Gloryland (28 page)

Usually trees were all you heard out there. I remember a particular red fir at one campsite cause the campfire light playing over it made it look like a skinny old man with long black fingers reaching out over you, like he was wondering if he should grab hold of you or just pretend enough so you could never relax. That was one night at Reds Meadow, the tree creaking away as we sat round a fire, thinking like I been thinking, letting the fire do all the talking, until Corporal Bingham said, “Hey, Sergeant, what you say you goin to do when you leave the army?”

I was down so long in myself that his voice sounded far away and broken up by the wind. When I looked up at him it was like I was rising out of black water.

“Well, Corporal,” I said, “I been thinkin bout that a long time, considerin this and that, and to be honest, I think I might try livin for a change. Cause I ain’t ever done that, and I seen a lot of other folks doin it so I figure I better give it a try before I die.”

I hoped that was enough to keep him quiet for a minute or so. I kind of liked the blackness I was in, just me and the fire and thinking and not saying. I kind of liked the feeling I was having just then by the fire.

Bingham just laughed down low when he heard me, sort of a complaining sound like a waterfall grumbling bout how far it had to fall through air just to feel ground again.

“But Sergeant,” he said, “ain’t you livin right now? No one’s tellin you this or that, you in charge here right now, no officers, just me and McAllista . . . McAlliser . . . McAww, aw, damn, boy, I just can’t say your name right!”

Across from him was Private McAllister, peering down into the fire like I’d been doing. Bingham couldn’t do anything but talk, talk, talk, and McAllister obviously didn’t want any of that. He wanted to do nothing, which is what he’d been doing ever since we got here, a whole lot of nothing, and there ain’t anything wrong with that after a day’s ride through a place big enough to make you feel like
you
were nothing.

“Bingham,” McAllister mumbled softly, like he was drunk, “you known me a long time, long enough for you to get my name right, so if you can’t say it, just say you sorry and be done wid it!”

It really quieted then, except for the fire talking. Bingham’s eyes got so chilly they got frost in them, and then it melted and he began to laugh, but that laugh seemed to rise up from something cold inside him, cause I don’t think he felt there was anything funny in what the private said. But what was he going to do? Bingham needed McAllister. McAllister needed Bingham. I needed both of
those fools, and they needed me, cause what was all around us sure as hell didn’t need any of us.

“You funny!” said Bingham finally. “You know I didn’t mean anythin, I was just foolin. I mean, look at us, all sittin here like we’re about to die, heads hangin down like men before the gallows, and here’s the sergeant sayin he don’t know what it’s like to live. If this ain’t livin, then what is? We got a fire to keep us warm, plenty of food, shelter. Now, what I don’t have is a woman! Maybe that’s what the sergeant needs.”

“Bingham,” I said to him, “you don’t know me, you don’t even know yourself. If you need a woman to feel alive, then part of you’s already dead. I’m not talkin bout bein lonely, I’m talkin bout bein alone. You know how long it’s been since any of us was alone, really alone out here like there was no one else anywhere, that kind of alone?

“We never got a chance to figure out who we are back at the Presidio or any other garrison, cause there’s always too much going on and too many people doin it. What you need to figure out is all this . . .”

I stretched out my arms like I was trying to hold the sky. What I wanted to say was how “all this” wasn’t just scenery. It was medicine. But I couldn’t find what I wanted to say right then cause I was so angry. I let my arms fall.

“Look at McAllister here,” is what I said. “He don’t talk much, but he’s thinkin all the time, so he might be lonely but he’s never alone. The army tells you you’re stronger when your troop is around you, that you’re weak when you’re by yourself. But if you’re never by yourself, you can’t hear yourself think, and that’s what they want. They don’t want you to think, just follow orders, but out here there ain’t no officers givin orders. There ain’t no one but us and this!”

And I stood up with my arms raised into the dark, feeling my breath going out and my heart beating fast, angry not really at Bingham but at everything I was feeling and couldn’t get across to him. Maybe I couldn’t even get it across to myself. Sometimes you feel
what you feel but you don’t know why. There was nothing wrong with what Bingham was saying, but I couldn’t hear what was right in it either. I was just too mad, and the anger wouldn’t let me stop talking.

“Bingham,” I tried again. “There ain’t no one else round us for miles and miles. These trees here, these red firs and lodgepole pines, they don’t care bout your small talk, they’re listenin to God all the time. If you’d listen to what they’re sayin and you understood any of it, you’d see that you need more than a woman, you need all this too, all these mountains and forests and that sweet sweat comin off of them.

“Sure, a woman just makes it all better, ain’t nothin wrong with a woman, but why would a woman want somebody that don’t know who he is? You don’t stop talkin long enough to hear your own name, Bingham, and it’s a shame, cause right now somethin’s talkin to you, tellin you somethin you need to hear. And I don’t mean me. I mean everything round us, and you don’t even hear it. Far as women go, if you really want a woman, the next time you find yourself in the company of one, you might try just bein real quiet and listenin to what she has to say. That, my brother, is how you get a woman!”

I finally stopped. I didn’t really understand why I was so angry, so how could it be clear to anyone else? Bingham hadn’t done or said anything different from any other time. I guess I could’ve gotten down on him cause here he was talking bout women, and he had a wife back in New Orleans. But plenty of soldiers had wives they never knew when they’d see again, if they ever would. So I could let that go. Maybe I was mad cause this night round this fire I’d felt something I hadn’t felt in a long time, and I didn’t want to spoil it with wanting this or that. There’s too much wanting, and I’d had enough of not getting enough.

What I realized was how much I needed silence, needed it more than just about anything. I needed a place where I could think, slow down all the shit moving through my head, the shit that happens to
anyone, the shit that makes you feel like shit. But it’s the same shit you put over a field in the hope that something sweet will grow out of days and nights like shit.

I slowly sat down and took a deep breath. No one had left. Bingham was glaring into the fire, the palms of his hands colored red by the blaze as he tried to grab hold of the heat. McAllister was looking at me strangely, like I’d finally said something he found interesting.

“Let me tell you something else, Bingham.” I tried to talk slow so maybe some of it would get through. “One day you’re goin to forget what I’ve been sayin tonight, forget how you’re feelin, how you’re hungry for a woman, but what you’ll never forget is the sound out there when you lie down on your bedroll, the sound of these mountains, the quiet. Cause it’s not like an empty room, it’s a different quiet, like when someone dies near you or when the sun goes down, that kind.

“And every day you been here, and every night, somethin else has been here too, and it may or may not be God, but it’s holy, I tell you that, and it’s what McAllister and I been listenin to all this time we been sittin round this fire. There’ll come a time when this sorta quiet is hard to find except in a coffin, but we’re alive now, and it’s everywhere round us, and maybe if you stopped talkin now and then, you’d hear it. I know you’re not listenin to me, but some part of you been listenin to these mountains ever since we got here. And one day before you die, Bingham, you goin to start payin attention.”

Bingham’s eyes were wide open and bright with fire. McAllister kept staring down into the smoke and flame with his hands out, raising and lowering his fingers as if he was playing the fire like an instrument, like music was coming out of it.

Bingham looked up from the fire then, into my eyes. “Sergeant,” he said quietly, “Elijah, you’ve had your say, and now I’m gonna have mine. Those stripes don’t give you the right to talk to me like I’m your boy, cause I ain’t. I’m a grown man, maybe more grown than you. I feel what’s out here, all right. I see the sun come up and go
down every day. I feel the wind on my face, just like you, and I know these mountains are alive. You’d have to be a fool, bein out here like we been and not knowin that, and my mother didn’t raise a fool.

“I see what you see and hear it too, Elijah, I just don’t want to do those things alone. None of it matters if you ain’t got a woman. What’s the point? I could talk to God, but the conversation’s a bit one-sided for my taste.”

He paused, then looked at me again, considering, then grinned.

“You know, Sergeant,” he went on, “there are other days to the week than Sunday. You seem to be all in love with Sunday, and I like it fine too. Where I come from Sunday meant somethin good to eat, so good it was sinful! But there are other days to the week, and nights at the end of ’em. Sunday’s a fine thing, but it don’t last for six days, especially not in New Orleans.

“When we get back to San Francisco, Elijah, I’m gonna introduce you to Friday night or Saturday night. Me and McAllister’ll introduce you to some woman who’ll make you forget what those trees are sayin to you, at least for a night. Yeah, you’ll be talkin all right, talkin all night long, and she’ll be talkin too, but the words don’t matter when you’re talkin to a woman that way. And that, Sergeant, is the kinda conversation that’ll really bring you close to God!”

I just stared at him, hearing the truth in his words. There’s more to any man or woman than just their thoughts and ideas. There’s also a body that needs to know it’s alive. I heard him, but I didn’t think he heard what I was really trying to say to him, so I made one more try.

Meanwhile, McAllister just kept his seat, staring at me and then at Bingham, with a funny smile on his lips. He seemed to be enjoying this now.

“Bingham,” I whispered, just louder than the crackling of the fire, “one day I’m goin to find a woman who will be my wife. You hear what I’m sayin? I’m not talkin bout a woman for Friday night or Saturday night, but for the rest of my life. And when that happens, I
will be a happy man and maybe easier to get along with, but that day hasn’t come. Meanwhile I’ll go wherever you want in San Francisco, but that’s not where I’m goin to find the woman I’m talkin bout.

“And while we’re still up here, I just want you to pay attention to what’s here instead of what you think you’re missin. Cause it’ll make you a better soldier in a way the regulations don’t measure.

“Think about this.” I was addressing both Bingham and McAllister now. “There ain’t nothin out in this night that’s goin to call any of us nigger. These red firs don’t care who we are or what we are. These mountains don’t even know we’re here. It don’t matter to the ground under us if we live or die, don’t matter at all, and that’s good.

“Round this fire, round any fire, none of what happened before we got here matters no more. There ain’t no hate in this forest, and there ain’t no love either. But there’s somethin else. There’s this fire warmin us, and us listenin or tryin to listen, tryin to understand, tryin to make sense of nothin at all. That’s what I’m doin here, tryin to make sense of nothin at all.”

And I remember the wind rose, taking my last words away into the dark, taking them so fast I don’t think Bingham had a chance to hear them before they were gone, red sparks that left no trail. The wind took my voice and the look in Bingham’s eyes, but it couldn’t take away the light of that campfire. It’s burning still, as fires often do for months, hidden below the ground, below Reds Meadow or deep inside a man’s bones, smoking the marrow of McAllister and Bingham and flickering inside me, those fires still burn.