In the Loyal Mountains (6 page)

One afternoon in early August Glenda and I went to the saloon. She lay down on top of a picnic table and looked up at the clouds. She would be going back to Washington in three weeks, she said, and then down to California. Almost all of the men would be off logging in the woods by then, and we would have the whole valley to ourselves. Tom and Nancy had been calling us “the lovebirds” since July, hoping for something to happen—something other than what was, or wasn't, happening—but they'd stopped in August. Glenda was running harder than ever, really improving, so that I was having trouble keeping up with her.

There was no ice left anywhere, no snow, not even in the darkest, coolest parts of the forest, but the lakes and rivers were still ice cold when we waded into them. Glenda continued to press my hand to her breast until I could feel her heart calming, and then almost stopping, as the waters worked on her.

“Don't you ever leave this place,” she said as she watched the clouds. “You've got it really good here.”

I stroked her knee with my fingers, running them along the inside scar. The wind tossed her hair around. She closed her eyes, and though it was hot, there were goose bumps on her tanned legs and arms.

“No, I wouldn't do that,” I said.

I thought about her heart, hammering in her chest after those long runs. At the top of the summit, I'd wonder how anything could ever be so
alive.

 

The afternoon she set fire to the field across the road from my cabin was a still day, windless, and I suppose that Glenda thought it would do no harm—and she was right, though I did not know it then. I was at my window when I saw her out in the field lighting matches, bending down and cupping her hands until a small blaze appeared at her feet. Then she came running across the field.

At first I could hardly believe my eyes. The smoke in front of the fire made it look as if I were seeing something from memory, or something that had happened in another time. The fire seemed to be secondary, even inconsequential. What mattered was that she was running, coming across the field toward my cabin.

I loved to watch her run. I did not know why she had set the fire, and I was very afraid that it might cross the road and burn up my hay barn, even my cabin. But I was not as frightened as I might have been. It was the day before Glenda was going to leave, and mostly I was delighted to see her.

She ran up the steps, pounded on my door, and came inside, breathless, having run a dead sprint all the way. The fire was spreading fast, even without a wind, because the grass was so dry, and red-winged blackbirds were flying out of the grass ahead of it. I could see marsh rabbits and mice scurrying across the road, heading for my yard. It was late in the afternoon, not quite dusk. An elk bounded across the meadow. There was a lot of smoke. Glenda pulled me by the hand, taking me back outside and down the steps, back out toward the fire, toward the pond on the far side of the field. It was a large pond, large enough to protect us, I hoped. We ran hard across the field, and a new wind suddenly picked up, a wind created by the flames. We got to the pond and kicked our shoes off, pulled off our shirts and jeans, and splashed into the water. We waited for the flames to reach us, and then work their way around us.

It was just a grass fire. But the heat was intense as it rushed toward us, blasting our faces with hot wind.

It was terrifying.

We ducked our heads under the water to cool our drying faces and threw water on each others shoulders. Birds flew past us, and grasshoppers dived into the pond with us, where hungry trout rose and snapped at them, swallowing them like corn. It was growing dark and there were flames all around us. We could only wait and see whether the grass was going to burn itself up as it swept past.

“Please, love,” Glenda was saying, and I did not understand at first that she was speaking to me. “Please.”

We had moved out into the deepest part of the pond, chest deep, and kept having to duck beneath the surface because of the heat. Our lips and faces felt scorched. Pieces of ash were floating down to the water like snow. It was not until nightfall that the flames died, leaving just a few orange ones flickering here and there. But the rest of the small field was black and smoldering.

It turned suddenly cold, and we held on to each other tightly, because we were shivering. I thought about luck and about chance. I thought about fears, all the different ones, and the things that could make a person run.

She left at daylight. She would not let me drive her home—she said she wanted to run instead, and she did. Her feet raised puffs of dust in the road.

O
NE DAY
I left the South, fled my job, and ran to the heart of snow, the far Northwest. I live in a cabin with no electricity, and I'm never leaving.

There aren't many people in this valley—twenty-six registered voters—and rather than disliking almost everyone, as I found it so easy to do in the city, I can now take time to love practically everyone.

I have to start small. I have to get it right.

Jody Michaels is sixty years old and lives up in the woods. She takes in stray dogs that come her way. There are more than you'd think: they jump out of the backs of trucks, or run away from home. They strike out for the North.

Jody's is the last cabin they come to before going over into Canada. She keeps a large team of sled dogs—huskies and malamutes, blue-eyed creatures that have so much wolf in them that they don't know how to bark, and can only howl.

When the moon comes up over the mountains that ring our small bowl of a valley like a high fence, all of Jody's dogs begin to howl, a sound that echoes around the valley. Perhaps the wild, strong sled dogs attract the strays. Often we'll see a stray loping down the road, dragging a broken leash, a broken chain—usually a big dog—and it'll be heading north, for Jody's.

She keeps them in a holding pen for one week, puts a note on the blackboard in front of the Mercantile, and calls the vet in Libby, which is due southwest, sixty miles across the snowdrift-covered pass. If no one claims the dog after that week, she does a very odd thing: she hikes to the top of Hensley Mountain with the dog and sits down with it.

You can see the whole valley from the top of Hensley. It's above the tree line, just barely, and the wind whips and gusts, blows your hair into your eyes. Jody must feel a little like God when she's there surveying things.

And she watches that dog too, watches the way it pants, and the way it looks out at the valley and off toward Canada. Jody knows dogs so well that she can tell, up in that blowing wind, if the dog can survive on its own or not. If it can, she'll unclip the dog's leash, take the collar off, and let it go down the mountain into the deep woods that cross over into Canada—she'll let the dog have its wish. But if Jody doesn't find what she's looking for, she'll lead it back to her cabin. Later in the day she'll drive it to the pound, where, almost always, it will be the end of the line for that runaway dog. There is a man in the valley, never mind his name, who for a dollar will take unwanted dogs up the road a ways and gas them or shoot them. Needless to say, Jody does not employ his services.

I am like those stray dogs, and I think Jody is too. Those dogs have run a long way to get here.

 

No one has money in the valley. No one has money even in the little town of Libby. Some of the people who have sled teams rely on road kills to feed their dogs—such large, hungry dogs—and for a fact, you never see a road-killed deer or elk up here. Whenever one of us does strike a deer, instead of leaving it, we load it into the truck (if the truck is still drivable), and head for the Dirty Shame Saloon.

The Dirty Shame sits at the base of Hensley Mountain, which, back in the forties, got a radar dish put on top of it, one of a whole chain of dishes the Air Force had set up along the Northwest's peaks to detect bombers flying over from Russia, the theory being that as we weren't far away—the Russian planes would only have to zip across Alaska, the Yukon, and British Columbia—it would be an easy matter to dive-bomb the valley, riddle the Dirty Shame (which has been here forever) with bullets, and strafe the Mercantile. The radar dish is still there, abandoned, and the lonely dirt road to the top, which seems to lead into the clouds, has long been grown over, crisscrossed with windfall timber and young aspen trees.

One thing from those days did not fall into disrepair, however: the warning siren that was supposed to sound whenever a Russian plane was detected. Handy with tools and electronics, Joe, the owner of the Dirty Shame, decided to hike up there one day and disassemble the siren. He brought it down to the saloon and mounted it on the front porch. Now, every time someone hits a deer and brings it in for barbecuing, Joe shorts the siren's wires with the blade of his pocketknife. Wolves, coyotes, and dogs go crazy when he does that. The siren is so loud that some people in Idaho and Washington can hear it, but because the roads into the valley are in such bad shape, outsiders have no hope of getting here in time for the evening barbecue. Everyone who hears the siren knows what it means.

If its summertime when the wail goes up, we gather at the saloon around six or six-thirty. Jody comes in her little wagon, pulled by huskies and malamutes. There are nearly as many children as there are registered voters, and after the barbecue the whole group of us will dance until the sunlight leaves, which isn't until around midnight. We bring lettuce from our gardens for the barbecue, and fresh-baked bread. Doug, who is not a veterinarian but is good with animals—he sews them up, and people too, after they've been hurt—brings jars of honey from his beehives. Dave brings his banjo, and Janie her fiddle. Young Terjaney has an enormous electric accordion with row upon row of colored flashing lights which once belonged to his father. Old Mr. Terjaney had brought the accordion all the way from Hungary. He kept it strapped to his chest when he played. The sound was magnificent.

Old Mr. Terjaney drank a lot. Along with everything else, we bring homemade beer to the barbecue, made in our cellars during the slow winters, beer that we keep chilled in the river during summer. Old Mr. Terjaney would open one jar after another of the deep amber-colored brew. He'd get out in the road and dance as he played his big one-footed polkas and waltzes. He kept a jar of beer perched on top of the accordion.

One night, near midnight, he spilled his beer. He'd been dancing and playing a polka with his jar wobbling on top of his accordion. The instrument was hot from the good use he'd made of it, and it exploded like fireworks, electrocuting Old Mr. Terjaney right there in the road. We thought he'd done it on purpose—perhaps this was a special function of the instrument when he pressed a certain button. There were so many buttons. We even cheered at first. It's amazing that Joe was able to repair it.

 

If it is snowing when you go out to get wood for your fireplace, tie one end of a rope around your waist and tie the other end to the cabin door. The snow can start coming down so fast and hard that in the short time it takes you to get to the woodshed, you can get lost in a whiteout on your way back. It doesn't sound like it's possible, but it happened to me once. A light snow turned heavy in just seconds, and then became a blizzard. I ended up staying in the woodshed all night waiting for daylight. I felt ridiculous, but not as ridiculous as I would have felt dying within a mile of my cabin, when all I had wanted to do was get a few sticks of wood.

There is some compass in all of us that does not want us to walk a straight line. I respect this, and do not try to challenge it in blizzards.

Sometimes people run out of gas (visitors, not locals) up on the pass, where during the winter traffic can go by only every second or third day, and some of them freeze to death in their cars—traveling without heavy clothes, without sleeping bags in the back—and others freeze in the woods when they get out of their cars and try to walk for help. Everyone up here has CB and shortwave radios in their trucks. You can live in a dangerous place quite easily, but to visit it is another thing.

 

We've got a nice cemetery. There are two cemeteries, actually: one that no one seems to know about, up in the hills above the river, that this kid just found while out walking one day. But the other cemetery, which originally catered mostly to loggers—since they were the ones who used it the most, what with trees falling on them and saws back-bucking and trucks and skidders rolling off cliffs and the like—is now used by everybody, and is majestic.

It's up on Boyd Hill, and you can see the river from it, even through the larch trees, which are centuries old. Two hundred feet tall, they tower like redwoods and have withstood even the biggest fires. They're so huge that eight or ten people holding hands can't encircle them. The larches line all sides of the cemetery's wrought-iron fence, and the air beneath the canopy of trees so high above is a different kind of air, motionless, even when the rest of the woods is windy. Different, too, is the thin light that's able to filter through. Moss grows on the headstones. The shade is cool and smells good. There's a spring nearby, up higher on the mountain.

The timber companies would love to cut the trees around the cemetery—each tree is worth several thousand dollars by itself—but no one starts a chain saw within a mile of the place; it's an unwritten rule.

“Give them a rest for once,” says Mack, the little man who takes care of the cemetery, emptying out old flowers, bringing in new ones. It's not the trees he's talking about.

The names of some of the people in the cemetery, if you can believe the headstones, are Piss-Fir Jim, Windy Joe Griff, and Solo Dog Thompson. There was a hermit buried here in the sixties, an old man who even by valley standards was an outsider. He lived as high up in the mountains as you could get, higher than any deer or elk lived, so hunters rarely saw him. Because no one knew his name, he was called The Hermit on his gravestone.