in progress

"The List" is a short story inspired by a trip to Yellowstone. I was awed by the size and majesty of the bison and fascinated by a snippet of conversation I overheard. I imagined the rest. "The List" will be included in a forthcoming Terroir Ink collection of contemporary short stories.

"Until you see a bison up close,” Myrna said to Al, “you can't imagine the courage it took to hunt them with only a bow and arrow."

"Damn buffalo." Al was breathing hard and tapping his fingers on the steering wheel in an impatient, uneven rhythm because there they sat, the old Ford Explorer idling and using up gas, trapped in a traffic jam of cars and bison, not far from Yellowstone's north entrance. They still had to drive miles out of their way so Al could check the old Livingston Hotel off his list before they headed to Glacier Park.

"Actually, they're technically not buffalo,” Myrna said. “They're bison. But don't ask me the difference."

"I didn't ask you anything before," Al said, without turning to look at her. "You talk plenty anyway."

Myrna gave him one of her hard stares and then pointedly turned away to look out the side window. A small group of bison grazed the strip of grass along the road. One of the animals was a calf, smaller by half than the others but still a hefty five- or six-hundred pounds, she guessed. The grown ones seemed big as a car. The calf lifted its outsized head and nuzzled the bison standing nearest. Mother and child, Myrna thought, smiling at the tenderness between the two prehistoric-looking beasts.

This was the first time the Explorer had stopped in their entire afternoon tour of Yellowstone. Al had driven through the northwest section of the park at his usual quick pace, exceeding the 25 mph speed limit and allowing Myrna only glimpses of spewing geysers, splashing waterfalls and bubbling sulphur pools. Even through the car window, Myrna was awed by the majesty of the landscape and its indifference to the human scale of things.

She had the same feeling looking at the bison. The small group near the car had finished nibbling and started ambling forward, not in a hurry but with definite purpose. The calf trotted after them, bringing up the rear. Myrna rolled the car window down and leaned her head out for a better view. About twenty cars ahead, a mass of bison were standing in the road. People were getting out of their cars to take photos, despite signs that warned against doing any such thing. A park ranger, wearing a Smokey Bear hat and a uniform that emphasized her thick legs, was rushing about, trying to herd people back inside the safety of their car.

"Those people could get really hurt," Myrna said.

Al snorted. "You can't have it both ways," he said. "You can't say you admire the Indians for shooting the buffalo up close with their bow and arrows and then sneer at people for shooting the damn things with their cameras. It's a once-in-a-lifetime thing, for God's sake, being close-up to a buffalo." That appealed to Al. He was always on the lookout for collectible incidents he could share with his cronies at the doughnut shop. Myrna was surprised he didn't get out of the car himself.

She kept quiet, immersed in gloomy thoughts about how men with rifles had slaughtered the bison to the edge of extinction, part of the plan to solve the "Indian problem" by eliminating their food source. A brochure she'd picked up in the gift shop said Yellowstone Park was the only place that bison still roamed free. Myna sighed. Those modern Americans enthusiastically risking life and limb to take a photograph were probably unaware of the brutal history of slaughter.

"Here we go." Al's voice broke into Myrna’s sad reverie. "Onward to number thirty-four."

The bison had finally finished crossing the road and traffic was moving. In minutes the Ford Explorer exited the park. They drove through the small town of Gardiner and picked up Highway 89 to Livingston.

Yellowstone National Park had been number thirty-three and the hotel was number thirty-four on Al's list. He got the idea from a book their daughter Barbara gave him for his birthday a few years back, something about 100 places to visit before you die. Al called it his “100 places" list, for short. Privately, Myrna thought of it as The List, with capital letters, because of the way it controlled their lives. When Al started The List three years earlier, Myrna told him he was only fifty-seven and had plenty of time, but he just shook his head and kept making his list. Maybe it was a good thing after all that he had something to do, because that was the same year he was laid off from his supervisor’s job at the medical lab.

The first summer, after school let out, Al and Myrna went all over California, visiting numbers one through fifteen on the list, which Al had methodically arranged according to proximity and route. They drove from San Diego to Sequoia, from San Simeon to the Mojave Desert, checking off numbers.

It wasn’t until the second summer of The List that Myrna got the idea of collecting postcards and making a scrapbook to share with her third-graders. That was the year they drove to Texas and spent fifteen minutes looking at number twenty, the Alamo, which Al wanted to see because his boyhood hero was Davy Crockett.

For Al, it was enough to show up at a place, walk around a few minutes, and then make a check on his list. He didn't seem curious about the place itself and hardly ever went on the guided tours offered at historic sites. Sometimes Myrna joined a tour group by herself but it was hardly worth having to put up with Al’s impatience to move on to the next place. Usually, by the time she located the gift shop and picked out and paid for a collection of postcards, Al was back at the car, checking the map to make sure he knew the quickest route to the next number on The List.

Al was like that, always checking details, always trying to anticipate, always trying to control. At work, in the cramped office he shared with the night supervisor, he'd hung a sign: “Plan Ahead.” When he got laid off, he brought the sign home and put it on a shelf in the den, irritating Myrna every time she looked at it. What Al didn’t plan for was dying on a bench at the Portland Zoo, right in the middle of the wild bird show.

But that was later, after Glacier and the drive through Montana and then Idaho and into Oregon along the Columbia River. The Columbia was number thirty-seven or thirty-eight, Myrna couldn’t recall for sure, although she did remember singing a few words from the Woody Guthrie song about the mighty river until Al told her to shut up because she was singing off-key and giving him a headache.

When they drove into Portland, it was a Friday afternoon and they hit another traffic jam, all cars this time. It took almost an hour to drive the last ten or fifteen miles from Gresham (?) to the city’s downtown where they had a motel room booked. They weren’t in Portland for any reason on The List but because it was too far to drive all the way to Astoria and Fort Clatsop, where the Lewis and Clark Expedition wintered in 1805 – 1806. From there, the plan was to head north again, to Seattle and number forty, the Space Needle.

That morning Al woke up feeling poorly. Myrna convinced Al to take it easy for a day. After all, they needed to conserve their energy for the three-day drive home down Interstate 5. It was mid-August and Myrna only had ten days left of her vacation time. School was scheduled to start the last week of the month and teachers had to report in two days before the students, to air out classrooms and sit through endless in-service presentations about the latest rules invented by the Board of Education.

It didn't take long for Al to get cabin fever in the small motel room. It was such a nice day Myrna suggested they take the light rail to the zoo. She loved zoos. They reminded her of a time when the kids were young and she’d pack a picnic lunch, put Barbara and Buddy in the stroller, and wander along the miles of the San Diego Zoo. Those were the days when Al worked six and sometimes even seven days a week.

At the Portland Zoo, Myrna and Al walked around, looking at zebras and monkeys, bears and giraffes and elephants, until they came to a wide open space configured like an amphitheatre. They sat on a bench just as the wild bird show began.

"The first bird is a red-tailed hawk," said the young woman standing on the small stage in front. The bird was perched on her arm. "Make sure you stay out of his way." The announcer lifted her arm and released the hawk. It opened its wings and swooped across the expanse of lawn to land on a perch a few feet from where Myrna and Al sat.

Myrna was awed to be so close to the predator bird, to see the hawk's wingspread and the sharp yellow beak. She said something about how beautiful the hawk was, and how in her next life she wouldn’t mind being one of those birds and then braced herself for Al's usual grumpy response.

Al said nothing.

When Myrna turned to look at him, she saw his head slumped on his chest at a 45 degree angle. His eyes were open but she could see how empty they were and she knew right away Al was dead.

Someone tapped Myrna on the shoulder. "Is he okay?"

Myrna shook her head, suddenly without words. She was like a kite after someone lets go of its string, untethered to the earth and out of control, and she held tight to the seat bench to keep herself from floating away. Later, she had a blurred recollection of the ambulance ride to the hospital, and then a kindly doctor holding her hands and confirming what she already knew, that Al was gone. Somehow, despite the dizzying sense that she might fly into the sky at any moment, Myrna arranged for the Ford to be picked up and garaged, phoned Barbara and Buddy to tell them and booked flights home for herself and for Al, in his coffin.

A small crowd awaited her at the San Diego airport. When Myrna exited Baggage Claim, she was surrounded by Barbara, her husband Steve and two-year old Jessie, Buddy and his girlfriend Amy, a couple of neighbors, her Principal, Don Stevens, and her best friend Shirley, who taught 4th grade at the same school. Their familiar faces and the obvious love and concern they showed made Myrna feel better, until she walked in the front door of her house. That was when she understood, in her heart and in her gut, the finality of Al's death.

The funeral was that weekend. During the service, Barbara and Buddy stood on either side of her, each one holding her hand the way they had as children. Except now, she was the one needing their strength, their reassurance. Several times, Barbara leaned over to kiss her cheek, and Buddy awkwardly patted her shoulder in a way that reminded her of Al. Myrna was pleased that the entire Doughnut Shop crew had come to pay their respects and so did a couple of men Al had worked with at the lab. Later, at Memory Gardens and then at the reception after the funeral, Myrna recognized others from Al's past. She focused hard on remembering names and made a point of thanking each of them personally.

"You're holding up pretty well, Mom," Barbara said when they were cleaning up the kitchen, after everyone had left. "But then, you must be relieved, really, that Dad's gone."

Myrna gave her a look that Al would have interpreted immediately.

"Barbara," Buddy said. "What're you saying?"

Barbara lifted her eyebrows. "Are you kidding? Dad was an asshole." She turned to Myrna. "The way he ordered you around and made nasty comments all the time. He was abusive, verbally abusive."

"You shouldn't show disrespect for the dead like that," Buddy said, shaking his head. "At least not so soon after."

Myrna turned and walked out of the kitchen and into the living room. She sat down on the couch. It was dark outside. She could see her reflection in the picture window. She was an old woman sitting by herself. Already, she missed Al's noises, his snorts and snuffles and his heavy-footed tread through the house, so like a drumbeat that she could always track where he was. She missed the way he'd put his hand on her shoulder, even though she'd resented it when he was alive, thinking it was his way of holding her back, of keeping her down. She missed his nearness.

Myrna sat on the couch long after Barbara and Buddy kissed her goodnight and told her they'd be back the next day. Barbara offered to help sort through Al's things and Buddy said he'd help her figure out how to get the Ford Explorer back home. Finally, well after midnight, she urged herself up and made her way into the bedroom. She didn't notice the paper bag on Al's nightstand until she got into bed. The bag had the name of the funeral service printed on the front and when she opened it, she saw it held Al's watch, his keys, a pair of reading glasses and a worn, folded piece of paper. The List. She put the watch aside, in case Buddy might want it, tossed the keys in the nightstand drawer, put the glasses on and unfolded the paper.

The next morning, Barbara got her first clue that something had changed.

"I'll go through your dad's stuff later," Myrna said. "But I do have an errand to run, if you wouldn't mind taking me."

They climbed in the car and drove a few blocks.

"Turn there," Myrna demanded, just as they rounded a corner. Myrna pointed at the driveway into a strip mall where a laundromat, Thai restaurant, Domino's Pizza and a place called The Beauty Palace shared space. "Park there," she added, pointing to an open spot in front of the restaurant.

Myrna got out of the car and went into The Beauty Palace, Barbara following close behind.

"I'd like my ears pierced," she told the young, heavily mascared receptionist.

"Mom," Barbara said. "Now?"

"Yes," Myrna said, although she almost regretted her decision when the punch closed on her ear lobes to make the holes. "My parents never allowed me to pierce my ears and your father was just as against the idea. Now it's my turn to decide."

That afternoon, Buddy got his own surprise.

"I've decided I don't want the Explorer shipped back home," Myrna told him. " Can I donate it?"

"What're you going to drive?"

"I'll worry about that, dear. I'm sure Shirley and I could carpool to work until I find another car. And she'll take me shopping too, or one of the neighbors will, so you really don't need to worry."

Buddy called his sister as soon as he got home. "I think the old lady's flipping out," he said.

Barbara had another opinion. "I think she's finally free, for the first time in her life. Nobody telling her what to do, or belittling her like Dad used to. I love it."

Still, even Barbara was taken aback one Saturday a few weeks later, when Myrna called to say she would be driving to Carlsbad, where Barbara lived. When Al was alive, Myrna let him do most of the driving, and everyone, including her family, thought she hated being behind the wheel. So when Barbara saw her mother climb out of a bright red BMW convertible, she was stunned.

"My new car," Myrna announced. She proudly showed off the heated, leather seats, the CD player with extra-expensive Harmon-Kardon speakers and the way the rag top lifted up and folded into itself at the touch of a button. Jessie laughed and clapped her little hands when her grandmother demonstrated this feature, so Myrna did it five times more.

"You could be right," Barbara admitted to her brother that night when she phoned him. They promised each other they'd keep a watchful eye, but after a while they were both reassured that their mother was the same as always, aside from the dangly earrings she seemed to prefer, and the sporty red car that she sedately drove to school and back five days a week and maybe to the market on a Saturday.

That's why what happened in June caught them off-guard. Myrna called Barbara first, and then Buddy.

"I'll be gone all summer," she explained to each of them. "Shirley and I are driving to Yellowstone. We're volunteering for Save Our Bison."

"That's cool, Mom. And who knows? Maybe you'll meet somebody," Barbara said.

"Oh, no, dear. I miss your father too much. Besides, I'm in love with Bison."

"She really has flipped out," Barbara told her husband as she replaced the receiver on its hook. If she'd heard her mother and Shirley laughing and singing an hour later as they sped away in the red Beamer, a Golden Oldies station blaring from the Harmon-Kardon speakers, she would have been convinced.

Buddy had a different reaction. "Buffalo? You want to take care of buffalo?"

"No dear. Bison. Technically, the Latin name is Bison bison."

"I always wanted to see a buffalo. I mean a bison. Maybe Amy and I could come visit you later this summer. If that's okay with you?"

"More than okay. I'd like it a lot. You know, someone once said it's a wonderful thing to see a bison up close. A once-in-a-lifetime experience."