Church of the Dog (23 page)

“You know, Ms. O’Shaunnessey, I have this recurring dream where I’m in my room, and I can’t turn on the lights and I can’t open the door. I feel freaked out, but I know if I just go back to bed, everything will be okay,” Kate tells me during one of our dream conversations.

I pull her aside and say quietly but with a smile, “You’re traveling. Next time, look behind you for a silver cord that attaches you to your body. If you see it, you don’t need to open the door, girl, ’cause you can go anywhere you want. It’s fun. Explore it.”

She looks at me like I’m nuts but seems interested.

“I go all over the place,” I tell her and then walk off.

I remember when I was very little and first became aware that I was traveling. I’d clean my fingernails really well before bed every night. I was thinking that if there was dirt in them the next morning, it would prove I had gone somewhere. I don’t remember if I ever found any dirt. Isn’t that a funny thing for a little kid to do?

About fifty people show up at the library to see my black-and-white photographs. The place where we crashed. The tailpipe. The old Ford. The church. The footbridge I hid under. Dawson, the police officer. Their graves. The ceiling of my bedroom. Their portraits hanging in the hall. Some photos of me being whipped around by a bull, then thrown. Then phase two: portraits of my grandparents, the church, Father McCleary, their fresh graves, me being scooped up by the horns of a bull, me airborne, me being crushed by the bull, a look of pain and surrender on my face under his hooves. I call my show “Images from an Orphan.”

Whitey is dressed up for the occasion in his blue cowboy jacket and lapis bolo tie. I approach him from behind and stand next to him. He peers at me below his deeply hooded eyelids. “ ‘Images from an Orphan,’ huh? Is that what you really think you are? You fool. You ought to take a picture of everyone in this room”—he points around—“of everyone in this blessed town and hang them up and call them Family Portraits. You ought to have pictures of me distracting that bull before he ran you over.” He stares me down for a minute, clearly disgruntled. “Going on pretending you’re a dagblame orphan when all these people raised you, when I raised you.” His eyes water just a little. “What are you trying to tell me? I’m not family?” He turns and walks out.

And it hits me what I’ve done. “Whitey,” I call after him apologetically. He just swats his hand backwards, without turning around, in a motion of complete disgust, as if trying to shoo me away.

summer

I want to do a tribute to Edith. I want to do a tribute to our Lady Godiva runs.

Everywhere you go out here there is metal junk just rusting in people’s rangelands. It’s junk to most people, but to me it’s art waiting to happen. How would I know about all this metal junk, you ask? I confess I am a trespasser. I like to explore, sometimes naked, and I like the unlawful act of trespassing just for the thrill of being naughty—well, that and my belief that no one really owns the land. They only agree legally to take care of it. Some of them are doing a mighty poor job, I might add. Anyway, I figure my trespassing doesn’t hurt anyone.

Lately, the thrill of trespassing has proven not to be enough. That metal calls to me. It wants to be art. It wants to be my tribute to Edith. I don’t want to haul it anywhere. See where I’m going with this? Doing the art on-site seems appropriate for the person and the act I am paying tribute to.

It’s the week of the summer solstice, and the moon is full. I’m caught up in the freedom of summer.

I pack my headlamp, a small propane torch, two extra tanks of propane, solder, flux, a pad of steel wool, a saw, wire clippers, a metal awl, a hammer, pliers, and a camera. I put it all in a saddlebag on Solstice and mount up. I plan to make these creations near the path Edith and I used to ride into town. I ride out through the golden grass, through a field of alfalfa, purple blossoms sitting atop rich green stems and leaves, and back into the golden grass again.

Site one is the smallest metal scatter but the closest. I assemble chunks of metal together to suggest a voluptuous woman form with one foot slightly forward and her upper body leaning back. Her arms are up, with palms facing the sky. I clip some barbed wire that had been lying on the ground nearby and use it for strands of her hair. I use bullet casings for a necklace. I photograph my masterpiece, pick up, pack up, mount up, and gallop across two small ridges to site two.

Site two is a large metal scatter from a tractor breakdown. Over the next three and a half hours I transform it into a woman on a horse. I must tell you that designing this so it will balance, even in strong winds, is no easy feat. I’m not really counting on these sculptures lasting very long. Propane isn’t the ideal way to go, and the metal is rusty. That is why I’m photographing them.

By now it’s much lighter than I anticipated. I fear someone will see me leave the area, and my art will no longer be anonymous. But before I go, I take a photograph, pause, and look at it. I think I hear Edith laugh. I go home in a roundabout way and fall into bed.

The rest of my week goes much like this at night except that due to travel time I usually can do only one sculpture a night. By the end of the week I’ve completed ten. All the sculptures are women or horses, though one is of a woman and a man waltzing. Even though I don’t expect them to last long, I hope before they fall some ranchers will find my sculptures and be surprised and amused by the fruits of my deviance. They won’t recognize the sculptures as Edith, but they’ll be touched by the spirit of the sculptures, and that spirit is Edith.

Minda and I took four trips to the dump in Valdez and now face the kitchen in our rain gear and ventilators. “I think we should take the refrigerator outside before we clean it,” she proposes, “since the EPA has declared it a level five biohazard. We don’t want to turn those microbes loose in the house!” We rock the fridge back and forth, inching it out to the back porch.

“You know, I think we should just take it to the dump,” I say. “Who knows what kind of bleach-resistant strain of E. coli might be in there? You guys could die. I don’t want that tragedy on my hands. I think you guys should pick up a used one for ninety bucks and not take the risk.”

“Hm. You’re probably right.” We rock the fridge onto a dolly, roll it over to my truck, and load it on its side. We return to the house. “Is anything eating through the grease on the walls?” Minda has test patches on the kitchen walls for 409, Citrisolve, and oven cleaner.

“Nothing yet,” I reply. “Maybe it just needs more time.”

“Hey, what about S.O.S. pads?”

“You want to S.O.S. the kitchen walls?”

“We’re going to have to scrub them anyway.” She surrenders to the kitchen. We moisten our S.O.S. pads and start scrubbing.

“I wish Gopher was here,” she says with a sigh. Since Rob is back working on cruise ships, Minda has started in with the
Love Boat
references. “He would know what music to choose right now.”

“You underestimate me.” I pretend I’m offended. “I didn’t live with you all for the last five years and not learn something.”

“Really!” She waits.

“Donna Summer, ‘She Works Hard for the Money.’ ” I grin.

“Genius,” she whispers and runs off to find it.

“Oh, I forgot to give you this. Paul would’ve never forgiven me. When he got home from Oregon, he cut off all his dreadlocks and made key chains out of them for his friends.” She opens her hand. There is one of Paul’s dreads attached to a key chain with a wire. Two plastic googly eyes are glued to the dreadlock. It smells. The problem with dreadlocks in a wet climate is that they never dry and eventually mold. Paul’s head always smelled just slightly better than the black mildew in the shower.

“Oh, he really shouldn’t have,” I reply. “I’m just going to put this outside.” When I return, Minda is scrubbing away at the kitchen wall to Donna Summer.

“So what, may I ask, ever became of Herb?”

“Oh, yes, Herb. Rob vetoed him.”

As we scrub and scrub, I realize how much we were a family here in this house and how much I miss them. “You know, you guys can come down and visit me anytime you want. Stay as long as you want. If you ever get sick of skiing, you could be a full-time cowgirl.”

“Sick of skiing? That’s funny,” she says with an exaggerated laugh. “I have to make up for lost time now that my knee has healed.”

“You guys are family, you know.” I take a moment and look her in the eye.

“Yeah, I know,” she replies tenderly and puts her dishwashing glove-covered hand around my back, leaving a blue S.O.S. soap handprint on my raincoat. She rests her head on my shoulder for a minute.

I kiss the top of her head.

I left my home, Solstice, Harvey, and Zeus in the hands of Casey, one of my students who I’m hoping will not host a party while I’m gone, and drove south. I wanted to take Zeus but was afraid it would be too hot in the truck for him. I figured he would be more comfortable at home. I think Casey will take good care of him.

It’s a year since my last trip here, and I play my guitar on the canyon rim, hoping that if it’s meant to be, Adam will hear me. But the sun rises, and I am still alone.

I woke at 4:00 a.m. to drive here from just north of Flag-staff, and if you’ve ever driven that road, you know it’s covered by mule deer. The drive was hairy, and last night I didn’t sleep very well, wondering what this morning would bring, and all this leaves me feeling quite tired. Since I don’t roll around in my sleep or anything, I figure I’ll just lie right here on the edge of the canyon and take a nap.

As I come out of my sleep, I hear many voices, some of which say things like “Nice place to take a nap” and “Don’t roll over!” I open my eyes to see a little girl, about five years old and dressed in a cowgirl outfit, standing over me waving a magic wand. More and more I become aware that there are hundreds of people walking by me.

I get up as fast as I can, grab my guitar, which I can’t believe is still there given the circumstances, and begin to bolt when my eye catches Adam, tucked in the juniper, laughing at me.

“I figured I’d catch you if you started to roll,” he says with a smile.

“Hello, old friend,” I greet him.

“Shall we go to a quieter part of the canyon?” he proposes.

“If one exists!”

He holds out his hand, and I take it.

We stop by my truck so I can drop off my guitar and grab my day pack. Then we stop a little ways away where he parked his VW Bus so he can get his. We begin our hike west along the south rim. First, we have to pass all the hotels, tour buses, and mobs of people.

“You know, I hoped I would see you again, but I didn’t expect it to happen so soon,” he confesses. “I thought about you from time to time, which is funny, I guess, considering I only knew you for fifteen minutes or so.” His aura really flames out. It’s huge. The rainbow spirals around him at a nice, healthy speed, very regularly and rhythmically.

“You did more than think about me. Don’t you remember visiting?”

“You remember?” He smiles. “A lot of people don’t remember.”

“You’re a good dancer,” I say, and we laugh. “And in reality you’ve probably known me for more than fifteen minutes.”

He nods, as if to say, “Yes, probably so,” but instead asks, “Do you remember anything?”

“You mean like past lives?” I ask.

“Yes.”

“No,” I reply.

“Me, neither.” He sounds disappointed about that.

“I figure if we were supposed to, on a more conscious level anyway, we would.”

“Probably so,” he consents.

That evening when we return to the parking lot, he gets his ice chest, and we find a picnic table. He lights a couple candles and puts hurricane lamps around them. Then he brings out hummus and pita for appetizers while he starts frying up falafel.

“Vegetarian?” he asks me.

“That obvious?” I laugh, and he nods. “Hey, do you ever look in people’s carts at the grocery store and imagine what their colons look like?” I ask.

“Of course,” he replies without thinking. I laugh some more. This leads us to a conversation about the virtues of garlic.

When dinner is over and we’ve packed up, he walks me to my truck and gives me a piece of paper with his address and phone number on it. “I’m not hard to find,” he says.

“Me, neither,” I reply, and write down my address to give to him. “I have no phone, so if you want to visit, you just have to show up.”

“Is that an invitation?” he asks.

“Yes,” I say.

“Then I’ll see you again.” With that he gives me a very, very nice kiss. I get in my pickup, he gets in his Bus, and as we drive off in our separate directions, something deep in my gut tells me it’s wrong. It’s wrong to be parting ways.

I spent the last three days in my darkroom, this time making proof sheets of all my negatives and actually making prints. At Minda’s urging I took a handful of my favorites to her friend Sue who owns a gallery down on the waterfront where the cruise ships dock. Sue was really excited about three shots in particular: my shipmates hauling up crab pots; our captain’s face as we tied up, safe after a particularly frightening storm; and Paul sorting through the nets in pouring rain. She asked me to bring more prints down today, so I print ten each of twenty photographs for starters. She said if people buy these, I can always print more in Oregon to send up.

While I was at it, I picked my five favorite shots of the housemates to print, frame, and leave on the living room wall as a good-bye present. In the first, Minda and Rob are dancing to Sly and the Family Stone in Afro wigs that Rob picked up for them in Seattle. The second is of Paul up in the old maple tree. I took it when he went through his arboreal phase where he slept in trees in order to get back to his early primate roots. His dreadlocks blend with the moss that hangs from the branches. The third is a rear view of Rob on the back patio striking a John Travolta pose, with a black bear running away in the distance. The fourth is of the night they all fell asleep together on the floor watching movies. And the last one was taken on the day we branded and castrated cattle. They’re all making sadistic faces while they hold up their respective tools: Minda with the branding iron, Paul with a knife, and Rob with a syringe. I have roped all of them and hold them in my lasso. Mara took that shot. It makes me laugh every time I look at it.