Weekend Essay

Finding Numbered Days

By Matt Larson, Guest Writer, 10-11-08

You can smell it through the broken pane of the back door. The dry musty odor of mold and mice. Dust and abandonment. Fleeing the swarms of mosquitoes, following our curiosity, we step slowly through the doorway as glass snaps and crushes beneath our feet.  The bright beam of the headlamp illuminates a small narrow path in front of us and a snowstorm of dust moves slowly through the corridor of light. There are silhouettes of piles stacked at the edges of the beam’s definition. We yell loudly and listen to our question resonate through the dilapidated hallways. My breath is short and my heart bounces, half expecting a person or a monster to fly out of some unseen corner or behind any number of walls or doorways. I stop and simply look around, feeling safer by not moving, listening to Jared gasp in amazement as he begins to rifle through one of a hundred piles of forgotten things.

A dictionary from 1913. A calendar from 1947. Letters, pictures, catalogues. An inter-Ocean Almanac from 1898. Newspapers, magazines. A New Years greeting from 1935. This is the first of a thousand boxes. As Jared continues to rattle off his findings, my thoughts begin to swell. I’m flooded with questions. They’re all too big to fit in my tired head and I begin to feel something less than comfortable in the dark. I turn around, my shoes clicking on the hardwood floor, and stare at a dresser filled with clothes, topped with an array of trinkets and papers. A giant, gothic looking book rests alone on one end.  I run my finger across its front, wiping dust from the title. Holy Bible. Opening the cover it reads “To the Campbell’s, Merry Christmas, 1893.” There are oil pastel illustrations, protected by a thin wax paper. I stop at one depicting the resurrection of Jesus, a halo of white light surrounding his floating body. Glancing to the floor in the next room I notice a mound of black books growing white with mold. And back to the halo. I flip to a dog-eared page and mumble aloud “So teach us to number our days; that we may apply our hearts with wisdom. Psalms 90:12” The verse is striking, too appropriate, and I read it again to myself. I look up, still expecting the monster. “I don’t think this stuff is going anywhere. We should go eat.”

On the way outside I pause at an antique pump organ covered in broken glass and scores of music. Brushing them aside, I give a couple thrusts with my foot and place my hands across several dirty ivory keys. No matter which ones I play it bellows the same eerie mess of chords. A shiver runs up my spine.

We seek shelter in the barn. The heavy wooden door creaks and rumbles, wrapped in a thick rug of grass and thistle. There is hay in the loft, but no ladder to get there. Tools still hang from rusted nails and rafters. The stale air smells of dried grass, manure, and machinery. There are stalls, long empty, backed into a wall. A row of doors lying unhinged. We move one and find our beds beneath a large open window overlooking a corral buried in weeds. We lean our backs against the stall wall, sip whiskey, and listen to the mice twitch and scurry along the weathered floorboards above us. There is a stretch of starless southern sky beneath the white smear of the Milky Way. Then lightning flashes yellow against its outline and the billowing heads of clouds are revealed. A thunderstorm miles across the prairie. Flash. The storm is silent. Another flash.

I watch the storm quietly from my sleeping bag as nineteen days of biking settle on my body. My mind drowns itself in thought. I feel the endless rolling of South Dakota highway build up in my legs. The incessantly strong winds on my sunburned face. The curiousity of the old couple who told us we could find sleep here with the mice. The brilliant orange of July dusk that accompanied the last miles of the day. The highway lined on both sides by enormous power lines sagging off into the horizon. The itch of a million mosquitoes that upon our arrival began a frenzy on our sweaty skin. My friends and family who may never understand the things that have taken us in, spit us out, or drove us crazy and to bliss at the same time. I watch the random strokes of white light miles away and brood over the ultimate finality of my trip and my life. What would happen if I disappeared? What would be left for strangers to ponder, to wonder about me?  What if my life were left only to the mice and the ravens roosting in the oak trees. In my numbered days how will I resurrect my self? How will I rise to live and know them? Perhaps, I have left my life, or parts of it, to grow thick with dust and mold. I feel as if I’ve entered a time warp, swept back to something ancient or forgone. But then I realize that this is now. Not yesterday. Not tomorrow. Now. It’s somehow disheartening, yet utterly fascinating. What if it were my family’s bible collecting dust on the mantle?  Maybe it’s good to leave things, to start anew, to wander off in unknown directions. My mind continues to walk, continues to follow the outline of the thunderhead illuminated only by the lightning strike. In a land so open and big, in a place so dead and deserted, I am hopeless in feeling anything but small.

So teach me to number my days, that I might find the joy and meaning in all of them. To apply my heart with wisdom that I too could disappear, forced into abandonment. Did the inhabitants here vanish? Did they heed the advice dog-eared in their bible? I wonder if they’ll ever come back or if I could re-establish life here. I wonder if water still floods the dry banks of Goodham, Campbell, or Medicine creeks. I wonder if the storm is always so silent.

The sun streams through cracks and knotholes. It takes me a second to remember where I am. The sky to the south is blue, showing nothing of last night’s outbursts. A brief instant of muttled dreams and consciousness. A barn swallow darts through the open window, the deep orange of its belly and the shimmering scarlet of its back flash lightning as the morning sun bounces across their sheen. It makes several circles above us before I notice the mud laden nest clung to a rafter overhead. Another swallow is cut by the sunlight as it passes through the window. They fly so close to me I could grab them from the air.  Then, without slowing, one catches the nest, the other a ledge high on the stall wall.  Three featherless faces appear, open their beaks and let out a flurry of squeaky begging.  It’s time for breakfast.

After eating with the swallows, we open the creaking barn door and allow the sun to pummel the sleep from our eyes. Today there is a slight breeze from the north and the droves of mosquitoes have disappeared. Last night as the sun dripped from the sky and we came to stop here in the overgrown driveway we were seized by a million of them. I remember breathing them and spitting them out. You can see our path through the grass as we ran first in circles, then towards the house, up to the locked front door, and around the side. The white paint of the house is everywhere falling off. The shingles are mostly missing. On the north wall an oak tree has crushed the roofline. On another side a maple grows upwards through a small alcove of the house. We come again to the broken panes of the back door; it still smells and it still opens. The house seems more real, less dreamlike with daylight soaking the floor and lighting the walls. Jared begins immediately where he left off. I walk straight to the organ to make sure its wreckage was not simply a product of the night. Once again it moans a broken tanglement of chords, although not so ghostly as before. I walk back the bible, still open to Psalms. I can’t understand what could make someone disappear. For someone to leave their family bible.  Or a dresser full of clothes. A trumpet. A maroon typewriter, new and shiny in its case.  But they did. They left journals and family photos. Toys and toilets. Telephones and bottle caps. Coolers and linoleum. Flower pots, canning jars, paintings and a grandfather clock. They left the title and deed to the house and the farm. They left the homestead papers and certificates signed by President Benjamin Harrison, 1889 and 1892. But what did they bring?

We stand outside in blowing grass, not saying anything. I look around trying to burn the picture in my head. To remember the smells and the great pools of emotion. Ultimately, I know it’s futile. I know that it won’t be crisp in my memory. Perhaps it is all for the moment, to help fully absorb whatever it is I am doing. Perhaps it helps to number my days.

Before riding east again, we climb to the top of the metal windmill that slowly sways with the gusting breeze. We look west at the miles we’ve already traveled. To the rolling highway and the endless hills we’ll ride today, dead straight into the horizon. We look at the falling house and the musty barn. We look south where we remember the storm and see only endless blue sky and an ocean of blowing grain.

This essay was first published by Camas: The Nature of the West, a literary journal produced by the Environmental Studies Department of the University of Montana. It focuses on creative writing and art related to the nature and culture of the West, and also provides a forum for the discussion of environmental issues. Camas publishes the work of new and established writers, photographers, and artists. The deadline for this winter’s issue is October 15th. Visit www.umt.edu/camas to read selections from a past issue, subscribe to the magazine, or submit work.

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