Red

5-22-2011

Perhaps, we are most lucid when in a state of disrepair. Maybe the graveyard on the ridge above the mountain ghost town of Elkhorn is as all things should be—forsaken and overrun by nature. The mountains gradually reclaimed the graveyard; tall sugar pine and fir grew upright within the fenced grave plots and heavy roots slowly toppled headstones that supported marble lambs and the ever-fading names of small children. The wooden fences and grave markers fell backward into the sage and yarrow.

The graveyard at Elkhorn filled-up with children, sometimes with entire families, in a single year’s time. The little ones, caught first in a diphtheria epidemic, perished at a rate of two or three each week. The town itself fell silent during the silver market crash and the survivors limped away, abandoning homes and businesses and even their loved ones on the sunshine hill beyond.

I recall walking through the graveyard with you, Uyen. Helen followed, a gradeschool girl clutching a stuffed bison toy. The summer forest scented the air with pine and dust and Helen read from the headstones aloud: “eighteen-eighty-eight…eighteen-eighty-nine…eighteen-eighty-eight…eighteen-eighty-nine…” Back in the abandoned mining town, I recall entering a ramshackle cabin that leaned precariously against the tall sagebrush and brome grass, the heavy winter snows having nearly pushed the building flat. Someone, standing inside the cabin, had repeatedly fired a rifle up through the roof-slats between the timber trusses. Fine shafts of light angled down through the inside of the darkened structure from the bullet holes above. Dust motes swirled up through these threads of light as if with some certain purpose. I swear, you were never lovelier than you were that day. I stopped and watched you strobe through the beams of light. Your hair shone as if made of polished obsidian where the light crossed you. Your face, smooth and clear as the most exclusive porcelain.

Over these last few days, I have been bagging your clothing and what seemed a hundred pairs of shoes. I have given most of these things to people in need. Except any jacket or dress or top colored red—those, and only those—I have hidden away to keep in my own closet.

Something about you wearing red...for as long as I shall live, red.

--Mitchell Hegman