Leadville: 300 Days Away

by Kara Skye Smith

  "You like America too much," Tenzing scoffs.

  "I don't!" he objects.

  "But, Tiyo," his brother continues, "it is it time to go home, now," the squadron cheers, "to protect what is ours!" And then he looks at the men he is leading and yells, "Let's go. Let's fight!"

  Matseidha enters the house, very quietly, nearly on tip-toes. Her mother, at this time of the evening has usually fallen asleep, in her chair, near the pot-bellied stove. Matseidha does not want her mother's company right now. She does not want her mother's questions about the letter. Sometimes she wakes her mother, and tells her of an eventful day or a fruitful sale; but this day's events, Matseidha does not want to share. She does not wake her mother to tell her of the news about the old man's sacrifice, his love wish, the opening up of the sky from cloudy, his blessing, the little dog, and the delivery of the best news of which Matseidha (and probably her mother) had ever hoped: Tenzing is alive; he is in America; and, he is thinking of her. A man, who Matseidha likes, has written her a letter.

  Matseidha clutches the letter to her chest, sitting on the edge of her bed, making a silent wish, one more time before she turns it over to open it. Looking down, her fingers nearly shaking in anticipation of what the letter might reveal, Matseidha notices that the letter has already been opened. Taped shut, and a botched job at that, the unknown letter opener hadn't even tried to disguise this dirty deed.

  "The messenger!" Matseidha thinks and nearly smiles, although his naughty snooping has angered her, because she remembers the look on his face; and, just as she'd imagined, she determines from his expression and his teasing, that this must be good news. Matseidha pictures clearly in her mind the near smirk on his face; and, Matseidha draws the conclusion that this letter might even contain something romantic. And then she nearly blushes, and again she is angry, vowing to herself to snub that little bicycle messanger the next time he drives that insidious clanging bell of a bike past her booth.

  "Hah!" she says out loud and then looks up as she hears her mother stirring. She sits quietly, again, listening. Her mother does not, yet, wake fully, as she does before the evening meal. Matseidha tells herself to stop being so afraid, and she quickly rips open the already opened, and taped back up, letter from Tenzing.

  1959 Leadville.

  On a three day break from Camp Hale, Mac heads for Denver for an overnight stay. He phones his wife on a long, and mostly upbeat phone call. "The kids aren't doing too badly in school," she tells him.

  "The sink backed up on Christmas day," she says, her voice shaky for the first and only time of the phone call. "But we fixed it," she says, and she recovers her resolve not to cry telling the funny story of how Johnny put the plunger in it, "stood right up on top of the counter," she says, "put his whole body weight into the thing. You're dad about died laughing."

  "How's Dora?" Mac asks.

  "She's fairing, okay," his wife says.

  "She make it over to Christmas?"

  "No, she didn't; but, I took her a plate, and some gifts."

  "Dad get her anything?" Mac asks.

  "Don't think so," she tells him.

  "Bastard," Mac says softly.

  "O now," she says and then the phone call gets kind of mushy, his wife wishing he were home again.

  "Well, you're a real trooper," he tells her, "Sure wish I could've been there with ya." And, the phone call ends with Mac promising to tell his wife, as soon as he hears, his ETA, or in civilian terms, when he can go home. He loves her, he tells her and the wife hangs up, not burdening him with the tears she'll cry later; and, Mac hangs up knowing that she does this for him, waits till she hangs up, to have a 'good cry'.

  Heading back 'up the mountain', Mac stops again, in Leadville - the two mile high city - at the bar at the top of the world. He has a sandwich and a beer. He thinks about Lhosta, for some reason that he can't quite put his finger on (the same feeling he always gets when he thinks of Lhosta); and, he and Mary Beth talk about Tiyo. She tells Mac, without the explicit details, that she kind of 'had a thing' for him.

  "Rather quickly," she explains, "I just liked him right away." He says he understands, quite a few of those fellers got under his skin too, he says, and she asks if there is anyway to write to him.

  "Well, it's all top secret," Mac says, "can't tell you where he is."

  "Ooh-wa!" she whines, "isn't he staying here? In Colorado?" Mac shakes his head no, but does not answer her, again, because he knows he already did.

  "Can't divulge those details," he sums it up for her. Then, he asks for his bill and calls it a day. "Headin' out!" he says, his enthusiasm about half what it normally is. To himself he thinks, "Won't be back by here. Already too many rumors surfacing around." But he knows, on days off the officers and himself will still come into this bar. So he cautions. "Ain't too many choices, 'round here," he tells Mary Beth looking into her eyes as he drops his lunch payment on top of the bill tray, and then holding eye contact he says, "You'll need to keep quiet, you know, about Tiyo and the party in here," and he drops another twenty on top of the payment amount.

  "Shoot," she says with a smile, "I was just about to ask you what you're really doin' up there, too." She scoops up the money.

  "Guess I won't. I..." she holds the word for a pause and Mac helps her.

  "It's kind of hard to let go, sometimes, I know. Just had a talk with my wife about Christmas. The kids growing up so fast. But how would I know?" He pats her on the shoulder, "Best you let go of this one, though." Stephanie walks in just as Mac is leaving. He stops to grab a toothpick at the counter and reminds Mary Beth, almost strictly, one more time. "I didn't know you two were getting so close, or I would've stopped it. We all got kind of tossed that night," he says blaming himself.

  Stephanie overhears this last bit of advice and offers her favorite drinking excuse, "People get drunk. Things happen! How ya' doin' Mac?"

  "I was just leaving," he says, and she goes in back to take off her coat. "Don't!" she yells, "Stay a while. You know, I've been tryin' to tell her," and she comes back out to the front counter, the front door slams shut. Mac is already gone. "Well!" she says and looks at Mary Beth. "I told you he was a cheater. Did he tell ya?" she motions to the just closed door, "He had a girl, didn't he?" Mary Beth shakes her head.

  "Top secret," she whispers and then gives almost a sugar eyed look to the slammed shut door, thankful that Mac has left Stephanie wondering and the words Mary Beth knows she can, and will, use to her advantage just to shut Stephanie up and drive her crazy.

  "Well," she says, stumped, not knowing what else to say. "Well," she says again, as Mary Beth walks off - to the back room to grab her coat.

  "On a break!" she yells, and walks out the very same door into the Colorado sunshine leaving Stephanie to twist and turn, hanging out to dry on two of her favorite topics: 'gossip' and 'her negative opinions of other people's business'.

  Back at Camp Hale, Mac asks the radio operator, "What's the word?" and he is allowed to sit in, with Antoine, head of operations, as the group in the plane is about to descend. Mac listens as the plane approaches it's target landing area, in Kham, directly over the outlying areas of the city of Litang.

  He listens as Antoine checks references in Lhasa of Chinese whereabouts, and he listens as Antoine says a swear word, crushing out his cigarette, standing up, away from the radio and asking Mac, "Now what are we gonna do?!" Mac rubs his forehead.

  "Somebody broke code. Somebody must've broken code! Dammit!" he swears, again, "They know."

  "How many?" Mac asks, knowing 'they' are the Chinese.

  "Uncertain."

  "Where?"

  "Kham - undisclosed location."

  "Dammit!" Mac says and slaps his hand against the radio bench watching Antoinne pace around the tiny room.

  "It's the pilot," the radio operator says, picking up a signal, "ST Circus. Come in." And, the pilot triumphantly announces that all 15 cadets of Camp Hale's ST Circus ope
ration have just jumped in, over Litang, whether conditions, cloudy, slightly windy and cold.

  1959 Litang.

  Tiyo doesn't have a chance to think. Tenzing yells Tiyo's number as soon as the pilot reports he's hit his mark. At the plane's door, Tiyo jumps - tuck and roll position - nearly smiling at the joy and excitement he feels leaping into mid-air, an almost instant numb feeling in his cheeks from the cold air so high above Tibet. He pulls up and counts the seconds of the free fall.

  "Pull the cord," he thinks and fumbles his cold fingers to the flap of urethane, ripping it with gusto to the right. Tiyo watches Litang's dots become buildings nestled among tip-tops of mountains, once again, two miles above the 'highest city in the world'. Tiyo smiles as he thinks these words, Mary Beth's freshly coated smile filling his mind amid his thoughts of practiced instructions and remembered commands. And then Tiyo hears it. Gunshots. He sees that the sounds, the shots, are coming from an army set up just past the rise of a ridge not far from his landing point.

  "Set-up!" Tiyo says, a panicked, angry cry to his voice. "There's no way!" He looks up, his mind sending him climbing up the ropes to the chute, but there is no way. No escape, this time, no lightening, no horse and he is hit and hit again. Under the cloudy, Tibetan sky of home, Tiyo is hit, first in the stomach and then in the head. Tiyo is dead before he hits the ground.

  The last words on Tiyo's lips, "I love..."

  Tenzing is the last to jump. He signals the pilot, who also does not anticipate the set-up; so, he is not looking, and he does not see it.

  "Clear!" Tenzing yells and jumps. Tenzing's freefall is exciting. This exciting way to return to the home he loves, and has missed while away, brings him an inner joy and resolve to fight and protect what is his - what is Tibet. He pulls up with flourish and sails like a dove. As he pulls his chute, he wonders if Matseidha has gotten his letter. He wonders if she will be welcoming him home. And then the doubt sets in: he wonders if he will see her at all, or if she has gotten married while he was away. This doubt leads him back to his thoughts of ST Circus, thoughts of triumph, of bringing Tibet a strategy of combat to defeat invaders. But then, Tenzing hears it. The sound of gunfire, just below him. Tenzing's return to Tibet is different than Tiyo's in three ways. The wind has pulled Tenzing to the East, just enough that his landing will not be out in the open from the firing squad; it will be just over a rise of a hill from where Tenzing now sees a visible 'pile' of red parachutes splayed out like blood spills, on the ground of his homeland; motionless. ST Circus radio operators have had enough time to call in resistance fighters of the area. There aren't many, but at least there are some who will 'cover' Tenzing, as best they can, as Tenzing lands. And, Tenzing lands alive. Hidden for a moment, from bullets beneath the rise of a hill, Tenzing hurries to cut himself loose from the chute. He leaves it, too, laying flat, hoping that his brother did the same. Tenzing runs.

  This time, when Tenzing stumbles into Lhasa, exhausted, having survived the elements, the treachery of the trail, and hunger, Lhosta does not arrive with him. His younger brother is not inside Danthra's warm house waiting with a smirk in a comfortable chair. And Tenzing does not hear the words of a courageous resistance fighter from his older brother, Danthra, pressing him on to fight. He hears the sobs of a child from the brother he has looked up to this entire mission and before it. Fourteen of the fifteen men trained at Camp Hale, including Tenzing's brother (nearly Tenzing's son, raised by him alone), are dead. Tenzing has survived and Danthra tells him he must run.

  "They know where I've lived. You must not stay there," and his sobs interrupt the radioed message until Mac's voice comes on.

  "Antoine says you must connect with resistance fighters who have formed a faction in Central Tibet. You are the only one we have Tenzing. The only one with the combat training who can pull up the movement of the Khampas, Tenzing."

  "I won't fail you," Tenzing says, wiping tears that flow, silently, from the corners of his eyes. He has no time for sobs. He has no time for feelings or for the Buddist prayers that bless a life loved toward joy in rebirth. Tenzing has survived the impossible and he knows, in his heart, he has not survived it alone; without purpose. A day later, after running and walking, he 'hitches' a ride in the back of a truck; and there, alone and off his feet, Tenzing 'lets down' and sobs, mourning the love and the loss of Tiyo, praying for his happy 'return'.

  Matseidha doesn't see the red parachutes fall from the sky. She does not see them laid out against the January ground among the hills of Litang. Matseidha, reads Tenzing's letter, privately to herself, again and again, in her booth at the market. She does not snub the bicycle messenger, because he does not ride by. She does not 'greet' Tenzing, as he asked her in the letter; because she does not see the 'sign' he wrote to tell her she would see. She is huddled, in the cold, under layers of warm fabrics and canopies of cotton sheeting, dutifully minding a very slow morning at the booth.

  Matseidha begins to feel, or have an inkling, there is something 'just not quite right' about today. She watches as several armed, Chinese soldiers march past, along the rise where she'd seen the old man go out as a 'gift' to her, she thinks, freeing the way for the bicycle messenger to ride in with her letter. There are many old men and young boys dressed like Khampas, huddling around the barbeques talking of fighting.

  She does not hear much as they walk by, she is not interested today; but she does hear blips and phrases like, "we must fight this," and "the Chinese have no souls". And then Matseidha hears it - the clanging bell of the messenger boy. She starts to smirk as she prepares her lecture, thinking this will satisfy her more than just a turn away; but he looks frantic, his bike riding wobbly and fast.

  He is yelling, "Your house! Your mother!" Matseidha jumps to her feet; her letter drops to the ground. Matseidha does not notice it.

  "Hurry!" he says and turns his bike, motioning to the seat. He tells her to get on.

  A wobbly start to the top of the rise, she worries if her weight as a passenger will be too much for him. She worries if she will get there too slowly; but by the rise of the hill, his momentum is up and he pedals with swiftness. He pedals his passenger, Matseidha, to the broken down door of her house. Her mother lays there, inside the door, beaten and crying. The house has been torn apart, as if the Chinese were looking for the tiniest thing.

  "You. Matseidha?! What have you done?" she cries.

  "Nothing! Mother," Matseidha swears, kneeling to her mother and lifting her chin to look at the bruises.

  "I just got a letter - I didn't tell you -"

  Matseidha's mother interrupts with wails, nodding her head, "He asked me for a letter. They wanted the letter." And then she cries, "Matseidha, O Matseidha!"

  The bicycle messenger kneels down on one knee. He takes

  hold of Matseidha's shoulders and turns her square to look into his face.

  "Matseidha! They will be looking for you. You must get out of here! You must go."

  Matseidha turns to her mother, "But -" and he turns her again, nearly shaking her.

  "No time to lose!" he says, "You must go, now." And Matseidha's mother, crying softly now, nods her head in agreement, clutching her knees closer to her hands which hold a bloody, white cloth, tucking her chin in a fetal position against the final blow of the beating, her daughter being taken away. Matseidha stands up to go, but she can't make her feet move.

  She points to her mother in this position and shrieks, "I can't go!"

  "You must," the bicycle messenger says softly. "If they find you, with the letter, they will kill you both."

  "Go..." her mother says, "go." Matseidha grabs a shawl and the bicycle messenger takes the lunch he has not yet eaten from his bike basket and shoves it into her pocket.

  "I will come back," he says. "I will help her back to her feet." Matseidha, forever grateful, kisses him on the cheek. She wishes him the many blessings that she never thought she would be wishing on a bike messenger she once perceived as 'nau
ghty' for peeking.

  Once upon the back of the bike, the cold wind in her hair, her face tucked behind the messenger as a shield to the wind, she confesses her suspicion.

  "You didn't open it," she says.

  "No," he says through heavy breath, pedaling with constant repetition, keeping the rhythm to ease the strain of the bike ride, "They must have opened it. Whatever it said," he remarks, "they did not like it, and they will be back. I will try to move your mother," he says. "Maybe she could stay with me - I don't know." And then he asks her, "Where will you go?"

  "I don't know," she says. After a long silence she suggests,

  "Lhasa?" But the bike messenger disagrees.

  "They came from there. Brought to me the letter from the embassy. And then, the old man who knows you stood up; so that I could bring the letter to you."

  "I thought so," Matseidha nearly whispers.

  "Maybe you could go to his house," the messenger suggests through loud exhales and wobbly pedal downstrokes.

  "Maybe."

  "Do you know where he lives?" he asks.

  "No," she says matter-of-factly. "No."

  "It won't be far enough anyway," he says slowing his motion to a standstill on the pedals, leaning back slightly to coast down a hill, "You'll have to leave China. Leave Tibet."

  "Leave Tibet?!" she nearly yells. "Where will I go?" and then Matseidha begins to cry. She cries and cries while the messenger pedals, neither having any idea where to go.

  1972 Leadville.

  Mary Beth pulls the pop-top van to the side of the road where gravel has been filled in over a ditch for extra parking. She looks up at the house she walked away from, thirteen years ago, in tears and tells herself, out loud with a humpf and a nonchalant wave of her hand, "And all that drama," to keep from crying. The Colorado sunshine glistens off the sequins of her cotton tunic from India and she takes the keys out of the ignition with a djangling sound, partly from the number of keys and partly from the even larger number of bracelets on her arm.