An excerpt from THE GINKGO: AN INTELLECTUAL AND VISIONARY COMING-OF-AGE

 Excerpt Submitted By: John Janovy, Jr.

 

In this excerpt, a teacher has traveled to western Nebraska for the express purpose of finding the right tasks to assign to an exceptionally creative and insightful student—typical of those recruited into Field Parasitology and who are now established scientists or successful teachers or health care providers. The scene takes place at a well tank that is modeled after the Nevens collecting site used by so many CPBS students. The town of Bodmer is actually Paxton. THE GINKGO is actually about the interplay between tradition (the ranching culture of western Nebraska) and creativity (the student’s mind).

The excerpt:

Beyond the barn are horse corrals. A double horse trailer is parked nearby, empty, waiting, perhaps, like its intended passengers, for some excitement. Thrills are few and far between around Bodmer: branding’s bawling mayhem, a thunderhead’s explosive electric violence, a coal train derailment’s earth-shaking screaming steel rumble, all exclamation points in the essay of life along the western rivers. The rest of the story is a linear, controlled, narrative: hard work in phases bound to planetary cycles, sermons predictably focused on obedience, and a matrix of debt and credit in which all things agricultural are embedded. Only the horses seem free. I look to the north; two roans, a paint, and a dappled gray have gathered at the windmill and its overflow pool. They stomp their feet, gently, flick their tails, and stare at me, snorting.

            I try to guess which one is hers, which one used to feel her saddle thrown upon his back, her hands pulling the cinch tight around his belly, and is now longing for that familiar physical contact while she’s off in the city struggling with strange ideas. They’re like barrels, old friend, always waiting for you to try your skills at negotiating the paths around them. He pounds out of the gate, mud flying, wind whipping his mane. He feels her legs, strong, squeezing him, her boot heels digging into his ribs, her crotch slamming against his back, her quirt stinging on his flank, and her soul and spirit coursing through his blood. His slather flies; the steel bar touches his lip; in all the hurtling violence, the gentle hint of pressure seems no different from her soft strokes on his forehead; he feels her lean; the orange oil drum rings with the pop of a flying clod. Go!  Go!  Run, horse; Run!  Go!  Go!  Go, horse; Go!  Beat that goddamn Johannes girl!  Beat her ass!  Win, baby!  Win, goddamnit!  WIN!

            How can it be so fun, where you’ve gone? How can you leave me? Am I not good enough to fit between your legs and thrust with all my might at those corners you must turn to win? We can beat her; we can beat the odds and beat the time and beat the goddamn Johannes girl, if that’s what you want! Three barrels! In all these fields, in all this rain and sun and wind and snow, the gray-green prairie grass, the tiny kangaroo rats I hear beneath my feet at night, the creaking of our windmill, the frogs in our stock tank, in all this free and wonderful life we have, those three barrels are something you’ve contrived, something out of your world that we can do together! But I can also take you to the Indian graves, to the places where I know they killed the bison, for I can still smell their bones, buried in the sand! I can take you out of sight of fences, where you can sit, and think, and let your mind go back to long ago. On the far hill I see another; he’s as much of a stranger to me as his rider is to you; you don’t wear a feather; your painted hand print doesn’t mark my chest. Yet across the valley we can talk with our eyes—that ghost man with a feathered spear, and you, my rider. I can smell that other horse; his scent lingers from the last century. Don’t you feel their presence? See, these, too, are things that we can do together.

            I remember when you were small and your father first put you on my back. Then you grew up and we went chasing barrels that never moved. What were we after? I only understand tangible, solid, real things, like rocks and plants and animals. We never caught anything in the barrel races. I hate that steel trailer, but I go there only because you want me to, and I know there will be play at the end of our trip. And now you’ve gone to chase ideas. Ideas, my Mistress? What are ideas? Are they anything like the barrels? Do we need to beat the goddamn Johannes girl at ideas, too? Come home. I miss you. I stand by the well tank, watching the flies, the beetles dig in cow shit as the sun goes down, and I miss your weight, your voice, your hands. I hear the coyotes late at night, and smell the thunderheads, and then I miss your footsteps, your presence in the air. Come home. Or send for me. I can help you. Are there three ideas, as many as barrels? Come home.

            “She can’t come home, friend.”

            My voice is damped by the openness, the total lack of walls from which to echo. The words ring in my ears. I look in all directions, east and west, north and south, into the sky and down at the ground. I am the only human I see. Houses and barns are evidence that someone has been here in the past, but they could be abandoned, fossils, for all the activity around them. Only the digger bees are moving and making noise. Then from somewhere, far off in the distance, a killdeer calls. The piercing low whistle sounds wavy, as if filtered through the heat waves rising off the roadbed. The horse stomps and snorts; the others with him do the same.

            “She can never come back. She may stand with you in the pasture, and ride with you to the far horizon, but it will never be the same again.”

            It’s stupid for a grown man, a university professor, a scientist, to feel as if he’s communicating with a horse. But suddenly I know which one is hers. I walk through the wiry grass, the hard grassland legumes, until I’m standing by the fence. His eyes watch my progress. The others back away, but he waits. I have never failed to be awed by the power of large animals. Does he smell the fact that she’s been to my office? I admit the possibility; one never makes unsupported assumptions about creatures who live in worlds apart from ours. I run my hand down his forehead, my fingers through his forelock, letting the coarse hair fall over the back of my hand. He pushes at me, searching for my palm.

            “All I have are greetings, friend. And she doesn’t even know I’m here to pass them along.”

            The others come back to the fence. They can tell I’m from the city; I’m not behaving correctly. Out here, men are supposed to have a bridle in their hands if they walk up to a horse. And what follows is a secret rite of The West: Cowboy Saddles His Horse And Rides Off To Do Some Hard Work With Cattle. When I get back home, I must ask her whether she ever got to rope the calves and pull them out of the herd at branding time, whether she’s ridden this one into that dirty violence, whether she’s been allowed to occupy the second highest position in her culture: Roper at the Branding.

            Already I know the answer: No. She would never be allowed to drive her pickup along the sandy roads, down through the valley over to the Johannes place, hauling the dappled gray in a rusty red trailer with the requisite amount of litter and manure and a few dents in it, bouncing over the cattle guards along with the other three dozen neighbors, all heading for the Johannes branding. She would never get to stick that wad of snuff in her lower lip, get up on the gray, her tight sweaty leather gloves gripping the stiff rope, then ride out into the big corral, milling around with the neighbor men, swinging their loops, waiting, waiting for the herd being driven through the west pasture by neighbors.