The Rock Child (43 page)

FINISH-UP

That is the end of my big wander.

What’s left of the story classical musicians would call fancy words, but I’ll call it a finish-up.

As a young man I set out, not knowing where or why. I took the first step, and fell into my adventure. It was the most important step I ever made, and the best. You know where it led.

There is more to my life, though, and maybe some things you will want to know about the people in it.

Sun Moon and I stayed at the lodge alone that autumn and winter, a long, snowbound honeymoon. It was grand. Our son Pasang was conceived then, and born the next fall.

In the spring we cut trees and floated them across to the mill, to a handsome profit.

Sir Richard and Daniel went immediately back to Virginia, Sir Richard because he had a little matter back to take care of with Tommy Kirk. He bought discreet items at the chemist’s shop and showed Tommy’s mistress Lu Pu-wai how to slip them into food. Sir Richard knew his beans. When Tommy died mysteriously a few months later, neither he nor anyone else guessed how or why.

In two years Daniel, Sun Moon, and I were prosperous, even halfway to rich, through our wood-cutting enterprise. But we didn’t like sending our Lake Tahoe trees into graves in a mountain for the purpose of gouging
out silver. So we sold our wood contracts and put full effort into the music school. In four years it failed and took everything we had. We had a lot of fun going broke, though, and made a lot of good music.

While we were going broke in the music business, Daniel got news his father had died and his mother needed him. He headed back to New Orleans. On the way, in East Texas, he got into a bar fight with a man as made a racialist remark, and took a knife through the lights. We missed him bad. Turned out he had willed us his half of the lodge.

Though it was ours, we always let people think the place belonged to Daniel and was only managed by us. This was partly our tribute to our friend, and mostly a ruse. Americans think it’s OK for people of color to manage a hotel, but not own one.

Sun Moon and I turned it into a resort. It was a lot of work, but the transcontinental railroad came in at the right time, not way round the south end of the lake like we thought, but right up the Truckee River past the Rock Child and over the old Indian trail, a poor route for them but good for us. We made a go of the resort, and got half-rich again. The best part is, we are open only five months a year, and we live here all twelve. That gave us time for each other, for walks, for snowshoeing, for music, and for Sun Moon’s prayer and meditation.

There are several resort hotels on the lake now, and I believe one day there will be more. That will be good for the white people who come here to breathe the spirit of the alpine air and drink the mountain waters, but it will be hard on the Washo people.

We had some fun with the name of our lodge. It’s called Gastonia, and the sign over the drive says in big letters, WELCOME TO GASTONIA.

Sun Moon mostly left the running of the lodge to me, with hired help. She stuck to her own life, raising our son, educating him in the Buddhist and the Western way both, meditating long hours every afternoon, and praying for the liberation of all sentient beings.

Today Pasang Richard Daniel Taylor is a fine young man of twenty-seven years, and will go far. Not in music—he has no ear. His eye for drawing, however, is excellent. We had only one child, we never knew why, but we had a lot of fun trying for more.

The Washo and me became dearest friends. I joined into their religious ways by learning their songs. For years I have sung or drummed at the Pine Nut ceremonies every autumn. Washo religion makes more sense to me than any Mormonism, Brotherhood of Life, Catholicism or
any sort of Christianity, or, for that matter, Buddhism. We worship things that are real—the four winds, the waters flowing and still, the sway of the sun, moon, and stars, the powers in the rocks. And we don’t tell other people what to do, but respect each man’s medicine. The Washo way suits me.

We heard from Sir Richard regularly. He always wrote us what a fine time he was having from Africa, Brazil, Damascus, and Trieste, wherever that is. We lived through every clever tactic which he employed against his many political and literary enemies, mourned his defeats, and celebrated his victories. We never thought he was having any fun, though, and he never did go on any more big explorations. Seemed to us his wife, Isabel, got the better of him.

I did enjoy reading his books, keeping in mind that lots of his life, like his adventures with us, could never be told—they were government secrets. My favorite is
A Thousand and One Nights,
which he sent us all sixteen volumes of. As I am a musician, he was a storyteller.

I had a dream that he would visit us one day. It’s an easy trip now—you can sleep in a Pullman car across the U. S. of A.—nothing like how we trudged over the California Trail breathing alkali. I pictured us three utterly different friends, the three playing in conflicting keys, being together for a few days on the shore of the most beautiful lake in the world. It’s hard to let dreams end, and mine never did until the mail came last fall. A business friend in San Francisco sent a clip from the newspaper about the death of the famous author Sir Richard Burton (he finally got that knighthood).

That was small, however, beside the letter from Pasang last week about his mother and my beloved wife. She had been going to the doctor in San Francisco for treatment for more than a year. This time she asked Pasang to come with her. I’m sure she didn’t have a premonition of her death, because she would have wanted me beside her, and I would have wanted to be there. Pasang going along was lucky, though. He read
The Book of the Dead
to ease the passage of her soul to wherever it is going next. He read for seven days, which is a high honor, and I trust that her way is good.

Our life here was good because we put first things first. Sun Moon concentrated on Pasang and her prayers, and I kept my music ahead of the resort. My family and my music. I did play most nights at the lodge, giving folks what they wanted to hear, songs and dances. I also played Gottschalk, Chopin, Schubert, and other stuff our guests admire but
don’t really like. And I played my own music. Because once I started listening, it was there in my head. If I turned on my fingers, out it came.

I got lucky, too. The folks at Dr. Bourne’s Hygiene Establishment, up at Carnelian Bay, asked me to play my own music at what they called a salon every Sunday afternoon. I have done that steadily for many years. I’ve been invited to Virginia to play from time to time. Jenny Lind came there to sing, and then stopped here, and we made music together at Dr. Bourne’s, just the two of us. These opportunities, they’ve been more than lots of musicians ever get.

Almost every day now since coming to Tahoe more than twenty-eight years ago, I have walked the countryside and listened. From listening I have got lots of my own pieces, for piano, banjo, harmonica, dulcimer, guitar, everything a musician can play alone. And I’ve got some music written for woodwinds, brasses, and even stringed instruments. From time to time the bands and orchestras over at Virginia have played my music, which made me proud. I’ve done everything but publish it. My music has been for me.

Curious thing, though. Last summer a fellow from San Francisco heard me play at the salon and said he would come back with one of those new phonographs and take my music down. Wouldn’t that be a hoot?

So that’s how it came out, my wander. I went looking for big things, what I heard in the river, and to find out who the Rock Child was, and where I belonged. I came to the truth of that, and it was not outside me. I didn’t have to go adventuring to find it. Home is always inside, in the heart. In me, in Sun Moon, in Pasang, and in you.

I am lucky, and deeply grateful, that when I figured out that home was wherever I was, I happened to be at Lake Tahoe. It could have been Deseret, the Rocky Mountains, the Nevada deserts, Virginia City, or anywhere. But my good fortune is that at Lake Tahoe, the most beautiful place in the world, I became willing to plant my feet on the earth and live like a human being.

So my big wander gave me a good life.

Not all of it good, of course. After Sun Moon took sick, it has been harder than I’d care to say. When they told us it was liver cancer, we both knew. We only took a few guests this summer, just old friends, and we spent most of the days sitting in the sun, holding hands. I also kept taking
my walks and listening for whatever music the gods would give me. Each evening I played it for her.

No marriage is all easy, no marriage all smooth. But some things I know, and Sun Moon knew them, too. I loved her. She loved me. I have set all this story down in her honor.

Pasang wants to do her honor, too. When he came back from San Francisco on the train, he said he’s going to finish what she surrendered—go to Tibet, to Zorgai, to her convent, and to her relatives. He wants to tell them about her life. He also wants to see where he came from, and to learn about that half of his bloodline, just as I did once. He is possessed of a restless spirit and a vast curiosity. He thinks that makes him unlike me.

He’s asked me for the money to go halfway around the world. I will give it to him. I set out on a big adventure twenty-eight years ago, and it brought me everything good. Now it’s his turn to look. It’s the zig in his rabbit path.

I hope he comes back one day. He doesn’t know how much a father loves a son.

He has a suggestion about that. If he isn’t back in maybe two years, he says, I should sell the lodge and go over to Zorgai and find him. Join him, maybe stay forever. Join him anyhow, and have an adventure. He’ll write me an address.

You never know.

I am tempted to say no to him, but that might be no to myself. Last time I threw my life to the winds, those powers carried it to a kind of glory. I bet they would again. I am only fifty years old.

You would be amazed if I went to Tibet?

Me too.

Flabbergaster, huh?

AFTERWORD

This book has some fun with history, in an attempt to speak truths that seem to me larger than facts.

Yes,
Rock Child
is intended to be both accurate and truthful historically. Richard Burton, Porter Rockwell, Brigham Young, and Samuel Clemens actually lived, and if their deeds here are imagined, my portrayals of their characters are meant seriously. (Yes, I believe that Burton was a wonderful madman and addict, and Rockwell a tortured spirit.) Salt Lake City, the California Trail, Virginia City, and Lake Tahoe are depicted in accordance with the record; so are the life ways of the Mormon people, Comstock miners, and Washoe people in 1862. Burton did travel to Salt Lake City in 1860, and the opinions of Mormons attributed to him here were set down in his book
City of the Saints
.

I hope that Mormon people, long sensitive about depictions of their history and ways by gentiles, see that my pictures of Brigham Young, and the Young household are drawn from empathy and in accordance with the record. When sketching the wives and children of the Lion of the Lord in a way that might cause controversy, I have generally used fictional names. Though the record is less than clear about Porter Rockwell, I believe my portrait is accurate.

Asie and Sun Moon are entirely creations of my imagination and my love. So is Gentleman Dan. Yet their dilemmas are as real as the dark history of racism in America. For decades following 1849, tens of
thousands of Chinese women were brought to the western United States, and their years as prostitutes amounted to slavery. Male Chinese were also treated as half-human. Indians and half-blood people living among whites faced just the predicaments that Asie faced, often in much more dire form. In 1862 slavery had corrupted the soul of the country, the Civil War was destroying the corpus, and Southerners like Gentleman Dan, aware, were in terrible straits.

The picture offered here of Tibetan Buddhism and Tibetan culture is as accurate as I can make it, and is written from love of a marvelous people and way of seeing the world. If I have used the Sanskrit form of words
(lingam, yoni, puja)
instead of the Tibetan forms, it is because the Sanskrit is somewhat more familiar in the West.

While the settings and situations here are historical, and some of the characters, the action is imagined. To my knowledge, Captain Burton did not travel to the United States in 1862, though he could have (and given the clandestine nature of his life, he may have). He was a relentless keeper of journals, but they were burned by his wife Isabel after his death, along with his letters and manuscripts; the journal entries here, I believe, are the sort he might have made. If Porter Rockwell chased any fugitives all the way to Lake Tahoe in that year, they were not our trio. I do not know whether any of the Asian women brought against their will to America were nuns, though many were surely Buddhists.

All these inventions are my way of taking a look at my country and my peoples, trying to see into their souls, expressing something of how it feels to me to be a human being, and of engaging in that wondrous form of play known as telling a story.

So. History is the foundation of this book. Its soul is imagination, dream, and love.

Win Blevins

Bozeman, Montana

December 29, 1996

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A writer receives many gifts in writing a book—brainstorming, information, company, solace, encouragement, and other essentials—sometimes even a place to live. I continue to be wonder-struck at people’s generosity, and deeply grateful.

My first thanks on this book are to Michael, Marilee, Sarah, and Tessa Enright. You gave me great hospitality at a critical time, and helped me rediscover my path. Special thanks to Sarah, a teenager who gave up her phone for me.

Brot Coburn and Didi Thunder, my neighbors in Wilson, Wyoming, opened the door to Nepal to me for the first time, loaning me their house in Kathmandu and answering endless questions. Brot, this book owes much to you.

Multitudes in Nepal were helpful. Raghunath Pradhan accompanied me through the Annapurna region. Marguerita Kluench provided spiritual guidance. The Tibetan and other people of the Annapurna region gave me inspiration.

Linda Svendsen and Kent Madin of Boojum Expeditions, old hands in Kham, loaned me books and answered questions about Sun Moon’s home country. Linda and Jennifer Read, another lover of Tibet, read the first draft and made valuable corrections. Adam Blevins and Jenna Caplette read the manuscript and made key suggestions.

These people provided essential information and insight into the
mysteries of Tibetan Buddhism—Brot Coburn, Ethan Goldings, Tashi Woser Juchungtsang, Paul LeMay, Wangchuk Meston, and the monks of the Sera Je and Drepung Monasteries.

Kathleen Gear steered me toward Kali, a seminal idea. Dick Wheeler helped me through the complexities of Virginia City. Max McCoy came up with fecund thoughts and pieces of information about Richard Burton. Lenore Carroll came up with marvelous bits of information.

Dr. James Weiss helped with medical verisimilitude. Miriam Biro of the North Lake Tahoe Historical Society went above and beyond the call of duty. Dick James offered expertise on Mormonism. Lyman Wear unknowingly provided one of Asie’s pet phrases, “heckahoy.” The Reverend Dale Salser helped me with the marriage ceremony of the 1860s. Stan West lent me his wisdom about a key scene.

Leeds and Nyla Davis offered hospitality, comradeship, and knowledge of the Tahoe region; Leeds, thanks for a quarter century of friendship. Teresa Jordan and Hal Cannon gave hospitality and thoughts about Mormonism. Rudi and Lynda Unterthiner loaned me their Idaho cabin as a haven for writing.

It was especially good to get collegial help from other professional writers, who took time and energy from their own projects for my sake: Thanks again to Brot Coburn, Kathleen Gear, Teresa Jordan, Max McCoy, Stan West, and Dick Wheeler.

Thanks to Phil Heron, Tyler Medicine Horse, and my other sweat brothers for companionship in the lodge.

As always, Clyde M. Hall, Shoshone-Bannock, acted as my close counsel in matters about Indians. He also discovered the splendid mandala in beadwork that graces the cover of the hardback edition of this book. Aho, my friend.

Jenna Caplette walked through the unexplored country of Asie and Sun Moon’s adventures with me, brainstorming all the way. Jenna, part of your spirit is in this book. Thank you.