Diez Anos con Jim Thomson (Chapter 10)

Chapter (10) Tragedy at the Prairie Dog Fishery

We went to the woods to start fires. Little fires—fireworks that secretly lay in the back of my Jeep. I didn’t know that was why we were there, and Michael hadn’t told me about the fireworks he brought. I thought we went there for a jog through the trees and across meadows and over iodized outcroppings of sandstone in search of Nirvana in the honey spring morning. Jim was in charge of the flask with the dead boy’s name on it, Wallace. I was driving the gold Jeep Cherokee—less aware. I hadn’t known Wallace that well. He was more Mike and Bobby’s friend than mine. I didn’t even know they called him Gomer till after he had slipped off the trail and died.
I soaked in a transic rhythm on the way to the Uncompaghre plateau of Western Colorado; I picked the place. I thought the quiet was just happenstance. The ride was unusually serene for us. I’d known Mike since we were boys, neighbors, and he never said much. That was his way, he didn’t waste his words, and I respected Mike and his thoughts. In a way he lived like a hermit with his father Jerry. Jerry was a geophysicist and he was skilled in everything he desired to be. He worked for the federal government and taught Mike all the things he knew, much of which they had learned together when Jerry would get an itch for a new hobby like; glider building and piloting, model r/c glider and plane building and flying. They never took their cars to mechanics and they never called tradesmen to work on their home. He and Jerry lived together because after Jerry divorced for the second time, he told Mike that the house was his, so they shared the expenses of the five bedroom house that had been paid off for a decade. His parents had divorced when Mike was very young and he always lived with Jerry; except the few times Mike had gone to live with a girl for six months. But he never let himself get very serious with women. Perhaps he just hadn’t found the right one.
Jim still seemed so young to me. And I still felt like an old guy when he was around. He was one of us though. He kept his hair long and curly back then and liked to fantasize about Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen, long before they were eighteen, and boast about it. He said he had it locked away in his spank bank in his mind. He made me laugh and only cared about his next drunk or high or trip—anything that got him away from the here and now, but so did I. To some, he was only a friend to the ear. He could play anything you put in front of him, from piano to drums. His mind was most useful when he played a musical instrument. For most of his life he studied mainly the piano. Jim told me his Mom had always played and so he did too. He played four hours a day.
Jim and I met because of the band. Mike and Jim belonged to a band called Would. They called themselves progressive metal, but I don’t know what they were besides loud and hard. They played a limited local scene, and managed to hang around a span of eight years. At sixteen, when Mike received a bass guitar and amp from Jerry, he taught himself to be more than an adequate bass player. He could slap the fish. I learned to like Jim for his lack of inhibitions—I was also entertained by him—and the way he always told the truth even when it was ugly. I enjoyed my occasional breaks away from the family life with these guys. I’d been married for eight long years, since I was nineteen. I had three young kids. I’m still a kid. I tried to do the right thing and stay home to stare at my wife as often as I had to. I rarely got out of the house except for work at the Home Depot. I felt loose with these guys; I easily let go of inhibitions. I didn’t go to the gym or split stove length logs; I went to work and back home to raise kids, while my wife worked so we could eat and have our own home. I was doing the bare minimum to sustain my lower middle class kind of life.
It was cool and still before noon. All the windows in my Cherokee were up. I rolled mine down just enough to feel the bite of the breeze. We needed a place to celebrate, a place above the mess, a place inescapable. I drove right by the national forest sign, which contained the phrase, fires in designated areas only.
I drove with Big Creek reservoir to my left, after I cleared the water I took the next road up the hill to the left, higher up into thick timber. I stopped at a treaded pull-off into the shade. I felt the anticipation and wanting to get out of the can that held us, to feel that expected cool breeze. I rocked out and we went for that hoped for jog through the woods—the reason we were there. No reason. It was a silly activity, a warm up more than a purpose. I followed Jim and Mike straight into the woods. I imagined the Sasquatch and the way they would run, with their overgrown arms hanging low and big sweeping strides across panoramas of trees. I tried on the stride I imagined. Jim drew straight lines in no particular direction, migratory predators on the prowl in formation. I was dragging the rear. I stopped, out of breath, at a clearing of chewed up red clay. Small mammals, kings over the local Lilliputians had built mounds upon mounds of spectacular dwellings, which from their vantage point produced fantastic views out over the forest landscape. This was fertile soil to them, and they held a large portion of a hillside as their kingdom.
The last time I’d seen Mike and Jim before this morning we had fished for prairie dogs. Yes fished. I owned five acres of prairie dog ridden red dirt and a house. Prairie dogs are a useless nuisance that dig endless ankle breaking holes in the ground, so I was forced to get creative as to how I would eventually kill all of them on my property. And I couldn’t use a rifle because of other houses in the vicinity. I killed them with B.B. guns, slingshots, arrows, but they didn’t go away. I couldn’t keep up. Prairie dog fishing is not something I created. I heard about it from a hillbilly I knew named Sherrod, who thought prairie dogs were for killin’.
The first time was with Mike and Jim at my place. I had a rod and reel loaded with Spider Wire for cat fishing—that stuff is unbelievable. We picked a mound with a lot of activity from younger pups. You simply make a large slip-loop in the line, bury it enough to keep it looped around the opening, back away from the hole far enough for the dogs not to be nervous, then wait. When they pop their heads out good and far, stretching to see the world, yank with all you got and start reeling and it might help to run toward the victim. I had caught the first one—just a small guy. He was jerked out by the neck, and stunned when he landed. My kids were home and I didn’t intend for it to happen that way, not that they hadn’t seen me kill them before—but not like this. When I had him close and strangled by the neck with my rod held high in the air, he made a fatigued choking sound as I whirled him into a nearby black boulder. I stepped on his head—brain and eye leaked out together. I’d been so wrapped in the frenzy of my first catch I’d forgotten my kids were watching. Their eyes beamed with terror and excitement. Death is real and everywhere, and I’m always honest with my children about the world, so I just watched them. Mike, Jim, and I had caught our limit, and later that day we laughed and reminisced about the initial looks on the faces of my children.

I often pondered my own death, because it’s healthy to daily realize the ephemeral nature of our existence, and imagine our eventual demise. We’re fragile beings and can be knocked off-line at any second. We might slip and fall like innocent angels, but we might get pulled out by the neck. Forgive the world for perfection in truth.

I marveled at the success these cousins of my squatters had attained in the mountains. My jogging was downgraded to a stroll. I found a road and assumed I was further uphill on the same road where I had parked. I walked down to find Mike and Jim drinking cheap beer from silver cans near my Jeep.
“We found these,” Jim said, as he held up a white plastic grocery bag packed with full cans, and could not hold back a dance that followed. “In the creek near that little fire someone made.” Mike laughed congenially and smiled while Jim cheered and celebrated his new found fortune. Mike took big slow pulls from his can.
“Can I borrow your keys?” Mike said.
I handed them to him without question.
“What’s Mike doing?”
“I don’t know.” I said.
Jim and I watched Mike mosey over to the jeep. He pulled up the hatch and grabbed out the large cellophane wrapped box of assorted fireworks. Jim whooped and yelled as if he’d won a rodeo. The box was jammed with thirty different kinds of ground sparklers—nothing dangerous. Mike appeared with an unfolded pocket knife in one hand. He stopped as we neared and attentively cut an opening down one of the long sides. Little yellow bumble bees buzzed angrily along the ground and then had to be stamped out if they settled in dry brush or piles of brittle leaves. After we fired all the small fun ones, it was a box full of fountains. These incited a war. I chased Jim with the dangerous end pointed at him—I started the war. The war didn’t last long because our euphoria quickly turned to exhaustion from constant lack of oxygen. We gave up on the fountains, put them back in the jeep, and stood there blank.
“I have to piss.” I said. I walked into the nearest timber. While standing there I was reminded of the package of bumblebees I had pocketed earlier. I emerged from the trees and they weren’t watching me. I stopped and lit one of them. They turned quickly, hearing the fizz from the fuse. I threw a high arc hoping to land it near them, but let them see it coming. It exploded in the air, and Jim attempted to kick it at me when it landed. I walked toward them and realized the haze we had created in the air, and smelled the attractive stink of sulfur. Throwing the bumblebees high into the air as they started was fun, but once again some of them had to be stamped out.
I threw the last firework while standing on the passenger side of the jeep. I stood at least twenty five feet from the vehicle. I tossed it the same way I had the first one. It was right above the Jeep. It couldn’t have. My window was the only one open—barely open. But the improbable did happen, as it so often does. The bee snuck through that amazingly tight angle and landed on the floor behind the driver’s seat. We ran over and I watched the whole back part of the jeep glow and flicker from the burning powder. Jim tried to open the back passenger door and found it locked. He ran to the other side and opened the door; a thick cloud of green smoke poured out. Jim slightly stepped back and then dove in stamping with his hand. I fell down laughing. Jim walked around the back and held the burned floor mat by a corner. The tan nylon carpet square was black in the middle. Jim’s stamping hand was black and slightly burned from the melted nylon.
Mike reclaimed an unlit fountain he had placed by a tree. I took it from him and he didn’t resist. I put the flame to the pink delicate paper till the fuse lit. I held on to the red plastic base. The yellow display was surprisingly the same yellow on the cylinder of the shaft. I love to say shaft. Again I watched, as the inactive, soulless one, while holding fire. Mike grabbed another side of the base and we held it together like some ridiculous ceremony. Ridiculous and serious. Jim was talking to his beer, unaware of everything else. He turned as if he felt our stares. He joined us holding up the fire while it lasted—which is never long enough.
“Where’s the flask?” Mike said.
“I forgot it.” Jim said.
Mike had been a pallbearer for Gomer. From Mike I learned that Gomer died while hiking by himself along a Gunnison River cliff. He just slipped—that’s what it looked like—and Mike knew he liked to walk close to the edge. He smacked his head on a rock. The flask was a relic Gomer’s mom had given Mike at the funeral. Mike had loaded it with scotch, and asked Jim to grab it on our way out the door this morning. But Jim forgot.
“I told you to grab it,” Mike said, and looked at Jim very seriously.
“Jeez, sorry man, I know you told me. I know you told me.”
Mike looked at me. “It’s been one year today, since Gomer.”
The fountain of joy was reduced to a steady flame. “Let’s go” I said. On my way to the driver’s door, I threw the still burning fountain, end over end into the forest.