Evening
The September fires in California have left their legacy in color and smoke. The setting sun is afire as it makes way west across a deep purple sky. The massive star is veiled in bloodred and aged amber and it leads me on as I drive Blue Diamond highway. This is my Magen David Adom, my calling out of the east, my Bethlehem Star. For I am winding west from Las Vegas to join a fellowship of men who share with me a passion and a need. We the few, we the fortunate. And I the luckiest of all.
The final spark of sun sinks down into the red hills of Nevada Southern. A weary traveler flashes his headlights in my direction, telling me it’s time to ignite my own. I turn the dial and watch as the road barely illuminates afore me. This will become my gauge as the day wanes and the cast light from my speeding vehicle warms the hot asphalt and cries the coming night. And the night comes, all the same if unannounced and unnoticed. All the same as if this world knew not of us. The night does not await invitation. So with the final heavy heave of the day’s last breath the night comes encompass.
In the desert darkness I pass Pahrump. The first building a dramatic and spired castle at the first signaled intersection. It is a storied gentlemen’s club, as if Cinderella’s bawdy step-sisters flew from the family manor and hung out a shingle on the dusty desert highway. A place to rescue the fair lass, or become the dragon itself, or simply sit in the back and sip of the cask and watch the maidens dance. A place of kings and subjects and nothing betwixt. A garrison of the rulers and the ruled. Past this stalks a terribly large casino with a full parking lot. Waiting in ambush and licking its chops at the smell of tourist car exhaust. A few filling stations and fastfood stops complete the scene amid the small residential zoning, and at last a welcome site comes into view in the sable night. A radio tower on the lefthand side. And 20 feet past this is the crux in my journey; the road leading to the Death Valley, yet for me a valley of life.
The domiciles, ranging from absurdly abundant to hovel and rattrap, slowly sparge and cease to be as I follow the now moonlit black river of tar sweeping across the sand and sagebrush. The small two-lane vein delivers lifegiving blood to the small desert towns in the form of the occasional car. Yet as I travel I count no others on the highway with me. I weigh the chances of this absence being very good or very bad, and am satisfied that the answer could not affect the outcome of my cause. For I come to find something that does not oscillate with the seasons, or fly south for the winter, or hibernate to escape the harsh reality of the cycle of life. And the game I chase cannot be harvested with gun or bow and demands not license or regulation or opening day. I chase the heart of man across the badland nadir, under the zenith of the waning September moon. A most elusive prey.
I arrive at the crossroads and follow the darkness into the northwest. A grandoise hotel, the only lighted structure amid the vast void of night, shines from miles hence. A lighthouse to the weary searcher, calling calm and rest. The Longstreets Inn is large and clean. An oasis erupts from the barren waste and cools the breeze off the manmade pond. In the parkinglot I take my pistolbag and shotgun case with me, not trusting the Mojave solitude’s frequent detention centers and cheap tin locks of my cheap tin car.
I received the room number via textmessage a day before and already have the four digit address memorized and catalogued alongside my birthyear and wedding anniversary. Walking down the hall I hear distant laughter from a familiar voice, which ushers me to the only occupied room. As I stand before the closed door I take a deep breath and close my eyes for the moment, attempting to catch it offguard and preserve it in formaldehyde like a collection of snakerattles I had as a child. I want to remember this moment. When I was invited into the company of men.
I knock on the door and am greeted by a camouflaged Jason, unrecognizable not only due to his headtotoe Mossy Oak but mostly his unrevealed sentiment. I notice his smile immediately and note the surprise it gives me to see him wear it with such brash abandon. And it strikes me as hilarious to be wearing one’s own metaphor. We are a long way from the galley and dishpit and cramped café we have come to call home. I look Jason in the eye and laugh at this hidden semblance. As if the last 2 years of working together had been a carefully crafted guise, ingeniously executed and longstoried in its practice. In my heart I have crossed the ramparts and met the aged P and am dining with whimsical Wemmick, far from Jaggers’ judging eye. We are two different men here, and I introduce myself for the first time, elated to meet a new friend. It is magic. A redsunned summons to the west.
The room holds much more than two double beds and a coffee maker on the bathroom sink. Giant igloo icechests litter the floor like bloated and beached seals, freshly decapitated and washing up with the rising tide. There is neither rhyme nor reason to their placement: each full cooler is left in the middle of the walkway, as stormtossed seas had thrown them onto a beach with galeforce and indifference. The dresser against the wall had been turned into a bartop with every sort of booze vareital from every drunk and distant land. Russian vodka, Irish whisky, Kentucky bourbon, English gin, Dutch liqueur. In the bloated coolers are cans of midwestern beer and cans of classic coke, drowning in an antarctic slurry of ice and bottled water. The TV is off and cigar smoke plumes from the open sliding-glass door. Jason takes me out to the shortgated patio and introduces me around to the six or seven men who sit smoking cigars in the September air, the squalid moon reflecting off the cement bottomed duckpond; the gateway to a vast valley of dove and dairy.
We sit talking in the leading evening. Story after story of deerhunting and gunsmoke fill the atmosphere around us and mingle with the sweet scented fume and ash of exotic tobacco. I realize this tiny desert deck feels strangely akin to a small mountain cabin. And so the air is filled with laughter and adventure as men born long before I recall better days and greedy dreams and lives well lived under woodenroof and starlit sky alike. One by one the men, satisfied with drink and smoke and conversation, leave the cluttered patio and retire for the night. Only Jason and I and his uncle and brother are up past eleven, and we plot a plan to heat frostbitten burritos without the aid of the missing microwave. Eventually hunger wins the war and we feast on cold fare consisting of soggy bean and cheese burritos submerged in bottled salsa and homemade guacamole, each saucebog buried under a heaping mound of shredded cheddar cheese. We all concur frozen burritos are best served still frozen. At length Uncle Dale and Jordan head to their respective rooms to sleep the wee hours and rise to hunt the dawn. Jason and I talk a bit from the separate beds while watching bits of Conan and Kilborn and dreaming aloud of the morning hunt to come.
I turn out the cheap lamplight and turn in to slumber, but not before kneeling at the edge of the bed and, with my face pressed to the cheap sateen comforter and leaving an impression like the shroud of Turin, I utter a thanksgiving for the safety, the opportunity, and the vast and wonderful world around.
Morning
The sun comes over the eastern horizon and lights the desert night. As a fire chases frost, so our faces are warmed and we are given sight and life. I follow close to Jason’s car and eagerly eat the dust as we turn from the paved highroad onto the hunting grounds of the desert dairy. It is now seven thirty, and as we wind down the earthen path I smell feed and seed and cattle. My window is open and I breathe deep the chances and joy of the hunt to come. Suddenly I see Jason’s hand point to the south as a flash of fur crosses in front of our bantam caravan. A meager coyote with a rakish grin looks back as it runs through creosote and cactus, laughter in it’s eyes shines in the earlysun and in this glimpse we share the same joy. For today I stalk and hope and strike. Today I boast and laugh.
We park on the westside of the tin shelters and gather around in a huddle. Strapping on gamepouches and loading magazines Jason calls the play. We walk from the coolshade into the bright morning and take our charges by the rusting roofpillars. Jason explains that dove clump objects together and do not distinguish different shapes within the general confines of the clumped objects themselves. So I stand with my back attached to the red roofpole and wait for the first offerings of September. And wait. Uncle Dale spots a dove on the wire behind the sheds and Jason goes to call. I venture out between buildings and Uncle Dale meets me there. He hands me a stogie and we have a smoke. The smell of the cigarillos is branded to this memory and I inhale this moment in the morning sun.
We hear two shots from the south and speculate on Jason’s luck. And seeing as there are no flybys, at least not this early, we begin a conversation. Uncle Dale was a schoolteacher for more years than I have laid upon this earth. He tells me of his recent retirement, his gift of a month in Alaska given to him by his friends and family, the sharp longing he feels no longer having his kids to teach. We talk of our favorite books and authors and stories. I soak up each word like rain upon the roots of a parched aspen patch. And I remember, as if I were there now, the summit of our homily among the feedpiles and haystacks. For as much as I owe to Jason for the invitation, Uncle Dale is the reason that I write.
He begins to tell of a mountain scene. Of a crisp autumn day. Of a nostalgia and feeling. Of an acre of heaven hidden upon the earth. There was a field by a stream, and to the west a rocky bluff covered in tree and scree. The sun had alighted behind the westernmost range and was painting the sky a masterpiece of color and contrast. And there upon the top of the rockridge stood, silhouetted against the blazing blue and orange dusk, a relic buck. A token buck. A trophy buck. The man’s eyes widened as he took in the glory of the moment. He stood in the field and staggered at the utter beauty of the portrait. He couldn’t breath yet needed not air in his lungs, as if the grace and pulchritude of the scene could sustain life itself. The air felled gentle across the massive animal and the glowlight of the magic hour luminated the beast and framed the figure among his most cherished memories.
-And if I could put paint to paper in a way pleasing to the eye I would spend my life trying to capture this moment and make it last forever- he tells me. I answer that I too wished the capacity of printpressing the photographs in my mind in such a way as to paint their beauty and share their strength with the world.
-You can- he says, staring me in the eye and speaking to my heart.
–You just use your words instead.-
We hunt the fields and the rushes and the brambles and weeds of the dairy until it is too hot to hope for more dove and walk back to the cars, now parked in the shade of high haystacks by the northgrounds. We share our gamebags and clean the birds on the tossed hay spilt over the dairygrounds, Jason wearing surgeons gloves like a coroner and wielded kitchenshears as if they were iron tinsnips and he a metalmason of old. We return to the inn and pack the room, taking the much mollified icechests to the cars and loading in the weapons until the vehicles look like mobile Mormon militias. As we drive away I feel like David Koresh in a two-door Hyundai Accent, the ATF hot on my trail.
We take lunch at a small Mexican roachcoach cafe placed inside of four cinderblock walls all hung to the rafters with Power Ranger piñatas and Santa Maria de Guadelupe calendars and child’s costumes of longdead luchadores and Spongebob Squarepants . We all order burritos, thawed this time, and sit down for a last supper among the relics and rosaries. I take the check and take no for an answer when it comes to sharing the bill, for my indentureship hails a larger debt than a few plates of food. I owe these men more than I can account for. I have been warrant to the hallowed field. I have been invited and guided and finally tested. And the results are warming even today, long after the expedition has closed and we find ourselves back in our former lives.
I have never met a man like Uncle Dale. Actually, having read over this last statement, I cannot say that. For there have been men in my life who have taken me under their wing and shown me the courses and the best ways to navigate. These men have been my mentors, if only for a moment in time, and all have had a direct hand in helping me to be the man I have become. As each experience has had a shaping effect, so then each teacher must have handled the hammer and chisel, however brief or fleeting, and struck the stone and whittled the rough and helped the final form emerge. But there was something select about Uncle Dale that I cannot escape. Something unique and redletter. For to spend time with him was to be edified and improved and ultimately uplifted to a new plateau: to a new recognition of myself, of my most feral dreams and raging capabilities. In the space of a short conversation, in the breadth of a lull of the dovehunt, Uncle Dale changed a doubting mind into a confident heart. What a master at the forge. He must have been a wonderful teacher. Truly he still is.
