Dalva

by Jim Harrison

  That written I had to wrap my book in oilskin as the sky fairly opened with rain & thunder bellowed. I had made a tarpaulin shelter from the sun & thus sat there pleased with the great power of the storm & eating wild strawberries I had picked in the morning. I was somewhat alarmed to see an Indian sitting on a large rock upstream a hundred yards away. He had either just arrived or I had previously confused him with a rock as I had been looking in that direction. At dawn I had heard an elk bugling upstream and hoped the rain had washed my scent away so this grand creature might make an appearance. I waved at the Indian & he approached at a gait unhurried by the storm. I stretched out a saddle blanket, made him a cup of tea & offered him strawberries. He was impressive in his bearing rather than in size, or fierce mien. He said he had watched me the day before and had told the white men he was guiding & they wished to invite me to dinner. I replied I knew they had been coming for days as Short Bull had told me. He nodded pleased to hear of Short Bull who is the younger brother of Crazy Horse. I then added that Sitting Bull was encamped near Bear Butte with five thousand warriors and it would be wise to avoid the area. He was aware of this but nonetheless seemed unimpressed & pleasant. His name is One Stab, a solitary chief, who has lost nearly all his people to the illnesses we have brought them.

  When the storm abated about four in the afternoon we rode an hour north to a large encampment. There were a full seven companies of Cavalry under the command of the reknowned G. A. Custer. One Stab brought me to the tent of Capt. William Ludlow who is chief of Engineers for the U. S. Army, an educated gentleman from Cornwall, England. Also there to be met was the geographer Prof. N. H. Winchell, and the scholar of Indians Geo. Bird Grinnell. In the beginning I felt shy with this august company as I had not spoken with men of this quality of intellect since I had left Cornell twelve years before. Their questioning was relentless & intense but civil. We had whiskies and a fine dinner including pies made of gooseberries, wild cherries & blueberries. Mr. Grinnell wished to know why he had discovered row upon row of garishly painted buffalo skulls. I replied that certain Sioux medicine men wish to bring the buffalo back from the dead. I assured Mr. Grinnell that I would send him some interesting fossil specimens as the progress of their march is too rapid to permit proper scientific inquiry. Lieut.-Colonel Custer stopped by to greet us though he seemed not altogether pleased by my presence, as if my being in the Black Hills decreased the drama of his expedition. This man is something of a mystery. There is something missing in him, but also something more than in other men. I was reminded of a brilliant Thespian who performed the role of Othello at Cornell. The Sioux are unequivocal in their respect for him. He stopped barely short of calling me a meddler & also asked of Sioux movements. I repeated what I had told the guide, that Sitting Bull was near Bear Butte with five thousand warriors and the mood among the Sioux was such that an encounter should be avoided. Custer asked me if I was sure & certain of this information & I said I was not in the habit of invention. He stalked off and when out of earshot Ludlow, Winchell & Grinnell had a good laugh over this comedy of manners. I was fatigued & a little angry by it all, so Ludlow poured some more whiskey before bed. He is of the opinion, and will say so in his report to the Gov’t., that the Black Hills must remain the exclusive province of the Sioux, who have been driven so relentlessly hither and yon. To bid goodnight on a pleasant note Ludlow told me of a view. “Harney’s Peak was visible from the top of a high, bare hill, and the sun having just set, we were in a few minutes well rewarded for the ride of five miles. The moon was rising just over the southern shoulder of Harney, and masked by heavy clouds. A patch of bright blood-red flame was first seen, looking like a brilliant fire, and soon after another so far from the first that it was difficult to connect the two. A portion of the moon’s disk became presently visible, and the origin of the flame was apparent. While it lasted the sight was superb. The moon’s mass looked enormous & blood-red, with only portions of its surface visible, while the clouds just above and to the left, colored by the flame, resembled smoke drifting from an immense conflagration. The moon soon buried herself completely in the clouds, and under a rapidly darkening sky we returned to camp.

  A Wagner opera of the prairies! I had to dash off an immediate note to my chairman, who was a scholar of military movements of the time. I would give him a copy of this portion of the journal—a new and unknown description of Custer would be a feather in his hat!

  I jumped in fright, hearing a voice at the door. It was Naomi and I hadn’t heard her drive in. She looked at me oddly and told me to check the mirror: I was sunburned from the goose-cage barbecue, and my habit of tweaking my own nose while working made it raw where it wasn’t stained by ink. While I washed up for our martini she gave me an assortment of news. Dalva would be back in the morning. Did I remember I was speaking at Rotary tomorrow? (I didn’t.) Could she help me make some dinner? Her young friend the naturalist had called from Minneapolis to say that he had received more funding and wondered if she would be willing to be his paid assistant. I darted out of the bathroom to give her a hug, because I could hear the pleasure in her voice over the job. I had to say that she had only been retired two weeks and a new job was pushing it. Then out of the blue I asked her why Northridge would marry Aase if she were dying of tuberculosis.

  “I told you I can’t read those journals, but I know about that part because Aase’s brother Jon, the one who killed the deer the Sioux helped with, is my grandfather. Dalva’s grandfather made John Wesley and Paul read the journals when they were young men. So one day in late October John Wesley was in our area pheasant-hunting and he pulled into our yard in a new Ford convertible with three English setters. It was a bright, clear Indian-summer Sunday. You know, it was the tail end of the Depression and we were just surviving, even though we had never taken any bank loans. My parents and John Wesley, who was twenty at the time, sat and talked of what was known about the old days. I was seventeen and in my last year of high school and very shy. He said it was strange but there had been no contact between the families in sixty years. Then my dad was embarrassed, because he said he followed the Northridges in the newspapers, but John Wesley laughed. The year before his dad had slugged a U. S. senator at an Omaha dinner party when the senator insulted his own wife in public. Then John Wesley asked my parents if he could take me for a ride in his car, and they said yes. I barely said a word, and when he dropped me off I never thought I’d see him again. He told me he had had one year at Cornell but hated college because he wanted to be a farmer. He certainly didn’t remind me of any farmer I had ever seen, and this puzzled me. A few days later a package came with an inlaid-ivory hand mirror. A note said he wished at this moment to be the mirror looking back at me. I remember it so clearly because the weather had changed and the first snow was falling. I was sitting at the kitchen table with my parents, listening to Gabriel Heatter on the radio. We were all shocked by the gift. Every few days another present and note would come. And that’s how it began.”

  Naomi abruptly walked outside, a bit overcome. I wanted her to continue but she refused, even under the urging of the extra-strong martinis I fixed when we went in for dinner. We decided it was still too hot in the early evening for much food, so I whipped up an antipasto from the air-freight goodies. I was feeling virtuous about this light eating until I recalled I had polished off an entire chicken for lunch.

  “You remember everything that ever happened to you as if it was yesterday, don’t you?”

  She began to answer, then stopped short for a minute or so, smiled, and started to name every student she had taught since 1948. She also admitted she could name all the over four hundred birds on her life list.

  “It’s pleasant to meet someone without blockages. I bet you’ve never been to a shrink.”

  “Just once, a number of years ago, down in Lincoln. I talk to my husband a little while every day.”

  “I’m sure it’s harmless as long as he doesn’t talk back.”

  “He does. The
psychiatrist said it was OK if I kept it strictly limited and it doesn’t interfere with the rest of my life, so every evening just before dark I sit on the porch swing and we have a chat.”

  “Even in winter?” I was aghast at this bit of news.

  “I bundle up. John Wesley was always discreet. For instance, he would never tell me who was the father of Dalva’s baby son. He said the dead don’t know everything. I still don’t believe him. I think he knows.” She noticed the discomfort this was causing me and laughed. “Let’s go for a ride,” she said.

  We drove north on the gravel road to the same place Dalva had gone swimming. We walked a mile or so along the riverbank, stopping when she pointed out a huge nest in a pine tree. She handed me the binoculars, saying it was a blue heron sitting on its eggs. It was dark when we got back to the car. The water made the air smell lovely, though the evening was still overwarm.

  “You suit yourself, but I’m going to have a little swim.”

  The moon hadn’t come up and I was fearful, but on a whim disrobed and followed her into the river. We held hands against the light current, sitting on the sandy bottom with the water up to our breasts.

  “What does he say death is like?” I couldn’t help asking the obvious question.

  “He won’t be specific but said it was a pleasant surprise. We all get what we deserve.”

  “I don’t think that would be a pleasant surprise,” I said, a little morosely.

  “You’re really not a bad sort.” She put an arm around my shoulder and gave me a squeeze. When her breast nudged my shoulder I became instantly erect. Oh my God, she’s old enough to be my mother, I thought. Then she said it was time to go, and we helped each other up. I couldn’t help embracing her. She lingered just a second, feeling me against her tummy. “It wouldn’t be right. Dalva will be home tomorrow.” She moved away and I loved the sound of her high, clear laughter in the dark.

  After Naomi dropped me off and I went back to work I felt a little confused and mysterious, the latter being normally beyond my ken. It was the very rare feeling that life was indeed larger and much more awesome than I presumed it to be. I knew this feeling would disappear by morning, and I meant to relish it as long as possible. It was a perfect time to check on the progress of my lovers, Northridge and the fair Aase.

  May 27-June 7, 1876

  I have been far too busy for my journal until this rainy day has given us respite. Leaving the Jensens I rode back to Scotts Bluff which had much improved in appearance with my new happiness. I engaged a Norwegian and his three helpers at an exorbitant price to come with me and build a good cabin in a short time. I bought house furnishings and food to live on, also many items for a wedding feast, and on impulse a white wedding gown for my Aase. I spoke to my gov’t agent friend, Spaeth, who promised to be beside me at the wedding, and also found an old Lutheran preacher willing to make the trip for a goodly price. Spaeth tells me that after my wedding he will move back to Kansas to make himself some money & to be in a place, Lawrence, where he can find good books to read. I post a letter and a telegraph message to my Quaker merchant partner in Chicago to find the best doctors possible as we will arrive in a few weeks’ time on our wedding trip. We are all ready to leave the next morning when I remember I need a suit of clothes & must further bribe a tailor to measure & find someone to deliver.

  Back on the north fork of the Loup. I am pleased to see the Norwegian and his crew up at daylight and working hard. I ride off to find my Sioux friends at their summer camp to invite them to my wedding & am dismayed to find only a few of the very old, and three crippled children in their care. One of the old is the medicine man I have known ten years & whose name I am not permitted to write down. He says all my friends have gone off to war in the West: White Tree, He Dog, Short Bull, Sam Creekmouth, and thousands of others led by Crazy Horse. They hope to engage with other groups of Sioux (Tetons, Lakota, Minneconjou), General Custer and any others who may wish to fight in Wyoming & Montana. I spent the day and night with the old man who is quite palsied & his joints are swollen. He tells me that this is his eighty-sixth summer which means he was born around 1790. He speaks long and slowly about the glory & decline of the Sioux & insists his observations & dreams tell him the end is near for his people. In honor of my name he gives me a necklace of badger claws, advising me to keep it on my body as in the coming years I will be in the gravest danger because of my efforts to help the Sioux.

  I bid him adieu at first light and ride off in a state of melancholy despite the fine weather. I question my accomplishments which are few. I ride everywhere to tend my trees in dozens of locations & have tried to offer by word & example the Gospel to the Sioux. I tell them that all white men are not evil & they seem to know this though nearly all of their land has been stolen. The Sioux also know that I am thought to be a lunatic by the white men at various Forts, by soldiery and civilians alike. They are not disturbed by this though there is humor on the matter, having a different notion of what constitutes a lunatic. White Tree told me that I had been around long enough now to begin having dreams & visions. I have tried to tell them I will only have the vision Christ has given me, but they say they have already heard that from all manner of thieves & swindlers. I am recently of the opinion that the Antichrist is Greed.

  At the cabin my spirits lift when the Norwegians say they will finish four days earlier than promised. I am desperate to see Aase & bury myself in the hard work of the cabin to exhaust myself. On the afternoon the Norwegians are packing to leave, Aase’s brother Jon rides up & tells me that I am to come tomorrow if I will. His sister is not feeling well and Jensen has relented on our waiting time. Jon helps me put the furnishings in the house & we pack up the wagon and are off for the wedding.

  It was past midnight and I was not up to a wedding, especially in regard to the uncertain results. I poured a nightcap and craved for something less high-minded to occupy myself with—a magazine, television, a trip to the bar. The car was there but I doubted I could figure out how to get to town or, if I got there, whether or not the Lazy Daze would still be open. I dismissed the urge to look at my single photo of Karen. There was plenty of time in the morning, before Naomi picked me up, to prepare notes for my address to the Rotary. In any event, I had planned tidbits, piths, gists, and witticisms from American History 102. There was the temptation to knock them off their seats with the story-behind-the-story. A note of caution was the idea that the burghers might be lying in wait for another of my pratfalls, and I didn’t want to oblige them.

  There was a single goose honk and I rushed outside without thinking. The geese were huddled together against the cage but not inside, and were staring off in the dark in a single direction, where their doom apparently lurked, watching us. I rushed to the pump shed to look for their food but couldn’t find it. I filched a sack from Frieda’s hidden cache of corn chips in the kitchen, rushed back out, poured the contents in the cage, and managed to shove and cajole them to safety. The last one in leaned against my leg for a moment in possible thanksgiving. The fine feeling this poor bird gave me substituted for another nightcap, and I fell asleep thinking about blessed nothing. I had almost yelled “Fuck you, coyote” into the dark, but thought better of it.

  At eleven in the morning I am dressed in my suit of lights, an anti-bullfighter in gray flannel trousers, brogans, Harris-tweed jacket, my only J. Press shirt. The day is cool and dark with rain and a strong northerly wind. The change in weather is exhilarating, reminding me as it does of my home in the Bay Area. I sort through some notes, waiting for Naomi to pick me up. I had been a bit miffed when Frieda hadn’t showed up, then remembered Wednesday was her day off. It occurred to me then that I had completed my first full week in Nebraska and had settled in quite nicely.

  Earlier, when I made my coffee (after releasing my grateful geese), I sat at the big Northridge desk and got out the Edward Curtis portfolio for breakfast reading. When I untied the first folio there was a note—“Dalva & Ruth. Wash your hands. I
love you. Grandpa.” A simple old note, brittle with age, but I was momentarily overcome with loneliness for her; at the same time, though, I knew in a deeper sense that I was totally out of the running. In the long and short of it, love is a more difficult subject than sex. Or history. I began to flip through the photos: Bear’s Belly, the Arakira chief, stared back at me in his grizzly robe, an image of such singular magnificence that I took my coffee to the window to watch the rain. These folks used to wander around in this area, I thought, watching the wind push against the empty tire swing. When Dalva returned I would become noble. Maybe I’m like the sun, who doth allow the base, contagious clouds to cover up his beauty. Or not.

  I returned to Bear’s Belly and thought my father’s eyes had some of the same quality. Maybe it was the insistence of physical strength got from forty years in a steel mill, or of time spent in the Truk Islands and Guadalcanal in World War II. I flipped through the prints, stopping at the Crow chief Two Whistles with a crow perched on his head. I had done my senior thesis at Notre Dame on Edward Curtis and never found out why this man had a crow perched on his head. Curtis probably never found out either, because after thirty-three years in the field taking photos of the Indians he went crazy and was placed in an asylum. When they let him go he went down to old Mexico and looked for gold, with a diffidence in recovery that characterized the behavior of many great men—let’s go to the edge and jump off again.