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| A.R. Koheen |
When I was a child in the Nineteen Fifties I was sick a great deal of the time and my mother
would lose patience with having to come home to take care of me so she'd ship me to my grandparent's ranch in rural Fallen,
Nevada where I learned to love many things including the desert and staying up late to listen to my grandfather tell stories
about his youth growing up as an American Indian with 'a moccasin in both worlds', so to speak. It was through their love
after Big Ed died that I found my way back. This poem is lovingly dedicated to Lou Larkin, "A Man Walking", a man
extraordinare!
1. I woke just as false dawn gave way and
as I sat on the edge of my bed striding away purposefully, of the empty street and building and I thought, 'Is this a sign?' was "A Man Walking"? I continue to sit and watch the urban landscape as my cat slept and I found a quietness that pain usually lacks as the weeks slip away and though there was a police car followed by four other cars in quick but silent succession I felt comfortably alone in the silence of this time, neither day or night ~and I knew I had to get up to write this poem!
2. I wish I could tell if I am now close to their age or not - I was a child they were old in my eyes at a time when 'old' was simply 'more than me' I have to stop for a moment, the coffee pot clicks at me and I needs must answer its summands for I am suddenly weaving dizzily on the edge of time and for the first time I fear I'll fall in ... The adult in me knows that I must sleep, to rise at nine, three hours hence but I linger, alone and yet comfortably so, for ~ I am. and for this moment, this darkness before true dawn I am content even as the Greyhound bus comes into town and my cat Shiloh sleeps in 'his' chair beside my computer and desk as he proves, yet again. that he is wiser than me.
3. As I look across the room weighing the necessity of movement I am chagrined to witness daylight creeping in through the open blinds in the other room. How blind have I remained? I can’t tell time either! But as I walk in silence I remain comforted by the continued silence on the streets below my windows, at the continued lack of pain I am reassured by the thin intrusion of a diesel truck’s promised deliveries and brakes, the promise of continuation I took for granted as a child and as I step back, waiting to sip at the hot coffee at my desk to see if the pain will intrude to see what I might remember beyond the ache that awoke me to need to write.
4. I am at once, reassured, silenced, comforted, at the same time. My memories are safe, they reside in me and I? I ~ reside in the pleasant companionship of the Lord God Almighty so I am a lanky kid again walking the silence of the rural road in Fallon, Nevada forty-nine years ago…at the side of the man I called ‘Grandfather’ while the Others who loved him called him “A Man Walking “
5 In hallowed companionship I walk in silence but I was seldom silent then, holding to his hand holding to my claim on his heart knowing only for sure that if I was with him, I was safe I could breathe on the inside though I choked on alkali dust and sage scents the dust stirred up in the distance by dust devils twisting frantically in a sacred dance whose meaning his calm eyes seemed to see within as he saw within me, and I within him a friend I could dare to trust while my Grandmother felt she owed something to her middle child she didn't to me. with him, I could speak. Now I wished I had been silent and just listened! For the echoes of what he spoke resound in me in who I am and what I hold dear as I walked beside man named "A Man walking"
6 I vaguely remember sleeping on the back seat of the 50's car. Awake, I watched the head lights flash by across the cloth roof of the sedan, Asleep, I watched the passage of dream images flashing just as suddenly from the night startling me with horrific possibilities ~ like the sound of my mother arriving for the weekend, the sound of ambulance sirens drawing soft cursing, the sound of weariness and resentment drawing me in against my will, reaching me, no matter how deeply I dived into escape, seeking oblivion heedless of the hurt the remained on the surface giving away my hiding place by the flotsam left on top of the waters.
7 A yellow bug light illuminating the quivering moths clustered against the new screen at the front porch my grandmother's face line -with age? -with worry? -with deep set resistance against the inevitable hostility that accompanied my disposal in the dark of a sage-tainted farmer's midnight vigil bemoaning the long ride across the bottle neck of the State back to the land of Grimm Brothers and black habited nuns from which I had briefly escaped as she escaped the terrible peering inner eye of desert solitude from the silences too long to be borne. The soft kiss on my forehead illuminated by the dim light of the hall as I raise my arms to shield myself from the blow the soft sigh escaping a child's chapped lips as I surrendered to respite. Here, I was loved not merely tolerated as a means to an ends.
8 My memory is of warmed sheets turning to ice I remember distinctly as all else faded to the low drone of adult voices on the other side of the light. Evidence that I again slept in a house of love. While the Wind that leveled the landscape to the very edge of the distant mountains was contained within the unused room with the moldering wallpaper paste. As old as Time, as immutable as GOD, of these things my memory stands Guardian as it did as I slept then. The noise of the gravity fed indoor toilet with restricted use and no tissue in the water meant to be joined for irrigation the creaks as the joints in the walls moved to ease the strain on their aches, the sound of my grandparents in their single bed int he bedroom next to 'mine' my mother's soft sob from the living room where she got to sleep next to the pot bellied stove- I envied her until I escaped the cold with sleep.
9 I remember the cold and snuggling down into goose down burrowing into the body warmed pit pressed unto the clean but worn and mended sheets, I remember the smell of moth balls on the gaily patterned quilt over the daybed as both were just beginning to shine bearing the streaks of dawn's rapid ascent . I remember the tentative click of the questioning cricket sleeping under the floor boards. I sighed in answer, if I remember. we both fell quiet as the pot bellied stove in the front room clanged and I remember the acid stench of sulfur, burning paper and dried bark, the soft thump, thump, thump of the oat crusher and the stubborn hiss of rejection from the pump handle at the edge of the galvanized sink as coffee brewed strongly on the wood burning stove , as my Grandmother stood with her back to the door, the rounded muscle of her arms waggling in time with the steady beat and push until the water spewed out, a little, resentfully, like a cow with no calf, then pouring out like it was running away from something that It feared, like I'd learn to fear I remember my mother's sharp laughter and for a moment, I am here.
11 "Grounded" no longer means punished but becomes a term of admiration simply for standing up for one's rights against the grain against the hurt pride injured suffers in silence only so long! but measures against the crushing isolation and size of the landscape containing all of man's noises and smells the measure of a man is in himself as he steps out of dried up pick-up trucks, covered in alkali allowing spindled, taciturn men to emerge and stand beside my grandfather honoring one another and the breaking sky looking up at it at one another as thought heir eyes alone can see the hidden treasure reclined across the tepid skyline of high cirrus clouds 'The Others" as old as the land, as old as Time, and they accept me, for his sake.
12 I remember oilcloth tables spotlight white lights as the bent, amble woman toiled deftly at kneading dough, making it take the desired shape pummeling it with her fist leaving on it the imprints of her enlarged knuckles covering it with a fresh worn towel for modesty to 'protect it from drafts' which meant delaying the intense excitement of moving the rag rug to lever open the trap door allowing the earthy smells of dried apples and must to rise up in a thin film she would need to clean however invisible it was the naked eyes! The slow drizzle of hand churned white butter between my teeth, and eyeing the forbidden sugar dispenser whose use was so closely monitored being one of the items the farm could not produce monitored by my mother expecting me to vindicate her arrival and yet humiliate her because of her lack of control like the weather was monitored by the men and women who stepped outdoors expecting and resenting what was- or what was lacked equally.
13 I remember the way my mother stopped looking at my grandmother when was ready to take her leave. It was a sign, one I was slapped for reading aloud. I noticed she didn't glare at my grandmother the way she did me and when I notice she doesn't glare when I look at her I anticipate that her time of departure is near I mustn't show my excitement I must curtail my relief, I mustn't show how important this respite is or she will deny me even though it means she will deny herself for she will remember with stunning clarity no matter how long my tenuous time here.... in Fallon, on my Grandparent's ranch. Then she finally looks at me and I am sure more in awe of the soft spoken Matriarch than the last time I was here as a mere child.
14 Everywhere my Mother walks people fall back, Everywhere my Mother walks she is the source of power the unchallenged and highly sensitive litmus paper for the instant determination of right, of wrong, of what must be, of what is intolerable in this she is sovereign ~ everywhere else. The upraised arm, appeased, applied too, the dispenser of ultimate Justice and worldly knowledge ~ indeed it seems there is nothing she doesn't know Everywhere my Mother walks except in her aging mother's kitchen, seated at the red and white checkered oil cloth near enough the lard can on the stove to smell it as home grown and slaughter pork is fried as bead bakes and freshly culled eggs sizzle and crisp around the edges yet to be cut through by the side of a fork where Grace is said before a meal not after in this she is sovereign ~ here Nancy sits quietly acting as if she hopes her mother won't speak its time to go \ what's left to be said? The explanations have been given the rationalizations accepted at face value they sit or stand in separate parts of the room dominating the space around them and I hunch my shoulders and try to eat without making enough noise to alert either one of them to my continued presence in the no-man's land between them.
15 Here I may not watch cowboys and Indians Grandfather is Miwok Grandmother is adamant they're false tales 'shoot'em ups' unworthy of the time indulged them. nor Howdy Doody or Captain Kangaroo, even Bennie and Cecil the Seasick sea serpent who are "Anti-Semitic" though Big Ed indulges me at home. Television has arrived on the western sage it purports to represent but these are farmers and ranchers with radios that also provide weather news and local gossip on cow cuds and beef hides its a small box reserved for a Saturday Night since Sunday morning will be spent on a hard wood pew in proper repentance for thoughts not allowed time to settle as the Pastor hails down fire and brimstone with more fervor that God used on Sodom and Gomorrah! I'm too sick to walk beside A Man Walking, but oh... how I long too!
16 Since I am sick, my chores are light but I come to loathe the broody hens and their sharp beaks don't they remember I came here yesterday? Or is it because they do? Since I am here because I am sick I'm left alone in the house as Grandmother and Grandfather go about their chores I am as safe in this house as babe in tender loving arms I'll do nothing rash that will jeopardize my time here ~ Nothing! But the empty hours and the empty house wear on me like the need to scratch when I had the measles! I use a dab of crayon on a single page and I cannot bare its lost innocence which infuriates my Grandfather's thrift but it is a cross we both must share he puts it aside for the time when the younger grandchildren are here gladly seizing on any shape on which to draw and I pretend not to see his disappointment in me as Grandmother and Grandfather go about their chores. Sometimes the quiet lulls me sometimes it pokes me in the ribs and taunts me sometime it gives me hours in which to dream and raw and plan the future almost in sight but all this is in silence, a prison, while she is outdoors with he chickens and the irrigation shunts and he is moving the cattle or whispering to horses and when they come in they are so joined, so tired I think they've forgotten me but don't worry. There's no chance of that once I have someone to talk too!
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17 It isn't yet time to walk beside him the fishing creek is far, far away and he cannot carry me on his shoulder that time is passed. I've outgrown that peculiar comfort being on top of the world, an extension of the man I simply call "grandfather" though Nancy bristles and points out he is 'only her step-father' ~ he's the only grandfather I'll ever know! But I have the odd shaped tiles I gather each visit from the mud flats before the milking barn, each visit,
Each grandchild collects the ones they want to use, placing them in a 'magical' shoebox that just happens to appear when its needed most and I build cities, unroofed houses and dreams from the multi-hued, multi-shaped stones and safely nestle within them a child's dreams!
18 Some things are too vivid to remember, and some are too vivid to forget! There was something to the air, dried, sun dried, filled with desiccated odors of immobile objects baked by the relentless sun in summer when nothing moved but the shimmering heat waves and simply by looking away from the narrow strip of paved Country road on the far edge of the horizon one could see the past moving upright between the mounded shapes of burrowing sage individual figures moving in time with the beat of their heart dancing in time with the drums beating with the rhythm of the human heart hunting, prating, laughing, mourning marrying and given in marriage disappearing like the trace of their feet in the scotched shifting sands.
19 There were times when we drove the ice cleft heights and I shivered under the blanket on the back seat the silences were more dreadful than the hurting word and I was too young to strike out as anger demanded wounded pride ready to rebel against them but the lack of words in Fallon differed just as the wind differed and my heart differed when I was free to go outdoors I was swallowed whole by a delicious feel of overwhelming sustenance the vast flat emptiness as far as the eye could see embracing me, calling to me, filling the emptiness nothing challenged me but my next breath while I challenged everything!
20 It seemed to me that the visible buildings were a necessity, push pins to keep the land in place between the vast stretches of Great Emptiness. Gone were the nun's habits, the need for neckties I could scream my rage and fear and no one would hear me but Antelope, jack rabbits, sage hens and scorpions I could dream and no one could forbid me but as I drew in the salt from the air it seemed to dry my lungs and heal my heart small and wounded within in and oh yes, from time to time I took notice of the quiet couple caring for me without hovering without resenting my being there. Like the sage and the ground hogs and the dust I was there because I was there.
21 I remember one day when there were icicles hanging down from the corner of the house as big around as my wrist and I'm not sure why but my Grandfather stayed near that day I simply took it for granted. I think I remember feeling how good it was to be cold when I burned with such a fever inwardly I remember him watching me anxiously concerned that I get back indoors and it seems strange as I look back now since so much of his life was spent outdoors and I remember him frowning in concern while I was laughing. Why does my laughter trouble now when it didn't then?
22 I remember the smell of yeast dough rising and getting to chat with my Grandmother I wish I could remember the sound of her voice what we talked about she'd had so many experiences in life it awed me listening to her with my elbows leaned on the checkerboard oil cloth tamely protesting it was acceptable since I wasn't eating, having to sit up straight just when I was listening to her, the wheeze in my chest and rattling cough diminishing and shadowing me as I fled down the paths her stories lead me past fiords and ghostly Danish galleons sailing with dragons' heads and Viking figures in wet furs past dark lands and dank seas to dreams as ageless as Time belonging to me.
23 The mud clung to our boots, I borrowed Grandfathers as I walked it sometimes clung to the edges threatening to pull them off my feet though I wore several pairs of sock s the air too cold to breath except in slide thin slices the Barn steaming with cow's heat and damp manure the light illuminating the dusty bottoms of spiders webs hung like gray-white chandeliers from the cantilevered roof. Bats restless, birds complaining sleepily, too cold to expose the area covered by wing as they slept with their heads tucked in as the ground's crunch gave way to sticky muck the fresh odor of urine wet tails waiting for the unprepared the while of the milking instruments like hair curlers from the Beauty shop sucking on each teat~ and the cat's tentative meow hello as sleepy as I.
24 Although i was born on my grandmother's kitchen table on a hot day in late July during World War II I thought of myself as Big Ed's daughter and Big Ed worked in the city - so - de facto I was a city girl who lived on the edge of the Watts Distrust where my Dad had been the youngest Police Chief ever while Watts was still a municipality of its own where I knew the strees to walk and the alleys to avoid where the pretty women sometimes came outside to smoke, to laugh, to dream squinted through eyes covered in make-up talking about the dreams they once had and how I should never give up mine no - no matter what - but this was a different world the smells were more visceral implying things you should also avoid where rats scurried and things moved beneath the straw moving it in a way never tolerated by the clean housewives who kept the laws mowed in Watts while I tried to look the other way!
25 Even within the hay barn there was more space than I was comfortable in bearing with spaces large enough to hide a maundering sloop or murderous savages who had to be pirates despite all the 'B' Westerns I inhales since Big Ed and my Grandfather were Native American and 'Indian' was just the mixed portrayal who grunted at the White Man on celluloid and spoke of The Happy Hunting Grounds I remember the stars were still thickly clustered close to the ground as if their weight had tired them during the night and they'd compressed closer and closer under their own weight as if I could run my fingers through them and feel the icy current they gave off this close to dawn.
26 Sometimes I am only one age as I remember although my visits covered many years many of my mother's lovers as fickle as the men she chose and that implies my Grandmother was aging too like my Grandfather but in my memory they are the same they neither bend nor stoop nor share the burdens of age now restricting me but are forever locked in the pleasant environ of the front room, with the fireplace its mantle and its chiming clock My Grandfather seated in the chair between the radio and the fireplace, the smell of his hair tonic clinging to the pillow when he went to bed, the comforting sounds of my grandmother cleaning up the spotless kitchen setting the food containers out for the next morning the wood yielding insects from under the bark as the warmth sunk in and the peace finally lodged inside my heart.
27.
When I was well enough to begin to walk past the corrals I would sometimes be allowed to accompany my Grandfather toward the distant corrals where the beef cows gathered to drink green slime and drizzle it from their muscles, their eyes blanking staring unless we gave them cause to give flight 'dumb animals!' I said once, under my breath. 'They deserve to be eaten!' It was one of the few lectures I can remember my Grandfather believed in teaching by example if you couldn't show it, you shouldn't speak it and though I knew he loved horses best having learned to reach their souls as he did mine and teach the wounded and troubled to trust still he taught me that all reside where the Great Spirit appointed would it be better if they knew their goal in life was to be Ground Beef? It gave me pause. 28 The time I try not to remember was one terrible day when I wanted to die I could see no reason to go on ~ Nancy lied ~ She said Big Ed was dead when he was in a coma my adult's mind warns he wasn't expected to live but my child's heart screams out in rebellion yet ~ he couldn't die! I still needed him! I writhed in fevers and gnashing of teeth and a spirit torn from its host but finding no place to rest and my Grandparents took turns sitting beside my bed the chores got done, the animals got fed, the world turned as often as it needed but all knew was a deep resentment that it did and I hated them for keep me here I wanted to be with Big Ed. Then the fever broke and the truth came out I wonder now if her lover double crossed her for Nancy grieved more at the word that he was alive then the fake tears and wails she protested while he was still alive but I, precious, precious, demanding child never thought to thank any of them! Not even God for answering a child's desperate need.
29. There may have been other visits after that I remember many camping out on the nighttime desert making a U'macha' from sage brush and old blankets then not being able to stay in them because of the heat! But when I remember after this, I am finally involved with A Man Walking to a degree I never remember before I remember the long dirt road we walked side by side we talked His world shoving aside the Catholics and the Jews to present a life integral to the land life breathed from the alkali and distance which he used to cover me as I recovered but the time I remember best was at the creek's edge so clean and shallow unlike the irrigation ditches where we could swim as long as we didn't disturb the mud or the other organic things that grew in the mud and as we sat with willow branches and string linking us to the spirit world he opened up the World of the Spirits his grandfather taught to A Man walking.
30. We needed something to touch to the land, to the water, to the sky lacking in concrete canyons and cemented water ways his voice, thoughtful and low, mine, coming too often to my ear and the silences that slipped between like past generations coming to rest on the damp soil and burnt rocks where we reposed sharing the fragrance of the stream as a thundershower in the distant mountains too far to see or hear swept fresh water sluicing down the mossy mounds defining this portion of the creek bed from that a hundred feet above or a hundred feet alone and I wished I could join the singing waters as they seeped down a slot the machines would have envied instead of pennies nickels dimes and quarters the sunburned essence of open air exploration gratefully returned tot he soothing darkness buried deep below out feet where waters slept until the Thunderbird called them skyward again.
31. That Day That day he risked sharing himself with me despite my disdain for 'common folk' the simple men in bib overalls and dusty pick-up trucks who wore no flashing diamonds on their hands, only feathers woven into clothing wealth worn in copper necklaces and complicated silver patterns health worn in ruddy cheeks and dark, sunburned skin where the white haired men among them worked while the younger man rested in exhaustion where the chants of the ancient ways were shared with a young child's untrained ear and names called the nuns would have condemned as heathen and savagery as Ghosts danced and my heart opened and I allowed A Man walking to take me inside.
32 The day came. He was dying. They lived in a trailer. The wonderful old house scheduled as a strip mall They stayed in one place, as I had and sometimes just being near one another as the air conditioned rattled in protest was to share the worlds they shared with me as a sickly child and I realized they had grown young as I grew old that my shoulders now had the burden to bear In time I would buy a house to repay the days she shared with me while he hunkered down at the nighttime fires in the sky waiting for her to join them so they could continue the rest of the journey together as they had been in life and I caught him smiling as he caught me unawares and I looked up in surprise. " Do you remember the day? "he asked me. in a low voice, illness or privacy, I know not which , you placed your hand in mind and claimed me as Grandfather and I nodded too full for word, this once, as I remembered a lank, sunburned child walking where a feeble, crushed spirit had shuffled and I knew we would walk that road together for the remainder of my life, a willful, stubborn, proud child in pain and a man walking.
The End
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Asia Rachael Cohen
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