Leadville: 300 Days Away

by Kara Skye Smith

  The guard steps away and says, "Good." Mac smiles wide and easy like he often does, seeming to Lhosta at that moment as big as the mountain top that silhouettes behind him, and he says in a booming voice, "Welcome to Camp Hale!"

  "Welcoom, too Comp Hayyl," Lhosta says and nods his head to Mac. Goosebumps arise on Mac's arms for the second time that day around Lhosta. An innocent gesture, Mac is surprised at his own reaction. After an awkward moment of silence he smiles at Lhosta and although his mind wants to spout his usual CIA sarcasm, like 'let's go shoot some people', he decides, instead, to keep his mouth shut. A strange and sudden urge to hold Lhosta's hand, as he walks, briefly wells up and Mac makes a scoffing sound and shakes his head. He kicks the dirt. He is caught off guard.

  He mumbles, "I don't know what I wanna teach you to shoot at people for, but that's the command," and then he says quietly, "Let's go."

  1957 Leadville.

  Days end, Mary Beth empties the ashtrays into a dented, old coffee can marked with a sharpie pen, "Butts".

  "Dj'ever think, you know, when you were little, you'd be doin' this? On New Year's eve? While other girls are out partyin', drinkin' with their boyfriends," she looks over at the bartendar, "Stephanie?"

  "Course not," she says looking at the bottle she holds in her hand. She screws the top back on at the sound of Mary Beth's voice and puts it away, "You?" she asks.

  "Nuh-uh. Nope. And I'm thinking, tonight, about changin' my life."

  "Well, good for you, darlin'," Stephanie says untying a string of Happy-New-Year's-1957 stenciled letters from a polished ballast of Colorado oak near the bar. Mary Beth looks up at her, and instinctively goes to help her at the other end, folding the letters toward each other, discussing Mary Beth's future, as if they were folding a blanket. By the end of clean-up that night, Mary Beth is determined never to sit another New Year's out by Stephanie's side.

  At the coat rack in back, Mary Beth bundles up for the car ride with a flourish, sweeping her scarf with a toss of her head.

  "You're pregnant, you can't go. What do you know? It might be easy. A girl like me," she glances at Stephanie with her sweetest, yet, look of the night.

  "O for god sake's, go, then. What am I to tell you. Sittin' around here givin' me sugar eyes, and me in this pregnancy, I can hardly withstand'jya, or anybody else for that matter - just go! And write me. Okay?"

  Mary Beth grabs onto the hat on the hook that Stephanie reaches for, "Don't worry about me, okay?" She looks at her.

  "You know I'll worry," Stephanie says, "I'll worry myself into fits if you don't write."

  "Okay, okay, I'll write to you. Postcards," she makes a sign with her hands, "with my name up in lights."

  Stephanie laughs, "You have big ideas, you know, there ain't nothin' wrong with finding a good man around here and settlin' down."

  "I know," Mary Beth says quietly, "for you there isn't. But for me - just don't talk me out of it now, I finally made up my mind!" she whines. "You're right. You get out of here. Go." As Mary Beth reaches the door Stephanie blurts out, "Are you sure you gotta go tonight? What about tomorrow? Stay with me tonight? You don't gotta go back there - you can stay with me." Mary Beth's hand rests on the door handle, feeling all torn up inside - leaving the place she is comfortable in - one foot out the door, almost. Mary Beth looks back giving Stephanie the saddest glance she can muster, and Stephanie backs down.

  "I'll pray for you," Stephanie says, a bit louder than a whisper. She holds her first two fingers to her lips, Coral Frost polish resting against Peach Sunset lipstick, in a kiss she holds watching Mary Beth walk out the door; good, old, newly refinished Leadville oak 'so thick a knock can barely be heard from the other side', slams closed behind her. Stephanie closes her eyes, and holds them closed for several seconds; making good show of a prayer she'll never say.

  1958 Leadville.

  "Mary Beth!" Stephanie yells from the back room, loud as she can through clenched teeth and straining, hoping her voice is heard above the juke box song of 'Love Me Tender'. "Mary Beth!!" Stephanie's knees buckle and she grabs onto the utility sink, the bottle she 'nipped' from falls and breaks against the floor spilling the sickeningly overpowering, sweet scent of peppermint Schnapps out all over the small, overcrowded back room. Stephanie grabs her belly with both hands and lets loose a low, animalistic sounding howl as the wave of pain that started from her belly runs all through her body and back down to her lower abdomen before it subsides. Stephanie breathes out, in several short pants, through her mouth still agape from the fear and surprise of such painful contractions this early in her pregnancy. Stephanie pants several more times before trying to stand.

  Out in front, in the bar, Mary Beth sings along, a few bars, to her favorite song playing on the juke box while she pours a beer, tipping the glass to avoid a large, foamy head. She has decided that the boy she was made to dance with is 'kind of cute'. After all, he keeps eyeing her as she serves drink after drink, the New Year approaching and the midnight countdown less than an hour away. She makes up her mind, as Mary Beth does, to flirt back and see where it leads.

  "Couldn't be worse than last year," she thinks, remembering sobbing on the phone to Stephanie who was trying to run the bar, about how she was lonely, and hungry, and how she thought she just wasn't ever going to meet anybody in California who liked her.

  "Nobody actually likes me for ME, ya know?" she remembers saying as the boy with the shiny head and eager grin's eyes catch Mary Beth's again, straight on, as she rounds the next table and delivers an ice cold Olympia poured from the tap. She doesn't even fumble with the cold, slippery glass as she makes her best 'sugar eyes', sending Tiyo, her admirer, into a swoon and pleasing her bar customer at the same time. "That'll be fifty five cents, please," she says to the man whose wife has chosen the very pink foil tiara that Mary Beth had asked Stephanie for earlier that night; but before he can speak, Mary Beth, 'O God's', loudly, in front of a Christ fearing table of Leadville's most likable types. "O God!" she exclaims again. Heads turn to see Stephanie, on her hands and knees, crawling out past the bar area, holding her belly with one hand, as best she can, a wet lower half - one part amniotic fluid, one part Schnapps.

  The man with the fresh glass of Oly stands up immediately and rushes across the room to help Stephanie stand. Struggling under the weight of a seven month pregnant gal, he is soon joined by two friends from his table. A moment later he looks up at his wife, who Mary Beth hovers above, her mouth agast and her tray still holding two beverages. He bellows out, "We've got to get her to the hospital. Quick." His wife responds by grabbing her coat off the back of her chair.

  "You certainly won't be needing this where you're going," Mary Beth says as she reaches for the pink foil tiarra in an ugly, and rather revealing moment, for Mary Beth - nearly ripping it from the fluffy nest of grey curls and hairspray. Not many things in life, it is apparent at this moment, have gone Mary Beth's way; and after all, she did tell Stephanie she wanted this very one. She could understand losing her chosen hat to Stephanie, but to this woman? No. Mary Beth just couldn't let it go. The woman nearly shrieks and flashes her a look of horror.

  "You little beast!" the elderly woman exclaims, and Mary Beth covers,

  "Not sterile enough, you know, for a hospital." She sets down her tray and puts the tiarra on her own head, nearly twirling in a circle with delight as the older lady is whisked out the door by her friend, following behind Stephanie who is leaning on the arms of the woman's husband. It is a sad fact and a low moment that this would be the determining factor, in Mary Beth's mind, to a better new year - she has actually reached for and gotten what she wanted. As Mary Beth's eyes lock for a brief second with the eyes that have watched her all night, she decides this tiarra is just the first victory. And her life, she thinks, has finally begun anew.

  "Terrible, isn't it?" Mary Beth asks as she bee-lines to the table of her newest conquest.

  "What happened to her?" Mac asks.

&
nbsp; "It looks like her water broke," she explains, "Kind of early. Real early, actually."

  "Well, don't djyoo worry. They can do amazing things now," Mac reassures her, assuming she has only grief that she feels for her co-worker, right now, on her mind. "Good thing you're here, to watch the bar," he tells her.

  "You by yourself now?" another customer asks her, excusing the fact that his beer has not yet arrived.

  "Yep. Just me now. O gads!" she wails, "and look at the time! Only 15 minutes to midnight. I don't suppose any of you could help out - serving the champagne? We haven't even poured it yet.

  Maybe that's what she was doing in the back room," Mary Beth wonders out loud, motioning her head toward the doorway, the last place Stephanie was seen by the room full of spectators during the scene of emergency; thereby causing most heads of her audience to turn in direction of the door while she shares a secret stare with Tiyo who yells,

  "Okay, yes!" practically jumping out of his chair.

  Nearly startled, Mac and Tenzing's heads whisk around his direction; Tenzing shaking his head 'no' and Mac smiling easy, saying, "Well, there ya go. Our prayers with the bartendar, we'll have a right happy new year's yet. Go ahead and help her. He don't speak much English," he tells Mary Beth, "but he's catching on."

  Tenzing says to Tiyo in Amdo dialect, "Go help her, and come sit right back down." Lhosta smiles at Tiyo, containing his laughter and Mary Beth extends one hand to him, her other hand gracefully balancing the two beverages she has yet to deliver; her hair all aglitter with the shine of pink foil and the triumph of letters spelling H-a-p-p-y N-e-w Y-e-a-r.

  The first day at Camp Hale, Tenzing, Lhosta and Tiyo are the only Tibetans to six military men and two CIA fellas leading the whole operation. ST Circus -the determined code word - is kept a secret even from the Tibetans themselves. Lhosta and the two brothers are each given a bag of supplies before entering a small room that looks like a classroom with a chalk board at the front and chairs with one arm in the shape of half-moon tables. Lhosta finds the chairs uncomfortable and would prefer sitting on the floor, but when he begins to ask this, he is told to raise his hand by the man at the front of the room. He raises his hand. The man at the front of the room quickly points to Lhosta and Lhosta grins at Tenzing and Tiyo, amused by the playfulness of this game although the man at the front seems rather gruff about it. Guided by translations from Tenzing to express himself, Lhosta explains he would be more comfortable sitting on the floor. The request is denied and he is told to remain sitting in the desk. Words are tossed around like Mess Hall and bunk. Lhosta, determined to gain some kind of understanding of the whole operation, carefully repeats these words, in his head, trying to grasp their meanings before the man at the head of the room changes the meanings altogether to some new concept of what Lhosta has understood of the topics before.

  Mess Hall he understands - to eat; Mess Hall he hears, "don't eat at the Mess Hall during off hours. Snack machines are in the Officer's tent; but do not take them into the Mess Hall. Eat the snacks in the Officer's Tent." Lhosta carefully repeats to himself, eat in the Mess Hall but don't eat in the Mess Hall. Eat in the Officer's Tent.

  "Ahh," Lhosta says out loud as if he were solving a philosophical story problem.

  The man at the front of the room glares at him. "Quiet, please," he says, "write down any comments you might have in the notebook provided in your supply bag."

  And Lhosta scrawls on the paper in Buddist symbols, with a brand new Bic pen, something that means to him, "Eat with the Officers in the Officer's Tent."

  It takes 17 days for the other 14 Tibetan men of the first platoon of ST Circus to arrive. By this time, Lhosta realizes he is no longer allowed to eat with the Officers. He has not yet found an understanding of the reason, but he does so with a light heart, experiencing the Mess Hall with Tiyo and Tenzing, discussing Tibet and the Art of War with the others as they enter the gates of Camp Hale.

  Danthra, Tenzing and Tiyo's eldest brother, is among the last of the first unit of Tibetans to arrive at Camp Hale to learn the techniques of combat. With his radio training, Danthra is seen as somewhat experienced in the strategies of war and fighting, having been one of the six Tibetans trained in Saipan. Danthra eats in the

  Mess Hall that afternoon of his arrival, sitting down with Lhosta at a table near a window facing East. The sun shines bright, reflecting off a snow capped mountain top outside. Tenzing and Tiyo join the table. Danthra is welcomed by the group whose individual escape routes down the treacherous road from Litang, had merged in the middle of his living room last time that they had seen him. Danthra tells the group, the same group who had gathered at his home in Lhasa just three weeks prior, that there were no survivors from the attack on the monastery at Litang. He tells them that, looking into the eyes of each one of them, that they did the right thing, having run or fled.

  "And by coming here, to Camp Hale," he tells them to receive the training offered by the CIA, "there is hope to reclaim our homeland."

  "Hope," he says, to reclaim the city, and protect the Dalai Lama, in the city of Lhasa and outlying areas. The men at the table grow quiet and somber.

  "No survivors?" Lhosta holds his forehead in his hands, thinking of his master at the monastery, thinking of all the young monks with whom he had studied.

  "No survivors," Danthra repeats.

  "None?" Tenzing asks, his face looking as though tears flow, but they do not; and he thinks of Matseidha, the woman he had met at a horse race the previous August, the woman for whom he had made many excuses (from August to the attacks) to look like he might be thinking about purchasing something new: a new sword, rings for his hair, cloth or a stove pipe; just so he could peruse the market in hopes of seeing Matseidha there.

  "None," Danthra says. Tenzing does not ask if any other escapees were found. He decides to ask Danthra this, later, in private, and Lhosta tells them he will pray for Litang.

  He says only, "I will pray," but silently he thinks of his master, and he tells himself that he will pray for the dead to reemerge as helpful beings. He tells himself that he will pray for all Buddist monks and monasteries; and, he tells himself, that during all the days activities, today, learning guns and combat, he will pray.

  Outside, Mac approaches Lhosta who is standing alone looking toward the mountaintops. Mac inhales a deep, cold breath of fresh air under a clear, blue sky. He opens his arms out wide to the side as if he were doing arm curls, filling up his lungs.

  He exhales out loud, "Ahhh! The sky just looks bluer up here, don't it?"

  Lhosta looks at the sky with Mac.

  "Probably looks just like this where you come from. That's the reason the CIA chose this place in particular. 'Much like Himalayan terrain', they said to me when I was called to take this job," he chuckles, "Job."

  He taps lightly on Lhosta's shoulder, "Feels just like we're standin' on the roof of the world! Not the only one, though, I guess. Sure ain't easy on us downstairs lovers, though, the oxygen up here, I forget what they told me, either colder or too much of it, or not enough or something. It's gonna make today's training twice the work-out," and Mac points a thumb in the direction of the armed guard who 'clearanced' Danthra only hours earlier.

  "You ready to try out a gun today?" Mac asks Lhosta directly. And Lhosta turns away from the mountaintops to look at Mac, his eyes not quite filled to overflowing but definitely filled of tears, and narrow's his eyes to a piercing stare.

  "Yes," Lhosta responds to Mac in near perfect pronunciation, "yes."

  The first 'class' of combat training is Big guns, and it couldn't have come at a better time. The weight of the guns in Lhosta, Tenzing and Tiyo's hands today feel like a retaliation, somehow, to the sick, sad news Danthra has told them earlier this morning. Lhosta's heart and mind become one with the heaviness of the gun as the answer to the burden in his hands; and, Lhosta's heart and mind become one with its ability to shoot that paper assailant, dead center. Lhosta becomes
the best shot in the room as Camp Hale's cadets end their very first day of training. Mac, again, is somewhat taken aback by Lhosta for at least the second time, and decides that

  maybe his misgivings about this mission are just second thoughts, and thinks that today's efforts have proved him wrong to worry.

  The second day of Big Guns, however, not so sure 'a ground to sit on, Mac can't quite put his finger on it, but the group of resistance fighters he is training look more like a poster a tourist would buy than a group to fear or a force to reckon. Combat training is Mac's forte. The other CIA fellas cover eating, work-outs, English and radio, but Mac's all training, all day. Mac is all heart, as a human being, so teaching people to obliterate people, just doesn't seem, from the outside what he'd be good at doing. But he is. And these guys he cares about already, because he sees them putting in the effort, and at this altitude, he is reminded while teaching them the combat 'crawl', is not an easy undertaking. He is not disappointed in the level of their participation.

  Finally, by the end of the second day, Mac puts his finger on what it is that's worrying him. The inkling creeps into his thoughts while watching the men stack their guns. And stack them again. These men are proud of their guns. They like to look at their guns. They like to hold their guns. And as Danthra puts his gun on, and almost subconsciously, without knowing it, poses with his gun, just standing there, holding his gun, the strap strapped across him like a stamp or a cross, it hits him.