Gloryland

by Shelton Johnson

  Lying there, I started remembering how the sun came up when I was a boy, watching how light filled the doorway of our cabin. That made me think of my grandmother, not Grandma Sara but Daddy’s mother, a Cherokee woman red as Georgia clay. Her name was Artana, and I only knew her when I was still little.

  When someone you know dies when you’re real young, it’s hard to tell later on if you’re remembering a real person or someone you made up. But I thought I remembered how, when I was five or so, I’d wake and hear her getting up in the darkest part of the morning and walking out the front door. Every morning she’d stand there on the front porch, stand there in the cold singing, in that black squeezed outta the bellies of stones as they’re waiting for the world to end. She was like that, hunched over like a red fir sapling under the snow.

  She’d sing softly at first, and then a wind would come up from somewhere close and far away, and the wind would blow more of her voice out of her throat, as if encouraging a whisper to be more, and as she sang louder the sky got lighter and lighter, like smoke in a stove slowly becoming fire.

  As the bodies of trees got clearer, so did her voice. Her body rose up straight, and her song rose up and brought the sun with it. I thought it was her making the sun rise, making the light that filled everything. I didn’t know no better, still don’t, cause here I was now watching it happen all over again, and I could feel her song in me, like when you touch a piano someone’s playing and you can feel the music shaking in your fingers.

  Who’s shaking this sky now? Who’s shaking me? Is it my grandma Artana singing? How can there be so much music in so much quiet? Those were the kinda thoughts I was having when I noticed what I might’ve missed.

  Looking east toward the Sierra crest, I could see a ridgeline with a few trees along it and the sun slowly coming up behind them. Sunlight was growing round them, through every branch and twig, till it seemed like the trees were on fire. I think they were some sort of juniper, the kind that can take in so much of the morning light you’d expect them to shine even in the middle of the night. I couldn’t see the sun, but I could plainly see the sun’s influence on those trees. Day was still on the other side of the ridge, but it was coming out of the junipers, as if that was where the sun went at night.

  Then the trees began to disappear. They got so bright with the sun that they must’ve caught fire, and they were hot with it. I wasn’t expecting wood to turn into glass, but I was looking clear through those trees and seeing the other side of where they were rooted. Trees had become windowpanes with sunrise just beyond, and I was alone with no one to point it out to.

  That’s when I heard Artana’s song in me, singing like she used to when she was welcoming the sun.

  Wen day yah ho

  Wen day yah ho

  Wen day yah

  Wen day yah

  Ho, ho, ho, ho

  Heya ho, heya ho

  Yah yah yah

  Over and over, the words sounding in me like I was a church or open to the sky like these mountains. It kept going out and back, out and back, till I lost what was sound and what was echo.

  Sunrise was taking so long to happen, I started thinking maybe this wasn’t sunrise, maybe it was still the middle of the night and God was dropping by. But I could tell by the feel of the air that it was just another day breaking, and as soon as I had that thought, everything began to change. The cloudfire on the ridge slowly melted back into trees, and the trees became only junipers, and the light became just sunlight again.

  But for a moment or two, it was like cathedral doors swinging wide. Heaven was just beyond the doorway, God was holding up a lantern so bright it lit up all of paradise, and I was standing beside Satan, gaping on the doorstep. I was struck dumb by the light of God, right there at heaven’s gate, and I couldn’t open my mouth to pray or even whisper thank you, I swear, that’s what dawn was like on that day.

  I don’t know what miracles are, but if you get a chance to glimpse heaven without having to die first, well, that’s a miracle if you ask me.

  Lieutenant Resnick told me the Sierra Nevada are the tallest mountains in America. I knew I was high up, but never dreamt I was that high. I’d been riding long and hard for a few days before getting here, but I had no idea that a mule could take you most of the way to the next world, or that the next world was so close to Yosemite. I’d gone way beyond the blue, for sure.

  God is everywhere, but I’m thinking he prefers some places more than others. I’m thinking he spends a lot of time in these mountains. That means my mama’s bound to be happy, cause I’m finally a churchgoing man. Every day in Yosemite is like Sunday, and I don’t have to dress right or mind my manners. All I gotta do to be in church is open my eyes in the morning. Every day here is a kind of prayer, and every night the prayer is answered. I can hear a sermon in the leaves whenever the wind blows. I can hear an amen when the rivers answer. When it rains, the world is singing what was sung at the beginning of creation, and at night before I close my eyes again I can hear it sounding in the ground under my head, in the rocks, the trees, the creeks, and deep in my bones, the same thing sung softly all night long.

  I can never quite make out the words, and I’m afraid I’ll have to leave Yosemite before I understand what God is saying to me, and what I should be saying back.

  If we do finally talk, I think it’ll be a conversation about what happens to junipers at daybreak, and why I can never forget that ordinary things touched by God become miracles, and that absolutely everything at one time or another is touched by God.

  Before sunrise ended, while the trees were still on fire, I found my voice. I crawled out of my blankets and went to the edge of my campsite, and I joined my grandmother’s song.

  Wen day yah ho

  Wen day yah ho

  Wen day yah

  Wen day yah

  Ho, ho, ho, ho

  Heya ho, heya ho

  Yah yah yah

  Patrol report on Yosemite Park stationery, under “Remarks,” Wawona, Cal., August 13, 1903

  On August 10, I found the detachment under Sergeant Shelton, Troop K, 9th Cavalry, camped in Virginia Cañon at the mouth of the East Fork of Virginia Creek. The memoranda of scouts show that the men of this detachment have done a great deal of patrolling in Virginia, Spiller’s and Matterhorn Cañons, and that with a detachment from Tuolumne Meadows Station, one scout was made to near the head of Conners creek. Four herds of sheep, about 5750 in all, had been removed from the Park since August 1. The country in the vicinity of this station is very rough and the trails are reported to be exceedingly difficult—practically nothing but sheep trails.

  Very Respectfully,

  J. T. Nance,

  Capt., 9 Cavy,

  Commanding Detachment

  campfires

  Being in Yosemite meant sky and mountains. So much sky, so much rock it was like the earth’s bones were sticking through, jutting up like a body that’s been laid to rest but keeps rising, rising, and after a time it don’t remember it’s dead.

  But it’s cold enough to long for death or at least a fire. How many times I was on patrol in that stiff McClellan saddle, my butt aching like it’d been kicked since sunup and the back of my head feeling even worse, the insides of my thighs chafed to nothing, and my back aching, my knees, my ankles, my shoulders. After riding all day, every day, all you are is pieces of what you used to be, strung together with tendons and sinew.

  At least twenty-five miles every day, or so it seemed in this country, miles of up and miles of down, and hardly ever flat country in between. All day looking at the butt of another horse or mule, and someone behind you doing the same, then bedding down on cold, hard ground with just a bit of wool between you and winter, and waking up just as cold and hard as the ground you were sleeping on. And it doesn’t matter if it’s raining, snowing, or just blowing pine needles and dirt, it’s all the same after a while, just something moving against you, most often something you can’t even see cause you’re blind
ed.

  Did I mention my hands? Stiff enough to be talons a hawk or a vulture would envy. Have I complained enough, or do you want more? Yeah, this is how I’d be thinking, but no one heard it, cause if they heard Sergeant Yancy whining then they’d never find enough reasons to stop doing the same.

  Eventually the sun would get tired, slumping into the west behind more mountains too distant to recall, and the horses and we got to rest. By then we’d be at a patrol post high in the Yosemite. My map showed the names of patrol posts surrounded by mountains, but not all the mountains had names. Sometimes I’d think about what that Indian woman said to me in Hetch Hetchy, that I didn’t know the real name of the country, that I was lost.

  After we’d get the horses settled down and convinced the mules to do the same, we ate what was available, and there ain’t no hunger like the one mountains make inside you, a gnawing, emptied-out feeling like there’s no measure of food could ever fill you up.

  Mountains must be hungry too. Everything here is so big and so empty that it echoes like Matterhorn Canyon when those big rocks come down. God was always trying to fill it up with snow, rain, wind, and sound, but no matter how much he tried, the country was just too big.

  Sometimes the silence round there could be too much of a good thing. I like quiet as much as the next man, even the stillness inside our church back in Spartanburg, but there’s a limit. Yosemite was so big that things got lost inside all that silence, like a fog going through your fingers. Things got lost even when they was right in front of me and all around me. Maybe that’s why trees have roots, cause they need to hold on to something. And maybe that’s why we were always hearing trees, creaking cracking calling sighing, cause they don’t want to lose themselves either.

  Usually trees were all you heard out there. I remember a particular red fir at one campsite cause the campfire light playing over it made it look like a skinny old man with long black fingers reaching out over you, like he was wondering if he should grab hold of you or just pretend enough so you could never relax. That was one night at Reds Meadow, the tree creaking away as we sat round a fire, thinking like I been thinking, letting the fire do all the talking, until Corporal Bingham said, “Hey, Sergeant, what you say you goin to do when you leave the army?”

  I was down so long in myself that his voice sounded far away and broken up by the wind. When I looked up at him it was like I was rising out of black water.

  “Well, Corporal,” I said, “I been thinkin bout that a long time, considerin this and that, and to be honest, I think I might try livin for a change. Cause I ain’t ever done that, and I seen a lot of other folks doin it so I figure I better give it a try before I die.”

  I hoped that was enough to keep him quiet for a minute or so. I kind of liked the blackness I was in, just me and the fire and thinking and not saying. I kind of liked the feeling I was having just then by the fire.

  Bingham just laughed down low when he heard me, sort of a complaining sound like a waterfall grumbling bout how far it had to fall through air just to feel ground again.

  “But Sergeant,” he said, “ain’t you livin right now? No one’s tellin you this or that, you in charge here right now, no officers, just me and McAllista . . . McAlliser . . . McAww, aw, damn, boy, I just can’t say your name right!”

  Across from him was Private McAllister, peering down into the fire like I’d been doing. Bingham couldn’t do anything but talk, talk, talk, and McAllister obviously didn’t want any of that. He wanted to do nothing, which is what he’d been doing ever since we got here, a whole lot of nothing, and there ain’t anything wrong with that after a day’s ride through a place big enough to make you feel like you were nothing.

  “Bingham,” McAllister mumbled softly, like he was drunk, “you known me a long time, long enough for you to get my name right, so if you can’t say it, just say you sorry and be done wid it!”

  It really quieted then, except for the fire talking. Bingham’s eyes got so chilly they got frost in them, and then it melted and he began to laugh, but that laugh seemed to rise up from something cold inside him, cause I don’t think he felt there was anything funny in what the private said. But what was he going to do? Bingham needed McAllister. McAllister needed Bingham. I needed both of those fools, and they needed me, cause what was all around us sure as hell didn’t need any of us.

  “You funny!” said Bingham finally. “You know I didn’t mean anythin, I was just foolin. I mean, look at us, all sittin here like we’re about to die, heads hangin down like men before the gallows, and here’s the sergeant sayin he don’t know what it’s like to live. If this ain’t livin, then what is? We got a fire to keep us warm, plenty of food, shelter. Now, what I don’t have is a woman! Maybe that’s what the sergeant needs.”

  “Bingham,” I said to him, “you don’t know me, you don’t even know yourself. If you need a woman to feel alive, then part of you’s already dead. I’m not talkin bout bein lonely, I’m talkin bout bein alone. You know how long it’s been since any of us was alone, really alone out here like there was no one else anywhere, that kind of alone?

  “We never got a chance to figure out who we are back at the Presidio or any other garrison, cause there’s always too much going on and too many people doin it. What you need to figure out is all this . . .”

  I stretched out my arms like I was trying to hold the sky. What I wanted to say was how “all this” wasn’t just scenery. It was medicine. But I couldn’t find what I wanted to say right then cause I was so angry. I let my arms fall.

  “Look at McAllister here,” is what I said. “He don’t talk much, but he’s thinkin all the time, so he might be lonely but he’s never alone. The army tells you you’re stronger when your troop is around you, that you’re weak when you’re by yourself. But if you’re never by yourself, you can’t hear yourself think, and that’s what they want. They don’t want you to think, just follow orders, but out here there ain’t no officers givin orders. There ain’t no one but us and this!”

  And I stood up with my arms raised into the dark, feeling my breath going out and my heart beating fast, angry not really at Bingham but at everything I was feeling and couldn’t get across to him. Maybe I couldn’t even get it across to myself. Sometimes you feel what you feel but you don’t know why. There was nothing wrong with what Bingham was saying, but I couldn’t hear what was right in it either. I was just too mad, and the anger wouldn’t let me stop talking.

  “Bingham,” I tried again. “There ain’t no one else round us for miles and miles. These trees here, these red firs and lodgepole pines, they don’t care bout your small talk, they’re listenin to God all the time. If you’d listen to what they’re sayin and you understood any of it, you’d see that you need more than a woman, you need all this too, all these mountains and forests and that sweet sweat comin off of them.

  “Sure, a woman just makes it all better, ain’t nothin wrong with a woman, but why would a woman want somebody that don’t know who he is? You don’t stop talkin long enough to hear your own name, Bingham, and it’s a shame, cause right now somethin’s talkin to you, tellin you somethin you need to hear. And I don’t mean me. I mean everything round us, and you don’t even hear it. Far as women go, if you really want a woman, the next time you find yourself in the company of one, you might try just bein real quiet and listenin to what she has to say. That, my brother, is how you get a woman!”

  I finally stopped. I didn’t really understand why I was so angry, so how could it be clear to anyone else? Bingham hadn’t done or said anything different from any other time. I guess I could’ve gotten down on him cause here he was talking bout women, and he had a wife back in New Orleans. But plenty of soldiers had wives they never knew when they’d see again, if they ever would. So I could let that go. Maybe I was mad cause this night round this fire I’d felt something I hadn’t felt in a long time, and I didn’t want to spoil it with wanting this or that. There’s too much wanting, and I’d had enough of not getting eno
ugh.

  What I realized was how much I needed silence, needed it more than just about anything. I needed a place where I could think, slow down all the shit moving through my head, the shit that happens to anyone, the shit that makes you feel like shit. But it’s the same shit you put over a field in the hope that something sweet will grow out of days and nights like shit.

  I slowly sat down and took a deep breath. No one had left. Bingham was glaring into the fire, the palms of his hands colored red by the blaze as he tried to grab hold of the heat. McAllister was looking at me strangely, like I’d finally said something he found interesting.

  “Let me tell you something else, Bingham.” I tried to talk slow so maybe some of it would get through. “One day you’re goin to forget what I’ve been sayin tonight, forget how you’re feelin, how you’re hungry for a woman, but what you’ll never forget is the sound out there when you lie down on your bedroll, the sound of these mountains, the quiet. Cause it’s not like an empty room, it’s a different quiet, like when someone dies near you or when the sun goes down, that kind.

  “And every day you been here, and every night, somethin else has been here too, and it may or may not be God, but it’s holy, I tell you that, and it’s what McAllister and I been listenin to all this time we been sittin round this fire. There’ll come a time when this sorta quiet is hard to find except in a coffin, but we’re alive now, and it’s everywhere round us, and maybe if you stopped talkin now and then, you’d hear it. I know you’re not listenin to me, but some part of you been listenin to these mountains ever since we got here. And one day before you die, Bingham, you goin to start payin attention.”

  Bingham’s eyes were wide open and bright with fire. McAllister kept staring down into the smoke and flame with his hands out, raising and lowering his fingers as if he was playing the fire like an instrument, like music was coming out of it.