By mid-morning I was already juiced and had walked all around Cheyenne and turned my thumb down on the whole mess. In one bar I had seen the three cowboys I rode into town with but they were glassy-eyed and didn't recognize me. The singer was still singing his delightful little song. At the Silver Boot I struck up a long conversation with a florid rancher from Greeley, Colorado, and we drove over to the rodeo grounds together. He was totally unreconstructed, hating the government, religion, war, his wife and even his cattle. He liked horses though and talked interminably about his quarterhorse mare Sunstroke. I asked him why he had called her Sunstroke and he said, “That's a story in itself.” Mysterious. We became unglued at the grounds by mutual boredom. I walked around to the chutes area and watched the unloading of stock. They had a semi-truck backed up to a paddock and were unloading some Brahma bulls, certainly unregenerate-looking creatures with a great hump behind the shoulders. Would ride one for a cool million in advance. Foaming in anger and red-eyed. In another enclosure an enormous top-heavy cowboy in a ragged denim shirt was sorting out broncs with a whip. They were running around kicking with their ears flattened while he looked them over. His right whip arm flexed nervously and looked capable of strangling a lion or gorilla. Wranglers rarely do calisthenics but somehow develop muscular arms and shoulders. Hard work, pure and simple. When you drive through Montana, Wyoming or Colorado and see those immense stacks of hay bales, dear traveler, pause a moment and understand that the hay did not stack itself. Many of the broncs had large open sores on their flanks where the spurs had struck too many times; each sore the size of a hand, a raw fumarole, covered with flies. Keeps them on their toes as it were. I've always preferred the small local rodeo where the stock tends to be fresher. I left the grounds and walked out to the highway. I wanted to reach Salt Lake City by the next morning.
No osprey there. But the nest looked fresh, rather used recently. I thought I could see feathers and part of a fish tail over the edge through my circle of leaves some fifty yards back in the woods. A fish hawk. Once I saw one hover over a pond, tuck its wings and hurtle down in free drop and the last moment braking with its wings, talons extended. Hitting the water with a blast and a foot long pike for its efforts.
My position in a half stoop was uncomfortable. I uprooted a large bunch of ferns and crept closer and covered myself with them. Please no snakes. A mosquito entered my ear and I mashed it with a forefinger. The wax in there is to keep bugs out I understand. I would give the bird an hour or so to appear then I would go back to the creek entrance and try to catch a trout or two. I've always liked hawks, even the ordinary redtail though my favorite bird is the loon. It is the loon's voice I like—the long, coiling circular wail. Somewhere between laughter and madness. There were so many evenings on the lake when I was young that I heard them and at dawn when I might rise to go fishing I would often see them though they kept their distance. We had a small cabin my father and uncles built, with no electricity or running water and a deep well that took no less than a hundred strokes of the pump to bring up the water. Ghastly work. Took turns with my brother and it often brought fights, rolling and slugging in the dirt. We spent much of our time killing. Frogs and snakes and turtles. We weren't ever allowed BB guns so all the killing had to be done by hand. We cleared the shore of water snakes by grabbing them and whipping them against a tree or snapping them like a whip which would break their necks. We ate the frog legs in prodigious quantities, joined by my little sister who at the age of six was the acknowledged champion frog killer with a day's record in the hundreds. She would spend hours cleaning them and skinning the legs, then my mother would fry the legs and she with her friends would eat the whole lot. I had a difficult time thinking about her; she was killed at nineteen along with my father in a car accident. Both death certificates read “macerated brain” as the cause of death. They were on their way north to go deer hunting though they tended to hunt in a desultory way with more interest in the walking than the kill. Rare for a father and daughter to hunt together. By mistake in the lawyer's office I saw the state police photos of the accident, the car tipped over with its engine driven into the trunk by impact. Impossible to tell who had been driving. In one photo I caught sight of her, in a split-second glimpse—I saw her forehead upside down with a single thin trickle of blood on it, an irregular black line. A man had hit them head-on going ninety or they had hit the other car. With everyone dead the facts were difficult to establish. My initial enraged reaction was to travel north and shoot him whether he was dead or not. When the state police returned my father's wallet and, oddly, his broken false teeth I took the teeth out in back and threw them in the swamp we had planted years before with multi-flower rose for game cover. For a year afterwards I slept with my hands tightly clenched to my chest so that in the morning my arms and shoulders would be sore from the exertion.
I was still watching the nest but my eyes were sightless, thinking of my sister. I hoped she had made love to someone before she was killed. I've always felt that the draft should begin with fifty-year-old men and descend in age. Give young men a chance to live a little, taste things, before they get their asses shot off in Asia. Also draft at least 25 per cent of Congress. Let them draw straws for front line duty. I suspect then that the vote for entering a war would be a trifle more cautious. Any fifty-year-old that can play eighteen holes of golf can certainly use his weak forefinger to pull a trigger and his chubby legs to hike through swamps. Have to write some crank letters about this. Nobody's exempt. Even the president of the chamber of commerce in every little town. Considerably less American then, I bet. If they want to wave flags so badly let them wave it where it counts, in the enemy's face. Lots of whooping and whining: But I'm a stockbroker or a chemist or a dentist with my hands fresh from a mouth. Precisely. Give the young a chance to eat and fuck and drink and love and travel and have children. If they're not effective, we'll send more of these pot bellies. Of course I speak from a tender 4-F vantage point, having had my eye nearly gored out by a broken beaker in back of a hospital when I was five. A little girl did the job. Since then my left eye has looked outward and upward in a googly trance of its own. Nearly sightless it moves to the strongest light and only sees the full moon clearly. I've often told girls when they asked about it that it was put out in a fight with broken bottles in East St. Louis. Then I am properly mothered. Tits perk and droop and perk to caresses and sad, lonesome tales. Eastern college girls especially like the part Indian bit. My dark complexion and vaguely Laplander or laplaper features have always made this possible. I vary with tribes from Cheyenne to Cherokee to Apache. Makes it harder to hitchhike though. Dirty minorities. I've been asked the question a thousand times: Are you part Indian or Mexican? Yes and no and none of the above. Was happy in England to remind a burly cricket player while we drank that my forefathers the Vikings had a splendid time scaring the shit out of midget limeys. He somehow took offense. But I reminded him that Britannia had conquered mighty India with her starving, pathetic, pacifist millions and that was no mean feat. Righto. And look who gave the world kidney pudding. And fish and chips in old newspapers. And cricket! I had won his heart. There's always some smartass Englishman coming over here and telling us we're mean and vulgar. I agree. But they showed their hand way back during the Irish potato famine as instinctual Nazis.
Two hours at the interchange without a ride. All the cars going the wrong way, toward the rodeo. I walked across the road and into a Shell station where I bought a Coke and asked for a map. The man charged me a dime for the map. Little did he know that a few years later I would run up $283 on a Shell credit card and totally outwit their collectors until my mother paid them off stupidly when the representative appeared at the door early one morning with a phony legal document. Ho hum. I've always wanted one of those really zippy big-time all-inclusive credit cards but have been turned down over and over. A pickup truck driven by an old man stopped.
—How far you going? he asked.
—California.
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—That's a long ways. He actually said “a fer piece” but no literate person would believe anyone still talks this way. Truly literate people hang around their own kind and talk in jingoes and arcane shorthand. Raising a single eyebrow may involve many subtleties. That's why I always preferred to smoke grass by myself—I simply can't bear the cultish mummery, giggling, meaningful glances, the “oh wows” and transference of energies by mutters. We're way up here and ain't we neat. Not especially.
The old man pushed the pickup to eighty. Wyoming is full of berserk drivers. Read of one who drove into a herd of antelope crossing the road and killed sixteen. The meat is usually too smashed up to eat. The radio was giving the livestock report: Choice at $32 per hundredweight, commercial and cutters at $24. The rancher's stockmarket. Hay going at $22 per ton.
—How far you going? I asked.
—Creston which is thirty miles past Rawlins.
Probably a tiny town. No traffic but cars going by with blurring speed. Got there two hours later deep into the afternoon with hardly a word exchanged. He told me he was partly deaf from the First World War. I delivered some books to a VA hospital once and got a quick tour. Wreckage. Former soldiers in there for ten, twenty, thirty years, maybe only incurable fright. A friend of mine lasted only a moment in the Korean War—at the first bullet fired in his direction he said he dove under a truck and started screaming and pissing and shitting from fright. Got a medical discharge finally after they were sure he wasn't faking. A second lieutenant tried to persuade him to come out from under the truck hours later after the skirmish was over. He said he was still blubbering for his mom and dad and the good old U. S. A. He told the shrink that he was afraid of the dark, dogs, snakes, electric appliances and women, the last the only lie in the bunch. The shrink asked him then if he masturbated to which he replied, “Frequently and inconclusively.” Then he told the psychiatrist that from youth he had dreamed only of marrying a pro football player and the psychiatrist said he was a bullshitting coward but he got the medical discharge anyway and with body intact. Now he is an insurance adjuster and talks about his invented war experiences. He averts his eyes when we meet by accident on our hometown streets, though he goes through the insurance man courtesy of saying, “Wanna have a cuppa of java?” No, please.
I went into a diner in Creston and had a hot pork sandwich with plenty of beef gravy. A plaque above the cash register said, “In case of atomic attack, pay bill and run like hell.” Ho ho ho. I played “Theme from Picnic” and mused about the tragic life of a wanderer. When I saw the movie I got a crush on Susan Strasberg. Maybe in some town I'll look like William Holden and a beautiful girl will take me down by the riverside and offer her own peculiar kind of vittles.
I was only back out on the freeway for a few moments when some college students with New York plates picked me up. The two of them sat in the front seat chattering about school. They were driving straight through to Salt Lake City to visit a friend, then on to California.
—Are you a cowboy? the driver asked.
—Yup, I said pulling my hat down and falling asleep.
The hawk was sitting on the nest. I cursed myself for not seeing him land. He looked around with a short jerky motion of his neck and then seemed to doze as I had done, missing his arrival. There's more than a small portion of shabbiness to my love of nature; on most pack trips I've been on I've loaded in cumbersome fifths of bourbon, so heavy but necessary. Always have to ration it so I don't get greedy and have to leave the woods early. You shouldn't ever drink while you're hunting but I often do secretively from a small flat aluminum flask. I sat in a duck blind with a friend on a very cold day and we finished a bottle and awoke in the dark. Much trouble stumbling through the woods to find the car and so cold we trembled running into invisible trees. Stopped at a tavern for a pick-me-up and discussed the non-hunt. Had ducks come in during our partly comatose sleep? Might be. We played pool for many hours and shook hands and made promises that we wouldn't drink the next time we hunted duck. Could hurt ourselves, you know. A sixteen gauge with Magnum number fours will cut a man in half at close range. What if in unsettled sleep a safety had been clicked, a trigger pulled by mistake. Blam. Or blam blam blam if it's a semi-automatic. Hunter slain in accident.
I watched the bird for a half hour and then he must have sensed my movement. He flapped upward, a five-foot wing-spread beating the air, and covering my presence in higher and wider circles. Nearly as big as an eagle which often steals from the osprey, the more effective hunter. A golden eagle from close range is awesome. In Texas there is a special club of rancher pilots who shoot thousands of golden eagles in flight from airplanes. Must protect the sheep. They have noticed strangely enough that fewer of the eagles appear during their migratory period. Be glad to be a Robin Hood for eagles and shoot their filthy Cessnas out of the sky.
Salt Lake City at dawn while lovers snuffle in pillows and wait for the alarm. The Mermaids conquered this valley thousands of moons ago, prospered by the ardent ficky-fickery of many wives, and the hard work of tilling the Indian's untilled soil. And then a great crise, as the French call it, arose a valley-wide horror, scarcely global, over a cloud of locusts darkening the sun. They prayed to the Angel Moroni (catch the name) and sho'nuf the seagulls buzzed in in formation, a million gobbling-bird Messerschmitts. The valley was saved and the Mermaids swore off coffee, tea, cigarettes and alcohol. Slight misrepresentation here but I cherish the essence of history, the main arteries rather than the niggling individual cells. The truth is, as we know now, that each bird ate exactly one hundred grasshoppers and then flew away. Many prayers were offered the next day over morning coffee which was expensive anyway, the freight costs alone from St. Louis running about three dollars a pound. The Mermaids gave up their expensive vices and stimulants in thanks for the seagulls’ arrival. The sacrifice seems inappropriate in that seagulls don't drink or smoke. Then a great tuberknuckle was built in the middle of town, and it was decided that no one could enter this building except the chosen. You can go into an adjacent building and see a museum full of pioneer artifacts or hear the choir sing “Battle Hymn” but don't try to get into the temple. It is guarded by a giant race of seagulls trained like hunting falcons—the “white” equivalent of those ageless ravens that guard the Tower of London. Some gossip about how Negroes can't attain priesthood because they're children of Ham, and not ham hocks and butter beans. The Old Testament Ham which the chosen people wouldn't eat, though some of them secretly liked it and ate it in the night. They were discovered and rather than giving up their favorite recipes they traveled out of Judea, south into Africa where years of equatorial sun darkened their skins. And that is why they can't be priests now. Oddly enough the Mermaids are great ham eaters now but the times change. It is difficult to speak against these wholesome folk—I've known some of them as friends and watched their pained wincing when I drank coffee with cream or sugar or black. If anyone though named Smith or Jones or Brown digs up some more stone tablets we should put our foot down before the whole thing gets out of control. Sanka is a moot point.
I had a quick cup of coffee then asked the waitress how I could catch 40-80 out of town for the long desolate haul across Nevada to Reno. She said that though she had lived here all her life she never had gotten the roads straightened out in her mind. She knew the road to Provo and the road to Heber but that was the wrong direction. Her brain was full of seagull droppings and grasshopper butter, probably why she was a counter girl in a diner.
—Nice town you got here, I said.
—We think so, she replied covering her teeth with her lips when she smiled. Vaguely greenish they were. Lack of calcium?
I walked around until I found a jolly policeman and asked him for directions. He looked at me as though my bedroll might be concealing tommy guns and poison adders, but he pointed the way with a courtesy uncommon in eastern cities. Wholesome folks hereabouts I thought again—no buggery, incest, dope, pornography, all the kitchens spic and
span and the girls fresh and capable of making their own gravy. It took me at least two hours to get to an interchange but the walk past dewy emerald-green lawns and cozy bungalows had been pleasant with the exception of a brush with an early-rising cur. I palmed my five-inch switchblade and walked backwards for a block while the dog snarled and barked. Weird-looking hound and terrier cross. If he jumped I would be forced to give him a single lightning slash across his furry throat. Actually he would have had my arm before I could open the knife. Quick rascals. And I couldn't walk with the knife open and outstretched or every mom on the street, awake and making breakfast, would have called the police and my bonehandled Neapolitan switchblade is held suspect by the law.
I stopped at a truckers’ cafe near the highway, had coffee and looked imploringly at the truckers. I knew though that they couldn't give me a ride for “insurance” reasons, a NO RIDERS decal on every windshield. I sat down next to a middle-aged beatnik type who glanced at me briefly through his wrap-around shades.