We Have an Agreement

 We have an agreement
     by Darting Douglas Deodorant 

I wish to tell you a story about wild wealth and a prospector’s discovery. Waylon Falls had been searching for gold in the regions south of Kenora for all of his mature life. At 63, he felt 43, given his six foot frame, broad shoulders, dark hair, strong arms and muscular legs. A year ago, at the Kenora Prospectors’ Days, he had carried a pile of 8 one hundred pound sacks of flour on his back the distance and earned a second prize. Two years ago, he carried an injured Dakotan over three portages down from Tegau Lake through Dryberry and Berry Lakes and canoed him into the Kenora hospital. Waylon’s grandfather once pulled a team of horses out of the marsh by the bridle in a fit of irritation, and his own father, already retired, small but very strong, once lifted, unaided, a granite boulder the size of a sluice box onto the back of a pick-up truck. So, Waylon felt strong and youthful despite his age.
     Women all the way up to eighty year olds drew to him and wanted to talk, sit, marry, walk, visit, kiss, play, whisper, work, drink, wrestle, carry, live, sleep, fight, laugh, and conspire with him. He enjoyed all these activities in their company when he’d been out of the bush for some time and in town. People inspired his inner drives. The moment he left human territory for a day, that part of him shut down, however. He had tried, many times, at his camp, for the sake of diversion, to quicken desire and imagination, to spur on his inner desires, and to experience the jarring pleasure on his own. Now and then, if the lapse of time still snailed the memory of the human form enough to keep trees, gulls, rocks, water and sun unimmediate, he achieved a reduced version of what the town’s bustle and comings and going’s of body and motion provided with certain clarity. Mostly, though, he had learned in the past decade to leave the thought of those others, those beauties, alone.
     That was why he bathed seldom. Sometimes a year went by without a voluntary dip in the water. This time, despite having been to Sioux Narrows for supplies, food, wine and tobacco, and having seen at stores and gas stations women in their clumsy grace, he had not stopped long enough to let himself begin to think of lingering. Instead, as soon as the taxi loaded his purchases, he returned to the Berry Lake landing and bore them off north in his canoe.      
     Hurried because he had discovered gold! A vein of it lay there at Marny’s Point, inland from the water 100 yards, where quartz ran unexpectedly in great, thick roads through the gray and pink granite. This part of the lake, hemmed in on all sides by tangles of tree roots and shallow reefs, remained unvisited by people from one century to the next, so quite understandably the treasure could have lain there forever exposed but untroubled by pick or ax. It was, however, not so situated, not so available. Covered in peat and moss, deeply blanketed by red pine needles, the entire kraddock of smooth rock would never have come to his attention accept for a stroke of great luck. A large pine, a white pine two feet in diameter, had its roots in the air near where he had camped one night some months ago. The moon had risen and it shone with unusual brilliance upon the wide waters of Tagau lake. A gathering of loons a hundred strong bobbed in two groups in the bay, filling it with their strangeness. They made no sound. They stayed so still, just bobbing. Not a ripple disturbed the warm world before him. Waylon lay on his sleeping bag near the fire in thoughtless quiet. 
    He drank from his wine bottle now and then, he smoked his pipe  frequently, always once more in his mind before he would turn in. Alone, floating on a timeless point of stone Waylon felt, as often he did on such pleasing evenings, the gentleness of opened eyes as the world closed its. He would relieve himself before drifting off. The evening breeze was beginning to freshen. Walking to the edge of the woods behind his tent, he followed the moon’s bright tree-shadows further inland under the sweep of red pine, with their soughing above him and their clear going underneath. 
     As often happens when quiet makes time unimportant, for a moment he could not decide which tree to lean on. He saw a great tangle of roots and soil ahead and wandered over.  Beneath it lay the dirty gravel of a recent uprooting. He stopped to start going back, then stood still to pee, holding onto one of the roots.      
     Standing there, he looked about, as we are wont to do when peeing in the woods, and bent down to look at the stones more closely that his stream had cleaned. They had sparked his interest. He must have seem the glimmer of gold among the stones without at first marking it. But then he knew. What had eluded him for forty years now wanted capture, and he had it in his mind’s hands as surely as an old Irishman has his wish ready for a leprechaun he sees beside a mushroom in the moonlight peat. 
     Yes, something glimmered and shone in among the chips of granite. He knew enough about these things to recognize it without having to see up close. Before he bent to pick up any of it he stood there like an old tree and wavered on his legs. He smiled a wide smile and mused upon his life. He knew that everything he’d ever endured in the woods was about to continue and keep him interested for the rest of it.
L
(To be continued)