Bird Cloud: A Memoir of Place

by Annie Proulx

  When we came up out of the wash to make lunch, the wind was shrieking, stinging our eyes, ears, faces with dust. The wind was too strong to make sandwiches as it blew the bread away and hurled the hamburgers out of the pan, flung the pan down in the dirt. Marty called home and got a weather report that predicted snow and blizzard winds for our area that afternoon. We stuffed the tents in the vehicles—they could be folded later in a quieter place—then cut and ran. At home, brushing the grit and dust off my skin and out of my hair I decided to look at it under the pocket microscope my daughter-in-law Gail had given me for Christmas. I was amazed to see what looked like tiny pieces of glass. I mentioned this later in a talk to an outdoor group and an older man spoke up and said that he was a geologist and this dust looked like glass because in fact it was glass deposited by Yellowstone’s last eruption over 600,000 years ago. That swung our thoughts to the rumor that Yellowstone was “overdue” for another big eruption that would wipe Wyoming and much more off the map. The geologist laughed and said we had another hundred thousand to a million years before it was time to worry. Television science is usually high comedy to professionals.

  The day after our return from the Red Desert all was calm. Snowplows had opened the pass to Centennial saving fifty miles of driving in each direction. Time seemed to be galloping and I mentioned to the James Gang that it would be good if I had a move-in date as I had to get the Centennial house on the market soon. Gerald said that in a perfect world October 15, 2006, was the date, but in the real world December 15 was more likely. That gave them seven months to get it all done, and those seven months shot past like a squeezed bar of wet soap.

  At Bird Cloud the summer went on for the James Gang in a chase after the right products. At this time we were thinking of alder for the baseboard and trim. I wondered how thin metal baseboard would look. Gerald went for the idea and experimented. When he brought a lengthy section in and laid it along the base of the wall we saw it harmonized perfectly with the character of the house.

  The summer days were hot and punched through with brief showers. The plumber and the electrician were working hard. Gerald found something else to keep him awake at night. “Back door panty line 3/8" shorter than kitchen window & dining window. TRYING/FIGURE IT OUT.” At this point I had written twenty-two hefty checks to the James Gang, and others to Harry Teague. While I worried about money Gerald sanded the roof edge and made it ready for trim and primed every inch of bare wood he could find. Steadily the metal roof went on as all metal roofs must—in the middle of a heat wave.

  On July 4 we had something of a construction party at the river. My son Jon and his wife Gail came up and we grilled meat, drank wine (Mountain Dew for Gerald), ate lots of salads and vegetables (only meat for Gerald). The eagles watched. A few days later Uphill Bob and his sister Carol came over from Centennial to take a look at the place. Once again to the grill and the vino.

  It was Dave’s turn to visit the Mayo Clinic to see what could be done with his bad ankle, seriously smashed years before when their big tree spade turned over, taking him with it. Since then he’d walked awkwardly and in considerable pain, often pale and exhausted at day’s end. He came back with the word that having the ankle fused would relieve him of a great deal of pain and make his walking gait closer to normal. On the Mayo’s advice he made an appointment with one of Wyoming’s excellent bone and joint doctors—fixing ranch-work and rodeo accidents makes these medicos tops in this field.

  Mr. Solar installed the panels in stages, zooming back and forth between Colorado and Wyoming. The copper sheets for the two entryways and the upstairs family room ceilings arrived, ugly-shiny, though Gerald planned to age them to a pleasant patina. But where were the Polygal window frames? Two weeks in the future. Special nonabrasive dirt had to be ordered to backfill the propane tank and the electric lines. We don’t often think of nonabrasive dirt; this soft and very finely sifted substance is one of the unknown mysteries to house owners.

  Deryl ordered the shoji panels, and as if this were a summons the Japanese ofuro tub arrived. The plumber tested the heating system hydronics with air and found everything good, the Warmboard ready to cover with flooring. Outside there seemed to be as many trenches as in World War I: the grey water line, the power line to the pump, the propane tank line to the house, the satellite cable trench, in addition to the well and septic trenches.

  Apparently in early August I said okay to the ceiling lights after a discussion about materials. Jim Petrie had suggested amber-colored mica sheets shaped into cones. The mica sheets he brought looked very handsome, but the cone shape was talk only, I thought, expecting to see sample shades. The next time I saw Jim he was carrying in boxes and boxes and boxes of laboriously fashioned but weirdly unattractive mica light shades. Everyone else liked them but to me they looked like giant moths. The Polygal windows and frames arrived at Gerald’s shop, and a few days later the heart pine flooring arrived. Beautiful stuff!

  The James Gang kept searching for subcontractors who could put a single rough coat of plain plaster on the walls. Again and again they heard “no.” A strange question arose—did I want a doorbell signal in the master bedroom? I did not, especially as there was no doorbell.

  In the third week of August 2006 twenty cows waded down the river, climbed ashore at the far end and began gnawing and trampling—cause for yet another Great Cow Chase. Summer fires were burning somewhere and the air was thick and hazed with smoke. We could smell the charring forest but see no flames. Everyone prayed that the Sierra Madre and Medicine Bow ranges would not flare up. Both ranges were mostly dry tinder and standing dead trees. People in nearby Ryan Park, surrounded by thousands of dead red lodgepole, spent sleepless nights.

  We abandoned the plans for a scratch coat of plaster—the first rough layer of plaster put over wall lath as a base for the finer finish coats in the days before drywall was invented. The quoted prices for what was once a low-cost undercoat had increased to what one might pay an imported craftsman for hand-painted frescoes. We settled for painted drywall. Gerald set early October for the final concrete floor pour. It was not clear to me if Catfish was working with Mr. A or helping him or neither.

  While Gerald worked on sheathing the upstairs ceilings, the electrician discovered some good-looking stainless steel pop-up outlets for the kitchen granite counter. When not in use they folded down almost flush with the countertop presenting just a curved gleam of brushed steel. Everyone liked them, even me. Those were beautiful days, only marred by the knowledge that we had passed the budgeted cost of the house. I began selling stock, maybe a good thing considering what was going to happen in the financial world two years later.

  In early September, Gerald cleaned up the house in preparation for the much-postponed insulation team. From this point on everything else that happened would be detail, where, of course, the proof of the pudding lies. The insulation looked like fluffy goose down, but was actually a new form of fiberglass with an R-22 rating and high soundproofing score. It all went smoothly. The sheetrockers arrived and confronted the 247 sheets stacked downstairs. Gerald explained how he wanted it hung. They began in the library, worked quickly and were gone in a week.

  The floor, as far as anyone knew, was still a Catfish-and–Mr. A project, but there were indications that Catfish had not actually talked with Mr. A or Mr. A with Catfish. Catfish started tying rebar in place in an eighteen-inch-by-eighteen-inch grid for the floor pour. On October 10 Catfish, Gerald and Mr. A all met and agreed on the rules of the game. And there was more palaver about the shoji panels. Gerald estimated it would take another $200,000 to finish the house. Where was I going to get it? I thought of Jack London who ruined himself financially building and buying a house and ranch.

  We all went one evening to make dinner in the ranger cabin in the Medicine Bows which I rented for a few days. It had a broken stove but we had a good time anyway and Dennis told a riveting story of catching an angry badger as a boy and clutching it while it struggled, unable
to put it down, unable to do anything. A crusty local man came along, took in the situation at a glance, reached in the back of his truck, pulled out a roll of smooth fence wire, took the badger from Dennis and swiftly wrapped it up in coils like the neck of a Benin princess.

  We met with Mr. A concerning the color of the floor. I wanted a deep orange-red that was called Adobe. Everyone was all smiles, for if there was a known factor in this process it was Mr. A’s expertise with stained concrete floors. The pour was set for Friday, October 20. Catfish would be on hand. The concrete was confirmed, the pumper truck hired and the site was ready.

  Catfish led the concrete and pumper trucks to the house and helped Mr. A lay and muck the floor, hot work that had everyone sweating despite the wind and blowing snow outside. The only good thing about the weather was that it froze the muddy road hard. The plumber watched anxiously in case there was a hydronic leak in the underfloor heating system, but all was well. The next day Mr. A cut the expansion joints which would keep the concrete from cracking. Gerald pointed out some bad areas in the concrete and Mr. A said he would fix them when he came to apply the stain in a few weeks.

  A herd of 150 elk moved through Bird Cloud. We heard they had been bunched on the far side of the highway four or five miles distant; then shooting began and they took off to the west, coming straight through Bird Cloud. Gerald called them a good omen.

  At the paint store in Laramie we settled on a color for the wall paint. I had used some taupe-colored paint in the Centennial office area and still had some left over. These days paint stores can precisely match your color chips or samples and we got the paint duplicated, a kind of chameleon color that subtly changed hue and intensity according to the time of day, nearby objects, paintings, metamorphosing through shades of mushroom, dry grass, olive, biscuit. It was beautiful and I was entirely consoled for the abandonment of the scratch plaster finish.

  The end was in sight and Gerald made what must have been a satisfying list for him writing “Done Done Done” on his checklist. But the Gang had been unable to locate good interior doors at a reasonable price, so they decided they would make them—plank-construction hickory with strap hinges. What is the rarest door in North America? Plank-construction hickory. Somehow they didn’t sound very attractive until I saw them—pale, wax-gleaming oversize doors that looked like fine furniture. Like everything else under Gerald’s perfectionist hand they were the highest quality work. But there was a new constraint. We had buyers for the Centennial house and they wanted possession by mid-December. A moving day had to be set whether or not Bird Cloud was finished.

  Mr. A was scheduled to stain the concrete floor on a Thursday. The day before, Gerald pulled up the tarps to check out the work. He was not pleased with what he saw—a rough surface scarred by the ripples called “chatter.” Behind the kitchen range the concrete was too deep and the gas valve had to be moved. Mr. A set to work doing repairs and showed us an acid-stain sample of rich color. Gerald, now very distrustful, watched Mr. A from a distance while the acid stain went on. A few days later Mr. A planned to seal the floor twice and be done.

  I drove over early on Friday morning eager to see the beautiful new floor. My God! My God! What a terrible sight. The floor was the color of raw liver and shone greasily as though coated with Vaseline. Mr. A had put on a gloss finish instead of the semigloss. Worst of all, great sweeping arcs of rough concrete and chatter still marred the surface. The floor was lumpy. I did not cry but I felt like it.

  Gerald called Mr. A and told him it was a bad floor, but when he called later to set up a meeting Mr. A did not answer his telephone. As it happened there was another floor man—Mr. Floorfix—working on a project in Saratoga at that time and the Gang asked him if he could fix Mr. A’s botched job. It was close to Thanksgiving and Mr. Floorfix said he had missed several Thanksgivings and he doubted his wife would let it happen again. But he would ask.

  We were all on tenterhooks. After an anxious day Deryl got the message that Mr. Floorfix’s family agreed he could squeeze the job into his nightmare schedule. His price was severe—$40,000 (unbudgeted) compared to Mr. A’s $11,000 (budgeted)—but we were over a barrel. Mr. Floorfix said the lumpy surface had to be ground down, densified and restained, twice the work that Mr. A did, and the grinding would take time. He had “green” colors and had made up some samples for me to see. Burnt Sienna looked the closest to Mr. A’s attractive Adobe acid stain. But Mr. Floorfix’s sample colors on chunks of concrete from our floor (Deryl dug up waste pieces from the hole in which he had buried them) were pale and not attractive, apparently because there was more limestone in our concrete which affected the color. I said I had really liked Mr. A’s Adobe color and Mr. Floorfix said no problem, he would use acid stain. As he was leaving he mentioned that the grinding process would reveal the aggregate stone chips in the concrete mix below. That meant the floor would have a speckled semi-terrazzo appearance, a look I have never liked. Mr. Floorfix was able to start a day earlier than we hoped, but the schedule for installing the kitchen cabinets and the countertops was now in shambles.

  The stain Mr. A had put on the floor had barely penetrated, so there was less grinding needed which didn’t translate into any cost reduction. The Gang roasted a turkey with fixin’s for Mr. Floorfix and his crew in appreciation of their effort on a national holiday. Still unable to reach Mr. A, Gerald sent a certified letter mentioning the word “lawyer,” and Mr. A responded, saying the floor finish was the best he could do except maybe waxing it. Gerald said the finish was not the big problem—except that the sealer was glossy instead of matte—that wax wasn’t needed. The problem was the rotary polisher marks and the dirt, rocks, sand and Sheetrock fragments rolled into the top finish.

  Meanwhile Mr. Floorfix was grinding away. Mr. A made a surprise visit to see what the complaints were all about, but at this point Mr. Floorfix had ground the evidence off. Mr. A was furious.

  Alas, Mr. Floorfix was no champion. He told Gerald he didn’t have the tools to fix the corners so the Gang had to get out their air chisels and spend hours doing it for him. The first coat of stain went on and it looked good. Gerald, however, no longer had any faith in concrete floor people and was watching Mr. Floorfix suspiciously. The second coat of stain went on. The next step was to neutralize the acid and spray on the densifier.

  Was there no end to this disaster? Mr. Floorfix’s acid stain came out a repulsive yellow-orange color. We decided that a half-strength “mahogany” dye would fix the problem. It had to fix it as we were out of time and the money was gone. Mr. Floorfix and his team worked all night dyeing the floor and putting on densifier. The final result was a dusty, dull brownish red speckled floor. Mr. Floorfix warned that no sealer could go on for months and that the floor had to be wet-mopped frequently to take up the unwanted acid stain that would work to the surface. He wasn’t kidding. For the next year I swabbed the huge floor several times a week, the rough concrete dust wearing out shoes and socks, destroying the mop, and still the floor threw off red dust. Eventually the dust was minimal and we called Mr. Floorfix to ask about putting on a sealer but he said the floor should not be sealed at all. This made no sense as the floor was as ugly as dried mud. By contrast, upstairs the heart pine floors went in, stained and oiled four times. They were a joy, though Gerald got a headache from the fumes which he (a teetotaler) likened to a hangover.

  We were down to counting days before the move from Centennial and Bird Cloud fairly steamed in the chilly December air from the violent activity inside. The house became a mad blur of rushing people, Dennis building cabinets, Lindsay hammering book stacks together and cleaning the walls that were dusty from Mr. Floorfix’s grinding extravaganza, Doug installing the glowing kitchen cabinets and pantry shelves, the plumber and the electrician climbing and crawling, the metal baseboard going on, Gerald weather-stripping the garage doors, the refrigerator jostled into place, doorjambs and trim going on, the tile man cleaning up grout and silicone. It was only a little more than a
week until Roughrider Movers (aptly named) would come with the furniture from Centennial. And before the furniture, hundreds of boxes of books had to be moved. My job.

  In Centennial day after day I packed books and Uphill Bob loaded them into Gerald’s multipurpose snowmobile trailer. The James Gang somehow found time to drive it over to Bird Cloud and Lindsay and I and a husky high school kid unloaded the endless cartons. The fun of shelving began, a job not finished three years later.

  Roughrider Movers used several trucks crammed to bursting with stuff—lawn mowers, suitcases, dressers, computers, hangers, pictures, cartons of china, kitchen pots and pans, beds, mattresses, musical instruments, sports equipment, file cabinets, desks and tables, chairs and more chairs, garden hoses, the contents of a full attic including masses of goods belonging to my children. I decided to move the dozens of framed paintings and photographs myself rather than have the Roughriders sling them around. These movers did a very bad thing that I did not discover until months later. In the Centennial attic I had forty-odd boxes of manuscripts and drafts. The boxes were cataloged, labeled and taped shut. One of the mover-helpers, without asking, decided to open and repack the boxes more economically to save space. If he were to appear before me now I would kill him.