Can we blame gentle Low El for wishing a certain high-elevation masochist would choke to death on an Elkmoon spruce grouse bone that doesn’t quite kill me?

  X. Murk Movie Beguinage

  (Portland, late September 1997)

  The solution to our plight, I think, is likely to be something

  no other culture has ever thought of, something over which

  !Kung, Inuit, Navajo, Walbiri, and the other traditions we

  have turned to for wisdom…will marvel at as well.

  —Barry Lopez, Crossing Open Ground

  AT ÉTOUFFÉE BRUTÉ, ten minutes till midnight, TJ pours the bourbons. Jim Beam for the downwardly mobile Ocean dweller. Bulleit for himself.

  TJ sets the shot glasses on the glowing bird’s-eye maple of the bar, circles round, takes the stool next to Jervis, levels his usual intense gaze upon his glass, and starts spinning it in his fingers. Incredibly intent stare. Endless precision spin. But for record amounts of time he neglects to drink his drink, and both brothers decline to speak. For TJ, the day-ending dram is all about staring at whiskey until something ineffable at last moves him to inquire into his brother’s eighteen-hour day of Ocean-walking, and they’ve performed the rite so many times that TJ’s inquiry consists of a single syllable:

  “So?”

  “So,” Jervis paper-whispers. “Never mind the night walk. There’s something from my day walk. Have you ever seen the Stumptown Shakespeare Ensemble perform, Teej?”

  “Just once,” TJ says, still staring at and spinning his Bulleit. “Lear. When I heard of an added dog, I feared tomfoolery, but you hounded me to see it, insisting that Lear’s dog obeyed no created thing but love. And sure enough, I couldn’t believe how moving the dog made the play. His love for his liege was utterly visible, as was the king’s love for his dog, though his madness doomed them. And when Goneril finally poisoned the dog, my God, that dog could die! Half the crowd broke out sobbing. It was a performance I want to remember forever, so I’ve not been back since.”

  Jervis takes a sip of Beam, then paper-whispers. “The Lear you saw is named Jamey Van Zandt, the dog is named Romeo, and Roams is a king too. And I got to walk him today.”

  TJ turns away to hide a smile. He doesn’t want Jervis to know he’s more at ease with his love of animals than his love of Ocean. Animal love is so much more manageable! But TJ’s relief doesn’t last long.

  “Something else, Teej,” Jervis says. “Jamey has met Risa, and he told me he really felt something for her.”

  TJ’s bourbon stops spinning. During late-night McGraff Brothers’ dram stories, TJ’s bourbon never stops spinning.

  “He says he loves her, and I felt that too, but I also felt the time’s not ripe. He’s got heartwork to do first. But get this. The instant Jamey said he was willing, Ocean gave him some heartwork. I walked Roams while he went to work on it, we met here at six, and soon as he saw us coming Jamey yelled, ‘Ocean is helping me like crazy, Jervis!’”

  With a stillness so total it’s clearly dread, not calm, TJ asks, “Does Risa have feelings for this actor fellow, do you think?”

  “No strobes on that. Ocean’s not a dating service. But after tonight’s Ocean-walk, heading back here to the Pearl, there was a murk movie that included them both.”

  TJ’s bourbon goes unspun as he says, “But murk movies are very inaccurate, right?”

  “They’re not a fraction as clear as strobes are. But this murk movie connected to a later strobe, and murk movies that connect to strobes have truth to them.”

  “Better tell me about it then,” TJ sighed.

  “Jamey and Risa were part of a group of broken-open lowly people who started what, through the murk, looked very like one of the Beguine communities the Roman Catholics wiped out. But coed, with kids included, in America this time, and Dumpster Catholic this time. Risa seemed central to this beguinage being born. Soon too it seemed in the murk.”

  TJ starts spinning his drink so fast that whiskey spills—another unprecedented event in the annals of McGraff midnight drams. And Jervis notices. He has always been aware that the love between TJ and Risa is platonic only on Risa’s part.

  “Yep,” he paper-whispers. “A full-on beguinage, it seemed in the movie. And wow was it piney! Is South Dakota piney? Idaho? It’s sad to think of Stumptown Shakespeare losing Jamey and Roams. But for a new Dumpster Catholic Beguine movement over Idaho Dakota way? Worth it, maybe.”

  TJ seizes his Bulleit, empties the entire shot, pounds his chest as he wheezes, circles the bar, and pours himself a second shot. Three straight unheard-of midnight dram events!

  “Let me be sure I’ve got this right, Jervis. According to an unreliable murk movie, Risa, this actor, his dog, and other people ‘over Idaho Dakota way’ are going to resurrect a religious order of women mystics destroyed eight centuries ago by the Church, and fairly soon.”

  “The Beguines weren’t an order,” Jervis says. “Just Jesus lovers. And the movie didn’t show Romeo. Roams is old. It’s time his body became human maybe, since his heart already is. The murk-movie people just seemed like grounded women, men, and kids somewhere piney. But when the movie ended there was a quick strobe showing we shouldn’t speak of this to Risa or Jamey. They’ll get thinky if we do, and the dumpster beguinage might not come to be.”

  “Christ!” TJ snaps. “Is this supposed to make me want to pack my bags and head over Idaho Dakota way?”

  “There’s more at the murk-movie level. Not a strobe. But do you wanna hear it?”

  “Do I have to?”

  “You’ll like it, Teej.”

  “We’ll see about that!”

  “The piney beguinage seemed to connect strongly to Portland. The Pearl Building was vital to it in a murky but good way. And you were the mother-brother of whom that connection was born. So don’t get thinky. Just know that you, me, Risa, Jamey, and no created thing but love might have some cool stuff to do before long.”

  Confused, disgruntled, and fascinated all at the same time, TJ gives Jervis a pained glance and asks, “Anything else?”

  “Nothing that’s not thinky,” Jervis says, and he closes up like a tomb.

  “Thank God,” TJ sighs. He then raises his glass, hoists a tight smile onto his face, and adds, “Here’s to whatever comes of no created thing but love here in the Pearl and over Idaho Dakota way. And for Christ’s sake, people! Don’t get thinky, and don’t forget the piney!”

  Shooting air in and out his nostrils, Jervis clinks TJ’s glass.

  The brothers set to work on their drams.

  XI. Dear TJ

  (October 3, 1997)

  Fax from Risa in Seattle to TJ in Portland:

  Mother-Brother:

  He died at 4:30 this a.m. after a month of miracles. My child heart, broken by his abandonment, doubly broken by him denying it, feels healed by an outpouring of more love and truthfulness in four weeks than in all of his life up to now—and what a delivery system he used! For the past three years he conducted a secret love affair with Skrit Lit. His sources were every book, journal entry, and class note from my college affair with the heart and mind of India, which I abandoned in the rafters of his garage.

  All month his sense of wonder, sense of gratitude, physical courage, never wavered. He hurt tons but swore off morphine and lorazepam to keep his mind clear, making it through on Vicodin so we could chatter like a couple of Skrit nerds, and did we ever! Between naps and pain waves we swapped bhakti poems, Mahabharata and Ramayana yarns, hours of Vedic crazy dumbsaint talk. Not long before he launched he then astounded me with a story about Gandhi’s incredible moment of death, which he festooned with Kabir, Tulsidas, and Valmiki verses lifted from my old notebooks! Before taking flight he also bequeathed me an instant aunt and uncle, Cindy and Bart, whom I’ll be staying with tonight.

  I can’t say when I’ll make it back to work, TJ. My heart’s so full I can’t confine it yet, and I’ve got a road trip to take. Destination: a subalpine Montana meadow where I’m to scatter Dave’s ashes, and two Elkmoon City storage units Bart says Dave has stuffed full of gifts. They cremate tomorrow, which feels impossibly wrong after so much intimacy. I’m staying right here with his body till they take it away, hoping he’ll feel me kissing him goodbye.

  If the cremation stays on schedule I’ll scatter his ashes on Oct 8th, my 30th b-day. It feels right to be in the place he loved more than any other on that day. I’ll call sometime after the scattering, but don’t worry if my silence runs at least a week past the 8th. He loved his Montana home valley like I loved Skrit Lit. I want to give myself to his place as completely as he gave himself to the very heart of me.

  All love to you and Jervis,

  Risa

  XII. Both an Angel and a Storm

  (Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, October 6

  and 7, 1997)

  Three chords and the truth.

  That’s all a country song is.

  —Willie Nelson

  If only.

  —Ona Kutar

  ON OCTOBER 6TH, a little before 3 p.m., Risa got a call in Portland from the crematorium in Seattle. They said they were working late. Her father’s ashes could be picked up that day if she could make it there by 7:30 p.m.

  This was the timing she’d hoped for. Dave had drawn her a map of how to get to his high Montana meadow from Elkmoon City. If she drove long and slept short, she could reach Dave’s mapped meadow on her thirtieth birthday. Why did this feel crucial to her? Dave had showered her with the Crimson Exploiter, the worth of his Seattle house, a life insurance payoff, and two storage units apparently stuffed with Montana-appropriate gifts. To use her birthday to release him in his meadow was the last gift she could ever bestow in return.

  She packed for probable cold night camping in under an hour, choosing the Crimson Exploiter, not her old Volvo, because Dave’s Montana escape vehicle felt right for her first experiences of his birthplace. She filled a thermos with hot Lapsang souchong, cream and honey, and a cooler with sandwiches and snacks, and hit the road.

  I-5 from Tacoma, north, was bumper-to-bumper, but creeping along at five to twenty miles an hour. Risa made it to the crematorium with just minutes to spare. Their rigamarole wasn’t too time-consuming. The marbled plastic urn containing Dave’s ashes was mauve. Jarringly wrong! But there was no time to change that.

  She set out for Montana at 8 p.m. Breaking free of rush-hour traffic on I-90 east, her escape velocity was strong. But miles and miles of the freeway were being resurfaced by night crews, often allowing just one lane to move at a time. It slowed her by more than two hours as she wound over the Cascades. Construction ended in the night-blackened pines of Cle Elum. She made good time in the rain-shadow country, past chaparral and the last increasingly small pine forests, past the huge green circles of center-pivot irrigation lands, the oceanic swells of the Palouse with its vast dryland wheat farms, past Ritzville, Sprague, Spokane, Coeur d’Alene.

  In the Idaho panhandle fatigue hit Risa suddenly and hard. She checked the clock: 2:50 a.m. Too late for motels, too early for cafes and coffee. She passed a string of sad-looking little mining towns—Smelterville, Kellogg, Wallace, Mullan, Compressor District? (that’s what the sign said)—but had to stop by the Compressor off-ramp to down a sandwich and drain her Lapsang for the caffeine.

  As the interstate corkscrewed up into a high mountain nowhere, no place to stop and rest except a shoulder with trucks blasting by, Risa grew so sleepy she turned off the heater, downed her windows, and let the car grow so frigid her chattering teeth rattled her back to wakefulness. As she summited Lookout Pass, Risa slowed down and looked out. Pitch-black for a moment. Then came a sign she’d waited lifelong to see:

  WELCOME TO MONTANA!

  Her spirits had already risen when the next sign invited her, as Dave had promised, to drive any damn speed she liked so long as it was “reasonable and prudent.” Risa pulled over, opened her door, set her sandaled foot down in Dave’s birth state, turned to the urn, and said, “We’re homing in! But you know what, Dave? Fuck mauve. First store I see we’re getting what’s left of you a new container.”

  As the Exploiter snaked its way down into Montana the headlights lit upon names Dave used to mention: THOMPSON FALLS. PLAINS. GLACIER PARK. KALISPELL. ST. REGIS. MISSOULA. To see the names was to yearn to hear Dave say them. Dark asphalt became pale concrete the same instant a green and white sign said, ST. REGIS RIVER. Realizing she was on a bridge, Risa saw a young, handsome Dave swivel at the steering wheel, craning his neck to glimpse the water far below. The image moved her to do the same, but she’d seen nothing but blackness when her right tires hit a rumble strip and, very nearly, the concrete wall of the bridge. Veering back into her lane, she told the urn, “Jeez! I had no idea your swivel and crane move took such skill!”

  More miles of near black. Drowsy again after her adrenaline rush, Risa turned on the radio. On the only station she could find, a twangy-voiced DJ was so broken up by static that she started to snap him off, then heard, “Next up, Willie Nelson’s fresh take on the Silas Dupree classic ‘Both an Angel and a Storm.’” She’d never heard of the song, but her college boyfriend, Grady, had loved the Duprees and Risa had a soft spot for Willie. Over the radio’s crackling an acoustic guitar set out in slow waltz time. When Willie chimed in, crackling be damned, she cranked it:

  My long-gone bride and cowboy pride

  Left me so lost and confused

  Hopped on my Harley, turned up Bob Marley

  And rode to church for Good News

  But when the news was her body

  Squeezin’ past me through the pews

  I cried, Mercy, please don’t curse me

  Sweet King of the Jews

  “Holy crap!” Risa laughed. “Are you hearing this, Dave?”

  The ashes jounced along in their mauve container, saying what ashes say. But when a Dobro slid in under the guitar, Risa felt a fraction of the man who could talk story like a Dobro slide into the Exploiter to listen—and oh, Willie Hugh! That old hippie cowboy could make honey out of another songwriter’s fresh morning stool…

  My will is strong, but church was long

  Soon she was all I could see

  Whether she’d kneel, or just set still

  It was a love dance to me

  We stood for song, her legs were long

  Her voice was bright and sincere

  And when she eyed me as if to try me

  The Lord destroyed all my fear

  “Damn, Dave!” Risa said. “If Willie sang an ode to John Wilkes Booth, Lincoln’s death day’d be as big as the Fourth! That hymny organ’s got me drawlin’ an’ almost bawlin’, an’ I heard that Dobro make your throat catch even though it’s ashes.”

  Hear me, Creator, it’s You made her

  And You who lured me in here

  My tree of knowledge says she’s my college

  An’ I’m enrollin’ in there

  Reception line, chills down my spine

  My gaze gets lost in her hair

  Her blazin’ eyes, her rump and thighs

  O Lord, I’m walkin’ on air

  When she prays it’s all Jesus

  But when she loves me I’m torn

  That’s why I call her

  Both an angel and a storm

  Now a woman joined Willie in high haunted harmony, creating eros of a high order. The woman’s voice was clear, noble, eerily familiar. Risa felt as if a lady of great beauty and virtue had strode into a ragged biker bar, seen Willie crooning on the smoky stage, stepped fearlessly up beside him to bust out a harmony—and suddenly Risa had it: “Emmylou! You wouldn’t!”

  But, oh, Emmylou would…

  We blast Bob Marley on my Harley

  And find her home on the hill

  And when we kiss, a sea of bliss

  Is all my stoned soul can feel

  She reads my body like a Bible

  Takes my lost soul by force

  An’ when she holds me, holy rolls me

  I thank the Lord for my divorce

  Yeah, when she prays I see Jesus

  But when she loves me I’m torn

  That’s why I call her

  Both my angel and a storm

  Driving with her knee so she could hold her head in both hands, Risa asked the radio, “When did the night hallucination music of truckers get so gorgeous?”

  I thank You, Lord, that I’ve been floored

  I praise Your works to the skies

  Crazed by her hips, mad for her lips

  I crash an’ burn in her eyes

  The guitar, band, and choir vanished, a ritardando made the voices feel like slow cirrus clouds sliding across a crimson sky at sunset, and when a lone French horn joined Emmylou and Willie in aching three-part a cappella Risa nearly expired from happiness:

  Yeah, when she prays it’s sweet Jesus…

  And when she loves I’m torn…

  That’s why I call her both my angel…

  And a storm.

  “Pope John Paul!” Risa shouted into the night. “Saint Willie today! What’s it take, two miracles? That face, those braids, that voice. His conversion of cowpies into hymns! There’s five miracles countin’ both braids! Saint Willie Hugh. What a ring it’s got! You’d convert a million in a day!”