Part 2: Willow, Weep For Me

"'Guess now who holds thee?' - 'Death, ' I said.

But there, the silver answer rang,... 'Not Death, but Love.'"

- Elizabeth Barrett Browning,

Standing there in the early dawn in back of the rambling log ranch house I looked up at the hill, the rising sun diffused by the large willow tree. It was over eight feet in diameter and tall at more that sixty-five feet. The glow of the rising sun highlighted the bright yellow of the young shoots enthusiastically growing in the early spring.

The tree sheltered the remains of generations of the Lane family... in fact, all of the Lanes excepting me, Tom, as the last of the line. I briefly wondered if the tree would fade away as the family had through the years.

As I started up the path, the heavy dew bathing my new boots, a slight smile came to me as I remembered from one of my college courses the quote from Richard Wright in his Story of Gardening:

"Nor can we leave the willow without remarking on how its weeping form became the symbol for the correct Victorian female attitude. The modest bending of their slim, pendulous branches, their response to the least breath of wind, readily typifies the acquiescence that Victorian ladies were supposed to display."

The smile faded quickly as I reached the top of the hill where a too large collection of markers and monuments were the memories of the rise and fall of a family. I could still hear my grandmother telling me the stories when we would visit what she called "the knoll of death with the tree that weeps."

I kneeled before the new marble slab, shiny with the dampness, and read the sharply chiseled inscription:

And this was my beloved
Sara Jane Lane
Wife of Tom, Mother of Sara Anne
Forever part of their hearts
1976 — 2006

My thoughts wandered to the small gathering yesterday afternoon under the weeping tree, sadly huddled together under the misty, cold drizzle of an afternoon rain in the mountains of Idaho. I sat there under a small canopy, Annie on my lap, looking at the pine box as the pastor droned on with his thoughts on life and death.

Annie was looking up at me, old enough to be sad but young enough not to understand why. Wonder in her eyes, she put her small hand on my face and wiped my tears away. I averted my eyes from the box that contained Sara Jane and thought of our discussion those too few years ago.

The ranch was south of Hayden Lake on Orourke Bay. I95 was about ten miles straight west but it was a good thirty-minute drive. From there on in to Coeur D'Alene was about another ten minutes, making it an easy forty-five minute drive. It was close enough to commute into town.

I had been dating Sara Jane for a brief six months and was hopelessly in love with her. She was a tall spare woman, comely in a reserved way, with a serious demeanor interrupted frequently enough by bouts of sunshine and laughter. There had seemed to be something sad about her from the beginning, something I couldn't put my finger on.

I was thirty and had just received a promotion with the Idaho Fish and Game Commission. I was going to be the manager of the Upper Snake Region and would be moving to Idaho Falls. I was currently mostly doing education classes and was living in Coeur D'Alene where I met Sara Jane. She was a teacher at Lewis and Clark State College in the Social Work Department. She also taught a couple of classes, as needed, at North Idaho Community College: usually either Oral History or American Indian History.

Sara Jane was about forty per cent Nez Percé and got involved in the oral and Indian history through her own research. Her grandmother Sara, several greats ago, was the daughter of a Nez Percé warrior and had been separated from her family as a young girl during the Battle of Big Hole in 1877. (Author's note: watch for more about the original Sara in an upcoming story: "Finding Sara.")

I think I fell in love with Sara Jane the first time I saw her. I was teaching a fly fishing class at the Bar None Ranch and she drove the forty-five minutes out from Coeur D'Alene for the three day, afternoon class. She was lovely in her hip waders and her gritty determination to learn intrigued me. After the last day I seized the day and asked her to stay for dinner at the ranch. The owner, Sean Brennan, was a long time friend of my father's before my dad had passed away.

They had a truly great restaurant as part of their dude ranch activities, and using their brand, a zero with a bar across the top of it, advertised that they were the "best restaurant in Idaho, Bar None!" Unlike most of the dude ranches in the area they were open year round.

It was a wonderful meal and I think Sara Jane had fun. I was too busy falling in love to notice whether I was enjoying it or not. We started dating regularly and then I got up the nerve to move ahead. I looked for a ring and found what I wanted. It was more than I could afford but she was worth it to me!

I wanted to do something different with the ring, not just put it in a jewelry box. The Coeur D'Alene reservation of the Nez Percé was about an hour's drive south of town. I had been there a couple of times with Sara Jane visiting her "aunt." At least she called her that... she was somewhere north of eighty, a tiny wizened woman with a surprisingly hearty laugh. If anything she was an aunt of a remote cousin.

I had noticed while we were there that there were a lot of knock-off handicrafts that were sold to tourists. I thought it would be nice to give my love the ring in a small handcrafted purse. What I had in mind was a replica of a type of bag designed to carry ration cards. They were usually small, about three by five inches of so. They could vary a bit either way. Mostly they were quite pretty, decorated with beads or else made from cornhusks. The latter were typically decorated with colorful wool yarn.

So I made the trip down to visit Alikkees, which as near as I understood had something to do with 'haircut.' Sara Jane called her Kat'sa, which was the Nez Percé name for maternal grandmother. I think this was a sign of respect. I was told to call her Aunt Sophie. Driving down I was thinking I'd better pay more attention to everything since I would be marrying into a culture, not just Sara Jane.

Aunt Sophie was pleased to see me and sat out front on a bench. She made me tell her everything — it all came out: my love for Sara Jane, the ring I had purchased, my plans for the future. She asked some surprisingly penetrating questions and I was reminded again that wisdom wasn't only the province of the young.

I told her what I wanted and she nodded wisely for a few minutes — actually I thought she went to sleep — then with a startled look on her face she jumped up with more agility than I would have expected and went inside to her small home she shared with her grandson, Henry.

She returned about twenty minutes later with an old cigar box — it wasn't a brand I'd ever heard of. She opened it carefully and pulled out an object wrapped in a silk handkerchief. She unwound the silk and showed me the beautifully made ration card bag. It was a little larger than others I'd seen, about 5.5 by 6.5 inches. It was made of finely woven cornhusks decorated with wool in colors of red, blue, purple and orange.

The wool was woven with outlined triangles in each corner and a smaller triangle centered between each of the four corner boxes. It had two handles made of leather strips. I'd seen one in a store in Coeur D'Alene for over a grand. This was in perfect shape and absolutely stunning.

Aunt Sophie put the box in my hands and waved me to my car. I stood there at a loss, not understanding what was going on. She yelled for her grandson and fired a torrent in her native language at him. Henry looked at her for a minute and at her nod started talking.

"Tom, this is a bit strange but she is adamant. She wants you to take this purse and when you give the ring to Sara Jane give her this bag also."

"Henry, I can't take this. It is very expensive — I was looking for a replica."

Henry talked to his grandmother again for a few minutes and turned back to me. He opened the box and took out the ration bag and took a small card out.

"This is the ration card of Sara Jane's great grandmother. You can see the date on the card, 1903. The name is her paternal great grandmother's name. I won't try to explain how Sophie was related and how she came to have the bag, but she wants Sara Jane to have it... and she wants you to give it to her."

I was stunned — this was a lot to take in. I pulled myself together and thanked them profusely and drove back to town. I was meeting Sara Jane for dinner and was going to surprise her with the ring. I arrived at the restaurant first and, when she came I, I stood up to pull her chair out. On an impulse I put my arms around her and hugged her tightly, as if I was afraid she would disappear.

She sat down and asked with a wry grin and a raised eyebrow, "I guess you are pleased to see me?"

I was so excited about popping the question that I was on tenterhooks the entire evening, even though I knew she loved me. I could see I was even making her nervous. Finally, over coffee and brandy, I waved to the waiter. He came back in a few minutes later with a box wrapped in a gold paper. I handed it to her and asked her to open it.

Looking at me, a little suspiciously I thought, she asked, "What is this?"

I took her hand and looked in her dark brown eyes, "This is just a box. Inside, though, is my love! Please be gentle with it!"

Looking intrigued she laughed at that and carefully started taking the paper off. I'd left the ration bag in the cigar box Aunt Sophie gave to me.

When Sara Jane got to the cigar box, she looked at me with her nose wrinkled and a question in her eyes.

I nodded to her, "Go ahead; open the box."

She lifted the lid and picked up the silk kerchief and slowly unfolded it. When the ration bag came into view, she stared at it, holding it like a newborn baby. She gently touched the bag, feeling the contrasting textures of the cornhusks and the wool, eyes feasting on the still bright colors.

"But, Tom, how... why... "

She obviously knew it wasn't a replica, that she was holding something precious — a piece of her life, her culture.

Quietly, not wanting to spoil the moment, I said, "Go ahead, see what's in the bag."

She opened the bag and slowly pulled the ration card out. She stopped and looked at me for a moment and held it up to the light. At first, she looked puzzled, then surprised, then a little astonished before starting to cry. She clearly understood whose name was on the card.

I took her hands and explained to her how I came to have the bag.

"But, honey, this is only the first of two surprises I have for you tonight.

I took the small box out of my pocket and feeling a little silly got down on one knee. Opening the box I handed her the ring.

"Sara Jane, I love you and want to share my life with you. Will you live with me, love with me? Will you marry me?"

She looked shocked for a minute — her face a study in changing emotions. Shock changed quickly to a huge smile of happiness. She started to put the ring on... and then something came over her, some indefinable emotion. The smile faded, quickly replaced by a look of intense sadness — a look of a mother losing her child.

She arose suddenly, put the ring on the table, grabbed the box and ran from the restaurant!

I stared after her, bewildered and hurt. I felt a pain beyond any expectation. I was expecting her to tease me a little, and then give me a hug and say, "Yes!"

I slowly dragged myself into my chair as the waiter appeared with a bottle of champagne. Seeing my love not there he beat a swift retreat, looking back at me once with a look of hurt on his face. I sat there, openly crying, and finally stood and walked slowly to my car. Back at my lonely apartment I stared at the phone, waiting endlessly for it to ring, for Sara Jane to call and explain everything to me.

I finally called her after agonizing over what to say. Of course it went to her answering service and I left a bleak message asking her to call me when she had a chance. Pathetic!

I called her a couple of times over the next few weeks but she never called back. I stopped by one of her classes but found out she had taken a leave of absence. I was going crazy, fighting off bouts of depression. How could I have been so wrong? I knew she loved me — that's not easy to fake!

Finally I went back to the reservation to talk to Aunt Sophie. I asked Henry to sit with us — I had to get this right. She looked at me with a great deal of sadness and gave me a gentle hug. She had never done that before. I started to tell her what had happened but she already seemed to know. She nodded to Henry and seemed to doze in the warm sun shining on the bench.

Henry looked at me for a while, somewhat pensively. "Tom, you've heard about sickle cell anemia, right?"

"Yeah, sure, it's mostly inherited from African ancestors, right?"

"That's what you hear the most about. It is also fairly common for people of Mediterranean and Middle Eastern descent. Unfortunately it's also all too common in Native American people. Many of us have one gene and that gives us the sickle cell trait. Those who have two genes actually have the disease."

Henry paused for a moment, looking out at Steptoe Butte, towering over the valley floor. I knew this was a religious site for the Nez Percé and that Henry was looking for wisdom to say the right thing.

"Sara Jane has the disease. The problem is not that she doesn't love you but that she does - only too much! She knows that she will live 'til she is fifty at the oldest, maybe earlier. Also she is afraid of passing the gene to her children."

I found myself staring at the butte... maybe searching for the same wisdom as Henry. I felt something let go inside — my heart, my very soul relaxed. If Sara Jane didn't love me, that was devastating and was life itself. This was just a problem.

Henry told me where she was — staying with family on the other side of the reservation. He gave me directions and said he would call and let her know I was coming.

As I pulled my truck (fish and game logo and all) up to the house I saw Sara Jane running out. She threw her arms around me and squeezed me tightly.

"Oh, Tom! I'm so sorry for running out on you like that. I do love you. I love you terribly. I panicked and ran without thinking what it would do to you."

I held her, both of us crying now. We went to a picnic table in back of the house and sat down.

"Tom, you do understand why I can't marry you, don't you?"

"No, I don't! Look at me. Do you love me? I mean really love me?"

Almost a whisper, "Yes, Tom."

"Okay, then, start planning the wedding!"

I guess she could see that she would have to either marry me or shoot me. I wasn't really in doubt as to her choice, but I was relieved when she leaned into me and sighed.

It wasn't easy. We had many long talks and met with her doctor several times. Finally the wedding happened and we started our life together. It was all I expected and more. Underneath her reserved exterior lived a passionate woman.

Life was good and got even better when she became pregnant a year after we married. The pregnancy was harder on her than I thought it would be and, looking back, I should have foreseen the end. Three years after Sara Anne was born my beloved died after a year of getting progressively worse. By the time she died, I think we both were looking at the end as a blessing. She couldn't live with the pain and I couldn't stand to see her suffer so.

I'd kept the ranch after my parents had died... I couldn't part with 150 years of Lanes resting in the ground under the weeping willow.

I would forever after get tears in my eyes when I saw a willow tree. Sara Jane was now always in the arms of the big tree; I took our baby and moved sadly on with my life... knowing a love like that would never bless me again.

THE BAR NONE RANCH BABY

"You do a lot of growing up when you're pregnant. It's suddenly like, 'Yikes. Here it is, folks. Playtime is over.'"

- Connie Fioretto

When we left Sherman Oaks, mom told me, "Kathy, I know it won't be home for you, but your Aunt Mary and Uncle Sean are family. I know you will want to come back as soon as you can after the baby is born."

Thinking back to this as we entered the ranch seemed funny in a way — I had left my home in Southern California but driving under the log entryway to the ranch road felt like I was coming home, not leaving it. As we drove under the archway with the Bar None logo I felt both a sudden peace and a prickling of excitement. I had last been here six years ago when I was twelve. I had a sense as we drove down the mile long road to the ranch that I wanted to stay here forever.

There were clusters of lodge pole pine and aspen scattered along the road. The fall weather was causing the aspens to show their fall finery: the shiny green of summer changing to brilliant yellow and gold splashes that contrasted with the always green of the pines and the scarlet parade of sumac. There was a faint hint of the dry smell of summer dust that was heavily overlaid with the heady aromas of the pines.

I felt something ease in me as we pulled up to the lodge. No one was around and since it was lunchtime we figured everyone was either eating in the cookhouse or the restaurant. We had come up I-15 through Las Vegas and Salt Lake City and then on to I-90. We had stayed our second night on the road in Missoula and eaten breakfast almost six hours of driving ago. Lunch sounded great!

We went in and Aunt Mary was behind the check-in counter working with the copier. When she heard the door opening she rushed over and gave us both a big hug. I was sure she had forgotten me but she fussed a bit and took us in to the restaurant. The summer rush was over and there were just a few people eating — as Mary told us, folks would drive up to see the fall colors and stop by to eat.

My cousin Marcie was busing tables and stayed back, shy like, until Aunt Mary whispered in her ear. She ran to me, squealing like only a twelve-year-old girl can, and threw her arms around me, quivering with excitement. I couldn't believe how much she had grown! The food was fantastic and for the first time I worried about gaining weight with my pregnancy.

Later Uncle Sean came in while we were having some cherry pie for dessert. He looked at me, kinda somberly, and then gave me a long hug, whispering in my ear, "We'll get through this girl, don't worry."

I couldn't say why, but that made me feel a lot better. It was rushed for the next couple of days until Mom left; suddenly it was quiet.

Uncle Sean explained to me,

"During the summer we are busy as all get out. You know we are open year round, right?"

At my nod he continued, "Only one or two of the other dude ranches in Idaho are open year round — most are only open during the summer. Once we get to mid-October, like tomorrow, we are open for the cabins and restaurant only on weekends. A lot of folks forget that we have a working ranch and there is always something to do. Mostly we get way behind during the summer and need this time to catch up.

"During the summer we never stop with the customers: horseback rides, camping, swimming, fly-fishing, hiking; gosh, you name it! We even teach handicrafts. Say, girl, do you fish? No, I guess not, being a Valley Girl and all," he finished, laughing.

"Anyway, we have a guy - Tom his name is, Tom Lane - that works for the Idaho Fish & Game, and he sometimes comes up here and teaches classes. I'll tell you girl, he is the best there is!"

I laughed, trying to take it all in. "And Uncle Sean, what do people do when they come up in the winter?"

"Gosh, honey, that should be obvious! There is sledding with the horses, cross country skiing, even snowshoeing... why some people just come out for the weekend and relax!"

He said this like he couldn't believe people would spend a whole weekend just lazing around. I think it was truly a mystery to him.

They did weddings here during the summer and around Christmas and Easter. Mom and I had been staying in the bridal chamber — the room where the bride changed clothes, rested, and all that stuff. It was okay while mom was there but when she left I started thinking about the room I was in, the bridal suite. That was some depressing thinking!

I asked Uncle Sean where I could stay more permanent like.

"Wal, Kathy, as you see we built a bunch of new log cabins for the guests last year. I've been using the old ones for the married hands to stay in or for storage. I got a real nice one up the hill under that big ol' cottonwood tree. It's nice and shady during the summer and has a great view all year 'round."

One of the hands - my old friend Curley (bald as an egg, of course!), the one that taught me how to ride a horse and sorta protected me from myself when I was twelve - helped me move all the stored stuff out. Curley's wife — she cleaned the cabins — helped me get everything spic and span (that's how she said it).

I moved in and really liked it. It was private and very snug. It was also tiny; one large room with the back mostly taken up with an open kitchen and a small bath boxed in back in the corner. The lodge had a reading room and Aunt Mary recommended to me some books to read. I guess she felt bad about my not being able to go to school.

I started working in the restaurant on weekends as the hostess and in the office for half-days during the week. The hostess part was easy: I just had to be polite and helpful - you know, smile a lot. I did get a bunch of guys flirt with me — God knows why since I was showing now. I'd just smile and lead them to their table; I knew about men now!

Aunt Mary took me in to see a doctor in Sand Point - it was just a block from Lake Pend Oreille and close to where I95 and route 200 came together. The doctor was really nice; she seemed to be in her mid-thirties and pretty in a way. She made me feel much more comfortable about having the baby. I guess I really didn't know anything.

Mom would call once a week, regularly like on Sunday mornings. She was planning on coming up - flying into Spokane this time - for Christmas. She would stay for a week. Uncle Sean said he would put a roll-away bed in the cabin for me to use while mom was here.

I was able to sign up for some online courses in North Idaho College, mostly accounting stuff to help in the office. I could do them at my own pace and use the computers in the office in the evenings. After the baby was born I would be able to start taking courses for an A.A. degree in forestry, wildlife, range, or wild land recreation management. I could take two courses by going in one day a week to Sand Point. I would have to finish by going to classes in Coeur D'Alene in a couple of years. Uncle Sean said I could worry about that later.