the southern sierra savanna
has been shattered and chewed many times
by the hungry teeth of the White Wolf fault.
the canyon’s garb changes,
as they climb
from sparse oak-spotted hills
to the gray greenish paint brush needles
of ghost pines and red-trunked manzanita.
yucca spikes point skeletal fingers
at the sky…….stripped bare
of their creamy spring blooms by the heat.
tight by the river,
button willows sprout between boulders
ground to the smoothness of ancient stone gods
by millennial floods.
they come to the pool,
emerald and clear as if the air
had condensed to a jewel.
are we here?
yes.
he sheds his shoes, so she does too,
dipping and testing
and oh how delicious!
this is heavenly cool.
told you so.
she lies back on the warm stone,
dangles her toes in the water,
watches the sycamore leaves overhead
flutter faintly in the soft breeze.
-I could just float away here forever.
-don’t float away yet, look over there.
where a doe stands, forelegs akimbo,
on a beach at the edge of the pool.
she whispers: she’s so beautiful.
and the doe,
lifts her dripping black muzzle,
gazes back,
picks her way into the maze
of boulders and willows.
he says, let’s go over there.
takes her hand, so cool and smooth, lightly calloused,
with a few grains of sand that cling to her palm.
they step into the water,
shoes linked by the laces
and draped over their shoulders.
the river is deep in the middle,
so she hikes up her dress
to the top of her thighs.
he hooks an arm round her waist,
looks at her strong brown legs
churning the water,
as lovely as his vision had appeared in the tub.
and he fumbles a step on a wobbly rock,
stumbles almost tumbles
at the sight.
the sand on the shore
where they emerge from the river
is dimpled with the hoof and paw prints
of many creatures, the eaters and eaten alike.
they walk up to a stone
shaped like a thumb the size of a bus.
I feel like an explorer!
you are! crossing mighty rivers into uncharted wilds!
I’m serious, don’t make fun.
e too. I almost fell in when you hiked up your dress.
Henry?
-yes?
you making a pass at me?
maybe. thinking about it.
I’m not saying I would mind, but slow down, ok?
I’ve never done anything like this before,
crossing wild rivers and all and I want to enjoy it.
they lie down in the shade
cast by the huge thumb-shaped rock.
eat the white peaches he’d brought.
she says, tell me about your family.
where do they live, any brothers and sisters,
what do they do?
my folks live up in Fresno.
I have an older brother and a younger sister.
he’s down in Pasadena, souping up cars.
he did mine. my sister lives at home.
they had a small vineyard for raisins,
and a few walnut trees when they came here.
had?
yeah. sold part of it off and opened a hardware store.
it’s successful. in a small town kind of way.
my mother and sister work there. and my father of course.
I used to, too. learned how to keep the accounts.
that sounds real nice, a farm and a store.
it’s not bad. at first, it was hard.
I was too young for that, but we heard all the stories.
hundreds of times.
about how easy us kids have it.
how tough it was when they came over.
let alone back in Armenia. that was the worst.
what happened there?
whole towns and villages murdered by the Turks.
thousands and thousands of people.
probably more than a million.
some people were burned alive in their homes.
the ones who escaped had nothing.
and your family?
they escaped on a fishing boat. got over to Greece.
my mother’s sister and her husband and children didn’t.
I’m so sorry.
it was before my time. I was born here.
but it was always there for my mother. the sadness.
I’m sure.
not that she was in mourning every day or anything….but
yeah. so how did they make it to America?
some of my dad’s relatives had lived in Fresno for a long time.
twenty years, maybe? and they sent word about how wonderful it was.
just like the old country they said. and in ways it is.
you can grow the same crops, and mountains nearby.
it’s not quite the paradise they said though.
paradise in Fresno?
yeah. some bedtime storytelling there.
anyway, the Americans got queasy when so many of us moved here.
couldn’t buy land or live in their neighborhoods unless we were servants.
kicked us out of their church because they said we smelled bad.
Uh huh. I know that story real well.
they were tough. they worked hard and prospered.
but we were still foreigners, they said we were
just low class Jews. called us Fresno Indians.
not everybody did, but a certain type of person.
types like Gus Smith. that’s how I know who he is.
because I’ve been around a lot of Gus Smiths.
it never seems to go away does it?
all the mean shit, ignorance, and hate.
not much. but I believe things will change. get better.
yeah. for you it probably will. what about my people?
you think it’ll get better for us?
seems pretty damn slow if it’s happening at all.
it’s happening right here. right now. for us.
you think so?
if we want it. and I do.
I think I do too.
Henry studies the fine gold flecks in her brown eyes.
how her pupils enlarge as he looks into them.
Ruthie tracks his like a mirror. how warm they are.
remembers how they reminded her of a puppy
she once had the first time she saw him at the hospital.
she giggles, he laughs,
they go quiet, lean together and kiss. kiss again.
for a minute that shifts their world
like the minute that shattered and displaced
the rock beneath them the day before.
-another aftershock, magnitude 4.6 at 10:47 a.m.-
now echoes that violent moment,
sends a ripple across a side pool of the river
unseen by the two but felt as a quiver
in their bellies, a message of bodies not mind
he smells like Ivory soap,
she has a faint scent
of night blooming jasmine.
the taste of the peaches they ate
still sweet on their tongues
and the scent of warm necks and skin
overwhelm the soap and perfume.
and the blood heat flows south, very far south,
as they cross a border with no way to return.
Ruthie pulls away, says, what’re we going to do now?
I don’t know. I don’t want to stop finding out.
I don’t either. do we have to go back?
not yet. we still have the rest of the day.
I hope that will do. for now. ok, Henry. for now.
there’s a place that I want you to see,
Bakersfield isn’t our home today.
I guess so. I just wish that it never had to be.
me too. we’ll have to find a new one. or make one.
you’d do that with me?
I’d go to the moon with you, or maybe San Francisco will do.
today I want to take you somewhere much closer.
are you ready to go on?
Yes. And this time, I want to cross the river on my own.
Sure, baby, I knew you could do it,
I just wanted to put my arm around you.
I know. And I wanted you to.
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