Gloryland

by Shelton Johnson

  Bingham looked up from the fire then, into my eyes. “Sergeant,” he said quietly, “Elijah, you’ve had your say, and now I’m gonna have mine. Those stripes don’t give you the right to talk to me like I’m your boy, cause I ain’t. I’m a grown man, maybe more grown than you. I feel what’s out here, all right. I see the sun come up and go down every day. I feel the wind on my face, just like you, and I know these mountains are alive. You’d have to be a fool, bein out here like we been and not knowin that, and my mother didn’t raise a fool.

  “I see what you see and hear it too, Elijah, I just don’t want to do those things alone. None of it matters if you ain’t got a woman. What’s the point? I could talk to God, but the conversation’s a bit one-sided for my taste.”

  He paused, then looked at me again, considering, then grinned.

  “You know, Sergeant,” he went on, “there are other days to the week than Sunday. You seem to be all in love with Sunday, and I like it fine too. Where I come from Sunday meant somethin good to eat, so good it was sinful! But there are other days to the week, and nights at the end of ’em. Sunday’s a fine thing, but it don’t last for six days, especially not in New Orleans.

  “When we get back to San Francisco, Elijah, I’m gonna introduce you to Friday night or Saturday night. Me and McAllister’ll introduce you to some woman who’ll make you forget what those trees are sayin to you, at least for a night. Yeah, you’ll be talkin all right, talkin all night long, and she’ll be talkin too, but the words don’t matter when you’re talkin to a woman that way. And that, Sergeant, is the kinda conversation that’ll really bring you close to God!”

  I just stared at him, hearing the truth in his words. There’s more to any man or woman than just their thoughts and ideas. There’s also a body that needs to know it’s alive. I heard him, but I didn’t think he heard what I was really trying to say to him, so I made one more try.

  Meanwhile, McAllister just kept his seat, staring at me and then at Bingham, with a funny smile on his lips. He seemed to be enjoying this now.

  “Bingham,” I whispered, just louder than the crackling of the fire, “one day I’m goin to find a woman who will be my wife. You hear what I’m sayin? I’m not talkin bout a woman for Friday night or Saturday night, but for the rest of my life. And when that happens, I will be a happy man and maybe easier to get along with, but that day hasn’t come. Meanwhile I’ll go wherever you want in San Francisco, but that’s not where I’m goin to find the woman I’m talkin bout.

  “And while we’re still up here, I just want you to pay attention to what’s here instead of what you think you’re missin. Cause it’ll make you a better soldier in a way the regulations don’t measure.

  “Think about this.” I was addressing both Bingham and McAllister now. “There ain’t nothin out in this night that’s goin to call any of us nigger. These red firs don’t care who we are or what we are. These mountains don’t even know we’re here. It don’t matter to the ground under us if we live or die, don’t matter at all, and that’s good.

  “Round this fire, round any fire, none of what happened before we got here matters no more. There ain’t no hate in this forest, and there ain’t no love either. But there’s somethin else. There’s this fire warmin us, and us listenin or tryin to listen, tryin to understand, tryin to make sense of nothin at all. That’s what I’m doin here, tryin to make sense of nothin at all.”

  And I remember the wind rose, taking my last words away into the dark, taking them so fast I don’t think Bingham had a chance to hear them before they were gone, red sparks that left no trail. The wind took my voice and the look in Bingham’s eyes, but it couldn’t take away the light of that campfire. It’s burning still, as fires often do for months, hidden below the ground, below Reds Meadow or deep inside a man’s bones, smoking the marrow of McAllister and Bingham and flickering inside me, those fires still burn.

  Of the Spur

  The instructor explains to the troopers the use and the effect of the

  spur. If the horse does not obey the legs, it is necessary to employ the

  spur. The spur is sometimes used to chastise; when necessary, use it

  vigorously, and at the moment the horse commits the fault.

  from Cavalry Tactics

  horse heaven

  Everyone’s got a favorite place, a place that’s who you are, and you can move through it, breathe the air, walk the ground, and be home in a way that you’re not anyplace else. I found a place like that in Yosemite, or it found me.

  It was a high meadow so close to the sky that the blue of heaven began to stain the plants below. You could see it in the high grass and flowers with the blue of the sky in their petals. Sky was so close there, maybe it was leaching its color, so after a rain the plant just pulls it from the air and gets drunk on it, waving back and forth in the breeze, giddy with indigo.

  You’d be giddy too if you could walk there with snowy mountains rising round you, holding the trees in place. It was high and rocky and green and cold. Even in the sun it seemed cold and warm at the same time. Some places can hold opposite things, like putting something to your lips that’s hot and cold and sweet and bitter, that’s what that meadow was like. It was cold as if winter was walking out but warm as if spring was strolling in, and when they passed each other, they stopped and turned round, then spoke in the heart of it, comparing notes. It was a long conversation. You could hear their talk in the grass and in the trees and inside yourself.

  Why was it so different from a thousand other meadows? I figure God’s walked in all of them, but in this one he lingered. He slowed down from all his work, looked round, and said, “Now this is it!”

  There’s all kinds of quiet. There’s the kind after a preacher prays to God in church, and the kind in Grandma Sara’s room after she’d tell Death off. There’s the kind round sunset when everything seems to take a deep breath and slowly let go. There’s the early morning kind right before birds begin to sing. The quiet in this meadow had some of all those and more, even more variety than sound has. Out here you can school yourself on quiet, get to know all the varieties, like how Mr. Muir can tell you the name of every bird and every flower, talk about them as if they were people he knew.

  If all those different kinds of quiet could be put in bottles, sealed shut, and set on a cellar shelf, that’s what I’d do with this vintage in Yosemite. Then from time to time I’d open one up and drink down the quiet of that meadow, fill up with it, and no matter how angry or sad I was, I couldn’t stay that way.

  Yosemite taught me that silence is a sound, the best kinda sound cause it makes you listen not only to what’s happening on the outside but what’s really going on inside. Usually the inside was a place I didn’t want to hear from too much, it’d be like feeling round the inside of a coffin to see if it would be comfortable. There would be plenty of time to get used to the feel of that. But in the silence of that meadow, I didn’t mind hearing what was in my bones and my blood and my heart.

  Anyway, I remember how riding into Horse Heaven would make me feel, how it would slow me down, calm me, soothe me like an ointment spread over a hurt I didn’t even know I had.

  I’d get off my mule, wrap the reins round his neck, and just let him go. There was always plenty to eat, so I was never afraid of him wandering off. That mule never looked happier than he was in Horse Heaven. I can still see flowers trailing from Satan’s mouth, like he was puking a rainbow, and his head bobbing up and down, side to side, as he rambled round that meadow.

  I didn’t like it so much in the spring. Then the ground would be wet like it was remembering when it used to be a real lake, and the mosquitoes made the air hum like the strings of a banjo plucked by the Almighty himself. Then it was more like Horse Hell.

  No, I mean late summer, when all the water had seeped back down into the ground, and you could lie back in the wildflowers after a long day in the saddle, and the pressure of your body would crush the purple under the red under the yel
low of all those flowers, and squeeze the colors out into the air, and you could smell the flowers you couldn’t see. They’d fill up your head and your lungs and someplace inside that was open and waiting.

  As my eyes would close, I’d hear my mule pulling up plants, chewing noisily, the wind in the trees away over somewheres, and the droning of bees gathering pollen. I could see every blade of grass up close, a little black ant crawling up this one, a caterpillar ringed with yellow and black on that one, I could see it all up close and all far away. And me opening up to the blue, a big ring of blue bordered by pine branches, dark and green. I was right there in the center of that meadow, the center of the world.

  You can see why I never took anyone else to Horse Heaven, or wrote about it in any ledger. Other soldiers and, worst of all, officers might’ve got curious, figured they needed to investigate. That would’ve ruined everything.

  But even though I went there alone, I never felt alone. The grass was good company, and the flowers too. Birds were always flitting round. I noticed how a bird’s song goes with what it looks like. Some birds don’t stay on a note too long, as if they know it’ll give way and collapse under the strain. Other birds say the same thing over and over again, like maybe it ain’t getting listened to proper, so the bird’s got to keep repeating what it’s saying over and over till it does get heard.

  It’s not an easy thing to tell the truth, but birds make a song out of it, and sing it wherever they go.

  The best time is the morning.

  There are two sunrises in the Sierra Nevada. The second one is the one you see. It’s when blackness fades in the east to a softness that ain’t really a color, but then deepens to a color there ain’t really a name for. Call it a distant relative of red, one that don’t come round to visit very often but who’s always welcome.

  That cousin of red lightens to a yellow, and about then a wind often picks up, stirring the leaves and branches. You start seeing the outlines of trees that went away the night before as darkness took them. After a bit there’s no doubt the sun is pulling itself up into heaven like an old man with a lamp climbing Jacob’s ladder. That’s the second dawn.

  The first one is the one only birds see. Light has barely, barely leaked into the sky when they start up like a choir on Sunday. Bird eyes must be sharp to see it, or maybe they feel something so thrilling in that moment they can’t help singing. Sometimes the whole forest echoed with what they were saying, and how long have they been saying those things?

  I remember thinking maybe it was the birds who coaxed the sun out of bed and up that long stairway. The music would rise up and up, wave after wave, and the sun would follow, rising into a color that was just becoming blue, and I couldn’t tell who was happier, the birds to see the sun or the sun to hear the music of those birds.

  Maybe I was the happiest one, just to be there watching and listening. If you’re a cavalryman and you find a heaven for horses, then you really have found paradise. I don’t know, and maybe I don’t want to know. Corporal Bingham taught me that thinking is good, but you can’t forget to feel. When horses are tasting the wind, they’re not thinking, and they never seem to worry about what they don’t know.

  In Yosemite, for the first time I was all right with not knowing. Usually I try to figure out something I ain’t too clear on. I want to know how much it weighs, will it float, can you set it on fire, or what’s it good for, but here I never looked for a reason or an answer. Some things you don’t ask God. You don’t say why to a lupine or a poppy or a shooting star, thank you will do just fine.

  Some people call Yosemite a wilderness, but all that really means is it’s a place where nothing ever stands alone but always got company, kind of like being in the military. No soldier is ever alone, cause he’s got all the men in his troop. They’re part of his squadron, which is part of a battalion, which is part of the Ninth Cavalry, and all those men are your family. People who will take a bullet meant for you, those people are your family. Someone who will die for you is your brother, and you’re all bound to something bigger than you. You all belong to the regiment, you’re all Ninth Cavalrymen, and that means something in the world.

  The same thing’s going on in this meadow. The grass is part of the ground, and the ground keeps the trees standing tall, and the trees hold the nests of birds, and the blue sky is beyond and between the branches of those lodgepole pines. Small things always add up to something bigger, and it never really ends. Too bad I can’t see it all. Too bad I can’t smell every flower. Too bad I can’t hear all the music there is to hear in these woods. Too bad I’m running out of time.

  That’s what I always thought about in that meadow in the sky. I was running out of time. When I was there, I noticed flowers dancing in the breath of God one day, and those same flowers dull and shriveled the next. That made me think I needed to dance more, feel the wind on me, and the sun, before I went all dull and shriveled.

  The place I called Horse Heaven got a real name on a map, but I’m not going to say it. You keep the whereabouts of your best fishing holes to yourself. Yeah, I went fishing in that meadow, but I was the bait at the end of the line. I was what was tossed into the high grass pushed into waves by a wind I can’t feel no more. And something took the bait, took me, and pulled me up time and again into Horse Heaven.

  All I got to do is think about it, and I’m there.

  Everybody needs a place like that. Even Satan. Even an army mule.

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

  The trail from a point on Virginia Cañon trail at the head of Smoky Jack Meadows, via mouth of Alkali Creek and McGee’s Lake, to Tenaya, which is now being built and repaired by Frank C. Palmer, was examined and found to be completed to within about 3¾ miles of Lake Tenaya (about 10¼ miles of trail being completed on August 11). This trail, so far as completed, is good, and I believe the contractor has complied with the terms of his contract in the work thus far done.

  Very Respectfully,

  J. T. Nance,

  Capt., 9 Cavy,

  Commanding Detachment

  when blackness came to yosemite

  I’d heard from Lieutenant Resnick that the first colored soldiers came to the Sierra in 1899. He told me he got that bit of information from the Superintendent Report for that year. He was reading those reports to get a sense of what had been happening in the park over the years.

  In ’99 it was just a small detachment of the Twenty-fourth Infantry, and they were only in the park for a few weeks. I guess they didn’t leave much of a mark, but it was comforting for me to know that I wasn’t the first, that others like ourselves had been here before, though you’d never know it from the looks we used to get. By the time the Ninth Cavalry arrived in 1903, no one should’ve been surprised, but I’m certain a lot of folks were.

  I wonder when you really get to a place. Is it just once you’ve arrived, or maybe after the animals have noticed you’re there? That don’t seem to take long. When the deer and raccoons as well as the settlers sit up and take notice, I guess you can say you’re there. How bout the black oaks in Yosemite Valley, those trees the Ahwahneechee tend and have been tending for thousands of years? Maybe the oaks know the Indians are there in a way that the white settlers couldn’t understand. Maybe the white folks in the valley haven’t been round long enough to be noticed by those trees.

  And how bout the Big Trees? Mr. Muir says that just one of those sequoias can live for thousands of years, that the Grizzly Giant in Mariposa Grove was alive when Jesus was walking round telling people what they needed to hear. How does something that old know we’re present, even if we was to sit in its shade every day of our life?

  What I’m saying is, from the Big Trees’ point of view, we’re just shadows moving round and not adding up to much of anything. To those giants, the Ninth Cavalry being here is like that cloud of butterflies I saw one spring down in the canyon of the Merced. They were so beautiful, flutteri
ng round like the sun broken up into tiny pieces, pieces that were alive and aware they weren’t going to be here for a long time and they might as well spend it all dancing in the air. There were so many, like small lanterns giving light to all the places the wind took them, and the river rolled on by never noticing those butterflies.

  How long do you have to be there, to be noticed by those mountains? Even Methuselah didn’t live long enough to be noticed by the ground he walked on. I figured if the settlers round Yosemite didn’t talk about the Ninth being there, then we were going to be forgotten. Not very long after we leave, people will be surprised that we were ever there. That’s why memories are so important to me, particularly my memories of Yosemite. I’m there only in my own head, in my own heart, and in the heads and hearts of my brothers in Troops K and L and I and M. Four troops of Ninth Cavalry, two in Yosemite and two in Sequoia. Four groups of colored men. Four families sent to the mountains to take care of something that would never know it was being taken care of and probably would be just fine if every human being walked away and never came back.

  But it was a wonderful time, a good time. How could it not be when we weren’t in a garrison with the routines and drills of post life, and in a place nearly empty of officers? That’s what I call paradise. There was an officer back in the ’90s, don’t recall his name, who called duty in the Sierra “the Cavalryman’s Paradise.” He was right.

  We had to take care of ourselves, since nobody was going to do it for us. Maybe if you’re in paradise, you ain’t got a right to be remembered by the angels. Figure angels, cause they live forever, got a lot on their minds and don’t want to be bothered whether or not Elijah Yancy bathed today or yesterday, or if he’s happy or sad. But I remember a certain evening down in Wawona when we had a particular good time. And even if the ground has forgotten, and the deer don’t remember, and the South Fork of the Merced never reflects on how I once stared into it wondering where all that water was heading, something happened that night that no soldier in the Ninth will ever forget.