Graphic the Valley (9 page)

He was quiet while he formed the first few layers. Then he turned to the medical student. He said, “From here you want to keep that hand up. The thumb still. Make sure nothing wiggles. You want to add from here?”

“Yes,” she said. She wound wraps. Pressed gently, then wound more wraps. “Does that hurt?”

“No,” I said.

“Good.” She added more layers.

The orthopedist said, “And that should do it. Come back here and get this thing off in six to eight weeks, all right? They can call for a cast saw if they don’t have one.”

“All right,” I said.

He smiled. Patted the new plaster. “You take care now.”

• • •

I called Lucy on a borrowed cell phone. I explained what had happened.

“A mountain lion?” she said.

“Yes, it came down off a boulder. I thought it was going to kill me. Then it didn’t.”

She said, “And you killed it with your fist?”

“Yes,” I said. “Down its throat.”

Lucy whistled into the receiver.

“I know. I know. It sounds so crazy.”

“Are you okay?” she said. Her voice was different over the phone. Not as strong.

“Yes,” I said. “They gave me something for the pain.”

“Good,” she said. “I’ll come pick you up.”

• • •

When Lucy arrived, she put both hands on the cast. Kissed me. She said, “I’m glad you’re okay.”

“Me too,” I said.

The blond medical student came out to the road. She had two cups of pills in her hand. “These are anti-inflammatories,” she said. “Every six hours. And these are for pain.” She handed both cups to me. “Every four hours. Don’t overdo it, and keep up with the pain.”

I said, “Thank you.” I was thinking about the tent. About before. I looked at Lucy to see if she knew, but Lucy was looking at my cast, picking at the edge, then touching the ends of my swollen fingers. The medical student walked back to the tent.

• • •

In the car, Lucy said, “We’re going to have successive days of wedding feasts. My father wants it.”

I said, “Is that the tradition?”

“No,” she said. “The old tradition is that you come into my house and live with me. There’s an exchange of gifts. Whenever we have our first baby, we’re officially married.” Lucy laughed. “That would be the old way.”

“Does your father know?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “No way.”

“Does anyone know?”

She shook her head no again. “They’re too busy with some Park Service deal.”

I said, “What Park Service deal?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “It doesn’t matter to me.”

“But it might matter,” I said.

“Well, my father said he needs me in on it. Says that my support is ‘essential.’ So I’ll know more about it soon. And I’m sure it’s good.”

The thunderclouds come, white stacks pushing black underneath, the Valley shadowed as Tenaya watches from the top of Yosemite Falls. The storm twitches electricity, ready to draw lightning. But the clouds open. Water pours down. And the frogs come up. They hop into the thatched homes, squeeze between the sticks, underneath the walls, dropping from the roofs. The frogs are in the acorn flour, the dried meat, the woodpiles. The frogs live and die everywhere in the Valley that summer and fall. The smell of their dying is in the water and the air, on the people’s skin. When men kiss women, they kiss with the smell of dead frogs
.

Then winter comes and the soldiers increase in number, soldiers of the 36th Wisconsin. Major Savage leads them up from Mariposa, and Vow-Ches-Ter is with them
.

Savage gives the order: “Wait for the first, big, spring storm before we march in. That way there will be no retreat over the mountains. No retreat to the Tuolumnes or the Monos. The Yosemiti will be trapped by the wet snow.”

He is coming to the Valley in March. The newspapers will later report that it is in the month of May, but it is March. 1851
.

I saw the press release on a signboard in the Yosemite Village three weeks later:

The National Park Service and American Indian Movement are proud to announce the return of the original inhabitants of the Yosemite, Yosemite Valley, Hetch Hetchy, and Tuolumne. The NPS is designing and building a Miwok village at North Wawona, and another Miwok village to come soon to the Yosemite Valley. The new native villages will allow for further cultural competence and recognition by park visitors as the tribe members hunt, gather, craft, and perform ceremonies within the boundaries of the National Park. Visitor centers will showcase the wonderful basketry, blanket weaving, tanning, and stone-napping skills of these original inhabitants
.

• • •

I read the sign twice.

Old Tenaya’s blood, Mono Paiute. Further back, Aztecan. I stared at the sign. Opened and closed my broken hand.

I’d torn the cast off the night before. Cut it with my sheath knife, then ripped shreds with my other hand. Only thirty days, but I could feel the injury healed, the muscles strong and rested. I felt my fist pulling the bones tight once again, tendons correcting. This is how I’d healed my whole life, more quickly than possible, the Valley in me.

That night, I said, “You have to come with me.”

My father shook his head.

My mother didn’t seem to hear us. Sometimes it was like that.

“You’re my parents,” I said. “So you have to come.”

My father picked at his thumbnail. He said, “Tenaya, this is something else.”

I’d come to their camp at dinnertime but I wasn’t hungry. My mother stirred the noodles and she didn’t hum.

I said, “You won’t come to the wedding, or you won’t come to the feasts? Which one?”

My mother looked up from her stirring.

My father said, “If we come, you’ll have to do something for us.”

I said, “What?”

He said, “You’ll have to embarrass them.” He licked his front teeth. Yellow across the enamel. Brown lines between each tooth.

“No,” I said.

“It wouldn’t have to be anything big,” he said. “Just a small embarrassment to show you understand. A little thing.”

I took out my knife. Squatted down by the log, and dug the point into the wood. I turned the tip to make a hole. “I can’t do that,” I said.

My father picked at his cuticle. He said, “I don’t think you ever understood it all. This new ‘Original Inhabitants’ thing, have you heard about that?”

“Yes,” I said. “I read the sign. I know it’s wrong.”

“But you don’t care?”

My mother handed me a bowl of noodles.

I said, “I care but that’s not the only thing here. Lucy and I are something else.”

“Do you know that for sure? Is she something else?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, is she involved with this?”

“No,” I said, “I don’t think so. Probably not.”

“Probably not?” he said. “There’s a lot more there than you think. And it still matters.” My father pulled a string of skin and a drop of blood appeared. He smeared it with his finger. “You know what you could do?” he said.

I shook my head.

My mother spooned two more bowls of noodles. Handed one to my father and took one herself.

My father ignored his food. He said, “I know you could do this.”

I carved into the log, deepening the hole. Turned the knife. Felt the indent widen, and cut at the edges.

My father said, “It’s a small thing to ask.” He took his fork and wound noodles around the tines. “You can do something. A small embarrassment. That’s all.”

• • •

We were headed to North Wawona before the first feast. We took two days to backpack together, up Pohono. My parents were not as fast as they used to be. We stopped the first evening just past the steeps, at the rim, in a meadow that reminded me of catching gopher snakes as a child. I always caught them tail first, then slowly dragged them back out of their holes or spun them flat until they hissed.

We stopped at the meadow and my father said, “This isn’t good. We shouldn’t be going.”

I spit on the trail. “You can’t say that now. We’re already on our way.”

He loosened his shoulder straps and shook his pack off. Thumped it on the ground and let it roll onto its side.

I said, “Come on. Let’s keep going a little bit further.”

“No,” he said. “I think I’ll stay here.”

I worked my thumbs under my own backpack’s straps. I said, “Put it back on. Let’s go.”

He sat down on his pack. “I said, ‘I think I’ll stay here.’”

My mother walked into the meadow and put her face to the last of the day’s sun, the low-angle beams on her closed eyelids. She still had her pack on.

I said, “And then I just don’t get married?”

“Well,” my father said, “it seems a little rushed, doesn’t it?” He wiped his forehead.

I wedged my thumbs underneath the straps of my pack. “Maybe. But Lucy is…” I didn’t know how to explain a girl who wasn’t afraid of rattlesnakes.

“Okay then,” my father said. “And I’ll probably stay right here if you don’t mind.”

“But I do mind,” I said. I pointed back at the trail. “We’re late to the halfway point.”

My father got some peanuts out of his pack and started eating. “Are you going to do what I asked?”

I said, “The embarrassment thing?”

“Yes,” he said.

I stared up at the line of trees around the meadow, the crowns like an uneven ridge, up and down, circling back to us. My mother was still standing out in the middle, eyes closed.

I said, “Will you go with me if I do it?”

“Yes,” he said.

“And you’ll push on a little farther tonight too?”

“Yes,” he said again.

“Okay, if I think of something, I’ll do it,” I said. “So my answer is maybe.”

“So you will?” he said.

“Maybe,” I said again.

He licked the salt off a peanut shell. Cracked it with his teeth, and shook the two peanuts into his mouth. Threw the shell halves into the grass. “That sounds better,” he said. “If you understand the history, then it matters. All of it.”

• • •

I’m little, and I watch him go to the car. He never leaves the trunk unlocked. He has the key around his neck on a string, and when it isn’t on his neck, when he goes swimming, he has that key hidden somewhere but I never know where.

The 1946 Plymouth Deluxe sits next to the big tree, green and rusting underneath. Good tires the only addition.

My father looks both ways before he opens the trunk. Leans in and moves his hands like he’s checking cards. Then he shuts the lid and locks it. Looks both ways again. I’ve never seen inside the trunk, and don’t know what’s in there.

The next meadow a mile up the trail. I hadn’t returned since the night of the lion, four and a half weeks earlier. I let my parents hike past. I said, “I have to pee. I’ll catch up.”

They nodded and kept hiking. Tired and breathing hard again. My father looked awkward underneath his pack. It was late day, but still hot, and the pack had shifted off to the side, one of his straps slipping.

I waited until they rounded over the next knoll. Then I went to look. I found the carcass where I’d left it.

Coyotes had scavenged the flesh off the legs and shoulders, cleaned to the bones. The hide was pulled back where it wasn’t missing. The top of the rib cage. I heard the buzzing before I felt the vibrations.

Inside the cavity where the lower intestines used to coil, bees were working, building. The combs were thick already, layered and dripping with honey. It was not possible for bees to produce honey in that amount of time, and I knew that it was not possible. But this is how it was. Like my hand. I looked at the healed hole, an indent, light purple, only four and a half weeks. I flexed my fist, the knitted bones straight now past the muscles.

I reached inside with that hand. The bees stung me next to the scar as I broke off a piece of the honeycomb. Pulled it out. The comb dripped down past the bee stings that welted, the honey dripping to my elbow.

I took a bite. The comb was soft and waxy, capsules of sweet popping between my teeth. I sat in the meadow next to the lion and ate, listening to the bees buzzing all around me. Workers flew in and out of the carcass, their rattle-paper wings, windows humming in a windstorm.

I reached in and broke off a larger chunk of comb, bigger than the first. Yellow-white. I ignored the new stings and started to hike again. When I caught up to my parents, I offered each a piece of the comb, smiling. Feeding them out of the carcass but they wouldn’t know that.

Both of them ate, crunching the golden, sugared sweet. Smiling. They ate and hiked, rejuvenated by the quick energy, the honey from the body of the lion. I thought of the favor that my father had asked, and knew something that might work. I thought it was a small thing.

• • •

That night, I tested the riddle on Lucy.

I said, “Can you tell me what this means: Out of the eater, something to eat; Out of the strong, something sweet?”

We were in her bathroom at North Wawona, next to the bedroom. “No,” she said. “What is it?”

“Guess,” I said.

Lucy began brushing her teeth. Brushed all around her mouth, then her tongue. Spit. She said, “No, tell me.”

I said, “You have to guess.” I wet my toothbrush. “So here it is again: Out of the eater, something to eat; Out of the strong, something sweet.”

I brushed my teeth then. Waited to see if she’d guess it.

Lucy leaned on the counter. She filled a cup of water and took a drink. She said, “Does this have to do with your broken hand? How it healed so quickly?”

“Yes,” I said. “Good guess.”

She rinsed her toothbrush and tapped it against the counter. “Okay,” she said, “I give up. Just tell me.”

I spat toothpaste foam. “I can’t,” I said.

“What do you mean, Tenaya? You can tell me.”

“No,” I said. “I can’t.” I rinsed my toothbrush. “You have to guess this one.”

Lucy walked into the bedroom and turned toward the wall. She unraveled a braid of her hair. From behind, I could see the way her spine almost made a full question mark.

My father met me outside my room. He had been waiting, leaning against the wall in the hallway.