Animals begin to stir and sounds of scurrying emerge often and then reside, the animal that caused it obviously passed. Matseidha opens her eyes at these noises, then shuts them again, to avoid the old lady. At once, however, there is a louder sound, larger than a simple scurry.
"Matseidha!" the old woman wakes her. She has actually fallen asleep this time and the fright has lessened the old woman's pride, reaching out to Matseidha she asks for her help, "Throw the stones!" she says, "A loud noise."
Matseidha listens. She hears it. Another 'step' or 'footstep' sound comes from the darkness. She throws a stone. She throws another. The little girl stirs, shifting her position along the old lady's lap.
"Who is it? Who is there?" Matseidha asks, but not loudly. There is no answer, only silence.
The cold hours, the dead of night are miserable, and Matseidha, the old lady, and even the little girl who has slept up until now, begin to 'bargain' for life in their minds, speculating their chances of survival. Matseidha can not feel her feet, she is so cold. The little girl shivers and wimpers continually, and the old lady's quiet is not by the choice of her own making. She is 'hanging on'. Matseidha notices, finally, tired of the thoughts of her own suffering, that the old lady is not doing too well. She opens her bag and takes out a bit of food that the last camp had offered her. She brings a demijohn to the old lady's lips.
"Drink," she provides the word softly. The old woman wants to open her mouth to drink, but her tongue comes out too.
"No, no," Matseidha tells her, "here," she says and presses the old woman's tongue back into her mouth.
"I'll pour it." She pulls down the old woman's chin and dribbles some of the water into her mouth, her eyes look desperate and pleading. Matseidha makes a sorrowful sound and throw's her arms around the old woman. She rubs her arms against the arms the old woman, bringing her warmth.
"Cuddle up!" she commands the girl and motions with her hand where she would like the girl to sit. Matseidha does just what she has warned and told them determinedly she would not allow. In the dead of night, she holds the old woman, who holds the little girl, whispering constant reminders to help her make it through these most wicked hours of the night.
The dead of night has a flatness to it that only those who have been out during every hour of it know; and, it has a coldness that seems wicked as it hits just when the sleep deprived survivor clings to the fact that the sun will be coming up, anytime soon, in just a few hours. The dead of night's coldness is the one that penetrates the clothes no matter how cold the night has been, the dead of night's coldness is colder. They are the hours best slept through even by the most veteran of night people; but if left out 'in it', life's contemplation does not 'hit' until then.
"Not so bad," "I can do this," - all the thoughts up until the dead of night, during which time, no matter how sufferable the season or the weather, a 'plan' arises. The dead of night's purpose seems aptly named to kill; to kill the want of being out all night, to kill the thought of 'getting through the mountains' if this is what it's like, and if the dead of night hits on the barely surviving, it will be the dead of night to take the sufferers 'home'. Matseidha battles it. She makes a 'plan'. This dead of night thing will not happen to these three again, she pleads, searching her mind for a plan. She will go back to the camp, she determines, and she will find a man there to see them through. The little girl sleeps on and off as children should when the dead of night falls, but when even she can not sleep through the wickedness, she sets the course in her mind, every detail, of how she will run back to the home, to her mommy, upon sunrise, and never be out in the night 'like this' or in such cold again. The old woman is enveloped like a shroud; the dead of night takes her out.
"It is not known if she suffered, or if she didn't," Matseidha tells a woman back at the camp, "but she was not alive by sunrise. I felt her, in my arms, grow colder; but I could not determine the time she died."
"The girl is yours?" the woman asks, motioning to the hand Matseidha holds.
"No," Matseidha lets go and puts her arm around the little girl, "another forced to leave in exile," she says, "like me."
"Ahh," she says, "the old woman was your grandma?" The little girl nods her head. "I am sorry for your loss," she tells the child.
"Please, can we stay?" Matseidha asks the woman.
"Well, you'll have to ask," she motions with her head to the man behind her because her hands are full of tea cups that she hands to Matseidha and the girl.
"Thank you," they both say and clutch the steaming cups gratefully.
"You can," the large man's deep voice tells them from behind the tea dispenser.
"Thank you," Matseidha breathes heavily, her knees nearly buckling under her relief. The two simple words do not alone express the debt of gratitude she feels and she welcomes the warmth of the tea into her hands as she welcomes the generosity of the people that she stands before into her soul.
1959 Darjeeling.
Lhosta's walk from the monastery to the center for Tibetan refugees is a short one. He barely has time to notice the mountainous horizon, the weather or the monkeys that play along the rooftops as he walks. He does notice, however, the number of Tibetans huddled in groups, sitting or standing, bright colored clothing near worn, washed out colors of Darjeeling architecture, expressions of homelessness, loss and wonder. Lhosta's thoughts are of fulfillment. Walking into the center, past the lines waiting to get in, he knows his joy spreads like thoughts of fulfillment he projects upon the emptiness he conquers. He contemplates ways in which to bless the huddled masses, so much joy he has to share; an opportunity he has to share.
Lhosta starts in on his day by visiting the sick. Refugees transferred to the hospital rooms in the building behind the center are Lhosta's favorite place to start. He enters the building, the beds line three walls.
"Lhosta," a young monk tells him, "a man named Danthra has called for you. Here is his message," he says handing him a slip of paper.
"And one more thing," he says, "that man, that bed," he points, "he was with the CIA? In America? The man on the phone said to look for him. I think that is him."
"Is he sick?" Lhosta asks. "No. Dehydrated, but he isn't now. Exhaustion too, but now he wants to go. He says he must go today."
"Okay," says Lhosta, "I think I will be very happy to see this man. I was in the CIA too," he says, and smiles.
The young monk thinks he is teasing, "Oh, oh," he says nodding his head and smiling. "You go then," Lhosta tells him, "I'll start there."
When Lhosta approaches, Tenzing is asleep. Lhosta does not choose to wake him, so he visits other patients. By the time Lhosta returns to Tenzing's bedside, the bed is empty and Tenzing is gone.
On the phone later that day, Lhosta feels he simply can not apologize for what he did not do. Danthra seems irrationally angry and Mac does not take the call when Lhosta asks to speak to him.
"I don't have a choice," Danthra tells him. "I must go to Darjeeling and look for him. Now, do you see?"
"Maybe you are longing for home. Maybe you are tired of the West?" Lhosta asks him. Danthra is not amused. He wants someone to take responsiblity for this, and he does not like that the rather meek voice of Lhosta has so strong a resolve not to take the blame for what he has not done. He hangs the phone up, unsuccessful at making Tenzing's whereabouts a problem that Lhosta feels he must confess to.
"It would be good to see you," Lhosta says, not knowing yet that the phone has been hung up. There is silence. "I will see you at the center?" Lhosta asks. Nothing. "Okay, then," Lhosta says. "Good-bye." Lhosta hangs up the phone and smiles at the woman who has let him use it. The woman smiles back and Lhosta bows his head just slightly.
"Have a good day," she says to him.
"You too, and thank you. Bless you," he says. "My friend is alive," he blurts out. "I am happy that my friend is alive."
"O!" the girl kind of laughs, she is caught off guard. "I'm happy that yo
u're happy," she says and Lhosta exits the hospital area. He goes back to the center to find the people homes.
1959 Leadville.
Danthra's argument with Mac and Antoine is not well planned out, but it is fervent. Nearly at a panic, he finally convinces his two authority figures at Camp Hale that he must go and look for Tenzing.
"I must find him in Darjeeling," he says, "get him back onto the front lines."
"The front lines," Mac notates, "that have retreated into the hills of Mustang." Danthra continues talking, making the point of how he must go and find his brother, Tenzing, until he is cleared to do so. Mac and Antoine look at eachother, repeatedly during the pitch, with raised eyebrows, not knowing what to say, until Danthra finally gets a 'yes'. He can go. He packs his things quickly and meets Mac out in the hall.
"How are you gonna get there?" Mac asks him.
"How did my brothers go?" Danthra answers with a question of his own.
"Just kidding. I'll take you - to the airport," he says. "Would you like a stick of gum?" Mac fumbles in his pocket for a pack, and opens it by pulling at the tab, a strip of red, unwrapping it.
"No. Thanks," Danthra says. "Can we go now?"
"Little while," Mac answers and Danthra presses past him without saying a word.
Danthra waits at the gate of security for nearly an hour under the Colorado sun until Mac appears, his tall frame casting a shadow as long as a tree, fallen against the late spring snow.
"You seem angry," Mac says, once through clearance and out into the parking 'area'. Both men get into Mac's sedan and close the doors.
"I'm upset at the incompetence," Danthra says and then falls silent.
"Tip of the ice berg?" Mac asks him. Danthra nods his head. There is no way to tell Mac that he has chosen to go home because he can't really go home. He does not have the desire to 'talk it out' in this car with this man who doesn't really care until every little loss, and every huge one is discussed and admitted to. In fact, the reason Danthra falls silent, at that moment, is because he doesn't have the desire to discuss and explain how he knows Mac doesn't care, when all Mac wants to say is the lie that Mac does cares. Danthra knows he doesn't.
Mac is counting the days until he goes home; many mentions to Danthra and Antoine of his wife and kids, the guilt he feels, the days away.
"Catching up," Danthra blurts out and tells him.
"What?"
"Catching up."
Mac nods his head, "Ohm," he says pretending to know what Danthra has just told him.
"I am angry at catching up," Danthra elaborates watching Mac's side profile's every move.
"That doesn't make any sense. Maybe there's no translation," Mac comments, like a period at the end of the sentence, rather than a question mark - Who cares. He doesn't want to give it anytime; exactly the reason Danthra first decided not to really tell him why he is upset. But now that Mac has dismissed his comment, so quickly, and with a lame excuse, Danthra decides to continue making his point evident. By doing this, he feels he is showing Mac how much Mac doesn't really care. The result of this for Danthra is that he has nowhere to go home to; no living room in Lhasa in which to 'catch up'; no comfortable chair for Tiyo to welcome Tenzing home; no radio room to be proud of in hopes of finding himself a wife who looks for a man with 'something'; nothing.
Mac worries about being away from home, away from his wife, he often calls to 'catch up'. Danthra learned the phrase - the english phrase - from Mac. He'd practiced it before he made the phone call to his brother; but Danthra has just called into chaos. There will be no 'catching up' for Danthra.
Danthra wants to bust out the glass of the car. He wants to jump and run, but he cannot. He must sit, in all his anger and his loss, sit here with Mac, chewing gum and driving, his hands at ten and two on the wheel of the car. Danthra sits with his anger that alone he 'has' and does not want to 'share', quietly. Not too quiet, though, for he does manage to tell Mac that he just cannot hear - from Mac the biggest liar, the biggest, most selfish, uncaring liar - the god-damned words, 'Catch up'.
Just as Mac shirks the iceberg by not understanding a bit of what Danthra has just said, he passes a girl in 'a rather swell car' and takes a long look. Danthra keeps his eyes on the road. Again, from the rearview Mac takes a glance at the girl and her car. He watches her fish tail on the ice a bit, checks the road in front of him, himself, and then looks back again to see that she has skidded off the road.
Danthra sighs a frustrated sigh, wanting out of the car and onto the plane more than anything in the world, right now, but understands the detour when Mac cries out, "Holy smokes! We gotta go help her. She's just skidded off the road."
"Gosh, Mr. Mac, thanks for stopping for me," are Mary Beth's first words as she steps out of the car, one hand on her protruding and obviously pregnant belly, "Do you think you can pull me out?"
"If not, I can probably get you to some place warm while we call a tow truck. Shouldn't be too bad though. You got any chains?" he asks her.
"I sure don't. Stupid, I know. Up here, in Colorado. I guess even in the springtime I outta know better." She looks at Danthra who is sitting in the car, silently fuming. "That wouldn't be," she pauses catching Mac's eyes as he has finished surveying 'the damage', "that wouldn't be, you know-" she says.
Mac looks at the car, "O! Tiyo? No. I thought I told you, he's not, he's not with us anymore." He looks at her belly. "He's not-"
"No. No!" she says, quickly interrupting. "I didn't really think so. I was just wonderin'. That's all."
"No. That's his older br-," Mac stops himself before he says the word brother. A slightly vindictive moment for Mac - he doesn't know why, he just doesn't tell her. He finishes with, "Um, no, older, brave guy, more authority. Not the same. No, no, Tiyo's not with us anymore. You got any rope?" He presses down on the top of the car over the most submerged wheel and bounces. He explains himself, "Sometimes if you push down on the car." Mary Beth frantically looks through her car for rope or twine or anything to pull with.
"Gosh darn it! Don't got a god-darned thing in here of use in this situation. Some nail polish, hair brush, mostly things like that."
"I'll check my trunk, State issued car though, you know. Didn't pack the thing myself. I always keep an emergency kit in my own car - but, you know, the wife's always driving that one," he lets out a laugh. Things like this get to Mac, the irony of how punctilious he is, anything under his care - the fine point of protocol and procedure; yet, he's asked to leave it, trade it for ineptness most of the time. Sometimes this strikes him as funny, like today. Sometimes this makes him wish he'd chosen a different line of work. Certain days, this makes him feel a little more than just slightly out of control, like he could put that car in neutral and watch Danthra and the incompetence of a State issued car without an emergency kit, in Colorado, run straight off the sheer cliff its sitting near; hop in beside Mary Beth, and not give a care in the world about anything else. As Mac allows his thoughts to wander while he's searching the god-damned trunk of the car 'packed by State workers without any foresight of the Colorado roads at all - 'it is their own god-damned state, isn't it, like they don't drive anywhere at all,' Mac thinks; and, suddenly realizes he might need a break. He suddenly 'gets' Danthra, and he steps back from the trunk, one hand on the back of the car. He rubs his forehead. He takes a deep breath.
Back in the car with Mary Beth, her constant traveller for what looks like about seven months, and Danthra, Mac turns to Danthra and says, "Let's get you to that airport, shall we? What've we been up here for, about 300 days?"
And Danthra corrects him, "242."
"Exactly?"
And Mary Beth chimes in, "Doesn't sound like a rounded off number, do it?" Mac checks his rear view as she sits forward filling the thing with her hair and lip gloss, white, shiny teeth in a full, jolly smile, and for just a moment he loses his edginess. He smiles, too. Danthra nearly smiles for the first time this day, and Mac starts th
e car, not knowing what to say and not really caring that 'he don't'.
Backing out of the turn around, he smiles and says, "It don't, do it?" And everyone, for different reasons, has a good laugh.
Mary Beth is dropped at the tow truck service station along the Interstate just north of where Leadville's main street turns to Route 8. She looks at magazines in a small, overcrowded room that smells of dust and a worn-out, plug-in, electric heater. She sips a cup of coffee from a perc-o-lator that has just finished percing from a little 'coffee station' near the front door. The front door that a Christmas bell hangs on, from the looks of it, all year, alerting the staff of customers. Mary Beth skims through How to Keep a Man at Home without any real tears, out of Ladies Home Journal and marvels at Mrs. Eisenhower's latest hair style choice.
"Cute suit," she murmers just before the bell on the front door chimes the most frantic tone of its dreary life. Stephanie enters the room nearly swinging that door right off its hinges. The Ladies Home Journal slams shut while Mary Beth's most daring selection Crimson-Sunset-coated-nails clutch the edge of the pages nearly tearing Mrs. Eisenhower's face off. "Wha-?" is all Mary Beth can manage before Stephanie lights in on a rampage.
"Mac called me. He said you have no where to go. He said you had no one to call and didn't he just know how I'd be so worried about you?! And how he 'knew' I'd just love to help! What was I supposed to tell him? Over the phone? Don't look at me like that. O, I have words, Mary Beth. I have words. You do not want to hear my words on this, Mary Beth. Get in the car!" And out she stomps. The tarnished little bell, falling to the ground, rolling out the door behind her.
Leadville: 300 Days Away Page 12
