|
A man I know—let’s just call him Stanley—
grew up on a dairy farm in Idaho, and
straight out of high school went away
to a Lutheran college in Oregon. There
he stayed two years and then went on
to another Lutheran school, this one in Indiana.
That is where I met him and where we became good friends.
From that school Stan earned a bachelor’s degree in 1974.
He went on to spend a semester in a seminary
in Missouri, and why Stan didn’t last longer there, well,
that’s something I’m not sure about. Could’ve had
something to do with doubt. Perhaps Stan would
tell you if you showed an interest.
Not long later Stan was residing contentedly—
or as contentedly as an erstwhile seminarian
might be expected to dwell—in a house
hand-built by his grandfather many decades
prior, on homesteaded ranch land in the north-
eastern corner of Wyoming. The home, three
miles and more from a paved road, and as
far from the nearest neighbor, lacked electricity
and running water—in fact, it lacked a well—but
it boasted a wood-burning cookstove, bright carbide
lighting, a propane refrigerator, and, out a gravel path,
the neatest, nearest to scentless outhouse I have ever
had the honor to sit in. I, a city boy, visited Stanley at his
ranch for a few days in the autumn of the year, when we
were five years out of college.
One crisp, sunny afternoon while I was there,
Stan saddled a pair of quarter horses who hadn’t, he
remarked, carried a rider in many a month. “They’re good
horses. They should be tame enough,” he said, as he drew
a girth strap tight. “They’ll be all right, I think.”
We had seen deer earlier in the day, so
Stan brought along a rifle, in hopes of maybe
harvesting a little pre-season venison. The first
wildlife we encountered though, was a porcupine,
larger, it seemed, than any I’d ever seen as roadkill or ambling
down a road at night. He was standing tall, on two legs, beside a
slender pine. With his forepaws he brought branches to his mouth.
He pretty much ignored us and didn’t abandon his foraging even
when Stan and I rode so close we could hear his munching.
We watched a while and then rode on.
As we crossed a field freshly plowed and planted
in winter wheat, our horses suddenly broke into
a gallop, as if a starter’s shot had sounded.
Hauling hard upon his reins, Stanley hollered “Whoa!”
And again, he hollered. “Whoa, I say whoa! Whoa, whoa,
whoa, whoa, whoooooa, you silly sonofabitch!”
But the horses didn’t slow.
“I am a farmer,” I heard Stan plead.
“I ain’t no goddamn cow-boy!”
His horse (and mine) seemed unimpressed.
And of course Stan lost his grip on the rifle. It
flew from his hand, sailed skyward like a spear,
and descended at last out of the blue Wyoming sky
to stick barrel-down, deep in dark, soft soil.
Meanwhile, I, too, was pulling with one hand on my reins
and gripping with the other hand my saddle’s horn while
trying to stand tall in the stirrups. I wore smooth-soled,
borrowed boots. My Miranda camera, in a rucksack slung behind
me, was thump, thump, thumping against the cantle of my saddle
and thump, thump, thumping on the bones of my lower spine.
Ah, but we were not thrown, my friend and I. The
horses ran out of steam before they ran out of field.
My Miranda’s meter never worked right again, but nothing else
was broken. And that good man, Stan, served beef, not deer, for supper.
♦
|
