compared to the evenings, the fight against another glass of whiskey or gin, which had everything to do with the fight against the old stupid belief of her life, which was that, in every life, some true and good and declarative romance would descend upon each person. This pain was not as bad as being alone, night after night, realizing the depth of untruthfulness of that mistaken belief, and that she’d let too much time slip by, been too picky, too selfish, too lazy, too indecisive, had let herself go smoke’s way, drifting along. It seemed unbelievable. It had simply taken her too long to realize that the door of love and family wouldn’t just open, that she was supposed to bang on that particular door more loudly. She hadn’t, and now it was too late.
“The reason I wanted to go to Paris, was because of Ernest. And Zelda and F. Scott,” she huffed when they cut to the right and stopped for a breather. “And Hadley Richardson, Hemingway’s first wife. And Pound and Gertrude.”
Kevin kept his eyes on Sergio and Ruben, who were farther up ahead, discussing something, but said to her, “To see their old haunts? Find remnants of the lost generation?”
“No. Because we are cowards now. Because they said things to one another. Real things that I don’t think we say to each other anymore.”
“Wouldn’t it be pretty to think so?”
She looked up at him, smiled.
He patted her on the coat. “Well, it might not be pretty. You’re romanticizing them, perhaps. Ruben is the vet, right? And Sergio is Parks and Wildlife.”
“Right.”
“And you?”
“Interested observer. And it’s my birthday.”
“You live down in town?”
She nodded. “In that little trailer park by the restaurant.” She wanted him to know that particular sorrow; that her poverty extended in all possible directions. Literal. Heart. Life. That besides this day, this hope of crawling into the den of the animal she believed to be most holy, that she had nothing of note to offer, share, or receive. She had missed her mark.
She took off her light blue cap and jammed it in her pocket. It was hot, now, the sun shining clear. “Grizzlies were gone in this part of the state by the thirties, you know. My great-granduncle was involved in the effort to save them.” She paused to catch her breath. “To convince people that they were not the bloodthirsty devils people thought they were. He was friends with Enos Mills, the Quaker who helped preserve Rocky Mountain National Park. They say he died of a broken heart, after the last grizzly was killed. My great-granduncle, that is. At least he had done something grand with his life.”
He clapped his hands to warm them. “Well, drinks on me, when we get back to town. For the bear, for the birthday, for him.”
A drink sounded like such a good idea. Drunk was what she wanted, how it would settle over her like a perfect glove of fog, how the pain in her hip would float away from her body like silk.
It was soon after that Sergio put his palm out to indicate that they stop, a finger to the lips, and then pointed them to a good place to take off their packs and hunker in against a small ledge. Wyn studied the topography, unconvinced. The mountain was the same as it had been for the last few hours. Then her eyes discerned it amid the trees and snow, a slant of outcropping of a rocky ledge that increased in size as it traveled across the mountain, and that somewhere, in there, was an enclave big enough to be a den.
She and Kevin snowshoed the last distance and removed their packs. In silence, they watched Ruben and Sergio, who had taken off their snowshoes and were shuffling sideways, hugging the ledge. They moved across it until they reached an area that was wider and flatter, and here they stopped, conferred, peered around a corner, squatted down, and started to remove equipment from their packs. It was hard to see what they were doing, hunched over and with all the coats and gear in the way, but she did see Ruben use his teeth to hold a syringe, use his armpit to warm a small bottle of what must be the tranquilizer, put together a pole, which she knew would be his way of reaching in the den to stab the bear. He’d told her bears could come at you, straight out of hibernation, at thirty miles per hour.
“This isn’t what I expected,” Kevin whispered. “I thought it would be a cave or something.” They were both sitting on a rock. Kevin had cleared of most of the snow, using his snowshoe as a shovel. He’d gotten his off easily, but she was fumbling with her straps, which were clotted with snow and thick with cold.
“It’s not like the cartoons. With the big roomy cave.” She kept her voice low. She had her snowshoes off now and was digging in her pack for the ibuprofen, trying to be quiet in her rustling around. “It’s generally a small snug place. There must be an indentation, a cubby of sorts over there.” But she had to agree—this rocky ridge was so insignificant looking that it simply didn’t seem grand enough for a bear.
“I’m exhausted. Look at this view.” He was standing, moving about for this view and that, and while she watched him, she stilled herself and felt something was tearing on the inside thigh of her left leg, that’s what it felt like, and it took her a moment to realize it was the cut. Perhaps it was peeling open. She peered down at her inner thigh, but no blood showed; but after all, there were lots of layers, the silk underwear, leggings, wind pants. What kind of adult still cut herself? She did. What a sad, sorry loser I am, and she closed her eyes against the view of her crotch, and the image of last week floated into her mind, home from the bar, having never bought the ticket to Paris that sh
e’d told everyone she was going to buy, and drunk, and angry she was drunk, angry she was alone, and she hated herself, hated herself, and yelling You are an alcoholic at the mirror, forcing herself to say it aloud for the first time, you fucking alcoholic bitch, you went smoke’s way, you drifted around, you’re just doing to yourself what Sy did, but slower, I hate him, I hate you, I hate hate hate and found the old cuts, both the very old, from when she was fourteen, and then those of ten years later, and added a new one to the last year, which is when she’d taken it up full-force again, a small punishment for a grand mistake. The grand mistake of not knocking on the door hard enough.
Kevin was still whispering. “That was an elevation gain of three thousand one hundred feet, putting us at eleven thousand five hundred feet above sea level. Right? I usually get headaches at about ten. I’m a Colorado native, too, but city boy. Which direction is town? I’m all turned around.”
She pointed north, to the highest white peak beside them, but he was already speaking into a small device, quietly. His voice was fluid and confident; it was a voice that had things to say and could be trusted. She heard the fragments of it . . . where several bears have been collared for a study . . . a study is being concluded . . . . I’m here with—. He paused and looked at her, clicked off his recording device. “Can I interview you?”
She was chewing almonds and had to swallow before she could answer. “No. I’m a nobody. I’m not really supposed to be here. I’m not official. Liability issues and all. Sergio just let me come because . . . I’m an old friend, and I’m not in Paris, and I’ll never go, and we all feel like breaking a few more rules these days, and he felt sorry for me.” She tilted her head at the men. “And it’s my birthday. Interview them. They’re the official ones.”
She had to pee—what a drag, so much trouble, with all the layers—and she was too tired to go far. She only walked so that she was behind him—and she could still hear fragments of his voice. A study conducted . . . state agencies . . . The results indicate that bears will return to their natural food sources when they are available. . . . Drought adversely affects bear habitat . . . climate change . . . that saying of “a fed bear is a dead bear” is not necessarily true . . .
The Blue Hour Page 14