THE PALE LIGHT OF SUNSET: SCATTERSHOTS AND HALLUCINATIONS IN AN IMAGINED LIFE

The Journal - 1963

118 1963 The Journal My head nods forward and my chin drops down and hits my chest and the notebook slides off my lap again. I pick it up and chuck it at the open door of the wood-burning stove. I am half asleep, the opening is small, my aim is bad, and the notebook bounces off into a darkened corner of the room. It is one of those hard-backed notebooks with the pages stitched in, the kind kids take to school in the third grade to write their assignments in. The cardboard cover is slate-dark, with flecks of something white floating around in the darkness. The cover is slick and every time I nod off in front of the stove, it slides off my lap. The notebook is part of my journal. And under the plank-sided lower bunk in the far corner of the bunkhouse there is a small canvas bag with maybe a dozen of them tied in a bundle with a piece of rawhide. The Indian, Wendell Klah, never really liked the idea of my keeping a journal. He says it is just something you have to lug around, a piece of your life that is already over, something that you probably didn’t do well the first time, and now you’re carrying it around so you can regret it all The Pale Light of Sunset 119 over again. Journals are for girls, he says. Don’t write anything in there about me, he says. Fucking Indian. It is different with the Mexican, Caton Baros. He thinks writing in a notebook is somehow special. He has not gone very far in school and, anyway, the schools in Mexico had very few notebooks for the kids to write in. Caton is small, and the bigger kids always got the notebooks. He never got one, so he likes to see me write in mine. Now and then, I will hand the notebook to Cat and he will write a few words in it in Spanish . It is years before I notice that he always wrote the same thing. El pan de cada dia. Fucking Mexican. I don’t write in my notebooks every day. What I write tends to be little stories, little memories, more about some instant of my life rather than what happened on a specific day; more about what I feel about what is happening, rather than the happening itself. Maybe that’s why, in later years, it turns out there are some big vacant spaces in my journal. I know I should try to find Wendell and Cat so I can fill in the blanks, try to find the only two friends I have ever had, try to make some sense out of the blank spaces. But I know I probably never will. All in all, it doesn’t really matter. Over the years, I lose a notebook, now and then. I lost one last week. I dropped it somewhere on some trail when Wendell and Cat and I were coming down off the high country, racing the snow back to the ranch. I never miss it until days later, when I need some paper to start a fire. Thought I would use the notebook. It is gone. I pick up the notebook and take aim at the stove again. Out of the corner of my eye I see Cat, lying on his bunk, the firelight glistening from his eyes. He isn’t looking at me. He’s looking at the notebook. Lee Maynard 120 I close the notebook and tuck it under the mattress of my bunk. When I turn back to Cat, he is feigning sleep, his eyes closed, the hint of a smile on his dark lips. And I know that I am stuck with the goddamn journal for the rest of my life. ...