by Margo Catts
There were, but my grandmother had plenty of experience in keeping them at bay. She had already made her way into the local history books as the last resident of Hat Creek, a gold mining outpost that grew and died within the span of thirty years. She had even been featured in a human interest story in the Rocky Mountain News a few years ago. The photo showed her in profile, leaning one shoulder against a porch post at her cabin and cradling a coffee mug in her hands. “Miriam Alvarez marks her seventieth birthday at her solitary mountain home,” read the caption. The article mentioned her husband, Eduardo, who died nearly twenty years earlier, and two children born and raised there: a daughter, Benencia, who had died as a teenager, and a son, my father, now living in California “with his family.” The last year-round residents had left decades earlier as gold mining ceased and wartime molybdenum mining drew them to Leadville.
My grandparents had gone as well, but every spring since my grandfather died, my grandmother would follow the retreating snow up to the valley just below timberline, her car loaded with flour and beans and canned ham and dried apples and bottled peaches. She would unlock the door to the old cabin, take down the sign advising hunters that the home was still occupied and to please look to any of the other structures for shelter, hook back the shutters, sweep out the mouse nests, air the blankets, and start a fire in the stove. Its wavering trail of smoke against the late-afternoon sky would be the signal that I was almost there.
Though my grandmother made the cabin her summer home, she made enough trips back and forth to Leadville that the road to Hat Creek stayed reasonably navigable. I drove with my chest close to the steering wheel, peering over the hood, easing the Pinto into each dip and around muddy spots, careful to avoid any rocks that threatened to scrape the oil pan. On the necessity of this my father had been quite fixed, standing on the curb yesterday morning, giving instructions with one arm folded across his chest and the other chopping the air to make … things … very … clear. I’d wondered briefly whether there might be a story or two to explain his stress on this point but didn’t really want the information badly enough to work or wait for it.
At last I eased through the center of Hat Creek, driving slowly to keep the dust down, passing between the abandoned shells of lives long gone. My grandmother had spun stories for me, though, bringing the silent town to life. To the left, Hamilton Brothers General Merchandise, the name still red, outlined in blue, on the false front where the boards had cupped and split. It had been run by a pair of Scottish brothers who slept on cots behind the counter for a decade before one got married to a large, loud woman, and the other left within a month with nothing but a suitcase.
To the right the saloon entrance gaped empty and dark between broken hinges, where identical twin brothers who had been secretly sharing a job at the mine surprised themselves and their coworkers by stumbling through it—one going in, one going out—at the same time.
Ahead lay the scattered logs of a cabin knocked over by a mule skinner who yanked the reins in the middle of an argument with the foreman about how much longer he could wait for a full load. My grandmother had told me the story more than once, each time demonstrating with her forearms the way the cabin had leaned over and lain down in the dirt: upright, lying down.
Beyond that, the road bent to the left at a rocky saddle and dropped out of sight on its way to the jumble of abandoned machinery and the locked gate of the old mine entrance. But my path lay in the other direction, up a track that bent to the right behind the schoolhouse, where my grandmother had shown me the marks children made against the doorsill to measure how tall they were. The tires crunched as I turned uphill and into the trees.
She’d heard me coming, of course. Plus the dust must’ve been visible for miles. She stood on the edge of her porch, one hand braced against the small of her back, the other shielding her eyes. She wore a chambray shirt and twill work pants and work boots, with her steely hair pulled into a bun. She held her arms open and unbent as I got out of the car.
“You look tired.” She gave me a stiff embrace, then pulled back, holding me by the shoulders and studying my face. Mac, the latest in a line of wise and shaggy dogs, stepped off the porch and shambled toward me, pressed his nose into my hand.
“Thanks, Tuah. Aren’t you supposed to wait till people are fifty or sixty or something to say that?”
“No. Not when you really do look tired.” She narrowed her eyes. “What’s that on your chin?”
I put my hand over it. “A bruise. I slipped getting out of the pool.”
“Huh.” She continued to study my face. “You feel all right?”
I wasn’t inordinately tired; nothing felt sore or strained or different. I hadn’t gained any weight. I felt a little unsettled first thing in the morning and needed to eat something right away, but as long as I didn’t let myself get hungry, I didn’t notice anything else. Surely she couldn’t have.
“Well, I’ve been in the car for two days. I’m sweaty and dirty and the last time I ate was about two hundred miles ago. Is that it?”
She tilted her head as if really thinking the answer through. “No,” she finally announced, releasing my shoulders. Then she turned and went inside. “Did you bring any fruit?” she asked over her shoulder. “I’ve been thinking about a banana all day.”
2
I slept for the better part of three days.
I sat outside in a porch chair my grandfather had made, moving it from time to time to follow the sun. When awake, I only bobbed on the surface of sleep. Then seaweed fingers would twine around me and drag me back under without warning, sometimes for only a few minutes, other times for an hour or more. The clearing around the cabin became an island where I washed up from time to time. While there, I would start to think about my choices, my future, the clock ticking in my belly, but then the breezes stirring the upper limbs of the pines would sound like the surf, hushed and rhythmic, and I would doze again, wrapped in a quilt, my head cradled against the worn boards.
Tuah eased the threads of truth free carefully, one at a time, without me noticing what she was doing. She waved off my help with chores she excused as being “a one-man job” or something that would take “just a moment,” then asked questions as she worked that came across as mere efforts to pass the time.
She started on the first day as she squatted in her small garden patch, pinching weeds and overcrowded plants between her fingers. Greens thrived under the intense sun and the cool nights at this altitude, and she grew varieties that I knew only by her pet names. Corn Salad. Ragged Jack. Foreign Shoes. She dismissed my offer of help in this case by claiming she’d staggered the planting and I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between weeds and immature lettuces. I should rest after that long drive.
“Graduating must feel like a real accomplishment,” she said as she parted two bunches of spinach to peer beneath them for intruders. Or maybe they were chard.
I shrugged. “It’s what happens when you run out of classes.”
“That’s not true.”
“Close enough. I took some classes, then I took the ones that followed, and then there weren’t any more.”
She peered up at me from under the brim of her straw hat. “You do know I didn’t go to college.”
“Of course.”
“Going to college is a remarkable opportunity.”
I twisted my finger into the edge of the quilt. “Yes, ma’am.”
She gave a pheh through her lips and crab-stepped a few inches to the side, parting another pair of plants. “Now don’t go acting like a child, like I’m correcting you. You’re a grown woman. But I grew up different and I just want to understand your way of thinking.” She probed between the plants as if that was the primary focus of her interest. A mountain jay made a blue slice across the upper corner of my field of vision.
“It’s just—going to school. It’s what people do. And now …”
“Time to pick your own path. That’s a privilege, too,” sh
e said when I failed to complete my own thought.
“I know.”
Tuah gave a single nod, the brim of her hat dipping down, then up, but she didn’t look at me. She prodded at the ground with a sticklike tool, working something back and forth with her other hand.
“Hah!” She yanked upward, holding a weed aloft for me to see, its dirty taproot dangling below her thumb and forefinger. “Even up here. Dandelions. If you don’t get the whole thing, it’ll just come back.” She continued to look at me for just a fraction longer, whether to emphasize the magnitude of her victory or to allow some metaphoric meaning to sink in, I didn’t know.
She tossed the weed into a growing pile a few feet away from her. “I think I would’ve studied biology. Understanding how things live, how they keep living … now that would be interesting.” She moved again, plucking the little grasses that poked up between the plants.
I looked down at the quilt, the binding now wound around my finger. I could remember having picnics on it as a child. I used to aggravate my parents to no end by taking an apple or a piece of bread, bunching this quilt under my arm, and disappearing for hours with Rex, Tuah’s dog at the time. I took perverse pleasure in defying the order that I tell someone at least what I was doing or the direction I was headed before I left. I cared nothing for my mother’s anger, which was constant and meaningless and only shifted from one object to another. During our Colorado visits she tried to keep it from showing, which made it all the quicker to flash through any little fissure of irritation. My father’s frustration at things that wouldn’t stay in their places was endless, so his anger here seemed more born of helplessness at his inability to keep her happy or me leashed. It produced pleading rather than volatility, oil rather than heat.
But I didn’t care. I wanted only my freedom, and my parents’ anger was too slight a consequence to matter. Announcing a plan and getting permission would defy the point of going in the first place. At the time I couldn’t yet imagine any consequence to my actions that should inhibit them in the slightest.
I worked my finger free, then slid it along the edge to a new spot and started over. I envied Tuah. She lived as she pleased, moving between town and the cabin, answering to no one. As far as I could tell, she enjoyed what I had been dreaming of for a decade: perfect solitude, with no one to be responsible for, no one to harm.
I pulled my finger free again, then balled my hand under my temple. “I’m not sure what I’ll do next, just yet,” I said. “There’s time.”
I wasn’t sure whether she heard me, but then she looked up at me, considering.
“I see,” was all she said. She waved a hand as Mac sauntered toward her. “Shoo,” she said, then turned her attention back to the ground. I was asleep before she got to the end of the row.
*
I woke the next morning to the murmur of voices, overlaid by the crack and clatter of wood chopping. Dammit. Cowboys. I dragged my hand out from under the pillow and squinted at my watch. Not even seven o’clock yet.
The remains of Hat Creek were in what was now open rangeland, the countryside peppered with cow pies in various stages of desiccation. Wandering Herefords, with their white, expressionless faces, would meander single-file down the main street from time to time as the empty windows watched them pass, or bed down in the shade uphill from the cabin to chew their cud.
Stopping at Tuah’s house was something the ranch hands liked to do whenever they could reasonably claim to be in the neighborhood—rounding up calves for branding, looking for strays, following up on reports of bears or mountain lions. She’d offer them a meal, they’d do a chore, and everyone would feel pleased with the exchange. But I’m pretty sure the cowboys were really just checking on her, though they never said so. By virtue of longevity, she’d become a communal grandmother, both in town and up here, and pretty much everyone who knew her called her Tuah as I did. I’d been told the name came from my grandfather repeatedly introducing her to me as tu abuela when I was little. When he died not long after, the name became an echo of his voice, and she never wanted to be called anything else.
As great as it was that folks cared about her like family, they weren’t my family, so I would have to march to the privy in front of strangers unless I wanted to stay in the house indefinitely. I sat up, rubbed my face, and raked my fingers through my hair a few times. Now that I was awake, waiting them out was no longer an option. To hell with it. I pushed my feet into my flip-flops. The sweats I’d slept in would have to be good enough for the occasion. I grabbed my toothbrush and toothpaste, then stepped out onto the porch to meet three horse faces lined up along its edge, one black, one brown, one spotted black and white.
“Well, hi, kids,” I said. The brown one shook, setting off a jangling of harness.
“There she is,” Tuah said, straightening, a piece of wood in each hand. Two cowboys that looked to be not quite out of their teens wielded hatchets at the splitting stump. The third, rolling a log toward them with his foot, was much older, leathered and weatherbeaten. He could have been forty or eighty.
“You make it sound like I’m stumbling out at noon.”
“Just glad to introduce you. Gentlemen, this is my granddaughter. Elena, this is Tom, Leo, and Rich.”
“Pleasure.”
“Pleased to meet you.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Pleased to meet all of you. But I need to”—I gestured over my shoulder with my thumb—“you know.”
“Of course.”
“Well, sure.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I scuffed off the side of the porch and along the path toward the privy. After they finished chopping, they’d expect breakfast. They’d be here half the day. I yanked the outhouse door open and let it slam behind me. I just wanted to eat a bowl of oatmeal in privacy and sit in the sun. And probably go back to sleep.
I took as long as I could possibly justify, brushing my teeth to a level my dentist would admire, washing my face, neck, arms, feet, counting the cold water as a small price to pay for the extra moments of privacy. By the time I came back down the path, I could see the first trails of smoke rising from the chimney.
“I wanted you to start the fire but I couldn’t wait any longer,” Tuah said as I stepped onto the porch.
Twelve years, now. When would she let it go? I was never going to start another fire. Period. “Sorry. It took a while to wake myself up, you know, after sleeping so late.”
“Sure,” said one of the younger cowboys. “The night life around here can be pretty crazy.”
“Thank you for understanding.” I wiped my still-damp hands on the seat of my sweatpants. “Tuah, you want me to start some pancakes or something?”
“That would be nice.”
Thank God. I managed to fill enough time getting dressed, mixing the batter, wiping plates, and getting the table set that I didn’t have to go outside again before calling everyone in to eat.
The cowboys ate with their heads bent over their plates, hair pressed to their scalps but for the ridge that marked the place where their hats usually rested. A smattering of conversation about the weather helped me know it had been an unusually dry spring so far. Finally the older one pushed back from the table.
“Rich, Leo, we best get going.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
“Thanks a lot.”
Tuah stood as well. “No, thank you. That wood will last me half the summer, and breakfast won’t last you more than a couple of hours.”
“And the work only took a couple of hours. We’re more than square.”
“And thank you,” the older one said to me, extending his hand. “Those were some real fine pancakes.”
I hoped my smile looked warm, rather than as if I was about to laugh. Only the use of “flapjacks” would have made him sound more like a character from an old Western. “You’re very welcome.”
“Yes, thank you,” the next one said, shaking my hand as well.
“Of c
ourse.”
“Thanks a lot,” the final one said, taking my hand in turn. But then he held onto it a little longer. “I hope to see you again real soon.”
Good God. What was he, sixteen? He had rosy cheeks and skin that looked as if it had never been shaved.
“I’m sure you will.” I pulled my hand away and sidestepped to follow the others out the door. They got on their horses, and the older one touched the brim of his hat.
“Bye, now,” he said.
They turned and fell into line, but as the black, the brown, and the spotted tails swished away, the cowboy at the rear turned around with one hand against the back of his saddle to give me a long final look. He grinned, nodded once more, and then the three of them faded away into the trees.
“My,” Tuah said as the last tail disappeared. “Looks like you caught somebody’s eye.”
“Spare me,” I said, turning to go back inside.
“What? There’s no rule against you enjoying yourself while you’re here.”
I twisted around in the doorway. “Tuah! Aren’t grandparents supposed to be overprotective? He’s a cowboy—bar the door and all that.”
“Leo is a scholarship student at Mines.”
“What?”
“School of Mines, down in Golden. One of the best engineering schools in the country. This is his summer job, at the dude ranch. Don’t be so quick to judge. There’s always more to things than you think.”
Had my father, master of the snap judgment, really been raised by this woman?
“People are the same the day you meet them as the day they die, so you might as well figure out what you’re dealing with up front.”
I first remembered hearing that when I told him about a sixth-grade classmate who’d called me a babykiller. I had not yet found any reason to doubt him.
“I’m going to wash up,” I said, and went inside.
3
In the time it took me wash the dishes, get the blanket, and go outside, Tuah had started sorting and stacking the split pieces of stove wood. She dismissed my offer of help this time by saying I’d helped a lot already and besides, she was particular about how the stack was built. It was easier to do it herself than to correct me as I worked. I was fairly sure I remembered doing that very chore without supervision when I was no more than thirteen years old, but I didn’t argue. It was certainly possible I’d done it in a way that bothered her for weeks after I left. So I pulled up the quilt as she nested the firewood and inquired about people she remembered me mentioning in letters or in summers past, her work-gloved hands serving as the front stop to keep the face of the stack even. She remembered most of these people better than I did, so I let her remind me of any necessary context and lead the conversation as she wished.