Having Everything Right. Kim Stafford

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СКАЧАТЬ and feel, in my faint of hunger, a shred of what the original cast of this drama lived. But where I sat in the car, all this was nothing. The windshield wore the small debris of shattered yellow bugs.

      What did I expect? The past wears an armor that thickens, and I was a fool to think hunger and a wish could pierce it. I had learned the dates and the map, had seen in photographs a long-braided woman and the anguish of old men. I had browsed on books in the National Battlefield gift shop, and I was fed full with history, with news that stays fact:

       During the morning of August 9, 1877, . . . 163 soldiers of the U.S. 7th Infantry and 33 civilian volunteers endured a 36-hour siege as the final scene in the Battle of the Big Hole. The battle began with a dawn attack by the military force upon a camp of 800 Nez Perce men, women and children encamped in 89 tipis on the grassy bank across the river. . . . Follow the trail and explore the military defensive positions. Recreate the struggle of the besieged men and the hostile feelings of the surrounding Nez Perce warriors.

      I folded the brochure, and closed my eyes. My government was trying hard to help me. They had made a building and a show. They had scratched out a trail and numbered it, had given me a brochure with matching numbers. I would follow the path. I was grateful. Still my head was a vacant room. Before I took the trail, I had one more try.

      Inside, at the headquarters reception area, a ranger with his flat-brim hat on the desk beside him was tallying information from the guest register.

      “I bet you get people from all over.” I faced him over the glass display case filled with books and souvenirs.

      “Excuse me one moment,” he said. “1984 to date, out-of-state 87 percent total.” His tanned fingers worked the blue ballpoint as if it were a shovel, scooping figures off one page and tossing them neatly onto another. Then he looked up at me. “Yes, from all over the world. Have you had a chance to sign the register?”

      “Right here.” I pointed to the word “Oregon.” The space for my remark was blank, but the column above that blank was filled with “Beautiful display,” “Very moving,” “Worth the drive,” “Howdy from Texas,” “My third visit and better than ever.” The ranger glanced at me, then turned away to usher a couple wearing identical sunglasses into the small auditorium for the slide show. I could hear the music begin as he closed the door behind them.

      “I’m curious,” I said. “How many Nez Perce people visit the battlefield?”

      The ranger turned to the register, then to his tally. “We had a woman from Iowa last year who said she was one-quarter Nez Perce.” He looked into the air between us for a moment, then back at me. There was a pause, and I could hear the muffled pulse of gunfire from the auditorium. My eyes asked the obvious question, and he answered it.

      “We know others visit the battlefield itself,” he said. “They just don’t come here to the Visitor Center to sign the book.” He looked into the air again. We both knew this was the part of the show about the Nez Perce warrior named Rainbow—how he was shot as he ran through the dawn mist, how his comrade Five Wounds would have to die the same day by the vow they had shared. We heard the tapered scream of Rainbow’s wife, a century distant through the auditorium wall. My eyes asked him again. This time he paused. I had to ask it aloud.

      “When do they visit the battlefield?” I looked out the window behind him, as he studied my face.

      “They come at night,” he said, “and no one sees them.” He paused again. “They have their ceremonies in the place, and we respect that.” Something brushed my sleeve. He turned. A woman held out four postcards and a dollar bill.

      “This has been marvelous, just marvelous. I must tell my daughter. Her children would love this. They’re in Chicago, you know. Don’t get west very often.” The postcards in her hand hovered over a huge open purse, like hawk wings over a nest. Suddenly they plunged inside and her hand escaped just as the purse snapped shut. “But maybe with these pictures I can get them to come. We could drive down from Butte, make a day of it. Wouldn’t that be nice?”

      “It beats Chicago. I’ve been to O’Hare,” the ranger said.

      “O’Hare!” The woman glanced at the ceiling with a smile, crossed herself, spun around, and moved gradually away. The ranger picked up his pen, but I waited. I could tell from the music the slide show was almost over.

      “The ceremonies,” I said. He held his pen up like an artist’s brush. Now the question was in his eyes: how can I trust what I tell you to be safe? Perhaps I have said too much already.

      “We don’t know much about the ceremonies, just that they happen.” We both looked into the air, not at each other. We looked into a box of wind from another time, a box suspended between us, a wind blind to his uniform and my traveling clothes, a box of storm air where the real voices resided and centuries made a number with no meaning. I asked the inevitable question.

      “How do you know about the ceremonies? Is there evidence left at the site?”

      He looked hard at me, then away. In the auditorium, the little motor whirred to pull curtains aside from the west window. “In certain places,” he said, looking toward the auditorium door, “they leave ribbons hanging from the trees.” The door opened, and the woman came out before her man. The skin around their eyes was pale. In one smooth motion, they both put on their sunglasses.

      On the trail to the battle overlook, the sharp-toed print of a doe’s hoof was centered on the print of a woman’s spike-heeled shoe. The woman came yesterday, the doe at dawn. I stepped aside, leaving that sign in the dust.

      But where were the ribbons? Now hunger-vacancy sharpened my sight instead of dulling it. Wind stirred every pine limb with light, green urgency flickering in the heat, flags of color calling every tree a monument. Ribbons? Ceremony? The wind was hilarious and sunlight a blade across my forehead. All along the trail, numbered stakes held cavalry hats of blue-painted wood to mark known positions where soldiers suffered or died. On the high ground above the trail, stakes painted to resemble the tail feathers of eagle marked the known positions of Nez Perce snipers who held the soldiers pinned down all through the afternoon. Feather Feather. Hat Hat Hat. Feather. Tree. Wind. Straw-pale brochure in my hand. Brochure folded into my pocket. Vacancy. Tree. Wind. Ribbon.

      Far uphill, at mirage distance, a ribbon shimmered orange from a twig of pine. Off-trail, pine duff sank softly beneath my feet. Trees kept respectfully apart. Earth sucked dry by roots from other pines made them scatter. A gopher had pushed open a hole, and cobweb spangled the smallest dew across it. Then the climb thinned my attention to one small spot of color the wind moved.

      Orange plastic ribbon crackled between my fingers—the kind surveyors use to mark boundaries. Not it. Not the wisdom of the place. Not the secret her sunglasses obliterated, not the message that family from Iowa went home without. Not the secret the ranger guarded, then whispered.

      A girl’s voice spoke from the grove: “The Nez Perce had only ten snipers on the high ground, but the soldiers weren’t sure how many were there.” She stopped and looked about, then led her parents and sister on along the trail, reading to them from the brochure in her hand. Somehow, she did not stumble, and they padded away through their little flock of dust and disappeared toward the river. A bird’s call broke from the willow thicket where they had passed, a watery trill. Patience settled into my mind, like a fossil leaf pressed between centuries. I threaded the trees like a memory. A crow drifted over. A single pine bough stirred, as if the wind were a compact traveler roving before me.

      When I found the ribbons they were red and blue. Five strands flickered half a fathom long from a СКАЧАТЬ