Education of a Wandering Man Page 5

  One story engendered another, and sitting on a bench in front of a store I’d tell of something I knew or had heard and would often get a story in return, sometimes a correction. The men and women who lived the pioneer life did not suddenly disappear; they drifted down the years, a rugged, proud people who had met adversity and survived. Once, many years later, I was asked in a television interview what was the one quality that distinguished them, and I did not come up with the answer I wanted. Later, when I was in the hotel alone, it came to me.

  Dignity.

  They all had dignity, a certain serenity and pride that was theirs completely. They might be poor, they might be eking out at the last a precarious living, but they had dignity.

  They knew where they had been and what they had seen and done, and were content. Something was theirs, something within themselves that neither time passing nor man nor hard times could take from them.

  I have worked beside them, eaten at their tables, sat beside them in sunlight and moonlight and firelight. I never knew one of the old breed who did not have it.

  It was hard work skinning those dead cattle, brutal, messy work, and I did not like it, but a job was a job, and I needed a road stake to go on to wherever it was I was going. Often at night, after the old man had turned in, I stirred the fire, adding hoarded mesquite roots, and read by the firelight.

  The book was Gil Blas, a copy I had found abandoned in the laundry room of a tourist court in Plainview, Texas. Whether it was left by intent or accident, I could not know, but it was my good fortune. I’d known of the book for years but had never happened upon it before, so I read it, not once but twice, on the plains of West Texas.

  What someone else in my position might have done I am not sure. Very likely, when they paid off such a job as I had, they might have gone on a three-day drunk. What I did was get a room in a small hotel and take three showers a day, finding my way, in between times, to the library, where I began reading John Motley’s The Rise of the Dutch Republic, and when I finished that, I went west.

  Which brings me back to Tucson, where this digression began. All the above took place months before I was put off the freight train at Stein’s Pass, but is an example of the stories that lurk everywhere, awaiting the lucky finder. The story of Doubtful Canyon and the fight is well known in the area and by many historians of the Apache wars, but I heard it from a spectator. Thirty years later I could have thought of a thousand questions to ask. Then, I merely listened and remembered, and that was the story I told Jeff Milton in the restaurant in Bowie.

  Tired of hitching rides, and expecting no luck on the busy highway to Phoenix, I bought a ticket on a bus. A week later I was digging holes to plant a citrus grove near Phoenix. (Unhappily, a few years later, the trees were all removed to make way for a housing development in what is now one of the plushier areas of the city.) That job ended all too quickly, and with no local prospects, I started north.

  On the Black Canyon Road my ride stopped to fix a tire. Another car stopped near us and the driver came over. He needed a man to be caretaker at a mine. He studied me. “Could I stand to be alone?” I could.

  “The last man who said that lasted almost two weeks. This is really alone,” he warned.

  My nearest neighbor lived in a mine tunnel about a mile away, was an Indian, and crazy. Anybody who came close he suspected of trying to steal his mine. The old Indian carried a pistol and was a dead shot.

  “Stay away from him. He’ll kill you as soon as look at you,” the man added.

  When asked, he volunteered that there was plenty of reading material. I was to live on the place, see that no trespassers carried away any tools, feed the dogs and chickens, and do the assessment work.

  I took the job.

  THE MINE LAY in a basin at the end of thirty-odd miles of winding one-lane dirt road. A very rocky road, I might add, most of it built by use. There was a mine shaft down about one hundred and seventy feet, a half mile of drifts*3 (which I never saw, as the mine was filled with water up to about forty feet from the surface), and there was a hoisting-engine and a compressor, both in excellent shape.

  A bit away from the mine there was a boarding house, a concrete bunkhouse with ten rooms that slept two men each. There were two dogs and about sixty white Leghorn chickens.

  All around were rocky bluffs and hills scattered with sparse semi-desert growth. A dry wash came out of the hills and swung around the mine area, dropping off into a narrow, rocky gulch about a half mile in length.

  My new boss left me off, turned around, and drove away. I was alone.

  From what I gathered in the drive out to the mine, there had been several others who attempted the caretaking job, the last being a schoolteacher who had come with two projects: to do a lot of serious study and to become a fine rifle and pistol shot. He had moved out there with a thousand rounds of ammo, two dozen excellent books, several blank notebooks, a number of sharp pencils, and a lot of ambition. What kind of teacher he was I never learned, nor who he was. To be alone was what he wanted.

  The difficulty was that few people know what it means to be absolutely alone. Even fewer know what silence is. Our lives are filled with the coming and going of people and vehicles, so much so that our senses scarcely notice the sounds. They have become a background to all our living, all our thinking, absorbed subconsciously.

  Suddenly, here, the man was alone. There was no sound. Occasionally, during the day, a hen might cackle, a loosened pebble might rattle down the rocks. Otherwise, nothing.

  The mine was at the end of a road down which nobody drove. Whoever the young man was, he had not bargained for this. No doubt he had told himself how wonderful it would be simply to study without fear of interruption, to be alone in the hills. No doubt it sounded poetic as well.

  It was not Walden Pond. There was no water here except what came from a well. There were no forests. There wasn’t a tree within miles. The only birds he saw were magpies who teased the dogs, and the blue quail running through the low brush. Occasionally there was a hawk or golden eagle at which the dogs barked to keep them from the chickens.

  His investment must have been at least $300 in books, ammunition, and guns. Perhaps it was more, though prices were reasonable then. Except for that investment, he might have left sooner, but I suspect that by the third day the silence was beginning to bother him. At first he would have brushed it off, telling himself he would get used to it. By the fifth day he would not have been as sure.

  Some of what had gone on I found in rolled-up wads of note paper where he had begun to write, but he rarely got past the middle of the page before discarding it.

  Then the pages had only a line or two—I gathered he was trying to do something on Shakespeare—and after that, often blank pages were discarded.

  My first days at the mine were busy ones. I cleaned out the room in which I planned to sleep, made up the cot, and hung out the few clothes I had. Then I checked out the boarding house to see what food was available. It was mostly canned goods, which pleased me, as I was no kind of a cook and hoped to do as little as possible. Then I scouted the place where I was to do the assessment work.

  It was a tunnel only a few feet deep, striking into the mountain toward what they hoped was a vein. I doubted there was anything there, but who was I to question? There was a pick and shovel hard by—and a short-handled pick, at that.

  My predecessor’s books were boxed but not sealed up, and I went through them.

  A complete volume of Shakespeare’s plays, Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy, the short stories of O. Henry (I’ve forgotten how complete an edition, but The Four Million was there and, I believe, the story of the Cisco Kid—“The Caballero’s Way,” from Heart of the West. There was also a book of collected poetry by many writers (but the title forgotten), The Autobiography of Joseph Jefferson, a volume on the theater in Elizabethan England, and Don Quixote.

  There were also translations of both the Iliad and the Odyssey, which I had dipp
ed into several times but never read. Aside from the Shakespeare, on which the man obviously planned a paper, and O. Henry, which I decided was a personal preference, he seemed to have gathered such books as he had always wished to read but had not found time for.

  According to the man who hired me, the teacher lasted nearly two weeks and then just dropped everything and walked away, calling him from the first telephone he found to say he was through. Having said that, the young man hung up, and that was the end of it.

  My boss suspected, however, there had been more to it than loneliness. He suspected the old Indian up on the mountain had spooked him.

  Certainly, the old man did prowl about, often at night, but I didn’t mind and the dogs no longer barked at him. He came and went like a ghost, active as a goat, although he was said to be past ninety years. Certainly his features looked old enough to have worn out two or three bodies.

  Later, I was to meet him, and he was another part of my education, for he taught me much of food plants and Indian remedies—the first Indian I knew but for one I met at Puerto de Luna on my trail to Fort Sumner.

  At this point I simply read what was available, with an insatiable appetite. I might add that, aside from the books (of which I’ve listed scarcely half) left by the teacher, there were other books left by miners or owned by the proprietor. Among these were several volumes by Clarence E. Muhlford, who wrote the Hopalong Cassidy series; a couple of novels by Zane Grey; B. M. Bower’s Chip of the Flying U; and novels by James Oliver Curwood and Harold Bell Wright. There was also The Spoilers by Rex Beach. Some of these were on a dusty shelf in the boarding house. Others I found in various rooms of the empty bunkhouse.

  The owner had subscribed to The Saturday Evening Post and several years’ worth of them were stacked on the floor in the boarding house.

  I had been alone before, but made companions of the dogs and often walked the hills with one or the other. I had been warned not to let them loose together, for they would pull down and kill cattle on the range.

  The assessment work was my first problem. I went to work on some rotten quartz, wheeling it to the dump nearby. Often I would take a break, drink coffee, and read. Then, as many times since, I did not read from one book alone but started several, anxious to get the flavor of each one and reluctant to wait until one was finished before dipping into another.

  Every book I read opened vistas before me of the things I did not know, of the books I had not read. I was not like Ivan, in The Brothers Karamazov, who wanted not millions but an answer to his questions. I did not even know the questions.

  Questions must be formulated from knowledge and I knew too little for that. I was a young man in a hurry, wanting to know all that had been thought, pondered, speculated upon.

  The world was out there, a big, wonderful, and exciting place of which I knew too little. In my reading I was constantly coming upon the names of scholars, historians, or political leaders of whom I knew nothing at all, though often enough there were names that I remembered from dinner-table talk at home. Reading Don Quixote was marvelous stuff, but I needed to know more about Cervantes himself and the world in which he lived.

  The loneliness at the mine never affected me, for I had many companions: Hopalong Cassidy, Hamlet, Sancho Panza, and Ulysses were with me. I worked at the assessment job, sat on the muck-pile and read for a half hour or so, and then went back to the pick and shovel. In between times I walked on the hills with one or the other of the dogs.

  There were two sheep left behind as lambs by some passing sheepherder’s flock and now grown to full size. The black-faced ram was young, full of mischief, and had to be watched. For fear of wolves or coyotes they never fed far from the mine, but when I walked out they often went with me, feeling secure in my presence. The first time they did this I was pleased, enjoying their company, and making friends, I thought, with the ram. Yet when I began to return on the first walk we took together, I heard a scramble of feet behind me and started to turn. Too late.

  The ram butted me very solidly in the rear and knocked me sprawling on the gravel. I got up swearing and he trotted off to one side and eyed me complacently. Mission accomplished.

  Every time the sheep followed me out, he attempted a repeat of what to him was vastly amusing, but he never again succeeded in catching me unawares, until almost my last day. Starting back, I suddenly saw that someone was at the mine. I forgot the ram and started to hurry, but too late I remembered—and he got me again. I skinned both knees on the rocky hillside.

  There were wolves about, for at night I often heard them howling, although I do not believe there were more than four or five. Once, I actually saw one, trotting along the mountainside near an old corral. He was alone, and intent on some business of his own.

  The lone visitor that day was the Indian from up on the mountain, the second time we had met.

  The first time was when I was hiking down that rocky gorge below the mine and thinking of nothing I can remember, when suddenly some sound or movement behind me turned me around.

  The old Indian I had been warned about was behind me, wearing a sagging vest and a battered, narrow-brimmed hat, his legs bound in wraparound leggings made from canvas. On his hip was the pistol of which I had been told. I stood aside and waited for him to overtake me, a bit jumpy inside. Yet I, too, was armed.

  When I spoke he asked me if I had seen an old gray burro. I had, often, but not that day.

  “If you see her,” he said, “don’t ride her. She’s very old and not very strong. I know how boys are,” he added, “but she’s not up to it.”

  He had but one eye, the other merely an empty socket. We walked on, and a couple of times he stopped to gather weeds from alongside the trail. When asked, he told me they were a plant he used for medicine, and as I seemed curious, he explained about various plants as we walked along. Some were for food, some medicine, and some were used for dyes.

  It was the first of a half-dozen such conversations we had, and each time I learned a little bit. Carefully, I avoided any question about where he lived or his mine. He obviously knew what I was doing and asked no questions either. I gathered that he did not like my boss.

  We spotted a flock of Mexican blue quail moving through the brush and he drew and fired, clipping the head from one very neatly indeed. A few minutes later he repeated it, picking up the quail—obviously his dinner.

  Once he came down to ask for eggs, which I gave him, adding some onions and potatoes. I never learned what kind of Indian he was, although for some reason I think that he was a Papago. It was not Papago country, however, so I could be wrong.

  He was said to be over ninety years old and I could believe it, yet he was not a man one questioned, and I had been warned to show no interest. I am sure, looking back, that I missed a rare opportunity, for he seemed willing enough to talk when he opened the conversation.

  The last three weeks I was there I saw him not at all.

  And I never saw him again.

  My assessment work was finished, and so were most of the books and ammunition. I had explored the country nearby and was beginning to feel the urge to move on. True, several of the books I had read while there could be read again with profit, but I was not prepared for that. There were too many books I had not read at all, and too many miles I had not covered.

  Several times, just for luck, I had panned out some of the rotten quartz that I crushed with a double-jack (sledgehammer), but found no color.

  In a small stream a few miles away I had better luck. In occasional attempts I panned out nearly $300 in gold, enough to buy some clothing and head on to the westward.

  I wanted to write, and had made attempts while at the mine, finishing nothing, but learning a little. My first attempt at creative writing had come when I was twelve. I’d been visiting an uncle in Minnesota, and one day I climbed a tree, sat on a big branch looking out over the lake at his back door, and started a poem.

  All I knew about poetry was that I enjoyed it, and
the poem went on and on. I could always write more but could find no ending. Somewhere around I still have it, a melancholy piece of no value.

  Most of what I attempted at the mine were short stories, but unhappily I did not even know what a story was, although I believed I did. They were mostly pieces of narration without drama or anything else to recommend them. I was, however, trying. And I was putting words together, learning to shape my thoughts into something worth reading. There was much to learn, and I had no idea how rocky the road could be. Jack London’s Martin Eden gave me some idea of what might lie ahead. It was to be a rough and lonely road, but it was the only road for me.

  With what I had saved I bought new clothes, for those I’d taken to the mine had been worn out, and I headed for the sea again.

  It was in my mind, vaguely, that I might “do” a Joseph Conrad. I might return to the sea, get my Third Mate’s ticket, and begin writing at sea as he had. It was an idea that stayed with me for several years but never came to fruition.

  The bus I was riding stopped in Ash Fork so we could eat. We all rushed for the lunch counter to get our orders in while we could. We ate quickly and rushed back to the bus. I reached up for my suitcase….

  It was gone.

  *

  Much is not dared because it seems hard; much seems hard only because it is not dared.

  —PRINCE WENZEL ANTON VON KAUNITZ,

  Austrian statesman

  *

  TWO OTHER BAGS were also missing. The bus driver had come from the restaurant in time to see a car speeding away, a car with an out-of-state license.

  Once more I was back to wearing everything I owned. The new suit, shirts, underwear, all were gone. What money I had left was in my pocket but I would need clothing in which to work, toilet articles, a razor. It would not leave much.

  Talking with a man on the bus gave me an idea. He lived in Barstow, California, and would be getting off there. He asked what work I had been doing, and I mentioned the assessment job in Arizona. He suggested there were several people in Barstow who had mining claims but no particular urge to do the required work. Most of the local laborers did not want to take a temporary job when they might miss out on something more permanent.