Dalva

by Jim Harrison

  You see juniper and scrub oak on the north-facing terraces at 5,000 feet. Looking north, the grasslands are mixed with low, scrubby mesquite, a sure sign of overgrazing, just as overgrazing destroyed much of the Sand Hills back home. There are also colonies of Huachuca agave, rising toward the Santa Ritas where a forest of several species of oak, juniper, and piñon pine climbs toward the ponderosa zone at about 7,000 feet. It can be nice and cool up there when the valley is blistering.

  In the bosque, under black walnut and big hackberry trees, you see the blunted tracks of javelina (the strong-tasting wild pig that Tino and Tito love to eat), a Mohave rattler in a thicket of wolfberry rustling among fallen leaves of ash and Arizona holly. You liked these usually dry creek bottoms where we saw tracks of deer, coyote, coatimundi, gray fox, bobcat, and ringtail cat. Occasionally I’ve seen the tracks of mountain lion, the scent of which upsets the bird dogs. Wolves and grizzlies were here into the early part of the twentieth century and the Yaquis still have two words for “coyote”: “coyote” and “big coyote.” I still think that huge coyote we saw that morning down on the slope of the Huachucas was a Mexican lobo. That was the area, the San Rafael Valley, where you asked me why I didn’t buy a huge ranch, and I said that was what was wrong with my father. He wanted to own every goddamn acre he looked at. When we were supposed to be hunting he was always looking at ranches and farms. Of course when he got tired of it all, and everything else, he turned quite a dollar selling the land off.

  West, the Pajaritos stretch into Mexico and run, under different names, south toward Caborca and west to Sonoita. The upper Sonoran country is rugged, little known, and remarkably well watered. Remember Sycamore Canyon, where you cooled your feet in the spring and the dogs swam around in circles, their eyes bright with pleasure? Harlequin or Mearn’s quail are here. Velvet mesquite grows all the way up to 5,500 feet, the much-frosted zone.

  Farther west across the valley there are scailed quail where it’s not overgrazed. For some reason you found this area scary, the way the sacred Papago mountain, Baboquivari, dominates the landscape. It is and should be scary. The Papagos are scary, so are the Yaquis and the different branches of the Apache. What grand people! We minimize these people now so we don’t have to feel bad about what we did to them. An English author who was otherwise quite daffy said that the only aristocracy is that of consciousness. Some day you must study the hundred or so tribes, the civilizations, that we annihilated.

  This is enough for now. Emilia is helping me pack for a trip to Chiapas. Some day we should climb up Baboquivari together, up through the prickly pear, the different chollas, the two acacias, catclaw and whitehorn, jojoba, white rhatany, and Mexican tea; higher is sangre de drago, juniper, pinon and Ajo oak, alligator juniper. Together we can look into I’itoi’s cave, the Papago God! You won’t see a sorry bunch of Methodists sitting around praying for a fast buck. Please write me. I love you. Uncle Paul.

  I’m not sure why the letter meant so much to me because my memories of the area seemed a dullish welter broken only by an occassional sharp image. But the letter served as a totem that, along with the long walks, got me through the summer until the day we all danced together. Of course there is something absurdly nonunique in a sixteen-year-old girl wandering around the fields, windbreaks, and creeks thinking about God, sex, and love, the vacuum of the baby.

  On the night of a full moon my breasts hurt from unused milk though I had been given a pill for the condition. I sat at the window all night watching the moon until it set just before dawn. It arose red, turned pink, then white, then pink, then red as it returned to earth, a summer moon. The moon drew me far away from myself and I imagined that my dead father and Duane saw the moon from a different angle. Before I went up to bed Ruth played me Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata on the piano. She could play it in the dark. I could also hear the squeak of the porch swing where Naomi sat every summer evening in what she called a “pointless reverie.” Ruth was embarrassed by the beauty of the mood and told me that my breasts were so big as to look truly silly.

  At daylight I dressed in my walking clothes and put a thermos of coffee, something to eat, and two books on local birds and fauna in my day pack. I never looked at the books but carried them along at Naomi’s insistence that I do something useful. Suddenly she was standing at the kitchen door in her nightgown as if wanting to say something. I was angry at the intrusion, and wouldn’t face her, staring at the rows of tomatoes she had canned the day before. The tomatoes looked as if they were suffocating in the glass jars, livid red and suffering. “Are you OK?” she asked. “I’m just walking off the baby,” I said, going out the door without turning to her, something I regretted halfway to Grandfather’s when the rhythm of walking had already taken over and I felt soothed.

  The smallest of the bitch Airedales was waiting out where the path neared a cattail-choked pond. She waited there every morning in hopes that she would get to go along. Grandfather liked me to take her because she was a first-rate snake dog; that is, she smelled a rattler before the snake was even alarmed, and if we gave permission, would kill it, and if she was hungry, eat it. Since rattlers meant no harm I never let her kill them except around the outbuildings. The other dogs would merely bark but Sonia—Ruth named her that after a doll—would go in for the kill, first letting the snake tire itself with repetitive strikes. Killing a snake made her very proud and she would march around stiff and bouncy at the same time like a gaited horse. She was also good at chasing away angry range cows who were protecting calves.

  Behind Grandfather’s, where the county road stopped, the land became hillier and was ill-suited for corn, wheat, or alfalfa. This land was the back end of a twenty-section ranch which, though it sounds large, barely made its owners a living because all the water was ours. We had all the property on both sides of the bordering creek.

  I crossed the almost dry creek, then the fence, and followed a contour of eroded hills and gulches toward the west. I turned north after a mile or so, took off my shoes, and crossed the Niobrara which was sandy and less than knee-deep in summer, then moved farther north along the neighbor’s fence line which came short of the water. The large trees, ash, linden, elm, with hanging wild grapevines, were left behind on the floodplain as I climbed up through a gully into the rugged caprock. Sonia smelled a snake but I hurried her along, wanting to reach the upper end of a small box canyon. I had been there with Duane and there was a seep he had dug out to water the horses. There were small trees for shade, a large flat rock on which we had eaten a roast chicken Grandfather had sent along, also a Ball jar of lemonade in which the ice had melted. Duane was reading Edward Curtis at the time and announced that this was a holy place. I said How do you know, and he answered that any fool could tell. To prove it he found several arrowheads, and sat on the flat rock for a full hour in silence, facing the east. It made me feel sort of religious at the time, and that’s why I returned there with Sonia.

  I was somewhat confused because several days before our Methodist minister had stopped by to visit me. He had sent Naomi and Ruth out of the parlor so we could talk and pray. He asked me to beg for forgiveness for having a baby out of wedlock. I asked him how he knew and he said he had heard through Mrs. Lundquist who worked for Grandfather. I refused to ask forgiveness and he pleaded with me. I looked up at the portrait of my dad and he seemed to say I didn’t have to beg for anything. Later at dinner Ruth did a wonderful imitation of the minister—“Oh Gawd, Gawd, saaave wayward Dalva!” Naomi was cross at first but ended up laughing. In any event, it was the end of my churchgoing.

  So I sat on the rock waiting for something to happen. I wasn’t sure what it would be but I was hopeful. Sonia flopped down in the cool grass by the seep and watched me, then drifted off into a world of dog snores and dreams. When I sat down I checked the railroad watch in my day pack. It was just short of 8:00 A.M. and I would still be there at 5:00 P.M. when I would leave in order to be home by dark.

  My only outward accomplishment
was a sunburn on top of my tan and a desperate hunger because I had given Sonia my sandwich. I let my coffee cool so that it would be a substitute for water. There was a spring a mile or so away but I stuck to my rock–the seep water was too discolored to trust. I saw a prairie falcon that flew over the canyon edge, then wheeled away shrieking with surprise when she saw me. I saw a doe and a fawn but Sonia chased them away, roaring as if they meant us harm. I rehearsed my entire life and I heard my heart for the first time. In the morning I had fantasies of love and laughter, even creating the image of Duane and my father riding horseback up the draw toward me. In the afternoon I nursed my baby and flew with a crow overhead. Mostly I had a very long and intensely restful “nothing.” I had the odd sensation that I was understanding the earth. This is all very simpleminded and I mention it only because I still do much the same thing when troubled.

  Later in the afternoon Sonia leapt up with a maddened howl and raced down the draw only to be met by Grandfather’s other dogs. They all carne at me at a dead, noisy run and I felt like prey. Grandfather followed on his big sorrel, leading another horse.

  “I hope I’m not intruding. Your mother was worried.”

  “I was just thinking things over.” I reached up for the canteen he offered as he got off the horse.

  “You look like a sorry Indian even if you’re just a trace. I used to come to this spot and so did the boys. When he was a boy your uncle Paul dug out the spring and stayed here a whole week when he hated me the most.”

  “Why did he hate you? He doesn’t seem to anymore.”

  “He thinks I killed his mother in one way or another. When you’re a boy you don’t understand your mother is crazy because she’s your mother. She babied Paul and neglected your dad because he was too much like me.”

  “I think Paul is a fine person.”

  “He doubtless is. You learn finally that some things aren’t meant to heal. But you already know that. That’s probably why you’re up here.”

  I nodded and reached out for his hand which for the first time seemed a little frail. I felt a pang as if acknowledging that this old man I loved so much would die some day. He read my thoughts.

  “If I live seven more months will you go to the Dublin Horse Show with me? I’ll show you the right way to spend some money. I haven’t been since 1937 and I miss it.”

  “I’d love to but I don’t think I could miss school.”

  “Goddamn your school. It’s a worthless piece of cowshit taught by flies.”

  I laughed and we mounted the horses despite the memory of Duane. He’s probably riding a horse right now, I thought, somewhere out in Dakota.

  Andrew came over early this morning, just after I picked up my mail which included letters from Naomi, Ruth, and one from Professor Michael postmarked Palo Alto. Everyone in the history of my family was a letter writer, a diary keeper. It’s as if they thought they’d disappear if they didn’t put themselves on paper. For a while in my twenties I stopped the habit but it made my thinking boringly recurrent. I resumed the practice so I could get rid of the thoughts and information, leaving room for something new. You make a topographical map of contours, then move on. Of course it’s a great deal easier when you never write for publication. The professor gave me several of his books and articles and I made the error of commenting that he sure did screw the lid on tight. This idle quip caused a fourteen-hour (by actual count) defense of his methods.

  Andrew had good news. Our sociopath friend, Guillermo, took an Air West flight to Houston with a connection to McAllen. The police in McAllen said the man paid two weeks of rent in advance at a medium-priced motel. They believed the DEA was shadowing the man though they wouldn’t offer any specifics.

  “How many days would it take you to pack this place up?” he asked, looking around as if to estimate.

  “An afternoon. I’ve been here seven years but most of my stuff is in Nebraska.”

  Andrew went to the stove where I was warming up some leftover posole, a Mexican pork, hot-chile, yellow-hominy stew. I learned this dish, among dozens of others, when I was with a young man who wanted to live a simple, Third World existence, which turned out to be amazingly complicated for me—I did the shopping, tended the garden, cooked the natural food, kept the house, while he meditated. When he stopped making love in order to achieve yet another “level” I moved out. The sixties were like that. He now owns a Mercedes dealership in Florida he bought by wholesaling cocaine. The seventies!

  “Can I have some of this? I’m fucking tired of cooking French and northern Italian for Ted. Last year it was Szechuan, then Hunanese. Next year it’ll be watermelon and flan.”

  “What if you wanted to find a baby put up for adoption twenty-nine years ago?”

  “A real cold track but possible. You’d want a pure white guy to do the job out in farm country. The idea is also ill-advised. You better get another job.”

  I didn’t ask him why it was ill-advised because I already knew. If there’s any seeking to do it should be instigated by the child who was given up, or away, abandoned, perhaps taken from its mother.

  “Why don’t you begin by asking your mother who the child was given to?” He was eating his posole with gusto and caught me off guard—an ex-detective is apparently never off duty.

  “I wouldn’t want her to know I was looking.”

  “I can find somebody to do the job but I think it’s a bad idea. And expensive, but I understand you can afford it.”

  “Does that make it doubly bad?”

  “You won’t get that shit off me. Leave it to the professor. Look at this half-colored boy. My dad was a schoolteacher in Roxbury, in Boston, before we moved to Albany. Son, he says, don’t waste your time worrying about parity on earth. Jesus said, To them that has, much is given. I’m not religious but what the hell does that mean?”

  “I never understood it,” I said. “I like to work and I’ve never been much of a spender. A man I know says I’ve always got a return ticket. But then he likes to spend money.”

  “What you’re saying is that it’s not your fault. Of course not. Look at Ted. He loves to piss away money. He serves great wine to these dipshit, drugged-up musicians when Mogen David would be appropriate. He loves you people, you know? You and Ruth and your mother. He thinks you’re the class act. Maybe you just thought spending was hard, pointless work. Ted said that if anyone’s ancestors put five grand in a good bank in 1871 and it did a modest five percent for a hundred and ten years you would have a million and a half. I bet a lot of fortunes are built just because some folks never got around to spending money. I’m such a pain in the ass about it I let my wife handle everything. It’s easier.”

  When Andrew left I felt a specific desire for him that I had recognized before. I remembered a quote from Ortega y Gasset that Uncle Paul had framed on his study wall in Patagonia from a text he had laboriously translated: “If you don’t have standards nothing can have any merit. Man uses even sublimity to degrade himself.” No matter how many times Andrew had given me an appraising eye, which I returned, we both knew it wasn’t a good idea. I have long ago given up trying to figure out the components of sexual desire. Ted teased me about how I could sleep with the professor whom he referred to as a “witty toad.” I answered that I got to sleep with the man’s brain too, which was an advantage over certain of his friends I had met who had been obviously purchased from a Beverly Hills butcher shop. “The best meat rack is in West Hollywood, dear, down on Melrose.” I apologized for beginning this minor tiff, but he said he enjoyed it. He reminded me of the evening we had spent with Andrew drinking a bottle of old Calvados. It was a semi-gay parlor game where we were supposed to admit our worst sexual behavior, or at least our most outrageous. Ted started innocently with a tale on how he had let an old Viennese musicologist at Eastman fuck him for an A grade on an unwritten term paper. Andrew and I booed the tale as banal. Andrew countered with a tale of screwing a very fat rich woman while he was a student at Boston University. Wha
t was so terrible about that? Well, it had gone on for a year while he worked part-time at an expensive food-and-wine shop where there was no opportunity for more than a slight taste of what they sold. He had literally fucked this tremendously unpleasant woman for caviar, truffles, foie gras, confit d’oie, good Bordeauxs. Piffle, Ted said, any German or French girl would have done the same thing in 1946. I admitted that I had slept with my old friend Charlene when I was a student at the University of Minnesota. This was treated with bored indulgence by both of them. Ted bragged that he had fucked his secretary’s husband for five hundred dollars’ worth of cocaine. This was getting closer. Andrew moved on with a blush to an underage shoplifter. Ted and I looked at each other and confessed a near miss years ago. I had come home from graduate school at Christmas with my Third World meditator while Ruth had brought Ted home from Eastman for the first time. My meditator, George by name, had been difficult from the moment we had arrived. Was the cow manure returned to the soil where it belonged? Of course, steers are nondirectional shitters while dairy cattle, of which we had none, are more specific because of fences, corrals, paddocks, but the manure from the steers’ wintering sheds is spread every March. Good, George said. On Christmas Eve we had turkey and George said turkey has been denatured by chemicals. Naomi replied that it was a barnyard turkey bought from a neighbor at which point George overate. On Christmas Day we had a roast from a prime steer Lundquist would butcher for us every fall, hanging the roasts in the cooler for a month or so of aging. George lectured us on how three ounces of lean meat a day was adequate. Naomi was nonplussed at this gratuitous impoliteness. George was actually a pleasant man except in the company of strangers, when he couldn’t stop lecturing. Ted teased him on how with all these nutritional theories he managed to be thirty pounds overweight. George huffed off to my room though he later returned for a quiet sandwich. After dinner Ruth and I took turns dancing with Ted to rock-and-roll records. Naomi had gone to bed, and then Ruth followed. We continued dancing to Sam Cooke, Buddy Holly, Little Richard, B. B. King, and so on. Ted was the best dancer I had ever known. I told him to turn around so I could slip off my panty hose which were too warm. He didn’t turn around but we were drinking and it didn’t seem to matter. We danced close then and he had a very obvious hard-on beneath his trousers which he pressed against me. I sat down and said I wouldn’t continue. He was standing right in front of my face and I couldn’t help reaching out and rubbing my hand against it. He unzipped his fly and I put the head of it in my mouth for just a second, then ran upstairs to my room. I managed to wake up my angry meditator enough to make love to me.