San Luis Bright

December 1969

Lucy,

Before Pinkie went off to war and never came back, he revealed to me the mystery of geodes. We were sitting on a log at Pebble Beach, where all the river rocks are jumbled up. The beach was so close to my bedroom that at night in the unseeing San Luis dark, I heard splashing rivulets slapping the shore. Sometimes a truck rumbled through the dark, his noisy passage obscuring the splash, his headlamps refracting blue and white.

I was throwing rocks, enjoying the satisfying plonk as each stone broke the slapping surface. ‘Did you know there are rocks that have no insides, Joey? They contain the spiky crystals of captured stars.’ Pinkie swore it was true. ‘Tartar’s scree is littered with them. It’s the old volcanoes that created them.’

That night I imagined ordinary rocks concealing captured stars, and dinosaurs beneath active volcanoes. Lulled by the rhythmic slapping of the Rio Grande against the jumbled rocks at Pebble Beach, I made some wonderful connections. A big truck rumbled through, interrupting the conversation between the dark river and me, the refracted light white and blue on my window. As the truck receded, I fell asleep.

Cold morning light raised the medicinal, honeyed spices of the lilac blossoms pressing against my window screen. Father had started a fire in the living room stove. The stove and Mother’s upright piano opposite were the center of our home. Mother often sat at the piano in the afternoon, Granados’ Goyescas drawing us all into her contemplative state. Mother had planted a triangle of Kentucky Bluegrass in front of the big living room windows. Mother’s yard, and her garden beyond, were visible through the windows when she played, making the home entirely hers.

In the kitchen, cigarette smoke wreathed Dottie and Papa in a diaphanous sheath. Mother stood crossly over the gas range. Dottie's face, pressed against Papa's chest, was flushed and wet with tears. Papa smiled at me through squinting eyes, his moistly purple lips pressed together. Dottie’s eyes were squinched tight against the sun rising above the root cellar in the east-facing kitchen window. Papa wrapped his sun dark arms, brittle from years under the high San Luis sky, around her.

The door swung open, cool early summer air and bright San Luis sun pouring in around Father. The high bright made Father a silhouette against the cloudless sky coldly blue and tall behind him. He held a laminate wooden bowl containing a few chicken eggs.

‘Dottie - those hens must have known you wouldn’t be coming this morning - look - they only gave me three eggs!’

Dottie pushed Papa’s arms out of the way. ‘Didya look under Clarissa? She’s always got an egg. I hope you didn’t scare ‘em.’ She looked solemnly at Father. Papa laughed with his belly and chest, and Dottie smiled too.

‘I’ll take care of that Dave. Here, I’ve made your coffee.’ Mother took the bowl of eggs to the sink to wash. Father sat down at the table. He touched her hand lightly with his fingers, and she allowed her hand to rest there for a moment.

She placed a bowl of porridge in front of each Dottie and me. I leaned over my bowl to take in the sweet steam rising from the bright yellow cornmeal, a pad of melting butter drizzled in fresh honey, bits of raisin and dried apricot here and there breaking the surface, which was already beginning to congeal around the perimeter of the bowl. Dottie reached carefully for the jar of cream, first pouring a dollop into Papa Sam’s coffee, and then a little bit into her porridge before setting the jar down between us. Then she reached for the violet tin with the words ‘Twining’s of London English Breakfast Tea’ written in fancy script across the side. She used her spoon to pry open the lid and scooped out some sugar which she dropped in Papa’s coffee. She carefully stirred the coffee, watching the heavy cream dissolve into little globules along the rim, transforming the dark liquid into a richly brown and sweet confection. She withdrew the spoon and put it in her mouth before stirring the cream and butter and honey floating at the top of her porridge into the steaming hot cereal. I poured a little bit of the cream over my butter and honey, watching the butter separate and pool into shiny slicks on the surface of the cream, then carefully folding the congealing edges of the porridge into the molten silky center.

‘I’ve never seen a boy eat so much porridge with his eyes,’ Papa cackled. I took in his comforting old cigarette smoke smell, fresh coffee and body odor clinging to his scruffy neck, as he leaned across Dottie to place a wet kiss on my cheek.

‘Dave, can you leave five minutes late this morning? Lem and Dolores enjoyed the kugel at Thanksgiving so much that I decided to bake one for them, but it’s going to need an extra five minutes.’

Dottie hopped off Papa’s lap and brought her empty bowl to the sink, climbing up the step stool to reach the faucet. ‘Joey hurry up,’ she said over her shoulder, her tears forgotten.

I scraped the bright yellow porridge from the bottom of my bowl, savoring the last little bit of the creamy sweet richness. I gave my bowl and spoon to Dottie and returned to my bedroom to gather my schoolbooks and homework while my sister did the breakfast dishes and Mother wrapped the kugel for Mr. and Mrs. Peres.

‘C’mon kiddos, we’d better go.’ Father’s chair scraped the linoleum as he pushed himself back. When I got back to the kitchen, Pinkie was standing at the table with a cup of coffee in his hand, running his other hand through his tousled hair. Now that he’d gone off to university, Mother allowed him to wear his hair long.

‘Hey kid,’ he smiled at me, and I threw my arms around his waist. ‘I’m riding into town with you guys. Sounds like Mr. Peres needs some help around the place.’

We grabbed our bucket hats from their nails by the door, Pinkie raising my hand in his to touch the mezuzah as we passed into the tall bright, briefly pressing the tips of my fingers to his warm lips.

I glanced back at Mother. A tear welled in the corner of her eye. Embarrassed, I looked away.

Father was holding his toolbox in one hand and Dottie’s little hand in his other. He didn’t acknowledge Pinkie this morning.

We walked out to the old truck. On our left stood the root cellar, obscuring the footpath which led up the hill to the chicken coop, and the dairy barn beyond that. We passed the propane tank feeding Mother’s cook stove and the tool shed where Papa had killed a rattlesnake last summer, and into which neither Dottie nor I had ever entered since. The splashing, rollicking early summer river was audible from here, if hidden by a brambly mess of scrub oak clinging to the bank. Over time we had trampled a little footpath from the edge of Mother’s lawn through a patch of raw meadow up to her kitchen garden, its little wooden gate the liminal between Nature and Mother’s cultivated realm.

When we got to the truck, which was parked facing the garden on a little rise just in front of the tall hay barn, Father placed his toolbox in the bed and Pinkie and I scrambled over the tailgate.

I closed my eyes and thrust my face directly into the early morning sun. The engine coughed and spit and growled, belching her comforting petrol smell, blue black and white in the bracing blue bright. Father backed the pickup into the open barn door, then cranked the wheel to the right and pulled out onto the hard packed dirt road that led through the farm and eventually out to the county road.

*****

The sun persisted above the western hills, contemplating her glaring effect upon the scraggy plain. Every exposed surface was dried flat and baked up.

All that lay hidden in the lee of a rock, in the shadow of a tree, the insides of a barn, was coolly chirruping and swishing and clicking with life. Pinkie and I were gathering our sleeping rolls from the hayloft. The air was heady - sweet old straw, fresh mowed hay, newly shoveled manure - thicker than outside. The sun-glare, beaming perpendicular between tired, irregular slats, revealed a barn mouse sampling the rich atmosphere. For the briefest, most reckless moment, she set her innate fear aside, before ducking back into the straw.

Pinkie and I set off for the campground. Mother had prepared not only kugel, but her kasha-stuffed holishkes as well. Mrs. Peres had gifted Father some sausages she had prepared from a doe Lem harvested in the fall. I carried these provisions in a box, along with the instant coffee and other morning necessities. I slung my sleeping roll over my back. Pinkie carried the cooking gear, toiletries, and other supplies.

We were setting down our things around the fire pit. Down here at the bend in the river the landscape changed. The hardscrabble fields gave way to a lush bottom. Tall deciduous trees were growing with great solemnity and majesty toward the arcing heavens. Under the canopy the soft earth supported sparse grasses. Young trees grew quietly where for the most part the lush tall grass and spiny purple thistle blossoms were unable to thrive. The earth was mostly soft dirt and damp leaves until one drew near the riverbank, where the tall grass flourished up to the water’s edge.

I found a rocky outcropping where I could fill the pot with river water. I rubbed my hands together with the granulated sand just beneath the water’s surface, the cold abrasiveness of early summer runoff refreshing my blood and bracing the muscles in my hands and forearms. I plunged back into the eddying river up to my elbows and held them under until the pain started to make my veins ache. I stood, shaking my hands to bring the blood back into them, stomping my feet and drawing short breaths as the bracing runoff rushed through my body.

‘Whooeeee!’ I cried to river and mountain.

‘Whooooo-eeeeeee!’ Pinkie’s reply came crashing back even as the sun descended.

Back at camp, the fire crackled before our extended bedrolls. We had entered the magic time before full dark. I lay down on my bedroll, peering into the darkening canopy, trying to see the great horned owl who nested here each summer.

Pinkie brought out his tongs and removed some embers from the firepit to the concrete cookstove Papa and Father had fashioned when they first moved here. A cast iron grate to cook upon.

I ladled some of the bubbling water into an aluminum skillet and placed it on the grate. I unwrapped the butcher paper containing four venison sausages, sliding them into the skillet. Pinkie placed the sheet pan of kugel on a little shelf closer to the glowing embers. The holishkes he placed in a second, smaller skillet.

The plates and forks I put on a gray stump which served as a prep table beside the outdoor cookstove. We sat on our knees in the dirt as the meal heated up, Pinkie occasionally poking the embers. Rich aromas grew out of the meat and grains and vegetables of this place.

‘What’s up with you and Mother and Father?’

‘That’s what I wanted to talk to you about - it’s why I wanted you to come down here with me tonight.’

Pinkie poked at the cook stove. I waited.

‘Look Joey - I’m not going back to university in the fall.’

He fell quiet again, poking at the embers.

‘I’ve realized that there are more important things for me to do than studying right now.’

‘Are you coming back home?’

‘No kid. I’m not coming home. I don’t know when I will be coming home again.’

‘Oh, jeez Pinkie. If you aren’t coming back, what am I supposed to do out here by myself? You have no idea how lonesome I’ve been. Please don’t go,’ and the hot tears began to rise.

‘Joey - you are stronger than you know. It is going to be alright - I promise. Whatever happens you are going to be alright. You are a geode, kid. You might be sad right now, but the power of Tartar flows through you.’

He put his arm around my shoulder.

I lay my head against his chest.

I tried not to cry.

I stared at the embers in the cook stove.

The kugel was beginning to sizzle, the holishkes were steaming, the water was rolling strongly over the sausages. The good rich smells were also making me hungry; my mood was shifting.

‘This is a beginning, Joey. We should celebrate beginnings, not mourn them.’

While Pinkie used his tongs to move the embers back into the firepit I served up two full plates, and we arranged ourselves around the blazing fire.

‘Take me with you, Pinkie.’

‘Sorry kid. Where I’m going you can’t tag along. Your place is here right now - but it won’t always be.’

We ate in silence. The kugel’s crispy crust gave way to a luxuriant creamy heart. Mother had stuffed her sweet and savory cabbage rolls with kasha. The kasha was crackling before it was soft, and earthy. She had flavored the kasha with paprika and salt, with crunchy flecks of chopped almond and unctuous chunks of smokey dates. The smoky, gamey venison sausage, spiked with crushed chili flakes and seasoned with coriander, savory, thyme, and young garlic completed a rustic and satisfying meal, drawn from this earth. I miss this good food more than almost anything from my San Luis childhood.

‘An Argentine friend, Neto, said to me one night that, ‘at the risk of sounding ridiculous, the true revolutionary is motivated by love’. It was so touching, for he is truly a good and a beautiful man, and I believed him.’

The tone of Pinkie’s voice, his soft smile, the way he closed his eyes and took in a long breath, before gazing again thoughtfully toward the embers, bore a flavor of expression I had not noticed in my brother before. There was more to know about this Argentine revolutionary. Pinkie had never described anyone as beautiful before, and I had never heard a man discuss another man in such terms.

‘Tell me more.'

‘Back east the world is different. There are great social movements afoot all over the world, and everyone is trying to push our government to take a stand, to show America’s hand. The fascists are winning all over Europe and Central America and Asia, and the US isn’t doing anything about it. By convincing Roosevelt to stay neutral the fascists are winning here, too. They’ve had Borah’s ear for a long time, and even some prairie Democrats are making common cause. These fascists are really bad, Joey - you have no idea. All over Europe they are coming to power, and wherever they take over it’s bad for the Jews. But they aren’t just making Jews second class citizens. They are coming after everyone who doesn’t fit the revanchist stereotype: homosexuals and gypsies and immigrants, sure, but also communists and socialists and anarchists. It’s hard to say whether it’s worse to be a gypsy or an anarchist in today’s Germany. Although to be a Jew is clearly the worst offense.’

‘Are you a communist, Pinkie?’

‘They have a lot to say that I agree with – the best of them believe in human rights which is something no fascist cares about. They are willing to take the fight to the fascists. The administration is saying a lot of the right things, but they aren’t actually doing anything about it. I can’t decide if Roosevelt is feckless or just out of his depth. But whatever the truth of the matter, the fascists clearly have the initiative. We've decided that the important thing right now is to stand up and fight before the fascists take over. We can sort out the details of what comes next, next.’

The sun had fully set. The only light in the campsite came from the mellowing embers casting Pinkie in a yellowing chiaroscuro. His features were illuminated in sharp relief, articulating the angles and ridges of his face such that he looked much older, like an old man, like Francisco Goya’s self-portrait I’d seen in an exhibition catalog Pinkie had brought home from a museum he had been to, leaning out of his own canvas, wearily, yet fully exposed to himself.

‘The conflagration is burning hottest in Spain. The people elected a Progressive government, but the fascist generals won’t allow them to take power. The democracies aren’t doing anything to help. Roosevelt is sitting on his hands. The Republican forces have their back to the wall. Neto and I have decided to do something about it. There are a bunch of guys who feel the same way. They’ve been getting organized for years and now they have started shipping out. Neto and I are going before the new semester starts.’

Now I understood, and I was afraid.

‘Pinkie, please don’t do that. There have got to be other ways you guys can help!’

‘Don’t cry, little brother. Look at me.’

I looked up and into his smiling face.

‘Look at me, little brother. I am happy. I am going off to do the thing that feels most important in the world to me right now, and I am going to do it in the company of this wonderful man. Try to be happy for me.’

And I was, in that instant, happy for Pinkie.

We had finished our meal, and Pinkie began gathering the dishes. We put everything into the box and carried it to the rocky outcropping to wash.

- Joe