Tallie had been listening quietly all this time. “But what about your adviser? You said he was a ghost. What happened to him?”
In late spring of my sophomore year, Leadbetter asked me to accompany him on the final ground-truthing phase of his prairie dog study. I was honored to be a part of the expedition; and it was indeed memorable, probably the high point of my university education.
Outfitted and led by Olsen, the three of us spent that entire summer in the field. We made extended forays into Colorado’s high valleys and wilds that are the last bastions of the prairie dog. We started in the San Luis Valley, then moved around the state. This included sweeps through South Park and North Park during which we gathered many samples and catalogued a dozen previously unknown prairie dog towns. In August we moved west into the White River country. The White is one of the main tributaries of the Colorado.
The summer passed in what you could call idyllic splendor. In mid-September we completed the last of the fieldwork during a two-week trip, more like a working vacation, through southwestern Colorado. Most of the time we were within sight of the San Juan Mountains. There was plenty of time to catch some trophy-size trout.
The summer ended on that high note, after which we moved indoors. The project continued on campus in the zoology lab located in the Agriculture Building. There were fresh specimens to be mounted, a thousand photographs to be sorted and collated, a mountain of raw data to be analyzed.
Most days I assisted a graduate student named Jeff Sherwood, brought in from the physics department to do the statistical work and develop a mathematical model.
But even before the number crunching was done, we knew the results would bear out Leadbetter’s preliminary assessment of the status of the prairie dog in the state. No mistake, all three varieties were in a steep decline throughout their range after a century of human depredations. Ranchers and farmers regard prairie dogs as a nuisance. The use of poison is widespread and has been for many years. Urgent steps were needed to protect the last strongholds.
How well I recall those last days. Leadbetter was at his ebullient best. The journal Nature had commissioned a feature article about the threatened prairie dog for its upcoming January issue, set to run with a color photo centerfold. The publisher had sent word that a close-up shot of a prairie dog would even grace the cover. Several other scientific papers were also in various stages of completion, slated for various zoological journals.
I had never seen my adviser in higher spirits as he fussed over loose ends and busied himself with the write ups, that is, when he wasn’t delivering one of his brilliant lectures on vertebrate paleontology. Leadbetter had a following on campus. His classes were usually attended by standing-room-only crowds.
On the 14th of November, I will never forget, I dined with Leadbetter and his attractive wife, Henrietta, who treated me like family. After dinner, over coffee, the professor and I discussed my Master’s thesis. I was still an undergraduate, but he had often encouraged me to plan ahead. Leadbetter’s enthusiasm for science was contagious, and that evening he wanted to know if I was ready to submit a formal proposal to the faculty committee, which was scheduled to meet the very next day. I was thrilled. Imagine my surprise. It was one of the most exciting moments of my life.
However, when I arrived in the morning at eight sharp, briefcase in hand, I found Leadbetter’s office cordoned off with yellow ribbons, as if the place was a crime scene. Graduate students and faculty were milling about in the hallway. They looked dazed, as if in shock.
I waited until the cop by the door turned his back, then ducked into the inner sanctum. I was not prepared for what I found.
Earlier that morning a custodian had discovered Leadbetter in a pool of his own blood. On the desk was a suicide note that explained nothing. On the floor – an empty revolver. He had fired one bullet.
The question that arose in my mind at that time still haunts me, for I have never answered it. Why would a man at the summit of his career, a man with everything to live for, put a .38 in his mouth and splatter his brains across the green pastel wall of his office? Why?
It was the beginning of the end of my academic studies. Something had fundamentally changed and there was no going back. The loss of my mentor, the professor whom I most respected, plunged me into a life crisis unlike anything I’d ever known. A crisis of faith.
The day of the funeral, I flung my thesis proposal into the trashcan. I was done with all of that. Zoology now seemed so pointless. The next two years was a time of darkness. At times, I felt I was losing it. I changed my major to philosophy and began the search that still preoccupies me.
Next to the grim finality of death, life seemed so fragile and illusory. How could anything so tenuous have real significance? How could anything so fleeting have meaning? And if life has neither significance nor meaning, what then? Does nothing matter?”
TWENTY ONE
“Your letters never reached me,” she told him. “Florence and I have not spoken since the day I arrived in San Francisco, and showed up at her flat. We don’t talk anymore.” She described their heated row, after her erstwhile friend, strapped for cash, had sub-let the spare room that she supposedly had been saving for her. As a result of which, Tallie found herself on the street in a strange city with no lodging, almost no money, and no friends – a scary prospect. It was her first visit to the West coast and she did not even have a map of the city. The stress triggered one of her worst migraines ever. In her agony she did not know what to do and, almost blind with pain, lay down on a crowded sidewalk. It was rush hour, and people passed her by or stepped over her, until a woman named Jane came to her rescue. The woman who happened to be a nurse helped her up, and they limped to Jane’s nearby apartment where Tallie remained until the migraine ran its course. Somehow this kindness from a complete stranger was transformative. With Jane’s help, Tallie found a job in a local bookstore and a room near Golden Gate Park, and started a new life.
She soon learned to love San Francisco. By then, it was February. Spring was already underway. She was pleased to discover that the city was one big public garden; and soon developed the habit of going for long walks. She liked to climb the hills for the spectacular views of the city and the Bay. She loved the bracing ocean air and the pungent sea wrack; she even enjoyed the fog. Her neighborhood was bustling with young people. She met several artists and street musicians and began to go out and have fun. The city was loaded with great restaurants. There was live Jazz or Rock nearly every night. Take your pick. And she spent many hours exploring the city’s fine museums. But her favorite pastime was riding BART and the cable cars to the end of the line. Alone.
“No boyfriend?”
“Nu-huh. I needed to….figure things out.”
But she never answered his question, “Why didn’t you write sooner?”
Later that afternoon she took him out bareback riding on old Luther, a cream-colored Arabian stallion. Luther was one of Mary’s oldest stud horses, and her favorite. The twenty-three-year old stallion was half blind, but otherwise in excellent condition. Tallie led him by a rope hackamore as they went out the long drive. Tom opened the gate. They crossed the lane, passed through a second gate and headed for “the south forty.” Whereupon, Tallie grabbed a handful of mane and slipped up behind Luther’s withers like she’d been weaned in the saddle.
He was amazed, all the more so because of her slight frame. As he watched her ride old Luther he recalled what Mary had said, the previous evening. “Tallie? Ah, even as a child my niece had a natural seat. Spent her summers at the ranch, and most of her time around the horses. Rode before she could walk, usually bareback. Hated saddles as much as shoes and hardly ever used one. A born rider that niece of mine.”
As Tallie took Luther around the meadow at an easy canter he realized she was wholly in her element.
After the warm-up she nudged the horse and gave him rein. Luther needed little encouragement and flew around the meadow kicking up clods. After
two more laps she brought him up hard, reining him in at the last moment. Tallie slipped down effortlessly and handed him the rope.
“OK, partner, your turn. Remember, it’s balance, not grip. He’s ornery. If he lowers his head you pull up with the halter so he can’t buck. OK?”
“Right.”
“Tom, what did I say?”
“Balance you said, not grip. Pull him up.”
“I’m telling you, he can be ornery. Watch his head. Use the halter. Pull it up fast and hard if he gives you any trouble.”
“No problem,” Tom said.
She formed a stirrup with her clasped hands to assist him. Luther was lathered up and game for more. Tom placed his left foot securely in her hands, then, grabbed a handful of mane. The other leg went up and over. But before he knew what was happening the hard ground came up and whacked him. He rolled over staring up at blue sky. The horse was nowhere to be seen.
“Whaaa?” Wuzzies danced around his head. It was only then he realized that the stallion had thrown him.
The blind old horse had shooed him off as if he were no more than a troublesome fly. Tom lifted his head into swirling mist and let it down again, easy-like. He pulled some grass out of his mouth, and coughed. Closing his eyes, he took a deep breath and lay very still. Things were still spinning. Finally, he sat up. The fog parted. Luther was grazing contentedly no more than fifteen feet away, the rope hackamore dragging loose on the ground. Now, came the biggest surprise. Tallie was standing over him smiling ear to ear, on the verge of busting out laughing. Her freckles had gone that silly shade of green, again. He was not amused. He snorted a sprig out of his nose. Light began to penetrate the clouds. She evidently felt a twinge of guilt, because suddenly she was cooing, all bothered and concerned.
“Oh! You poor thing,” she fretted in a soothing voice. She knelt down, brushing back loose hair from her face, and said earnestly, “Are you sure you’re OK? Geeze, Tom, I’m sorry. I should have warned you. Here.”
She helped him to his feet and steadied him as he stumbled about. His legs were rubbery. But no harm had been done. Nothing was broken. He was all in one piece, except for his ego.
To her credit she did manage to keep a straight face, but only just. It was her brown eyes gave her away. She had pushed her sunglasses up over her forehead. She could scarcely keep it in. “I just wanted to see if you could handle him.” Her attempt at a pout was pretty, but hard to take. That was when he noticed the green freckles going up and over the bridge of her cute little curled nose.
He found out later that due to an abusive incident, many years before, old Luther harbored a deep grudge against men. The stallion had not been successfully ridden nor even mounted by a man in more than ten years. She might be slender, lost in a dress, just a slip of a thing, but Tallie was no less the pure bred article. Any woman with buck like that would make a man proud one day, if he could manage to stay in the saddle.
“Tallie,” he said. But he never got the rest of it out.
“I want to show you something.”
“Show me? What?”
“One of my favorite places.”
He mumbled something incoherent. “I’m not sure if…uh.” She had mounted Luther and now extended her hand.
“Oh come on…”
“Not a chance. I’ll walk. You ride.”
“See, it’s perfectly safe. As long as I’m with you he won’t buck. Promise. Here. Give me your hand...”
“Well ... I don’t know.” He hesitated for a moment. “Oh, what the hell.” He took her hand and swung up. Luther appeared not even to notice.
Up they rode along a horse trail that followed an arroyo to the head of a wash. They dismounted in the shade of junipers for a cool drink at a clear water spring. Above the spring the trail grew steeper and they continued on foot. Tallie led the horse and Tom followed, through a forest of rough-barked Ponderosa pines that eventually opened into a small meadow. Sunlight was filtering into the glade through the surrounding trees. Now, they climbed through wild flowers and high grass. The air was filled with butterflies. The trail grew steeper. They walked through fragrant horsemint and wild iris.
Presently, a small shack came in view.
“Trail’s end,” she said. It was not a cabin proper, just a rough hut with tarpaper siding set on wooden piers. The place had a decent roof, though. Outside there was a block for splitting wood. She hobbled Luther and they went in.
It was a single room with the barest rudiments. For heat a small potbelly stove set on flagstones in the corner. An axe was propped against the wall. A pile of split wood lay neatly stacked behind the door. The double bed took up most of the room. Actually, it was just a faded old mattress on a makeshift frame at the level of the large picture window. The mattress was water-stained and leaked stuffing at one corner. The room had a musty smell. Along the north wall was a small table with two chairs that did not match. On the table was a vase-full of last year’s faded flowers, an ashtray with butts and roaches, and a small urn, the kind used for incense. Beside it lay a fragile line of ash. On the wall was a black and white photo of Janis Joplin, postmortem queen of the counter-culture. Janis had her hands on her knees and was smiling in full hippie regalia, strings of beads dangling from her neck. Tacked to the ceiling over the bed was a sagging poster of Jimi Hendrix, guitar in hand, frozen forever in mid-chord. On the dusty sill were stubs and partially burned candles of various lengths, one with a parted lip and a thick wax puddle at the base. A multi-sided crystal of cut glass hung by a thread, with a propensity to spin and cast its prismatic rainbow about the room.
The window commanded a terrific view of Trail Ridge fifteen miles to the northeast. A lazy fly buzzed against the windowpane. The only other noise was the sound of their breathing. They were winded from the climb. The look of Janis the erstwhile hippie queen said deja vu all over again.
Now she was beside him. Gently she brushed her ponytail back over her shoulder.
“Thanks,” he whispered.
“For what?”
“For coming.”
Her small hand found its way into his. When she kissed him his heart fluttered, before leaping out of his chest.
TWENTY TWO
Bright and early Monday morning a delegation from the Ancient Forest Rescue paid an unannounced visit to the logging camp in the Kawuneechee Valley. The green tide was a half-dozen strong and was led by Pinecone Peters. The visit was born of a new sense of urgency. The campaign to save Bowen Gulch was in danger of being overtaken by events. Time was running out. The delegation hoped to gain a reprieve. If even a few of the loggers could be persuaded to desist or delay…
Pinecone had learned about the camp through dumb luck, from one of the loggers, no less.
The ad hoc plan was to politely introduce themselves, then engage the residents in a rational discussion about ancient forests and especially the ecological need to preserve them. The arguments were cogent. The facts were science-based and were overwhelmingly on the side of preservation. With truth on their side, how could they fail?
Pinecone and his cohorts began knocking on camper doors and windows, going from one to another.
“Hello, there? Anyone home?”
But it was a ghost camp. The green team had no way of knowing that Jacques’ loggers were not due back from the long weekend until the following day. Far from being deterred, Pinecone and company did the next best thing. They began to disperse their literature freely, slipping activist fliers under doors and brochures into open windows. One young woman boldly peeked under the canvas flap of a wall tent. Finding it deserted, she left a neatly folded handbill on the cot, a personal touch. Pinecone was busily scotch-taping a flier to a camper door when Wolfe Withers suddenly appeared from around the back. Wolfe had his morning coffee in hand and was chewing the last of his buttered toast.
“What can I do you for?” he said in a deadpan voice, with no hint of emotion. Wolfe had on his perpetual scowl. His face conveyed a challenge, unambig
uous and emphatic. A wintry gust passed over the activists standing behind Pinecone who nervously looked at one another as if searching for consensus about how to proceed.
Pinecone stepped forward. “Good morning, sir,” he said with a pleasant smile. He handed Wolfe one of the handbills. “We are with the Ancient Forest Rescue and we … uh … were hoping to chat. That is, if you don’t mind.” Wolfe gave no reply, only a cold stare. After a pause Pinecone continued. “We uh, understand that you are … uh … scheduled to start cutting in a few days. Up at Bowen Gulch, and we...”
Wolfe had taken the flier without a downward glance, his eyes boring straight ahead through Pinecone like a laser. Now, he one-handedly crumpled the flier into a wad, then, with a quick upward jerk of his wrist flung it back in Pinecone’s face. The wad had a low trajectory and bounced off the bridge of his nose. Bingo. The delegation winced. Pinecone was as startled as the rest. Caught off guard.
A gauntlet had been thrown.
It took Pinecone a second or two to get a grip, but in the end he handled his anger, and extended his hand as if to calm down the fast-developing situation. “Look, sir,” he said, “we don’t want any trouble…”
The words “sir” and “trouble” or rather, the thought-form of the words, electrified the air like a proleptic archetype.
Wolfe was in the habit of venting for fun and pleasure, usually on human punching bags. Although not a boozer he had been known to hit the bars just to stir up a fight. No special occasion was necessary. Any old excuse was cause enough, especially this unwelcome visit by these uninvited tree-huggers.
Wolfe took a step forward, swelled out his massive chest, and got on with it. “What say motherfuckers?” The big man had set his feet and now beckoned with his free hand.
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