"No," she says, again, adamantly; and away from her responsibilities Mary Beth walks - out the door, locking it behind her as the last straggler realizes his New Year's Eve is over and he is being asked to leave; leaving to Stephanie the strings of paper letters, empty, plastic champagne cups, heaping ashtrays and that sickening scent of Schnapps in the back room to clean up after.
Mary Beth asks Tiyo if he would like to ride with her, in her car, "Mac's van looks rather full," she says with 'sugar eyes' to the side that hint of sloppy kisses; and, he chimes a "Yes!" before Mac can answer her.
"Don't get lost now, or I'll have to call Intelligence on you," he jokes; and, the caravan toward the interstate, begins, with a right at the second light, on up the mountain.
Mary Beth has had her driver's license since fifteen, and a car her father bought her that he nicknamed Tween Ingine which he painted on the driver's side near the door handle in loopy, cursive lettering. Mary Beth hangs her New Year's tiara above the rear view mirror, adjusts her hair, and tells Tiyo that her father is dead, now; and, that is how she got her driver's license early.
"My mother," she tells him, "needed a way to get to the store."
"Oh," Tiyo says and the two of them kiss for at least a half an hour.
"Don't worry," Mary Beth finally says, forming her words from pink, swollen lips, "I know where the all-night diner is. Everyone in Leadville knows it. Lots of kids go there after games and parties. I used to," she says quietly, and then with more boisterous enthusiasm she explains, "Sometimes. But I don't now. Most of friends from school are married or engaged. Three of them have babies. I guess that's where I'm headed now. Anyway, I don't know too many kids. They're not my class nor my grade. But this'll be fun. Or I'll just drop you off. Is that okay?" she asks Tiyo, sweet as possible.
"Yes, okay," Tiyo says, and suddenly wishes he could say something a little more exciting, but he doesn't.
Mary Beth is a descent enough driver and the route to the diner doesn't take very long. Tiyo enjoys riding along with her in the front seat, watching the shops and storefronts of Leadville disappear as Tween Ingine hits the Interstate.
"Leadville's really growing. We've almost doubled in size," she tells him.
"Oh," he says and nods his head enthusiastically.
"In 1950, we only had a population of 2,000; now we have a population of almost 4,000 - not even ten years later," she laughs, "Guess we're all havin' babies pretty fast."
"Okay!" says Tiyo, thinking 'wow' would've been a better response. "I'm boring you, aren't I?" Mary Beth asks him, "all this talk of Leadville?"
"Boring?" Tiyo does not understand; and Mary Beth does her best acting job of pretending to be falling asleep. Tiyo laughs and Mary Beth asks if he will steer the car while she puts on lip stick.
"I tried to get out of here," she tells him while coating the perfect lip pout with Avon's Fall Shine from the Sunburst Collection. "Two years ago, a year after my dad died, I ran away, so they say - I didn't call it that - to California. I wanted to be an actor," she says, "It was awful. I hated it. I couldn't connect with people. They just didn't like me. I went to auditions, as many as I could, but I never got in. Now I'm back, in Leadville. Most of my friends seem like they hit middle age while I was gone."
"Middo age?" Tiyo asks.
"Fuddy-duddy," explains Mary Beth.
"Oh," Tiyo smiles.
"Old." she says.
"Ah! Old," he recognizes and acknowledges the word. And Mary Beth pulls the car in under a gigantic, neon sign that says Pancakes!.
New Year's day begins, just before dawn, hungover and ruddy - despite the steak and egg breakfasts. Flight suits are handed out and each and every cadet is ousted out of the barracks and into several small, carrier planes. Tenzing and Lhosta are in the plane that Mac details while Tiyo and Danthra are seperated in the other two planes. The plane Tenzing rides in gives him tremors of uneasiness accentuating tiny shivers from the cold to actual shudders. The open door of the plane can not really even be called 'open' as it looks like it might have actually been torn from the hinges at one point, and yet, it rises. As Camp Hale falls away and the vertical grandness of the mountaintops begin to flatten out as they are looked down upon from above. Tenzing presses, hard, against the back of his seat, positioning his torso into a corner between his seat and the wall of the plane, as far away as possible from the gaping, open door. Mac yells above the noise of the flickering wind. His demeanor? His usual: booming voice, enthusiastic, half-cocked smile, hair greased back and combed, like he hadn't gone out the night before, at all; or maybe he hadn't slept, yet. Whichever it is, he is the grace of the kind that never really looks hung-over, and to Tenzing and Lhosta, at this moment, he looks tall as a tree in contrast to their shrinking violet feelings, nauseated and quivering as the ground slips further, and further, away.
"This is where we jump!" Mac yells, smiling. Tenzing swallows, the taste of steak sauce rising just past his uvula.
"Ugh," he mutters and swallows again. He looks away from the open door, for the first time since the propellers started up, having stared at it like a deer in headlights while waking up, the frigid air rushing in like a cold, water wash against his face. He looks at Lhosta. He nearly laughs at the sight of Lhosta's eyes wider than he's ever seen them, looking straight at Tenzing like a frightened puppy.
"Lighten up!" Mac yells, "this is the good part!" Tenzing knows this. This is the part he'd been waiting for. He realizes Lhosta must be completely unaware of what is to occur; but, Tenzing has known about this 'part' since he made the decision to go to Camp Hale way back in Danthra's living room. Danthra had told him, months before what it had been like, parachuting in, and as Mac tosses around jet-black, packed and ready parachutes to the cadets Tenzing, although holding down vomit as best he can, knows this is what he wants to do. Lhosta, however, is not so sure. He knows nothing of what is to occur, but that he is up in a plane, in what Mac has called a jumpsuit, and as he's thrown the pack to put on, as he sees Tenzing is doing, he realizes he is about to be asked to jump out of an airplane... actually jump. The sky, dark above but lightening around the edges, twinkles in twilight as light hits the snow covered peaks, and frothy white clouds, while the moon and some stars still glimmer in the sky. And, it is cold. Freezing cold. Frigid.
Tenzing thinks of the saying from home, Amdo and Kham, "steaming bread freezes like iron soon after it's taken from the bamboo steamer"; while Mac recites his version, "Colder than a witch's tit in a snow bank! Isn't it?" he smiles again. For the first time since they met at the Denver airport, Mac annoys Tenzing who wishes he would stop being so smiley, and his stomach makes a gurgle as it does another churn.
At the count the men with 'backpacks' on, now standing in a line to the back of the plane, jump: "One! Two! Three! Four!" Mac calls and numbers as the Tibetan men jump into the rushing sounds of the cold dawn. 'Taught' the tuck and roll, by Mac, in shouts, over loud sounds of wind and twin engine propellers, Lhosta talks himself through in repetitive 'mantras' of what he caught of Mac's instructions.
"Tuck. Tuck. Tuck," he tells himself. "Pull up. Pull up. Pull up," he says and does, and then, through rushes of cold air that shoot up his nostrils, filling his lungs with the sweetness of Colorado's purest oxygen, Lhosta smiles, his arms out wide, his legs up, bent at the knee; flying. In freefall position, Mac watches and laughs from the open doorway to himself, "A flying monk."
"So this is what an eagle, soaring, feels like," Lhosta thinks as he sails through the sky watching the tiny mountaintops fill with the light of early morning sunrise; and although the wind flaps at his ears, Lhosta enjoys a 'quiet' he has never known before. And then, something very spiritual and endearing to Lhosta, happens. An actual eagle, soars alongside Lhosta for a time, a time almost without an actual time increment to it, not a moment, not a life span, but something in between, and Lhosta wonders if this moment is between an him and an old friend.
After several
seconds of this enjoyment, Lhosta nearly panics, wondering if he has waited too long, and he caught up, once again, into this world's demands of timely second counting, and he relies, again, on his mantra-style instructions, to get him through: "Count. Count. Count. 3. 2. 1. Pull the cord!" The cord is pulled and up, up, up, Lhosta sails, as the chute releases and catches the wind current.
Lhosta smiles, first with the relief of thoughts like, "The parachute opened" and "It was not too late," and then in wonderment as the mountaintops, again, appear to fall away. Finally, the updraft feeling stops and the parachute slowly, ever so slowly, begins to lower Lhosta to the ground.
1959 Litang.
Mathseida pulls back the covering that protects the table of colorful sashes, buckles, and hair rings. She quickly places heavier items upon the sashes before the wind can pick them up or blow them around. She settles in behind her open booth, once her morning chores are done, and pulls a warm wrap over her shoulders, keeping out the cold. The sun is not yet visible through the mist that often lines the market streets this time of year and she wonders, silently, if there will be many customers this day. She doubts it, as she notices the 'store' across from her has not bothered to open and she wonders when she will get to the point of 'not bothering' if the money weren't good enough that day. She thinks, again, for the fourth time this morning of the comforts of sharing her life with a man. Children, she thinks of, and she remembers for the 18th week in a row, the boy who often stopped and talked with her during the horse races, back in August; and, how he had talked of his brother's need for a wife. A chill wind curls through the wares section, again, this time permeating the wrap, the fur, and the leather of her 'keep warm' clothing. A little dog runs down the lane between the shops. She scoffs and does not laugh; as the scent of barbeques being lit and the first meats of the morning being browned are the only signs of human life. She withstands the cold wondering how long this day will last.
About mid-afternoon, the mist has lifted but the chill has not. There have not been any buying customers, and only two men have approached the booth, but just to talk to her; both of whom she does not like. The first is a gloater. A merchant himself, he is always telling her what she should do and how much he's made; and on a day like today, she doesn't even believe him.
"I suppose the dog bought a couch," she grumbles, under her breath. He pretends not to hear her, but he makes, for a quick second, quite an ugly, little expression revealing that he might have gotten 'caught', just now, in a lie. The other man, quite a bit older than Matseidha, was husband to a wife who died, inexplicably; and although he is sometimes a charming conversationalist, Matseidha instinctively knows to 'keep her distance', there may have been dharma working its business; although, by the time he leaves the booth, there is not even one cloud in the formerly cloudy sky. She feels warmer and gets out from behind her booth to move around a little. She turns quickly, at the sound of a bell from a bicycle clanging erratically, and sees the bicycle moving straight toward her.
"A letter!" the bike rider calls out to her.
"For me?" Matseidha asks in delightful surprise.
"A letter," the rider repeats, getting off of his bicycle and leaning it against the post of the market stall. "Here!" he takes the envelope from the metal, wire bike basket and holds it up above his head, smiling with excitement and a bit of P.R.
"Oh," Matseidha is reminded, and she fumbles for the lock box retrieving a bit of money for his 'tip'.
"Here you go," he looks at the meager amount, but likes Matseidha instantly, so he smiles and hands the letter to her - kind of. He teases once and quickly grabs it back. She laughs, having been fooled; and then he gives the letter to her, altogether. "Thought I could get you to smile," he says taking his bicycle from against the post. He gets back on his bike and rides away, back down the empty, dirty lane, one hand waving high above his head, the other hand steering his bicycle with his thumb erraticaly pressing against the lever of his bike bell. The clanging can be heard from quite a distance as he goes, and Matseidha watches, smiling, until he can not be seen by her any longer.
Matseidha looks at the envelope. It is from Lhasa, the embassy. She opens the envelope. Inside, there is another envelope. This one is from the United States. She gasps, touching her fingertips to her lips as she notices the first name on the outside edge of the upper left corner.
"Tenzing!" she says and clutches the envelope against her chest, looking up for a moment; and, just then, Matseidha sees the old man, who had seemingly 'brought' the sunshine, leave the barbeque along the rise of the lane. She watches, for a moment, his silhoutte, his cane and his hat. She watches the little dog follow him; until, he disappears into the shadows; and, Matseidha goes behind her booth, sets down the letter and says a little prayer.
"He has eaten his own heart," Matseidha thinks to herself, "he has set aside his own needs, this day, for me to receive this," but Matseidha does not know she thinks this second part. Matseidha does not yet know she loves this man from whom she has just received a letter; and, she does not open the letter until she gets home, her eyes welling with tears several times that day, before she closes the booth and carries the cherished, sacred letter home with her, that same little dog reappearing, following her nearly all the home.
Over India, the pilot explains to the seventeen Tibetans that the plane will be landing, shortly; the party continuing on to Darjeeling must deboard and take the train or bus. The fifteen others must wait through refueling and clearance, but due to security measures, they are told, they can not leave the plane. Danthra stands and offers his last word of command before he appoints Tenzing as the leader of the squadron.
"ST Circus code cannot be broken! Once down," he tells them, referring to Cushi Gangdruk, the lands of Amdo and Kham, "the code you have learned, cannot be shared with a single other outside of this squadron." His reminder is a stern one and he is confident the squadron will succeed. Danthra and Lhosta hug Tiyo and Tenzing, good-bye; and Lhosta wishes blessings upon the men of the first ST Circus squadron before he and Danthra take their bags and exit the plane. Tiyo watches as they go, noticing the symbol of Indian Air on the side of the plane that had picked them up in Berlin, while Tenzing talks about being leader and what he plans to do once they 'touch down'.
"Word is not yet out," he tells them, "whether or not we will 'go in' today."
Once the plane is refueled and in flight, again, the pilot relays a message to his passengers of utmost importance.
"Finally," he tells them, "the drop will take place, on this day, as scheduled. There is word, radioed in from Lhasa, there are no Chinese in the area." The Tibetans cheer and holler. Tiyo hugs Tenzing, almost lurching his body toward his brother in absolute resolve of gratitude. He has grown from boy to man over this journey and he will descend upon his homeland with his older brother, from the sky, reclaiming, eventually, their home.
"The land of Tibet," he thinks, "to be Tibetan." And he looks, again, out the window, while Tenzing, their new leader, quiets the men and re-explains a strategy they have heard before.
Tiyo thinks of home. He thinks of Litang. He thinks of the day the black horse went down, and Tiyo feels strong. He will not, this day, he tells himself, think of lightening. He has grown up, he thinks. He has a weapon. He has strategy; and for a moment, he remembers Mary Beth.
He watches out the window and thinks of the English words she'd said to him, "Don't ever let anybody, no matter who they are, take you away from your dreams." And Tiyo decides right then, that his dream is to live free in Tibet, forever - raise his family there, build a home and race his horses there; and, for a moment, but only for a moment, he wishes he could marry Mary Beth. His brother talks, and although he feels he should be listening, his mind drifts back into her memory and he pictures the loopy lettering of the words written near the handle of her car door as he opens it for her. She does not want to go into the restaurant, he remembers. She wants something different, something he has n
ever known.
"This going to bring me close to you," she tells him, fumbling with her bra in the back seat. "I just knew you were different," she says to him, her breath rapid. She keeps talking, "as soon as I saw you, I knew. Did you? Did you know anything about me? Soon as you saw me? What did you think?" she asks. He pulls back and looks at her. "It's okay," she says, "I'm already pregnant." He looks down. Her tan line shows against the browness of her stomach. She is holding her muscles tightly. The brightness of her white breasts glowing in the darkness.
"Ohh, honey," she coos, taking his cheeks into both her hands and lifting his face to look at hers, "he won't know!" She kisses him. "Is that what you're worried about?" she asks. Tiyo remembers not knowing what he was worried about. He remembers not understanding much of what she was talking about. He remembers her talking and the feeling of heaven.
Tenzing interrupts his thoughts yelling at him, trying to draw his brother's attention away from the airplane window, "Tiyo! Tiyo! What did I just say?" he asks in the familiar dialect from Kham; and Tiyo looks at him, suddenly overcome with a sincere, heartfelt, desire to pray.
"Are you sure we're going in today?" Tiyo asks.
"Tiyo!" Tenzing says, "We were just cheering about it - you were cheering. We want to go in today," he looks at him confused, his head tilted, slightly to one side.
"I know!" Tiyo says, "but shouldn't we check it out first? Maybe we should wait. I just have a bad feeling all of a sudden."
Leadville: 300 Days Away Page 7
