The Muses Among Us: Eloquent Listening and Other Pleasures of the Writer's Craft

Live Free or Die

L/ve Ptet OL D/e The conference was a fine one, where the Wyoming Council on the Arts had gathered us in Casper to wrestle the issues and opportunities of the art trade. But after a couple sessions my head got full and I had to get out. I went softly out the ballroom door, down the motel corridor, across the dusty-white parking lot out back,up the embankment to the railroad tracks, and west. I had to get dust on my shoes and sage in mynose. I had to seek something older than mykind. At the trestle, I scuffed down from the tracks into the willows. My shoes got muddy and I found apath. I sought the hobojungle, for surely here, where the train tracks met the North Platte River, travelers would camp. I was afraid, yes. I'm not well schooled in the customs of such places, but I had to learn. Myown path joined other paths, allconverging at the bank. And there, yes, the hut. A beaver had felled and bucked a twelve-footwillowlog, and some vagabond had set this beam horizontal between two forked trunks, then sewn together a cardboard house with orange baling twine. There was no west wall,leaving theflimsyroom open to the fire pit just outside . A grill hung from a branch. A fork lay on a stone. Yet the place was abandoned: Dry leaves had blown into the fire ring. It was late October, but on the feedlot calendar nailed to a tree, the September page still showed a cowboy "Shipping Cattle in the Fall." Already, I liked this citizen the chill fall wind had sent south by highway or by rail. Inside the hut, a roll of purple carpet formed a pillow for the bed of straw. A strip of canvas just the size of a sleeping form lay ready. I crawledinto this room and laydown to sense what such a life might be. I could see the river sliding east toward the Missouri, the last leaves of willow and cottonwood swiveling in the wind. Then I looked up at the cardboard ceiling, where a magazine photograph of Miss Twin Volcanoes stared down at me, where she was pasted, smiling and kind, and I thought suddenlyof the Sistine Chapel, of Michelangelo , religion, love, music, allthings naked and fair, clear and passionate . I thought of this vagabond who had made from beaver's work and the city's waste his own home in the willows. And then he went away. The tall blue skyhad darkened. I stood just at the edge of the day's light, watched the rivergleam and the downtown citylights of Casper looming up on the opposite shore. Then I turned to trudge back toward the conference.I waslisted on the program, soon, and would be there in time. In the gathering dark, before crossing apatch of ground thickwith tumbleweeds toward the motel, I wanted a walking stick. Under the trestle, where travelershad built fire and cooked their black-eyed peas in the can, I rummaged through the firewood debris and came up with a stout and knobby shaft. Myhand closed over the smooth end. I turned it over in the dim light. It was hickory,maybe,or holly— some heavy, quirkystuff—with manymiles of fist polish on the handle , and with a messagewhittled in block letters along the shaft: LIVE FREE ORDIE. The letters were carved neatlyinto the wood and blackened , I guessed, with shoe polish. The owner must have lost this in the tangle of firewood, and gone on south without it. Could I takeit? I had lost myknife the week before, myOld Timer. Does it work that way? The trade felt right. I struck the earth with that stick and set out through the tumbleweeds. 28 I THE MUSES AMONG US It felt right, too, to return at the motel's back door, the trade entrance , to prowl the corridors where steam pipes ran and racks of linens waited, to enter the conference room quietly from the rear and ease into a chair with my hat pulled low. Gradually, I was there, the stick beside me. As I joined the conversation again, there was talk of getting published , getting artwork into galleries, getting grants, getting recognized . I tightened my grip on the text in my hand. "LIVE FREE," it said. I'm afraid that could mean free of success,if success cut...