Persistence of Memory

Hi Folks, Here's something I've been working on. What do you think?

Thank you all for coming. Mom would have been pleased, but she would have a made a snide joke of it, you know? I don’t think she ever set foot in a church, so she’d have something to say about that too, all of you being here, in this place. My father died before I was born, so she was father and mother to me. Changing diapers and castrating cattle; fixing fences and mending sweaters; scrubbing the floors and mucking out corrals. Pastor Reynolds said to tell you a memory. Here’s all I can think of. One day we were dodging boulders trying to hike up Jackass Pass and I was dead tired and complaining, “Why do we have to keep going? Let’s stop and rest.” Finally, she said, “If you’re so tired, turn around and walk backwards. Pretend you’re going downhill.” It works. I do it all the time. Walk up backwards and pretend you’re going downhill. Yeah. Sorry. I don’t think I can do this.    

Rock Springs, Wyoming, 1988

Opal has died before, but never quite like this—shrunken and still, lips chapped, heels aching under the sheet's white pressure. “You’re groaning again, dear.” Cold metal on her tongue. Bitter fluid. Again. Walls melting like the clock, dead tree, yellow earth, purple sky. “Liquefaction.” “No dear, that was before.”  “Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco.  Don't you believe it sweetie." Someone laughed. Before

Crackly old cowboy in a dingy old bar and Jean Shepard wailing on the jukebox, "You can take possession darlin’ when I hear you say I do. When you slip the ring on my finger, take possession I belong to you.” Opal shivered as he stroked her forearm with scrathcy fingertips. "Your skin is so soft.”  She couldn’t feel it.  "What do you say, girl?" Cigarettes and beer on his breath.

            “Where you going? God damn idiot!”

                       Dad said “You say nothing. Nothing. Period. You walk away and you say nothing.”

                                    “Shhhh! Don’t wake your father!”

                                               “You say nothing.”

                                                             “Shhhhh”

Mid-summer, Emma, with your little hand warm in mine; you in those cowboy boots, running to keep up as we walked along the dusty path. Way high in the Wind Rivers air smelling of pine and dirt. We passed the half-dead tree and looked then as we do now, for the porcupine who once snoozed in its branches. Through the wooden gate we’re birthed into the moist, buzzing meadow.

Crickets spring ahead to clear our path and we step around mounds of drying manure. Boulders squat between the hillside and the deep blue lake tossed there by eruption so long ago. Outflow burbles and you pause to watch a baby duck weave his way through the lily pads. I pause to watch you watching. Sun warms your neck and the stork bite turns pink. A neon blue dragonfly hovers just out of reach and you laugh straight into my heart.

Then you spot them across the meadow. “Look!” All those horses: bay, grey, black, pinto, buckskin, appaloosa, and palomino shine against the backdrop of surrounding pines. They stretch noses to earth, nibbling grasses. Tails swish at flies. One by one they sense our presence. Heads lift. Nostrils flare to sniff the air in great gusts. After a still pause they set off galloping towards us; tons of horseflesh on stampede, manes blowing, hooves pounding. The earth could be shaking and a shrill voice in my head screams, “Run!”

But you laugh, again, and we hold our ground while I listen to the memory of Dad’s gravelly refrain, “You’re OK.” The horses slide to a stop just beyond reach, and approach, slowly, blowing, testing our scent. One knickers, a low rumble from her middle. One nuzzles my pocket for a treat. One musses your hair. Others circle. Their eyes are gentle, their noses are velvet.   

Sagittarius trots above the horizon as snow melts in the meadow. All summer the prancing Centaur watches from his home at the center of the galaxy; then autumn comes, earth tips, and we drop back into the shadows.  Heavy snow that winter.

Opal is dying, but not like this—the child mustn’t see her bald head, her cracking lips; mustn’t smell the sweat and the stink. Mustn't remember. Not this. “A mirror.” “What dear?” “Give me a god damn mirror!” Here's a washcloth. There's a scarf to cover her head. Hands flutter, needing to tidy. But there is nothing to tidy and there is no child.

                                   “Do I know you?”

                                           “Oh mama.”

                                                    “Don’t cry. Please don’t cry.”

                                                                Hands wringing.

                                                                           Could they be hers?

Remember Sunshine, when you brought home that raggedy old pinto pony? Chico, you named him. You were the angriest eight-year-old on this blue planet until you found Chico lame and starving in a dry creek bed, his hooves all curled and split. It took me weeks to trim them. Chico. He’d lick your cheeks and follow you around like a dog. Then you'd climb up on his back and take off for parts unknown.

That day you were so late I paced the floor, howling “Where is my baby?”  What if you got bit by a snake? What if a car spooked the pony? What if he tripped in a hole and fell, crushing your spine under his? What if the saddle slipped under his belly and he ran away and left you stranded and you wandered in the desert while the sun sucked the moisture out of your body? What would I do if you were gone? You did come back that evening, and I could have killed you for worrying me so. But then you were gone and Chico got colic. Poor old pony. 

Mom used to call me Sunshine. Still does, though it drove me crazy for a while. She sang that song to me when I was a baby to put me to sleep. She said one night I had an ear infection and she crooned “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine. You make me happy when skies are grey. You’ll never know dear how much I love you. Please don’t take my sun-shine a-way.” over and over until she was hoarse. She used to hum it doing the dishes or riding the trail.

Shoot, you learned to ride before you learned to walk. I'd fly you up onto Shauna's warm bare back and those pudgy little legs of yours splayed across her withers. You'd throw out your hands and laugh at the sunset. I'd climb up behind you and she'd walk along the dirt road. Eventually tired, you'd lay your cheek against the mare’s neck. Your heart slowed to the rhythm of her breath, and you were home until sleep took you away.  When your legs grew longer you could ride her without me. I'd watch from behind while she would trot, then canter, then gallop, and you would go bounce bounce bounce across her back, fall down to earth, and roll like a stone-- Yeah, really-- like a stone, just like a stone. So free.

This morning there's frost on the grass.  Your head reaches Dad’s chest and I have my reservations but you want to learn to vault like your grandma did. You're athletic, just like her, so Dad puts Shauna on a long lead and I settle down on the wood fence of the corral. He walks away from her, playing the rope out from her halter until all the slack is gone. Then he clucks his tongue and Shauna begins to walk, tracing a circle around him, going faster with each cluck, seamlessly moving from walk to trot to canter and gallop until “whoa” tells her it’s time to slow and then stop.

Now you join Dad in the circle’s center. Shauna trots while he explains. You run behind the lead. Not straight towards the mare, but in the direction she’s going, angling closer until your shoulder brushes hers. Your prancing steps match hers and as you reach for her mane your body knows what will happen next. Your mind will never understand, but your body will never forget. When the time is right when the force of the running—both hers and yours—and the centrifugal power of the circle unite.   When the rhythm is true and your feet land just so, the momentum allows you to fly – requires that you fly. Your feet leave the ground in an arc that pulls the rest of you along. If you weren’t holding her mane you might fly into the clouds and disappear. Instead, you land astride the galloping mare. One day you will stand on her rump. Dad will beam while you do a headstand and summersault to the ground. You know you never did break a bone. Not ever. Stitches yes, but you never had a cast.

Yellowstone is burning. The moose are dying, birds are confused. Ash drifts a hundred miles. Small fires driven by howling wind and dry lightning strikes merge and grow, devour and grow. No rain. No rain. Ground fires race up slim trunks to the canopy. Crown fires. Flames over 200 feet in the grey-black sky. Fish boiling in the rivers. Three jumpers trapped by a blow-up get cooked in their shake and bakes. Yellowstone is burning.

We’re having a good day Miss Emma. She ate some oatmeal with raisons and sugar.  She knows you’re coming. “Never thought I’d die in a hospital. Figured I’d fall and break my neck!” “Oh mama. Don’t say that.”

Poor old Chico, panting and moaning. Sometimes he’d scream with a cramp.  You can't let a horse suffer like that. I’d never put one down before, and I guess it went about as well it could. I shot him full of painkillers. Brochure from the Extension office said "Make sure when the body falls that it is where you want because it will be heavy." Dead weight. Ha. Ha. "Dig the hole first, someplace that doesn’t drain. Use a 22-caliber long rifle with hollow-point bullets. Draw an imaginary X from right ear to left eye and left ear to right eye. Hold the gun 2-6 inches from the point of impact. Shoot in the middle. Aim carefully and death will be instantaneous. Stand back because the horse will lunge forward." Chico didn’t lunge forward. He just crumbled down like someone was holding him up by strings and let go. Like that fellow’s self portrait with grilled bacon, only quicker. Chico’s buried in the north end of the meadow next to that pile of boulders where the woodchucks live.

                                      “Pushing up daisies.”

                                                  “Shhh.”

 Fifty horses and fifty slaves were assembled at the Scythian king's burial mound on the barren steppes. The horses wore carved head dresses, red felt blankets, and saddles decorated with gold leaf. Horses and slaves were slowly strangled. After death, the horses were propped up on wooden posts, each one ridden by the corpse of a slave. Ranged in a circle, they guarded the tomb until the cold wind toppled them down.

Riding in the hills out behind Lovelock Dad used to watch for vapor trails, traces of jets. He’d point one out and ask me, “Where’s that one going?” “Hawaii” was always my first guess and he’d say, “Hawaii? Hawaii’s to the South. That jet’s heading due east. Now what’s east of here?” “Washington D.C. Where the President lives.” “Yeah, that jet’s going where the President lives.”

She’s a little under the weather today. She was coughing all night. Maybe it’s a cold. No fever though. I think she’d better rest. You want to come in anyway?

The first time Opal died she was just walking along the dirt road from the bus stop home. She heard the truck behind her. Heard the crackly old cowboy, “Girl it’s fixing to snow here. Come on. Get in.” Jean Shepard wailing on the radio, "You can take possession darlin’ when I hear you say I do. When you slip the ring on my finger, take possession I belong to you.”

                           “Hey girl, I gotta stop at my trailer and pick something up.”

                                       “Come on in, It’s cold out here.”

                                                    “You can take possession darlin’”

“I call this here my cow-killer. It takes a captive  bolt pistol to get through those thick skulls. No, you come here for a minute. Damn  you are one butt-ugly girl. I’m going to do you a favor. You take off those ugly old pants.”

Grunting like a pig while her flesh melted and Opal just died and flew away. Dad said “You say nothing. Nothing. Period. You walk away and you say nothing.”

Sometimes birthing takes longer than dying. Emma came in the autumn. Easy-peezy-baby.  She took to the trails like a pro, wedged between Opal’s soft tummy and the saddle horn.  She took to school like a pro, too. Opal cried her eyes out the first morning of kindergarten.  Wouldn't let her ride the bus. She dropped that child off at school and picked her up every day, dust trailing out behind the truck. 45 miles each way. Then one day Opal was early picking her up. She sneaked into the classroom while the teacher was breaking up a fight, “Use your words, Samuel! Don’t hit him. Use your words!” Use your words. Opal whispered while she trailed Emma out to the truck. “Use your words.”

Mrs. Love taught second grade at Farson elementary and she had what some might call "a unique pedagogical philosophy." Those twelve kids, boys and girls, every single one fell in love with her. They'd malinger near her desk when it was time to run outside for recess. They'd leave her little presents: a rabbit's foot, a piece of leather, some old Mexican coins. Truth was they'd never known a teacher could make the day go by so fast, so fun, so free.

She loved that painter came here from Spain. Pinned up posters of his melting pictures all over the room. Then Mrs. Love taught those kids to make their letters by turning them into pictures. After they'd exhausted themselves playing handball at recess, Mrs. Love would settle the kids down with pencils and big-lined paper. She'd talk them through the strokes of the day’s letter while she drew it on the chalk board. "A." Most teachers would have stopped there, content with a serviceable capital letter, but not our Mrs. Love. She kept those kids going, stroke by stroke, until each and every one had a perky little bird to take home to their loved ones. Emma’s looked like he was scowling. "Well, isn't that something!" The letter B turned into a fat man smoking a cigar. C was the man in the moon. All the way to Z, an hour glass, with one line added and some squiggles inside. That teacher broke some hearts when she got pregnant in the middle of the year and married a cattleman from Nebraska.

Opal didn't cry until Emma's car slipped out of sight. Laramie didn't seem that far away, but it was, and the University of Wyoming was light years away from the Farson cattle ranch.  Opal died a little bit that day. Her body was still there, but her heart ached so badly that she took up gardening. Emma came home at fall break to find her mother hunkered down blending compost and manure in dark strip of dirt along the long southern wall of the ranch house. They’d be sheltered from wind and tumbleweeds there.  Spring  break found her shopping seed catalogues and mapping out her plan. Maybe she'd turn the old wheelbarrow into a planter.

First night I came home from college, my mom cooked steak and potatoes. “I killed the fatted calf!” She chuckled.  We drank coffee out on the porch and watched the stars, looking for Sagittarius just over the range.  She was always looking for Sagittarius to watch over her. “You know, Sunshine, that light we see there isn’t from our time. It was born tens of thousands of years ago; before people were here. Horses were here then, you know. Before people, horses were here. Dad was wrong when he said the conquistadors brought them. Well, he was right that they brought horses, but it wasn’t the first time horses were here. What would it be like to be the first person to meet those herds?” “Aw mom, if you were a cave man you’d just want to eat them!”

Remember, Opal will die one day, but not today.