Church of the Dog (16 page)

I take the warped cone out of the hole and replace it with a new one. Then I begin to load the greenware. I handle the unfired clay very gently. I keep a fat pinch pot on the shelf. Its weight tells me there is still enough moisture inside that it would blow up in the kiln. I load a few small slab pots and then pick up one of Liz’s vases. It has bold, curvy lines—great lines—but then I notice her vase has a couple extra holes. Dammit. Well, I can’t be manufacturing bongs for kids, so I “accidentally” drop the “vase” and watch it break into pieces. Too bad. I really liked the lines.

When I glance back at Kelli, I can’t believe what I see. She has filled two papers and is working on the third. She has drawn a pregnant woman on each, and each has a small crucifix behind her head. I suppose she’s drawing the Madonna. Her fast strokes have given each woman a lot of life, and yet despite their size, there is still something delicate about them, something vulnerable. I walk over to her but stay a little farther back, and she turns to watch my reaction carefully. Tears well up in my eyes, and I sort of shake my head in disbelief. “Oh my God, Kelli. These are brilliant. These are really brilliant.” I look in her eyes and nod a little.

There is an interesting moment when young people are confronted with their own brilliance. Very few embrace it right away. Most can’t believe they are brilliant, but as they continue to look at the evidence, it gets harder to deny. Then there is a moment when you can see them consider the responsibility that comes with brilliance, and it scares them. They take a step back and want to deny their brilliance for a new reason. Occasionally, young people walk away from their talent at that moment, but most decide to step up. Then there is a final moment where I see relief, relief that they are really good enough, relief that there is something truly unique and special about them. I watch Kelli experience all those moments in the space of ten seconds. She smiles. She is proud of herself. I give her a couple pats on the back of her shoulder before walking back to the kiln.

I wonder about what the Madonna means to her, if that is in fact what she was intending to draw, and I think about how easy it is to underestimate the spiritual depth of teenagers. They can hide those parts of themselves so well. I wonder if Kelli has words for the content of her artwork, but that question is too personal to ask, so I don’t.

I breathe in deeply, holding his favorite shirt, the green and tan flannel one he wore five days out of seven, to my face. Oh, what a relief it is to smell his smell. But just as fast as the relief comes, it is replaced with the feeling of beng kicked in the stomach when I realize it’s just a shirt, not him, and that I won’t ever see him again on Earth. I feel a little panicked today because the smell isn’t as strong as I remember it being a couple weeks ago. I know I’m supposed to give all this away to Goodwill or something, but I just can’t—not yet, anyway. Not as long as his smell still lingers on them.

I confess I took one of his shirts, buttoned it around his pillow, and slept on it the first month after he died. I didn’t change the sheets, either. Then everything began to smell like me, so I went ahead and washed it all.

I wonder how many other widows sit in their closets smelling clothes. Probably more than we’d guess.

My mother didn’t, though. When Dad died, she had his closet cleaned out the next day. It wasn’t that she didn’t love him—I know she loved him passionately. Maybe all the reminders hurt her too much. Or maybe instead of a slow, torturous transition into accepting widowhood, maybe she thought she could have a quick-severing one, get it over with and begin healing. I don’t know. I do know us kids weren’t ready for it, though. Some hadn’t even accepted that Dad wasn’t coming back, and those of us who had weren’t ready to let go. Mom’s willingness to let go of Dad’s things was interpreted by some of my brothers and sisters to mean that she did not love him. I don’t know how they could have thought that. To this day two still haven’t forgiven her. Families go a little nuts after one member dies, don’t you think?

I’m glad no one is here who wants to throw out Earl’s things. I pick out his wedding day suit, take the jacket off the hook, and hold it like a dance partner.

We were married in the summer of 1947. My sisters and I picked flowers that morning to put in the church and to make my bouquet. Mom had made a beautiful two-tier white cake, one small circle sitting right on top of a larger circle, and a single pink rose was stuck into the top of the cake. Simple. Elegant. Our little reception was in the churchyard. There were little children playing tag and friends sitting on blankets enjoying a picnic. John O’Kelly brought his fiddle. First he played a waltz for us, and Earl waltzed me around the churchyard. After that, John picked up the pace, and the others danced. Earl told me decades later that his father had pulled him aside to give him this simple piece of wedding night advice: “If she doesn’t want to do it, don’t do it.” Earl’s father was a man of few words. Earl was so embarrassed! Earl said he passed it on to our son, Sam, when he got married. I laughed.

If you had told me on my wedding day that my future held years of trouble conceiving and that when God finally gave us a child, he would take him back to Heaven early, leaving Earl and me dwelling in a period of sadness so long that we thought we’d died too, if you told me about the horse accident and losing my baby girl, and that one day I’d be sitting here, a widow, smelling my husband’s wedding day suit jacket. . . . If you had told me this, I would have run in the other direction. That is why God doesn’t reveal the future to us before the future becomes the present. Yes, there’s been pain in my life, as there is now, but it’s still been a good life. I’m not sorry to have experienced it. Although there have been times when I thought surely He had, God has never given me more than I could handle. And when I open my eyes, I see God’s signs of renewed life, like a grandson or the crocus blooming or the summer birds returning.

I sit on a cedar chest at the foot of our bed, holding my husband’s jacket and looking out the window for a sign.

I figure I’d better let the housemates know what’s going on. Rob answers, “Oh, Dan! Thank God it’s you! Minda’s talking about marrying some bush pilot named Herb and having us be her bridesmaids, but instead of making us wear matching ugly dresses, she wants us to dress up like the Village People, which I, for one, am relieved about, being that my ankles are hideously thick and I always wanted to wear a headdress—dibs on the Indian! However, I have forbidden her to marry any guy named Herb. I’m sure. Herb? ‘Ooo, Herb, I love it when you touch me like that!’ No, I don’t think so. She deserves better, don’t you think?”

“Hey, Rob? My grandfather died. I’m going to stay here and help out at least through calving season.”

“I’m sorry,” Rob says and stops like he doesn’t know what to say. “Does this mean you’ll be the cowboy in the Village People at Minda’s wedding?”

“I thought you weren’t going to allow her to marry a guy named Herb” is all I can think to reply.

“Right. Hey, are you coming back? Because if you’re not, you know we’ll never be able to recruit another housemate with the house like this. If you don’t come back, the rest of us will have to clean.”

“Don’t panic yet. And for God’s sake, don’t do anything drastic like clean.”

“Today I need a break from grieving,” I tell Mara as she puts another waffle on the iron. I wish it were that easy.

“We could get drunk and bake bread,” she suggests.

“No, that would remind me of . . . um”—I lower my head, a little embarrassed—“a special memory of Earl after your oven christening.” I smile thinking back to how silly he and I were that late afternoon, and then the pain in my chest hits when I realize I’ll never experience anything like that again.

“We could go pick up all your friends at the nursing home and go sing karaoke.”

She’s trying to make me laugh. I can just imagine Bertha and Madeline making their way to the stage, Bertha with her oxygen tank and Madeline with her walker. Together they sing “Walkin’ After Midnight” by Patsy Cline as if either of them could possibly go walking after midnight.

“Well, a change of scenery will probably be necessary to foster a really strong sense of denial,” she says.

And that’s when it comes to me. “Mara, there used to be a hot spring in the southeast corner of the ranch somewhere. Earl used to take me there when we were newlyweds. I don’t know if I’ll be able to find it, but I’d like to try. I haven’t been on a horseback ride that long in decades, so I might need to turn back.”

“That’s okay. We’ll go on an adventure.”

For the last four days the temperatures have been in the forties and fifties. Most of the snow is gone.

Mara has insisted that if we are going to wander around, we need to dress up like gypsies, so we are wearing scarves on our heads and her big, clunky, silver Pakistani jewelry. Her new thoroughbred, Solstice, is decked out in a bareback pad she recovered in velvet and tassels. My horse, Winter, looks much more western, like me from my neck down. Harvey and Zeus are both wearing paisley scarves.

The warm wind blowing up from the south feels comforting. When it hits my face just right, it reminds me of feeling Earl’s cheek next to mine when we danced close. I close my eyes and indulge in memories.

When I open them, Mara says, “I love the wind, too. I always think of the Hopi, who believe February winds carry the spirits down from the mountains, back to the village mesas to bring life back, to bring spring.”

Funny that we both were thinking of spirits and wind, but in such different ways.

Around noon the winds get stronger and stronger. I see clouds coming in on them, so if we don’t want to be drenched in deadly forty-degree rain, we need to turn around now.

Mara gets off her horse, stands with her arms open wide, and completely leans into the wind. She smiles, eyes closed, and shouts, “Edith! You should check this out!” From time to time the wind gusts blow her back a step. Zeus stands next to her, his jaw moving up and down like it does when he hangs his head out the passenger side of her truck.

“I’m afraid if I get off this horse, I’ll never be able to get back on again!” Watching the spirits in the wind hold up her whole weight reminds me that it’s okay to lean on things I can feel but not see, like God and my Angels. It also reminds me something about the beauty of faith.

“I feel like the wind purifies me!” she shouts over the wind. “Like it sweeps anything that clouds my clarity right off me!”

I think about what she just said and picture the wind blowing the dark cloud off my chest. The heavy numbness of the cloud gives way to the sharp, acute pain of clarity. Pain lets you know that you’re alive, I’m told, but then I think if this is what it’s going to feel like to be alive without Earl, I don’t know if I can bear it. I want so badly to hold him in my arms again, to smell his smell, to hear his voice. I keep picturing the wind sweeping the clouds off me and become aware that I’ve been crying hard for I don’t know how long when Mara stands at my side, rests her head on my thigh, and puts her arm around my hips. My body collapses over her head to rest on Winter’s neck as I sob my seemingly endless tears.

“Hey, why don’t you ride with me and look for the hot springs your grandmother and I tried to find yesterday?” Mara asks me.

At first I try to think of some reason not to, but then I wonder why I’m doing that. “Sure, okay,” I say, and go back to the house to grab my hat and camera.

We saddle up the horses without saying much but a few comments about the weather. She lets Harvey out of his pen. We mount and head off to the southeast, weaving our way through the sagebrush, dog and hog following behind us.

Her horse spooks several times and jumps sideways, throwing Mara off balance. I’m glad she’s wearing a helmet. “Your horse seems like a disaster waiting to happen,” I say.

“Yeah. He’s afraid of places where the grass changes color, white rocks, litter, mud puddles, and stumps, not to mention grouse and deer. Fortunately, Zeus and Harvey seem to flush out most of the wildlife before Solstice gets there. Maybe that’s why he seems to feel a little safer when they’re out in front. If they ever roam behind a sage bush or something, he just stops and frantically looks for them.”

“In fairness to him, the grouse scare me sometimes, too,” I say.

“Yeah, they do jump out of nowhere, flapping like crazy. I have this fear that one will get a leg or a wing caught in one of my braids, and I’ll have this crazy flapping bird tethered to my head.”

I chuckle. It’s a funny picture.

We pass some coyote kill, a young deer with its stomach cavity completely eaten out. Mara looks sad.

“During calving season it’s war with those guys,” I say.

“Dead deer?” she asks, confused.

“Coyotes,” I say.

She looks at Zeus. He smells the carcass, runs over, and rolls in it. Then he picks up a leg and runs with it, excitedly.

“He’s not sleeping on my bed tonight,” she says.

“You let him sleep on your bed?”

“It’s like being tucked in all night—tightly sealed, no drafts. Keeps me warm.”

“Wait until tick season. The first time you find a tick in your bed, you’ll change your mind real fast.”

“Ew,” she says.

From the bluff we ended up on, we can see steam from a gulch below. We skirt the edge and look for the easiest way down.

“This looks like a fabulous place for a wreck,” she says and dismounts. She clips a lead rope to Solstice’s halter and slips the bridle off his head. “If he freaks out and I have to let go, you’ll give me a ride back, right?” she only half-jokes.

“It’ll cost you,” I say.

As we get closer, I catch a whiff of that rotten-egg sulfur smell and dismount. “Water your horse?” I offer. She hands me the rope. I walk to the stream with the horses, followed by the dog and hog, while she investigates the springs.