Willow Wood Road: Lavender and Sage

by Micah Sherwood

  Micah stepped back looking at Mr. Dorsey, then turned and left for the barn and Dane, plopping sunglasses on his face to hide the redness from his waterworks. The afternoon sun was cruising in a downward spiral toward darkness, and Micah needed the night. Nighttime complimented his soul, eased his misery.

  They rode the horses at a canter, stopping periodically to let Puckers rest (a canter to a horse was a fast run for a small and short legged donkey). By sundown, they were at the first campsite where they tied the animals to a downed cottonwood tree. The train trestle and highway were to their east and the Canadian River was probably another ten miles further north. They made a fire in the same pit they used last April with the wood they had collected then. No one had camped here in the last two months.

  Once the fire was roaring, they pulled out their sleeping bags and their rations: jerky, hardtack and raisins for supper. Micah liked this simplicity; it seemed to match the tenor of his soul. Haze had disappeared on their journey to the campsite, but now he was wiggling his tail as he pranced near the firelight to sit between the boys. Micah pulled off a piece of the dry meat and tossed it to the coyote.

  There were lightning flashes toward the southeast which likely meant nothing. The high temperature that day did not get past 70° and it couldn’t be over 60° now, so a big storm was not very likely. Their camp was on a cliff above the normally dry arroyo, but the weather had been weird all week with rain almost daily, so the creek was running near to full, and it would not take much more moisture to put it into flood. But they were safe on the bluff.

  The friends had not said more than a dozen sentences since they left the ranch house, but their senses conveyed more than words. Micah looked at Dane, who was satisfied, contented and happy. He had moved beyond the pain his father caused him and the dislike he felt for his step-mother; he had grown and was finally unimpeded by these emotions. Micah was thankful, because Dane had been suffering, which was torture for the both of them.

  Their eyes met and Dane shook his head fore-and-back as he spoke, “You need to let your misery go too. I know that you are working through it, bringing something to closure; I can feel your torment.” He lay down on his sleeping bag, zipped himself in but continued to scrutinized his friend.

  “I watched you once when you were with Greg right before he left for Vietnam.” Dane was compelled to express himself. “Your eyes showed pain knowing he was leaving. You want to be Greg. That’s how I feel about you.” He turned over and went to sleep.

  Dane vocalizing his thoughts caused Micah to think. “Sometimes it’s necessary to voice what your soul is saying,” he reckoned. “It’s hard being a boy, to lock your needs and feelings away, to be strong and aloof all of the time. That’s why friends are important. Everyone needs people they can talk to, a person with whom he could be open and honest—just free to be. It’s amazing how much of yourself goes hidden, even from yourself.”

  Micah lay within the cocoon of his sleeping bag. The murky night sky, its low clouds tumbling with the wind, had a lemony luminescent glow projected from the city many miles away. The billowing mists hid the stars and the moon. “Bring something to a closure,” is what Dane had said a few minutes before. His brothers grasped that he had a problem but were unable to discern what it was. “How could they not know that this Harry thing is eating me?” He spoke quietly and privately. Everyone had some sort of mental scotoma when it came to the old foreman, and that made Micah feel very alone, vulnerable, and forced him to question his own sanity. But at least Cory knew. He understood absolutely that Harry was a threat, and this knowledge comforted Micah. But tonight he was safe, and he slept without dreams or whispers, and without jogging through the prairie in some kind of fugue-like marathon.

  When he awoke, the sun was rising, but the sky was still blanketed by clouds, and a delicate mist was falling. The fire was roaring. Dane had already watered the horses and led them to the green prairie grass that bordered the creek. Haze lay next to his feet watching. The young horseman lay back down and sucked in the sweet prairie air not wanting to rise and start the day. But he finally crawled out of his warm nest and pulled breakfast from his saddlebags: hardtack, milk made from powder, and pemmican. Poppi had shown him how to make the hardtack using flour, honey and water; and he brought a sack full of the bread for this excursion. The boys sat near the fire eating and thinking; not moving until the fire had consumed the wood, and the charcoal glowed a bright orange slowly fading and changing into ash. Micah grabbed a paper sack from the supply bag and went to the mushroom grove to collect a sack full of long, skinny fungi for later. Dane had shoveled dirt over the fire pit and made ready to leave.

  They approached the floodplain following along the foot of the escarpment heading northward; the creek was to their left and the Canadian lay before them. Eventually they came to the old Seabee camp with its abandoned and roofless buildings. Dead and windblown tumbleweeds were stacked inside the crumbling structures. The boys kept their distance because in the summer, the stone edifices would be a magnet for snakes.

  The rumble of 18-wheelers disturbed the birds even though the highway was a good three-quarters mile from where the boys stood. A covey of quail darted down a ravine chased by Haze. The boys looked toward the creek: the stream stopped its wild meander and darted toward the river straight as an arrow. This area was prone to flood, and only prairie grass covered the flatland. The creek lost the characteristics of an arroyo at this point. Its narrow gulch-like streambed became wide and ever flowing; the spring-fed water ran clear as glass and its muddy bottom was covered in ripple marks, its depth a fairly consistent ten or twelve inches. The river was two miles further north, but they needed to cross over to the west side of Amarillo Creek, so they walked their horses to the stream and commenced looking for the best place to ford.

  The area nearest to the river was studded with beds of quicksand. It was a well-known hazard for the local ranchers whose cows would mosey into the bog to get to water and then sink up to their bellies. Horses could be educated to find the “soft spots,” and when a trained horse approached a bad area, he would do a “two-step” to miss the quagmire. Jax and Styx were not trained for this.

  Quicksand is most often the location of natural springs, and Amarillo Creek at this point was fed by the sweet water that flowed out of the Ogallala Aquifer. Micah could not tell quicksand from the plain ole mud that filled the creek bed, so he took off his boots and stepped into the water slowly crossing to the opposite side. He did this several times and then took Pucker’s rope and off they went across the stream. Then he crossed back and grabbed Styx’s rein and the two boys and their horses traversed through the water, stopping in its center to let the animals drink. Haze returned with a dead quail but sat staring at the boys wanting to cross but apparently afraid of the flowing water. “Damn!” Micah cursed and then waded through the stream to fetch the wary coyote yearling that appeared to smile as he rode in the boy’s arms.

  They rode westward toward the rise of the Caprock and then turned north. A snake-like stream ran down the sandy riverbed of the Canadian, coursing from one side of the wide basin to the other, slowly cutting gorges and small box canyons in the high escarpment, which climbed several hundred feet above the plain. Its flat top was mostly inaccessible.

  Clan-Home faced the River on the southern cliffs of the Caprock overlooking a field surrounded by cottonwoods. A hundred yards west of this meadow lay a narrow box canyon, almost hidden by willowy trees, which was carved by running torrents of rainwater over millennia, deepening the chasm until its floor became nearly level with the flowing river. The boys tied their horses under a canopy of cottonwoods and made their way to this canyon; it was slender, barely wide enough for the boys to stand side-by-side; and it stayed this way for a good quarter-mile; its walls jutting upward. Looking skyward, all Micah could see was the gray moisture filled heavens framed by the walls of the chasm. A thousand warriors could be standing at the crest of the canyon walls and the boys
would never have known.

  Eventually the narrow and claustrophobic gulch gave way to a wider circular space with a pool of clear spring water bubbling up in its center. At the far end, a wall had collapsed which provided access, though difficult, to the top of the overhanging cliffs. The buckled wall was ancient and covered with dwarf mesquite and yucca. They started to climb, an exercise that required sure footedness and strong hands for grasping and clinging. Twenty feet from the top, a large crevice opened, and each boy had to shimmy himself up by pressing hands and feet on opposing sides of the fissure, slowly inching themselves upward until topping the escarpment. Looking down from the tabletop into the abyss, they stood amazed at their feat.

  Micah turned and looked across this small piece of the Caprock highland. It was bounded on two sides by canyons and formed an isosceles triangle with its south side forming the narrowest line, perhaps only fifty yards in width, which linked the two canyons and opened onto the limitless prairielands. The village, Clan-Home, once rested on this arrowhead-shaped space, protected on two sides by the precipitous drop to the plain below and opened to the greater flatlands on the south. It was both a good and bad place for the Antelope Clan’s heartland. Good because it was easily defended with only the southern flank of the village open to threat and bad because the people were penned in with nowhere to flee.

  Dane and Micah surveyed the piece of land as they walked to the center of the forgotten settlement. No one would ever have known that millennia ago a vibrant community lived here. The only remnant that endured was a depression in the earth that was once a water storage basin that sat near the center of the settlement. Dig down a yard or so and you would find a clay floor that stopped the water from leaching into the ground. And around the clay, the villagers placed head-sized stones carried from the base of the ridge.

  Both boys were lost in remembrances of their life lived in this very spot, memories that overshadowed their 1965 reality with the actuality of a distant past. They could see the family lodges, grass and earthen dwellings that surrounded the plaza, ten of them, one for each of the extended families. The ceremonial kiva, where the Antelope leaders met and the shaman interceded between the villagers and the totemic Elders, dominated the plaza. Perhaps 150 people lived in the village, and this was but one of the seven villages of the Antelope and Turtle Clans.

  Specters of children ran around the central plaza while young girls babysat and elderly grandmothers worked with their mano and matate grinding corn and making porridge. The aged shaman climbed the low dome of the kiva to educate and tell tales of the Western Lands for the adolescent boys to absorb, youths who would soon go into the prairie on their Dream-Cry to become men. This is where Micah and Dane sat in that long-ago time, their feet underneath them, bored out of their minds while listening to the scary old nature-priest recite their history.

  The air quivered in the brightness of a summer sun over Clan-Home; the thermals formed dust devils that circled and danced and then condense into forms; and the two native boys stood facing their future selves, who in turn stared back from the water pit. Two sons of the Antelope Clan left the shaman’s lessons and walked toward the strange youths until they stood within feet of the visitors; four boys with a single soul instantly seeing a world from the others’ eyes; worlds that belonged to them in an esoteric way, incomprehensibly and inclusively.

  Dane and Micah watched the phantoms until they faded into nothingness. They were filled with both happiness and sorrow: happiness for the memories and sadness that the recollections were relics of a conscious past, a place and time they wished to live once again.

  “They aren’t dead,” Micah broke the silence. “Past, present and future are just words, synonyms for being.” He got up and headed toward the fissure for the descent to the canyon’s floor and to the restless horses awaiting their masters in the fertile meadow below. The field was covered with fine grass, and the horses were tied where they could get their fill of the tender greens. Timber was collected; a pit dug; a fire started; a supper eaten.

  As twilight morphed into darkness, Micah brought out the sack of magic mushrooms. Both boys lay together under the twinkling firmament. The clouds had broken, and it was clear and cool. The ‘shrooms intensified the night; an aurora of unimaginable colors danced through the stars with a voice that sounded like an orchestra performing a drawn-out symphony played in cut-time. Micah lay atop his sleeping bag, not watching the ‘shroom fed display but a participant in it. Golden glitter flittered down from the celestial show coating his head in a lustrous yellow pigment, and this was followed by the feeling of his falling into a great void while red and green stardust swirled out of nonexistence, circled around and then faded back to nothingness.

  Suddenly his physical-self evaporated. The bodiless boy became the wind, gliding through the jetstream surrounded by a thousand iridescent butterflies guiding him where he needed to go. Micah thought of Willow Wood, and there he stood upon the roof ridge peering at the smoke bellowing from the smelter in the Heights. The moment he looked at that grimy chimney, he was instantly transported to it, where he pranced and cavorted with his own sentient ghosts 400 feet in the air. The smoke roared as it fled the stack, which Micah stopped to contemplate as its snakelike grayness slithered into the star infested sky. It had an elegance, a gracefulness as it swirled and expanded forming an inverted pyramid in the heavens. Micah pondered and then jumped, but instead of hitting the ground, he landed upright at the foot of a bed where he studied its sleeping occupant; the fragrance of lilac and ozone filled the room. The person asleep jumped up and gazed directly at him. Lindy smiled and lay back down making Micah feel all warm and dissolute inside.

  The fantasy seem to last forever, but when morning climbed over the eastern hills, the friends were up refreshed and feeling real smooth. The air was sweet and the sun hot. The misty weather of the past week was finally spent and the universe covered the world in a radiant azure that seemed to intensify the earthy tones of the Caprock. They took their rifles and moseyed down to the river to watch the birds and to hunt the rabbits. They would bivouac another night at the river before heading home Monday morning.

  Dozens of rabbits hopped to the water’s edge, sniffing the air before scurrying off. By noon, the boys had bagged half a dozen critters for supper. It was tougher hunting with a .22, but both boys left their shotguns back at the barn. A higher caliber weapon would have splintered the small cottontails into a hundred pieces, but a .22 bullet to the head would remove the noggin almost completely without mangling the meat too much.

  They gutted the animals, used a couple of narrow branches as spits and skewered the dark meat to roast over the open fire. Dane was in charge of the meat while Micah made several trips down the box canyon to refill their canteens at the spring (Haze remained with Dane, interested more in the meat than in Micah).

  After supper, the youths returned to the stream, tossing their clothing aside and jumping into the cold water to wash and to play. The coyote followed them and decided to jump in and join them after watching the boys splash.

  They failed to notice the rider galloping in their direction. “You boys enjoying yourself?” Tom Dorsey rode high on Nellie and laughed as Micah and Dane jumped in surprise.

  “We are!” Micah answered. He studied the old man and saw the depth of his trust and love.

  “I got lonely and thought I’d ride out to meet you. I wasn’t sure I’d find you. You don’t mind do you?”

  “Course not,” Micah replied. We’re glad, only wish Tandy and Cory were here. It feels sort of wrong without them.”

  “Kindred spirits,” Tom mumbled silently.

  The boys got out of the water and sat on the soft green grass to let the great, hot sun dry them. Tom rode Nellie across the stream and led her to where the other horses were tethered. After a few minutes, the boys, now dry and clothed, returned to the campsite.

  There was a single rabbit leftover and Micah gave it to Mr. Dorsey along with some hardt
ack and raisins. Tom sat near to the dwindling fire next to the boys and started telling the stories of his youth: how he camped alone in this very spot pert near forty years earlier. He saw a paper sack lying on the ground an arm’s length away and grabbed it, looking inside, reaching in and pulling a couple of the mushrooms out.

  He first looked at Micah and then at Dane. “Experimenting? I figured those mushrooms that suddenly appeared at the creek back home were no accident.”

  Micah and Dane were not sure how to respond while they wondered where the old man’s knowledge came from. “Well you must-of experimented yourself since you know what they are,” Micah responded.

  “This conversation is not about me.” Tom retorted. “It’s about the habits of you two delinquents, or four delinquents, whichever.”

  Micah studied Tom, who was not irritated at them at all. “We aren’t stupid. We don’t trip often. It’s not a habit.”

  “When I was a kid, I had an Indian friend who showed me the magic in those mushrooms. I didn’t go sailing often, and it never hurt me. Promise that you will control it and you’ll never do it alone. It may not be habit forming, but it might cause a psychological dependence. I don’t want that to happen. Plus if you get caught by the law, you’ll have a very bad mark against you which could haunt you forever.”

  “We’ll quit if you want. It’s not important. If you’re uncomfortable, we can stop.” Micah knew that Tom was not truly upset. “Let me get rid of these,” and he pulled out the remaining ‘shrooms and stuffed them in his mouth and smiled. “All gone!”