“Never
Gone”
From the book: “Big Sky Café (And Other Schools I Have Attended)”
ã By Jack Bogut
All rights reserved
The car’s headlights probed the
darkness and found only gravel road and fences.
Nothing looked familiar in the narrow beam of light; he'd have to wait
until morning to see his old world blossom into day. He needed these visits to renew his memories,
to recharge his mental batteries. It had
been far too long.
He pulled off on the narrow shoulder
of the road, stopped the car, opened the door and got out. He looked up and down the road; not a sign of
another car so he reached inside and turned off the headlights and the
engine. It took a few seconds to get
used to the dark enough to make out the horizon. His eyes were drawn up into the mass of stars
overhead and the magic of this place flooded over him again like gentle spring
rain.
His family was asleep in the car and
never stirred all the time he stood there. And it was just as well. Only he could hear faint strains of the music
of his years, and the eloquence of silence all around them. Metallic sounds of the engine cooling in the
soft breeze broke the quiet.
He closed his eyes tightly and reached
upward, wriggling his fingers to feel the stars, trying to pull the night sky
lower until he could feel it touch his head and go down over his ears like it
used to when he was a kid. He felt a familiar, slightly embarrassed grin spread
over his face and his shoulders shake a little as he stifled a laugh. He never
felt as close to the essence of his life as in this place. And he was still miles from the farm.
"Why are we stopped? Is there something wrong?" His sleepy wife asked from inside the car,
and then thought better of it.
"Are you here with us?” She
asked. “Or are you out there in the past
somewhere?"
He reached blindly inside the car with
one hand. She took it and slid across the seat, hooked a thumb in his belt loop
for leverage, stood up beside him, and put her arm around his waist
“This is really important to you,
isn’t it?”
“Yeah it is.”
"I wish I could understand
about this place and what it means."
"It's really hard to
explain," he said wrapping his arm around her shoulder. They
stood a few minutes until he said,
"We'd better go. They'll start to worry about us if we don't
show up on time.”
The lights from the windows in the
old farm house got bigger and brighter as they got closer. When they turned down the lane and the
headlights hit the kitchen window the porch and yard lights suddenly came on
and the only door in the house opened.
Then it was yawns and hello's, suitcases and greetings, gentle laughter,
the smell of coffee, the slam of the screen door, the rustle of sheets and
blankets, distant overheard pillow talk about what to fix for breakfast and the
night laid peacefully on them all.
Next morning was pancakes and stiff
bacon and more coffee and getting reacquainted with the dog and the cat. Then it was a game of horseshoes out near the
garden and a discussion of crops and grain prices and arthritis and the price
of land and how young people don't want to farm anymore.
He watched his kids run until they
got small in the distance and run back again, short of breath, full of noise,
wild eyed, unaccustomed to not having limits to the yard. Finally, she stood
alongside him and said,
“Now I know why you’ve been a little
sad on this trip. I heard what they did.”
He just nodded his head.
“Were you surprised?” She asked.
“No, not surprised exactly. I knew it was gonna happen someday.”
“Disappointed?”
“I haven’t seen it yet.”
"Well, you might as well get it
over with then, huh?"
"I guess you're right," he
answered softly and strode abruptly away by himself toward the top of the small
rise that hid most of the farm land from view from the house.
It had been a long time since he’d
visited the old farm where he’d grown up, and each step took him farther and
farther back in his memory. By the time
he passed the barn and neared the top of the hill he was nine years old again,
tall and gangly, with hair that always looked like a blond explosion.
He walked the last few steps to the
crest and stood, motionless, as the moment stopped, and then slowly reversed. His pulse quickened. He could see what he remembered without
looking. And it was so vivid:
The land dropped gently down and away
into green grass and sagebrush and small mounds of cactus. He could still remember how the prickly ears
would bloom after a rain, big yellow blossoms catching and holding the sun.
Buff colored mounds of earth marked
gopher holes that not only hid snakes and gophers but, when he stood on them,
made him taller than he really was, when it was important to be taller.
Animal paths from all parts of the
pasture were carved into the earth like veins in the land, meandering, but all
leading to and from the barn. So many
times he'd gone to the farthest corner of the pasture to get the cows and
brought them home, swinging a stick, whistling and hollering at the top of his
lungs, straining at his boundaries, testing his welcome on earth, growing every
day.
He remembered how the cows used to
ignore his whistles and shouts, unless he ran up alongside and looked them
right in the eye; then they’d take off
like the devil himself was after them and run like the wind, bellies and bags
full, swinging and swaying back and forth like a pendulum, their hooves
clicking like castanets. It was a crazy
sight. He had to smile.
With his eyes closed the dam was
still almost full of water, reflecting blue and white as the day passed
overhead. Ducks were swimming, making
v-trails and ripples, pushing the reflections to shore. And just beyond the dam lay the old dump with
all those discarded treasures: medicine bottles turned purple by age and
weather, old catalogs and magazines hidden under buckets and tubs and earth and
weeds - unreadable, damp and musty but with pictures he’d never seen before;
discarded tools that could make and build marvelous things for which there was
no earthly use were buried just below the surface of the dump, if only one had
the time to dig for them.
He'd lain on his belly in the grass
in this pasture with a long string looped around the top of one of the gopher
holes waiting for one of the little rodents to stick his head up so he could
tighten the noose and lead his prize home.
He didn't learn until years later that the gophers had undoubtedly
watched him from the other entrances to their holes and couldn't believe how
stupid humans really were.
He'd rested on his back in the soft
grass below the hill and watched clouds like fleecy, white sheep, graze their
way across the blue meadow overhead.
He'd run in the rain in this place.
He'd played in the mud. He'd shouted
and waited out his anger at the world in this place. He'd shed tears he was afraid to show in this
place.
Now, most importantly, he'd brought
his family and let his kids run and get dirty and tired in this place, and when
he'd tried to explain what being here meant, they didn't understand.
But the air was still so sweet with
the scents of the animals and the grass and the water and the sage and all
mixing together on the gentle breeze.
There was never any place like this.
He hadn't heard her come up behind
him, so he twitched just a little as she touched his hand, took a deep breath
and said,
"I'm sorry. I had no idea they
did everything. It’s all gone isn’t
it?"
His voice caught in his throat as he
opened his eyes. He couldn't
answer. She understood.
They stood there together for what
seemed a long time before she broke the silence again.
"When did they plow it
up?"
“Last spring. They've been talking about it for years.”
“Do you know why?”
“Yeah. Dad said they needed to farm everything,
every bit of land, to turn a profit."
"But it's all gone. They plowed everything under, all those
things you’ve told us about: the dam, the sagebrush, the cactus, the road, the
gopher holes...."
He nodded his head.
She waited a long time in silence
before she asked, quietly, "Will we ever come back here again?"
“Oh sure, as long as the folks are
around.
“But not to this hilltop.” She said
"What would be the point? Everything’s gone." He said, looking off into row after row of
green grain.
"Wait a minute. Think about it. It's not gone!" She said
"What do you mean?" He shot back.
"Well, first of all, maybe this
mystical old farm was NEVER here, for anyone but you. This place has always been mystical to
you. But have you ever thought that you were
the magic in this place. That you saw it
with different eyes because you changed as you grew up here.
Your personality, your values, your
work ethic and your character were all formed here, all that stuff!” She said as she playfully dug him in the
ribs.
“And second, as long as you
remember, even though it’s plowed under and gone for everyone else, it’ll still
be here for you.”
“How do you know?” He asked, looking
at her.
“Because everybody has a place that
is special only to them, someplace they can’t explain to anyone else. But, as long as they remember, it’ll never be
gone,” she said softly.
“You’re sure about that?” He asked.
“I’m sure.” She answered.
"I just wanted you and the
kids; the kids especially, to feel the magic I feel." He said.
She looked up at him. “Even if
everything was still here and we looked at it, I’m not sure we could see
anything special. But you could show us!”
“Show you. How?”
“Paint us a picture with words.
Write about it! Then maybe we can see it."
She was so wise.