An excerpt from Seldom Seen:
A Journey into the Great Plains
Copyright
Patrick Dobson and personally recommended press 2003
Chapter Twelve
“Probably wouldn'ta
killed ya. But it woulda hurt."
Guernsey State Park,
Wheatland, Casper
The
rain had stopped, the sky had brightened to light gray. Daylight leaked through
the crags above and down through the stony creases in the shelter’s rock walls.
Sharp with pine and sagebrush, the air was still and cold. I had slept more
deeply and awoken more refreshed and relaxed than anytime since Kansas City. I
lie on the floor of the shelter and listened to the yawning wisp of wind that
came up through the canyon. It took a long time to rise from the warmth of the
sleeping bag.
What
finally rousted me was a young man on a motorcycle. The sound of the bike began
abruptly around one of the great rocky walls of the canyon and echoed over the
length of the lake, rising and falling for what seemed to be a long time. The
sound almost disappeared until it popped out of the pines, louder than ever, at
the wall of the picnic shelter.
The
kid stopped at the shelter to throw away some trash in a barrel outside the
shelter. He stepped past the rock wall into what I’d made into my sleeping
quarters as I was slipping into my shorts.
“Oh,
man, dude, sorry,” he said when he saw me and turned to go.
“No,
brother, I’m just waking,” I said, cinching my belt. “Don’t let me drive you
off.”
“Cool
place you got. Better than what I had last night.”
“What’d
you have?”
“Leaky
tent,” he said. “Keeps the bugs out, but that’s about it.”
“Stay
for a cuppa tea?”
“Sure.”
He
introduced himself as Mike. He was twenty-one years old. Putting the helmet in
the crook of his arm, he combed long brown hair with his other hand and shook
his head.
"I'm
on a tour," he said. "I want to take in as much as my bike will let
me." It was not a large motorcycle, and with him and his pack tied to the
back seat, it sagged low to the ground. "It's kinda small for a trip like
this, but if I stay to the back roads, I'll be all right."
"Where
are you coming from?" I said.
"Boise.
But I think this is as far east as I want to go. I think I'm headed back up
toward Yellowstone. I seen pictures of it, but I never been there. I wanna see
some of them geysers and things they have. I wanna park this thing and pack
around a little."
We
sat on the rock wall in the sun, pot of water coming to steam over the pack
stove. Mike was a gentle man, not given to smiling or to melancholy. Just being
near him was comfortable. He was friendly and open, but not overly talkative.
Attached to his pack, bungee cords strapped worn paperback copies of Catch
22 and Huckleberry Finn to a notebook and sketchpad.
His
breath hung in the air. "I never backpacked before,” he said. "What
things you think I need to get back on some trails in Yellowstone?"
"What
you need to travel on a motorcycle you’ll need to backpack,” I said. “But
you’ll have to go lighter. Your back isn’t your bike. Your pack looks pretty
worn, though, for never being used to backpack."
“It's
a good way to put things on the bike,” he said and looked at the tea bag he
bobbed in his cup. “I try to get around a little every summer, mostly along the
coast. This is the longest I ever been away. I get back this time, it looks
like I'll be marrin’ my girl. I been with her four years. She wants me ta
settle in and get ta college, which I probably will. I am a draftsman now, but
I want to be an architect."
Somehow,
it seemed like it was already true.
We
sat on the wall talking once in a while until the clouds covered the sun again
and the day turned bright silver. When he was finished with his tea, Mike
hopped astride his bike and started it. A plume of white smoke billowed out of
the little exhaust pipe.
“Well,
man, good luck with your trip,” he said, holding out a leather-gloved hand. “I
hope we both get where we’re going.”
“I
have this feeling we won’t have to worry much,” I said. “At least not like we
think we have to.”
Mike
pulled his visor down and putt-putted up the slope to the road. The bike was
clearly overloaded, but he looked comfortable and patient.
I
breathed in the cool air that rose from the lake. A new feeling pervaded the
atmosphere, and it had little to do with the setting. For the first time since
leaving Kansas City, the dread I’d felt was absent. The uncertainty that had so
plagued the mornings was gone, completely, and a lightness had invaded the
space where there was once a heavy weight. I did not fear the next step, didn’t
put one though beyond putting up the stove and packing my things. The pack felt
good on my back, the road solid and fine beneath my feet. As the blood filled
my legs and drove the chill from my limbs, the air tasted good, was clear, the
scene sharp and pretty. I didn’t know what it meant, but it didn’t matter. I
was on my way again, free to walk a world that would be new with every step,
every turn in the road, every crest of a hill.
The
lake meandered between large, sheer cliffs and pine-topped hills of red and
brown sandstone. The Laramie Mountains rose solid blue-gray in the distance. Up
the road, a two-room museum the Civilian Conservation Corps built in 1935 was
made of stone and pine logs and set into the side of a hill. It was a serenely
quiet place. The floor was of brown slabs of sandstone, and ight came from
simple indirect lighting fixtures in the corners of the room. Savory smoke from
a big cedar log in the library room hung in the air. The effect was warm and
human. The museum was interesting the way old museums tell of their builders
and of the way their caretakers saw their past. The exhibits stood behind
glass, safe from the public, static things that hadn’t changed in years would
be the same many more. The Indians were stooped, with shaggy dog faces and
droopy eyes; whites tall, straight backed, strong in the shoulders.
By
the time I’d made my way about the exhibits and donned the pack again, the day
brightened with enough cloud cover to ease the sun. I walked the length of the
lake along a road cut into steep rocky inclines that tumbled into the water
below. The dam, an earth and concrete structure, spanned a narrow, deep canyon.
Water rushed in eddies below the dam power plant. The turbine house was small,
but this small power-generation plant lighted quite a few farm and ranch houses
in what would have been, and still was, a sparsely populated and widely spaced
place.
At
the highway, a long incline led to a stone marker where the highway crossed the
Oregon Trail. The trail had been obvious, thick brush grew in lines parallel to
the road in some places. In others, two deep tracks ran through skeleton white
stone. A German couple had stopped at the marker for lunch. The tall man with a
long face and thick glasses said they wanted to see "as many of these ruts
as we can." They were on their way to Guernsey in the valley below, to a
landmark called Register Cliff—a giant sandstone boulder that settlers carved
with their names and dates of passing, graffiti that made history.
“In
Germany,” the man said, adjusting his glasses, “we read about these things all
the time. They are interesting to us, you know, because our own history so
different from yours is. Simply to think that these settlers in such numbers
came that they actually wore the stone through. Well, that’s amazing.”
The
man’s wife was tall and pretty, with dark hair and thick glasses that matched
his. She came around with a sandwich.
“Do
you like hard salami?” she said. “We have also some tomatoes. A man in Oshkosh
in Nebraska gave them to us from his garden. They are very good.”
She
wasn’t lying. We munched tomatoes and ate sandwiches, mopping our chins with
the backs of our hands. I told them of my time in Germany as vineyard
apprentice in the mid-1980s and spoke a little German to show off. They were
delighted. After a while, we ran out of things to say and ate more sandwiches.
“I’m
sorry,” the man said after a moment. “But the bread isn’t so good. American,
you know.”
I
left them inspecting troughs in the limestone and went on. Cows roamed in small
herds across vast rolling plains. Power and telephone lines crisscrossed eroded
cliff and badlands. Only shadows of passing clouds made distances sensible. I
walked down long hills into wide valleys and out again. Few cars passed.
Grasshoppers buzzing overhead in arcs and light breezes in the grass broke the
unimaginable silence. At the crest of a hill, I kicked back, my boots off, feet
free in the warm sun. A feeling of contentment settled in, and I laid my head
into the grass and closed my eyes, feeling the sun on my face. The Germans
drove by with a honk, and I raised a hand to them. Some sage wrens twittered
and fought in a bush behind me. I walked again. The road seemed to flutter on
forever.
A
wide valley opened before the Laramie Mountains, a blue wall on the other side
of the valley. Brown-green prairie stretched out over winding arroyos and the
North Platte River.
A
brutally dark storm came in over the mountains, and advanced in lightning
flashes and lithe gray veils. Yellow and brown fringed the clouds where storm
met sky. As it approached, it became more awesomely beautiful and powerful. The
gray veils became opaque. The breeze kicked up into a stiff wind heavy with the
smell of rain. When the curtain came within a mile, I dropped the pack and
pulled out my rain gear. The rain approached within a quarter mile, and though
I was thrilled, excited even, by the oncoming storm, the feel of the electricity
and the smell of the rain, something told me to get out of it. I turned and
faced east and stuck out my thumb.
Almost
immediately a pickup appeared over the crest of the hill and pulled over in
front of me. When I opened the passenger door, the man inside shouted:
"Get in…Hurry. It's almost here."
I
threw my pack in the back of the truck and jumped into the cab. The curtain
fell, and with it hail up to an inch thick.
"Probably
wouldn'ta killed ya," the man said over the ruckus. "But it woulda
hurt."
"Thanks,"
I said. "I was going to walk in it, but..."
"Butcha
got smart," he shouted. He stuck out his hand. "Wayne," he said.
We
watched the rain and hail beat the windshield, obscuring sight a foot past the
glass. I sat back in the seat, glad to be out of it. I would have hunkered down
and used my pack as a shelter. There was nowhere to take cover. Ditches and
washes were out of the question. Dry just minutes before, they now foamed with
runoff, a slosh of soupy red and brown.
When
the storm let up, Wayne bumped the truck off the shoulder slowly. He was a
short, wiry man with a determined but open face.
"Where
d’ya want to go?" he said.
"If
you can get me to the interstate, I can take it from there."
"Well,
this road ends at the interstate,” he said. “So we'll get you there. But I
can't guarantee you anything but hard-luck stories after that. It's one of the
few places you can hitch on the Interstate in Wyoming ‘cause there just isn't
any other road. But it's mostly long haulers who won’t stop for anyone."
"I
don't want to hitch. I just want to walk. I'm going toward Casper and thought
I'd stay tonight at Glendo State Park."
"I
tell you what. It's no fun walkin’ on the Interstate with everyone driving by
at a hundred. I have to go into Wheatland, I live there. Then I'm off to
Casper. I'll take you if you can wait a few minutes while I gather some things
at home. It'll be my pleasure."
"Thanks.”
"Well,
you hate to leave a man out in it,” he said, pulling on his sunglasses as the
day lghtened. “But you know, you make it easy for a guy to pick you up."
"How
so?"
"You've
shaved. You’re hair’s clean. You got good equipment. And you’re clean dressed.
It's a little easier to trust a guy like that. Except for the storm, you didn't
look like you needed help from anyone."
I
didn't know what to say. I had made it a habit to take sink showers in
restrooms everyday before I hit the road, tying the small washcloth and towel
to the outside of the pack to dry in the sun.
"It’s
kinda sad you feel safer picking up a guy who looks like he doesn't need a hand
than someone down on their luck," he said.
Wayne
was on the way to the Wyoming State Games in Casper. It was, he said, the
biggest sporting event in this small state. From every corner of Wyoming,
professional and amateur, old and young, men and women competed in every
imaginable sport. Towns sent baseball and football teams. Associations of bike
riders, runners, shooters, and rock climbers competed. There were soccer,
hockey, and polo matches, along with skeet and target shooting, endurance
races, and track and field events. Wayne was a professional bicyclist who was
going to ride a time trial and a long-distance race. His teenage son was
shooting in the archery tournament.
His
house was on the outskirts of Wheatland, a trim two-story with a few
outbuildings on a neat spread of land. While he gathered his cycling clothes,
he told me about himself. Originally from New Mexico, he had moved to Wyoming
after college and had been working as control room engineer for fifteen years
in the Wheatland Generation Station, a coal-fired power plant up the North
Platte Valley.
We
sipped cola and ate peanut butter sandwiches at a small kitchen table covered
with oilcloth. The kitchen was tidy with bric-a-brac curtains and wallpaper. He
had moderate views on politics and culture, of which he spoke freely. But he
was firm in his belief that the state's resources were being squandered by a
new large land-owning interests and natural resource development corporations,
mostly in mining and oil.
"One-business
towns are Wyoming's biggest problem,” he said. “Nearly every place has just one
major employer. The health or death of the town rests with one company. That's
a damn shame. You know, I'm a Republican, and I believe in the individual. Far
be it from me to tell anyone what to do with their money. But I'm also an
environmentalist. We have to provide for future generations, and we’re just not
doing it; we aren’t trying to be smart.
"You
may think it's funny, me being an environmentalist since I make a living at a
coal burner. But I really believe there are better ways to do things, ways that
take care of people better and allow them more choices and more freedom. Think
of how much freedom you have as a coal miner in the Powder River Basin (where
there was a large deposit of low-sulfur coal used in Midwestern power plants).
If the company decides to lay you off, you have to leave. Or if you want to do
something else other than mine, you have to leave. You have to live in crappy,
expensive houses, the landscape all torn up with strip mines. That's not much
of a good choice."
We
drove the interstate between the hills and ridges past Douglas. This was once a
vast inland sea. As the Rockies rose to the west, the sea pushed toward the
Midwest, leaving layers of sand- and limestone that rain and wind had shaped
into a broad plain, broken only by the northern section of the Black Hills and
bounded by the Snowy Range and Sierra Madre to the south. To the east rolled
the dunes of the Sand Hills, and to the west, the foothills of the Laramie,
Ferris, and Big Horn ranges. Long hills were topped with craggy buttes. Trees
grew only along creeks and in isolated nooks where springs flowed. Only
fourteen inches of rain fell here each year, most of which came in the form of
snow or driving rains. Gullies and ravines were deep and prone to flash
flooding as the clay-sand soils quickly saturated and sent the rest of the
water in vein-like intermittent and dry creeks to the North Platte. (Surface
hydrology maps of eastern Wyoming show creeks and drainages similar in
appearance to veins and arteries on the surface of the human heart.) Of the
pre-settlement wildlife, antelope and mule deer roamed widely, but only a few
bobcats and coyotes remained. The elk, bear, wolves, and bison that roamed
these ravines had long been shot away.
While
this edge of Wyoming had long been inhospitable to humans—dry, hot summers,
bone cold winters—Indians forced from the east began to make this part of
Wyoming home in the 1700s. Crow, Cheyenne, and Arapaho people moved from
Minnesota and passed through here on their way to other parts of Wyoming: Crow
to the west into the Wind River Basin, and Arapaho and Cheyenne into the area
of present-day Cheyenne and Laramie to the south. The Brule and Oglala peoples
moved into eastern Wyoming in the 1830s. Tipi rings, circles of stones that
held down tipi covers around the bases, fire rings, and ceremonial medicine
wheels still dotted the tops of hills and buttes above the North Platte.
Unfortunately
for natives, the country of short grasses and seasonal water was too kind to
cattle and their keepers. In the 1850s and particularly after the start of the
Indian Wars in 1854, the natives in this area —and the wildlife that competed
with ranchers and farmers and their livestock—were shot down, confined, or
driven out and the land given over to cows.
Casper
fanned out from Interstate 25 into the prairie to the north and to the Bessemer
Range to the south. We drove into an undistinguished suburb of Mills. Shopping
malls and gas stations hid where everyone lived. Crossing the line from Mills
to Casper was a non-event, the two towns separated on a map but not in real
space.
Wayne
dropped me at a KOA, thinking it would be a good place for me to camp the
night. He wished me well. A new hot tub that stood by itself amid the RV’s and
pickups with campers and fifth-wheel trailers. In the camp store, a small
building lined with big windows, dusty items stood in a jumble on sparsely
stocked shelves. Orange price tags curled up at the edges and were dark with
dust. A portly and greasy man behind he counter wore a dirty ball cap and
tattered T-shirt. He had bad teeth.
"You
mean you got no vehickel?" the man said. He raised the bill of his cap
high on his head, revealing strings of oily hair.
"No."
"No
camper?"
"I
don't have a vehickel."
"Then
you gotta tent?"
"I
don't have a tent."
"No
tent?"
"No.
Just a canvas I set up when it rains."
"No
shit."
Unable
to be plugged in, hooked up, or dumped at the dump station, I didn't exist.
When I asked the price for an empty tent pace, the paunchy man motioned to a
square in the grass outside covered with a sort of carport awning. Water stood
inches deep in long, uncut grass. He held out his hand.
“Twelve
bucks.”
"I
can't sleep in the water.
"That's
what I got."
"You'd
take my money for that?"
"You
'r somebody else."
"No
kidding."
"Look,
buddy, if someone got to have a place ta stay, I take their money. I own the
place. If they don't like it, theys other places for them ta stay."
"Really...where's
that?"
"I
can't tell you that."
"Why
not?"
"'Cause
I gotta make a living here."
"But
if I don't like it here, I'm leaving anyway.”
He
looked at me, face blank, hand still extended.
“I
tell you what,” I said, “if you have an empty park bench, that'll do."
"We
can't let you sleep on a bench," he said.
"Why
not?"
"It's
unseemly. It'll upset the customers."
"But
I'd be a customer."
"Look,
I got one tipi left,” he motioned to the line of comic-book concrete tipis out
front. “I can let you have it if the reservation don't show up." Good
choice of words, I thought. An Indian attack might be what the place needed. I
left him with his hand in the air.
I
walked out past the tiny cabins and concrete tipis. The rain had cleansed the
air, but it only seemed to show the desperation of the town. Rows of weekly
rental motels and shabby bars stood beyond broken sidewalks and weedy yards.
The eaves of the tiny houses sagged. Paint seemed a scarce commodity.
Convenience stores and a couple of gas stations were the only businesses
besides the motels. Here and there was some evidence of pride in ownership, but
I had a feeling most of the property along strip was owned by people who didn’t
live there. There were no pedestrians.
Closer
to downtown, things brightened. The houses were in better repair. I strode into
a small, plain café and ordered some coffee at the counter. There were a few
customers scattered among the Formica-top tables set with glass sugar
decanters, red and yellow ketchup-and-mustard bottles, and salt and pepper
shakers. The only other man at the counter was a gaunt, horse-faced man. He
turned and looked at me, brushing wiry gray hair out of his eyes. He had
shining blue eyes and a friendly, open look. I sat down and looked over a
well-thumbed Casper Star-Tribune
from two days previous.
"Say,
that's a nice set-up you got," he said after a few minutes. His teeth were
a nightmare. "Where ya headed?"
I
told him. He moved his plate and coffee and took the seat next to mine. He was
tall and very thin. His cowboy boots and denim jacket sagged on him. Wiping his
hand on his jacket, he stuck it at me after he sat down.
"Johnny
Whisenant."
His
hand was strong and calloused and matched his leathered face. He said he was a
former carny. The carnival he had worked for came through Casper about a year
before. He had enough and couldn't do the work any longer.
"I
tried ta stick one place or ‘nother, get a real job,” he said, running a hand
through his hair. “But I been working in the carnival business since I’s
sixteen. That’s when I joined my first circus. But circuses weren’t worth shit.
Travelin;’ carnivals. Well, I really liked them. I got behind them counters and
it was jus’ like magic. I'd run the ring toss or duck shootin’ scams on folks,
take lots of their money, and watch 'em git mad and line up to give me more. I
loved it.”
He
hung his hands between his legs. "But it's bad, bad business,” he said.
“Famblies, ya know, reg’lar moms and dads and kids. After a while, yer
conscience gets ya. I given it up a million times. Once, I gave it up and even
had a wife. And a house. Real purty nice set-up in Montana. But ever’ time a
carnival come to town I jus’ couldn't stay away.
"The
life's rough. Goin’ and goin’ all the time. Late nights, lotsa drinking and
drugs. Hard work. But then there's them lights, and music. The smell of carmel
corn and that funny smella cotton candy. All that noise and ‘citement. It was
great."
Johnny
had sobered up in Casper, rented himself a little apartment, and worked as a
laborer for construction and oil drilling projects. It wasn't much of a living,
he said. "But it still is nice to get away from the midway. I been doing
it straight for ten years ‘fore I quit this time. I still feel like I'm takin’
a rest."
Outside
the sky had cleared, and the threat of rain lifted. I asked Johnny if he knew
where the police station was so I could ask about camping in a park later.
"I
don't know ya wanna do that," he said. "There's lotsa rough
characters around town. Not that you'd be in danger or nothin’. Just you don't
wanna be out there."
Johnny’s
eyes widened and he became excited. "My place is purty nice, and you can
have the couch. I gotta little thing goin’ later. But you're welcome to come
‘long. I'll introduce ya around ta some friends of mine."
We
talked a while longer. He had a way about him, tough through the years of hard
travel, but childlike, almost excited about starting this new life. When we
were finished with coffee and paid up, we walked out to his pickup, an old,
green Chevy that hardly seemed to be holding together. He pulled on a manual
choke under the dash and worked through a series of maneuvers to get it
started. The truck coughed to life in a plume of white smoke.
We
drove a short way to a stucco, one-story, U-shaped building darkened by
towering cottonwoods above. The apartments faced into a courtyard where a
jumble of plastic children's toys lay about in on the bare ground. A covered
sidewalk rambled in front of the apartments, and the front doors stood open
behind screens. The sounds of televisions, radios, screaming and laughing
children flooded the courtyard.
A
man with thick horn-rimmed glasses and a bare and muscular upper body opened
one of the screen doors as we walked by. White tape was wrapped around the
temples of his glasses.
"Johnny,
what's up?" he said.
"This
here's Billy,” Johnny said. “He's from Lou’siana. An’ this here’s Patrick, he’s
walkin’ the Oregon Trail."
"Bayou
Cajun," Billy said, holding out his hand. "Just a’ old swamp
Coon-Ass. Oregon Trail, is it? Must be quite a a’venture."
"It's
all right.”
"Take
a million dollahs get me to walk that far." His Cajun accent was heavy,
and his laugh was high and squeaky. "But, I suppose if I had it in me, I'd
do it. Hell, I been lotta places ya never wanta hear about. Some were kinda
exciting. But never hadta walk. Hadta run, sometimes. But never walk."
Johnny's
apartment was a dark place with cane blinds in odd angles over the windows.
Posters of rock bands were nailed to the wall. A plastic clock with gold
colored spikes radiating from the center hung with an electrical cord falling
behind an ancient couch. He had an armchair and a small television. An old
clock radio (with hands) stood in the middle of small table. The place had the
fust of shaggy dogs and fried food. But Johnny was a good-natured, outgoing
man. It wouldn’t be a bad place for a night.
We
headed out to a restaurant at a truck stop on the edge of town. Casper didn't
change much along the road. Sprawled trailer courts and tract housing of the
mid-1970s oil boom decayed in weedy lots and behind rusty chain-link. Two of
the three major refineries in Casper had closed in the 1980s, and the third had
cut employees with improved technology and lowered capacity. Many of the
out-of-work refinery workers abandoned Casper. Those who remained seemed eked
out an existence in gas stations and convenience stores.
We
pulled up seats with several people who seemed happy to have Johnny with them.
He introduced me to a few men and women in jeans and button-up short sleeves
shirts, ball caps, and cowboy boots.
"We're
a sort of supper club," said Dan, the man seated next to me. He had a
round face made more so by his circular glasses and rotund figure.
"Johnny's a good man. But you don't change a way of life overnight. To go
from making a living running midway scams to settling down and having to do
what work's around. That’s tough. ‘Specially here. He'll come through all
right. We just have to keep him from carnivals."
I
listened to the talk around the table: weather, town politics, people catching
up with each other. Johnny and I headed home in the dusk. He opened a couple of
cans of cola, and we sat on the couch listening to the people and televisions
in the apartments around us. He was silent, but smiling.
"Tell
me about your wife," I said.
"She’s
purty, real purty. But we don’t talk much,” he said, his head settled into the
back of the chair, eyes staring at the ceiling. “I have a daughter, too. Amart
kid. Whole lot smarter ‘an me. I don't see her much, but I talk to her on the
telephone sometimes. Sometimes I write a little on a postcard. But I don't
write too well. She sends me back letters. Man, how she can write. I can't read
that good, so Dan reads the long ones to me. They sound purty good."
The
dark walls seemed to absorb light from the single lamp that stood on an end
table. Johnny smoked one cigarette after another. "Sometimes at night, I
dream about them lights on the midway. You know how them lights hang in strings
and flash aroun’ the games and along them trailers. I miss ‘em. ‘Ever a
carnival comes to town, I stay away. I know I get around them lights, start
smelling popcorn and cotton candy and money, and I'll be gone again. I don't
want that. I got kind of a good thing going right here. I don' wanna fuck it
up."
He
said good night and lit another cigarette. Dry breeze came through the window,
sagebrush and motor oil. The radio came on the bedroom. I laid out my sleeping
bag and dug my head into a pillow to block out the sound. The scratchy sounds
of AM radio country music, then a talk show, something about the KGB and the
JFK assassination. The people calling into the program sounded like astronauts.
I
dreamed. Floating above the sagebrush, I saw lines of wagons, a great cloud of
dust rising, orange in the sunset. Indians on foot and horseback trailed up
over the rises and down into the river valleys. The wagons and Indians turned
into bison, flowing in great streams into the river and disappearing under the
sheen of crude oil coming out of the ground below the refineries. Suddenly,
there was a great clap and I woke. Bison scattered across the plains.
"Whatcha
got on the plate today?" Johnny said. He was standing in his briefs
jittering and fidgeting around like an excited kid. The radio played in the
bedroom as loud as before. The sun slanted though the cane blinds. The clock
with the spiky rays read 11. "I don' have much right now. Whatcha got in
mind?"
“Gee,
Johnny, I don’t know,” I said, trying to open my eyes in the light. “I thought
I might head on today toward Waltman and Natrona, you know. Or see Casper a
little. I hadn’t really thought much about it.”
"So,
here’s what I’s thinkin',” he said as he sat on the edge of the armchair seat,
bent forward at the waist, his elbows on his knees. “We'd go get some coffee
and some breffast. Then, you said you might haf some things to get done, and I
figgered we'd get ‘em done. Then, tomorra, if your stayin', I’s thinking we'd
drive over to the Register Clift back in Guernsey, see some of them ruts and
things you was talking about. I never seen 'em, and you missed 'em on the way
in. Whadya say?"
I
didn’t have time to say much before Johnny whisked me out the door. We ran into
the Cajun in the sidewalk. He was in the same pants as the day before, holding
a can of cola. He stared out into the dusty courtyard. He seemed to be waiting
for something to happen.
"Whatcha
got t'day, boys?" he said, turning to us.
"I
have some things to do," I said. "Johnny's going to drive me
around."
"An'
tomorra, we're going out ta Register Clift," Johnny said. "We'd be up
for some dinner tonight if you're aroun'."
"I'm
good," Billy said.
We
went to a dirty café for coffee and eggs. Johnny seemed at home. He knew the
waitresses and the cooks.
"I
useta work with a couple of the cooks when the carnival’s in.” He lifted his
eyebrows and smiled at a busty waitress as she walked by. She hiked her breasts
up with her hands, one which held a pen, the other an order pad. The pen put a
small, black check on the bottom curve of her white shirt.
Johnny
laughed and turned to me. "They wasn’t with the show but set-up and
tear-down help. Never envy a guy with that job, just plain work. I useta do it
sometimes for extra money when I first started as a carny. But it’ll make you
old too quick."
Dan
came in and took a chair next to Johnny. He asked if I was going to stay around
a few days. I said at least the next two—Johnny seemed to be having a good time
hauling me around. Usually, Johnny said, he sought work, sat in the courtyard
with Billy (who also didn't seem to work much), and dined out with his friends
several times a week. I was a break in his routine.
"Well,
he's a good man, the best," Dan said. He slapped Johnny on the shoulder.
"You're in good hands. Plus,” he said to me on the side, “I have an idea
you’re gonna show him a world he’s never seen."
We
drove up to a state park on the side of the Bessemer Mountains, which towered
over Casper. Hiking up the hillside, we stopped on a rocky outcrop. The city
spread around the North Platte. Tangles of pipes and blank concrete pads
littered the brownish fields where the refineries used to be. Johnny was
intrigued—he’d never been up in the mountains. He looked silently over the
valley, the innate tension in his face loosened. We drove over the top into
alpine meadows filled with wildflowers and sagebrush. The sky was overcast, and
it was cold. Johnny was surprised to find large fields of snow there. We built
a small snowman and slung wet, icy balls at each other.
We
smacked and rubbed our hands, now red and numb, and climbed back in the truck.
Descending the mountain took us into clouds and back out again. Winding our way
through the city, Johnny was careful to point out amenities he knew—the public library,
the park and swimming pool, city hall, the police station (“I don’ know what
the inside’a that one looks like,” he said. “An’ I ain’ plannin’ ta find out.”)
We went by to pick up Billy, who’d finally put on a shirt. Before we left,
Billy had us in to look at his kitchen. His apartment was the same as Johnny's
but shabbier. The walls were covered with velvet paintings: Elvis, camels
crossing the desert, flowers, belly dancers.
"I
get' em from them sellers on the road," Billy said when he saw I was looking
at the paintings. "I like 'em."
"They’re
awfully nice," Johnny said. "I like the colors. But they ain' really
my style."
Chattering
between themselves, they walked into the kitchen, finishing each other's
sentences. Billy’s entire apartment centered on the television in the living
room. An assortment of racing and girlie magazines, empty paper cups, straws,
full ashtrays, and empty pop bottles radiated from one empty dip in the
deep-blue plush velvet couch. In the kitchen, Billy was already showing off his
cooking utensils and spice rack to Johnny.
"This
here's the cayenne I use," Billy said, holding up a bottle when I came in.
"It's good stuff. Ever use it?"
"Not
this brand, no," I said.
"It's
good stuff, leave your draws smokin'. But it ain't just the cayenne I use for
Cajun cookin'. I use all them spices. I get 'em down at the Safeway. Ever made
gumbo?"
"No,
I haven't," I said. "But I like gumbo."
"If
I can find some okry, I'll make up some tonight for tomorra when y'all git back
from Register Clift."
We
ended the day another greasy place where my I wished my glass had not have been
clear. The water was milky, the surface iridescent with oil. The food was bad
and warmed over, and the owner was a loud man who thought himself a grand guy.
Dinner
was a tumult of conversation. Dan was there, and Billy, and several other
people who had been at dinner the previous night, along with new faces. Bevies
of young children raced about husbands and wives, and men without wives, and
women without husbands. They were a rough-looking bunch—stained jeans, cowboy
boots with leather salty white, faded T-shirts with airbrushed images of wolves
and Indians. They watched a lot of television and had a long discussion on the
merits of several programs. But no one had cable. They all drove used or old
cars, and none had kids in private school. Some wished for a return of the oil
business, others never wanted to do the body-breaking work again. Johnny just
wanted something regular and didn’t want to search every day for the next spot
on a construction clean-up crew. Billy never wanted to work again.
"If
I get a job, what’ll I do all day?" he said.
The
next morning, Johnny gassed up the old truck and we hit the interstate. When I
had mentioned the Register Cliff to Johnny two evenings before, his eyes had
lit up. I said I had foregone seeing the famous Oregon Trail landmark in
Guernsey, a bluff etched with hundred of settlers names, because of its
distance from the main road. He said was looking for new things to see and do
and volunteered to take me in such a way as to make outright refusal a
disappointment. I said yes, we'd see. But I was tired and ready for bed, and I
didn’t think he’d take me seriously. But to him, the deal was sealed.
Now
he drove with a cup of coffee in one hand, the other draped over the wheel with
a cigarette. Not far from town, we saw a man walking on the shoulder—the only
person in a vast brown landscape of sagebrush hills. It was already hot; the
sky was cloudless. The man had no coat or hat, no umbrella, pack, or suitcase.
He walked with a sort of waddle, plopping along as if he were hurt.
"We
should pick him up," Johnny said.
He
called himself Jonathan and, unsteady and breathing heavily, climbed into the
truck,. His clothes were new; his shoes were rubber boots. He had clean,
chiseled features, and a mass of unkempt blond hair. He seemed shorted out. He
looked like a surfer who lost his way.
After
a bit of broken discussion, Jonathan began to talk a little more coherently.
"I
am on my way to the East," he said. He had a look of great sincerity in
his eyes. "See, I’m the next King of Israel. In the Bible, it says
Jonathan would be the next great king after David. The apocalyptic things
occurring around the world now, and the ascension of the devil to the most
powerful political position in the world...I’m the Jonathan the Bible speaks
of. I am him. Everything in my life has led me here. My time is at hand."
"Was
you stayin' at the mission in Casper?" Johnny said, looking over from the
wheel.
Jonathan’s
ice blue eyes were clear, but unfocused. I offered him some water, which he
drank deeply.
"Take
it easy a little," Johnny said. "Too much'll make you feel bad."
Jonathan
shook his head a little, he looked sick.
"I
know whatcha mean," Johnny said.
Jonathan
quieted and fished a bag of tobacco and papers out of his pocket. But his hands
shaking whisked it all over his lap. Johnny gave him a smoke from his pack. I
lit it for him.
"Listen,
it's damn hot today. Ya sure ya wanna walk?" Johnny said.
"These
shoes hurt,” Jonathan said meekly, looking down at the floor.
The
boots were open and flopping around. He didn't have socks. He'd gotten the
shoes from the mission, but they were rubber duck hunting boots—the exact wrong
kind for walking on hot pavement—and they were too big. We drove in uneasy
silence until we came to the exit for Natural Bridge State Park. We dropped
Jonathan at the exit at his insistence but told him we'd be along in an hour if
he didn't get a ride. He waddled off down the interstate toward Douglas.
"Cops'll
git him," Johnny said. He put the truck in gear and took off down the dirt
road to the park. "They'll take care of him if he don' git a ride."
A
dusty road through the sagebrush led to a closed gate, where a sign warned of
high water on the La Prell River. But it didn’t say the park was closed. I
convinced Johnny we needed to walk in, to which he responded with enthusiasm.
The road dropped into a canyon along the river, which flowed in a long loop
through the canyon and into a flat, grassy area. Picnic tables and barbecue
grills were scattered among cottonwoods the canyon walls had hidden until we
walked into them. In the depth of the canyon, the scene was calm and peaceful
except for numerous signs, "No rock throwing anywhere in this park.” I
stooped and picked up a rock and threw it into the water. Johnny waited for
someone to scold us. Then he picked up a rock and bounced it off some boulders
into the river. We began to throw rocks with abandon, into the canyon walls, into
the river, laughing. We walked to an abandoned stone and brick building that
looked like a small power plant. The park was built around was a wide, yellow
and orange sandstone arch skewed over the swollen river. Hundreds of bank
swallows flew into and dropped out of honeycombs of nests plastered under the
bridge. They flashed here and there, skittering over the clear water.
We
walked back up through the sagebrush and rock to the truck and came across
Jonathan again flopping not far from where we'd dropped him. This time, he
revealed no biblical truths but said he had stayed in the mission, gotten new
clothes and boots, and had a good meal to eat.
"It
was time for me to go," he said. “It’s important for me to travel light.”
"Ta
Israel, ya mean?" Johnny said.
"What?"
Jonathan said with a quizzical look.
Jonathan
looked as if he had just come to, staring out over the expanse of sagebrush
around us, the highway disappearing in the distance.
“I
can’t understand so much land in one place,” he said. “I lived in Hawaii my
whole life. Surfed a lot. I thought it was time to see how things went on the
mainland.”
He
had bought a ticket to Boise with a stopover in Seattle. After a long stint on
the waterfront on Puget Sound, he missed his plane and hitchhiked to Idaho
capital. From there, he’d taken off on foot. He didn’t give a sense of how long
all this took, but to hear him, it had been a while. Johnny and I suspected
there was something he was not telling.
Johnny
dropped him off at a truck stop in Douglas, where he insisted he could find a
ride with a truck driver. We drove over to a restaurant and motel called The
Pump, an old log building with wide glass windows across the front. It was
comfortable and dark, but the employees were smart aleck and slow. They clearly
didn’t feel like working for a couple of single-digit payers. We got our coffee
in heavy milk-glass mugs and took a table by the window. We looked out over the
quarter-mile drag strip in Douglas, the stands fat with spectators. Below,
smoke plumed up from time to time, and rumbles shook the glass.
On
the way out of town, Johnny pulled off to see about Jonathan, who leaned
against a corner of the canopy that connected the building with a set of gas
pumps. Someone had given him milk and pie, which he had lathered into his face.
He smiled, blueberries on his teeth, when he saw us and seemed happy that we
had returned. We loaded him back into the truck and pulled back on the highway,
passing the whistle-stop towns of Orin, McKinley, and Glendo. As we approached
U.S. 26, which we would take east to Guernsey, Jonathan began to tell us more.
“I
spent a lotta time on the beach,” he said. “Shot a lotta dope, heroin mostly.
But I’d use just about anything if the connections weren’t hittin’.” He paused
and rubbed his forehead. His hands were shaking terribly and his eyes had
become bloodshot. “I was ready to quit. But I was always ready to quit. I wanna
quit now. But I can’t.”
“Let
us take you back to Casper, kid,” I said. “We can hook you up with people who
can help you.”
“But
I don’t wanna stop.”
“I
thoughtcha said ya did,” Johnny said.
“I
do wanna quit, the bad stuff, but I don’t wanna quit the drugs.”
I
looked at Johnny. We both knew what he meant. He wanted the pain to stop but
not the euphoria, the escape. Johnny had known it with the carnival. I had
known it with a hundred other things.
“But
it’s driving you insane,” I said. “I mean, look at where you are. Walking in
the hot sun with bad shoes, screwed up feet, no water.”
He
stared vacantly out the windshield. “I don’t know. I don’t know,” he said.
When
we turned off the interstate, Jonathan insisted in being left off. We’d be back
in a few hours, I told him. If he wanted to head back to Casper, we’d find him
the right help. He could think about it and wait for us if he wanted. When he
climbed out of the truck, he looked up and grasped my wrists tightly. His
ice-blue eyes were wide with fear—where to go from here, what to do. It was
familiar feeling. The land was large; he was alone. He tried to smile and wave
after he stepped out on the shoulder, but back on his aching feet, he
hesitated. I looked back as we pulled away. He was looking after us, one hand
raised.
We
drove toward Guernsey. “We’re never gonna see him again,” Johnny said.
“I
know.”
We
coasted down a long slope into the valley and into Guernsey, a lively, if worn,
town where the Wyoming National Guard had training grounds and reserve units.
We followed the signs to where we could stand in the tracks thousands of wagons
had worn into the sandstone. Some of the ruts were troughs nearly three feet
deep.
On
a road, a worn path, one is never lost. One may be disoriented or unsure of the
direction they are headed, but they aren’t lost. A trail, a path, a road leads
somewhere. People have past here before, and in all likelihood will pass here
again.
Travelers
on the Oregon Trail had only two things to show them the way—these tracks and
the sun. After the first few adventurers and immigrants, the path was set. The
maps some carried were indistinct and uncertain, and could never tell their
owners of the vast changes they would endure along the way. Highways and
interstates along what used to the Oregon Trail now carried hundreds of
thousands of people every day, as if the migration had started as a trickle and
turned into a frothing stream.
We
parked the truck and walked over to Register Cliff, a large sandstone boulder
behind chain link fence to keep modern graffiti artists at bay. People had
hacked their names into the stone to be remembered—letters scrawled by the
hands of working people; hands that had driven oxen, baked bread, handled
babies and scythes and hammers; hands that were gone; dead.
A
bent and rusted wrought iron fence marked a small cemetery in the shadow of the
rock. Unmarked stones ringed the graves lie small children, fathers and
mothers, old people. Many immigrants drank water they found in wagon tracks and
hoof prints of oxen when the river disappeared in the sand, and the pathogens
there wreaked havoc on stomachs and colons. Cholera and dysentery wasted them.
Influenza and the common cold choked them and drove fevers. There were
literally thousands of these nameless graves, most disappeared into the
prairies.
I
walked into a small gate in the fence to get a stronger sense of the graves.
Johnny said he was superstitious about the dead and would leave them alone. He
wandered along the face of the cliff instead, reading names and dates aloud. He
wondered at archaic and biblically inspired names—Cletus, Jedidiah, Malachai, Otis.
He was awestruck that the letters had been scrawled by human hands. When we
returned to the truck, we had nothing to say.
Johnny
pulled the truck up on the Interstate. There was no sign of Jonathan, which
disappointed him. The sun on his face was yellow, and all around shadows had
turned the prairie dark in shades of green and brown. About forty miles out, we
heard loud bangs against the bed of the pickup and stopped. The wind smelled of
sagebrush and grass and soil. We considered vacant spots on back tires where
pieces of rubber had come loose. We thought we’d change them but discovered
both spares were flat. It was all right, we thought, and decided to press on.
If we broke down, someone would come along and we would get a ride. That’s just
the way it was.
We
leaned against the truck a while longer, feeling the heat of the metal, and
listened to the wind in the sagebrush. Johnny smoked. The sun dipped into the
horizon, turning the sky orange and purple.
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