Read Online The Cure for Death by Lightning by Gail Anderson-Dargatz - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Gail Anderson-Dargatz
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father.
M Y FATHER wore his sheepishness like a sack over his back as he changed his shirt. He harnessed Cherry and Chief, our other horse, to the democrat himself instead of cowing my brother into it. He even helped my mother up into the buggy. But he wouldn’t look at me; he ignored me as if I weren’t there.
I sat in the back with my brother and the cream cans, watching the road unwind behind us. The road was a deep, rich brown-red, from iron deposits in the soil, I suppose, though I grew up believing the road was red from the blood of turtles. Blood Road was what the Indians called it, what everyone called it. The government maps, however, named it Caldwell Road after the first white landholder in the valley, a man who died alone in his cabin with no wife and no kids and no one to mourn him but his hungry pigs. The road had once been an Indian trail and had been expanded into a wagon road during the gold rush of 1867 that had founded the town of Promise. It had been a busy road until the new highway diverted traffic around Bald Mountain and through Promise. Now it was a quiet road through a quiet valley with only the rattle of ghost wagons and the crying songs of the berry pickers to tell us it had ever been anything different.
Towards the Turtle Creek Reserve, Blood Road wound through a valley so narrow that, even in summer, the sun didn’t rise over the hills until nine A.M. and then set well before three o’clock. That end of the valley was damp and dreary without sunlight. The reserve stretched over part of Bald Mountain and down its slopes to the flat landsbeyond. Here a few Indians farmed and others made their living capturing and selling the wild horses that roamed across the flat lands. It was a long walk to the reserve and going there was one of the many things my father forbade. I was also frightened. You heard things then, about the reserve; how white women were raped, how children were beaten. Except for the times I walked up Bald Mountain to count the wild horses, I stayed away from that end of the valley.
Towards the town of Promise, the valley opened up like a wound in skin. The valley basin was rich and fertile because of the spring floods, and the land along the road was cleared for pasture and crops, except for trees that grew around the many sloughs. The road followed the valley floor at the lowest point, and at spring runoff it became a muddy mess. Three miles down the road from our farm was the Boulees’ farm and then the school, a small one-room building heated with a wood-stove in the center that kept it too hot in the early summer and too cold in the winter. I still went there, but Dan had quit school a couple of years before. Beyond the school there were several smaller acreages inhabited by families that I now had little to do with since the craziness set in on my father.
The road followed the valley basin, along the creeks and swamps, and now, in spring, the turtles crossed the road in thousands to lay their eggs, so passing down it was a grizzly thing. Many of the people who lived in the valley didn’t stop but whipped their frightened horses over the moving road of painted turtles. The shells were crushed under the hooves of panicking horses and under the wheels of the wagons and the few automobiles. Their smashed bodies were strewn all over Blood Road, wherever the road met a swamp. But death didn’t stop the painted turtles. They came and came and came across the road, and by their tenacity and numbers alone they succeeded in seeding the next generation. The blood of the turtles seeped into the dirt of the road and hardened, paving the road a brilliant red that turned to rust when the season was done; this is what Bertha Moses told me, and the proof of the story was there, on the road we followed.
In past years my father had held something like a worshipful respect for that turtle pilgrimage. Only the spring before, perhaps a month before the bear attacked our sheep camp, my
M Y FATHER wore his sheepishness like a sack over his back as he changed his shirt. He harnessed Cherry and Chief, our other horse, to the democrat himself instead of cowing my brother into it. He even helped my mother up into the buggy. But he wouldn’t look at me; he ignored me as if I weren’t there.
I sat in the back with my brother and the cream cans, watching the road unwind behind us. The road was a deep, rich brown-red, from iron deposits in the soil, I suppose, though I grew up believing the road was red from the blood of turtles. Blood Road was what the Indians called it, what everyone called it. The government maps, however, named it Caldwell Road after the first white landholder in the valley, a man who died alone in his cabin with no wife and no kids and no one to mourn him but his hungry pigs. The road had once been an Indian trail and had been expanded into a wagon road during the gold rush of 1867 that had founded the town of Promise. It had been a busy road until the new highway diverted traffic around Bald Mountain and through Promise. Now it was a quiet road through a quiet valley with only the rattle of ghost wagons and the crying songs of the berry pickers to tell us it had ever been anything different.
Towards the Turtle Creek Reserve, Blood Road wound through a valley so narrow that, even in summer, the sun didn’t rise over the hills until nine A.M. and then set well before three o’clock. That end of the valley was damp and dreary without sunlight. The reserve stretched over part of Bald Mountain and down its slopes to the flat landsbeyond. Here a few Indians farmed and others made their living capturing and selling the wild horses that roamed across the flat lands. It was a long walk to the reserve and going there was one of the many things my father forbade. I was also frightened. You heard things then, about the reserve; how white women were raped, how children were beaten. Except for the times I walked up Bald Mountain to count the wild horses, I stayed away from that end of the valley.
Towards the town of Promise, the valley opened up like a wound in skin. The valley basin was rich and fertile because of the spring floods, and the land along the road was cleared for pasture and crops, except for trees that grew around the many sloughs. The road followed the valley floor at the lowest point, and at spring runoff it became a muddy mess. Three miles down the road from our farm was the Boulees’ farm and then the school, a small one-room building heated with a wood-stove in the center that kept it too hot in the early summer and too cold in the winter. I still went there, but Dan had quit school a couple of years before. Beyond the school there were several smaller acreages inhabited by families that I now had little to do with since the craziness set in on my father.
The road followed the valley basin, along the creeks and swamps, and now, in spring, the turtles crossed the road in thousands to lay their eggs, so passing down it was a grizzly thing. Many of the people who lived in the valley didn’t stop but whipped their frightened horses over the moving road of painted turtles. The shells were crushed under the hooves of panicking horses and under the wheels of the wagons and the few automobiles. Their smashed bodies were strewn all over Blood Road, wherever the road met a swamp. But death didn’t stop the painted turtles. They came and came and came across the road, and by their tenacity and numbers alone they succeeded in seeding the next generation. The blood of the turtles seeped into the dirt of the road and hardened, paving the road a brilliant red that turned to rust when the season was done; this is what Bertha Moses told me, and the proof of the story was there, on the road we followed.
In past years my father had held something like a worshipful respect for that turtle pilgrimage. Only the spring before, perhaps a month before the bear attacked our sheep camp, my
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