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I
In some
places in the Southwest there doesn't seem to be much but dry land and
high sky, on and on, nothing. It’s overpowering at times. We look
out and think that we will just dry up and blow away, just like the
soil, red in the air all about us.
But one thing that keeps this desolation from being quite as overpowering
is a stream, any kind of stream--a river, a creek, a gully, a bayou,
any kind. I am acquainted with lots of streams, friends with a few.
Growing up In Orange, Texas, I knew best Cooper’s gully, which
ran next to my house, ran maybe 100 feet through the naval base into
the Sabine. I could see the Sabine, but I couldn't get there without
going into Orange to the docks just past Levingston's shipyard or going
all the way down Destroyer Drive past the naval base almost to Little
Cypress Bayou. But I didn't need the Sabine. It was too big and scary
anyway. Cooper's gully was more my size, about twenty-five feet across,
and different depths depending on how long it had been since it was
last dredged. It was really just for storm run off, and it was needed,
for in Orange it really rained, days on end sometimes.
We didn't fish in it. And we didn't swim in it because most of us couldn't
swim, not very well anyway. We played on, around, and over it. We built
rafts and floated on it. We threw things into it, sometimes accidentally,
softballs and footballs for example. We threw things over it–clay
wads mostly. Clay was a weapon ready for the taking, seemingly everywhere
below the sand, sand which we pumped in from the river to cover the
marsh so our temporary wartime housing could be built. With this clay
and homemade wooden swords we were pirates, charging onto the rafts,
swashbucklingly fierce as Errol Flynn or Tyrone Power. Or we
were rushing from our LSTs to attack the Japanese on shore. We could
be John Wayne, Sonny Tufts, or even John Payne. Sometimes we sang the
“Caissons Go Rolling Along” and with whistles and kabooms
lobbed our clay missiles at the neighbor kids across the creek and dodged
the incoming fire.
Or we watched
the gars, seemingly everywhere on the surface, looking for the big ones,
talking about how we were going to build some gar boards and catch us
one. But we never did. Who would want a stinky old gar anyway? We would
occasionally get a little fat meat and try to catch some crabs. But
crabbing was a lot better in the bayous, so mostly Cooper's Gully was
just a playground, our small backwater from the river.
Later as
I got older, I moved from the Gully to the bayous as a place of recreation,
to Little Cypress Bayou, nearby, and Cow and Adams, out on the roads
to Port Arthur and Beaumont. Even after we learned to swim, we didn't
swim in these much. They were snaky, muddy, and full of cypress knees.
For swimming we preferred the rice canals, particularly the one by the
rice mill on the road to Mauriceville. We swam there during the day
some, but the greatest fun was going out on a moonlit night, getting
in the canal and leisurely doing the backstroke, moving easily with
the slow current. Of course we tried to honk the horn and make a lot
of noise first to scare any cottonmouths away. The snakes still added
a little extra interest to the swim since we never knew whether this
tactic would be effective or not. No one was ever bitten that we heard
of, though we did sight a snake from time to time. And there was always
some joker who would fake a snake attack. I never thought that was very
funny even though I wasn't particularly afraid of snakes. For a special
treat we would sometime drive farther out the Beaumont highway to another
rice canal, one with a flume. A flume is kind of like a modern-day water
slide, but flat and free. We would lower ourselves on the braces at
the top of the flume, hold ourselves momentarily in the strong flow,
then let go to go rushing through the corrugated-metal trough and out
into the slower rice canal. Usually we had these rice canals to ourselves.
One car load of teenagers could seem like a crowd though at times. If
we really wanted a crowd, we could drive over to the rice canal at Starks,
Louisiana on Sunday. There was always a lot of people there, whole families
together swimming.
Finally, I went away to North Texas State College in Denton. There was
no river there, but it wasn't far to Lake Dallas for some good back-to-nature
swimming. And in the summers in Orange, I finally came to know the Sabine,
working on the way at the shipyard, perched above it welding, with the
metal flakes falling sizzling into it, and on the graveyard shift watching
the sun coming up orange across it. Then too my friend, Jerry Powledge,
got a ski boat, and we discovered the pleasure of skiing around the
barges on the intercoastal canal. And we finally got around to doing
a little fishing. But every time I caught something they told me to
throw it back, something about it being a junk fish, all bones, or something
like that. At any rate fishing still seemed like something I could do
without.
And then
I went to the Army and spent the first year in the mountains of Colorado
and the forest of Louisiana, before I got back to a river, still one
of my favorites, the San Antonio. It’s a favorite not because
it’s much of a river but because of the area it went through.
I really loved the river walk and that was before it was fixed up. Even
then there were beautiful trees along it. And there was downtown San
Antonio right there–the Menger, the Saint Anthony, Houston Street,
even the Alamo. It was the first city I had lived in, and I loved it,
a city and a river together. And weekends, I got to meet other beautiful
streams–Comal creek at Landa park, the Guadalupe at Sequin. I
got a real baptism of a sort in the Guadalupe when I turned over a paddle
boat and lost my glasses. And the Medina and the Frio were nearby, the
Frio particularly was a favorite well worth the time spent in getting
there, hill country scenery and swift water.
Out of the
army and into teaching school. I got to know Dickinson Bayou in Galveston
county. I drove over it everyday on the way to Dickinson Junior High.
And it was a nice place to escape to to try to forget the travail of
a first year of teaching, to try. It snowed that year 1959, and the
bayou, like the people, didn't seem to know what to make of it, the
cypress looking like flocked Christmas trees and with thin sheets of
ice around the edges, and snow six inches or so deep coming right down
to the water's edge.
Then I moved
to Irving to teach and the Trinity never seemed to be nearby though
it was. I guess the only times I ever noticed it was when driving into
Oak Cliff to the Zoo or a baseball game. Even then it didn't really
seem like a river, just an unimportant something the bridge passed over.
When I moved
to Stephenville, I again found a river I never could much like. The
Bosque wasn't bad, but there was just not much to it. It was hardly
bigger than Cooper's Gully. But I did go down to the city park every
once in a while to throw some rocks into, just on principal. Of course,
you could drive over to Glen Rose to a little more interesting river,
or up to the Brazos at Granbury. This was even before John Graves was
saying good bye to it. There were some really interesting creeks too,
out there east of Stephenville, small, but with personality, nice places
to drive out to on a Sunday.
Then I made my move to my favorite river, the San Marcos. I moved to
San Marcos to teach in 1967, and I moved into a trailer park called
Pecan Park, high on a ridge above the river. I spent most afternoons
prowling along the river banks and on the island just below me, a small
uninhabited island made where the river temporarily forked. I learned
that I was allergic to poison ivy, highly allergic. I picked my time
and place for prowling more carefully after that. In 1969, I discovered
why I didn't want to be any closer to that river. The great flash flood
of that year swept down the San Marcos carrying everything before it.
It filled the gorge completely across and above the island, as much
as fifty feet above its normal height. Trailers and pickups in a low
lying area were swept away and strewn down the river as far as Martindale.
In 1970,
I moved to Austin and lived just south of the Colorado, Town Lake as
it is called there. Once again I spent lots of time by a river, if a
river it can be called. But it seemed like a river to me, like the Sabine,
wide and slow moving. I ran along the river and the creeks that fed
into it, Barton, Shoal, Waller, and Harper's. I was out there jogging
in those years, mostly alone at first, but then as the jogging craze
took hold more and more runners joined me. We moved sometimes in waves
across the bridge at Zilker park and down the creek and into the giant
cottonwoods as we turned onto the river path, really not a bad way to
get your exercise. Sometimes it rained as we ran. It was really kind
of nice to run along in a gentle rain and watch the rain hitting the
waters. But on cold days the rain falling into the river couldn't be
enjoyed. But it was good to be there daily and watch the river change
with the seasons. Through the years I have visited lots of other rivers
of the Southwest. I have seen the Colorado, a thin line at the bottom
of the Grand Canyon. I have walked alone the Rio Grande near McAllen
and canoed on it through Boquillas Canyon at the Big Bend. I have swum
in Cow Creek near Kirbyville. I have been along the Arkansas on a train
through Royal Gorge. And I developed a spring in Hay Canyon high up
in the Sacramento mountains. And in those same mountains I've driven
along the Rio Peñasco all the way down from Cox canyon, watching
it get gradually larger and faster.
And I've been on, in, and around the Pedernales, the Neches, the Nueces,
the San Gabriel, the Red, along Cibolo Creek and Sea Willow, along unnamed
creeks. Oh, and as a small child, I lived by Big Cypress Bayou in Jefferson,
way up in East Texas, walked along where the steamboats had been.
For four years I lived a few blocks from the Guadalupe just outside
of Sequin. I drove over the river every day twice, but we only had a
nodding acquaintance. I don't think I ever even put my hand in the water
in all those four years.
Now I've moved back to Hays county, living north of San Marcos about
eight miles, near the Blanco. I can see the ridge on the north side
of the Blanco from my house, but we can't get to the river because a
big ranch is at the end of the road, and there are no trespassing signs
every where. I guess I could get there if I really wanted to, but I
don't really have to go there. It's enough to know its there, nearby,
and besides I have the San Marcos again. Mainly, I play basketball along
the San Marcos, at Sewell Park on campus. After a good hot summer game,
I jump in to cool off. Sometimes the ball bounces off the court and
into the water. Then it's kind of like Cooper's Gully again. I'm trying
to get the ball out of the water without going in. But sometimes I just
have to go in before the ball washes down and away. If that happens
in the winter, the water seems surprisingly warm, really pleasant, welcoming.
Yes, I've known lots of streams.
II
I have written
poems about these streams:
Above
the Mill Race
We stop
to breathe slow
by the Guadalupe
beneath Gruene's bluff.
We see in the weave of tree
as the pink sun goes
in the water's flow
and silver bounce
see how it is
intricate
quick
momentary
till round the bend
and pink
becomes black.
Yet chill
is the water
and warm the skin
as we breathe slow
by the Guadalupe.
Roosting
The two from
Michigan move,
old heads white as Winter ptarmigans,
along the resaca
on the asphalt circle
the waddle of old fat pooch before,
move stiffly, softly, quietly
to Chacalaca noise
exploding--
a cacophony in the half light.
And close by a man
newly baptized
rises from the Rio Grande.
The Airstreams reflect
rich purples, pinks, oranges
flamboyant as Tropical Kingbirds,
Altamira Orioles.
A green jay squawks.
Then the warm dark.
River
Walk
It was warm
soft
winter
the night she said
she was dying.
The river
shivered
with light,
the water
dark
dirty,
her eyes ice.
Mariachis played,
haggled for cash.
III
And I have known rivers second hand from my reading. I've been down
the Brazos in a canoe with John Graves, along the Canadian on horseback
with John Erickson, homesteaded on the Rio Grande, with J. O. Langford,
fished the San Gabriel with George Sessions Perry's Sam Tucker, camped
along the Brazos with his hoboes.
I've crossed rivers and rivers, crossed lots with cows, nearly all onery
longhorns. I've pushed them across with lots of trail drivers, with
Will Carpenter, Rufe LeFors, Teddy Blue Abbott, Ernest Fletcher, and
with those created by Andy Adams, Benjamin Capps, Larry McMurtry, Clay
Fisher. Mostly they were fit company to swim a river with. I crossed
on good horses and bad, crossed naked and clothed, during freshets and
at low water, with fords and without.I've crossed river borders too,
gone across the Rio Grande into Mexico with McNelly and the Texas Rangers
as Kelton and others tell of it, crossed and recrosssed the Rio Grande
with Tom Lea's Martin Brady and with O. Henry's misfortunate tavern
operators.
I've been lost crossing the Pecos River valley with early day pathfinders
Royce Wilson tells about those trying to find a cart trail to the West.
And I've been across that difficult river at Horsehead Crossing with
Elmer Kelton's Milam Haggard.I've enjoyed a fourth of July picnic with
Carolyn Osborn's clan on the Leon at Fauntleroy's crossing even though
her narrator let me know that the Leon there is "nothing much to
look at. It's small, twisty, and full of sandbars, wicked currents,
and water moccasins." (Osborn, p. 151)
At another fourth of July celebration, this one along the San Marcos,
I've felt pain with David Fleming's Ricky McAllister, feeling with him
his jealousy and frustration as he heaves the present he had intended
for his sister into the river.
I've escaped from Sugarland with Paul Foreman's Bones by swimming down
the river and I've learned of its taste and why it tastes that way:
He
started jogging west towards the dying sun, towards the great river
the Spanish called the Brazos de Dios, the Arms of God. The Brazos quicksandy,
the Clear Fork, the Salt Fork, the Double Mountain Fork. The Brazos
actually started in gullies in New Mexico a hundred miles west of Lubbock
on the Llano Estacado. The salt fork that ran down off the Alkali flats
gave the Brazos water its distinctive taste, to drink it left one thirstier
than before. Bones had drank the water many times when he worked the
ranch at Double Mountain. Old cowhands there, who recalled stories from
older hands–long since dead and gone–would tell him that
on the long trail herds up to Kansas after the War Between the States,
the chuck wagon widow would take along an extra keg of salt to lace
into the coffee so the cowpokes all the way across Oklahoma and Kansas
could drink a bitter brew that tasted like coffee made with salty Brazos
River Water. (Foreman, p. 127)
And I've been up in the Double Mountain area too, with Jim Corder living
there on the edge of the Croton Breaks with the Salt fork of the Brazos
wandering down there somewhere.
I've been with Kelton's Buffalo soldiers at Fort Concho along the Rio
Concho and been with them, in thirst, in the wilderness area west of there.
I've been almost washed away by the Colorado when it broke the dam and
nearly drowned Irsfeld's F. N.
I've been a third, observing Beverly Lowry's Pauline and Will Hand in
their love nest on Snake Creek, a tributary supposedly of the San Marcos
out by Martindale. Through Pauline I've perceived the creek:
Trees
came together over their heads in a thatch of wildness so thickly bunched
you could not see the sky. Mustang grape vines wound around bushes and
trees in a dark tangle. New green grapes hung from the vines. The air
was damp enough to swallow. Pauline shivered. It was perfect. Uncivilized
and perfect. The creek ran steadily, patiently winding its way through
rock and mud and slabs of the bluish rock Will called blue clay toward
the river. (Lowry, p. 95)
I've stared
into the water at the Great Carp with Rudofo Anaya's Tony wondered with
him about the nature of the creation, of beauty and evil, and walked through
the water with him in fear.I've sat and eaten my lunch with Joseph Jones
by Waller Creek, there in the gully, just below Memorial Stadium. Then
I've helped him pick up the trash, move some rocks.I've been there with
Joe Mondragon helping him water those beans too, wishing the little guy
the best, but not really worrying about him knowing what a survivor he
is. I've swum in creeks outside Hondo with John Crouch, the world's fastest
creek swimmer. And I've swum with Paul Horgan's teenagers as they moved
about in the lake above the town that used to be, the town on the river
that used to be. And I've been in the water around Sour Lake and Batson
with William Owens' Bo Carrington looking for oil, and finding itI've
suffered with the Ordways when they lost their child in the Red River
as they crossed over and suffered with R. G. Vliet's Lee Benbow when he
was there as his brother, Willy, drowned in the Nueces and with the picnickers
too, the ones who failed to save Willy. And I suffered with McMurtry's
Irish kid overwhelmed by snakes.From Jefferson I've traveled downstream
on a flat-bottomed river boat piled high with cotton bales, made the many
turns through the snags across the Caddo past Shreveport on by Alexandria
and eventually to New Orleans.I've been wading in the Rio Grande with
Larry McMurtry's Danny Deck, really suffering over the loss of his manuscript.
Just the thought of that lost manuscript still upsets me, the work, the
waste.
But the Trinity I know best, know it as William Goyen's Charity river–a
river anthropomorphized into a principal character of a novel. I've heard
it speak through the genius of Goyen. His river spoke to the young boy
and to me:
You came, young boy from the House, to these woods with me running in
them and you called out any name (and (I will never tell it) and the
woods held the name you called and trembled with the name and all the
nests shook with it and berries swung with the calling like little bells,
and flowers rocked the name like listening faces turning their ears
to hear the name, and birds flushed up at the calling of the name; and
animals stopped where they were going and pricked their ears and heard
and their ears held the name you called. You walked and thought of all
those killed by their love and lovers, and you had none, of all lost
causes of hunters and explorers, of all failures of men going after
something, and said the words that the Mexicans say, O Díos,
O Díos, O Díos, and wished and yearned for someone to
lead you and to follow. And you knew that I, river, had gone out onto
the land, the land of widespread corruption and drouth, the flaccid
land of the dead, and lain upon it and covered it with my sperm and
brought life from corruption; that I crossed over my banks and went
where there was nothing of me, where I was not, and left some of myself
there. But there is the inevitable return, we are forever going out
and coming in, joining and abandoning, alone and together. (Goyen, p.
29)
And it told
me more, much more of life, feeling, of Charity itself.
So I have read about streams. And after a time the reading and the doing
blend into the being, and the having been, joining in memory. And in all
those streams, now, water is flowing to the sea.
Works Cited
Adams, Andy. The Log of a Cowboy. Lincoln: University of Nebraska
Press, 1969.
Adams, Michael. Blind Man's Bluff. Austin: Imperial Palm Press,
1982.
Anaya, Rudolfo A. Bless Me, Ultima. Berkeley: Tonatiuh International
Inc., 1972.
Capps, Benjamin. The Trail to Ogallala. New York: Signet Books,
1964.
Erickson, John R. Through Time and the Valley. Perryton: Maverick
Books, 1978.
Fisher, Clay. The Tall Men. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company,
1954.
Fleming, David. Summertime: A Novel. Fort Worth: Texas Christian
University Press, 1986.
Flynn,Robert. North Toward Tomorrow. Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New
York, 1967.
Foreman, Paul. Sugarland. Berkeley: Thorp Springs Press, 1978.
Goyen, William. The House of Breath. New York: Random House,
1975.
Graves, John. Goodbye to a River. New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
1974.
Horgan, Paul. Whitewater. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux,
1970.
Humphrey, William. The Ordways. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965.
Kelton, Elmer. Horsehead Crossing. New York: Bantam Books, 1982.
Langford, J.O. with Fred Gipson. Big Bend: A Homesteader's Story.
Austin: University of Texas Press, 1973.
Lea, Tom. The Wonderful Country. Boston: Little, Brown and Company,
1952.
Lowry, Beverly. The Perfect Sonya. New York: Viking, 1987.
McMurtry, Larry. All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers. New
York: Simon and Schuster, 1972.
McMurtry, Larry. Lonesome Dove. New York: Simon and Schuster,
1985.
Nichols, John. The Milagro Beanfield War: New York: Ballantine
Books, 1974.
Osborn, Carolyn. The Fields of Memory. Bryan: Shearer Publishing,
1984.
Owens, William. Fever in the Earth. New York: Putnam, 1958.
Patterson, Becky Crouch. Hondo: My Father. Austin: Shoal Creek
Publishers, Inc., 1979.
Perry, George Sessions. Hold Autumn in Your Hand. New York: The
Viking Press, 1941.
Perry, George Sessions. Walls Rise Up. New York: Whittlesey House,
1939.
Tarpley, Fred. Jefferson: Riverport to the Southwest. Austin:
Eakin Press, 1983.
Vliet, R.G. Water and Stone: Poems. New York: Random House, 1980.
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