Steve Barnheisel made a sluggish cluck with his tongue. "I don't know what to tell you about that, Fremont. A visit's not what he asked for."
Adams waited. He'd stretched the black curlicue of the phone cord as far as it would stretch. He paced his way almost into the kitchen, making the cord twirl from its own tension.
"He wanted to write a message. You know how Buren is, can't make nothing easy. At first I couldn't read half his words. Sammi says he's maybe on more painkillers than he thinks. I kept after it, though. It's like he needs you to finish some list for him. He kept writing your name, then what looks like the word sugar or S-U-G or something. When I said those letters out loud to him, he nodded straight up and down, like that was it. All you needed to know."
"Christ."
"I'll tell him I talked to you, Fremont. And I got a phone number for his hospital room. Then I might just step back on this one, though I hope I'll get to see you if you come up here. That Buren-" Adams could almost smell the rancid truth of Steve's sigh. "That brother of yours, he is not easy to be around."
He thought about it for a long time, longer than it deserved maybe, but the thinking didn't come easy. It was like climbing over wet scree in the rain-you could only get where you were going with a lot of clawing and shifting and sliding. He went out onto the porch where he could see the unchangeable flare of the evening sun-golden, smeared, effortless. Then he went back inside and took the shotgun off the rack and loaded it with slugs he kept in a box on the windowsill in the mudroom. His rifle was gone, another connection he'd failed to make, but the shotgun would do. He could handle it with one hand. He slipped his right elbow into the sling he'd made from a saddle strap and crossed the ranch yard with a simple, sealed-off urgency he hadn't felt in a long time.
Jesus, he'd been stupid, and it was the stupid who were led astray. Like idiot lambs. He had never come close to guessing that it was his lonely son-of-a-bitch brother Buren who was bothering Sugar. Buren must have trailed her to Casper and Sinclair, and maybe other places too, trying to buy her drinks like it was his right to pursue her and upstage C.D. Hobbs whenever he felt like it. It hadn't quite gotten him killed, but it had gotten him busted up enough for police photos and trials and lawsuits, which were precisely the kinds of fun houses Buren understood. Jesus. It was just like his sick, arrogant brother to get exactly what he wanted. He was half dead, and probably more alive than he'd been in years. Now he would have a righteous goal once again. Adams knew Buren would harass Sugar or whoever had done her fighting for her until he had their very last penny and their dreams.
He got to the horse pen and let himself in through the high-swinging pole gate. He shot the first buck where it lay, right in the head, shattering the upper portion of its goaty skull. The second one ran from him. It hit the far end of the pen and tried to climb the slats with its soft, forked hooves. When that failed, the buck began to butt the fence with its thick brow, never turning to look back at the danger, never ceasing its instinctive, absurd movement. Adams watched the humping drive of its shaggy ass, thinking to himself that some things in the world just had to be stopped and ended, then he moved to his left, aimed, and shot the buck behind the shoulder. The shot slapped through rib and meat and the warm, pressured air of the buck's lungs, and the animal was down and finished before the sounds of its death had run their scale. Adams left the bodies where they lay. It was still too cold for flies. And if he shut the gate, which he did, there would be no way in for coyotes.
He returned to the house, made coffee but didn't drink it, cleaned the shotgun with oil and a rag until the throb in his shoulder made his eyes burn. He piled his wood box with more kindling than he would use in a week. He filled several buckets with curled magazines and phone books that he swore he'd drive to the county dump. But nothing brought relief. Even when he realized he wouldn't be able to stop himself, he began to tear down, unhook, and dismantle all the tawdry belongings that he considered his. The parlor floor became tiled with faded, unshelved books, and his father's picture of the Grand Tetons lay bent and flapping behind the cabbage-rose settee. The woodstove roared with the conflagration of burning files and correspondence. When the room looked and felt as abandoned as he did, he put on a coat and hat and gloves and went outside to keep vigil on his porch. He wasn't sure what he was waiting for, what he thought was going to arrive and finish him off for good, but he knew what was leaving him. He could see it lifting and whirling into the sky above his house. The small shreds of his life rose red through a single chimney. They blew across his scattered lands on a slack prairie wind, cooling and crumbling and falling into untraceable smudges of nothing.
He didn't have long to wait. When it was light enough for the hungriest of the magpies to glide into his ranch yard from its cottonwood perch along Muddy Creek, he forced himself to feed the horses and the remaining sheep. He fueled that hapless chore with mutterings of self-hatred and slugs of scotch straight from the bottle. He was inhaling a harsh breakfast of nicotine, trying to decide whether he should murder the handsome bird that had begun to peck at the bodies of the slaughtered bucks, when he heard the distant bark of a dog. It was Rain, he was sure of it. Rain was calling to him from somewhere on the butte.
He whistled for the dog, heard nothing more, then staggered into the house for his binoculars. The sun was a fist of white thorns to the east. He squared himself against the cold clay of the yard and glassed the dawn-tipped ridges of the Trumpet Bell. Before long, the sun winked at him from the fenders of the old International truck. The truck was on a trail at the base of Bell Butte, not a mile from the house. It looked like it had gotten high-centered on some stumps of sagebrush. He did not see Hobbs, but he did spot Rain looking dead-whipped near the rear of the truck. There was also a glint of flat light from the crown of the butte. Maybe he was being glassed, too. He wondered when Hobbs had gotten back to the ranch. Then he wondered whether Hobbs and the dog had ever left at all.
He started after them with the small John Deere, but he left the tractor at the fence line of the alfalfa meadow. If he needed to tow the truck, he could come back for the John Deere. It seemed easier, somehow-though slower-to hoof it straight across the prairie and up the hill. He pulled down the flaps of his hunting cap and checked his pockets for keys and coins he wouldn't need. He had already made up his mind to carry the shotgun.
Zeke and Dan accompanied him in a squall of lunges and casts. They preferred him when they believed he had work to do. They fell away, nevertheless, as he picked a difficult route through the greasewood and wind-glossed snow. To them, loyalty remained a matter of distance.
The shadows he traversed clawed long and blue toward the west. The rasp of his movements reminded him, as he didn't need to be reminded, of the doomed marine retreat from Chosin Reservoir. Fewer than two thousand men had made it out of Chosin alive, and he was one of them, and for what? For what? Every fourth or fifth step inspired phantom pain from his missing toes. His shoulder ached like a bad tooth. When he crossed the barren wheel ruts of the Overland Trail, a stretch of stagecoach-carved mud that the federal government had been pestering him to preserve, he paused to look for the International. He couldn't see it. He was on the low point of his land, a washed-out road that people who had never lived outside a city wanted him to save. No scars on the scars of history-that was their reasoning. Well, to hell with them. History was nothing but scars. He was living proof of that.
He did not have to turn around to know how he felt about everything that was behind him. The ranch, perhaps, was salvageable. With enough money and optimism, they usually were. But he was not. He could hear the bleats of his vestigial sheep-thoughtless and eager-and he knew they had been a bad idea. Too sentimental. Too impractical. The sheep were the result of a body that kept waking up alive and its need-or, hell, call it a desire-to manage animals the way he might have managed all the better extensions of himself.
He passed the gray kilter of an old docking pen. He crossed the collapsed bowel of Bell Butte ditch. His feet, as always, finally gave way to the dead Korean cold.
Hobbs wasn't at the truck. Adams called out his name and got nothing, not even the dog. The truck keys were in the ignition, however. What he was supposed to do seemed clear. He was supposed to let Hobbs go nuts and clean up afterwards. He placed the shotgun in the truck bed with a hollow feeling in his arms and legs. It took him several trips to collect enough rocks to wedge beneath the truck tires so that the differential would rise over the sagebrush when he did a fancy dance on the clutch. When the truck was free, he allowed himself a bitter smile. Two men could have done the job in less than five minutes. For one man, it was an elegy.
He rolled the truck downhill until he reached a faint track that shouldered west of the butte. He drove the snowy ruts carefully, avoiding deep drifts and badger holes. It was the way he'd driven when his ewes were fat and sleek and ready to drop loose-skinned lambs, and anticipation was a thing to be cultivated.
He got out of the truck at a place they called Indian Sink, opened the gate, and drove through. The gate was adjacent to the site for Bell Butte Well #3, a wrecked pad that had gone dry on him and Buren in 1979, a time when failed gambles still led Adams and his raucous neighbors to throw up their ranchers' hands and laugh. There had seemed no end to things in those days. Oil. Gas. Deeds to more acres than you could drive across in a single day. Now there was nothing left of the well but a pair of rust-sutured condensation tanks. If there had ever been much oil, maybe the money would have kept the polish on the Trumpet Bell. His old age, Adams thought, would be banked away in some vault.
He latched the gate at Indian Sink with a loop of wire and gave one more whistle for the dog, Rain. His lips were so dry the sound they made was akin to the hiss of a propane leak. It didn't matter. The dog didn't show. But when he jammed the truck into gear, Hobbs was suddenly there, a flumed shape in his rearview mirror.
Adams was startled. Hobbs had gotten inside his peripheral vision, not an easy thing to do on that broad jut of hill where everything but the junipers was the color of bleached cowhide. He had his thumb primed like a hitchhiker. Adams had seen that pose only once, he'd swear it, and that had been for the benefit of a gnashing, heat-boiled marine sergeant at Camp Pendleton. The sergeant, as everybody knew, had been badly whip-sawed on Guadalcanal. Hobbs was the first, and last, recruit who tried to joke with him.
Adams stood on the clutch, then reached over and opened the passenger door while the truck was still rolling.
"S-sorry about the truck, Fremont. I wasn't driving too good. Whyn't you stop? I want you to s-s-see something." Hobbs was dip-shouldered and grinning. There was a thick smear of something on one cheek, and his doeskin gloves were dark with what looked like axle grease. He kept his eyes on the chromed handle of the truck door, appraising it as if he'd never seen one before. He didn't touch it.
Adams set the brake, but left the truck engine running. That was a joke of his own. It suggested that he and Hobbs would be finished with their encounter in one short minute. Or two.
He got out and faced what was in front of him.
He'd climbed Bell Butte from this direction many times as a boy, they all had, despite his mother's warnings about rattlesnakes and his father's tales of child-eating lions, tales of skulking Ute warriors-so many false tales. When had the butte, that hunch of sandstone and burled light, gone bad on him? He'd shot his share of eagles from its shit-frosted brink, illegally of course, but the damned things had been taking his lambs, and he'd never felt one stab of grief. He had loved the rock's height and permanence. He had admired its stature. Now he could hardly bear to look at the fraudulent mountain that had hovered over his family and their enterprises for two culled-out generations. Bell Butte had finally deserted him as so many things had, everything but Hobbs and memory. Maybe that was how it had to be. It made him like every old man he'd ever known.
He looked into the valley of his empty household and saw vultures corkscrewing the sky above the corrals.
He believed it was his duty to begin the talking. "You up here to earn us a new fortune in oil?"
"No. Uh-uh," Hobbs said. "Though it brings the stink back, don't it? Stink of times g-gone by. I was good on a rig once." He tugged at his cap, a freebie from the hardware store in Rawlins. Its bill was already skeined with grease, maybe graphite. Hobbs's eyes looked strangely white to Adams, as if they were sealed over by an inner distraction.
"I heard some of them at the post talking about the arthritis or bad hearts. C-cancer," Hobbs continued. "How is it that we never talk like that?"
Adams began to relax himself into a shrug, then thought better of it. "Not because we're so different, C.D. We're not. We just haven't got to it yet."
"Think we will?"
"If you want."
Hobbs gaped his wide mouth until his teeth were uncovered. "I like how you believe it's a option, Fremont. You're a b-believer. I remember plinking gophers up here for money from your uncle Gene. You remember that? P-penny for each one. You were always the best shot."
"And Buren the worst."
"Well, sure." Hobbs crowbarred a true laugh from his lungs. "Buren was always the worst."
Adams paused as the wind pressed against the back of his neck, cold and unmannerly. He listened to it toss grit against the pitted windshield of his truck. "I guess you heard me shoot them last evening," he said. "Those damn bucks."
Hobbs nodded. "I worried for a minute you'd shot the horses. Then I decided you wouldn't d-do that. I'm sorry I had the rifle. A rifle's neater."
"It don't matter," Adams said.
"Are more of them sick?"
"Some, probably. I haven't looked this morning. Don't want to. They're a weak bunch, and I haven't handled them so good."
"You handle them fine. I hadn't seen anybody so good at it since Etch and G-Gene. You got the knack." Hobbs's body was so enthusiastic even the binoculars that hung around his neck took on a happy sway. "K-keep on it. You ain't meant to give it up."
"I already have. Starting again was a damn stupid idea. The whole bunch of them has already stomped on me and run me over."
"N-not stupid," Hobbs insisted.
"Well, here's something that is. My brother got himself attached to your friend Sugar. He's caused some serious trouble." He went on to tell how Buren had overstepped himself and landed in the hospital with his jaw wired shut.
Hobbs etched at the dry ground with his steel-toed boots, absorbing the news. His eyebrows drew themselves into a straight line as if he was reworking some kind of internal calculation. Finally, he puckered his mouth and gave a little whistle. He said, "Death is a punishment to some people, and to others it's a gift. I b-been practicing how to say that. I taught the words to myself for you and Buren, especially Buren."
"I'm happy to say my brother's not here to ruin our day. What you been memorizing?"
"How to explain. Th-there's a thing I want to explain."
Adams stared at his own feet. "What are you telling me, C.D.?"
"I only saw Sugar that one time in Rawlins. We never did g-get to be real friends, though it would have b-been nice. I just didn't have the time. Anyhow, I'm sorry Buren found trouble, but I have a announcement on the schedule. I-it's time to go."
Adams cupped his hands behind his ears. "Say that again."
"It's time to go."
He began to understand what had been laid out on that trampled well pad, what he had been led there to perceive since that had always been his role, he the scout, Hobbs the one who bore the consequences. This was the balance between them that he'd never tried to change. The well's pump shed had been crudely reassembled-he finally noticed that. He could see tire treads, and boot prints, and deep drag marks leading up to the shed now that he was looking for them. And he knew exactly what was inside that shed. He could visualize how Hobbs would set things up. There would be an overhauled gas generator cross-wired to a waxy packet of dynamite. That way, Hobbs could be sure this explosion was triggered on his terms.
His body came back into itself when he felt heat and stirring near one of his dangled hands. It was his old dog, Rain.
"You got the shotgun with you?" Hobbs's voice was singsong and terrible.
"Yes."
"Want to use it again?"
Adams didn't withhold his answer. He'd done a lot wrong in his life-maybe too much-but he could still call himself honest. "No, I don't."
"Good. That's not the way I have it in my head, just so you know. My h-head doesn't have us struggling over this one." Hobbs defused his eyes, and Adams saw a glimmer of stillness within them, an ocean-rich column of blue. "It's not like anybody t-told me how it has to go, not a preacher or a dream or anything like that. This is my answer. I just see the way I have to be. It s-seems right after all these scarecrow years."
"I guess ... I don't know what to say." Adams heard something begin to restore itself in his voice. It came very quickly, a pure gout of letters, and then it was gone. "Do you have to-leave?"
"I ain't left you yet, F-fremont. And I won't ever leave you-not in a way that matters. That house might be empty, but you're not empty. This is what you got to learn. For a long time we've kept each other going on and on. But you've got something to take care of down there." Hobbs pointed a finger toward the toppled dominos of the ranch.
"No. There's nothing left to that."
"There is. Sh-she's gonna come-and you got to be home. She'll come to the graves to see your ma and your father and me."
His mouth wouldn't make the sound he wanted.
"She gave me this to give to you," Hobbs said, as he unfurled a stained and empty hand. He seemed to see something in that hand that Adams did not. He reached out, and Adams reached out, and their bodies touched one last time.
Adams turned to water at the hips and knees. "I d-don't.... I just wanted ... I w-want to help you-"
Hobbs cut him off with a captivated grin. "I thank you for trying. Old Etch would say we stayed wh-who we were and that it was a good thing. What I don't know is how it ends for you. Who's to say what's best for a human man? I never did get a answer to that one." He turned and blinked into the striations of the morning breeze. "B-but this ain't never been about the two of us squawking. Some things don't ever get taken away from people, Fremont. Some things we keep inside us forever," he said. "I n-need you to remember that."
Then he walked in his slow, pronating way toward the shed. It sounded as though he said one last thing to his friend John Fremont Adams, but Adams couldn't be sure of the words. Wait for her. Don't forget. Your turn. Which was the answer to his question? Uncertainty rooted him to the crumbled soil beneath his feet. He saw the hinges on the pump-shed door glitter like hung decorations. He saw Rain leave the shade of his body and follow Hobbs into the pump shed, a fine dog. He saw C.D. Hobbs cover the last strides of his life like a herder who has more stragglers to round up. He recognized no choice other than the choice to stand steady, eyes open, eyes gathering, heart rising like a freed bird in his chest. It would come to him. The answer would surely come. He had only to wait and see how much of this destruction was his to share.
Acknowledgements.
This novel arose from a story overheard at a potluck dinner in Laramie, Wyoming. I'm grateful to Jeanne Holland for telling that story with her usual panache. But the book found its true center as I traveled the back roads of Carbon and Sweetwater counties with Gary DeMarcay, who was then an archaeologist with the Bureau of Land Management. I'm grateful to Gary for showing me that landscape in all its beauty and strangeness. I'm also grateful to the late Staige Blackford, editor of the Virginia Quarterly Review, who published the story "Snow, Ashes" in 2001.
Thank you also to my readers Kim Kafka, Beth Kephart, Janet Holmes, Alison Harkin, Mark Miller, and Mandy Hoy. The National Endowment for the Arts, the Wyoming Arts Council, and the Christopher Isherwood Foundation all provided financial support. Sharon Dynak and the Ucross Foundation gave me safe harbor when I needed it most. Carol Bowers and the excellent staff at the American Heritage Center located the documents and photographs I craved. David Romtvedt and Simon Iberlin helped me with the Basque phrases. Bob Townsend of the Owen Wister Review and Dan Wickett of the Emerging Writers Network graciously published excerpts from the manuscript.
Bob Southard talked me through dozens of drafts. He is a dream critic.
Gail Hochman stayed committed to the manuscript. Katie Dublinski, Anne Czarniecki, Fiona McCrae, and the staff at Graywolf Press were patient and passionate. I consider myself very lucky to work with such wise and far-seeing professionals.
Finally, this book is dedicated in no small part to soldiers lost and found. It was written about war during a time of war. I remain humbled by the stories carried home by those who have fought in uniform.
Notes.
The epigraph is from James Galvin's poem "Hermits."
Buren Adams's quotations in Part I are from Gilbert Murry's translation of Euripides' Medea and F. Storr's translation of Sophocles' Electra. His quotation in Part IV is from Thomas Fuller's Gnomologia. C. D. Hobbs's quotation in Part IV is a garbled version of a sentiment from Seneca's Hercules Oetaeus.
Many of the tales Hobbs tells in Korea are inspired by Lori Van Pelt's Dreamers and Schemers: Profiles from Carbon County Wyoming's Past.
I read many books about the Korean War. Eric M. Hammel's Chosin: Heroic Ordeal of the Korean War was both moving and influential. My descriptions of combat at Chosin are inspired by Hammel's account, but my characters and their actions are fictional. I hope curious readers will find their way to books by Hammel and others. The Forgotten War is not forgotten.
ALYSON HAGY is the author of four additional works of fiction, including the story collection Graveyard of the Atlantic and the novel Keeneland. She lives in Laramie, Wyoming.
Snow, Ashes is typeset in Sabon, a typeface designed in the 1960s by Jan Tschichold, based on Garamond. Book design by Wendy Holdman. Composition at Prism Publishing Center. Manufactured by Friesens on acid-free paper.
Other Books by Alyson Hagy.
Keeneland.
Graveyard of the Atlantic.
Hardware River.
Madonna on Her Back.