The Bear River Massacre and the Making of History

2. HOW IT CAME TO ME

2 HOW IT CAME TO ME And now we begin again. It’s a dark and stormy December night (really, it is) when I finally get in my pickup and head down to Preston, Idaho, for the second of four public hearings. It’s 1995. The hearings will gather the opinions of locals regarding the National Park Service proposal to build a National Historic Site at the location of the Bear River Massacre. I don’t feel like going. At Idaho State University, where I teach English, it’s the last week of classes. I’ve broken my contract with the University —I’m packing to move to Chicago midyear, about to abandon my entire life to join my partner Joe, who teaches there—I’m more than worn out. Plus, it’s raining. I don’t like driving my truck around here in the rain. Rain in Idaho means a vague, spritzing thing, just enough to mix with the oil on the roads, whisking a lethal salad dressing on the streets. My truck, with no weight in the back, skids on braking, spins on accelerating. Then too, I have no idea where I’m going. In early December, the sun goes down before supper—in the rain, I won’t be able to see a damned thing. But something pulls me. It’s a piece of history I should have known about long ago, and didn’t. Why didn’t I know? Is it the story that pulls? Or my dismay at not having heard it before? I should have known. Certain instincts kick in. Journalists get farther in life than do academics and artists—and I can safely say this, because at different 85 points in my thirty-six-year life, I have been all three. In an attempt to look more like press than brain, I yank an old blazer on over my more typical sweater and jeans, and dig my job-interview portfolio out of the box I just packed it in. I find my favorite pen, the one that flows well so I can write a mile a minute and not miss (much of) anything—and get in the truck an hour and a half before the hearing is scheduled to start. Like I told you, it’s a dark and stormy night—really—so I can’t see the mountains looming over the Portneuf Gap as I hang that long curve on I-15 out of Pocatello and through the spot where all that ancient floodwater, that huge Lake Bonneville, once escaped to form the Columbia River Gorge, a whole nother time zone away. I can’t see Malad Summit looming at the other end of the valley, can’t see Scout Mountain, which Joe and I had finally managed to climb this summer . I can’t see a damned thing except an occasional light from a distant ranch in the valley. I take US-91, which cuts east and south around the side of Malad, rather than climbing the mountain to the pass, as the interstate does. I’ve never taken this road before. It’s a winding valley road, a good one, wide, clear. There’s the occasional farm light, the occasional hefty, serious pickup—not a toy truck like mine—passing me doing 70. I’m losing the country music station out of Pocatello, so I pop in a Trisha Yearwood tape, sing badly at the top of my lungs, refuse to think about all the papers that need grading, the friends that need good-byeing. When I’ve driven another half hour, I know I should start looking for the turnoff to Preston, on the right. Shouldn’t be hard to find. The road’s still wet but the rain’s quit finally. Clouds low, still can’t see a damn thing. I’m singing loud as hell when suddenly the road dips down. It’s been flat for thirty miles, but now I’m on a sharp grade, headed steeply, surprisingly, down, with that roller-coaster sense that the ground has fallen out from under me, and my soul hangs in the balance of gravity. There’s a farmhouse on my right, one ahead on my left, at a level lower than the road I’m on now. I’m headed into some sort of deep hollow. Then something happens to me. It’s a quick grip in my stomach. A sense of presence. Of not-aloneness in this...