Chapter 3: Spirit Dreams

Cottonwood trees flanking the rock-rimmed irrigation ditch behind the house moaned in the rising late-night wind. Graydon heard the swaying branches outside and close thunder booming from the north as an early summer storm moved down the valley. They had spent several days cleaning out clutter and moving in. 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 surplus 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 tree outside his window, with the rising hissing, sound of the increasing rain rushing down through the cottonwood trees beyond. Chilled air through the window began smelling 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 either a chill, grey wet or a warm, green damp. Here on the east side, the only green was the blue-green of the mountainside Ponderosa Pine forests and the lush green of the river-bottom alfalfa hayfields. All else was yellow and tan grasses, grey-green sagebrush, and a solid golden carpet of sunflowers coating the foothills in late spring. The blossoms would turn to seed heads and the broad leaves would become brittle and crackling when one walked through their overlapping ranks. When the winter snows stopped falling and March winds brought a thaw to the valley, only the thunderstorms would bring rain throughout the summer. The valley survived on snow melt that flowed down from the mountain streams. The surrounding foothills became dried and parched. On a hot summer'a day the scent of pine pitch and cottonwood sap would hang heavily in the air.

"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 a small tribe of natives living at the confluence of the Methow and the larger Columbia River to be welcoming and friendly. A few years later, white man's diseases and guns had killed and scattered the Methow band. None 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.

Now the storm began raging outside Graydon's window as the it moved overhead. A flash of lightning framed the stark outlines of the heavy cottonwood limbs and the rising wind brought one of the weaker limbs crashing down. He could hear it tearing its way down through the lower branches and the heavy thud as it impacted the ground. The wind was gusting and the house shuddered as another thunderclap crashed all around them. Alex Jr. whimpered in his bunk on the far side of the room, but didn't wake. Graydon lay still, until a wind gust blew a scattering of cold rain across his blanket. He pulled the window down. Laying back, he closed his eyes and listened to the storm as it passed over and then south down the valley towards the sleeping town.

In the shadows of his sleep he began to perceive forms, whispers, shifting images barely glimpsed in the shadows. The dreamscape firmed. He found himself standing 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. A thick mist hung overhead, obscuring the light. He stood alone, the thundering sounds and cold spray buffeting 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 past his head, striking his ear. He fell to the ground. Glancing up, he saw the bird with outstretched wings, swooping up, soaring up high above the pines. Its momentum spent, the bird beat its wings to continue climbing in broad circles, fluttering upward with an odd, dipping rhythm. It was a nighthawk.

Graydon stood to see the dim overhead gloom brighten in the center and move toward him. He stood rooted, unable to focus on the confusion of light, the shifting glow of light, brightening, moving closer. A form emerged, a dim visage. Around him the world had gone mute. The waters cascading behind him were silent; no sound came from anything, not even the beating of his heart. The expanding light, the visage, moved closer, brighter. Graydon's consciousness contracted. He stood locked in a confined space where he and the specter faced one another.

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

Graydon stood, unable to move, frozen by the face and the upraised hand. A long moment passed, the specter's eyes hinted some unspoken message, then it faded and dissolved into the glowing mists. The world around Graydon burst in upon him with brilliant light and thundering sound.

He was instantly awake, alone in his bed. Outside his rain-streaked window the night was rich with fresh rain and cleansed air. He rubbed his eyes, unable to focus on whatever lingering presence might remain in the darkness. 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 soon fell asleep.

Purdy

The next few weeks passed quickly for Graydon. Long, bright, sunshine days were filled with chores and hard work, clearing the garden and cleaning the old chicken house and patching holes in the chicken run fence. Dee had her sons busy, getting the rundown homestead repaired and replanted and watered. Alex Sr. had 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 he did it was Dee and her two sons alone on the Wolf Creek homestead.

Graydon was standing in icy water at creek's edge, struggling to slip another board into place on the log-braced dam that spanned the creek. He was trying to divert more water into the old flume that fed their irrigation canal. It was hardly a dam. It let far more water slip through than it diverted; and there was hardly an irrigation canal, being so old and long-neglected that it was mostly a natural water trace snaking through cobble rocks and brush, flowing down to a corroded steel culvert to cross under Wolf Creek road and out to feed the homestead's half-buried irrigation ditches. Wolf Creek's snowmelt waters gave life to the homestead. It 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 the watercourse.

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