The Dog Stars

a long winter both of us knew he would not see. Three cords of maple beech ash yellow birch, cut from his wood-lot on the side of a gentle hill, split and stacked along half of the front porch and around the side, the whole of which —me working while he sat inside—embarrassed him. At first I thought he was crazy. I mean he could have been sitting on his little porch watching the Vermont spring turn into a riotously green and sultry summer for the last time, watched the wrens and larks and owls in the lyrical commerce of breeding and nesting, leaf and air. Got bitten by black flies, gnats, then mosquitoes, on the last exquisite evenings. Why wasn’t he out there on his Dartmouth rocker? Maybe picking on his beat up guitar?

But lying one night in my old bunk under a wide open window listening to a screech owl trying to terrify me with a woman’s screams and only making me happy—the bittersweet cry of undigestible beauty and great impending loss—then it came to me: the obvious epiphany that he was reliving his life. Doh. Slide by slide, picture by picture. He was aggregating memory like a wall against extinction and the little boxes of slides were his bricks.

Up on the ladder in the soft morning, listening to the last pull of fuel gurgle into the wing tank and gauging the time by the sun. Something about that made me think of Pete and his albums leaning into the table in the dim close cabin that smelled of resin and woodsmoke and coffee. Like a man leaning into an incessant wind. Keeping track of things that have no use anymore except as a bulwark against oblivion. Against the darkness of total loss.

Well. I wasn’t going to count the hours. I had a plane full of fuel and good weather and I was going to take off and fly west and see how far I got. I was tightening down the gas cap when I heard a scuff and saw Bangley walking across the ramp. He had a basket on his arm.

I grinned. It was like the old railroad song. Pete sang it. Johnny’s mother came to him with a basket on her arm / She said my darling son / Be careful how you run / Many a man has lost his life just trying to make lost time …

It’s not a pie, he said.

I grinned. Clicked down the cap cover and climbed down.

He handed me the basket, turned to the stepladder and chopped up on the locking struts so it half folded and carried it back to the pump. Inside the basket were six grenades.

Don’t know why I never thought of it before, he said. Working on the launcher got me to thinking.

They lay inside like so many eggs inside a nest. The Egg of Death. Something in a fairy tale I once read and couldn’t remember.

How many mags do you have for the AR?

Four. The big ones.

He nodded.

You got the hand pump?

He meant the pump with long hose I could use to get gas out of an underground tank or any tank. Aside from the extra fuel the thirty feet of hose was my heaviest item. I nodded.

What are you going to do when you run out of gas?

Land.

He nodded. He looked at the Beast, at the mountains. His hands were in his pockets. He was looking west into the light breeze, he said

You been a good partner Hig. A little goofy sometimes.

Oh fuck. My chest constricted thought I was going to—Well.

Like family he said.

I stood there rooted to the tarmac.

I’m not a easy man to get along with. Only ones ever got halfway there were my wife and son. And you. Big Hig.

I think my mouth actually hung open. I blinked at him.

Long story, he said. He smiled the half smile.

Keep your eyes rolling in your head Hig. Situational awareness. Don’t get goofy thinking about the past and let some SOB blindside you. Try and come back.

I stared at him.

I’ll keep the weeds down.

He walked away. I stared after him. Fuckin A.

Fuckin A.

I hand cranked the heavy hose back on its roller and climbed into the Beast, latched the door. Hit the master switch, turned the key in the mags and pushed the starter.

Few sounds in the world as exciting as the exploding catch of a Continental engine firing to life. The first refractory turns of the prop. The roar smoothing out as the prop disappears in the speed of its rotation.

Go fast enough we disappear.

Bounced across the ramp through the lines of wrecked and disintegrating airplanes, turned straightacross the taxiway onto the strip and took off from midfield. Saw Bangley pushing into the door of the house that was his workshop, he didn’t look up.

The Beast is hungry. Pulling at air like an excited horse. I look over: the empty right seat, just Bangley’s egg basket and the quilt with the hunter aiming at the rising pheasant, over and over. Crumpled against the door. Even half deaf and stiff Jasper was a better copilot than most men. All men. That it has come to this: life distilled in a ratty blanket. The shot will never hit, the bird never fall but neither will that hunter ever miss. Or lose anything. His dog will never die.

The biggest hole torn by a mutt.

…thinking about the past let some SOB blindside you…

I fly over. Straight over the Divide. Boulder burned below, the triangular slabs of the Flatirons thrust against the greater mass of the mountains like blank headstones. Prettiest town on earth couldn’t sustain. Mark it. The ski area El Dora scarred with old trails and slopes, the lines of the lifts just below us, can see the empty chairs swinging in the wind. A few bumps, the Beast more than compliant. Sail over the snow saddle. Close enough to see the tracks of a single large animal stringing the ridge. Not possible but. Too high. All of us caught out too high.

Winter Park and the Fraser Valley revealing itself on the other side as we go over. Scores of ski trails tender green against the rust of the dead forests. We used to ski there. The last time Melissa and I split up for a run and I rode next to a big man who said he was here for winter break with a church group from Nebraska. Nondenominational.

We just follow the Bible word for word he said. Word for word you can’t go wrong. Shook his head nice smile. I’d be crazy to disbelieve him.

I thought of stones in a river, rock hopping. One rock to the next, nothing to think about. Word for word. Just follow them, man. Breadcrumbs right to God. Sitting the chair next to him, our skis dangling over sixty feet of air, I thought Maybe there is a different translation for meek. Maybe it’s not the meek who inherit, maybe it is the simple. Not will inherit the earth, they already own it.

I told him I always got stuck at the Begats. I said I had just read Lamentations though and it seemed like Mad Max. I mean women eating their babies, everybody dying.

He didn’t laugh.

He said, I try to stay on the Right Side of the Bible. Left side was written by Jews. Some things to pay attention to, I guess, but if I were you I’d start with John.

We should have all paid more attention to the Left Side I am thinking now. The Wrong Side, the Side Where Shit Goes Really Really Wrong.

Drop down and follow the Fraser past Tabernash. Most of the valley burned except the firehouse and the discount liquor store which now stands alone at the edge of a field full of bighorn sheep. They rouse, swing and trot in a panic toward the blackened forest as I pass and I see four wolves standing out of the grass and they turn them back like sheepdogs. Fly on.

I know this country all of it. Doc Ammons, I can see his barn still standing in a hundred open acres this side