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Twenty
Friday
Pasticcio, teneramente
Listen carefully. The molten rock flowed onto the surface
and down to the sea, filling the riverbed and forcing its water to the north.
The mountains pushed themselves high, causing the river to flow faster and cut
deeper into the earth until it formed a long gorge. Great floods and glaciers
followed, cutting into the sides of the gorge and leaving high, graceful
waterfalls.
I checked into a beautiful three-story hotel in Hood River
and proceeded the next morning along the Oregon side of the Columbia Gorge. The
river is wide and lovely; the Washington side rises quickly to clifftop
orchards. My first stop is obvious, because the roadside begins to resemble a
kind of amusement park. I see a sign reading Multnomah Falls, and I remember this from the tourist map in my
hotel room. It’s the second highest falls in North America, just behind
Yosemite Falls, which makes for an ultimately logical progression.
I stop off at the snack bar, ignore all the tacky hardwood
gifts and get a candy bar and a lemonade. I sit at a bench facing the falls, a
swath of energy twice the width of Yosemite against gray-green boulders and
cliffs. An old bridge cuts in front of the falls in an archway of steel and
concrete. Once I feel sufficiently fueled, I start up the trail, which is paved
over like a cart path. The place is pretty deserted, except for a trio of
beerbellied dudes and a family dragged back by an evercomplaining
three-year-old girl.
The trail disappears into the woods for a half-mile, and comes
out on a small river. The route alongside is tricky, and it takes a while
before you realize that this is Multnomah Creek, a body of doomed water. The
trail follows the stream for a few hundred feet and comes out to a deck
overlooking the drop. You pace onto the boards with a certain confidence but
are quickly brought back when you dip your head over the railing and see just
how far one can fall if one is not careful. The parking lot looks a mile down,
and the rail line isn’t big enough for HO gauge. I step back to a safe distance
and watch the water pour across the edge.
After a while, the movement of the water becomes mesmerizing.
I start following certain swatches, trying to track them all the way down, but
inevitably lose the line of descent about halfway. Doing this, however, begins
to roil up my internal tracking system. Tick.
I pull the water bottle from my belt and open it up, taking a swig, then
pour the rest out over the water just before the edge. Go. Become immortal.
For the next step, I remove my tennis shoes and pull out the
laces, using them to attach the water bottle to the end of a stick. I sit on
the edge of the deck, seeking the conversion point, the spot where the water takes
flight. But I can’t quite reach it. I brace myself mentally and slip through
the railings onto the bank, locking an elbow around the deck post and extending
the stick with my free hand. I strike the point perfectly, right where the
bottom falls out, and fill my bottle halfway up. Then I swing it all the way
back around, stick it between the railings, and balance the bottle so it settles
right-side-up on the deck. Letting go of the stick should be helpful, but just
then my laceless shoe slips on a moss-covered rock. My heart starts to do the
cha-cha, and I have to wait what seems like five minutes before hoisting myself
back through the railing. I screw the cap onto my liberated water, take one
last look at the crest of Multnomah and jog back down the trail.
I continued west on 84 to Portland and crossed over the
Columbia on the Jackson Bridge, a high arching band of steel that hits all the
bad parts of town before widening out into the countryside. A few miles later,
I met up with my old pal Interstate 5 and took it to Olympia, then along the
east side of Puget Sound toward Tacoma. To my right, I spotted the gracious
white hulk of Mount Rainier. To my left, straight out of postage stamps and Old
West movies, I found the white head and forever wingspan of a bald eagle. My
first.
Tacoma calls my name and I answer, bearing left onto 705,
which toboggans into the downtown high-rises. I get off on the main drag, park
streetside and trek uphill like I actually know what I’m doing. Halfway up I
find a place called Lou’s Music, and I stride in. The signals are strong; I
wait for some object to leap off the shelf. Straight in a shaft of sunlight
appears a ring of wood lacquered in black, and a skin of goathide, affixed to
the wood with brass nails. The hide sports tufts of fur here and there, left
there on purpose, one would think, to prove authenticity. I lift it by the
cross-braces and strike it with a finger, producing a low, ringing thud that
bottoms out and warps back. I pick up the pamphlet underneath: Bohdran, Celtic Drum, Trinity College, Made
in Thailand.
This goatskin beckons to my hands in the same way that the
rowboat beckoned to my arms and shoulders. I have done this before.
“Need any help?” Salesman, agreeable-looking college kid in
a sweater vest. “Hi, I’m Norm.”
“Yeah. How much for this little guy?”
He helps me find the price tage inside the pamphlet - $60.95
– and I say, “I’ll take it.” Norm seems disappointed that I don’t have at least
one question, but he agrees to take my credit nonetheless.
“Always wanted one of these bow-drans,” I say.
“Oh, that’s boh-rawn,” says Norm. He holds up a two-sided
drumstick. “And that’s your tippler.”
Norm squeezes the bohdran into a bag and advises me to keep
it out of the sun or the skin will tighten up and stretch itself out.
“Thanks.” I hold my prize against my ear and thud the
goatskin through the paper. I will need this.
I drove due north to Seattle, watching with wonder as the
interstate ramped up between two valleys filled with Boeing factories, airports
and houses. The readings were coming quicker and stronger, so I got off midtown
and headed for the biggest building I could find. It turned out to be the
Hilton, $120 a night.
After checking into a small but plush room, I donned my best
clothes and took the elevator to the top-floor, where a black piano player
named Digger was playing the classics for rich white folks. “Girl from
Ipanema,” “Stand By Your Man,” whatever the yahoos requested, Digger was not a
man with options. I ordered a Rainier beer, sat through “Kansas City” and
“Great Balls of Fire” (okay, it was getting a little better) and watched the rivulets of fog run down the
windows, all the way down to the street. I am soon on the elevator, following
suit.
I pad down Sixth Avenue into the Seattle night, a pure flint
darkness of clean steel buildings and spooky Northwest fog, broken by the spark
of voices drifting out of restaurants. Soon the hill bottoms out, and Sixth
draws out nice and level. I cut westward to Fourth and continue. Turning the
corner of Pine, I find a shopping center facing a square, soaring angular panes
of glass. I am standing on cobblestones in the middle of Westlake park,
surrounded by glistening stores. Tick,
tick…
The road has become stones, and stones must have water. I
pull my water bottle from my belt, remove the cap and allow the airborne liquid
of Multnomah to finish its flight into my mouth. But I am asking for trouble,
as in brain freeze. A scorching pain flies into my skull. I hold my temple between
my hands, run my tongue along the roof of my mouth, all the tricks the kids at
school discussed over Slurpees but it will not work, the goddamn thing has
taken up residence. I will die of a brain seizure right here in the middle of
Seattle.
After a brief eternity, the pain subsides, but along the
trail of my agony I’m picking up the signals. The hollow brrummmm of the bohdran heightens and weaves itself into curtains
of brass, then individual notes fall from the line like autumn leaves. It
actually isn’t in my head at all. I look back toward Fifth and there in front
of Nordstrom’s is a gray-bearded black man with a saxophone, ringing an old
jazz tune over the street. Water is thawed out, water becomes sound, sound
becomes time, time becomes sound becomes music.
I walk to the storefront where he stands, watching the way
his cheeks purse back and forth. I pull out my wallet and drop a ten into his
upturned hat. He nods at me, and I stay on for another bar or two before
drifting around the corner into darkness. But then I stop. It’s “‘Round
Midnight.” Thelonius Monk. I look at my watch. He’s right on time. I reverse
direction and come back into the light just as he is wrapping up, fluttering
the tune to sleep like a mama bird. He looks up at me and smiles. I pull the
Connecticut quarter from behind my driver’s license and drop it in. The cracks
open wider.
Photo by MJV
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