Circa 8,000 BCE
North America
In what is today southeastern Oregon
A weary hunter shivered beneath a cloak of rotting hides, a spear his only companion. To either side of him, high canyon walls loomed black against the predawn sky. Straight ahead, out to the west, the great River of Fire climbed through the glittering stars, drifting slowly rightward.
The hunter moistened the insides of his nostrils with a little spit and sniffed the brittle air, marking the strong autumn must, and something else, a fishy scent, a lake somewhere off in the darkness. The thought of fish set his stomach growling. For days he had eaten nothing but dried roots and berries. But that would change soon enough.
His pulse quickened as the sky behind him warmed with dim yellow. Setting aside the spear, he got down on his belly and pressed an ear to the frosty ground. Once the sting of it had eased, he closed his eyes and listened. At first, he could hear nothing but the whoosh of his own blood. But as his heart slowed, he thought that he could feel something there between the heartbeats, a faint tremor. A rumor of hooves.
He sprang to his feet. The sky had brightened, and now he could see the canyon clearly: a broad corridor of tawny, frost-rimed grass flanked by sheer cliffs of umber rock. Stunted willows marked the path of a stream as it meandered down the canyon to a vast lake, its calm, gray waters backed by a line of gloomy mesas in the distance.
And when the first rays of dawn struck them, it was like a seam of golden light opening up between earth and sky, seeping forth, spreading back across the lake. Countless birds, before hidden in shadow, now flashed in the sudden light, swimming, skittering, rising up in great flocks. It was all so beautiful that for a moment the hunter forgot his grumbling belly, forgot the rumor of hooves.
Morning light flooded up the canyon, drawing a mist from the frosty grass. High on the northern cliff, to the hunter's right, a raven ruffled its glossy feathers and cawed at something in the tawny grass below.
Now the hunter saw it: a shock of blue caught in the morning light. But it was not the blue of water, or of flowers, or even sacred stones from the south. It was unlike anything the hunter had ever seen. It was as if a flake of sky had fallen to the ground.
Crouching low, he crept through the high grass until he was close enough to see what the blue thing might be. It was not a flake of sky, or a pool of water, or flowers or sacred stones. It was a person, a man it seemed, lying in the grass. Blue was the color of his tunic; it shimmered in sun.
Now, the hunter watched in amazement as the man in the blue tunic sat up, yawned, and stretched his long, muscly arms. He swiveled his head from side to side, his curly black hair brushing a broad back. He got to his feet and stood tall, taller than any man. He was a giant.
The raven dipped its head but said nothing.
The hunter followed as far as the boulders, then veering left, he picked his way through bones to a narrow crevice that split the canyon's sheer wall top to bottom. Slipping inside, he shimmied up and up and up until he had nearly reached the top. There he paused with his back against the frigid stone. Again, he felt a tremor in the ground. It was closer now.
Hazarding a peek, he spied the giant just a few paces off. He was standing with his back to the cliff, gazing south across the plain at a pair of nearby hills that swelled like breasts from the tawny grass. Silently, the hunter hoisted himself up and crouched with the crevice between them, sun at his back, spear ready. For a long while he remained utterly still. A morning breeze snaked through the grass. Then the hunter gradually stood erect, his shadow inching toward the giant's bare feet.
At last he noticed. Pivoting toward the hunter, the giant stared down at him, shading his flint-gray eyes with a long hand.
Neither man moved nor made a sound. The sun lingered low, and the morning held its breath. Then, from the far side of the canyon, the raven cawed and flew away.
The giant exhaled sharply, and he let his hand fall limp at his side. Dropping to his knees, he bowed his head, shoulders draped in black curls. His hand went to his chest, fingers caressing the strange blue fabric. Now, it seemed to shimmer like water. He reached inside the tunic's collar, withdrew a small leather pouch, and emptied its contents into his open hand: five tiny seeds, each like a grain of mustard. But even as they settled into the creases of his palm, he clapped his hand to his mouth and swallowed them all.
A tremor rippled the ground, and the hunter tensed. He hissed and jabbed his spear at the twin hills to the south. Then lowering himself into the crevice, he gestured for the giant to follow.
The giant struggled to his feet and turned listlessly toward the twin hills to the south, each gilded along its sunward flank. On the left-hand hilltop, there appeared a figure, a person cloaked in heavy furs. Another appears beside it, teetering it seemed beneath the weight of an enormous mask fashioned from the disembodied head of a horned beast with brown wooly fur. Now, people were beginning to gather on the right-hand hilltop, and more still on the left until both hills were crowned with people. The ground shook again, stronger this time, and suddenly the people began running down the hillsides toward the giant and the cliff at his back. They formed two parallel ranks, on to the giant's right and one to his left.
The earth shuddered, and from behind the twin hills, a cloud of dust billowed high. It spilled now over the low saddle between them, flooding forth. From the leading edge galloped a lone beast, a huge bison swinging its deadly horns. Seeing the people to either side, it dug in its hooves and came to a snorting stop. The people whooped and hollered, goading it on. But there was no need. With a sudden peel of thunder, the entire herd came crashing over the saddle and down the slope.
The people broke ranks and scattered, left and right.
But the giant remained still, rapt it seemed by the spectacle unfolding before his pale eyes. The first bison charged by so close it fluttered his hair. He turned to watch it hurtle over the edge, legs pumping wildly as it arced down to the boulders below. Another bison galloped by, and three more. At last the giant turned to run, but it was too late.
The hunter stole a final peek as the giant and his blue tunic vanished in the crush of hooves and dust. There was nothing he could do now. Retreating deep into the crevice, he wedged himself against the heaving rock, covered his ears, and waited.
When at last it was over, he shimmied up and peered out through the settling dust. The surviving herd had scattered, leaving behind a sea of trampled grass. The giant was nowhere to be seen, doubtless swept over the edge to the rocks below. There, the people would find his broken body beneath the heap of bison and wonder. Already he could hear the women and children singing as they butchered the animals and relished the taste of warm meat.
The hunter was about to climb down and join the feast when he saw the raven again, gliding in low. It landed near a patch of bare rock stripped of soil by the passing herd. The bird hopped twice then cawed at something on the ground. It was the giant, his blue tunic all gray with dust, his body crushed and twisted. But he still lived. The hunter watched in amazement as with his hands, the giant dragged his limp body to a jagged hole in the rock. There he paused, blood-soaked hair dangling down into the darkness. Then, with a final effort, he pulled himself over the brink and fell.
***
Just before dawn, Peter loaded his car and set off. He drove east over Washington's Cascade Mountains, then southeast, traversing the state's agricultural heartland, his destination a childhood adventure stirred to mind by the meeting with his father a week earlier. Every day since, the memories had swirled through Peter's mind, refusing to settle: his parents' laughter, the aroma of sagebrush, a lonely mountain, a desert stream full of speckled trout.
Peter crossed the Columbia River before noon and headed south-southeast through the smoky wildfire pall shrouding the state's arid hinterland. Late in the afternoon, he stopped for gas at the little town of Frenchglen. It was a less a town and more a roadside oasis. Amidst decrepit barns and abandoned farm equipment, a general store offered shade, snacks and gas. Nearby, an old white ranch had been converted, inexplicably, into a bed-and-breakfast. The only living thing out and about was a rooster strutting around the gas pump.
Peter rolled up, shut off the engine and stepped out into the afternoon's heat. Ascending general store's rickety wooden steps, he pulled open the screen door and stepped into a maze of shelves randomly stocked with cans, dried goods, and sundry wares.
Snatching a six pack of beer from the refrigerated case, Peter set it on the checkout counter. There was an antique brass cash register there. Sitting on a low chair behind it, a white, middle-aged woman thumbed a magazine. She looked up and gave Peter a once-over with her lazy blue eye.
"That everything, sweetie?" she asked.
"Plus twenty dollars in gas."
Setting aside her magazine, she got up, leaned over the counter and peered out the screen door at Peter's car, the brown 1988 Toyota Corolla wagon he had inherited from his late mother. "Where you in from?" she asked.
Peter handed over his credit card. "Seattle."
She ran it through the reader and handed it back. While they waited for authorization, she mindlessly turned the hand-crank on the side of the antique register, and with chime of a brass bell, the cash drawer popped open. Instantly, Peter remembered standing in this exact spot with his parents, the tang of lime Popsicle in his mouth. He must have been nine or maybe ten.
She handed Peter his credit card. "Fishing?" she asked.
Peter glanced at his own clothing: T-shirt, cutoff shorts, and ratty Chuck Taylor low-top sneakers. "How'd you know?"
"You don't look like a hunter or birder, or a reporter neither. They stopped coming once the standoff at the wildlife refuge ended." She ripped the receipt from the printer. "You need bait?"
"No thanks. I'm fly fishing."
"Right." She seemed to disapprove.
As Peter headed back to his car, she called after him. "Don't go pumping your own gas, now. Wait for me, sweetie."
Car filled with gas, Peter lowered himself onto the scorching vinyl of the driver's seat. Then he took the rusty butter knife he kept behind the sunshade, inserted it into the gouged-out ignition switch, and gave it a twist. The starter whined, and with a belch of black smoke from the tailpipe, the engine rumbled to life. His mother had not driven the Corolla before she died, but reminders of her were everywhere, a credit union pen, a bottle of antacids, a tube of vanilla hand lotionâand all those bootlegged cassette tapes she stuffed into the glovebox.
As Peter drove through the parched scrubland outside of Frenchglen, he listened to a cassette tape of his mother's favorite classical composer, Edvard Grieg, and her favorite piece, "Solveig's Song" from the Peer Gynt Suite. She said its dark, remorseful tones reminded her of the mountains of Trøndelag, the region of Norway where she was born. Where she met Peter's father.
The undivided highway traversed a barren mesa and dropped down to follow the base of a sheer ruddy cliff. Bright green vegetation marked the spot where a natural spring erupted from the foot of the cliff and tricked through a culvert pipe to nourish a pasture on the other side of the highway. Several cars were parked beneath the tall poplar trees that grew there. A group of ten or fifteen people formed a circle in the shade, dancing. As he drove by, Peter wondered who they were and why they were dancing.
A few miles on, Peter pulled over and consulted his map. A rough-looking dirt road snaked its way through the pale scrub and up the side of a low bluff. Peter followed it and at the top got out for a look around. The air was dry, still and hot, perfumed with sagebrush, sleepy with the buzz of cicadas. The river remained hidden within its canyon, but far to the north it could be seen as an apple-green ribbon wending toward Malheur Lake, a slate smudge in the distant haze. Beyond the canyon to the east, the land rose steadily through yellow aspen stands toward a long, craggy horizon flecked with lingering snow.
Peter had read somewhere that Steens Mountain was a massive fault-block, a slab of the earth's crust tilted skyward by slow geologic action. Running for nearly fifty miles north-south, the Steens fault block rose gently from the high desert to an abrupt eastern escarpment nine thousand feet above sea level. Enormous glaciers, long since melted, had carve the mountain with deep, U-shaped valleys that now fed desert streams. These were the waters Peter had come to fish.
The Corolla bucked and creaked down the primitive dirt road, engine whining against the steep grade. At last, the road met the river, and Peter pulled to the side of a rough turn-around. There were no other vehicles. He would have this stretch of the river all to himself. He was just about the grab the butter when the Corolla's engine coughed, sputtered and with a violent thump, died. He sprang out and threw open the hood. Reeking shreds of rubber timing belt lay melting on the engine block. The Corolla was going nowhere.
He took out his phone. No reception, not a single bar. He would have to camp for the night, hike out in the morning, and hitch a ride. Until then, there was still enough light for plenty of fishing.
The river was more like a creek, shallow, thirty feet at its widest. The water was cool and clear, a series of willow-shaded pools and riffles strung along the bottom of a rocky canyon.
In his cutoff jeans and old sneakers, Peter waded his way upstream. At the foot of the first pool, he crouched and cast his little brown fly to the upstream edge. It settled in a dimple of water, drifting back. Not a second had passed before the fly vanished in a dainty gulp. Peter hesitatedâone beat of the heart, his mother used to sayâbefore he raised the tip of his rod to set the hook. The sudden tension was like the closing of an electric circuit: fish to hook, hook to leader, leader to line, line to rod, rod to hand, hand to arm, arm to pounding heart.
They were not big fish Peter caught that evening, but they were certainly beautiful, each a trove of ruby, emerald, and silver not meant for the light of day.
When it was dark enough that bats started going after his fly, Peter returned to his starting point, leaned his fly rod against the trunk of a gnarled tree, and waded back out to retrieve the six pack of beer he had stashed in the river to cool.
"Hey-o!" called a clear voice from the tree's shadow. Out stepped a tall woman with long, dark hair.
Peter sloshed ashore. The woman was nearly six feet tall, her lanky frame concealed beneath baggy clothes. Despite the evening's warmth, she wore hiking boots, jeans, and a man's flannel shirt, untucked. And she was younger than her voice had suggested, just a teenager it seemed.
Peter laid the six pack of beer in a tussock of grass.
The young woman remained still, her gaze downcast. Even in the fading light, Peter could see the freckles dotting her tanned nose Then she spoke, her voice cool and smooth, her affect flat. "I saw you fishing from up on the rocks. Any luck?"
"I caught a few. Nothing very big though."
"Yeah, that fly you're using only catches the little ones."
Peter frowned. "How'd you see what fly I was using from up on the rocks?"
Glancing at the tree, then back at Peter, she raised her freckled face, made a peace sign with her right hand and pointed at her dark brown eyes, as if to say, "With these, dummy." But maybe she meant something else.
It was then Peter noticed a hunting rifle leaning against the tree, right next to his fly rod. "What's the gun for?"
She walked over to thetree, picked up the rifle and worked the bolt a few times as she returned. "It'snot loaded. Grandpa Saul says I need to get used to carrying it if I want to gohunting by myself."
A little chill settled in Peter's spine. "Hold on. Saul?"
Demi glanced up and nodded.
The swirling memories were beginning to stick now, gathering around that name. Saul.
"Does he have red hair?"
"He used to."
"Is his last name . . . Gordon?"
"That's my last name too."
Peter gaped at her. "This is so weird. I think I've met your grandpa before." He quickly introduced himself, explaining, "It was a long time ago, probably before you were born. My whole family came out here to visit him."
"Why did you come to visit?"
"Um. I don't actually remember."
"Are you a relative?"
"No," said Peter, puzzled by the question.
The young woman just shrugged and eyed the tussock of grass. "Well, my name's Demi. It's supposed to be short for Demetria, but I checked my birth certificate once. It just says Demi."
"Well, it's nice to meet you, Demi. By the way, do you know where I can get cell phone coverage around here? My car's broken down."
"Probably Frenchglen." She thumbed the steep hillside behind them. "But our house is just up the road."
"Oh, you have reception up there?"
She shook her head, no.
"A landline?"
"No. We have satellite." She slung the rifle over her shoulder. "Are you going to be okay out here by yourself?"
"Yeah, yeah. I'm fine." He had all the gear he needed in the Corolla.
"If you stop by our house in the morning, we can give you a ride into Frenchglen, or even Burns."
"That would be great, thanks."
She gave him directions and was about to leave when she eyed the tussock of grass. "You can't take those beers with you. Grandpa Saul will make you pour them out."
"Why?"
"We don't talk about that." She turned and walked away.
_________________
Author's note:
Thank you for reading chapter 3!
What do you think of Demi? All comments and questions welcome!
-Frode
Header Photo: fall foliage on Steens Mountain
Photo credit: Tom Wilcox, BLM
https://www.flickr.com/photos/blmoregon/15467118216/in/photostream/