Good Day to Die

by Jim Harrison

  There was a trace of Sylvia's jasmine scent in the car so I got out. Shocking like the effect of smelling salts when I was knocked out playing football. I did not want to think of her while I fished but the odor in the dark of the sage and sweet-grass and pine resembled a subtle perfume and I was drawn to her despite my desires to the contrary. I had listened to her breathing and liked the way it intermingled with the hooting of the owl and a very distant sound of a whippoorwill. Now I could see a faint edge of light over the slope between Odell Mountain and Alders Peak and I began to walk to the river.

  There was a strangeness to the morning that disturbed me and at first I attributed it to the similarity of walking to the river as I had walked to so many rivers on so many dawns. A car approached at high speed and I stepped off the blacktop into the grass I had been avoiding out of paranoia over rattle-snakes. As the headlights swept past and the car bobbed in the dips of the road I could hear music from the radio and it took several minutes for the sound and the red taillights to disappear up toward Chief Joseph Pass. Maybe that formed a little of the strangeness. Less than a hundred years ago Gibbon's men had crept leading their horses here up to the Nez Percé encampment. An old brave probably out taking a morning leak had finally seen them and his eyesight was reputed to be bad. The first bullets caught him anyway and then the Cavalry charged the sleeping tents.

  I reached the bridge and dimly made out the narrow path down to the river. When it got lighter I would walk downstream for a mile or two and then fish back up. But I wanted to be able to see a path. The snakes’ rattle was their way of saying they didn't want to be stepped on. I had so little of what I thought of as courage. It was easy enough to suppose that courage was somehow mixed up with energy and your metabolism; I knew that it was unlikely that Tim ever backed down from a fight or the danger of competitive driving, and when he did make some comment about the war, fear never entered the language. And blowing up the dam seemed as simple to him as having a meal or going to a movie, even simpler than the act of screwing which he apparently had some problems with. And the Nez Percé who had battled on the ground where I stood had a saying when war was near—"Take courage, this is a good day to die"—just as the Miniconjou Sioux had said “Take courage, the earth is all that lasts.” Eerie to be able to say such a thing and mean it.

  Now it was barely light enough for me to make out the shape of the entire Big Hole basin which was some seven by fifteen miles. It was once a high summer pasture for elk and bison and in the blurred and dulcet light of early morning it was possible to believe it still owned that virginal state. The water had a strong even flow and I had had good luck within a few miles of this spot but now the ground fog that curled and drifted across the sage hung above the river. Fog or heavy mist always disturbed fly fishing as insects tended to avoid it and there was nothing for fish to rise to. I tied on a streamer, a minnow imitation, and began to cast but I couldn't concentrate.

  Gibbon's men had watched the squaws come out of the teepees and stoke the morning fires before returning to their husbands and children. Then the old half-blind brave who was the first kill. Then the charge with the Cavalry shooting low into the tents to pick up as many sleeping bodies as possible, which was a rather usual Army strategy in those days. Fifty women and children had been killed. Even babies. No Nez Percé sentries had been posted as this sort of attack wasn't in their own repertory and they were trying to evade the Army anyway.

  I had a sharp heavy strike but failed to hook the fish. I moved along the bank further to try another hole feeling very bad that I had begun to think about the Nez Percé. Outrage was the most vaporish of emotions. It occurred to me with some amusement that a student in the future might have his grade dropped on an exam from a B to a C because he misguessed the exact number of My Lai dead. The water reminded me of the name of Chief Looking Glass. I looked at my reflection in the water and said it aloud several times. He drank water here. Funny how such errant details make it real as if my own reflected body were that of Looking Glass taking a drink a few minutes before the battle. The Nez Percé had regrouped quickly and had killed some thirty of the Cavalry and wounded forty. If you could except the squaws and children which you couldn't they would be the clear winners. When Gibbon's men finally withdrew after twenty-four hours the Indians traveled on and those who pursued them found along the trail some wounded and aged who voluntarily dropped out in order not to impede the flight. Gibbon's Bannock scouts got their scalps.

  I took several brown trout, none of an interesting size, but as the first bit of sunlight burned away the fog, insects began to appear and trout rose to them. I could see the dimples and circles of rising fish down to a bend where the river disappeared in a grove of willows above which the mist still hung. I had no stupid urge to be here when it was unspoiled because it was nearly unspoiled now. It was hard on your brain finally to have to think constantly of searching out a place that was relatively “unspoiled.” But you could reach an incredibly primitive area of the coast of Ecuador and find that the black marlin in that infinite Pacific had nearly all been lost to the Japanese longliners who cherished them for fish sausages.

  I had certainly been born too late to cream it and I knew how resolutely fatuous it was to blow up a single dam. Or fifty or a hundred. But I felt almost sure that it would make me feel good and however primitive and silly that reasoning was it would have to do. I knew that I would have given up in Arizona had it not been for Sylvia and this admission made my holy passion suspect. It was simply a good idea but I was just as simply not geared to carrying it out on a large scale. While I was fishing I could feel the ebb and flow of my reasoning almost with every cast and retrieve, and it was only momentarily interrupted by watching a large brown trout swirling against the far bank. I begin to think of Sylvia waking and how my courage for even this small but elemental battle was weak. I almost wanted Tim to reconcile himself to her though I knew this was unlikely. I fantasized through a dozen casts that they would vanish while I was fishing. I would pretend to be shocked and, at first, getting over Sylvia posed some difficulty but this might be resolved by hiking up into the mountains, perhaps way over into the desolate Selway-Bitterroot area of Idaho. Who would cook my meals? Horseshit. Ideally I would climb one of the surrounding mountains, mistake a lightning bolt for a power vision, and die with my charcoaled body blasted into a crescent smile. Locals would call the mountain Big Smiley. An anti-legend might be formed including choice information: at fourteen his heifer took last place at the fair; at twenty-two he had difficulty staying awake; at twenty-six his wife asked him to leave but to please not take the car; at twenty-eight he climbed his first mountain and made a smile.

  I had two hours of excellent fishing then and all other considerations were lost in the excitement. I even planned how I might attack the evening hatch and what part of the river was a likely alternative to my morning fishing as I wanted to cover new ground. I wished that I had a frying pan and some bacon and could fry a few trout quickly in the bacon fat or that Sylvia were sitting on the bank like a Nez Percé squaw ready to cook her brave's fish. How romantic. A sickness, actually. Pure and simple an unquestionable disease to which there were no alternatives this late in life. I could not help but assume it was late in life because I had no notion of what was possible next other than returning to Key West for a few weeks tarpon fishing after, of course, we had the satisfaction of blowing up the dam.

  I hoped enough notice would be paid to the incident that I might collect a few newspaper clippings to show to friends. The barflies would be astounded. And fishing friends would admire me for doing what many fishermen thought of frequently. I deserved some of the same kind of praise that the Fox had been getting near Chicago only my debut in the realm of ecological violence was much more dramatic. Sabotage. The word lifted my neck hairs and made me shiver. I released a final trout and began walking back to the cabin. The fishing had slowed somewhat and we wanted to get up to Missourla to buy our unsuspicious material bef
ore the stores closed. And Tim wanted ammunition for the pistol which we argued over but then I remembered that small arms are popular in Montana and there would be no danger in getting shells. A few years before I had met a minister who enjoyed shooting rattle-snakes with his .357 on Sunday afternoons. It was relaxing after a hard morning at the pulpit.

  I guessed it to be about ten in the morning when I let myself in the cabin door. I was quiet, then noticed with some disgust that Sylvia had her leg over Tim's hip. A pretty picture for a voyeur but the nature of voyeurism indisputably changes when you think you love the object. Tim had an inexplicable bruise above his scar but it couldn't compete in interest with Sylvia's ass. That's not just plumbing, I thought, but I had to squint so Tim's nudeness didn't vitiate Sylvia's. Odd to be homosexual and be only interested in the other. I tiptoed past the sleeping bodies. Tim always had to have the bed closest the door, a mania he got overseas. Not to be cornered, taken, and eat rice for years in a bamboo cage. I took a shower and crowed loudly a rendition of “America,” a song that transcended its status as a nullity after my morning on the Big Hole. Be nice to drive down the road a piece and receive instruction at the feet of Joseph himself. But he loved his squaws, there were two of them late in life, and nine children, only one of which lived long. He clearly wouldn't like me and I didn't very much either. I could redeem myself in his eyes easily enough by blowing up dams. Fish were a staple for the Nez Percé.

  When I got out of the shower they were still there but Tim's eyes were open and Sylvia's legs were close together and drawn up fetally. Her body somehow raised the question of suicide. An abyss safe from harm's way.

  “Well you missed it last night.” Tim stretched his arms and yawned.

  “I see your face. Did she hit you?” She still hadn't wakened and I thought how silly it was to stand there making conversation when I ought to be shooting him and jumping her. In Granada I once had mistook a wife for a daughter and there was a lot of fleering Spanish passion that was only resolved when I lost face and left the taverna. Should have kicked his face in.

  “This bugfucker grabbed her when I was dancing and when I grabbed her back he hit me. So I drilled the motherfucker.” He held up his right hand and the knuckles were ugly and swollen.

  “Must have been a good punch.”

  “A great punch. He was drunk and they didn't even cut me off.”

  They had gone to the only bar in Wisdom for something to eat while I had walked down to check the river. I stopped by for a nightcap but the only thing to eat other than pickled bologna was XRAYE SANDWICHES, CHUCKWAGONS AND CHILI DOGS. The food was placed in a small aluminum oven and within a few minutes the buzzer rang and the food was ready. There was a group of wrangler types at the other end of the bar and I thought I overheard some slighting reference to the length of our hair. Tim either hadn't heard or pretended not to—I knew he wouldn't let such a comment pass. He and Sylvia danced two numbers while I had my drink and now it seemed that it had been plainly an enticement to the cowboys what with Tim's habitual sneer and Sylvia's short skirt. I thought I had had my mind on the river but I probably subconsciously wanted to avoid a hassle.

  Tim got up to re-enact the scene. Good fighters can always shadow-box with such speed that you fairly hear their fists whish through the air. I was suddenly happy that our ice-skating fight in Wyoming had come to nothing.

  Then Tim put his arm around my shoulder. “Pretty close to zero hour, huh?” He laughed and walked to the bathroom.

  I blushed. I wasn't used to nude men putting their arm around my shoulder, plus I thought it was a tacit accusation over my leaving the tavern when I knew secretly that a fight might be inevitable.

  Sylvia woke up and made no move to cover herself. We had become not nature's children but familiar people whose concerns were too ill and fractionated to care about our bodies.

  “Sylvia, cover up or I'm going to fuck you right now.” I sat down next to her on the bed.

  “Timmy knocked this guy's teeth out.” She rubbed her sleepy eyes and stretched. I leaned over and kissed her belly button. “I was afraid they would gang up on him and almost ran over to wake you up.” I moved my mouth lower in mock trial. “Don't do that.” She tried to push my head away.

  “Why?” My question was muffled against her sex.

  “Because!” She jumped up and drew the sheet to her in mock alarm. I could hear the shower running and felt safe. I advanced on her and put my arms around her but she was play-acting and put on a mincing show of the seduced.

  “Sylvia, goddamnit.” She let me kiss her once and I was hard against her and almost thought I was home for a moment. Then I got that same “please” again and sat down on my own bed with my head in my face. I thought of rape. Tim would only think it was funny but she came over and began rubbing my neck and shoulders.

  “It's not what you're thinking. This isn't a good time.” She had anticipated some foul question that I intended to ask or state about the night before. I drew her tightly to me for a moment then let her get dressed. Tim came out with his hair slicked back like Mifume and laughed when I tried to cover my embarrassment with my hands.

  CHAPTER

  15

  IN THE CAR moving toward the vast line of the Bitterroots I began an odiously boring lecture on Indians. At first they listened civilly with the tape deck turned low, not knowing that I had dropped one of Tim's spansules to try to ameliorate my growing dread which had got totally out of hand. How in Christ did he take so many of them when a single one set me off like an endless string of firecrackers. And not that I really knew much about Indians other than what I remembered from LaFarge and a few other books in high school but I countered my ignorance with what I thought was eloquent invention. I characterized my favorites—Nez Percé, Cheyenne, Blackfoot and Mandan, maybe the Oglala Sioux. I kept on through the switchbacks on Chief Joseph Pass, embellishing each doubtful fact with mystery. Sylvia turned on her seat and faced me so I increased and exaggerated the romantic aspects which of course in reality were few. I had meant to take a Seconal and sleep, not an upper. Sylvia's arm trailed over the seat and I could barely hear Dylan on the deck; my voice grew an octave higher and was on the verge of quacking. I should own a duck ranch, a harmless spread speckled with ducks. After we killed the ducks and shipped them to the cities we could make duck-feather pillows, assuming there was a market. How could I blow up a dam when I hadn't ever voted, a comparatively sane political act? Sylvia and I would go to the polls together then stop at Burger Chef. She was partial to Burger Chefs and though I despised them compromises are essential in marriage. We would grow tired too of eating duck. There would be no pills on the ranch and only the mildest strains of grass would be allowed. Wine, not whiskey. The children could have a duck or two to play with. Sitting on the front porch she would say the ducks have been good to us this year. I might have to tell her to shut up.

  Tim had turned the music up when I lapsed into my duck silence. I speculated that I could flit around the mountains like Road Runner escaping the coyote. If I closed my eyes I saw an enormous billowing orange explosion and a towering geyser of water and mud. Then some Navajos stood looking at the site of their sheep shed. Where's our sheep shed? Little Face saw it blow up and a red car escaping. My temples pounded. What ever happened to Gene Krupa. I opened my eyes and rolled a large joint assuming that it would counteract the speed better than alcohol. If it didn't I could always try whiskey later. I handed it to Sylvia but she passed it on to Tim.

  “It's too beautiful today.” She was rubbernecking the Bitterroots. But the statement appeared in the air as a judgment on me. I was irked anyway at having forgotten to take my vitamins in my haste to go fishing.

  “Tim, Sylvia thinks these mountains are more beautiful than we are. I think that's inconsiderate.”

  “She always was corny. I asked her to send me a sexy picture of her and she sent one in a bathing suit. A bathing suit!” He shook his head. “By sexy I meant no clothes.”

/>   “You'd just pass it around,” Sylvia said good-naturedly.

  “They didn't know you. I see her naked since she was seventeen and she won't even send a picture while I'm protecting her ass in Nam.”

  I should have kept my mouth shut. Quarrels didn't serve to keep my mind off what we intended to do in the next twenty-four hours. They jangled. What quarrels I had had with women, week-long sullen wranglings like dogs parrying in a property dispute. While you're up get me a drink. Get it yourself, you're drinking too much. Fuck you. Don't talk that way in front of your daughter. She's not listening. Yes she is. She's watching Archie on TV. No she's not, children are upset by their parents’ voices when they're cross. Then get me a drink and shut up. No. I'm going out. Don't take the grocery money. And so on.

  I had Tim stop when we crossed the West Fork of the Bitterroot River near Conner. I felt compulsive about my vitamins and needed water to get them down. We sat and talked in an addled way about an escape route while Sylvia waded along a shallow stretch of the river with the announced intention of finding a gold nugget. Tim thought we should double back into Montana at least as far as Bozeman. We were pulling the kind of stunt that local authorities would naturally suspect of Californians and maybe we would drop a key ring with a California address on an ID tag. It sounded like a barbershop crime magazine trick to me but I agreed. I wanted to contribute something crafty to the plot but couldn't come up with anything.

  We sat there with a pint of whiskey watching Sylvia sort the rocks and ask us which we thought might have some gold in them. I pretended I knew, saying igneous and ultracrutaceous. She was so placid and believing, and today especially she looked much younger in the knee-deep rushing water. She deserved a small farm and a horse to ride on or something like that. At age twelve in Sunday school the teacher told us to treat and regard all girls like little sisters. I felt sappish and cold-headed with Tim talking very intensely about details while I for the hundredth time in eight days so envied him his woman that it was unbearable. An idle mind. You have a job in order to be so bored that you are kept out of mischief.