1. 16 July 2012 16 July 2012 A dayworker reaches into the wall of the parsonage his crew''s revamping and pulls a piece of history up, the edges of its pages crumbling under the fingers of his glove, and I have to think that, if his supervisor isn''t walking by at just that moment, then this construction grunt stuffs that journal from a century ago into his tool belt to pawn, or trade for beer, and the world never knows about it. If this works out, though, then I owe that dayworker my career. In January, I wasn''t exactly denied tenure, but I was told that, instead of continuing with my application, I consider asking for the extension I''m currently on. The issue wasn''t my teaching-- I''m the dayworker of Communication and Journalism, covering all the 1000- and 2000-level courses--it was that my publications aren''t up to University of Wyoming "standards for promotion." See: get a book under contract, Etsy, and then we''ll talk. And, if you don''t? Then all your schooling, all your dreams of being a professor, they''re smoke, and you''re out in the cold. Until that random dayworker reached into that wall.
Until what he found wrapped in mouse-chewed buckskin wound up in the hands of Special Collections librarian Lydia Ackerman of Montana State up in Bozeman, and she was able to read the scripty hand enough to glean a name from the very front page: "Arthur Beaucarne." It''s not far from there to me, that surname not exactly being common. And, because technically that journal belongs to me--well, my father then me, but my father in his facility down in Denver''s not exactly compos mentis--Lydia Ackerman''s been sending me the digitized pages as they''re processed, the original being a century too delicate to handle. But I don''t think she does it out of kindness. It''s to keep me from showing up unannounced again. "Etsy?" she asked when I did show up like that in May, breathing hard from the stairs. She was looking from my ID to me, to see which was the typo. It''s Betsy , really, I didn''t say, but a boy with a speech impediment in kindergarten.
who cares? "The last name," I told her, as politely as I could. So, I was led back to the workbench they conserve delicate literary artifacts on, was made to mask up, glove up, bootie up, and then sit like that through a lecture about the lignin content of old paper and the homemade inks of the late nineteenth century, and how this particular ink had aged into acid that was eating away the brittle old paper it was written on, meaning the individual letters collapse into hopeless crumbles from just the slightest breath--thus the case the journal''s enclosed in. It''s for humidity and temperature, Lydia Ackerman explained like giving a tour to second-graders, but mostly it''s to keep any breeze from punching those black letters from the pages, effectively erasing this amazing find from history. "It''s also for dust ," Lydia Ackerman leaned forward to say in some sort of confidence, like "dust" was a profanity in this particular room. "Even dust weighs enough to make the letters fall through the paper." To be sure I got how dire this all was, she heated her eyes up and raised her eyebrows. "I''ll be careful," I assured her, at which point she unlatched the glass case, both of us holding our breath behind our masks, I''m pretty sure, and, finally, I got to look directly at my great-great- great -grandfather''s journal. The workroom we were in smelled like my dad''s chemistry lab on campus, sending me back to being ten years old, when I''d yet to betray him by choosing the humanities over hard science.
Sorry, Dad. Again. I turned my back on chemistry, became an alchemist, yes, mixing facts with rhetoric and spin and encomium, all in hopes this or that speech will catalyze an audience, hopefully in what feels like a heartfelt way. Such is communication, which I long to enter into again with you someday, Dad--hopefully soon. I do get the reports from your medical team, after all. But, as my great-great-great-grandfather says in his journal--okay, my greatest -grandfather--that''s neither here nor there. And, yes, okay, I''ll admit it here in the privacy of this laptop: since I didn''t inherit "science" from my dad, I''m here choosing to inherit journal-keeping from someone much deeper in my bloodline. Well, either "inherit" or "resuscitate"--I haven''t kept my precious thoughts in a secret notebook since junior high, thought I''d outgrown that kind of stuff.
Surprise, I guess? I''m still that awkward girl in seventh grade, except now the enemies I''m putting on my hate list are from my tenure committee. But, Great-Great-Great-Grandfather, I know I''m nowhere near as practiced as you, with organizing my daily thoughts and recollections on the page. You were educated in the nineteenth century, when recitation was the order of the day. You could recite long poems and speeches, and I, who teach speech-writing, can barely remember a phone number. Where we''re also different: you were a pastor, and--this I did inherit from my dad--I''m more of a professional doubter. I''ve worked my way through the first few days of your journal, though, and I''m coming to understand why Bozeman wants to pay to keep your writing in their collection. You were good, Arthur Beaucarne. You used my rhetoric and spin and encomium to come off sounding heartfelt, never mind the actual facts, but you had a documentarian''s eye, too, didn''t you? And a playwright''s ear.
You didn''t have a camera, but you had a pen, and its nib was sharp enough to cut right to the center of the day, the year, the era. You make your case better than I can, though. I''ll paste in a news item from 1912, the year you disappeared from your church, and then showcase your more fleshed-out version: "Is it happening again?" This is the question former cavalryman and current postal clerk Livinius Clarkson was said to be asking his patrons for the better part of Monday. What L. Clarkson is talking about is the deceased individual found off the beaten path yesterday, out in the open prairie across the Yellowstone River, in the environs of Sunday Creek. Initial speculation was that this was some unfortunate who perished over the last winter, who was only just now thawing out due to last week''s abundance of sunlight. This would explain the state of this person''s remains. However, knowledgeable men involved with transporting the body into town assure the Star that this isn''t frost burn or scavenging.
They also assure the Star that while ice, when affixed to skin, can possibly remove it, this would seem to be something more pernicious and intentional. This is cause for concern. Are the Indians turning hostile again? If so, which ones? The Crow, the Nakota, the Ree? More farflung tribes like the Blackfeet, Gros Ventre, Snake? And, if this is a holdover from the depredations of older times, then what might be the cause of their ire this time? Does our government not provide them with beef rations, and land that they leave fallow and untended, not interested in working it as God intends? When pressed on the matter, L. Clarkson, himself no supporter of the Indian, averred that what he was concerned about instead was similarity to a rash of grisly discoveries he claims went on nearly four decades ago, in Montana''s more lawless times. As for that supposed rash of mutilations, the Star talked to an unnamed source in the later years of his long and storied life. Once a miner, among other and sundry occupations, this source remembers this country when it was "young and open." Scoffing at L. Clarkson''s sensational claims, this former ore-worker, treasure hunter, stagecoach driver and occasional cowpoke, who was young when the so-called "mountain men" were in their dotage, remembers that as the great buffalo herds were collapsing some 40 years ago, there were motherless calves left bawling out in the night, until finally the men of "Milestown" as he still insists upon calling Miles City, went out and dispatched them in a single night, leaving the humps skinned as a warning to any more disturbers of the night''s peace.
Apparently they drew all the calves together by draping a buffalo robe over a large bull borrowed from a certain rancher, also nameless. The hides they salvaged from these calves, being too small for a robe and too golden for the milliner, were initially stored on a pallet in a shed behind the old livery, until they got too scabby to work soft. At which point they were fed to hogs. This recollector of former times assures the Star that this spectacle is what L. Clarkson is inaccurately recalling, as a buffalo calf weighs about the same as a grown man, and, dead in the grass in the state they were both left, it would be easy to mistake one for the other. Of note is that the two dogs that accompanied the party to collect this dead individual both expired overnight, each of them chewing at the skin of their own bellies. But of course there is no shortage of dogs here in Miles City. The identity of the deceased individual is as of this date unknown, save that he was male, and possibly a traveler, as his unmarred face isn''t known around these parts.
The service for him will be private. That''s the just-the-facts version from the Miles City Star , dated March 26, 1912--microfiche, yes. Now, here''s what my greatest -grandfather wrote into his journal the evening before: Yesterday evening, word started to percolate around to.