Green River State Penitentary,
Bismarck, North Dakota
Dear Grandfather,
There are things that a boy cannot forget. There are things he can never let go of, that he won't let go of, and they are not the things you may think are important for they are not things at all. They are thin slices of time and light. Seconds. Fractions of seconds. Somtimes measured in wind gusts or the beats of butterfly wings. A boy remembers everything. Every hand that touches him. Every mouth that speaks to him. The eyes that look upon him with malice, with love. He remembers teeth and breath and the smell of spit. He remembers the paws of a good dog. A boy remembers every minute he spent alone, eventually they all come back, those minutes. He remembers the answers sometimes but not the questions. Why do we live Grandpa? Why do we die?
Sometimes a boy remembers a certain look in the eyes of a person he loves, a sparkle, a light, a voice without words that comes from the place where words began. Eyes like that can heal. They can undo the damage wrought by hands, mouth, those other things...
Once, when I was a boy I asked you, Why does the night come? Do you remember? You had taken me to the Devil's Tower National Monument, it was the first time I was there, and I remember how you told me never to speak the name they gave to that place, to call it the Lodge of the Bear, as our people called it. Forgive me now for saying it, but when this memory was born I had not known the right name and I want to be true to the chronology of this...
I was ten years old. I had never before left my small home. We drove together in that old truck you had bought from the oil company, the one with the yellow scallop shell on the door. We arrived at the end of the day, just as the sun had begun to set. We watched the sun set together. I remember the shadows, all the long shadows, and how the sky had changed to that special shade of indigo you call the mysterious blue. It was so quiet. I could hear the wind blow, and I remember that there was a sudden gust from the east. From dead calmness the wind did blow, and so alarming was that unexpected burst of air that it spooked a pair of mule deer from their night-beds. They were small does, and they broke toward the two of us. You told me to be still, so still that they would not see us, that they would believe that we were some natural element of the prairie itself. We were downwind of them. We were undectable as long as we remained perfectly motionless. You held me tight by the arm so as to keep me from moving. That was the first time I can remember ever being touched in such a way before. I cannot describe to you how that felt. But it was warm. I felt heat. It was almost electrical, and I could feel it spread out from your fingers like venom from a snake. To this day I'm having trouble understanding what that feeling was. But I want to believe that it was joy.
I remember that the deer came close and you whispered to me, Stay still. Become like a tree. So I did, I became a tree, and when the deer came I heard the hollow thud of their hooves in the mud and they saw us, they saw that we were not trees, we were men, and I heard them snort before they broke off in opposite directions, and I could smell them as they passed. We watched them bounding up toward that granite tower you made me promise to always call the lodge of the bear.
The night comes to quiet the Earth, you said. The night comes so that the Earth can rest, to prepare for the new day to come. Just as we die to rest, after a long life we must rest awhile, so that we have the energy to pass on into the next.
You held out your hand to me. You held out your hand and spread your fingers the way a father will instinctively hold out his hand for a child when they cross a road. For a moment I did not know what to do. But you waited, and I took your hand, for perhaps it is also the instinct of a boy to reach out and take hold. I remember how that felt too. Your skin. Hard but smooth. I could feel every line, all the fissures in your palm and on your fingers.
We followed the deer, who were long gone, but we tracked them together. You showed me. We stooped low and examined the impressions in the soft earth. And you told me:
As for this other question, I have no answer for you Tom. We live because we can. Because as long as we are living we are alive. We are alive Tom. We are here together, you and I, in this place, on this day, in this moment. And one day when you are old like me, and I am dead, this day will live again, it will live in you always, and if you are very lucky you will pass it on to a boy. And that in itself is enough to justify this life.
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