Granny Tales Part iv

A. Blinken…

Granny: We had a little kid, but no matter, because living was hard those years and there was no working for wages, there was only finding a living as best you could, and for us that meant the pick and the bar, the rock drill and candlesticks, the hammer and the sluice. We were living in a big canvas tent we took from hillside to hillside. We tried to stay to the creek canyons, because there were fewer trees and water was near by. The creeks were often rummaged by someone before us, so mostly we hammered at layers of ancient gravel. Sometimes we would find an ancient nugget, but as always most of it was small stuff, rice and smaller, and some of it was rough, still stuck in quartz. All of that was hard work even if a creek was close and the gravel stone was loose. If the gravel was hard and the crick long down the canyon, we left it, even one bar where we could see thin layers of dust and black sand. There would be nuggets at the top of the bar, but that could be 140 feet in any direction, meaning maybe it used to be where we were standing, and it already washed away. There is a line just about where the pines take over, and above that there is no gold, it’s the way the mountain tilted the ancient rivers. Get into the granite and the gold gets scarce. All this meant that by the end of summer we’d played out the easy places we could without havin’ to show guns to other miners. One day Aaron stood on a ridge and looked miles and miles, down across the forested skirt of the mountain, over crumpled and folded stone canyons into the misted river valley rich and green below. High as it was, and though the sun was only up a quarter, it was hot; I sat next to the kind sleeping on a blanket in the shade of a pine. I remember unbuttoning my shirt and splashing water on my breasts; I was pregnant and they were filling out beautifully. I sprinkled water on little Abner to keep him cool. Aaron started singing to the world and to the hawks and eagles that floated on the rich hot air below; I recognized the 20^th Psalm of David. I looked at him; he was like a god. He straddled the ridge so each foot stood in a different watershed. He held his arms out, his back was straight and broad and even through his shirt the muscles on his shoulders stood out like mooring ropes. His voice was pure and rich, and the Hebrew words made it seem like a mystic chant. It wasn’t the drops of water on my breasts that made me shiver. When he reached the end of the Psalm, without looking back, he said, "Brighid (Breed), come here." I got up, tied my blouse behind me so Aaron could see how round my breasts were, and went to his side on the perch above the world. "There," he said, pointing to one of the folds in the lower hills. Look, we know there are old river diggings there, there, there and there. If you follow a line with your eyes, you can see the old river bed slopes across the hills this way. That little canyon there is just so. There probably isn’t a running stream now, but there are likely pools still. Yah?" I didn’t care where we went, just so we went together, and of course were there in time to set up the tent and start a fire. I pulled his shirt out of the back of his pants and rubbed my breasts on his back. "OK," I said. An hour later, the blanket was folded and the donkey loaded and the kind on Aaron’s shoulders, and we were heading downhill. It took all the rest of the day to work our way down the ridges and valleys. We walked together, with our necks bent, heads down, eyes focused on the pebbles and scree for the color. God as my witness, I would give every heartbeat I have ahead of me to feel again for ten heartbeats what it was like in those days, walking behind Aaron, hearing his pace, catching the musk of his sweat mixed with the pine, my child on his back, his child freshening in my belly, the most, best days of our lives still ahead. Anyway, by the time we’d worked down to the level Aaron had chosen, it was late. We were between the oak and pine forests, and cut young pine for our tent poles and burned dry oak to cook our dinner. We were set up and had the fire going, the dusk was on us and my eyes were used to the fire so I couldn’t see in the shadows of the forest. Aaron said, "hello. Who are you?" I looked at him; he was holding an armload of wood, looking past the fire. I stood and retreated to the tent, and as my eyes grew used to the dimness the hairs rose along my arms; someone was standing just past the edge of our camp, a large humping shape, a bear or a man. I reached inside the tent pulled the Winchester. Aaron threw the wood by the fire and walked forward, his hand held out. I raised the rifle and pulled the hammer back, the humping shape framed the blade of the front sight in the groove of the rear; if it moved too suddenly, or reared up, I would touch the trigger, drop the hammer, strike the primer, fire the charge and send the .30 Winchester bullet screaming through the air and to the bear’s heart. But, the figure disappeared into the gloom. Aaron laughed it off, but I was nervous. I slept with one hand on the cold smoothness of the lever gun. Aaron could scarcely sleep he was so excited about breaking dirt in the morning. Morning came and we set to work at the head of a small ravine. There was top soil which we hated to clear, so we looked for things like trapped soil in the roots of fallen trees or the pebbles in a deer trail for clues to the geology. I worked a pick, but I had the old wheel gun strapped on and had my shirttails down over it. Around noon I smelled burning oak and knew it wasn’t our fire. We stopped to eat some cold venison and skillygallee, dried bread soaked in bacon grease, and Aaron said, "Brighid, you’re so nervous you snatch iron at every twig snap, like a gunfighter. Let’s go find out who is sharing the hillside with us." He picked up Abner, I picked up the long gun, and we wandered through the woods following the smoke until we came to a small path. It led to a larger one, which lead to a small clearing at the foot of a narrow canyon, with a nice cabin and barns nestled with oak and pine. Smoke drifted from the chimney of the cabin. We stopped at the edge of the clearing and Aaron shouted, "hello in the cabin. Hello!" After a minute a man appeared from the woods behind the barn. He held an ax. Aaron said, "Brighid, set the rifle against that stump." I lay the rifle down, Aaron held his hand out and walked forward; I followed carrying Abner, feeling the weight of the wheel gun on my hip. The man stood where he was. He was an Indian man, shorter and older than Aaron but solid and easy on his feet. Aaron walked on; I kept my eye on the cabin. Finally, as Aaron walked up the man held out his hand. "I’m Aaron; this is my wife Brighid and son Abner." The man took his hand, held it for a moment and said "I am Edward Edwards." His face, nearly the red-brown of the earth beneath the trees, was broad and open, like the face of every honest man I ever knew. He nodded to me. I nodded, "was that you at our camp last night?" Edward shook his head, "no, that was my grandmother Erma. Have you eaten?" Aaron said "we had salted venison." "Come in, there will be soup." That is how we met Edward Edwards and his wife Bertha, daughters Mina, Linda and Elzbeth, grandmother Erma, and toddler granddaughter Lily. Lunch was toasted green acorn soup, corn bread and roasted squirrel, and it was delicious. By the end of lunch, Abner and Elzbeth were playing and Edward and Aaron were working on a deal. Edward showed us a handful of nice nuggets he’d picked up clearing for the house and barn. His son in law was in Prison in Nevada, and Edward needed help clearing more land. Aaron would help him clear land, and in exchange, we could use the small creek for sluice water, and we could keep 60% of any gold found in the fields and all the gold in the creek. A further bonus: we could stay the winter in the barn. He and Aaron would build a fireplace and chimney in the barn for heat. It was one of the best deals we ever made. The barn was small, built of pine logs, but it was built better than most cabins of the day, and this was at a time when there were still folks as knew a cabin. Within a week we were just more kin in Edward’s family. It was lovely how our scratching for pockets and their scratching for gardens and orchards made us kin. In the warm weather we ate together outside, in cold I occasionally cooked on the fireplace in the barn, but mostly we ate with the family. It was also Edward and his family that introduced us to the sweat. Their sweat was built like a beaver dam, of poles laid against each other to make a large hollow cone, and then the whole thing thatched with leaves and covered in mud. It was too small for everyone, and the men and boy did a sweat, and then the girls crowded in. My belly grew over the months and by late fall I was showing nicely. Erma, Bertha and Mina shared the pregnancy with me, giving me the fat hump of the bear, the liver from the deer, and a daily dose of extract of bitter cherry. The winter flew by, our poke grew, Edward’s fields grew, my baby grew. I became accustomed to the presence of the Edwards, to Erma’s touch as she rubbed lanolin into my growing belly to keep it soft, to the sound of the women who sang as we did chores, to the smell of oak fires and roast bear and simmering rose hips and currants. I had thought Erma was a bear at the edge of our camp, but she became like my mother, and I found myself glad I hadn’t shot her that night. Later, when my daughter was born, it was Erma who attended me, and through the pain I focused on her round face and soft dark eyes, large lips and quiet, kind voice. As I pushed I fixed my attention on her great round shoulders, and the neat part in her thick black hair. My daughter was born in March, at the Edward’s family hearth, and we named her Ruth, after Aaron’s mother. We stayed on at the cabin until May, when the baby and I could travel, then we made our parting. We swore to each other that we would be family forever. Abner and Elzbeth swore they’d marry, and we hoped they would. Mina swore Lily and Ruth would be sisters. We shed tears, even Edward, even Aaron, and we parted feeling that something of our hearts stayed. We couldn’t wait to see them again, vowed to see them soon. And, we never did. Never. Time went by and we worked hard. We moved up the state and east again, and came to this canyon where we built this little cabin and barn and so on. We never thought we’d stay, we always figured we’d move a range over and find the Edwards again, that we’d stake a claim there and patent it and make it our home next to them. But, we never did that. Finally, in 1983 I made my way back to the Edward’s cabin as part of making myself over again. It took two days to find it, and when I did, no one was there, the cabin was empty except of wood ants and rats, and the lovely barn had burned down long before, but the fireplace and chimney Aaron and Edward built from river rock stood, a monument, I figured, to the love we had for these people who made us family forever. I found two graves, Erma died in 1942, and Edward died in 1948. I wept over each grave, and sat and told them the story of why we never came back, and I asked, where are the girls? Where are Bertha and Mina and Linda and Elzbeth and where is little Lilly? They are gone to me like my old Mamo and Cousin Teltina, like my Mama, and my brother Patrick, and Aaron Wise. Now, boy, what does this story mean? Hey, potatohead.

End of Granny Tales Part iv

Continued in Granny Tales Part v