A Time Ago & Then - Chapter 1. Dry Dock

I was Twenty-two and my Navy enlistment would have been coming to an end in seven months. Laid up in a Foster frame with three vertebrae crushed and fused together by the Docs at Tripler Army General Hospital, I was in dry dock. My boat was also in dry dock at Pearl Harbor Shipyards after a Westpac tour but I wouldn’t be going back to her. My luck had run out over a shuffleboard machine at the Sub-Base EM club.

My luck had run out but not because I didn’t play well. I knew every warp on the board of that machine:  I played good alright… too slick for the squids off the Coral Sea. They met me on the way back to the barracks and worked me over real good: crushed my cheekbone and a few ribs. I’d flipped over a retaining wall to get away and discovered that it was at least twenty feet to the pavement below.  I remember shouting on the way down: “Oh, shit!” and thinking; it is over… this is all I have to show for my life. I hadn’t those thoughts while I was getting the crap beat out of me by the Coral Sea Skimmers. I was busy fighting for my hide. Had I known it would come to this I might have given them their money back. But I chose to make an unscripted exit: they took off, perhaps believing the fall must have killed me and that I could be more trouble than the few bucks I’d conned them out of was worth.

I lay there in that Foster frame after the Army surgeons knitted my vertebrae together, waiting to be carted off for another surgery to patch my crushed cheekbone.

One of the candy-stripers came by and gasped in horror: “My God, what happened to you?”

I didn’t really want to talk… I was a mess. The whole left side of my face was a swollen blob of black and blue, bruised flesh. I could see through my one blurry eye that she was young, cute and innocent enough, “Oh, I got jumped by some skimmers.” I made part of that up because I barely remembered the fall and, vaguely, a shuffleboard game.

“Oh no, were they black?” She had such deep brown eyes. Her sympathy was enough to stir me through the fog of morphine and pain. I hated to disappoint her… I couldn’t remember what race the skimmers were at that time either. Racial tensions were high. It was 1969 and Black Power was combined with anti-war sentiments that divided race and rank in every branch of the armed services.

“Naw, they were white.” I watched with my one good eye her expression sour.

“That is horrid, to think, they were your own kind!”

I could have laughed, had I not been so medicated, because she looked Hawaiian with a good amount of Africa in her Wahini blood… Like it would have been better had they been black.

And, horrid? Nobody used words like that except in old movies.

“Naw, I already told you, they were skimmers.” I was getting annoyed now and hoped she would go away without me having to explain that I’d earned my dolphins as diesel-boat submariner and that a skimmer (any surface ship or crewman) was an entirely different species… Hell, we were practically in a completely different Navy than even Nuke Boats.

“Oh, by the way, how long does it usually take to recover from something like this?” I was unaware that candy-stripers were just volunteers and not nurses.

She could only see my smashed up face, “I don’t know… a few weeks?” She must have been in the dark about my crushed vertebrae.

I added, “Oh, you do know my back is broken?”

“Oh, Jeeze,” her brow furrowed in deep thought; “how bad?”

“Three vertebrae, T-twelve to L-two: Crushed ‘em.” Oh jeeze? An Andy Hardy movie at that!

“Oh, Jeeze,” she said it again… knitting her penciled-in brows, “probably six to nine months.”

Whew, I thought; it is February and my enlistment is up in August… good, I won’t have to go back to the boat… hmmm; counting on my fingers, do nine months extend past my separation date?

Just before I was being prepped for surgery on my crushed cheekbone, a brass oak leaf Major came into my cyclopean view. I saw on the Major’s other collar a brass cross. Oh shit, an Army chaplain. The candy-striper was at the door watching. It was mildly embarrassing that she had to be a witness as the chaplain attempted to do his job. He picked up the clipboard from the foot of my frame, looked at my chart for a name, and slipped right into the topic of his visit.

“Hello, Max… er, Seaman McGee. Would you like me to pray for you?”

“No Padre… no thanks.” I was kinda playing for the candy-striper now but I meant it.

“Are you sure you don’t want to talk or anything?” the Padre was not used to being shunned, “A short prayer helps before surgery.”

“Helps what, Father? I don’t need help.”

I swear he winced, “I’ve seen many healthy young men think the same as you, and sometimes…”

I’d heard this ministerial tone before, “I’ll take my chances.”

Now he was pissed, “… And sometimes they don’t make it.”

“Well, Padre, I don’t believe in your uniform or your God. Let me go to the grave on that!” On that I saw the girl in the candy-stripes turn away. The Major hesitated a minute, as though he was going to say something, but turned to go pray with someone more receptive on the ward.

I came out of the surgery alive despite my curses. It might have been worse. You never know when you go in for surgery… especially in an Army Hospital at a time when battles like Hill 937 were sending planeloads of 187^th Infantry and 101^st Airborne to Ward Ten in far worse straits than I was in. A little meat-grinder in South East Asia called Hamburger Hill was chewing up soldiers, young men like me, in ways that made me feel like my problems were insignificant.

The candy-striper was there when I came out from the anesthesia. I hadn’t expected her to be anywhere near me after my outburst with the chaplain. My vision was still blurred and a patch of thick gauze covered my left eye but she looked like a bronze angel, “They call me Max, what’s your name?”

“Glenda.”

“I expected something more exotic, like Leilani or something.” I wasn’t in pain… I wasn’t in anything… I was there and that was all there was to it. She was there too and that counted for something.

“It’s just plain Glenda. How are you feeling?”

“Huh, a little fuzzy…”

“You’re in a better mood than when I last saw you.”

Oh shit, I thought, more mawkish concern, “Thanks to the morphine.” Then, after a pause of more than a few uncomfortable minutes, I spoke through a thick anesthetized tongue, “My mood is cheerful enough… what do you mean?”

“You tore into the chaplain…. He was just trying to be helpful.”

“How’s it helpful to tell me I might die?”

“Don’t you think about what will happen to your soul, Max?”

“You tell me what a soul is, Glenda, and I might get concerned about it.”

She turned to walk away and, over her shoulder added, “We’ll talk about it when your mind is clearer and you are in a better mood.”

“My mind’s clearer than it will ever be. How am I in a bad mood?”

“It could be better.” She smiled and walked out of sight from my one good eye.

Ward Ten was the orthopedic ward where all the broken bones, shrapnel wounds and amputees went. There were Marines, Army, Navy and an assortment of military dependents and veterans in the ward. Our section had a kid in the bed across from mine, a dependent of a Navy NCO barely sixteen, who suffered some form of deterioration of his bones. Billy’s head was held with pins through a halo attached to titanium rods that continued down to reinforce his spine. The Kid (that’s the name we gave him, Billy the Kid) was dying and he knew it. He’d suffered a series of heart failures and each time they wheeled him to the E.R. seemed like it would be his last. 

I was intrigued with him because the Kid was always so damned cheerful. Even though he was sixteen Billy looked more like twelve. Still, he joked and goofed off with the best of us and he was considered one of the men in the ward.

….. All the while I hungered for meaning in my life.

And now I know I must lift the sail

And catch the winds of destiny

Wherever they drive my boat.

To put meaning in one’s life may end in madness

But life without meaning is the torture

Of restlessness and vague desire ---

It is the boat longing for the sea and yet afraid.

- Spoon River Anthology -

By

Edgar Lee Masters

A TV program played one evening that the Kid insisted we watch. There were eight beds in our section and the viewing fare was picked by consensus: mostly cop-buddy shows like Hawaii Five-O or Combat reruns. But this particular night everyone ceded and allowed the kid to watch his show; The Spoon River Anthology, from an adaptation of the book of poetry written by Edgar Lee Masters. I wasn’t sure why but I looked forward to the show myself. The theme was somewhat dour as far as I was concerned and I wondered whether it might be too much for the kid. The subject of the anthology was the lives of those buried in the Spoon River graveyard speaking from their graves. After it was over was over Billy asked me; “Do you believe in life after death, Max?”

I adamantly did not believe in any such nonsense but I understood that the Kid was asking because he was preparing to die. Of course, I lied; “Yah, I guess so. What do you think?”

“I don’t know but I’m gonna find out real soon.” He shrugged.

“You mean heaven and hell?” our section was quiet… everyone in earshot was listening. “Whatever; just doesn’t make much sense does it?”

“No, but I’m gonna miss my folks and friends if I’m there and know it.”

“Good point,” I was hesitant but, what the hell, the kid would know soon enough, “it does seem a bit morbid when ya think of it.”

“Anything’s better than this.” He gestured at his halo, monitor and oxygen tanks. I didn’t know what to say and the other GI’s in the room had nothing to say either. Finally, the kid spoke. “Don’t get me wrong, it isn’t so bad that I don’t want to live.”

I was thinking, Shit, he hasn’t even had a chance to get laid yet. Next thing I knew I was making things up. I heard myself saying, “Hey, maybe all this will work out for you.” I knew I was lying and I knew the Kid knew it too.

“Yah, maybe it will work out,” he admitted without a hint of cynicism.

That would be our last conversation. The alarms on the monitors went off around two a.m. That had happened several times before but, as the Docs and nurses wheeled him out to the E.R., the finality of it sank in.

The next day at lunch Glenda wheeled-in the meal cart and passed out the trays to our glum lot. Usually the battle-hardened Grunts and Screaming Eagles would cheer up when a skirt like Glenda walked in the door but there was none of the usual banter.

As she set-up my tray she asked about the kid. Of course, she already knew but it was more to break the silence, “Were you awake when it happened?”

“Yah, we all were. There was a lot of the usual noise.”

“You okay?”

I had been biting my lip and I’d hoped she hadn’t seen it. “Yah, I’m fine.”  A lump the size of a golf ball was lodged in my throat. I didn’t know why but her concern stirred up something deep within me. I wanted to cry but I could not: not here in front of these other men but perhaps… just perhaps, if I were alone with Glenda… far away from the ward… perhaps I could cough up that golf ball and let the dam break. I turned my head into my pillow so she  wouldn’t see the tears. Hell, I didn’t even know the Kid. He was just another bed on the ward. A nuisance… with his monitors and alarms! Damn it all to hell. The nation was at war and so was I. I was at war with myself and I was at war with God. What kind of God would make this mess?

“Glenda,” I called out as she was almost to the door, “You still concerned about my soul?”

“Well… er… yes?”

“Don’t be. I don’t have one.”

“I think you do… and a good one at that.” Thankfully she left. I watched her bronze-toned legs under the candy-striped skirt push her stainless-steel cart of trays down to the other end of the ward.

Ah, I thought, I wonder if my back will be able to manage the ole In and Out with a girl like that when I’m out of here.

My mind must’ve been easy to read because the Jarhead in the bed next to me fended-off his grief by saying, “Yah, I think I’d like a taste of that too.”

I spent my first three months at Tripler Army General Hospital on a Foster Frame. The Foster Frame is a contraption designed to keep one’s spine aligned while it heals. It is a sort of cot that can have another part of the cot attached, like hot-dog buns, so that I, the wiener, can be flipped over without causing problems with the alignment of my vertebrae.

In other words, I lay completely prone for ninety days. Being flipped once every four hours was made tolerable with a steady flow of pharmaceuticals prescribed, traded, swapped, donated or bought from each other. The first week I had a Demerol-drip but caps or tabs of it and Darvon were my regular fare from then on. Besides that, the men back from Nam were rationed two cans of beer a day with their meals. There were enough GI’s who didn’t drink to pass on their ration to me and the other stoners. That kept us in good supply. We learned to open-up a Darvon cap and empty out the Tylenol to ingest only the little red B-B heart. A can or two of beer and six of those little red B-B’s provided a pretty good buzz. Those were my distractions but; most of all, in those first three months, I read.

The first challenge was getting my eyes to work together. After the gauze was removed from my left eye I found that the right eye focused faster, but the left was cacky-wampus, causing me to see double. To read I had to close my left eye. This was more than I was willing to tolerate. I practiced every free minute, getting the railings on the ceiling that held the curtains around my cot above me to align. Seeing double at first, I could only get them to align for a second or two. But, as days passed, I could hold the lines together for longer periods until, after a week or two, they stayed that way.

Once I managed to read with both eyes a whole new world opened-up. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich; the Hobbit and the Tolkien Trilogy; Norman Mailer’s American Dream; John Hersey’s The Wall and Hiroshima; Ken Kesey’s Sometimes A Great Notion and One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. What the Hospital library didn’t hold momentous events; live on TV, such as the Neil Armstrong’s, giant-steppin-leap-for- man-and-mankind, moon landing occurred. These readings and events stirred my soul toward adventure… an adventure that I’d given up on. For all practical purposes I’d given up on adventure when I dumped my wrap-around sunglasses in the contraband bin upon entering boot camp. I did manage to keep a leather-bound collection of Keats in boot-camp. I had to convince my Company Commander there that it was a Bible: the Bible being the only book that was not contraband. Because it was leather bound and looked like a bible, he approved it.

Sadly, Glenda graduated from high school before I could have any of that. She bid me adieu and thanked me for the experience as she was moving to Davis, California to study veterinary medicine. I ordered a dashiki for her, from the back of a Playboy, as a parting gift. The dashiki came just in time and she wore it to the ward on her last day as a gift to me.

“Thanks,” she turned to model it for me.

“It looks better on you than a Mu-Mu.”

“I promise I will write you often and let you know how I’m doing. Maybe we will see each other when you get out.”

I got a few letters from her after that but they stopped coming by September. I neither saw nor heard from her again.

Finally, my three months in the Foster Frame were up and I would be fitted into a body cast the next day. It was the middle of the night when I nearly sabotaged my recovery by attempting to get up and walk around a bit before being confined to the heavy, full-body, plaster-cast. After all, ninety days was plenty, as far as I was concerned, to mend a few crushed vertebrae. I thought I was special and I didn’t accept Dr.’s Orders, laws of physics or any other law.

First off, I gradually propped myself up on both elbows, keeping my back as straight as I could. As soon as my head was elevated a few feet the blood rushed from the brain and I passed out, falling back flat on the frame.

Whew! I thought. This could be serious trouble.

I lay there for about fifteen minutes and tried again. This time I was able to stay upright without passing out but was still dizzy. I swung my feet off the cot and noted the sensation of the legs filling with blood. Three months of being off one’s feet causes more than a few physical changes. First off the thick skin on the heels and pads of the feet peels off. I hadn’t given much thought of how much padding normal feet have until it all started coming off as those first weeks laid up passed. Then the cartilage in the joints becomes atrophied. As I set my feet on the floor I found out how much cushion the joints of the ankles and knees are needed. Searing pain shot out from my ankles and knees as I stood. I realized then that I might have made a serious mistake as far as my recovery was concerned and lay back down on the frame. It was a hard pill to swallow. I’d never understood until that night that there were physical limitations that even I had to accept.

It was too painful to walk very far at first but I could get around in a wheel-chair. I joined a roving gaggle of amputees and paraplegics who raced about the wards. We were usually stoned or drunk, seeking anyone who might part with a few of this or that to redistribute to ourselves and bed ridden friends back in the ward. I soon was doing wheelies and balancing perfectly with the best of them. I could even negotiate the stairs that way. It was high risk behavior but I didn’t see it that way at all.

I was passing time as the end of my enlistment drew nearer. I was allowed to go into town on a day-pass around the first part of July, even though I still wore the cast that covered my torso. I got down to the Jungle in Waikiki and scored pot to bring back to my pals on the ward. A couple of times I went to Hotel Street massage parlor where I knew one of the girls that would give me a hand-job for an extra ten bucks. But most of all I simply went to the bars and got good and wasted before coming back to the Hospital at night.

Okie From Muskogee by Merle Haggard

Chapter 17: Passage

We rolled down east through Angel Fire, south to Guadalupita and on to Las Vegas, New Mexico. From there we headed to I-40. No one was talking much. Everyone was hung-over but Dennis; and he was busy driving with Wanda asking why she couldn’t go to Jamaica with us.    Dennis tried to explain that it wasn’t going to be easy and that she might end up stranded in Miami.
I was concerned that Wanda might get belligerent when she started off with the business of racism. Stan tried to cut her bitching off, “Hey, I had to leave Debby and Leah behind.”

Wanda was quiet for a few miles before she began putting down Debby and Leah, “What, Debby wasn’t your woman… neither was Leah. They were fucking everyone last night.”

Stan wasn’t going to let her get by with slurring Debby and Leah. “Look, what we did last night was a going away party. We will probably never see each other again. I thought it was damned cool that they put out for everyone.”

“Yeh,” Dennis added, “Lighten up Wanda. We can’t take you with us and we really can’t all stay crammed in this car any further than Amarillo. You agreed a week ago that you wanted to go back there where you have family.”

That was how it went all the way to Amarillo.
There would be silence for a while and then she’d start in again. I figured that Dennis could handle her but it seemed touch and go at times. Finally, when we arrived in Amarillo, I gave her twenty bucks for bus fare, or whatever, and she had Dennis drop her off at a bar. That made a little more room in the car and a rotation system was developed. Jamie didn’t know how to drive a stick shift… or probably any car at all, so he was exempt from driving. 
I had some rest, nursed a raging hangover and slept most of the way by the time we got to Amarillo. But I did look forward to getting behind the wheel just for the sake of stretching my legs a bit. Besides, I loved long distance driving. I hadn’t paid much attention to the landscape after passing Las Vegas, because I was sleeping or pretending to sleep most of the time. But once I got behind the wheel I loved the rolling hills and arid prairie along the way. I pictured herds of buffalo covering the landscape from horizon to horizon and horsemen following the herds for the hunt; a way of life that came to an abrupt end a mere century before. Comanche, Kiowa, and Sioux… all across these plains: the majesty of the land dictated a humility and even pride in being a part of the drama of the wide open spaces.

I drove on through the panhandle of Texas onto and through the prairies of Oklahoma. A sea of grass and winter wheat as far as the eye could see stretched out, interrupted only by an occasional gully or wash. I envisioned the dust bowl era of Okies packing their belongings on their trucks and cars heading for greener pastures in California a mere generation before. 
The land had a sadness about its quiet dignity and the tragedies played out on these plains. Stan took the wheel before Oklahoma City; I moved back to the rear seat and slept some more sitting shoulder to shoulder with Jamie and Steve. Dennis rode shotgun when he wasn’t driving… it was a tacit agreement as it was, after all, his car.
I didn’t mind sleeping sitting up, drifting in and out of consciousness. Dust devils seemed to follow along side of the road as we made our way eastward on route I-40. Then, by a spontaneous and unanimous decision, we made a turn north at Checotah to Muskogee. After all, the song was an anthem enjoyed by both rednecks and hippies alike for completely opposite reasons.

Muskogee had the look of Everytown, USA. It could have been in Springfield Illinois or Grand Island Nebraska, Topeka Kansas or any other plains town. It too had a street called Broadway and a Main Street. It had hardware stores, drug stores, auto dealers and diagonal parking along the streets in front of the shops. We stopped at a greasy spoon to sit at a booth and order a cheeseburger and shake. No one gave us any trouble. In fact, I figured, it was a friendly place where people treated everyone civil until proven unworthy. 
The middle aged waitress even called us honey. “Sure, Honey. Would you like French fries or country fries?”

I had no idea what a country fry was so I answered, “Oh yes, country fries.”

A couple of older men in coveralls in the next booth watched us order and one of them asked, “Where you boys from?”

Oh, oh, I thought, here goes… “We’re from New Mexico… we just had to see Muskogee. We’re on our way to Florida.”

“Was it because of Merle Haggard’s song?”

“Yeh, ya gotta love that song.” Dennis acknowledged.

“I’m Hank and this here is my brother Jimbo…”

So they went around the table introducing themselves and feeling welcomed. It was no big deal. These people were authentically friendly. Here were the town folks of the most anti-hippy anthem of the era sitting next to us swapping friendly noises like old friends… Just goes to show ya how wrong popular images can be, I mused as I enjoyed the setting and the whole scene.

Muskogee sits in the middle of the country where three rivers; The Arkansas, the Grand and the Verdigris meander and converge. Something about all that water energized me. Id missed the green of the Northwest where I’d grown up although I’d learned to love the high chaparral of New Mexico. I felt as though Muskogee wasn’t such a bad place to settle down. 
We fondly bid the old-timers in the café adieu as our motley little group piled into the Hillman and headed back down south to the I-40.

A Sky Burial

A Sky Burial

The Vulture swooped down

before the darkness fell.

I felt it in my throat... a dull ache that lingered

I’m too sophisticated and embarrassed to have called it a broken heart.

That’s too melodramatic... but it sat there regardless of my objections...

the vulture pecked away... heart ripped out first...

So, melodramatic it was, I threw the back of my hand to my forehead and...

what?

Wept?

No, not wept... no, I Cried! Cried out! I Cursed love and life.

Anger flashed brighter than the sun!

No, truly, the crying was done with a long time ago.

Now, it perched, claws dug in at the throat.

The heart feast over..., the devouring was done...

It moved to the throat and waited for the darkness to let go.

After all, the crying was done... though it... the vulture clenched there... a dull ache...

Gone... talons worn down with time...the stinging stabbing dulled... then gone

the knives...

the dismemberment of time and time forgot... what is left stayed...

the carcass pecked...

all that is left of the last gasp... a sky burial.

No, no, no, if only I would have learned to love this time around...

back again to the sky.

No, no, no, if the earth would have had me... another time around.

No, no, no... no lesson learned?

I think not.

I haven’t learned a goddamned thing.

I left love behind this time around.

geo

06/12/2015

.

Missing Chapter: Vision Quest

I crossed the mesa the next morning to Brian’s place at the Pueblo where he welcomed me. Brian wasn’t happy about the whole situation but I was surprised to find him remorseful for his own reactions the other night. Only a kerosene lamp for light flickered, adding eeriness to the scene. I paid attention closely when he spoke, slowly and deliberately, in the dark of his place.

“When we left California we were visited several times like this. We had gone up there to Mahayana Ranch hoping to get away from the hassles of the city. It all broke loose a few years ago... you know, the summer of ’67. Trouble followed.”

“You think it will get worse then?” I asked remembering the headlines... of Goldberg insisting he’d turned over his deed to the ranch to God.... of eviction notices... court battles... of marshals and sheriffs.... of bulldozers tearing down what had been built.

“I’m hoping it will settle down once we get ourselves established. If we do it right, we can be taken seriously. Risingstar seems to have become a magnet for run-a-ways and some shady characters.”

He laughed at what he’d just said, “Look at me. I should talk. I was going to fight Billy last night… all the booze and...”

“Yeh, I’m not that proud of myself either. I came out here to escape that crap,” I said along with my own remorse. It could have been the peyote but I cared deeply about Brian’s contrition.

Brian became fatherly. “I haven’t had much opportunity to get to know you, Max. I hope you find what you came here for.” Brian pulled a book out from his shelf and opened it. I could see it was well worn and a valuable text of some sort. He read aloud a verse in what sounded like Sanskrit or something. Then he recited in English for me… something about change and blissful peace.

“What’s that from?” I was honored to be sitting in this dark room with this mysterious and helpful man. I had been starving for something like that “blissful peace” of the text but had very little idea how it was attained.

“That is from the Diamond Sutra… a Buddhist text.” Brian said without pretense.

I confessed, “You know, the reason that incident last night between you and Billy got to me was...” I hesitated before throwing caution to the wind, “I quit drinking a while back and now I drinking again. I’m not too much different from Billy. I don’t want to drink and it seems I can’t get away from it.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean. I have been around all kinds of abusive drunks in my life. My dad was pretty bad but you’d never know it. He was a professor of English lit. He had a secret life that only his family saw.” Brian hung his head from side to side and continued, “I swore I would never drink like him but, every once in a while, I drink and I can’t tell what will happen next.”

I told him about my first acid trip in Waikiki and how I’d stayed away from drinking for three or four months after that.

“So, I thought I saw that in you. You ought to go on a vision quest.”

“I’ve heard of vision quests. What would I do?”

Brian gave me a leather pouch with a three or four buttons in it. “Take this medicine and go on a fast. Head up the arroyo to the wilderness area. When hunger hits you… take a bite or two from one of these.”

“Yeh, how long do I go?”

“Go until you have a vision.”

I wondered aloud, “I’ve seen some pretty amazing things… like at the Peyote Ceremony and all… all the coincidences on the way here, but visions? I can only admit to a calm and serene love… a love was at one with other people... with the prickly pear cactus and the sage… and, of course, the goats.”

I had a feeling that what Brian was talking about wasn’t just some more hippy bull-shit. He was talking about a vision… a real vision and it seemed that if anything would make that happen perhaps peyote might.

“There is only one way to find out, eh?” Though Brian was slightly rotund in physique, he possessed an intrinsically mischievous elfish quality about him whenever his face took on a sly smirk like it did then.

I went back to the goat pasture with my pouch of buttons... er, he insisted I call it Medicine. I figured I ought to get the booze and the acid out of my system a few days before doing anything as serious as a vision quest. I was about a day into a fast when, in the morning just before sunrise, a commotion with the goats broke out. There was bleating and some rather furious noises that could have only come from a cat… a big cat. I went out to where I’d heard the ado and saw the evidence of big cat tracks, fur on the ground and a little blood here and there. Charlie had some deep gashes between his horns but he escorted me to the spot where I put two and two together. I didn’t like the idea that a cat could take one of my kids. I did a count and, sure enough, one was missing.

Having no rifle, I sorely needed one now. I figured Mason might have one because I’d seen a deer hide stretched out for tanning at his place on the island.

Smoke coming from the chimney of Mason’s place told me he was home... or nearby.

“Howdy, stranger!” Mason called out from a rock above the cabin behind me.

Startled, I spun around to see him coming down off the rock.

Calling out to him, I watched this wildman bounce gingerly down towards me, “I need to ask you something kinda irregular.”

“I’ve been waiting for you to show up. We need to sit down and smoke a bowl over it then.” Mason went inside and came out with what looked like a classic Indian peace pipe, beaded and adorned with feathers... like in the movies. The pipe was packed with Bull Durham tobacco, herbs and sage, but no pot. We smoked and passed the pipe between us prayerfully before I brought up the goat and the cat.

“What do you want to do about the cat?” Mason asked.

“Huh?” How did he know? “I was wondering if you have a rifle.”

“I know… You want to kill the cat?”

“Yeh, I can’t see letting the goats get picked off one by one.”

“You know anything about cats?” he whispered, leaning towards me like he wanted to keep a secret.

“Not really. Just that one of ‘em is eating my kids.”

“Shhh. Didn’t we eat one the other day?”

“Yeh, we did.” I took his whispering as a rejection of my request for the rifle. More disturbing however, I was afraid the whole idea... his mocking... was sour to Mason and I respected his judgment.

“If you gotta do it….” Mason paused a few minutes as though he were weighing my character. “Big cats, they kill in the hour before and after sunset and the hour before and after sunrise.”

“Very well, then all I have to do is stay up an hour after sundown and get up an hour before sunrise… maybe throw rocks or sticks at ‘em if they go for any of my goats?”

“It is likely it is only one, probably a female cat this time of the year. Rocks and sticks? Wouldn’t you rather have a rifle?”

“Yeh.”

“You know how to use one?” he asked earnestly. I liked the idea that he asked me these questions. It was one of those things I have about guns. I’d been raised using them and learned to respect and use them safely.

“You know the rifle that Angelo came into the Peyote Ceremony with?”

“Winchester .44, lever action, I thought it looked like it was old enough to be at Little Big Horn.”

Mason went inside and came out with the rifle. I wondered if Mason knew Angelo would show up the way he did at the ceremony. Mason handed me the rifle and a box of ammo holding only five bullets. I checked it out to see if the chamber was empty and was pleased to see it was well maintained, oiled and clean. I found the stamp with the date: 1886 on it. I said, “It looks like this rifle could’ve been handed down from Custer’s Last Stand.”

“If it was there this rifle would be almost a Vatican relic to the Ogalas but Little Big Horn was in the ‘70’s and you see the stamp. It sure wouldn’t be in my hands if it was there,” Mason snorted before he continued, “Now, cats have a range of seventy or eighty miles. But they will carry their kill only as far away as their den. You probably won’t find her anyway.”

Mason went back inside his cabin and turned to say, “Go do what you must and nothing more.”

“With five bullets… I’m pretty safe on that account.”

  Going back to the pasture, I put together a small kit. The vision quest would be combined with the hunt. I had to get going while the trail was still fresh. Not all that sure I was good enough at tracking to find and follow it, I set out anyway. My coat and good Army Surplus boots I’d nabbed while in Spokane as well as a warm flannel shirt and jeans would keep me warm and I only carried a small day-pack.

I launched out at sunrise the next morning. At first there were signs of blood and unmistakable goat hairs on bushes that led towards the arroyo between the Hondo and the mesa. I lost the trail several times as it progressed up through some farm land higher up on the mesa. Pausing in the draw I had been following up, I opened my pouch of peyote the first time since I’d begun the trek. There’d been no sign for at least a half a mile and now I was to cross some acreage owned by ranchers who would not take kindly to a hippy toting a rifle on their property.

Sitting there for over an hour, resting after taking a bite from the medicine, I was inspired to head over north to the Rio Hondo. Peyote cat-thinking, perhaps the cat would not like crossing farm land either, my feet moved. Crossing the rim road that coursed its way towards the Carson National Forest above the Rio Hondo, I saw several perfect paw prints in the dusty shoulder of the road. Where there had been dust on the weeds, it was clear to see a trail. The weeds were bent and absent of dust too. My vision was sharpened, “I see where you are going now, mama,” I said softly to the winds.

I followed that trail down a draw into the arroyo. The landscape awoke with a most pleasant clarity. It wasn’t so much that I saw colors that weren’t already there, but I saw in the colors a heightened intensity while my spirit passed the junipers and pinions. Their presence was extended out from them with an aura or vibration that was actually felt as I passed... melded into that flow. Like a wake left by a boat through water, the path the cat had taken led me. Near the waters of the Rio Hondo I cupped my hands and swallowed the fresh cold molecules that tweaked my senses all the way down my throat. The rocks took on an aura too and I sensed what was meant by the biblical prophets declaring; “the rocks would preach if I don’t.

By night fall I found a comfortable spot to curl up on my haunches but didn’t sleep. I listened instead to the sounds of the night. The coyotes in the distance and the soft flutter of an owl swooping down to grab a field mouse. Indeed, the hills were alive around me.

Vision... perhaps... I saw, or dreamt... Pleiades in the clear sky above... but I was awake... it was one of those Kachina dolls dancing... a cat in a ceremonial coat open to Pleiades standing... stomping a rhythm... the drum in the peyote circle... chanting.

The second day I had finished off one piece of the medicine and started on the second. The wake of a trail left by the cat led me up a steep canyon. I felt as though my boots were too harsh on the earth. It was as though the earth was lifting up to cushion my feet; they found their way around the sharp edges of the stones or gently folded around them like a snail would on the razor’s edge. The higher I went the more snow was on the ground but I rarely saw any sign of the cat in the snow. The cat knew better and I sensed that the cat knew I would follow her. My feet felt no chill or cold and I kept following slowly through the next night up into the forest.

The third day, after a night of sitting and listening, I approached on the far side, down-wind of the canyon. The Kat-china told me to strip off the rest of my clothes wearing only a rope sash to hang my medicine bag and the rifle sheath strapped over my shoulder.

I felt the presence of the Kat.

She was very near me.

There was no fear.

Coming to a place on the shady side of the draw, I could see a collection of rocks that had an overhang making a sort of entrance to her den. The rifle came out of the sheath strapped over my shoulder. Looking down the sights I saw Mama Puma looking straight into my eyes from her spot in the cave. She crouched and turned suddenly to give her attention behind her. There I observed one cub, then another. She gently pawed them back out of sight. Mason’s words came to me then, “Do what you must but nothing more.”

The chamber of the rifle was loaded and I had a clear and easy shot. She was no more than a hundred feet away but my heart saw mama and I understood: She’d killed the goat-kid to feed her cubs. The kid carcass was probably stashed somewhere nearby. Her breasts had done the job up ‘til now but it was time to feed her cubs some meat. I lowered the rifle and stood… not being sure what she would do at that juncture... whether she would attack me to protect her brood.

 Not able to do anything but turn my back to her, I walked away. Throughout the day, I hiked down the canyon and felt her presence behind me at times… ahead or along side of me. I caught a glimpse now and then. She let me know she was escorting me away from her den. A special affection grew, like the love that filled my heart after the peyote ceremony. That love never left me for that cat. After all, as Mason said; we, at the communal feast, had eaten one of the kids too. As far as I was concerned the score was even.

I neared Mason’s cabin. Mason was standing at the door grinning. Fully dressed now, I handed over the rifle to him. Reaching into my day pack, I passed over the box of ammo.
 “Still five in it,” Mason observed.

“Yeh, still five in it.”

“You found her though?”

“Yeh, I found her.”

“Did you have a vision?”

“Yeh, you might say so.”

“You might write it down someday.”

“Yeh, once I figure out what it was, I will.”

“That might take some time.”

“It will.”

A review from a reader:
Just finished reading this book & it's quite a journey & adventure. I enjoyed exploring with Max all the different states & cities his explorations took him. I learned more about the hippy (free love) drug culture that I'd only heard about before. This is a good read, and moves along quickly. It's got a little bit of everything, some tense drama, a little walk on the dark side & steps to redemption. Definitely worth your time & great nostalgia for those who lived those days & for those who didn't you'll be educated on what it was really like.
www.amazon.com/Time-Ago-Then-McGee-Book-ebook/dp/B00NY5F8Q4/

Share Yours

http://www.amazon.com/Morningstar-East-Memoir-George-Couper-ebook/dp/B00NY6RBGS

I am opening up this site to comments from folks who'd like to share their most powerful spiritual experiences, either of this era or otherwise. I think it would be interesting.

Study

This pic inspired the character, Iniga

Study has bogged me down while writing Adriane; my next novel. Adriane is a complex adventure that begins in 1998 with a forty year old French woman of Basque background. She is unaware of the heroics of her father mother, and Godfather before, during,and after the Spanish Civil War. It is a historical novel but I am no historian. I admit that freely but I have been studying the Spanish Civil War... reading as much as I can beyond Wikipedia. Orwell, Hemingway,and Neruda excited my first inspiration for delving into the past. But before these writers I had created Alesandro out of the idea that some of these Maquisards of the Resistance would go to the hills after fascism was defeated everywhere else but Spain. And, because the Basque language and culture has remained cohesive in Southern France and Spain despite persecution by Franco, I just imagined that there would be an Alesandro. It turns out that there actually was in likes of el Quito and el Cara Quimada. These continued the struggle for Basque independence 'til they were killed in the sixties.

While I studied these I learned of the practice of taking the children of Resistance fighters and adopting them out to conservative families. This continued into the 90's and it gave a contemporary touch to some of the story. 

All of that and more has been a pleasure to explore but might take longerhas delayed the progress on the novel. I do hope to finish it by the New Year. I am no Michener so it might take longer.

A sample from the first chapter:

Adriane: The Chaos of Desire

Cold… chills… sweats: she’d left a window open a couple of hours before she’d passed out on top of the blankets wearing light cotton pajamas. Off to the side from the window, over the garage, a light cast a glow onto the lawn from the servant’s quarters. Other than that light, the house was as empty. She needed to talk with somebody and Alesandro was... well, Alesandro. He had been more than the chauffeur to the family: officially her God Father, a guardian angel, throughout her growing up and awkward teens. He was there when her father, Marcel Fournier, couldn’t be after the tragedy of her younger brother’s lingering death from AIDS. He had rescued her from Rémy, her older brother. It only seemed fitting that she should find comfort in the company of this single-most dependable man in her life now that Marcel was gone.

 “Alesandro… are you awake? It is me,” she tapped lightly at his door.

The door swung open, “Of course, Adriane, please… come in.”

Her eyes adjusted to the loom of the light of dawn’s sun rising above the hills from the window of his small but comfortable room. She preferred the side of the house facing west because she rarely crawled out of bed before noon but she saw the majesty of Alesandro’s choice that morning.

 “So, this is why you didn’t take the guest house when Papa offered it.” Her father had remodeled one of the maids’ quarters and added it to the small chauffeur’s quarters above the garage especially for Alesandro. The window faced the open expanse of the horse pasture and forested hills beyond.  From the window she saw his need for the sunrise, a small sitting room, and a smaller single bedroom.

Alesandro was the family chauffer, of his own volition: he insisted on having a job as a condition for staying on. The family knew he had been writing something of a confession; of his years in isolation, his near solitary campaign against Franco; of ranging over and back across the Pyrenees, of his lost companions at arms and his imprisonment at Carabanchel. This was his real job and, he’d said when he allowed her to see what he was writing, he told Adriane; “I’m no writer. I don’t care whether anyone reads it either.”

She knew better about his insistence that he wasn’t a writer. After all, since before 1936 and into the fifties, he’d sat at tables and drank wine with the greatest luminaries of his time: Malraux, Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Camus, Hemmingway, Neruda, Dos Passos, and Orwell. From what she’d read of his work, she could see that it was profoundly spiritual, with sense of serious history that didn’t depart far from the natural poetry of Alesandro’s humility.

She looked around the room. Her picture was framed on the wall above his writing desk. It was taken when she was fourteen; an innocent image, naked in the surf, with arms stretched above adolescent breasts budding skyward. He’d snapped that picture in better days before the incident with Rémy. Next to it was a 2 ½ x 3 ½ Kodak Box picture of Alesandro with an arm over her father’s, shoulder from the days before Madrid fell. They cut dashing figures, standing in Basque berets… boyish grins… like they were going to bite-off Franco’s balls. Marcel’s eyes were raised to the lean, taller, hardened veteran, as though he were a fan standing next to a film star even though they were both eighteen. Alesandro’s demeanor in that picture reminded her of an image painted by Orwell in his memoir, Homage to Catalonia: “a face of a man who would commit murder for a friend…” and Alesandro would have killed for Marcel. The two were together in Barcelona and when Madrid fell in ‘38. Marcel was a novice, free-lance, journalist there. Whenever she asked him of those times his eyes would dart away as he would modestly say, “I was little more than a Civil War tourist.”

“You are always up before dawn, even when no one is here,” she stood by the window. Under the glass of Alesandro’s desk was another picture she hadn’t seen before. It was a wallet sized, black and yellowed white, fading, crumpled photo of a young woman with fierce eyes under a beret cocked jauntily to the side barely holding down a cascade of jet black curls. Her cupid-bow lips kissed the tip of an odd-shaped knife she held in front of her face, “Who is that woman, Alesandro? I’ve never seen her picture before.”

“I will tell you about Iniga someday.”

“Is she the mother of the boy you wrote of that was born in prison?”

“Yes, she was a fierce angel…, guard your heart.” his eyes darkened and he turned away.

Disregarding his change of mood she asked, “Then you were lovers?”

“No,”

As though the subject was a secret he’d promised to keep, he motioned her to sit. She could see he was purposely evading the topic altogether as he moved some of his papers and books off the chair at his desk, “How are you doing, Moineau?”

 “Oh, I don’t know…” she blushed. Moineau, meaning little sparrow, was his name of endearment for her, “things are so strange. Rémy tried to take charge of everything. Mama was content to let him run all our affairs at first… what have I to do?”

“And this is not okay with you?”

“I can’t complain… I’m hardly ever here anyway. Rémy can handle all the lawyers and banks… the estate. I counted on being here for Mama, and that’s all. But Rémy swooped in like a hawk and scooped her up before I could do anything.”

“Yes, I’d heard you were back for a few days.”

“Just a few… to pay my respects,” She caught herself tearing up.

“You could have come for the funeral, perhaps?”

Anger replaced grief with this reminder, “Funeral services are nauseous for me.” It was a sore subject.

The bile always arose in her throat, if reminded of how the village congregation wouldn’t allow Eder to be interred on church grounds. Those memories had not faded in the least: of the fucking village assholes, so afraid of queers and AIDS; of Papa sitting with her in the priest’s office while Papa pled. Marcel Fournier, the powerful banker and financier and gracious donor to the very church whose office he was begging in, pleading in vain… that’s what brought up the taste… the bitterness of bile, from her gut. Standing before the mahogany desk, the priest cowered behind, she’d let the dogs out; “What are you afraid of Christian? That the dead will be… your good Christian corpses buried there…. will be recruited or infected by this queer?” She’d stormed out of the office, tearing past a secretary carrying a stack of files… pages fluttering to the tiles like fallen angels: it was the day she left the God Damned Church for good.

Alesandro had good instincts: he read her feelings, “You know, you are Basque. We always follow the church… with a candle or a club.”

Adriane laughed. It felt good to laugh with Alesandro. His quips relieved her angst.

“Understood, so, what is it you plan to do now?” he held both her hands. It was a comfortable gesture and a fatherly one she longed for now that Papa was gone. She loved her father… how badly could have she disappointed him. And then there was Eder. They had rebelled so thoroughly from father’s influence, yet his love was unflagging. It was as though Alesandro was an angel standing in on father’s behalf. Eder too was like a son to Alesandro. He was named after Alesandro’s father.