Snow, Ashes

by Alyson Hagy

  His body came back into itself when he felt heat and stirring near one of his dangled hands. It was his old dog, Rain.

  “You got the shotgun with you?” Hobbs’s voice was singsong and terrible.

  “Yes.”

  “Want to use it again?”

  Adams didn’t withhold his answer. He’d done a lot wrong in his life—maybe too much—but he could still call himself honest. “No, I don’t.”

  “Good. That’s not the way I have it in my head, just so you know. My h-head doesn’t have us struggling over this one.” Hobbs defused his eyes, and Adams saw a glimmer of stillness within them, an ocean-rich column of blue. “It’s not like anybody t-told me how it has to go, not a preacher or a dream or anything like that. This is my answer. I just see the way I have to be. It s-seems right after all these scarecrow years.”

  “I guess … I don’t know what to say.” Adams heard something begin to restore itself in his voice. It came very quickly, a pure gout of letters, and then it was gone. “Do you have to—leave?”

  “I ain’t left you yet, F-fremont. And I won’t ever leave you—not in a way that matters. That house might be empty, but you’re not empty. This is what you got to learn. For a long time we’ve kept each other going on and on. But you’ve got something to take care of down there.” Hobbs pointed a finger toward the toppled dominos of the ranch.

  “No. There’s nothing left to that.”

  “There is. Sh-she’s gonna come—and you got to be home. She’ll come to the graves to see your ma and your father and me.”

  His mouth wouldn’t make the sound he wanted.

  “She gave me this to give to you,” Hobbs said, as he unfurled a stained and empty hand. He seemed to see something in that hand that Adams did not. He reached out, and Adams reached out, and their bodies touched one last time.

  Adams turned to water at the hips and knees. “I d-don’t…. I just wanted … I w-want to help you—”

  Hobbs cut him off with a captivated grin. “I thank you for trying. Old Etch would say we stayed wh-who we were and that it was a good thing. What I don’t know is how it ends for you. Who’s to say what’s best for a human man? I never did get a answer to that one.” He turned and blinked into the striations of the morning breeze. “B-but this ain’t never been about the two of us squawking. Some things don’t ever get taken away from people, Fremont. Some things we keep inside us forever,” he said. “I n-need you to remember that.”

  Then he walked in his slow, pronating way toward the shed. It sounded as though he said one last thing to his friend John Fremont Adams, but Adams couldn’t be sure of the words. Wait for her. Don’t forget. Your turn. Which was the answer to his question? Uncertainty rooted him to the crumbled soil beneath his feet. He saw the hinges on the pump-shed door glitter like hung decorations. He saw Rain leave the shade of his body and follow Hobbs into the pump shed, a fine dog. He saw C.D. Hobbs cover the last strides of his life like a herder who has more stragglers to round up. He recognized no choice other than the choice to stand steady, eyes open, eyes gathering, heart rising like a freed bird in his chest. It would come to him. The answer would surely come. He had only to wait and see how much of this destruction was his to share.

  Acknowledgements

  This novel arose from a story overheard at a potluck dinner in Laramie, Wyoming. I’m grateful to Jeanne Holland for telling that story with her usual panache. But the book found its true center as I traveled the back roads of Carbon and Sweetwater counties with Gary DeMarcay, who was then an archaeologist with the Bureau of Land Management. I’m grateful to Gary for showing me that landscape in all its beauty and strangeness. I’m also grateful to the late Staige Blackford, editor of the Virginia Quarterly Review, who published the story “Snow, Ashes” in 2001.

  Thank you also to my readers Kim Kafka, Beth Kephart, Janet Holmes, Alison Harkin, Mark Miller, and Mandy Hoy. The National Endowment for the Arts, the Wyoming Arts Council, and the Christopher Isherwood Foundation all provided financial support. Sharon Dynak and the Ucross Foundation gave me safe harbor when I needed it most. Carol Bowers and the excellent staff at the American Heritage Center located the documents and photographs I craved. David Romtvedt and Simon Iberlin helped me with the Basque phrases. Bob Townsend of the Owen Wister Review and Dan Wickett of the Emerging Writers Network graciously published excerpts from the manuscript.

  Bob Southard talked me through dozens of drafts. He is a dream critic.

  Gail Hochman stayed committed to the manuscript. Katie Dublinski, Anne Czarniecki, Fiona McCrae, and the staff at Graywolf Press were patient and passionate. I consider myself very lucky to work with such wise and far-seeing professionals.

  Finally, this book is dedicated in no small part to soldiers lost and found. It was written about war during a time of war. I remain humbled by the stories carried home by those who have fought in uniform.

  Notes

  The epigraph is from James Galvin’s poem “Hermits.”

  Buren Adams’s quotations in Part I are from Gilbert Murry’s translation of Euripides’ Medea and F. Storr’s translation of Sophocles’ Electra. His quotation in Part IV is from Thomas Fuller’s Gnomologia. C. D. Hobbs’s quotation in Part IV is a garbled version of a sentiment from Seneca’s Hercules Oetaeus.

  Many of the tales Hobbs tells in Korea are inspired by Lori Van Pelt’s Dreamers and Schemers: Profiles from Carbon County Wyoming’s Past.

  I read many books about the Korean War. Eric M. Hammel’s Chosin: Heroic Ordeal of the Korean War was both moving and influential. My descriptions of combat at Chosin are inspired by Hammel’s account, but my characters and their actions are fictional. I hope curious readers will find their way to books by Hammel and others. The Forgotten War is not forgotten.

  ALYSON HAGY is the author of four additional works of fiction, including the story collection Graveyard of the Atlantic and the novel Keeneland. She lives in Laramie, Wyoming.

  Snow, Ashes is typeset in Sabon, a typeface designed in the 1960s by Jan Tschichold, based on Garamond. Book design by Wendy Holdman. Composition at Prism Publishing Center. Manufactured by Friesens on acid-free paper.