Pilgrimage

"But then," I defended, "I'm still functioning in society and I don't drool or foam at the mouth. I don't act very crazy, and as long as I guard my tongue I don't sound crazy."
I pondered the item awhile, then scribbled out the mark.
"I guess I'm still sane-so far."
Item two. "Then what's wrong with me? Do I just let my imagination run away with. me?" I jabbed holes all around my second heavy mark. No, it was something more, something beyond just imagination, something beyond-what?
I crossed that marking with another to make an X.
"What than I do about it then? Shall I fight it out like I did before? Shall I deny and deny and deny until-" I felt a cold grue, remembering the blind panic that had finally sent me running until I had ended up at Kruper, and all the laughter went out of me, clear to the bottom of my soul.
I crosshatched the two marks out of existence and hid my eyes against my knees again and waited for the sick up-gushing of apprehension to foam into despair over my head. Always it came to this. Did I want to do anything about it? Should I stop it all with an act of will? Could I stop it all by an act of will? Did I want to stop it?
I scrambled to my feet and scurried around the huge stack, looking for the entrance. My feet cried, No no! on the sliding gravel. Every panting breath cried, No no! as I slipped and slithered around the steep hill. I ducked into the shadowy interior of the huge chimney and pressed myself against the blackened crumbling bricks, every tense muscle shouting, No no! And in the wind-shuddery silence I cried, "No!" and heard it echo up through the blackness above me. I could almost see the word shoot up through the pale elliptical disk of the sky at the top of the stack.
"Because I could!" I shrieked defiantly inside me. "If I weren't afraid I could follow that word right on up and erupt into the sky like a Roman candle and never, never, never feel the weight of the world again!"
But the heavy drag of reason grabbed my knees and elbows and rubbed my nose forcibly into things-as-they-really-are, and I sobbed impotently against the roughness of the curving wall. The sting of salty wetness across my cheek shocked me out of rebellion.
Crying? Wailing against a dirty old smelter wall because of a dream? Fine goings on for a responsible pedagogue!
I scrubbed at my cheeks with a Kleenex and smiled at the grime that came off. I'd best get back to the hotel and get my face washed before eating the inevitable garlicky supper I'd smelled on my way out.
I stumbled out into the red flood of sunset and down the thread of a path I had ignored when coming up. I hurried down into the duskiness of the cottonwood thicket along the creek at the bottom of the hill. Here, where no eyes could see, no tongues could clack at such undignified behavior, I broke into a run, a blind headlong run, pretending that I could run away-just away! Maybe with salty enough tears and fast enough running I could buy a dreamless night.
I rounded the turn where the pinky-gray granite boulder indented the path-and reeled under a sudden blow. I had run full tilt into someone. Quicker than I could focus my eyes I was grabbed and set on my feet. Before I could see past a blur of tears from my smarting nose I was alone in the dusk.
I mopped my nose tenderly. "Well," I said aloud, "that's one way to knock the nonsense out of me." Then immediately began to wonder if it was a sign of unbalance to talk aloud to yourself.
I looked back uphill when I came out of the shadow of the trees. The smelter stack was dark against the sky, massive above the remnants of the works. It was beautiful in a stark way, and I paused to enjoy it briefly. Suddenly there was another darkness up there. Someone had rounded the stack and stood silhouetted against the lighter horizon.
I wondered if the sound of my sorrow was still echoing up the stack, and then I turned shamefaced away. Whoever it was up there had more sense than to listen for the sounds of old sorrows.
That night, in spite of my outburst of the afternoon, I barely slipped under the thin skin of sleep and, for endless ages, clutched hopelessly for something to pull me down into complete forgetfulness. Then despairingly I felt the familiar tug and pull and, hopelessly, eagerly, slipped headlong into my dream that I had managed to suppress for so long.
There are no words-there are no words anywhere for my dream. Only the welling of delight, the stretching of my soul, the boundless freedom, the warm belongingness. And I held the dearness close to me-oh, so close to me!-knowing that awakening must come ….
And it did, smashing me down, forcing me into flesh, binding me leadenly to the earth, squeezing out the delight, cramping my soul back into finiteness, snapping bars across my sky and stranding me in the thin watery glow of morning so alone again that the effort of opening my eyes was almost too much to be borne.
Lying rigidly under the press of the covers I gathered up all the tatters of my dream and packed them tightly into a hard little knot way back of my consciousness. "Stay there. Stay there," I pleaded. "Oh, stay there!"
Forcing myself to breakfast I came warily into the dining room at the hotel. As the only female-type woman guest in the hotel I was somewhat disconcerted to walk into the place when it was full and to have every hand pause and every jaw still itself until I found my way to the only empty seat, and then to hear the concerted return to eating, as though on cue. But I was later this morning, and the place was nearly empty.
"How was the old stack?" Half of Marie's mouth grinned as she pushed a plate of hotcakes under my nose and let go of it six inches above the table. I controlled my wince as it crashed to the table, but I couldn't completely ignore the sooty thumbprint etched in the grease on the rim. Marie took the stiffly filthy rag she had hanging as usual from her apron pocket, and smeared the print around until I at least couldn't see the whorls and ridges any more.
"It was interesting," I said, not bothering to wonder how she knew I'd been there. "Kruper must have been quite a town when the smelter was going full blast."
"Long's I've been here it's been dyin'," Marie said. "Been here thirty-five years next February and I ain't never been up to the stack. I ain't lost nothing up there!"
She laughed soundlessly but gustily. I held my breath until the garlic went by. "But I hear there's some girls that's gone up there and lost-"
"Marie!" Old Charlie bellowed from across the table. "Cut out the chatter and bring me some grub. If teacher wants to climb up that da-dang stack leave her be. Maybe she likes it!'"
"Crazy way to waste time," Marie muttered, teetering out to the kitchen, balancing her gross body on impossibly spindly legs.
"Don't mind her," Old Charlie bellowed. "Only thing she thinks is fun is beer. Why, lots of people like to go look at worthless stuff like that. Take-well-take Lowmanigh here. He was up there only yesterday-"
"Yesterday?" My lifted brows underlined my question as I looked across the table. It was one of the fellows I hadn't noticed before. His name had probably been thrown at me with the rest of them by Old Charlie on my first night there, but I had lost all the names except Old Charlie and Severeid Swanson, which was the name attached to a wavery fragile-looking Mexicano, with no English at all, who seemed to subsist mostly on garlic and vino and who always blinked four times when I smiled at him.
"Yes." Lowmanigh looked across the table at me, no smile softening his single word. My heart caught as I saw across his cheek the familiar pale quietness of chill-of-soul. I knew the look well. It had been on my own face that morning before I had made my truce with the day.
He must have read something in my eyes, because his face shuttered itself quickly into a noncommittal expression and, with a visible effort, he added, "I watched the sunset from there."