A Cottonwood Stand Read online

  A

  Cottonwood

  Stand

  © 2018 by Chuck Redman

  All Rights Reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including

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  Cover artwork by Rebecca Redman and Joshua Redman

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Redman, Chuck, 1952- author.

  Title: A cottonwood stand : a novel of Nebraska / by Chuck Redman.

  Description: Santa Fe : Sunstone Press, 2018.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018001294 (print) | LCCN 2018004602 (ebook) | ISBN

  9781611395457 | ISBN 9781632932204 (softcover : alk. paper)

  Subjects: LCSH: Country life--Nebraska--Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3618.E43435 (ebook) | LCC PS3618.E43435 C68 2018

  (print) | DDC 813/.6--dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018001294

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  To Jilla, Josh and Rebecca

  Preface

  I’m a Nebraskan, born and raised. I love my native state and I admire its people, both ancient and present. But I’m saddened by much of what we call progress and how it has transformed the place so fundamentally over time. Like everywhere else, Nebraska has become modernized, urbanized, and homogenized. Though less developed than other parts of the country, still a lot of its history and charm have been plowed under and paved over. No one sets out intentionally to spoil the environment, but that seems to be the chief legacy whenever there is cutting, drilling, or building upon our land.

  Moliere said it so well: “It is a vigorous blow to vices,” he wrote in his Preface to Tartuffe, “to expose them to laughter. Criticism is taken lightly, but men will not tolerate satire. They are quite willing to be mean, but they never like to be ridiculed.”

  In full agreement with that philosophy, this book is simply my one attempt to look at Nebraska and to mildly satirize the things that ought to be satirized and honor the things that ought to be honored. There are many of both.

  Part of the idea for the book came from the town where I live, in southern California. It’s a town that is committed to protecting its native oak trees. Many of its oak trees, especially the California Valley Oaks, are so big and so beautiful that you just want to stand there and look up and smile. Some are hundreds of years old. Imagine what it was like four or five hundred years ago when they were just starting out. Imagine all the good and bad things that have passed under their branches. They are still here, these trees, part of our community, but it’s a community and a region where commerce and development, not trees, are the kings.

  I started to think about the possibility that someday these stately oaks might all be chopped down to make way for more freeways, malls or luxury residential tracts. I wondered if someday the last oak tree in town might look around itself and know that it would soon be a pile of firewood at somebody’s hillside mansion. I thought about these things but I realized that Nebraska was the place that I really wanted to write about, and that I was still “rooted” to my small town past, growing up in the very center of the country. So instead of the oak tree, it’s the cottonwood. And these cottonwoods are nurtured by the Platte River and rich Nebraska soil. And they have been for hundreds of years. And the result, especially on a morning of sunshine and treetop winds, is memorable.

  I once saw the inside of a meatpacking plant. The head of the plant took me all through the facility. I hadn’t been quite honest with the gentleman about where I was coming from, philosophically. Afterwards I wrote down everything I could remember. And waited for the smell to clear out from my nostrils. There’s some part of my brain that is still trying to get out of that plant. Meatpacking plants like that have been sprouting up in small towns all over Nebraska and neighboring states. Those towns are forever changed by the rapid growth and problems that follow. Problems, I’m afraid, that are even bigger than giant cottonwoods.

  Most books are labors of love. This labor was made lovelier by the people who read my manuscript at various stages and gave me such needed encouragement and advice at all points along the way: the incredible writers Brad Chisholm and Claire Kim, who read my manuscript on an airplane and didn’t throw it out the window and told me some of the nicest things a writer could ever want to hear. Pat Walsh, who was the first publishing professional to take the time to talk to me about the business and to give me some real hope of finding a publisher. My niece Sarah Scheerger, whose writing career has inspired me and who has given me invaluable advice about publishing and keeping your sanity.

  My sisters Pat, Nancy and Beth, who spoiled me as a kid and who still manage to lift my spirits, even when I thrust upon them my roughest and lamest of first drafts. Their husbands Ralph, Larry and Steve, who are collectively such a wealth of knowledge and advice that who needs the internet?

  No writing or, for that matter, getting up every day would have much meaning or purpose if it weren’t for my best readers: Jilla, my wife, Rebecca, my daughter, and Josh, my son. What they’ve taught me about life and how to live it would make the greatest book in the world, but there aren’t the words to do it justice.

  Sunday

  For the life of me, I cannot decide whether ambivalence is a good thing or a bad thing.

  When was the last time you sat down on your best davenport and tried to hash that thorny problem out in your head? It don’t get any more basic than that. If you want to live a life of principle. Which is what folks nowadays could use a good dose of.

  Now look here, I’m not out to bad-mouth everybody in town, and I don’t say it weren’t a nice graduation and all. The feller who give the main talk and brought fame to the school thirty-six years ago when he become Deputy Undersecretary of Agriculture under Ford was a speck long-winded, no question. But the convocation as a whole was generally pretty agreeable for the most part.

  Fact is I always choke up just a little to see them tiny seedlings that I’ve watched get growed up over the years, and here they are graduating high school, looking awful proud and accomplished. One hundred and eight flushed young faces, all told, decked out in blue. Class of 2010. Where’d them years go? Gee, couldn’t help but feel just a shade sorry there for little Caylie Hauptman—yessir, dad’s Phil Hauptman, farms down across the river—when her cap blew off at the “rocket’s red glare” and she dropped her microphone. But the way she kept her cool and almost hit that high note was most inspiring. A trouper ain’t she.

  I hate like the deuce to see a happy occasion like this go all sour and bitter. But I’m afraid that’s the way it’s sittin for the Portillo family. Tanya and her folks ain’t talkin now. I expect that’ll last til at least dessert at Pavarotti’s where Tanya and her best friend Keith O’Connor (just a friend friend, as they say) decided to have their graduation dinner. It’s a dang shame, too, specially after Tanya give such a beautiful co-valedictory speech entitled “Look How Far We’ve Come in 168 Short Years.” Well, Tanya did kinda throw the fat in the fire.

  “Mom and Dad,” she up and announces, still smiling pretty two seconds after they took her and Keith’s picture outside the football stadium, “tomorr
ow I’m going to City Hall and get a petition to run for City Council in the primary. The one coming up? I think I’d be a pretty good councilperson, and I’m eighteen now.” She’s took off the commencement cap and her red hair is crispy in the late sun and wind. She’s got a glow about her.

  Mom’s sunburnt face looks as though her heart has just sank like a water well in the sandhills—which moms’ hearts do when anything goes haywire respectin their kids. Dad’s face looks like a few choice words are suddenly bangin on his teeth to get out, and his smile ain’t the kind you take pictures of. “Honey,” says Brent Portillo, with a kinda forced dad voice way down deep, “you just graduated high school. Don’t start going overboard on us.”

  “Dad, all my friends who are eighteen will vote for me. Plus, anyone who’s not totally reactionary and wants some change in this—”

  “Honey,” he says, brushing two or three dead gnats off his shiny forehead, “you’re going to college in the fall, you won’t even be here.” There’s a small tussle going on between Keith and his mom over the letter that says he graduated and the diploma will come in the mail in two to four weeks, and if it don’t there’s a number to call. She’s saying Keith is wrinkling the letter, which he kinda is, and he’s saying it don’t matter it’s not the diploma it’s just a form letter and after a couple more seconds of wrangling between them two the letter rips clean up the middle. Mrs. O’Connor’s hankie, though it’s real lacy all around, don’t look nearly absorbent enough for the situation.

  Anyways Tanya’s been thinking, she owns up at last to her folks, of maybe just going to the community college over in Grand Island. Live at home and commute.

  “Oh, sweetheart,” cries Mom, “you worked so hard to get straight A’s, you’ve got that wonderful scholarship to Lincoln—”

  “I don’t care, Mom, I wanna do something that really—”

  “You just better care,” Dad growls over his daughter’s poor pleadin voice, “after all we’ve done. Or I’ll pomp your circumstance, young lady.” With Brent Portillo’s green eyes, just a shade darker than his daughter’s, we might as well be lookin at two hungry cats and one bowl of chow.

  “Not funny, Dad,” and that was the last that was spoke, as I said. Now, as Sinatra sings in the background, Mom’s just kinda pokin at her Alfredo, Dad looks like his veal Parmesan is stuck somewheres in the rib area, the O’Connors is all just lookin down at their plates and gulping their food like they’re gettin charged by the half-hour. Tanya—she ain’t touched a drop. Her shoulders is stiff and from the way she’s starin at her feta and arugula you’d think they was last month’s science project. You want principle? Tanya’s clinched mouth—it’s about as serious as Sittin Bull with a loaded shotgun and Custer’s personal address in his headband.

  Monday

  The Cottonwood Caterwauler is kicking up dust like a stampede of bison. I oughta know. When dust gets kicked around, I tend to take it somewhat personal. Anyways, I ain’t mad. She’s hands-down the last bastion and beacon of independent journalism in the whole Outstate area, the Caterwauler. She knows an issue when she spots one. And this here, this is an issue. The paper’s motto—“We Go Out on a Limb for You!”—those aren’t just hollow words.

  I call her She, but that’s fitting. A newspaper’s just a thing, it don’t think or feel about the problems of the day, not quite like a human. But in the case of the Caterwauler she’s a She all right, since the editor and owner is Janet Hinderson and—well, let’s just say that Janet has opinions on things that are a little stronger than Apache rawhide. And a bit of a—by golly, I better just watch what I say. I sure don’t want you to git the wrong idea.

  Anyways, Janet ain’t the commie pinko hippy radical that some Cottonwoodians claim she is. It’s been whispered that once upon a time she was registered Republican, up until Iran-Contra, and that she’d gone out and voted for Reagan and Bush in ’84. But Janet matured into a moderate, which in Outstate Nebraska means not Republican. She agonized over Obamacare, but she finally come out one and a half thumbs up in favor. That was some jim dandy editorial she plastered the town with back in that day.

  So it ain’t no surprise that Janet’s sittin right now, hammering out a socko editorial—brassy as a dang trumpet section. There ain’t gonna be no doubt in no one’s mind which way the Caterwauler is comin down on Zoning Petition 17 and Council Motion 188.

  Dogs trained to never bark. Little kids taught from birth that you can’t never cry out loud, no matter what life tosses at you. The entire human flock livin in humble villages where share and share alike is the creed. The spirit of brotherhood at its best, you might say. Money? That evil commodity ain’t been invented and ain’t no call for it. A little friendly bartering does the job just fine.

  “Rabbit and fox okay?”

  “Nope.”

  “All my fingers?”

  “Toes, too.”

  “Left foot or right?”

  “Both.”

  “Shake.”

  And simple as that, puffing on a soothing pipeful of tobacco and willow bark, Chief Rain Bear has just got himself a nice new wife. Number three if you happen to be keeping track. He’s agreed to fork over as many buffalo robes as he’s got fingers and toes. A fair price for the adopted daughter of Eats No Breakfast, a big proud-looking gent sitting cross-legged, with four quail feathers in his long parted hair.

  And Eats won’t let the Chief forget about saving him a front row seat at all the council fires. Plus, the groom’ll be throwing in a pair of beaded moccasins for everyone in the bride’s teepee. “And she’s worth every bead,” adds Eats. “Haven’t you always heard me admit she’s a better daughter than my own flesh and blood child? You won’t regret it for even one beat of a hummingbird’s wing.”

  “What if she balks?” And Chief Rain Bear lays his pipe down alongside the low fire of dry buffalo chips in the center of the snug teepee.

  Well, Eats No Breakfast poo-poos that silly notion and insists the gal’s as mild-mannered as a newborn fawn. And with a face that suddenly looks like it just give birth, he pulls a rawhide strip from around his neck and hands it over to Rain Bear. “Here, take my wolftooth choker. You’re my son now.” And Eats’ big lower lip starts in atrembling something fearsome.

  Chief Rain Bear, who has gray hair and was already scalping worthy enemies long before Eats No Breakfast was even slid out into the painted fingers of a smiling midwife, stares at the four pearly fangs dangling from his grasp. He don’t know what to say at the moment, he just gapes in admiration at his brand new papa. And these two happy gents start slapping each other on the back, chuckling and guffawing like parrots and recounting stories of brave exploits they’ve both heard more often than they could tell you.

  Yessir, don’t think fer a minute things was always the way they is nowadays. It’s nice to recollect back to this here band of friendly folk called the Oglala Sioux, couple three hundred years before the covered wagons and pony soldiers come along. The Sioux back in them days was way outnumbered by the buffalo, but that’s how they liked it. These Oglala folks moved around some. But you could say they was pretty much at home up northwest a ways across the sandhills from where this here town of Cottonwood sits today.

  Now these Oglala was a hard-workin hard-livin band of kinfolk, with a tradition like you wouldn’t believe. And they never done me one speck of harm, no more than the antelopes nor the coyotes done. And I’m talkin more years than even I can count, goin back many winters as they would of put it themselves in one of their handed-down campfire stories.

  I wish you could of seen with your own eyes how them folks made a pretty respectable life for theirselves. Without all the newfangled—well, now don’t get me started down that path. At any rate, there they’d be, camped in just the right spot against one of my grassy hillocks near a river or little feedin creek with a few poplars, cottonwoods and willows alongside. And being it’s a cool spring morning with dry silky air and racing clouds above, daily chores is the order
of the day. The Oglala is a anthill of activity, make your head spin. Motley dogs is tearing around after scraps, not barking but snarling low at one another whenever they get the urge. Little bitty kids is toddlin around aimless, watching the gals at work. Nary a one of them tykes is crying so much as a single boo. Some of the gals—and there are plenty—is pounding on dried chunks of buffalo meat with wild berries mixed in. Others is sewing, mending skins, stirring pots. And most of the guys what ain’t out huntin is cuttin lodgepoles out of cottonwood or fashioning arrowheads out of flintrock with stone knives. Or maybe arrangin marriages like our two friends you just heard about. Some kind of holy man is telling stories with a lot of hand gestures to a couple older potbellied fellas sittin on stacks of hides. One young feller is walking around on his hands in moccasins, believe it or not, with his feet straight in the air and a fake face affixed to his heels. This feller’s known as a Contrary and, as a sorta self-punishment for some dishonorable act, he does everything backwards so’s you almost get used to seeing that mask coming at you like it was any regular joe.

  From the grassy flats across the creek comes a small cluster of young gals, toting stacks of buffalo chips in satchels made of skin of the same critter. The gals is laughing amongst themselves, not paying no attention to a gang of boys in breechcloth playin mock ambush and capture near the creekbank. One of the gals, who you could call Running Water, for that’s her everyday name but not her true unspoken name, suddenly stops laughing and turns to her companion near to tears. With her braided head hangin low and shoulders slouched, she’s awhimpering softly about somethin pretty tragic, having some reference to ending up married to old Chief Rain Bear. “Of all the girls on the plains, why did he hafta pick me!” The gal she moans this to has long black hair thick as a jungle, angled in the westerly wind. Her you could call Lark Laying Eggs.