Modoc

We lived in the northeastern part of the state, Oregon on the north border, Nevada, the eastern border. The entire county was atop the Modoc plateau. High desert. Powerful winds. Wildernesses. Alkali lakes that barely existed, ghost towns, tumbleweeds, geese, alfalfa fields , sweet in summer, white with snow in winter, wild mustang herds and dust, sage after rain. The feeling of being apart from the rest of the nation, even humanity. First and most importantly because here humans were rare. There were more Herefords than humans. More antelope than families of homo sapiens.
You would wander thru the desert, thru orchards, with a .22 rifle, looking for rattlesnakes, coyotes, beer bottles. With your long walking stick, with the “y” at the tip, you overturned rocks, sometimes you’d spy them , coiled, tongues flicking, rattling their warning, but in vain, you aimed with one hand and shot their heads to nothing but ragged bloody ribbons of snake meat. Move the stick and the rock falls on their serpentine cadaverlet.A crow in Uncle Sonnys cherry tree: aim, heart of crow in your sights, fire and it falls, wings akimbo, flailing, or, sometimes, strangely, motionless, in slow motion, no branches, a strait, plumb-line, from branch to dead earth. You’d walk and look at the eyes as they went from yellow, paniced, draining with life, til yellow morphed to white, to cloud, beak opening for one last “caw”.
You read the earth for signs of life. Deer, bear, bobcat, wild dog, coyote, skunk, porcupine, raccoon, antelope, and the tracks you wanted most and feared the most were the ones of the mountain lion. In forty years you never saw one. You heard their purr, or their yowls, their screeching, their quiet watching , their eyes sending limbic fear into your heart and bowels, making you shake, expecting the paw of one to razor your face from its skull, its canines to puncture your brain. But, it’d watch you, play with you…you with a gun that was really just a b.b. gun on steroids.A .22? Flesh wound, a mob of mosquitos would harm a mountain lion more than your .22.
Rounding a curve in the trail, you’d run, adrenaline coursing thru you, natures cocaine, you’d run from the hills, the pine trees, down, down to pastureland, to the open, and walk, exhausted thru the Basques field, knowing that, unlike the lion, he would strike, he would shoot. But, his gun was rock salt, still when it hit the fleshy fat of below your ass, there at the top of the leg, it’d welt you, bleed you. His archaic language of double ‘a’s’ and “x”, Neandertal!, you’d scream at him. And hide , stomach to the hot earth as rock salt scythed the wheat above you.
Grasshoppers crawling on your face, wanting to bend on knee and take aim at the sonofabitch, shoot him in the eye.That Basque crow, that foreign fuck. He always thought you had crawled away, so he’d leave--- you’d hear the tractor harrumph into life, wait a minute, peek up and see him driving away from you, the orchard of your uncle Sonny a football field away.
Up! And, youd hoof it, so goddamned fast, you flew, as if carried on the wind, reaching the barbed wire you’d dive over and roll. Then, sometimes, youd shoot at his tires. At that range a .22 was useless, the bullet hit with a metallic limpness.The Basques neck moving from you, lobster red, welt red, red as eyes after whiskey.
The orchard of Golden Delicious was originally planted by a Cherokee named January Jim who had stolen some of the original Golden Delicious apples in Clay County, West Virginia on the Mullins farm. From here, these sweet, aromatic apples went up and down the West Coast. My uncle Sonny had told me this story many times, so many times in fact, we began thinking his mind was going. “Did I ever tell you the story of the Mullins Cherokee…? He’d begin, and my aunt Wanda would shush him down, his eyes would go from bright and lost in remembering to the here, the now, the bright red water pump in the kitchen. He’d always start pumping a bucket of water, embarrassed. Wanda would shake her head as he’d go water the turkeys or rabbits.
In the orchard, I’d read. I’d sit. I’d hide. My dusty cowboy boots strait out in front of me, eagles on wind, high; crows and ravens eating the apples, the cherries, plums, making a racket. My cousins, Rhonda and Katy, twins who looked like strangers and the opposite of each other: Katy had an afro, big boned, loud, witty, ready to arm wrestle any one, even a man. Rhonda, small framed, quiet and coy, doe eyed. My uncle Big Sonny and Aunt Wanda adopted them , a drunk Apache and her black amour had a cardboard sign, 1959, outside the Safford , Arizona post office, “Adopt our girls for 100 dollars”. They gave $40. They took them up and down the West, following whatever was ripe, living in tents and cabins, finally settling in Modoc.
Being half Indian was enough to gain a fight every day, or, at least words. But, being half black was akin to being part unknown, part nightmare. Aunt Wanda would beat Katy if she listened to James Brown, danced like a “nigger”, spoke like a “jigaboo”. Katy would tell her, in an eerie monotone, matter of factly, “You will never beat the nigger out of me, bitch.” Uncle Sonny would plead for his wife to stop, the small Pomeranians were yapping, Rhonda would cry and Wandas blood sons, Elbert and Roy, when they weren’t in jail or in Alaska, would insouciantly waltz over, grab the leather strop and walk away as their mom, glowered and spit and hissed.Uncle Sonny outside chopping kindling, the little dogs yapping. The wind from the warner Mountain Range blowing cold, in gusts, bringing flecks of snow to the red house in the middle of June.