Dead Man's Float - Jim Harrison

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Tiny Bird

      84  Apple Tree

      85  Galactic

      86  The River

      87  Daylight

      88  Warbler

      89  The Final List

      90  A Dog in Heaven

      91  Quarantine

      92  Moon Suite

      93  Bridge

        About the Author

        Books by Jim Harrison

        Acknowledgments

        Copyright

        Special Thanks

      He fell off the cliff of a seven-inch zafu.

      He couldn’t get up because of his surgery.

      He believes in the Resurrection mostly

      because he was never taught how not to.

      I was chest-high in the wheat field with wind blowing in shimmering circles. A girl on horseback came by on a trail and the horse smelled sweet with the wheat. How blessed horses smell in this bitter world.

      I could see the hospital in the distance and imagined the surgeons in the basement sharpening their knives. Tomorrow they will cut me from neck bone to tailbone to correct mysterious imperfections that keep me from walking. I want to walk like other kids in the fields with my noble dog.

      After surgery I didn’t get well and they sent me to Mayo in Minnesota, an immense Pentagon of health machinery. In an ambulance-plane I ate a bad sandwich in keeping with the tradition of bad food that would last until my secretary brought takeout from a nearby restaurant.

      Each night I sang along with a bedsore cantata from the endless halls, the thousand electronic gizmos beeping, and also people entering my room for “tests.” I was endlessly sacrificed at the medical gizmo altar. There was no red wine and no cigarettes — only the sick who tore at the heart.

      A beautiful girl Payton couldn’t walk. I’d shudder whenever I passed her room.

      On very long sleepless nights I’d gaze at the well-lit statue of Saint Francis across the courtyard. I’m not Catholic but he bore me up with birds on his shoulders. One night the planet Venus dropped unwelcome on his neck. Francis with Venus is not right. I don’t think he knew a woman. I saw the same thing in Narbonne, France, one night with a million blackbirds flocking above the canal for the trip south across the Mediterranean. Venus was blurred on the peak of the cathedral.

      My spine aches from top to bottom. Also my shingles burn, a special punishment. Francis heard my crying over Payton. He doesn’t care about her beauty I suppose. There were no beauty contests among his birds.

      I heard Mozart’s last trio late last night, a spine-tickler, like the night I heard Thelonious Monk in Grand Central. There are so many emotions on earth, especially trapped here where moment by moment I surge with emotions. I’m told this place is admired throughout the world, though my brain waves tell me different. The nurses are kind and friendly while the doctors tend toward smug and arrogant. Hundreds of doctors looking for something wrong are suspicious.

      The old bugaboo of depression slid in. I wanted to sleep on the floor but was frozen in an electric bed. I began to have delusions and at one point I was in Paris at my favorite food store buying cheeses with my grandson. Another night I was wailing and the attendant shook me awake. “I’m dying,” I said. “No you’re not, you’re just wailing.” I ate an apple and went back to staring at Saint Francis and his birds. Without birds I’m dead. They are my drug that lifts me up to flight. Thousands of kinds of birds I’ve studied, even in the rain when they seem more blessed on the branches.

      What is wailing? A death-drawn crooning. It hurts to hear noises from the pediatric ward — the innocent crying out. I am thoroughly guilty in a long life.

      I wanted to be a cello. I hear cellos when I’m trout fishing. The green banks with wild roses capture the cellos and thousands of birds, many sweet-sounding warblers and colorful western tanagers. Will I fish again with this badly ruptured spine? The scar looks like the bite of an ancient creature.

      There is a place in us to weep for others. I found it at night with daytime eyes, whirling the memories so fresh you could smell the pain within is dark and raw. This great sprawl of sick people craving the outside, to walk in a forest beside a lake, the air full of birds in the greenery. Saint Francis dozing against a tree, a yellow warbler perched on his shoulder. There is no way out of this prison we have built so clumsily, hellish in its ugliness. Most of us want to stay. I can’t die when I want to go back to Narbonne and my secret room where I write so much. They cut me open in a long strip and luckily sewed me back up. In hospitals we are mostly artful sewage systems.

      I need my secret place in the Upper Peninsula near Lake Superior, my dark thicket covered by winter. It is night in there but I can watch passing animals, a deer, bear, even possums, which I love for their humility. The thicket is flooded with birds, a few inches from my good eye. Francis would love this thicket. Maybe I’ll take him there someday. And best of all a stump in a gully that I can crawl into and sit up. My place of grace on earth, my only church. The gods live there.

      How to get out of this hospital? I planned three departures but a doctor won’t sign my release. I am desperate for home and my lovely wife. They want to keep me here though departure is supposedly voluntary. Finally a friend in California sent a jet and saved me. We loaded up my daughter, my secretary, and her daughter and were soaring back to Montana.

      A green glade of soft marsh grass near a pool in a creek. There are a dozen white birches and I curl in the grass. The last day I saw a drop of blood on a tile. Be careful, our blood falls easily.

      The birds are flying around frantically

      in the thunderstorm that just began, the

      first in weeks and weeks. They are enjoying

      themselves. I think I’ll join them.

      1

      The Saturday morning meadowlark

      came in from high up

      with her song gliding into tall grass

      still singing. How I’d like

      to glide around singing in the summer

      then to go south to where I already was

      and find fields full of meadowlarks

      in winter. But when walking my dog

      I want four legs to keep up with her

      as she thunders down the hill at top speed

      then belly flops into the deep pond.

      Lark or dog I crave the impossible.

      I’m just human. All too human.

      2

      I was nineteen and mentally

      infirm when I saw the prophet Isaiah.

      The hem of his robe was as wide

      as the horizon and his trunk and face

      were thousands of feet up in the air.

      Maybe he appeared because I had read him

      so

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