…things wished undone…
I’d not hung out with Tommy very much. A roly-poly high school kid who hadn’t yet lost some of his baby fat, he was a shirttail friend of some of my pals. Funny, rarely. Serious, sorta. Athletic, not at all. Down to earth? Yeah. Maybe that.
His major asset may have been a century-old cabin I’d been told about. It was located an hour away in the Sierra at a gold rush era encampment called Jonesville. Set amongst some towering pines and backed by a fresh, burbling creek, about six miles past where the pavement ended, I only visited Tommy’s place once.
My Honda Trail 90 was nearly new. Buddy John’s older Trail 55 had miles on it and John would have made it but his Saturday lifeguard gig cramped his schedule. Buddy Duane had a more powerful 125, but its configuration didn’t lend itself to gravel or dirt roads and when we got to where the pavement ended, he turned back. I motored on not quite knowing where I was headed.
Jonesville is little more than a collection of hammered together ramshackles, lit by candles or kerosene at night and warmed by cordwood in the woodstove that would also serve as the cook stove. Each place had an outhouse some distance away, old Reader’s Digests sometimes served as toilet paper. To find a particular cabin, one departed the main road that headed over Humboldt Summit. Every worn out two-track intersecting that main road looked the same. I found Tommy’s on the third or fourth try.
Dinner that evening would be hobo stew, a mix of ground beef, potatoes, bell pepper and onion wrapped in foil and tossed into campfire coals. Tommy had prepared four of ‘em, so there would be leftovers. He’d swiped some Brown Derby beer from his old man to wash things down a bit. With nothing to clean up, just aluminum foil to ball up, in the gathering dusk we set out so he could show me around.
We hiked a few yards to the end of his shared road, Tommy talking about the families that would be his neighbors. Most had owned their cabins for generations, many built by a great grandpa or grand uncle. None would ever be for sale. Past the end of the two-track, a single track waded into grasses and mule’s ear. Not far beyond, a tiny creek – Scott John, I think it was called – gave melody to the meadow. A sinking sun offered alpenglow to the eastern hills as a three-quarter moon slipped over their summit. We each took a moment to unload some of that Brown Derby and then toed up the fisherman’s path on this side of the creek. Kid though I was, I was struck by the beauty and the balance of it all. So peaceful. So right. I’m not sure if I then believed in heaven on earth, but on the banks of Scott John, I might have experienced it.
We came to a rounded outcrop of granite around which the little stream curled. There, the stream pooled. “We’ll catch us some trout here tomorrow for dinner,” Tommy said. “Cook ‘em the same way as tonight so there’s no dishes to do. You did bring that extra foil I asked for didn’t you?”
I shook my head. I think he must have asked John or Duane.
“Well, shee-it. I’ll have to figure something out.”
And I’m sure he did, but not that I’d remember.
Breakfast would be Cocoa Puffs or Fruit Loops, dry – “Just like the Indians ate ‘em” – then we were to go hunting.
“I don’t hunt,” I said.
“Doesn’t matter,” Tommy said as he slung a .22 over his shoulder.
“What’s in season?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Doesn’t matter?”
“Yeah. We’re just gonna do some target practice,” and he handed me a gunny sack with some empty Brown Derby bottles tinkling at the bottom.
He banked the fire in the wood stove and we headed out.
Walking up the track that led back to the main road, he told me about Robber’s Roost, a couple of miles over the pass where somebody name Black Bart robbed the Humboldt Stage that ran from Chico to Susanville. “Did it more’n once they say. And he always left a poem. Weird, huh?”
Across the road, we hiked on soft, scented duff through a stand of evergreens for maybe a half mile. We came to the edge of a glade where the white, barkless hulk of an ancient yellow pine lay in the morning sun.
Leaning the rifle against a standing tree maybe twenty good paces away from the downed timber, Tommy told me to set some bottles “make ‘em a foot or so apart.”
By the time I’d lined up seven or eight, I heard Tommy rack a shell pointing the gun at bottle number one. And me.
“Hey!” I’m sure my utterance was involuntary.
Lowering the weapon, Tommy grinned. “Get back over here. Let me show you this thing.”
I’d handled a neighbor’s BB gun once or twice, and this didn’t seem much bigger.
Tommy explained how to put in the bullet and how to sight through the points at the end of the barrel. “Just make sure you point this” – he tapped the end of the barrel – “right at what you want to shoot. You should be able to hit it. It’s pretty simple.”
I tucked the rifle’s butt against my shoulder and peered down the barrel scanning each of the bottles I’d set on the log. Which one would I choose?
The Oregon Junco is a little black-hooded bird a bit smaller than an empty Brown Derby bottle. Looking like a miniature medieval executioner, Juncos flit through forests and clearings feeding on seeds and only saying eetle, eetle, eetle. I’d seen lots of them on hikes with my dad. Part of the balance, Juncos are prey for foxes and red tail hawks and others. Including, this day, me.
One lit at the end of the row of bottles. Tommy tapped me on the shoulder and whispered, “You think you can get that one?”
I didn’t think so, but I swiveled the .22 in the bird’s direction and squeezed off a round.
Looking back over seven-and-a-half decades, now, I am certain that there are acts I have committed that will justifiably condemn me to an eternity in hell. Lust. Avarice. Gluttony. But the sight of that innocent little guy simply collapsing out of sight off the back of that log without so much as a sound or a flutter must top the list.
Mouth likely agape as Tommy slapped me on the back and uttered words of congratulations, I handed him his gun, hiked back to the cabin, fired up my little Honda and – stomach hollow – headed home.
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Church of the Open Road Press
