by Lloyd Zimpel
Chief, having listened to Duwayne, wheeled his pony toward the herd and disappeared.
Cobb, too, was heading back toward the herd. “Wait a minute,” Duwayne called. “What we gonna do with him?”
“Goddamn it,” yelled Cobb over his shoulder, “if he’s drunk, he ain’t gonna get paid for today either!”
He was gone, and Duwayne started after him, but at that moment Chief reappeared out of the snow, towing a thin, high-legged horse, a gelding with more muscle and size than the others, and bearing a sign or two of a harness, tolerant of the hackamore Chief had on him.
“Okay, then,” said Chief. “Let’s go get that dumb fucker.”
But when they came to haul him groaning out of his pit, he was barely conscious. “Come on, Whiskey Boy,” said Chief, getting his shoulder under Harris’weight as if he had done this before; Duwayne held the gelding. “You can handle this bronc, fancy rider like you.”
“We gotta get his saddle,” Duwayne said; but wherever the storm had blown the old bay, it was out of their sight and Harris would have to go saddleless.
He flopped like a fish, but they hoisted him onto the anxious gelding’s slim back; he slid from side to side, the horse shying abortively in the deep drifts.
Chief said, “Shit, we’ll tie him on,” and used his rope to do so. They set out to catch the herd.
Snubbed across his unhappy mount’s back, Harris racked with convulsions, began to retch. Right on his tail, Duwayne was at first concerned and then disgusted. He’d never thought he would side with the boss, but as for some drunk getting paid, he could see Cobb’s point of view in this matter.
THROUGH THE BLOWING SNOW, the herd was never in sight, but its trail was plain. Some of Big John’s fine specimens might have gone through the ice or strolled off into the storm, but a sufficient number remained to leave a filthy, churned-up track, even as the falling snow worked to clean it up.
Before long, Chief stopped and, with Duwayne, checked on the condition of the third man in their crew.
“That rope might be cutting off the blood in his arm there,” said Duwayne. Chief shifted Harris and tied a couple of new knots. Harris was virtually lashed to the sorrel’s neck. The collar of his coat, vomited upon, had frozen to his cheeks, and Duwayne pried the cloth partly free.
“Don’t you pass out no more,” Chief said. “’Less you wanna fall and get your head stepped on.”
“He gotta be froze down to his ass,” said Duwayne, wonderingly.
“If he’s cold, he oughtta say so,” said Chief, kicking the gouts of snow off his pants and re-mounting. “He sure smells like shit, don’t ya, Whiskey Boy?”
“Where’s he from?” said Duwayne. “He got folks around here?”
“Couldn’t say,” said Chief. “Big John took him on at Quail Lake, I think.”
They were ready to turn back into the storm.
“You think that was poisoned whiskey?” Duwayne asked.
“Forty-rod hooch? said Chief. “You bet. Uncle of mine up around Mott used to mix up that shit. Traded it to the soldiers. Hell, he put in pepper, gunpowder, anything—a pinch of wolf bait. It didn’t have enough kick otherwise.”
“I had a little taste back there,” Duwayne said. “It didn’t seem so bad.”
“Didn’t, huh?” said Chief. “So you’re next.”
Heavy snow had almost filled in the herd’s trail; while it could still be seen, they plunged after it.
LATER, MAYBE MID-AFTERNOON, they saw Cobb again. Incredibly, the snow had picked up—where in hell was it all coming from?—and the wind came in at new angles as if seeking out one it hadn’t tried yet. It seemed to Duwayne to come out of some other country, far to the north.
Cobb had calmed a little. “I got ’em settled down up ahead,” he said. “There’s a little open spring and some bare ground. It’s all salt or mineral or something, but they put their noses right into it. We’ll let ’em be.”
He looked carefully at Harris, roped insensibly to the rangy horse’s neck, but said nothing to him. After handing Duwayne the food sack, he went back to keep tabs on “the leaders,” as he put it—which were horses Duwayne had never set eyes on. Leaders. He wondered what they looked like.
Chief threshed his way to Harris’ horse. “Hey, Mr. Whiskey Harold, you still alive?” He slapped him on his rear, untied the ropes, and when Harris slid off the horse, kept him halfway on his feet and asked, “How about a little whiskey drink right now, eh?”
“Drag him over here,” Duwayne called. He had kicked away or stamped down the snow in a wedge-shaped declivity beside a shoulder-high rock. It made a little corner out of the wind. Harris groaned as they lowered him into it.
But even down low, the wind whipped the snow around to sting like nettles. Duwayne retrieved the blanket and buffalo robe from Harris’ horse and tossed them to him, where they lay jumbled across his body, gathering snow. With some snatches of chaparral and dry bark he had saved, Duwayne got a sketchy fire burning with scant heat at Harris’ feet; the rock, much higher than their heads as they crouched, made a decent heat reflector. Chief, ranging nearby, stumbled over a sizeable cottonwood branch and dragged it in. He kicked the slabs of snow off it and said, “She’ll be good for all night, if we can get her started.”
With their backs against the wind and protecting the fire, Harris opposite, Duwayne and Chief rustled through the food sack, producing a sheet of dried deer meat and biscuits, a stub of frozen salt pork and a can of tomatoes, also frozen. Duwayne punched a hole in the can with his knife and leaned it with great care close to the little flame, which darted wildly in the wind. On the odd chance that he could get some snow boiling over this unreliable fire, Chief pulled a few paper twists of coffee from the bag and tucked them in his shirt pocket.
Duwayne did his best to wrap the blanket and robe around Harris who, mumbling a protest, did nothing to help; a dead and smelly weight. Having done what he could, Duwayne nudged Harris’ snow-caked boots closer to the fire, which had picked up a bit, but then wondered if that was right. If this guy was half as frozen as he looked, he was going to smart something awful when the thaw set in.
A HALF-FROZEN SUPPER in his belly, Duwayne went to untie his bedroll from his saddle, and it was then that Cobb came dashing up like a white phantom out of the snow-filled dark. His big mare threw up snow with her flexed forelegs, half burying the little fire, as Cobb pulled her up.
“Get on them horses right now!” he yelled. He’d reacquired his panic of the morning. “The bastards took off again!”
He sounded to Duwayne like an old woman yelling at her hogs, and he was pulling his poor mare all wrong; she missed stepping on Harris’ legs by inches.
“Christ Almighty,” said Chief. But he was first on his horse and headed out as confidently as if he knew what needed to be done to repair whatever ruin Cobb had brought. Now Cobb was right behind him, yelling back, “Hey you, Harold! You ain’t drawing wages to lay around no goddamned fire! Get your horse!”
Harris, under the snow, made no response.
Cobb was still hollering, now at Chief, far ahead, now at Duwayne, beside him. “They headed south, the whole Goddamn bunch!” Duwayne looked to where he pointed, thinking, well, that might be south; how was a man to know in this shitty storm?
“We gonna head ’em off,” yelled Cobb. “C’mon, you follow me.” His mare plunged into the obscuring snow.
Duwayne set his pony to follow. The fire had barely started to warm him, and now his cheeks burned again with the cold. He’d taken the food bag and stuffed it into his oilcloth saddle pouch before he realized he’d left nothing for Harold. And now he had to hurry forward to keep from losing Cobb and Chief. But he would come back here soon, or someone would, to get Harold. He tried to fix this spot in his mind, but it was all snow—a big rock, and blowing snow.
Wintry Silence, and a Sudden Moth
1888
FEB. 3. An horrendous few weeks, in every regard; first this dire weather, whic
h began when? It was an ordinary winter until Harris vanished, as if he took with him what benevolence the season might vouchsafe to offer; thus we sit girdled in a dark and wrathful freeze. The poet knows—
. . . cruelest Winter’s iron jaws
lock down so tight the tendons sing . . .
How many of our neighbors are done in by this storm? Desperate Burger and his skinny boy thresh up, hauling themselves over one mountainous drift after another all the way from Yorby, seeking forty lost head of beef; their trek fruitless. . . . And I learn today from our good Sheriff Pfeiffer—who comes sliding up on what can only be called a royal toboggan—that Burger’s stock was all jammed into a fence corner on his own land, the lot visible from the roof of his own house, had the snow been six feet less.
We have more to be thankful for than does Burger; as Otto and the boys, yeomen all, by hand drag armloads of hay across the drifts where our cattle flounder; and chop free those fastened to the ice by the heat of their muzzles. A loss, of course, but a negligible one, next to the disasters around us; and at the first hint of a thaw, we will retrieve those dozens gone, for their hides, and whatever frozen parts are still good for the table or other use—this last a circumspect business: not everyone believes frozen beef is good beef. . . .
So brief is the Sheriff’s visit that I wonder why he bothers: he has only a single question: What word is there from Harris? We know our duty to report such, do we not?
Emil, say I. There is nothing here but storm upon storm. In two weeks, before you, I have seen only one man.
Not as if to pry, says Pfeiffer, but who would that be?
Burger, say I, and so I learn of Burger’s discovery so close to his own home—and also of another catastrophe: the little Erickson girl. Her teacher, hoping to fetch the little girl home at noon, in the worst of it, got no farther than Gantz’s place—not that it is visible in the solid white surrounding; but in his haystack, the teacher burrowed a cave. It was not enough.
No way to keep the little girl warm, said Emil. Froze her own feet off too, looks like.
Erickson’s little girl? say I. Damn the luck of that! I saw her once or twice—pretty white hair, all curls. . . . Damn. . . . We will send something over there.
Yes, yes, says Emil. That would be good. They are in terrible shape over there. And others too, Goddamn it!. . . . But listen, Gerhardt, you would tell me if you heard from Harris, eh?
Emil, say I with force, I have heard nothing but the damn blasted wind, and I have had enough of that; and now you add to it.
Emil waves his hand. It will get better, he says.
You tell me when, say I; and sign your name to it; but he is gone off on his fancy toboggan in a cloud of steam from his overheated pony.
Otto, who is always listening, says: Well,there is Beidermann’s hay; let him buy up what Burger does not need anymore.
THE TWINS ARE in a fit of concern, with something only now discovered: the little Jersey, a pet of the two for her soulful eyes, and tended and milked only by them—they drank her warm milk—half-cream, it seemed, unless Otto or one of the other boys saw them at it—having sought out the lea of the barn in the storm, enough out of it so her warm bag melted the snow it touched; and when the temperature plummeted in an hour to turn the world into ice, well there she was caught, cruelly tethered to the ice by her frozen udder. The twins chopped her free; but no matter. At supper, Otto looks at me over the ham hocks and string beans and shakes his head:She’s a goner, he says. So the damage has been done; she will not be milked again, should she live.
FEB. 5. So cold it is that we scarcely leave the house, except to bring in stalks and hay twists to feed our pale fire. . . .
Ma has solved her annual problem of where to store her sauerkraut crocks—the root cellar, although having room, being too cold—by having the twins haul the huge jugs up the stairs to the bedroom of Henry, Cornelius, and Harris, there being space under the window on Harris’ side; and for all they appreciate a spicy hank of the vegetable on their supper plates, Cornelius and Henry look askance at the three big crocks, for they do produce a scent, and take up more room than Harris.
We will move them out, says Ma, once Harris is back.
So that ends their grumbling; and now, to accompany their snores, they have the frequent plop of a gaseous bubble, from under the window.
FEB. 6. Rain follows the plow, the pretty little catalogues from the railroad have trumpeted for years now: indeed, it is almost biblical: Yea, Rain doth Follow the Plow. And behind that promise from the Eastern companies come the greenhorns; who flock in still, holding out their cups for a drink of rain. And go dry; as one old boy white-washed letters on the side of his wagon as he headed east: Bust in Dakota, No Rain.
But there is something that follows the plow—and that is snow. It follows not only the plow but most everything; for sure, it follows the Praeger family. Where we look is all snow. In some winters paths blow open across stubbly fields, where a man could almost stroll in his slippers; but not this winter: even Gulliver in hip boots could not easily cross these brutal drifts. The prudent man stays in his house. . . .
And yet, through and across, into and out of, up and over the corrugations of this barren landscape, there thresh the twins; they haul their last load of our hay to their friend and mentor; and the horses pitch into the drifts at their shouts.
Shaking his head, Otto watches them plow off. If they hurt that team . . . he says; and walks to the barn, kicking gouts of snow out of his way in the head-high chute the boys shovel daily to keep clear, against the wind.
FEB. 8. There is less to say, surely less to set down here; and less to say aloud for us all. At breakfast, dinner, supper, it is mostly silence; perhaps as we speak less we think less too, having shut out painful ideas. . . .
Harris: his name goes unspoken; but perhaps conveyed in a way of looking—certainly from Ma. Beidermann too, another name unspoken, but for the twins, and they have a code.
Thus we push through the confinement of each cold day, with essential matters gone unuttered. It is not impossible to do this: it is easier, for it provides a queer tranquility, which fastens to the season, as the poet knows:
. . . the silences of winter.
FEB. 10. I look at what last I wrote: yes, the silences—indeed, the hush—of winter. The hush in this household, a moldering hush: a dire hush laid upon the human hearts of an old man and his family who must answer for a truant dog-poisoner and barn-burner. No one can say it aloud, and we are sorrowfully limited now in what we say and to whom we say it. Can we talk to Beidermann, then? Or do we bid for membership in that confraternity of our neighbors who live their lives as they regard each other in mutual and contemptuous silence? Many here have got themselves into that fix: the Bells and Gruntvigs; the Placertons and Peckners; and famously the Foss and Gustavson families—not a word spoken between them for two decades, the early disagreement forgotten—and we have one of the Foss boys marry the oldest Gustavson girl; they move to Montana, promptly; with those left behind maintaining full silence. . . . On an afternoon, a year or two back, our business done, I talk with Schwantz in the doorway of his store; and he pokes my shoulder, pointing up the road and saying: Watch this now.
It is old man Foss approaching from the east; and then Schwantz motions down the road: old man Gustavson strides at us from the same side.
Now, says Schwantz, as pleased as if this is a display he has been at pains to arrange: watch this fancy footwork; as the two men, each taking note of the other at the same time, haul up sharply; and Foss, quickest of the two, makes a neat two-step across the road as if that was his intention all along, for all that only a vacancy of weeds and sunflowers awaited him.
Schwantz chuckled. Hey, he says, better than if they are shooting at each other, eh?
And now I unhappily foresee years of the Praegers and Mister Beidermann and his progeny, should any occur, fancily sidestepping each other on the icy byways of Skiles . . .
. .
.
FEB. 13. It approaches midnight; and having fed the last handy twist of straw to the kitchen stove, and having studied the dying coals through the crack of the door, I will pause at this ledger, and perhaps more than pause. How long can we live this frigid life, each day more icily daunting than the one before? It takes all heart from a man, this bleak and harsh season. . . . What follows the plow? Snow follows the plow, and follows . . . and follows . . . and follows. . . .
What is there to write, then? The cold causes the pen to slip, my fingers little warmed for being tucked into my armpits, however well that strategy suits the twins, whose mittens sprout holes as fast as Ma darns them over. . . .
Yet into this piercing air comes a moth, a ragged, worn-out creature in a foredoomed struggle around my lamp chimney, where it knocks itself dizzy in a frenzy to what?—escape Ma’s cedar chips? To find a passage to more benign territory? But it bangs around, losing dust from its tattered wings, hastening its end.
INTER-LEAF
IT WAS SOMETHING BLACK up ahead, a half-mile off, along that snow-covered incline running north off the old freight road along which Corporal Doggett and his detail plowed their way. Hard to tell what; maybe it wasn’t even alive; it didn’t move. Near it was a big rock, almost buried in snow.
“Hey,” Doggett yelled back to the kid on the horse behind him, who was wrapped in a blanket to make a hood over his head, out of which came the steam of his breath. He looked not at all soldierly, and indeed, out of the four rug-and-blanket enfolded privates who trailed the Corporal, Doggett alone, with his upright bearing and official great-coat—and the three pack mules with U.S. Army branded on their rears—betrayed the military nature of the group.