Legends of the Fall

by Jim Harrison

  Ludlow in fact had thought of Two as a daughter and had loved her as a daughter. Years before he had been delighted to teach her to read and write and was constantly to Pet’s and Decker’s dismay trying to spoil her with gifts. It was Ludlow who wrote Isabel and told her to bring from Boston the grandest and costliest wedding gown possible. Now when he rode out to the grave with One Stab in the flivver he felt far more than his seventy-five years thinking of another October when he sent the boys off to war, and then the beautiful October afternoon seven years before when Tristan and Two had been married in a grove of cottonwoods, the sun glistening off the white gown against the sere colors of autumn, faded grass and yellow aspens. Two deaths in fourteen years of loved ones are not all that uncommon except to the mourner who has lost all sense of common and uncommon and is buried in the thoughts of things left out and how it might have been.

  Alfred returned to Washington spending a long train trip in a sleepless turmoil. As a political issue, Prohibition had been a senseless obscenity to him and had only served to promote the interests of the criminal element, all the more evident in the waning years of the Volstead Act. His father had always been a hero to him. And he liked to quote the elegant old frontiersman in speeches to the Senate though Ludlow, to be sure, had no such notions of himself. Popular ideas as basically silly as “cowboys” or “frontiersman” or the law of Prohibition itself came after the fact in self-congratulatory phases of history, when the energies turned toward labeling and social order.

  But Alfred’s problems were more profound in nature than politics and an alienated father. Susannah in fact was quite ill, had always been ill in a quiet nonobvious manner. And Washington, the social demands of being a senator’s wife exacerbated her problems. Alfred had bought a country house and stables out in Maryland where they boarded many of his father-in-law’s racehorses. She stayed there most of the time with twice-weekly visits from a professor of forensic psychiatry from Johns Hopkins, an old French Jew sworn to secrecy, as a mad wife has always been a political liability. In the blindness of his affection, Alfred had refused to admit the severity of the problem. One afternoon years before when they were being driven from Vallauris to Nice to take the boat home, Susannah insisted the driver stop and they walked off into a wooded hillside and made love. She had seemed terribly happy for weeks though there were intermittent fits of weeping. Despite this Alfred thought himself never so gloriously happy, but then Susannah had descended into her particular torment, refusing to leave the stateroom for the entire two-week trip back to New York. The country place and release from the immediate pressures of Washington seemed to help.

  But in each of the nine years of their marriage there had been periods of what must be called insanity of varying degrees of severity. The psychiatrist hadn’t been encouraging though in the past few years Susannah had been his most endearing patient. He had pushed her activity with the racing stable, understanding as he did that a preoccupation with animals tended to calm a patient, that the horses benignly seemed to draw the poison away at least temporarily.

  The weeks that followed Alfred’s return from Montana had been totally hellish. Susannah had reached the pinnacle of her manic phase where all things on earth had become too vivid to be borne up under: she could see a horse’s heart through the skin, muscle and bone, and the moon was only a foot beyond the window; cut flowers in vases were dead and terrifying and certain paintings from France had to be turned to the wall; she claimed she lacked an imaginary child no matter how hard she tried to invent one and she used Tristan’s refusal to answer her note of condolence as a lever to descend into depression.

  In April Alfred came back west ostensibly to visit his constituency. He bought a large house in Helena, thinking that if Susannah began spending her summers in Montana it might help. Isabel would be there and Tristan and Pet might allow Susannah to help with Three and Samuel. As he drove into the muddy yard near Choteau his heart, always optimistic, lifted at his plan and at the beauty of the ranch.

  Tristan and Decker were outside the shed building frames for packsaddles while Ludlow and One Stab watched smoking their pipes. When Alfred got out of his car Ludlow slipped through the fence and walked far out in the pasture with One Stab following. Tristan, Decker and Alfred watched Ludlow make his way around the melting drifts as if he intended to walk to the end of the world. Tears streaked down Alfred’s cheeks and Tristan took his arm. Alfred asked for his forgiveness but Tristan was matter-of-fact and only said, “Forgive you for what, you didn’t shoot my wife.” Decker sat on a sawhorse and watched Tristan and Alfred walk into the pasture after the receding figures of Ludlow and One Stab. Decker’s own sorrow owned a harder Nordic remorselessness. (He waited three years until he was at a cattle auction in Bozeman before he had the opportunity to shoot one of the Federal officers on the Bozeman to Livingston road the officer traveled every day. He sat on a rock up in the loblolly pines with a .270 on his lap, first shooting out a tire, and when the man got out of the car he shot him ten times with great satisfaction. The other Federal officer had been transferred east and Decker had to be satisfied with the one.)

  Halfway into the pasture Alfred stopped and in a rush of words explained that Tristan must write Susannah and relieve her of her twisted guilt. Tristan nodded in sympathy for his brother. When they reached Ludlow, who was leaning exhausted against a boulder, One Stab walked away out of earshot. Tristan took his father’s arm and asked him to forgive Alfred who was his son and not the government. Ludlow shivered in a chill and stared at Alfred with hard but watery eyes, nodding at Tristan and looking away. He was without his slate so he merely embraced Alfred and began his walk back home.

  When Alfred left the next morning he felt airy and positive though it was raining. He had been forgiven and they had a fine evening with Tristan’s children sitting on Alfred’s lap as he told them stories of life in the great cities of the East. He paused on the way to the main road to let a large band of packhorses and mules pass driven by two hands he recognized, the negroid Cree and the huge Norwegian carpenter. He wondered idly why Tristan wanted so many pack animals.

  By early May when it was sure that spring had solidly broke and that any mountain storms would be short and fitful, One Who Sees As A Bird came down from Fort Benton and led Tristan, Decker, the Norwegian and Cree from Choteau up past Valier and Cut Bank to Cardston in Alberta where they loaded fifty packhorses with four cases of whiskey each, cut back down past Shelby and Conrad to Great Falls where Tristan got rid of the whiskey for six thousand dollars. The large profit was due to the fact that the whiskey was first-rate Canadian blended, not cut into working-class rotgut, a practice of the more venal smugglers. The other factor in the large profit was the scarcity of roads in northern Montana making it a relatively easy area for police. One Who Sees As A Bird made it an assured run though his friend One Stab was sad that Tristan had insisted he stay home to take care of Ludlow and the ranch.

  Unfortunately, Tristan wasn’t satisfied. Without realizing it he had half hoped to meet some resistance. Then Decker counseled him to think of his children and the fact that the small population of Montana would lead to their eventual capture. Tristan agreed though Decker’s quiet anger was such that he only voiced these reservations at the insistence of Pet who feared for her grandchildren. Tristan made one more run in high summer and when they got home One Stab said Pet had disappeared with’ the children. One Stab said he would have followed but Ludlow had been ill. So Decker and Tristan rode up to Fort Benton in the Packard with the hole in the back seat and brought Pet and the children home.

  Tristan laid off then after wiring the Mexican in Vera Cruz to bring the schooner to San Francisco by the following spring. There was money to be made. Isabel had come west for the summer helping Susannah settle in an appropriate house for a senator in Helena. Isabel had her grandchildren and Pet down for a month and Susannah’s tentative health thrived caring for them and Three and Samuel adored her in return. No one knew that Sus
annah’s apparent health was based on the most fragile of misconceptions. When Tristan had answered her letter at Alfred’s insistence he had dwelt overmuch on the fact that fate had separated them and despite what had happened they must live with it with grace. The letter was unwittingly cruel because it somehow gave her hope; she had entered a period again when her world was somehow too errantly vivid, peeled back so that her days were a sequence of the essence of things. Alfred was planning a big dinner and party for all his political and social friends in Montana and she went rather manically about the preparations with the help of Isabel who was an expert at such matters.

  Tristan went down to Helena to see a representative of a Canadian distiller he had met up in Cardston. The man had discussed with Tristan the trouble caused by a group known as the Irish Gang based in Seattle and the apparent stranglehold they had on the liquor distribution in the Northwest and California. Certain demanding clients in San Francisco were unable to get the first-class whiskey their clients preferred. The two men had tentatively agreed that Tristan would make a schooner run from Vancouver Island to San Francisco and Tristan intended on this sunny day in Helena to strike an exorbitant deal. He had brought along five cases of Haig & Haig as a gift for Alfred though he had declined to attend the party. He had always been repelled by the ostensibly important friends that Alfred had brought up to the ranch for hunting season: they played cards and drank all night, got up late and with few exceptions, the Cree filled their elk and deer licenses, though Tristan refused to cooperate any longer after a rich haberdasher shot a grizzly sleeping on a hillside.

  Tristan had his meeting then drove around Alfred’s ornate Victorian mansion until he found the back entrance. He intended to greet his mother, deliver the whiskey, avoid Susannah somehow and get back to the ranch. Helena unnaturally enervated him, all those men dubiously referred to as civil servants wandering around, not to speak of the cold limbo of his month in jail there when his throat and chest were continuously on the verge of choking him with his memories of Two. Even after bearing the children she would spring to her mount on a horse without using the stirrups and when she rode the roan gelding hard her hair would fly out in the back as the mane of a wild animal. But he was wen past simple notions of vengeance and perhaps grief had coarsened and poisoned him to the point that he knew there was no evening the score with the world, because even if he could that would not recreate the woman whom the rain had beat against until her long black hair had swung against his legs.

  So for this man it was no more than rather belligerently fateful that he should walk into his brother’s kitchen and find Susannah laughing and talking with Samuel and Three. He greeted and hugged his children, then they ran off to help their grandmother direct the hanging of the decorations for the party. Susannah and Tristan sat there in a condition of discomfort so extreme that it seemed the kitchen would explode. Susannah half lied and said she dreamt that she had become the mother of Samuel and Three, but Tristan shook his head no and she stood clasping her hands as if to pull her shoulders together. She left the table and walked into the pantry. Tristan sat at the table sweating in the close August heat and then she called his name in her soft clear voice. He pressed his hands hard against his face and went to the pantry where she stood naked with glistening eyes, her hair released around her shoulders, her clothes about her feet. He closed the pantry door and tried to calm her, then gave up without hesitation when she said if he did not make love to her she would begin screaming and scream until she died. They sank in each other’s arms, their skin sticking to the cool tile floor.

  Later when Tristan left, Susannah cut off her hair with sewing scissors and was confined to her room for the duration of the party under a doctor’s and nurses’ care. Early the next morning Susannah was driven north to Choteau with the doctor, Isabel, Pet and the children. They drove in two cars and Alfred was distraught, but kind, utterly uncomprehending. When they arrived Tristan took the -children up to a hunting cabin he had built some dozen miles into the mountains for a few days.

  But when he returned Susannah was excited and graceful again, and everyone was relieved and Alfred left in a few days to return to Helena to take care of his political business. Tristan was only a week away from leaving for San Francisco to meet the Mexican and the schooner. He would keep the crew thin, taking the Cree and the Norwegian because he trusted them.

  It was now early in September, and a brief cold spell had arrived and left within two days dusting the foothills with snow that had melted off the aspens by mid-morning. Tristan sat alone in the lodge after One Stab and Ludlow had picked up the children to take them down to have lunch with Isabel. He brooded over the smoldering log in the fireplace thinking bleakly of his betrayal of his brother, no matter the circumstances. He placed not a shred of blame on Susannah recognizing that she was periodically less responsible for what she did than the youngest of children. His heart ached over the confusion and pain he had caused on earth. He poured a glass of whiskey, and began packing for San Francisco early, knowing that it would be best to be far from Susannah if she collapsed again.

  Tristan quickly packed, noting to tell Decker where he hid his money should he not return. But when he got back to the main room Susannah was sitting on the couch before the fire. He called her name but she didn’t answer. He walked to the couch and looked at the fire and down at her short rain-dampened hair and clothing. She spoke low and clearly, asking his forgiveness for what she had done. She couldn’t help herself because she loved him so terribly and knew at one time he had loved her and it wasn’t fair so she broke down just to be with him once more on earth. She was unwell and a senseless torment to everyone so when· things had settled down and she and Alfred returned east she would take her life. She assured Tristan that there was no self-pity involved, only that she could no longer bear the phases of insanity and his absence.

  When she stopped Tristan tried to gather time for a few moments with his brain whirling in panic. He rushed his words and thoughts, feeling his heart dull and sinking further from reality. He said that she mustn’t take her life because life was so awkward and complex that one day they might be together again. He would at least return in a year and they would see each other again when their spirits and minds had cleared and they could talk calmly.

  So he left, and she had hope again, and held his lie that saved her life close. She had more hope than when he had left so many years before because she thought she knew how desperately he wanted to be with her again. Her health took an abrupt upturn and when they got back to Washington Alfred and the psychiatrist were delighted by her behavior over the next ten months and had hopes as ebullient and false as her own.

  In San Francisco Tristan, the Cree and Norwegian quickly made contact with the Mexican, boarded the schooner and left under cover of darkness. On the advice of the distiller’s representative, the Mexican had given the impression on the dock that the schooner was headed for Hawaii for delivery in Maui. They made their way in cold stormy weather north up the coast and reached the inlet near Church Point on Vancouver Island in a week of brisk sailing. They loaded in the dark and headed back toward the rendezvous point in Bolinas Bay just north of San Francisco.

  Their luck held at Bolinas and the unloading and full payment were uneventful. Tristan and the Mexican were driven down to San Francisco by a man who was helping to arrange the next shipment to be paid for by a group of restaurant owners. After a meeting in an apartment above a speakeasy on North Beach the man drove them back toward Golden Gate, stopping against orders at a wharf restaurant for a quick meal. The Mexican was nervous thinking he recognized a dusty Model A from earlier in the afternoon. When they got out of the parking lot four men quickly surrounded them and beat Tristan and the Mexican senseless with blackjacks and dumped them back in their car, cutting the throat of the other man. Before the beating the most elegant of the attackers said they best keep away from the liquor business on the coast. Tristan remembered his gray suit and smiling eye
s, his Irish brogue, when he awoke in the car after midnight. Tristan revived the Mexican and they dragged the man with the cut throat out of the car, drove back to the speakeasy and asked if the deal was still on. It was.

  * * *

  When they returned to California from Canada, this time to Tomales Bay near Point Reyes, they were ready when at dawn a launch approached their anchorage. Those in the launch did not know that Tristan had already unloaded a few miles further up the coast. As the launch drew near the schooner Tristan and the Mexican lay under wet canvas watching, with the Norwegian and Cree down below ready for a second wave of assault if necessary. The launch raked the main house with a short burst of machine gun fire before Tristan and the Mexican opened up unerringly with the elephant gun and a 375. He recognized two of the men that had beat him and they went first with the five-hundred-grain shells designed for the largest walking mammal on earth blowing them in shattered pieces out of the boat. The Mexican worked on the waterline of the launch, then potted the heads of the remaining two men as they dog-paddled in the incoming tide.

  They sailed south for Ensenada then, with Tristan recognizing that though he had won the battle he could not win the war. He spent a winter of utter dissolution and the Mexican returned to Vera Cruz, his wallet full but knowing the game was over. After a month Tristan had sent the Cree and Norwegian home to the ranch with a long letter to his children and the message to Ludlow and Decker that he would return home after visiting Alfred and Susannah during the racing season at Saratoga. He hired an old Mexican fisherman and his wife to take care of the boat and cook for him. He drank and thought of Susannah and what he might possibly tell her in June when there was nothing to tell her. He began to miss his children and allowed the fisherman and his wife to move their three grandchildren on board when their mother abandoned them. He spent his days drinking and fishing with hand lines with the old man in a small scow powered by sail. Early in May he came not so much to his senses but to the realization of how much he missed his children so he left the schooner in the care of the old couple and traveled north. He had not an inkling of how he might urge Susannah to longer life, but he would go home before traveling east to Saratoga.