Read Online Graphic the Valley by Peter Brown Hoffmeister - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Peter Brown Hoffmeister
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about all the berry bushes lost downstream.
I hiked Four Mile Trail under Sentinel, Union, Moran, the granite dust puffing in the heat. The smell of every summer, the dust and the green acorns not ripe hanging on the trees, and the bitter taste of the soft, green nut that wicked the moisture from inside my cheeks.
Up in the pines I met the Pohono Trail near Glacier Point. Then I could run, had to run to catch her before dark. I wanted to talk to her, ask her about the New Parks Plan, hear that everything was okay. I wanted to see if she was still real.
To North Wawona, past Bridalveil, maybe North Wawona by eight or nine o’clock. Running hard above the meadow, I noticed the easy cool in the trees and the smell of the wind coming over the high stream. The half-light slant like mist filling. The new dew smell.
And I saw the lion.
Up on split granite, rock that sluffs old skin, the lion waiting, hoping for a short hunt. I ran underneath him. But I saw him too, saw him as his body tensed.
The lion jumped soft yellow above me as I stepped back. Then he hit me and we fell downhill toward the meadow. Both the same size. Both animals. It was like that in the meadow, and I gouged at his eyes and kept my forearm over my own throat. I’d watched lions kill deer in El Cap Meadow in the spring and I knew what he would do.
We were face to face, and I could smell the rotten meat smell of his breath. Then we rolled and I saw the patterns of the pines above us like woodcuts displayed along the lodge wall.
Each moment clipped, with a gap between to keep it slow, slow at the freeze, that slow.
The lion rolled and I rolled with him. Then he bit my hand. He was growling, thrashing and biting, and I was yelling, and I didn’t know at first that my hand was caught. I didn’t see it go into his mouth. But I felt the bones give, felt the bones crack with a wet sound, a dull wet like saplings, not dry sticks, not short and
pop pop
but a slow
clssst clssst
sound.
My hand turned in the lion’s mouth, the pain striking up my wrist, up the sinews of my arm, and my shoulder twitched hard with the sudden shock of pain and the wrenching. Then I felt the Valley in me, everything tighten, down, close and close, and the Valley was with me, and the Valley was me. I was with the Valley in the meadow, and slow now. Slow again.
I felt my broken hand ball up inside and began to force it down, push and force it down the lion’s throat, slow, catching and sliding, forcing until that fist was fifteen inches down, down to the elbow. I felt the choking of the whole animal, the lion seizing.
• • •
The lion was on top of me, over my legs, a blanket of rocks. I pushed it to sit up. Struggled and cleared my legs, but my arm was still inside. And I saw that the animal was not breathing, that he was dead, something inside him broken when I forced my fist down into the bottom of his throat.
I felt the lion on my right arm, his whole weight, 150 pounds, and I ripped at the mouth, punched his teeth and jaw. Punched myself too, my right arm that was fixed inside and my punching was nothing, and the skin nicked off my left fist’s knuckles when I hit his yellow teeth, the backs of my knuckles turned red from the yellow sharps of his teeth, turned red and dripped.
I punched once more, and hit my own bicep. Pink to swell. I watched the colors.
• • •
My father says, “You’ll do this to me?”
“To you?” I say. I don’t know what he means.
“Yes, to me. My whole life. And yours. Everything I’ve told you about the history.”
I say, “This has nothing to do with you.”
He laughs. He is retying a double half hitch at the tent corner. “Is that right?” he says.
“That’s right,” I say. “It doesn’t.”
He looks at me. “I never touched you,” he says. “Not one time. You’ve lived soft, Tenaya.”
I look downhill at the dark trees. The slope where the granite scatters. “I don’t think so,” I say. “Maybe you’ve
I hiked Four Mile Trail under Sentinel, Union, Moran, the granite dust puffing in the heat. The smell of every summer, the dust and the green acorns not ripe hanging on the trees, and the bitter taste of the soft, green nut that wicked the moisture from inside my cheeks.
Up in the pines I met the Pohono Trail near Glacier Point. Then I could run, had to run to catch her before dark. I wanted to talk to her, ask her about the New Parks Plan, hear that everything was okay. I wanted to see if she was still real.
To North Wawona, past Bridalveil, maybe North Wawona by eight or nine o’clock. Running hard above the meadow, I noticed the easy cool in the trees and the smell of the wind coming over the high stream. The half-light slant like mist filling. The new dew smell.
And I saw the lion.
Up on split granite, rock that sluffs old skin, the lion waiting, hoping for a short hunt. I ran underneath him. But I saw him too, saw him as his body tensed.
The lion jumped soft yellow above me as I stepped back. Then he hit me and we fell downhill toward the meadow. Both the same size. Both animals. It was like that in the meadow, and I gouged at his eyes and kept my forearm over my own throat. I’d watched lions kill deer in El Cap Meadow in the spring and I knew what he would do.
We were face to face, and I could smell the rotten meat smell of his breath. Then we rolled and I saw the patterns of the pines above us like woodcuts displayed along the lodge wall.
Each moment clipped, with a gap between to keep it slow, slow at the freeze, that slow.
The lion rolled and I rolled with him. Then he bit my hand. He was growling, thrashing and biting, and I was yelling, and I didn’t know at first that my hand was caught. I didn’t see it go into his mouth. But I felt the bones give, felt the bones crack with a wet sound, a dull wet like saplings, not dry sticks, not short and
pop pop
but a slow
clssst clssst
sound.
My hand turned in the lion’s mouth, the pain striking up my wrist, up the sinews of my arm, and my shoulder twitched hard with the sudden shock of pain and the wrenching. Then I felt the Valley in me, everything tighten, down, close and close, and the Valley was with me, and the Valley was me. I was with the Valley in the meadow, and slow now. Slow again.
I felt my broken hand ball up inside and began to force it down, push and force it down the lion’s throat, slow, catching and sliding, forcing until that fist was fifteen inches down, down to the elbow. I felt the choking of the whole animal, the lion seizing.
• • •
The lion was on top of me, over my legs, a blanket of rocks. I pushed it to sit up. Struggled and cleared my legs, but my arm was still inside. And I saw that the animal was not breathing, that he was dead, something inside him broken when I forced my fist down into the bottom of his throat.
I felt the lion on my right arm, his whole weight, 150 pounds, and I ripped at the mouth, punched his teeth and jaw. Punched myself too, my right arm that was fixed inside and my punching was nothing, and the skin nicked off my left fist’s knuckles when I hit his yellow teeth, the backs of my knuckles turned red from the yellow sharps of his teeth, turned red and dripped.
I punched once more, and hit my own bicep. Pink to swell. I watched the colors.
• • •
My father says, “You’ll do this to me?”
“To you?” I say. I don’t know what he means.
“Yes, to me. My whole life. And yours. Everything I’ve told you about the history.”
I say, “This has nothing to do with you.”
He laughs. He is retying a double half hitch at the tent corner. “Is that right?” he says.
“That’s right,” I say. “It doesn’t.”
He looks at me. “I never touched you,” he says. “Not one time. You’ve lived soft, Tenaya.”
I look downhill at the dark trees. The slope where the granite scatters. “I don’t think so,” I say. “Maybe you’ve
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