Looking into Charlie’s wild eyes, remembering how much I love Wyoming and how I used to traipse around the prairie, blowing up monster-size anthills with Black Cat & Zebra firecrackers, reveling in the openness that goes on forever, the road that ribbons out for miles with not
one single car
to interrupt the silence. Only the wind—wind across dry prairieland full of sage and cactus and gullies that haven’t seen water in an eternity. There is magic there. It calls to something inside me, something buried deep in my heart. I think of my mother that last day of her life, lying there in her bed, when she looked at me as clear as day with those soft brown eyes of hers, and said:
Four young Indian boys are watching over me; they’re about fourteen, with long braids.
She lies on a high hill in Gillette Wyoming at Mt. Pisgah Cemetery among pioneers and veterans and members of the American Legion. Most of her family is there, too. I remember the day I visited, sitting in the grass, surrounded by all the
Tarver
names, some I remembered, others had passed long ago.
Those “Charlie photos” stir up all sorts of feelings and for some reason, they are tinged with sadness. I always dreamed of having my very own piece of Wyoming. A place where I could sit and listen to the wind, hear the yips of far-away coyotes. A place I didn’t have to walk away from and
go back to reality.
As the years pass and life interferes, I hold onto the dream. Perhaps Charlie will help me find a way.
Photo credit: Shreve Stockton, The Daily Coyote
