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JAMES DICKEY
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while he went by. He was big, and for some reason I felt like I could
even ride on his back, but I couldn't reach him, or give him any notion
of how I fclt. He went across in front of me, on some kind of a raised
platform that was like a breakwater; it was the breakwater that made the
buffalo be there, like he was. There was no doubt about it in the dream,
or when I woke up, either.
It
was all good; I mean it; all the problems were for the next day.
Nobody was going to check the cab of a loading-crane between three
and five in the morning, no matter what the city was, no matter what
the war was. I woke up, more or less, saw that it was still black dark,
saw one star, and went back, waiting for the buffalo to come across
again, on a line just above the ocean. That was something beautiful.
Light, and I was dead. I knew it, and kept watching for it. Some–
times I looked, actually, and at other times I looked in my sleep and it
was the same; through my eyelids it was the same; I could see the sun,
and water. But when I heard feet, and voices amongst them, I knew I
couldn't give away any more. I raised up, and twenty or thirty guys were
going by, right by me, on their way somewhere. As much as I could, just
at eye-level over the bottom of the window, I watched where they
went. The light was gray; it was first dawn , and if I was going to get
into my hole I had better do it before much longer. Little by little I let
myself out of the cab, and dropped down between the rails. Most of the
men had gone into the warehouses, as far as I could tell the few others
would go in when they got around to it. I looked at my watch.
It
had
taken me nineteen seconds to get to my hole before. Could I do it
now? Could I time it so that nobody saw? Out on the range, the
Brooks R ange, I had got where I was scared of the human voice; you
didn't expect there to be one. I knew now that, when I made my move,
if anybody sang out, I was dead. I crouched down between the rails and
put my head up one more time. All but two or three of the men had
gone into the warehouses, that they were opening up with big sick
clangs and scrapes of galvanized iron. I stared at one especially, who kept
hesitating and looking back out at the ocean. I made him the one that
things turned on, and when he took a step or two toward the buildings,
I broke.
I was on the wall in a second, not hunching but putting my head
down and digging, but digging light, and there was not a sound but me.
When I got to the piece of reed I had stuck up I hit the top of the
breakwater side-on and slid over, my feet going into the hope; I even
broke off the stalk with my hand as I went down.
There I was. All the time I was growing up on the Brooks Range
I was on the side of the hunters, the foxes and weasels and lynxes, on the
side of the wolverines, because we were doing the same thing; we were
