New Mercies (17 page)

“Have you found gold as well as God?” David asked.

“Here’s your blossom rock,” he said, tapping an outcropping of ore with a chicken bone. “I’ve done drudgery work on it, and it might amount to pay dirt, though the assay makes a hard decision against it.”

“What would he do if he found it—pay dirt?” David asked me when we had given the miner the remains of the picnic and gone on our way.

“Spend it. In a few years, he’d be right back here.”

“Isn’t that what he wants? It’s the search that matters. It’s always the search,” David said.

David liked to listen to the tales these old-timers told. One of his greatest assets was his ability to listen seriously to even the giddiest talk and to find gold among the dross. The prospectors found in David a kindred spirit, for David had dreams, too. At the time, they seemed to be for wealth and recognition, and perhaps a chance to make the world a little better place. Those were the things he talked about, at any rate. But as time went on, I realized he wanted something else, although I didn’t know what it was.

Often we stopped to visit with my grandmother’s brother and his wife at their little house in Georgetown. They had no children, which might have been why they were especially kind to
me. There were stories in the family that Uncle Billy had been an outlaw, which was difficult to believe, because he was gentle, and he and Aunt Emma seemed to be such an ordinary couple, honest as gold. Uncle Billy was even the treasurer of the First Presbyterian Church in Georgetown.

They captivated David with their tales of the old days in the West. “Why, a man couldn’t walk down the streets of Leadville at night without he was attacked by footpads. There were more outlaws than honest men.” He turned to Aunt Emma for confirmation. “There were women outlaws, you know.” He winked at her.

She gave him a wry smile. “You’d not want to cross one of those.”

“Oh no.” Uncle Billy took her hand. “After all these years, she still makes my heart glad,” Uncle Billy told us, and I thought I wanted a husband who would say that to me after such a long time.

Aunt Emma was embarrassed at his show of affection, but later she told me, “Your uncle was the handsomest-made man I ever saw. I thought he hung the moon.” She paused. “I still do.”

Driving home, I told David, “They ought to move out of the mountains. The coming of the leaves is hard on old people.”

“They won’t,” David said.

And they didn’t. They stayed on until they died. “Emma and I have lived side by side for forty years,” Uncle Billy told Mother when she invited him to live in the Marion Street house after Aunt Emma passed on. “The good Lord didn’t let me keep her, but her memory’s here.” So he stayed on in their little house, sleeping with a very tired heart, until he died less than a year later. Uncle Billy left the Georgetown house to David and me.
When David and I divided up things in the divorce, he insisted the house was mine, although it had been a place of refuge for him.

Once, when David and I were dating, Uncle Billy showed him a pair of slats that a miner had left in the barn. “Snowshoes,” Uncle Billy said. “That’s how we used to get around in winter.”

“Skis,” David said. “I’ve seen pictures of them.”

Uncle Billy helped David strap the long boards to his feet and showed him how to propel himself across the snow with a pole. David poled himself to the end of the street and back, then called, “Come along, Nora. You’ve got to try it.” He strapped the skis onto my feet, and I attempted to push myself along, but the skis were heavy and my legs wouldn’t move. “Try, try,” David said, a little frustrated, for he expected me to be as good as he was.

I finally pushed myself a yard or so and fell down, laughing.

“You’re a game girl, but this will never do,” David said. After we returned to Denver, he ordered skis for both of us, and we taught ourselves to use them. We pushed along the old mining roads, then turned around and followed our trails back to the starting point. Or we skied through the aspen trees, making our own trail. Once, we got caught in a blizzard and spent the night in a deserted cabin. There was a sign on the door that read
NO TRESPASSING AND WHEN YOU DO FOR
C
HRIST’S SAKE SHUT THE DOOR
.

We had a lunch and a thermos of hot chocolate in my knapsack, and a pair of lap robes in his, so we were in no danger of either cold or hunger. “But what about your reputation? What will your friends think about your spending the night in a cabin with me?” David said.

“Or a week. With any luck, the storm will last that long.”

“I mean it.”

“Do you think I would preserve my reputation if I stayed outside and froze to death?”

“I could hang the blankets across the middle of the room. You could stay on one side and I on the other.”

“Are you serious?”

At last, he saw the humor in the situation. We spent the night huddled together in the blankets, and by morning, the storm was over. We skied out through the fresh snow, which was such a dazzling white that it hurt our eyes. I told David, “I would risk my reputation just to see this.”

There was a Kodak of David taken on that adventure. I had been snapping pictures of the snowdrifts, and I turned and saw David kneeling beside the cabin, putting on his skis. There was one picture left on the roll, and I called to David to smile. He looked up at me with sheer joy on his face. The snapshot, which was on my dressing table throughout our marriage, was one of the few pictures of David that didn’t go into the dustbin when he moved out, because I knew the happiness on his face that day was real and that I had been a part of it. It seemed proof that our marriage was not always a sham.

The blizzard wasn’t the only danger. Once, we skied up an old road almost to the timberline, the farthest trek we had ever made, when I spotted a mountain lion ahead and a little above us. It was large and muscular, and its fur was the bleached yellow of mine tailings. “Oh God, David, hurry. Let’s go!”

David looked up and saw the lion, then gripped my arm. “Don’t move. Stay where you are.”

“And be eaten alive? Not on your life.”

“Stay!” David ordered me. “If you race off, he’ll chase you. He’ll think you’re dinner.”

“I am dinner.”

“Hold on. He may just go away.” David slowly slid toward me on his skis, stopping a foot away. “Don’t look him in the eye. You don’t want to challenge him.”

“Maybe we should curl up, so he’ll think we’re too small a supper to fuss with.”

“That won’t work. We’ll wait him out.”

The lion moved his head a little, watching us with eyes that were yellow and mean. He took a few steps toward us, hissing through yellow teeth.

“He’s not leaving,” I said as the lion began pacing back and forth. He did that for a minute or two, and then he stopped and crouched.

“We’ll have to scare him off. Hold out your poles, so we look big.”

“But he already knows there are just two of us.”

“Animals can’t count.” David moved a little so that our ski poles, held out at arm’s length, barely touched. “Now, make as much noise as you can, so he’ll think we’re going to attack him.” Suddenly, David began shaking his ski poles. “Get! Get for home! Go on!”

I jumped up and down, as much as I could on the skis, made faces, and cussed. “You ugly cat. I’ll rip your damn head off if you don’t get out of here.”

The lion stood his ground for a minute, while David yelled and I shrieked and carried on. Then David thrust his ski poles toward the animal, which turned and trotted up the mountain.
When he reached the top of the trail, he stopped and looked at us again. David picked up two rocks and threw them at the big cat, and he disappeared.

“We did it, David.”

“Not yet. Getting back to the car is the hard part. You go first, but not too fast. I’ll follow.” I started off, looking back to see that David was directly behind me, protecting me. The lion would have to go through David to get to me. But we saw no further sign of the animal. We were exhausted when we reached the car and ripped off our skis. David pushed me into the seat, then secured the skis and poles before he climbed in. He turned to me with a look of exhilaration on his face. “That’s the most exciting thing I’ve ever done.”

“You’re nuts. We could have been eaten alive.”

“You were magnificent. Any other girl would have fainted. But you mugged that cat like a regular Lon Chaney.”

“Mugged?”
I was embarrassed but had to admit that I was a little proud of myself. “Oh, applesauce!”

“Applesauce, my eye. You mugged him.”

Over the years, those adventures spurred David on to greater challenges, and I could not always keep up with him. So I did not mind when David’s college roommate, Arthur Ransom, moved to Colorado and the two of them climbed with the Colorado Mountain Club or hunted and skied with the other men in our set. David even joined a bird-hunting club, whose members sat all day in freezing duck blinds. That was not something I wanted to do, so I was glad women were not welcome.

I took to Arthur and his wife, Betsey, at once. Arthur, like David, was friendly, interesting, and fearless. And although
Betsey was timid and got frightfully upset when Arthur went adventuring, she made fun of her fears and encouraged the boys, something I admired in her, since she had young children.

David was fond of Betsey, almost as attentive to her as he was to me, although I did not think anything of it at the time. The Ransoms did not move to Denver until some years after David and I married, about 1930, and by then, David’s daredevil streak was obvious. He used to laugh and say that if he had not been a lawyer, he might have had a career as an auto racer or a stunt flier or even a flagpole sitter. That was not entirely a joke.

We had dated for more than a year when David and I became engaged. From the beginning, we had assumed we would marry, but we were having such a swell time that we were not in a hurry. David was thoughtful and romantic. Still, he did not propose with roses and candlelight, as I’d expected, but in an offhand manner, which came as a surprise. We had gone to the mountains to see the aspen, which had turned a glorious color, the leaves spilling onto the ground like golden coins, and decided to prowl through the Georgetown cemetery, where we read the tombstones.

“Listen to this,” David said. “ ‘Little Freddie, age two years nine months ten days, 1880–1883. Oh, you must be a lover of the Lord or you won’t go to heaven when you dies.’ ”

I smiled at the epitaph, then pointed to the gravestone of a couple, both born in 1841. She died in 1868. He lived until 1920. “Do you suppose when he got to heaven, she said, ‘I’m not married to that old man’?” I asked.

“Think of all the things he had to tell her about—automobiles and airplanes.”

“She’d more likely be interested in vacuum cleaners and window screens.” I rubbed my hand over the faded letters carved into the stone. “ ‘Forever rest together.’ ”

“Do you think you could stand to lie beside me for all of eternity?” David asked.

“I shouldn’t like to do anything for all eternity.”

“I am serious, Muggs. You’re a first-rate girl and the best pal a fellow could have. You know I love you dearly. It would be grand being married. I think I’d better snatch you up before some other chap does it.” He had been sucking on a stem of dried grass, which he took out of his mouth, then kissed me. “You will marry me, won’t you?”

I did not realize how much I loved David until that moment, when a great sense of happiness came over me. And, of course, I said yes.

After such a wonderful courtship, we had a dreadful engagement. David was uncomfortable at the parties that Mother and Henry’s friends gave in our honor. He’d never been crazy about social gatherings, and these were especially difficult for him because he was the center of attention. Mother had given her share of engagement parties for her friends’ children, so it would have been rude of me to turn down the reciprocal invitations. David sulked when he got each week’s social schedule, and he flat out refused to attend one party.

“I’ll feel like I’m on display, like a lamb chop at the meat market,” he said when he received an invitation for the tea that our neighbor Elvira Doud was hosting for us.

“With or without the skirt?” I asked, for we had always laughed at the paper frills the butcher put on the lamb chops.

David did not find that amusing and didn’t reply.

“Oh, David, we have to go. Mother had a party for Mrs. Doud’s daughter, Mamie Eisenhower, when she married. I can’t turn down her mother.”

“You’ll just have to think of something, because I’ve had it. I’m not going,” he said. So I went alone, explaining that David had just been called to the bedside of a client who was at death’s door. Mrs. Doud probably scanned the obituaries over the next few days, searching for the woman’s name.

David hated planning the details of the wedding. He took no interest in the color and style of my bridesmaids’ dresses, had no opinions on the flowers for the ceremony. He didn’t even care about the menu for the reception, and when Mother asked him whether one of his groomsmen should be seated beside a married or unmarried bridesmaid, he snapped, “For all I care, he can eat in the kitchen.”

Of course, he apologized to Mother and sent her flowers, and she told me that Henry had been just as jittery before their wedding. But I was not so sure it was nerves. Just that week, David had walked out of a picture show, claiming he had a violent headache, and when I put my hand on his forehead, he’d brushed it away, saying, “For God’s sake, Nora, it hurts enough. Don’t touch me.”

Another time, he had stopped his car in the park and said he wanted to go for a walk. He set a fast pace, and when I couldn’t keep up, he snapped, “Why must you be so poky?”

“It’s my slippers. They’re not made for walking.”

“You should have worn something else.”

“I didn’t know we were going for a hike.”

“Well, damn it to hell.”

“David!”

“Oh, don’t be so shocked. You’ve said worse yourself.”

By the time we got back to the car, he had begged me to forgive him, and I had, but I worried nonetheless that he might have changed his mind about marrying me.