The Woman Lit by Fireflies by Jim Harrison

Author:Jim Harrison [Harrison, Jim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grove Atlantic
Published: 2008-10-02T05:00:00+00:00

VI

Early the next morning Gwen was back on the train with a slight hangover and the scent of garlic still on her skin. She could not have hoped to accomplish more than she had in two days. All the improbable tensions of the trip on the way out had dissipated, and she read a mystery novel about the Navajos called Listening Woman that Sun had loaned her. She drifted in and out of sleep all day, and in conscious periods thought of how best to approach Sam. She had left the Denver Post article with Patty but had written down the particulars of Sam’s location in the Sangre de Cristos. It was up between Galina and Lindrith in the Sante Fe National Forest which was rough country, she knew, because she had taken Sun up into the area to see Chaco Canyon, the Anasazi settlement.

Then it was twilight and her daughter was waiting for her in the pickup. They hugged and watched the train disappear to the east, then they turned west and studied the sunset which served to remind Gwen why she lived where she did. The smell of saguaro flowers in the air was so clear one’s depth perception was doubled: the shadows were the homes of thousands of ghosts, for this was the homeland of Cochise and Geronimo. It was a little-admitted fact of history that Sun pointed out to her, that many Mescalero Apache families rode their horses pell-mell off the tops of mesas rather than submit to us.

Very early the next morning Gwen drove north from the ranch on Arizona 666 on her way to see Sam. The evening with Sun had been a little difficult due to her dislike of Zip and Gwen’s efforts on his behalf. Sun, however, looked forward to houseguests, to seeing her mother’s college friends she had heard so much about. Living that far out in the country they talked about everything there was to talk about, then they read. On Saturdays they drove to town and shopped for groceries, had lunch, visited friends, spent an hour at the library, had dinner and went to the movies. On Saturdays a neighbor stopped by to do the chores in exchange for their doing his chores on Sundays. It was a matter of feeding the penned bulls and any other penned cattle, checking irrigation head-gates and making sure no stock had gotten through the fences. The most intense periods of labor for Gwen and Sun were during haying when the irrigated alfalfa was cut, bailed and stacked, but the second crop wasn’t due until mid-June. The real pleasure of the evening for Gwen was to call the airport mechanic and have him start a rush job on the valves of the Cessna. Gwen had inherited this passion for flying from her mother. Her dad had steadfastly refused to have anything to do with the old Cessna except to ridicule it.

It was indeed ironic that Sam, studying coyotes in the mountain fastness of

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