Rye Curtis - Kingdomtide

I had expected to come to the lookout from which I had glimpsed the search party in the ravine, but I did not. By and by I was in some unfamiliar place. All over the ground lay strange shapes of icy snow kept by the shade of the greatest trees. Not knowing where to go, I plopped down in the crook of an exposed root to catch my breath and suck on my busted lip. The wind picked up and the trees clawed and leaned over each other like the inebriated revelers Mr. Waldrip and I used to see in front of the Empty Cupboard roadhouse on our way home from a Saturday-night picture in Amarillo. I shut my eyes for a spell and imagined I was there with Mr. Waldrip, sitting in the truck and not saying a word to each other, just driving home, listening to the road. When I opened my eyes again and looked around at the trees I was mighty confused about the way I had come and uncertain I could find my way back to the log cabin.

I would come to learn later that I had gone in the opposite direction from where the search party was approaching the log cabin. If I had gone out the door and to the left instead of the right I would have run smack into them. They would arrive at the log cabin later that evening.

Sometimes it is awful hard not to see the humor in something aggravating like that. It is hard not to see it in the sad things too. A real important rodeo man from Borger got himself killed riding a mechanical bull in a bar in Dallas. Hit his head on a light fixture. It is not funny, but it always tickled me something terrible when Mr. Waldrip would tell it. I laugh as I write this now. I wonder if this rodeo man’s mother ever laughed about it. I have a hard time thinking she ever did.

I was turned around and lost. So I just settled down in those roots as a chorus of wind and darkness tuned up in the mountains. I did not laugh about anything at all right then. I could not yet see the humor in it. Instead I went back to hollering and hollering, Help me, I am Cloris Waldrip.

I sat balled up in Terry’s coat shivering and hollering all night long like a crazy person until I lost my voice and could scarcely whisper. My lip was swollen up pretty good too and I was slobbering like a mule. When the sky started to lighten and the sun was just below the mountains, it was not a minute too soon. I was nearly froze to death.

Suddenly I heard something stalking through the woods. Whatever it was stopped just yards shy of where I was, but I could not see it for all the trees. There was a patter like something piddling on the ground. My thought was if it was not a mean old bear or that backwards mountain lion it might be one of the search party. I managed to pick myself up and peek around the pines, but I could not see what the thing was. I endeavored to say out my name but all that I could muster was a ghastly groan. The pattering stopped. I limped over.

Whatever it was gave a shriek and lit out of there with some haste. I chased after it, but it was awful quick and I lost track of it in the dark. I kept on in the general direction.

I did not see the drop.

My legs went out from under me and I was thrown down a slope of cold mud and stone! I tore off a whole fingernail clawing at the rock to slow my descent but I slid out over the lip of an overhang anyway. I caught the edge by my gory fingers. I could not turn my head to know how far the drop was. My legs swung free in open air and I stretched them out as far as I could to find ground if there was any. My purse had slipped off my shoulder and it lay in front of me on the overhang. I could not let go to grab it. I am sure I was a pitiful sight, dangling there in those glittery purple stockings and that pink shirt doused in black mud. My fingers burned and blood spurted from them. I was not fooling myself that I could hang there for eternity.

So I let go. There is something to be said for the graceful acceptance of the inevitable.

The fall was not far, thank goodness, but when I hit the ground my legs gave out and I twisted my ankle and knocked my head on a rock. Gracious, it hurt a great deal and I went loopy for a spell. I was sure I heard a woman above on the overhang saying my name as the sun came up. I lay on my back with my legs splayed out at the bottom of this steep escarpment, in a damp place of rocks and coarse brown shrubbery, and did not move. Above me a barkless and dying tree grew from the overhang. Snagged on a bare high branch was the kind of silvery balloon you could find with the misted flowers in the supermarket or deserted in a corner of some hospital room’s ceiling. It was printed with pink words that I could not make out.

When first it caught my eye I took it for a helicopter. My heart dropped when I realized it was only a balloon. My sister-in-law, Rhonda Lee Waldrip, had brought me a balloon like that when I had my gallbladder removed in September of 1978. I accidentally let go of it on the walk from the hospital back to Mr. Waldrip’s truck. It was a windy day, as they often are in Texas, and that balloon vanished into the sky mighty quick. I had the funny notion that this could be that very same balloon. It is amazing the distances they can travel.

I lay still and felt my body for injuries, but as I have put down here before my bones were strong. I had taken a spill in the grocery store a year before and had given a very nice young couple there in the produce aisle a big scare, but I was not injured.

After a time I sat up to put some weight on my ankle, but it gave me a terrible pain and I toppled over. I lay on my back like an upset turtle and considered the many mistakes I had made out there in the wilderness. It was a miracle I had survived for this long. I watched the treetops upside down and imagined Mr. Waldrip up there instead of that balloon, like deadwood that had not yet made it to the ground. But there was only that silvery balloon flapping before a big sky filling with clouds and daylight.

I set myself upright and slid under the overhang. My back was against a wall of mud and roots where it had been washed out, and I stretched out my legs and looked at my bloody fingers. I was mighty hungry and desperately thirsty. I commenced to telling myself that all I had to do was to wait and the search party would find me. They were looking for me. I had seen them.

In 1983 a man bought a spit of land down the road from our ranch. It was not more than an acre or two of caliche. He built on it a peculiar little structure, a kind of Indian sweat lodge. All hides and painted leather flagging loudly in the wind. He was not any kind of Indian that I know about. He was as white a man as I had ever seen. He wore white slacks and no shirt and a colorful little hat like a Bundt cake.

Every Thursday afternoon Mr. Waldrip would drive out to the ranch so that he could meet with our ranch manager, Joe Flud, by the cattle tanks in the east pasture. I tagged along whenever we got lunch at the El Sombrero and he did not have the time to take me home afterward. Mr. Waldrip and Joe would stand out in the grass and I would wait in the truck.

From where Mr. Waldrip parked I could see on down the road to that unusual dwelling, and a young and pretty girl, could be the prettiest girl I have ever seen, would show up on a bicycle from the north road in a swell of dust. She wore a fine cotton dress only ever a shade of blue and her flaxen hair was always combed nicely down her back. She came at 1:30, without fail, all of the Thursdays I was there to bear witness to it. She would disappear into that strange place behind a flap of buffalo hide and not come out until at least an hour had gone by. I could not then fathom why this beautiful girl, so young and vital, would be paying a visit to this unattractive and oddly costumed older man.

My awful suspicion had always been that she was going in there to give herself to the man for money. However turning it over out there in the Bitterroot, I was struck that perhaps the girl was there not because he would pay her, but because she wanted to be there. I supposed it was not impossible that she desired this unusual little man. She had ridden there of her own free will, if any of us have any free will at all. Though I often wonder if we are not all set upon roads we cannot see, enslaved to masters unknown. I have come to believe that who or what we desire cannot be helped. We are doomed from the moment we are able to know what it is that we want. And I do not blame people for knowing what they want. I only blame them for doing anything and everything to get it without a thought to the consequences.