Chapter 3: Spirit Dreams

Cottonwood trees moaned in the rising late-night wind. Graydon heard their swaying branches and the approaching thunder booming from the north. An early summer storm moved down the valley.

The family spent several days cleaning the old house. Alex Senior made a trip in the Blue Goose to buy used furniture: a kitchen table and chairs, an iron frame double bed with springs and mattress, two war surplus barrack cots with pads, an overstuffed couch and chair. Everything came from second-hand stores. Dee had her small collection of cookware and dishes that traveled with them across the U.S.

Wrapped in a wool barracks blanket, Graydon opened the wooden-sash window beside his bed to feel the rising wind blow in. The smell of dust was heavy in the air, the musty wet smell of the first raindrops. He could hear the big drops splattering in the elm trees outside his window, and the hissing sound of rain falling through the cottonwood trees beyond. Then the chilled air coming through the window smelled of sweet elm sap. He marvelled at all he could hear and smell and taste. He savored this new experience.

Coast rain was nothing like this. Coast rain was a chill, grey wet or a warm, green damp. Here on the east side, summer thunderstorms would bring an occasional, violent rain. The valley mostly survived on snow melt that flowed down from the mountains. The surrounding foothills became dried and parched. On a hot summer’s day the scent of pine pitch and cottonwood sap would hang heavily in the air.

Mountain valley colors began with the blue-greens of the ponderosa pine forests and the lush greens of the river-bottom alfalfa hayfields. All else was yellow and tan grasses, grey-green sagebrush, and a golden carpet of sunflowers covering the foothills in late spring. Sunflower blossoms would become black seed heads. Broad, faded leaves would be brittle and crackling when one walked across the dry hillside.

Methow was thought to be an Indian word for valley of the sunflowers, but no one could say for sure. The first white men had found the small tribe of natives living at the confluence of the Methow and Columbia rivers to be welcoming and friendly. A few years later the white man’s diseases and guns had killed and scattered the Methow band. No one remained to confirm the meaning of their name, not that it mattered. It could mean anything the white man wanted it to mean. Thus, valley of the sunflowers it was. And the name was never pronounced as meh-thou but as met-how, like two distinct words run together, a subtle reminder of its native origin.

The storm raged outside Graydon’s window. Lightning flashes framed the stark outlines of heavy cottonwood limbs; a wind gust brought a great limb crashing down. He heard it clatter down through the lower branches and the heavy thud when it hit the ground. Fierce wind gusts battered the house. It shuddered again when a thunderclap boomed above them. Alex Jr. whimpered in his bunk across the room, but didn’t wake. Graydon lay listening and watching until a wind gust blew a scattering of cold rain across his face. He pulled the window down. Laying back, he closed his eyes and listened to the receding storm as it passed down the valley towards the sleeping town.

In the shadows of his sleep he began to perceive forms, whispers, shifting images barely glimpsed. A dreamscape firmed. He stood at the edge of a rock-strewn torrent. White water frothed and lashed around the boulders, spilling into grey-black pools that swirled and spilled down and away. Thick mists hung overhead, obscuring the light. He stood alone. Thundering sounds and cold spray buffeted his face.

He turned and saw behind him an endless sagebrush plain. Upstream and downstream lay thick tangles of red willows. Across the torrent, up the steep slope, he marvelled at the pines towering hugely overhead, long fronds of hairy lichen moss hanging from the lower branches, fed by the billowing mists thrown up from the maelstrom.

The roar dimmed in his ears. At the same moment a fluttering bird rushed by his head, grazing his hair. He ducked and fell to the ground. Looking up, he saw the bird with outstretched wings, swooping, soaring up high above the pines. Its momentum spent, the bird beat its wings and climbed in broad circles, fluttering upward with an odd, dipping rhythm. It was a nighthawk.

Graydon stood. The overhead gloom brightened in its center. He stood rooted, unable to focus in the confusion of light, a shifting glow, brightening, moving closer. He saw a form, a vague shadow. Around him the world had gone silent. He heard nothing, not even the beating of his heart. The shade moved closer, brighter. Graydon’s consciousness narrowed. He stood confined in a tight space where he and a figure--a person--faced one another.

A tall man in buckskins and face-paint studied him. Long gray hair streamed down over his fringed shoulders. Intricate beadwork patterns covered his shirtfront. His face was stern, solemn. He was a white man with sapphire-blue eyes, high forehead and thick brows. His rough cheeks were painted with shining silver lightning streaks and his forehead bore a golden sun-burst symbol. The man stood unmoving, silent. He lifted his hand to point at Graydon, then raised it to an open-palm gesture of greeting.

Graydon was unable to move, frozen in place by the face and the upraised hand. A long moment passed; the man’s eyes hinted at some unspoken message. The scene faded and dissolved into the glowing mists.

He was instantly awake, alone in his bed. Outside his rain-streaked window the night was rich with fresh scents and cleansed air. He rubbed his eyes, unable to focus on whatever lingering presence might remain in his mind. He flung open his window to the sweet, chill night. Far down the valley he heard distant rolling thunder. He fell back on his pillow. He was soon asleep.

Purdy

The next few weeks passed quickly for Graydon. Bright sunshine days were filled with chores and hard work. They cleared the garden and cleaned the chicken house and patched holes in the chicken run fence. Dee kept her sons busy getting the rundown homestead repaired and replanted and watered. Alex Sr. left, catching the bus in town to seek another job outside the valley. He would commute home on weekends once he’d landed steady work but until then, Dee and her two sons were alone on the Wolf Creek homestead.

Graydon stood in icy water at creek’s edge, struggling to slip another board into place on the log dam that spanned the creek. He was trying to divert more water into an old flume that fed their irrigation ditch. It wasn’t much of a dam. More water flowed through it than was diverted, and there wasn’t much of an irrigation ditch. It was so old and long-neglected that it was barely a water trace winding through cobble rocks and brush. It flowed to a rusted steel culvert and crossed under the Wolf Creek road and out to the homestead’s irrigation ditches. Wolf Creek’s waters gave life to the homestead. The ditch had flowed, untended, for so many years that a permanent stand of cottonwood trees, chokecherries, elderberries, wild roses and grass had survived the hot summers all along its length.

Graydon strained and shoved and pushed old boards and poles, struggling to fill holes in the barrier. He had just clambered off the old log to stand on the creek bank when he heard a voice behind him:

“You want to have a mind doin’ that, youngster. That’s a mighty fast creek and cold too, and you’d have a hard time gettin’ out with your head intact if you fell in. That water’s claimed a life or two.”