Going Down Slow
Dream of Death – 2
“Then right after you were married, we were stationed in Alaska, right? What was the name of that base?”
“Eielson Air Force Base,” Mom says without hesitation. “Fairbanks, Alaska.”
“Alaska. Land of the Midnight Sun. You know, I still remember that bog near our house. It had those wild purple irises and giant blueberries. And, Mom, remember how you’d color the pussy willow buds with different color chalk and put them in a vase?”
Mom crinkles her eyes at me. “You really liked Alaska, didn’t you? You and Daddy both. He loved the outdoors. We used to pack up that ol’ station wagon and just take off to go fishing . . .”
“For grayling, yeah, out in the back country. I wonder how Dad knew where to find the streams? Hunh. And remember the salmon?” I still keep a photograph of me trying to hold up a salmon as long as I am tall, an Alaskan King salmon that Dad had just caught. It’s hooked at the mouth, and I’ve got it waist-high, as high as I can hold it, and wear a proud, strained smile.
“And Daddy was the Great Hunter. Right, honey?” She leans out around me to see him, but Dad’s eyes remain closed, his body still.
“I remember he got a moose,” I put in, “and Mom, remember the caribou? Remember that picture?” We both laugh. On one camping trip, Dad had snapped a picture of the endless tundra and then, once slides were made, swore that the gnat-sized speck in the middle of the frame at the horizon was a giant herd of migrating caribou. For years afterward, that slide would bring good-natured hoots of derision from Mom and us kids.
He hears them snickering happily, reminiscing about Alaska. He remembers Alaska, where you were lucky to even see the bones of caribou and wolves, let alone the actual creatures, but a good hunter, like himself, could easily track deer and moose (and even bear if you were feeling foolish) and feed your family off the land.
He hears them recounting more about Alaska, and their voices intertwine into soft musical riffs, and the words dissolve into cadences like the mutter of a
wide shallow stream percolating over a rocky bed. He’s standing on the flat gravel bank, listening to the water speak. Pines and willow bushes stand sentinel about twenty feet back on either side. The air is quiet, dry and cold, but still carries the acrid scent of a nearby fox den. It’s midsummer, and here in the arid Arctic air, the sun’s radiance layers heat on his exposed skin like a flannel shirt, but his shadowed side is chilled, stiff.
He’s about to head back into the woods, back to his car, when about fifty yards away on the stream bank, an apparition rises slowly to its hind legs from behind a sheltering rock. The bear, a grizzly, is an old female, maybe eight feet tall. Age has frosted her muzzle and around her eyes, but her pelt is thick and glossy.
She knows something strange is near, and traces a pendulum arc with her snout, tracking a scent grid. He’s alarmed, but not frightened. No breeze at all. Probably can’t smell me. Still, he begins to stalk her in reverse: When she swings her massive head and torso away from him, nose up snorting, he steps backward, slowly, carefully rolling each foot silently onto the sandy gravel. But when she oscillates back in his direction, small eyes glittering, he abruptly freezes, goes completely motionless, holding his breath. Slow. Slow and careful. Within just minutes he has gone the twenty feet from plain view to the shadows just inside the pines.
He believes he’s hidden, he’s safe, Close call, and blows out his lungs in a huff. But at that telltale sign, the betraying breath of living prey, the old grizzly drops to all fours and shambles toward him, those long claws clacking on the rocks, pebble eyes fixing him even as her head swings with the roll of her shoulders. Shit, she heard me. She’s ambling a little faster now, rump high, pushing her bulk effortlessly toward him. He knows running is futile, like trying to outrun a train. He left his rifle in the car. Stupid, stupid. And now she’s rocking into a clumsy gallop, lips pulled into a snarl, certain of her prey. His legs are wooden posts driven into the ground. He rubs his palms on his thighs, blinks his eyes clear. God , this can’t be— in desperate arrogance he throws out his arms to back her off, lowers his head and roars “NO!” She stops. He feels his life’s blood shuddering through his chest and arms. She stares, dispassionate, then abruptly lurches to her full height and lunges, bellowing, raking at his head with her yellow claws. Screaming, he stumbles back, falling, landing on his butt
in the bed and his feet jerk up like a puppet’s. His heart pounds for a few seconds of blankness before he sees his wife and daughter sitting by his bed, open-mouthed. He wonders, from the fear on their faces, if they saw the bear too, but then with more clarity and chagrin, he realizes he’s been shouting, crying out his protest from the nightmare, the death vision.
“Dad, were you having a bad dream?” Tess asks. “You were yelling.”
He can’t meet her eyes. The dread lingers. “Guess so.” Just a dream. Calm down.
Baptism in the Wilderness
“Well, we’ve been talking about Alaska,” Tess says. “About how you got a moose and we had moose-burgers.”
His lip twitches, trying for a smile, and he levels a gaze at her. “Yeah.”
“Remember when we’d go fishing for grayling?”
“Mm-hmmh.” He’s fully back in the hospital room now, and makes an effort: “You fell in. That stream.”
Tess grins. “Yeah, I did. Good thing you pulled me out.”
“Mmmm.” A cough of a laugh. “Good thing.”
She pulls a foot up under her thigh and fingers the book in her lap. Margie’s eyes travel to the TV set. He frowns at a brief clamping pain across his chest and eases his head back. The half-started conversation bumps to an end.
But as he closes his eyes, he remembers that day in the Alaskan wilderness and strives to capture the details. She must have been all of six years old and had pleaded to go fishing with him. It was spring and the streams ran swift, swollen with snowmelt– too silty for grayling, but he wanted to please her. He drove the battered station wagon as far down the rutted excuse for a dirt road as he dared. When they stopped, Margie stayed with the car to make camp, and he and Tess hiked in, following deer trails through the brush. He carried his tackle box and rods. Tess carried lunch and mosquito repellent.
He found a fast, churning, dirt-yellow stream. The water had cut away at the tree roots that lined the stream bed, leaving steep, muddy banks. He set up his gear and gave Tess a simple pole. He found a flat niche carved in the bank, planted her there and told her not to move around. Then he stationed himself a few yards downstream and began his cast.
He was lucky to catch the motion in the corner of his eye, it was that quick. A small bundle of denim and red splashed soundlessly into the boiling current and swept toward him. Smoothly, as if he did it every day, he dropped his rod, hunkered down, gripped a tree root for balance with his right hand and with his left, grabbed a fistful of the red jacket swirling past him and then stood up, hauling her out. He had her clutched by the scruff of her jacket, so he landed her on her feet right next to him.
She was cold to his touch from the snowmelt water. She coughed and blinked. He frowned, blaming himself for choosing this stream, and she caught his scowl.
“I was being careful,” she said tightly. She ducked her head, her arms rigid at her sides. “I just slipped.” Then she glowed up at him with round eyes. “Daddy, I could see under the water. It was yellow!”
He wondered she didn’t bawl, standing stiff and wet, feet rooted to the bank. “We better go back.” He was careful to keep all anger out of his voice.
“No, I want to catch a fish,” she said, like nothing had happened, as if she hadn’t sunk into the deadly current, a blink from being swept away. As if his heart hadn’t clenched with a new fear, a father’s fear.
“Aren’t you cold?”
“No, I’m not cold.”
But as he knew would happen, she immediately began to shiver. “Hey!” she cried merrily, “My teeth are chattering! Hear them Daddy? And I’m not m-m-making them!”
“Time to go back,” he said with finality. “We’ll come again some other time and catch a fish.” After they climbed the slippery bank, he had her take off her soaked jacket, shirt and jeans. Then he zipped his own wool jacket up around her like a tent, and picked her up in his arms, and carried her back to the car.
Now, so many years later, he still feels proud of rescuing her. He’d been just twenty-five, and had no experience with children. But he’d stepped up to the plate for his “ready-made” daughter.
He remembers when he’d first met Tess. She was four years old, living with her mother in San Francisco in a boardinghouse. She was alone a lot, entertaining herself with dolls and picture books. She was shy, kept her head ducked, and clutched her mother’s hand. Oh, she was pretty enough in a solemn, hug-the-wall kind of way. Her eyes were light gray–the color of the City, concrete and fog–and her hair was a pale, flat blonde.
But she changed during those three years in Alaska. The blonde hair darkened to brown and grew in thick with curls. She grew straight, her head up. She spent whole days outside, playing with neighborhood kids. She asked questions about everything, relished childish jokes, and even once—he’s pretty sure this happened–when it was black and fifty below outside, she angrily announced that she was running away from home.
He wants to believe he had a hand in her blooming, in spite of his laconic fumbling toward fatherhood. He wants to believe that, somehow, when she was stooping down to watch him gut a fish, or when she was proudly pointing out Cassiopeia and the Big Dipper in the western sky, or when she was stumbling breathlessly through the hummocks with him to “hunt moose”, that his lessons took hold. He hoped he’d given her a love of the outdoors with its terrible beauty; had taught her the constellations and about finding her way; had encouraged her not to whine, but to persevere.
Now, he tries to order his thoughts, make the words.
He says: “You changed.”
“I did? How?”
“Your hair. Darker…”
“Yeah, it used to be darker. It’s going gray now.”
She doesn’t understand, and the effort to fill his lungs enough to speak defeats him, and what he means to say to her slips into a shadow. Christ Almighty! If I could have just one good breath! He yearns for that simple act of the living, to fill his lungs up to that last sweet pull into a yawn so huge his ears pop. He closes his eyes against the futility, and then sleep, a true, blank sleep, settles over him like a shook blanket.
Safe from the Evil Mosquitoes
Now Dad’s fallen asleep again, just like that. What did he mean about me going gray? I’m glad though, that we reminded each other of when I fell in the stream and he pulled me out. He saved my life, yes he did. And I remember later that night, after Dad carried me back to Mom and our small camp by the car, after the hot dogs and marshmallows (he hadn’t caught any fish), after they’d made up their bed in the back of the station wagon and settled me across the front bench seat, I lay content in my jammies, on top of my sleeping bag.
I watched the mosquitoes, hundreds of them outside the windshield, dancing against the glass, whining with blood lust. I shivered at how evil they seemed, how intent. “Evil mosquito” I whispered out loud. I liked the sound of it. “Ee-voh mus-kee-doh.” They wanted to get in, they wanted to get me, but they couldn’t. I knew I was safe now. I had a Daddy now. I looked past the mosquitoes into the summer twilight, and tumbled into dreams of the dusty blue bottomless sky.
