The Star Fisher Read online

  “So I had betrayed the benefits of seventeen years of proprietary instruction and traveled the world, then struck out to discover fool's gold in California. A writer I would be—and only the greatest among them, of course—and not a titan of business. I would be a poet—the summa cum lauded among them—and not a colossus of cash. My first task was to pen the greatest script of the biggest movie that Hollywood would ever make. After that I would longhand a few Great American Novels and in-between times I would carve from the curious musings of my soul bright essays to compare with the sage of Concord’s and starry-eyed verse by which to commence a Romantic age among the new Romans—my own countrymen—we who are among the first dozen generations of Americans; we whose forefathers tamed the wild lands and felled the tall trees and the old spirits within them and grew from the virgin soil by the sturdy sinew of the huddled masses the first civilization in the history of earth to set a human footstep on the moon and give to each soul the inalienable right of common equality at law.”

  He stopped a moment to remember, his bright, old eyes looking off toward the sunrise of his life. He continued,

  “All this I would do, and I had given myself five years to do it. And long now have I wondered of the enchanted elixir that swims in the brain matter of the young and makes them imprudent in their beliefs that they can do in a few seasons what would take a lifetime and lucky stars to accomplish.

  “I had used the last of my graduation loot to rent a flat near the beach and got right to it, for I had to unlearn much and learn much more and after a long apprenticeship of eighteen years I had penned and filled up journal after journal of ramblings on existence even existence itself would be discomfited with. Of these immortal works I failed to sell a single one; so then—and about time—came woeful me to the end of my dream. Then I met a stranger who was familiar, but it is sure I had never met anyone like her. She informed me of my destiny and reminded me of my oldest and first dream.

  “When I first met her she smelled of mountain and valley, of crisp fall leaf and hardwood hickory fire—she was crisp, clean and hopeful, with a pleasant touch of big mountain to her. She promised me it would be worth my while and since I had nothing better to do, I could not help but take up her offer. The reality of the world had taught me that dreams are gambles we make as soon as we have the money to roll the dice, so with the currency to back them, dreams can always begin again. It is a coarse truth that in most people there is more hope to be found in cold hard cash than all the warm colors of all the sunsets of all the worlds to come. But the big lesson she would teach me is something all of us need to learn sooner or later: It’s never too late to try—one more time—to live happily ever after.”

  Blue Water Canyon

  September 25, 1960

  He waited two days then went back. She was in the field with the horses. He climbed the fence and walked to her. She was bent at the waist, cleaning out the horse's hooves and he noticed the pretty snakes were coiled up and tight. He said hello and asked her what she was doing.

  “The dirt here is a hard clay when it dries. I have to clean out their hooves daily to make sure it doesn't stick and cause them problems.”

  “Are they ready to ride?”

  She stood and the sun caught her Indian eyes and they blazed up in the colors of fall. He lost a breath but got it back as soon as he could. She said,

  “They are always ready to ride.”

  “Well let's do it then. I brought the money.”

  She said,

  “We can't go on a trail ride with empty stomachs. Have you eaten?”

  “I had breakfast a few hours ago.”

  She motioned for him to follow her inside the kitchen just off the back porch, where she prepared three ham sandwiches and cut one in half. They ate quickly before going back outside. She pointed at the bridle hanging over the fence,

  “Take that bridle and follow me.”

  They led the horses to the tack shed and she went inside and brought out a saddle, throwing it over the fence easy and following after it. He watched her climb the barrier, as easy and effortless as a cowpuncher, then she picked up the saddle and tossed it over the side of the horse, cinching it at the bottom. She said,

  “There's another saddle in there. Go get it and you can put it on Stardust. You will ride him and I will ride Twelve Bolides.”

  He went into the tack shed and found the saddle and brought it out and threw it over the horse. He had never saddled a horse before but he had watched her closely and as he figured it out she made sure he did it right. When he messed up she corrected him with a soft hand and gentle instruction. He could see she was a natural at teaching.

  When they were saddled she asked,

  “You ever rode a horse before?”

  “Twice. Once when I was twelve and once again when I was twenty-seven. But only a moment that second time. The horse started bucking then took off across a field toward a pond bordered by barbed wire. That is when I jumped on the rump of that horse and then jumped off of that. Haven't been on a horse since then.”

  She smiled and said, “Stardust won't buck you. Just be natural and easy with him; flow with his movements and it will be a good ride.”

  She put her hand on the horn of the saddle and her foot in the stirrup and swung herself up on the seventeen hands high Twelve Bolides. She, in tune with the beautiful horse, was what they call poetry in motion. He had always thought horses were the most beautiful creatures and now he saw their beauty was completed in only one way. She said,

  “Well don't be afraid. Just hop on.”

  “I'm not afraid. Not of this horse, anyway.”

  After he got up on Stardust she smiled and clicked and Twelve Bolides began trotting off, with Stardust following. As they walked through the field she told him it was what she called the Back Eighty-three. Nearly a hundred acres of alpha-alpha, a type of hay grown for feeding large, herbivorous animals and made of high-grade protein. It was nearing harvest time and the waving land stretched out before them, heading toward the base of the great mountain about five miles off. They began to gallop a half-mile into it and he watched her in secret wonder, how gracefully her body moved with the elegance of the horse. It made him take a few extra breaths.

  When they passed out of the Back Eighty-three they had to walk along the road, a dirt and rock pathway the farmers used to travel along. It stretched toward the mountain and as they got closer the mountain grew bigger and he was awestruck by it. From five miles away it was large but up close it was bigger than the sky and to him it seemed a giant had gone to sleep in the earth and the wrinkles and rivulets of the sheet of land he was sleeping in remained furrowed over the resting giant. When they made it to the base of the mountain and began the climb he asked where they were going.

  “I am going to take you to Blue Water Canyon. It is not far from here. It will make a good first impression on you about my mountain. With it being overcast, the blue in the water will be shown well. The canyon catches the light and throws it into the waters. You'll see.”

  “How big is this mountain?” He asked.

  “About a thousand acres, give or take. It's big.”

  As she led the way and he followed, he watched how her hips rolled with Twelve Bolides. He quietly thought to himself how a woman on a horse is a thing of beauty and a beautiful woman on a beautiful horse is beyond beauty. Her hair fell down to the midpoint of her back and her curls bounced in time with the horse's pace. Her back was straight as a rod and her heart-shaped rear fit perfectly into the curve of her saddle. When they made it to the rim of Blue Water Canyon they stopped and peered over the rocks at the pools of water. She was right, the water appeared blue as the sky, with the clouds augmenting the color. He believed it was the shade of shale that caused it. She set her hands on the horn, drew in a big breath, then let it out slow. They sat there ten minutes like that, then she got off her horse and tied him to a brush oak. He did the same and they sat on a rock. He said,

 
“I completed my eulogy.”

  She smiled and said, “That's good. Let me hear it.”

  “First tell me why you cared for me to write it.”

  “My grandfather made me write mine a long time ago. Said a person don't know what they are about in life if they have no idea what they would like all of their life to be about and the best way to do that is imagine it is over with and done and what did they say about you.”

  Then she turned and looked at him,

  “I would like to know what kind of man you are.”

  The kind that loves you, he thought, as he held her gaze a moment. He reached in and pulled out what he had writ and read it to her.

  “His life was a long history of sadness—a novel of sad letters—and nobody likes sad stories, so he tried to make it less sad in various ways, one way by imagining he was a superhero in disguise as a mild-mannered writer who rode a bike everywhere he went. But none of that was true, except the bike, the writing and the mild-mannered part. He was a dreamer in a world that has forgot to dream, and it was a little dream of his to become a writer that inspired life. He wished to move hearts and souls. He wrote for the poets and the poetical. He wrote for the thinkers and the believers. He wrote for the evolutionary and the revolutionary. He wrote for the heroic and the noble outlaw. He wanted others to remember the miracle of life, if they had forgot. He sought to start, with a little spark, an age of wonder. He thought our world needs such an age.

  “He wished to serve life. He hoped to make people cry and smile; laugh out loud and think real quiet . . about life, death, love and all the cosmic miracles that we are, as a life form, and that we should hope to be. Toward that end he worked and wrote his simple works. And that work—and the lack of interrupters a tunnel-vision makes possible—gave him the peace and quiet by which to do his best to do for others what life did for him: make them stand and look at the stars and stand in wonder about it all. “He was always busy thinking, pondering, ruminating, contemplating, penning, writing, deciphering and figuring out. He did a lot of that because he was slow. Of the slow, he was the slowest. Slow to come to it, slow to go past it. He was comprehensive. He was a detective on the case of life and maybe he cracked the case and maybe the case cracked him. He liked to say about things: It's all up in the air right now. Nothing about life is a given. “He hoped to one day live some before died. He did live once. It was long ago. Back when he was alive. He became more ghost than a living man. And he wrote from a ghostly perspective of the beauty he once lived through and perceived. From what he saw, love is talked a lot about but is rarely, truly known. He thought people play at love. He thought that a big problem. All of his works, in one way or another, are about love. If there is a general theme to it all, it's love. He saw there is no love without war. That war was just basic to the species. He didn't trust anyone, man or woman, as far as he could throw them; but he didn't go around throwing people, either, so he never knew just how far he could trust them. “He figured too many people see the world as a stone to sharpen the blade of their ambition on and then, when it is sharp, use it to cut others with. He noticed these kind, if given the right push, eventually fall on their own blade. He never did carry a knife. He thought society a vulgar, rough-cut and coarse way of life, hid behind a false politeness. He was glad he didn't have any sensitive, intelligent children, so they didn't have to live through all that. But then again, he missed that part much. He reasoned that is why few make it through—at least as happy beings—because the world eats the sensitives and the intelligent. He knew the evolution of the species is dependent on the sensitives, and this explains why evolution is slow to go. He did not recommend the staying in society too long, unless one was very strong. And even then, he wouldn’t suggest you stay in it too long. He said the world will break the hell out of you if you are not anything less than granite and if you are granite it will chip it away slowly. That granite in him held a long while. But perhaps that is how creation makes sculptures of souls and men? He was one big block of obtuse granite in the beginning. There was a lot of chipping to get it down to the piece of flint he was at the end. But he figured maybe by that, somebody might pick up the last piece of him someday and spark an age of wonder into the world. He figured, one way or another, that things work out according to our dreams for them. He was a born dreamer and that is the way he died. “As he got older and his strength faded, he grew to miss that the most. His strength was the second happiest memory of his life. He had once edged his hand against the rock of the world and had moved that world, if but a little. From where he sat, he had moved the world, about as much as a flinty pebble thrown into a still pond changes the pond.” He finished and folded the paper up and set it in his back pocket. She sat quiet a while, then said, “So you want to start an age of wonder in the world.” He sighed, “No. Not now. But that was my big dream when I was young. Maybe what I hope to do now is make enough money to buy my burial plot. Then again, what does it matter what happens to my physical remains? I used to care about myself, after death. Once I even wanted to be a beautiful corpse, at least. Important to look dapper that last showing, you know? Now I am not so worried about it. This body has been a damned annoyance most of the time, in one way or another. Strong mind and will, weak body parts. Burn this son of a bitch and scatter the ashes on the mountain I hoped to climb. One less poet in the world. And that is not so bad a thing after all. You couldn't have got me to talk like that a few years ago if you would have beat me. Things do change, don't they? That is what I would tell the young about life, in a sentence: How quick the hours go, and right on time. Count them, and make them count.” She asked, “Why have you lost your dream?” “An age of wonder, in this world? Have you seen this world?” She chuckled, “Yeah. I've seen it. Which makes your kind of dream more important than ever. You should rethink it.” “Okay. I will rethink it. How about you? What is your dream?” “I really like a hot bath. I guess my dream would be to always have a bath with hot water on standby.” “That is a good dream. I have gone without hot baths in the cold. It makes the cold stay inside the bones and that makes the bones bitter and weak.” She picked a wild Indian flower out of the ground and said, “It simplifies life, to have simple dreams. I have a disease and everyday I wonder if this day might be my last, if something might go wrong and I might slip away. So I look about me and take in as much as I can and seek the grace and beauty of each thing and by that, I have both simplified and amplified my own dream of life.” He was astounded at her disclosure. She didn't look sick in any way, quite the opposite. She was the picture of health. He asked her what her sickness was and how she kept her health so well. “I have to keep healthy. The disease requires it. As long as I do all that I am supposed to do, it will be managed. This disease, which I never name, for I do not consider it a disease but a call and blessing to healthy eating and living; and that is why so many die from it, because they refuse the call. I listened to the calling and it has been good to me, this . . . little problem. But I worry sometimes.” He reached over and squeezed her hand and said, “I am proud of you, and this blessing of yours, you will always heed the call and the call will save you and keep you strong.” She looked at him and said, with a speck of water in her eyes, “You are a kind man. I knew it when I first met you.” He smiled, “Someone once told me I was a hard man. All along, even before that, I had been working on becoming softer. Gentler. More understanding. Being a natural born fool, I understood a long time ago it was needed. But in the end, I have to be tough, or it wouldn't be me. I try to be gentle with the gentle and whatever fits with all the other.” She replied, “My mother once told me I had stolen fire. And whether it came from heaven or hell, it burned bright just the same. And then she told me it would burn me, if I kept a hold of it too long. My mother and I didn't get along as well as I wish we would have.” “My mother liked me on the weekends during tea, and was a hard task-master all the other days. She told me to live my life and not the life some other would have me live for t
hem; to try to come to a sense of the miraculous by the so-called small things. She said if I could see the miracle that is a blade of grass, then the entire universe and all of life would open up for me. She told me to take nothing for granted but death and the ignorance in men. She said to make sure to count the hours as they go by, and try to make them count for something eternal.” “Your mother sounded like a wise woman.” “She was. On the weekends. During tea. She never followed any of her own advice and she bade me to follow her, so she also would have me not follow her own good advice. I think we are all heir to this neurotic thing called parents. It is an essential part of growing up, to prepare us for a neurotic world.”

  She asked,

  “What do you want to accomplish by all your days, what is your one great purpose?”

  “I guess the theme of me is that I have sought for wonder, but I do not know what to do with the wonder I have found.”

  “I know what you should do. You should give it away, give it to the world, and you should call into the world that age of wonder you dreamed about when young.”