The following story was first published in “Wyoming: Hub of the Wheel” and later in “The Other Side.”
Coming to Colorado
by Barbara Sherrod
From the car window Nona sees the banner-tree forest.
“This is the tree line,” her husband informs her.
Nona observes the evergreens, bare and scarred on the north side, where the wind kills all growth. Gray-green branches flare out towards the south, like flags signaling distress.
“In a minute we’ll see the tundra,” Sam says. He turns the wheel to maneuver a switchback. “Too bad we didn’t come in July. I hear it’s full of flowers. But then if we’d come in July we’d have missed the elk bugle.”
Sam had heard about the elk bugle that morning from tourists staying at their motel.
“Bugle,” he says. “Funny name for a mating ritual. Anyway, they say it’s something to see.”
That’s the difference between them, Nona thinks. The prospect of seeing the elk bugle excites Sam. He looks at a physical landscape--the Colorado Rockies, with their yellow aspen and bare granite--and through his engineer’s eyes, he sees beauty displayed before him in a grand mural. But when she looks she sees a moral landscape--signs and symbols, battered trees, remorseless rock.
“I think it’s starting to snow,” he says. “See the flurry?”
Of course Nona sees the flurry. Why does Sam feel obliged to point out the obvious? As white flakes dot the windshield, Nona thinks back to white walls and sheets surrounding a white translucent face. Soon the face grows large, masking the scenery. Catherine’s face contorts as she vomits again, and Nona recalls her surprise at being unable to love the pain away.
In those days she searched the hospital room for a sign. She gazed at the ceiling as though she expected a message to appear, like skywriting. She knew it was silly, knows it now, as she feels again her daughter’s nausea.
“Isn’t this great?” Sam declares. “There’s something about the mountains and trees and sky and getting right in it all.”
Nona does not respond. Sam can, if he chooses, interpret her silence as assent.
She does not comprehend the fact of Colorado yet. The snow peaks spread before her vast and unreal. The white room, however, remains palpable. She can finger the dolls and teddy bears and fondle the bald head on the pillow.
Sam stops the car at a geologic marker and looks at her. Throughout the trip she has endured these looks, which take in her fine profile and auburn hair without seeing how ill they fit. She recalls standing in the bathroom doorway, watching Catherine struggle with her wig. The ten-year-old bent like a sapling toward the mirror, complaining that the stupid thing didn’t fit.
“It’s itchy and hot,” she pouted and threw it in the sink.
Nona could always tell when Catherine wanted her help and when she wanted to rely on herself alone, and so she just stood by, waiting for a sign that did not come. In a temper, Catherine crawled up the staircase. After a time she came down again, sitting each step. She wore a newsboy cap pulled rakishly to one side. Her eyes spoke mischief, as they did when she set out to give her little brother a hard time. It occurred to Nona then that her daughter would never wear a mortarboard or wedding veil.
Sam is still looking at her. He must have been looking a long time. “Should we drive to the top of the mountain?” he asks.
“If you want to.”
He hesitates, as if expecting her to say more, then heads up the narrow road.
“We can’t go to Colorado,” she’d told him weeks ago.
It was a Sunday. Sam was fixing himself lunch, and she was clipping coupons at the kitchen table. She stopped when he mentioned the idea of a trip.
“School just started a couple of weeks ago,” she said. “We can’t take Steven out now.”
“Your mother said she’d stay with him.”
“I’ll think about it.”
He opened the refrigerator door. “It’s been over a year since Catherine died. Your mother thinks it’s time the two of us got away and enjoyed ourselves for a change.” He took out a plastic-wrapped bowl of tuna salad and a loaf of bread. “I think she’s right.”
“I don’t want to enjoy myself.”
As soon as she said it, she wanted to call it back. But Sam did not take the words as a cue to argue. Methodically he spooned the tuna onto a slice of bread, while Nona suddenly wondered if he was dying too. He had a dread disease and wasn’t telling her. Why would he tell her? He knew she wouldn’t be able to handle it. There had to be something wrong, very wrong. Sam was not a traveler. If he wanted to go to Colorado now it was only because he needed to grab gusto before it was too late. It would be like him to say good-bye in the form of a vacation.
She inspected him as he sat down opposite her with his lunch. He was, to all appearances, the same lean, sandy-haired Sam who grew tanned each summer from gardening and puffy-eyed each winter from reading by the smoky fireplace. She watched him chew.
As he licked a speck of mayonnaise from his lips, Nona realized she was wrong. Sam wasn’t dying. He couldn’t be. She kept track of the checkbook, and no payments had gone to any doctor, not since Catherine. She handled the savings and investments too, so he could not have withdrawn money without her knowing. If Sam were really sick, he would certainly have withdrawn something, for dying, she knew, cost a great deal of money. Sam just wanted to take a vacation. That was all. As usual she’d looked for signs and symbols behind simple facts, and as usual there was nothing there.
They left for Colorado early on a misty September day. While Sam drove, Nona embroidered. From time to time she looked up to stare out the window. The cornfields lulled her, row after row of pale stalks desiccating in the sunshine. Whenever she felt Sam’s eyes on her, she fixed hers on the embroidery again.
“Why Colorado?” she’d asked when they left Chicago.
“I don’t know. We always talked about seeing it some day.”
“It’s a long drive.”
“It’s a destination, that’s all.”
Apart from that, Nona said little. She listened as Sam read from the guidebook about points of interest along the way, speaking only when they needed to make a decision about where to eat or stop for the night.
In one Nebraska town, he pulled up in front of an Old West museum. “It’s time we took in some sights.”
“I’ll wait for you here.”
His face grew red. He started to get out of the car, then got back inside and slammed the door. A man of less patience, she knew, would not have come back. “Let’s talk,” he said.
“There’s nothing to talk about. I’ll be fine. Enjoy yourself.”
“Dammit, there’s got to be more to talk about than restaurants and motels.”
She kept silent.
“Do you want to talk about Catherine?”
“What is there to say? It’s all been said, over and over, and it doesn’t make any difference.”
He shook his head. “I don’t know what to say to you any more.”
“I’m sorry,” she answered, wishing what she often wished--that she had it in her power to make everything well again.
“Then come with me to the museum.”
“I’m tired. I’ll wait here.”
“What’ll you do?”
“I have my embroidery.”
He was gone a long time, it seemed, so long in fact that Nona began to imagine something had happened to him. A museum was, on the surface, a benign place, but still, something disproportionate and undeserved could happen anywhere. Once she’d seen a man on a bus have an attack. As he fell to the floor, he pulled at his throat, trying to breathe. The other passengers helped by loosening his collar, alerting the driver, and keeping oglers away. Within minutes, a team of paramedics appeared to carry the man off. To this day Nona didn’t know if they’d been able to save him.
She was on the point of opening the door and going to look for Sam when she saw him appear on the steps. He smiled as he climbed into the car. Wordlessly she watched him put on his sunglasses. He moved with brisk energy.
“You should’ve come inside. You would have enjoyed it,” he said.
That night, as they lay in their motel bed, Nona could feel the car still moving. She kept her eyes open in order to fight that feeling, which seemed to pull her further and further from Catherine. Lying rigid, she listened to the trucks on the highway and watched shadows glide across the ceiling.
“Tomorrow we’ll be in Colorado,” Sam said.
“Okay, we made it to the top,” he tells her, pulling to a stop at the overlook. “Wasn’t sure this poor old heap would make it.” When she does not put down her sewing, he climbs out of the car and walks to the stone rim. From the car, Nona can see much of what he sees, a lush valley and blue mountains beyond. She opens the window, pokes her head out long enough to feel the freezing wind, and closes it again. She watches Sam and half a dozen other tourists take pictures.
Back in the car, he glances at his watch. “It’ll be dusk soon. We’d better get down the mountain and get a place for the elk bugle.”
They drive down as they went up, with Sam steering cautiously and calling attention to the sights and Nona concentrating on the flowery pattern in her hoop. Occasionally she looks at her husband. He seems to be having an awfully good time.
Cars are already lining up in the Horseshoe Valley by the time they pull into the parking lot. Signs mark the bugling ground, a wide meadow backed by forested moraine. Spectators stand in front of their cars holding binoculars to their eyes. Sam gets out and joins them.
It’s growing too dark to sew in the car, and Nona is afraid that turning on the light will frighten off the elk. She folds her embroidery and puts it away in its basket. From the front window, she can make out the bugling ground, rosy in the dusk.
She inhales when the elk appear. By two’s and three’s they flow out of the forest into the open meadow, gathering by a pond under a pink sky.
Nona remembers the pink canopy. It took her a couple of days to construct the frame. Then she sat Catherine up in bed to show her how to make the ruff. From time to time she wiped tears on the back of her hand as they sewed. Catherine did not trouble to hide her disgust. Since losing the use of her legs, she was often peevish. “This isn’t going to be any fun, mom,” she scolded, “if you’re gonna cry.”
Throwing open the car door, Nona walks to the hood and leans against it until Sam finishes with the field glasses.
“There’s about seven bulls and I don’t know how many cows,” he tells her, handing her the binoculars. He speaks casually, as though her standing there next to him is perfectly natural, but she feels his eyes on her as she raises the glasses. Then she spots the grazing elk. They roam their surroundings without curiosity, peacefully taking the early evening air. Handing back the glasses, she buttons her jacket.
Sam observes the herd for a minute before passing the glasses back. Although it’s growing dark, Nona can see two large bulls butting their antlers together, preparing to square off. They fight in a circle dance, each move taking them further and further from the rest of the herd.
Seeing them run at each other and lock horns, Nona protests. The bugle is supposed to be a mating ritual. What instinct drives these two to fight? A sickness rises in her. She can’t help but despise a nature that compels innocent creatures to do battle.
A sound goes up, a wail that is nothing like a bugle call, more like a long, spiraling note on a flute. Moving the glasses, she sees the other bulls running, purple shadows against a haze of hills. When the flute reverberates again, the cows run too.
Meanwhile at the other end of the meadow, the two bulls continue to fight. Nona watches them until they turn gray in the twilight. Then once more she looks at the bugling elk. They run wildly now, drawn by the filtering high note. When they stop, she sees them stand close and touch their heads together.
As the last light disappears, Nona aims the glasses east. She can just make out the two bulls, still in the throes of combat. The rest of the herd slowly fades into the intimate darkness of the trees. At this moment, she could tear off across the meadow and follow the elk into the quiet forest.
Lowering the binoculars, she turns to Sam, who is staring at her. Embarrassed, she glances away. “Why did you let me look so long?’ she scolds.
“I could see you were fascinated.”
She hands him the glasses, though it’s too dark to see anything now. Only the silky notes remain.
“I guess we better get back to the motel,” Sam says.
“Maybe we could take a walk first.”
He doesn’t say a word; he probably thinks she’ll change her mind if he says the wrong thing. After he gets the flashlights from the trunk, they start up a path. Turning around, Nona can see the tail lights of the departing cars. They make a red line, marking the way from the bugling ground to the exit. She follows Sam out of sight of the cars into the evergreens.
To help feel the way, he picks up a branch. Pausing by a ponderosa, Nona smells the vanilla fragrance of the bark. A dim bugle sounds, and they both stand still.
He sits down against the ponderosa. After a moment, he reaches up a hand to her. She takes it and sits down, even though the ground is cold. Switching off the flashlights, they look up at a density of stars.
Another bugle cries, so faintly this time that Nona wonders if she’ll be able to hear the next one. “Do you remember when Catherine said she wanted to stop the chemotherapy?” she asks.
He closes his eyes.
“Do you remember how she said it--that she was no longer interested in fighting? No longer interested.
“I remember.” Even in the pitch dark she can see him grow pale.
“At the time, it struck me as strange, I mean for a little girl to say.”
From far away, the flute goes up again. It curls over them in the crisp air, silvery and dreamlike. Nona listens, trying to absorb it. With just a little effort, she feels, she will be able to touch it.
-published in Wyoming, The Hub of the Wheel