How Charley Cowary Come to Be in Kolob

He wanted to be a pro. He was good in high school. He was pretty big, he could bench two-ninety. Pretty strong and big. He put up the posters and wore the jerseys, plus he did dips and taped his wrists. It was him and the team in the halls between classes all booming suck my dick this and you pussy that and carrying their books gripped that way, fingers vising the top edge palm down faking casual. To show his strength. Girls carried them on their hips. Skinny boys cradled them with their hand hooked below. The team gripped them that casually strong way palm down. To be all cool but it took effort carrying them that way.

He skipped classes. Who needs algebra. The Peloponnesian war. Shit like that. He worked at Foot Locker and rebuilt the ’69 Camaro with his dad. Painted it Wisconsin red and white. He graduated. Who doesn’t.

He did not get the call. He went to the walk-on tryout senior year and got hit so hard by a farmboy a hundred pounds heavier he passed out. They did not call him back. He stayed on at Foot Locker summer after graduation. Stopped working out.

His uncle hired him on at NAPA. He drove a delivery truck around Milwaukee. Parts warehouse, mechanics’ shops. Parts warehouse, mechanics’ shops. Then they promoted him to Counter. He put on 75, 80 pounds working Counter. He did that for three, four years. Knew all the parts, pretty much. Knew all the mechanics and the weekend DIY guys. Worked on the ’69 Camaro til it was cherry, then sold it to some big high school kid’s dad.

His doctor said get exercise every day. Walk. Go to the gym. Maybe lift. But if you don’t lose that weight you are going to die young. The doctor reminded him of Coach, so he did what he was told. Every morning early he walked. He lost the weight. He felt dynamite. 110%. He got a new girlfriend that was way sexier than the other one. He dressed sharp. Tucked in his Charley NAPA shirt. Got promoted to Warehouse Inventory Manager. Moved with the sexier girlfriend to Atlanta and bought a house. That went pretty good for a few years. He got promoted up through Inventory. She wanted to get married but he had this stupid thing on the side with a girl at H.Q. and the girlfriend left. He slept around for a while and focused on work.

He flew lots. Went from store to store all over the country, implemented the new Inventory Control System. It was a big deal. He got lots of recognition and got bumped up to Corporate. It was the role he was born for. He never knew he could do Corporate. He wore a suit and made deals. He ended up Vice President for Purchasing. Twenty five years out of high school they sent him to get a BPA. He did it in evening classes. Then he retired, years early, on his savings and did the MBA at the University of Colorado. Went to work for a software company that did inventory control for the Fortune 500s. After that, he found some investors and started his own business. He hired some programmers and they did distribution optimization. Sold that and he was done. At 50. He sold his house in Denver right before the recession. For a mint. The amount startled him. Millions in assets. Real estate. Shares in the company that bought his software.

He met a younger woman in Phoenix that winter. They were golfing in Scottsdale, staying at the Loew’s. Real nice. They were drunk in the hotel bar and she asked him up to her room and pretty soon they were married with a kid on the way.

All these years he’d kept up the walking and the working out. He was fit. Had this girl who helped him dress sharp. A personal shopper. He got two expensive haircuts a month. Bought a nice house in North Scottsdale, on the fairway with a pool and a view of the McDowell Preserve. Things were going good.

Then he just couldn’t get it up anymore. Here he was with his pretty younger wife and it just didn’t work. He tried Viagra, of course, but no go. He just wasn’t that interested. Plus, he was pretty sure she was sleeping around. A rumor she’d been in a downtown club with a big man her own age. He didn’t really care.

He’d been taking the RV to the National Parks by himself. Every couple months he’d take off for a week or so. Drive to a Park, do the hikes. Went to Canyonlands, southeast Utah. It just felt like where he belonged. Phoenix and his wife and the kid and all the shit with pool maintenance and HOA meetings and drinks at the golf club and not getting it up just sort of went away. He got his ducks in a barrel and had his attorney deliver the house and car titles and a pile of stock certificates and a college savings account for the kid and a bunch of other paper, including a petition for divorce, to his wife. He left a package of MagnumExtra-sized Trojans on the counter along with the spare keys to the Mercedes convertible and the ski-boat. He kept the RV and enough money to last his remaining years.

She tried to get more from him, but her attorney told her it was pointless. He’d already given her far more than the law required.

He bought a hacienda-style place in Moab. Got to know Canyonlands pretty good. And Arches. Even made several trips deep into the Maze. Bought a new pickup just for that.

He walked farther and farther into the wilderness. Went all around the Colorado plateau, from the San Rafael to Chaco. One night about sunset, deep in southern Utah, he hiked out of a remote canyon where he’d been lost for two days. He was very hungry so he drove 80 miles up a dirt road in the dark to a tiny town. The smallest dot on his map. Just a cluster of houses and some outlying ranches in a narrow valley between the canyons and a huge standalone mountain. In all the black night just a few lights out there. There was this strange thing he saw. Like a vision. In that lonely place a big yellow window floated in the perfect black and the window was full of people. Like fish in a tank. It was like they were just bumping around in that glass rectangle, drinking and laughing. In his headlights there was a handpainted sign with an arrow pointing at the floating window. It said Be Merry Restaurant. He parked the RV. He tucked in his shirt and dusted himself off as best he could. He could hear music as the door swung open. Someone off in the dark smoking. He walked around toward the door. In the back of the room three young people on upright bass, banjo, and fiddle and an ancient scrawny woman on drums. A mix of people dancing. Old ones and young ones and a few kids. The tables pushed back. Most of the dishes cleared and people drinking wine and clapping to the music and dancing and that yellow light and the music and laughing and clapping. It was a restaurant, but it was also like a home party or something. He hesitated to go in. Maybe it was a birthday, some private event. But he was hungry. Anyway, he ate a steak. It was good. He hadn’t been drinking much in the last couple years, but he got a glass of wine. Then a bottle. The waitress was cute. He felt good. A young guy with a drowsy toddler on his lap talked to him in a neighborly way. Big Charley with his now-gray crewcut and this kid in his twenties with beaded braids in his beard talked like they were buddies. Like the kid didn’t care who he might be as long as he was decent. Charley was decent. He had a great time. Felt so good. The very long last couple days lost in the desert, the long drive, the night black as ink and then this good meal and this old-style music and the warm people and the wine. He felt like a million bucks.

He slept in the RV in the parking lot. Early the sun came up the valley over long hayfields and pastures. The view seemed a fiction. Something ideal. The canyons and mesas ranked a hundred miles into the white east. The sun coming to him through the spray of a hundred chugging handlines. Angus cattle and the sawtoothed ripgut fence cutting the sunrise to his feet. He sat in the door of the RV and watched the shadows back away and the colors sharpen

.

The restaurant opened midmorning and he went in for coffee. The sunlight on his table was harsh and the place was quiet and sober.

This is how Charley Cowary came to be in Kolob. It was what he wanted, or what he imagined he wanted. Peace and quiet. Remnants of old ways. Cowboys and conservative old Mormons. Friendly people. The magnificent scenery. That’s what he thought about over the next several days as he looked for a house to buy. He wanted nice neighbors but not too close. He wanted enough land to have a horse. A barn he could convert to a woodshop. He though he would spend his retirement being a woodworker. It felt right. A view out over the canyons and pastures. Walking distance from this restaurant where he could drink coffee mornings and wine nights. For the first time since high school he had an exciting vision of the future. Before the week was over he owned a house, a horse, tack, and a restored Ford tractor. He started the life he’d never known he’d wanted.

*             *             *

This is how Charley Cowary came find a place in Kolob, and to buy the horse and tack and the restored Ford tractor:

That first day in Kolob, after he had coffee at the Be Merry, he took his morning walk right there in the middle of town. It was just a crossroads, where the dirt road he’d driven out of the desert the night before teed into a two-lane county highway that came out of the canyons and went up to the mountain. The Be Merry was right there at the intersection. There was a store next door, mostly tourist stuff and an espresso machine and snacks. Off to the side a small sawmill with the overhead door wide open but nobody around, just drifts of pine dust blowing across the highway. Up a ways there was a shabby two-pump gas station and a little motel straight out of the ‘50s. Other than that, just a couple dozen houses scattered around back from the roads and a post office and a fire station that was little more than a Quonset hut. He walked by all this in a minute. A dirt lane went off the highway toward the pastures, and he went that way. From around a bend he could see a cloud of dust and soon a herd of a couple hundred pair of whiteface cattle came up between the roadside fences. Behind them on either side rode two cowboys that from a distance looked like straight out of a John Wayne. He stood off to the side to let the cattle through. A rough and tattered heeler planted himself between Charley and the cattle and watched him. Charley looked the old dog in the eye and remembered a big purchasing deal he’d made with a Chinese manufacturer, how the Chinese man played it like a poker game. Never blinked, never showed nothing. Just kept his face blank as though to say Nothing personal Mr. Charley, just business.

When the cowboys came up at the rear of the herd Charley studied them, but they ignored him. He was disappointed to see that one of them wore bright new Nike basketball shoes and was listening to an iPod. These modern things jarred him, because otherwise the scene could have been the 1870s. The other cowboy was elderly. He wore dusty flannel and scarred leather chaps and a sweatstained felt hat. He even had an old blued Colt revolver with walnut grips. To Charley’s eye, the older man’s general dusty decrepitude, his deeply-weathered face, and the rubbed-in grime in all his tack and gear spoke of authenticity. He saw a no-bullshit manliness. He imagined the old man alone on the mountainside in a howling blizzard, stoically tending a fire while his massive quarterhorse dozed on a highline. In his imagination coyotes yipped in the distance and cattle lowed in the frigid night. But the Nikes and the iPod intruded on this pure vision, and Charley felt resentment rise in him. He also felt a new certainty that he would live in Kolob and that his new life would be authentic. That the pussified golfing and wine at the club and strategizing with brokers and managing the pool boy and the wetback landscapers and the mobile car-detailing service were over. That he would, from now on, live an honest and manly life of independence and self-sufficiency. That he would meet his future with stoic endurance. He knew all of this in the time it took the cowboys to ride past.

As inconspicuously as he could, looking both ways, he took his cell phone from his pocket and snapped a picture of the older cowboy, pausing just long enough to frame the younger man, with his ridiculous white basketball shoes, out of the picture.

He walked down the lane. Back from the highway the pastures opened up to land that sloped away for miles down to the canyons. Dozens of green and buff fenced fieldsand a few scattered houses and barns. The sun was still low and cast a golden light on everything. Thick old cottonwoods lined the lane, and here and there sections of the old juniper ripgut fence. He thought he’d never seen prettier country anywhere. The prettiest farmland he’d ever seen placed tightly into a wilderness of buff towering sandstone, like a National Park you could buy and live in.

With his new excitement and certainty he walked down the lane. It fell away from the town. He found a realtor’s sign, and went to call the number, but there was no service. He felt a moment of irritation, but quickly said to himself Well, here is a good sign. If there is no cell service here, we’re not really in the ticky-tacky modern world, are we? A man could escape to this place and live a genuine life. Without the intrusions. No interruptions, just the man’s real life’s work to do, no excuses. Just an honest day’s work and the pleasures afforded to such a man as can face that work unblinking. He found the thought satisfying and true. He clicked a picture of the barcode thingy on the realtor’s sign and walked on.

After a while, he came to a crossing lane, a sandy two-track that climbed the slope back toward town. He crossed a cattle-guard and walked up the hill. Some irrigated plants with purple flowers all around, and an irrigation ditch running. As the lane fell out of sight behind him he found himself in a sort of wide swale. A dog stood in the two-track a couple football fields ahead and started barking. In a dense stand of cottonwoods a ratty old shipping container sat on blocks. Other dogs came out from under it and the pack trotted down the drive toward him. He stopped and stood his ground. The dogs arrayed around him barking. A big man in a wide hat came out from behind the container and stood and watched. Charley waived to him, but he didn’t waive back. He just stood and looked. The dogs came in closer. Charley held his arms out and shrugged in an exaggerated way as though to say What am I supposed to do? Why don’t you call your dogs off? And the man finally whistled. Just one sharp whistle and the dogs stood down. Like he’d thrown a switch. The man came down the drive.

Help you?

Just out walking, looking around.

Private property.

I apologize. I didn’t see a sign.

Never needed one.

Charley Cowary, he said, and held out his hand.

The man paused. Jasper Lyman. His hand was huge and hard, but he barely squeezed Charley’s hand, and looked away as they shook.

Well, the way back to town is the way you come.

Maybe you can tell me about that property for sale? With the sign?

You lookin to buy?

Maybe. Just looking. Who’s the seller?

I am. It int any kind of vacation place or cabin or nothin.

Is there a house on it? Just land?

There’s the linehouse and some rock foundations is all. It’s good pasture.

Can you show me it?

Was gonna let the realtor do that bit.

But Jasper started walking along the fence. At the top of the rise he pointed down into another broad swale. Below them another cluster of cottonwoods and willows, and the two-room line-house and an acre of rusted machinery, clots of rusting fence, a bottle dump, a white refrigerator listing beside a Willy’s jeep lying on its side. A dump. Charley looked. Didn’t say anything for fear of offending Jasper. He stood with his arms crossed. A horse walked out from behind a low barn. The horse reminded him of his new commitment to the authentic life and the scene of redneck squalor shifted somehow, and Charley saw beneath the surface of appearances to the many years of hardship the people here must have endured. The junk took on a history then. A history of authentic survival in a harsh western desert. He looked again, and he thought All this junk, these things, they must have kept because on the frontier you don’t throw things away. You keep them in case you’ll need them. Spare parts. Clever ways to re-use machines. That old rusted pickup down there, for example, could be converted to a grain mill, or some such useful device. He looked and looked til he became conscious that Jasper was shifting on his feet, waiting for some response.

How many acres in the parcel?

That’s the original forty.

Forty? Charley asked, with some astonishment, then immediately regretted the sound of enthusiasm in his voice. He thought it betrayed some suburban innocence, and he wished to sound savvier, more familiar with rural western ways. I was lookin for closer to eighty, he said, on an impulse. He cursed himself. Now what was that? he said to himself. You wake up wanting a nice place not too close to neighbors and now you’re asking for eighty acres.

Jasper’s expression didn’t change. Well, I can’t spare eighty, but I bet we could work something out, less you need eighty exact.

They went down to the line-house. The dirt there was hardpacked and lifeless, and stained here and there with motor oil and trampled by cattle. The linehouse was a shambles. Windows boarded, old yellowed and brittle vinyl siding hanging off in strips. Charley silently noted the dovetailed squared timbers exposed there. The roof was just asphalt roll with the mastic seams mopped on. But a chimney of hand-squared sandstone stood through the roof. He went to the front door.

Nothin to see in there, Jasper said, with a dismissive waive of his hand. Just a wore-out old linehouse the packrats took over.

Charley feigned indifference.

They walked among the rusted detritus of a hundred years of cattle ranching. Back in the trees Jasper took him to the barn. The horse stood off. The barn looked solid. Old and weathered, but with siding repaired and the doors newly built. Inside was neat and dry. There were rolling chests of mechanics’ tools along the wall. Crescent and Snap-On, Charley noted with approval. In the middle of the floor stood a gleaming red tractor, an old Ford.

What year is that?

Fifty-eight.

You did the restoration.

Yes. Sort of my winter money-making business, except for the money part.

Charley smiled. Walked around the tractor and looked it over with admiration. That’s some fine work, he said.

I do what I can. Hard to get parts here.

They talked about the auto-parts business a while. Then Charley said he’d call the realtor and they shook and he left.

He bought sixty-six acres, the tractor, the horse, and tack. Before Charley left Kolob to close down his life in Moab, he contracted with Jasper to haul all the junk, and he hired a builder to start on the linehouse. The builder, a solid, clean, silent man used to working on vacation cabins, looked the linehouse over. Looked neither encouraging nor skeptical. Charley struggled to convey his ideas about the linehouse. He felt self-conscious. He didn’t want to say aloud what he felt about authenticity and manly stoicism and how to attain these ideals in the refurbishment of a decaying linehouse, but the builder, name of Fielding, saved him the trouble.

What I suggest, if I may, is we strip off everything modern. Get down to the underlying structure. See how those logs are holding up. Have a look at the foundation. Give you a report when you get back from Moab so you can make informed decisions about how to proceed.

Charley felt a swelling of gratitude. Not only did Fielding speak like a man of business and seem so competent and ready to work, but the man had perfectly read Charley’s mind concerning the construction work. Get rid of all the defilements of modern life. Strip away the artificial, man-made siding and get to the thick, handhewn timbers beneath. Clean the place of all signs of the new world of commerce and hurry and makeshift cheapness.

Two weeks later Charley drove back into Kolob pulling just a small trailer containing all of his old life he cared to keep. He’d sold the RV and donated his nice suits and ties to the Mormon Church. He’d appraised every last item for its authenticity and manliness and culled what didn’t fit his new standard. He left the Moab house furnished to rent. In the trailer, along with an old oak rocker and a narrow twin bed and a set of cast-iron Dutch ovens he’d found in the antique store in Moab, was a set of old battered steamer trunks full of his new clothes. In a kind of fever of lust for his new life on the frontier he had gone online and bought hats and boots, chaps and a Navajo saddle blanket, flannel shirts and an oilcloth slicker and a shearling coat. He outfitted himself for riding his new horse, for fly-fishing, for hunting deer and elk. He ordered checked wool blankets and shirts from Pendleton, and lapelled wool vests from Filson. He ordered matching leather belt, holster, and saddle scabbard from a craftsman in New Mexico. With some input from his personal shopper, he outfitted his new life to perfection.

He stayed in the motel on the highway. The Lazy Daze. Run by a young couple who were always agreeably stoned. Every day he spent at the new property, working as though he were one of Fielding’s employees. The linehouse progressed quickly, despite many setbacks. Fielding just about disassembled the entire structure, placed a new foundation that Charley had him veneer with sandstone, to match the chimney. He tore down the old chimney and rebuilt it with the original stones over a core of reinforced concrete blocks. They replaced many of the logs. Fielding himself used a hewing axe to surface the new timbers, to match the old ones. A specialized painter came down from Salt Lake for a week to stain and antique the new timbers to match the old ones. Almost black with age. They rechinked. They roofed with a special steel designed to rust evenly. They framed a new floor and planked it with wide pegged oak, scrub-planed to a perfect unevenness. Fielding bored the peg holes square, for authenticity, he said. Charley appreciated this conscientious attention to detail, and Fielding’s knowledge about the old ways of building. They added a wing out back so that Charley could have a kitchen and bath in his house. They added plumbing and power, and a furnace. Charley wanted only a woodstove, but Fielding gently insisted on the furnace, just in case.

Some months into the job Charley went to talk with his neighbor Jasper about getting the junk cleaned up. He hadn’t even started. Jasper’s brother told him Jasper was probably in Vegas and he had no idea when he’d come back. So, at considerable expense, Charley hired a company from Grand Junction to clear the area.

It was a long winter, bitter cold. Charley hadn’t expected the cold. It scared him sometimes the way it blew a plume of powder-dry snow off the mountain and threw weighted sheets of plywood across the pastures. But spring came as Fielding put meticulous finishing touches on the house. They’d added a long porch with battered stone piers and heavy columns of nearblack timbers. Charley showed up one morning and found his rocker set just so on the porch with his Navajo blanket across the armrests and the keys and Fielding’s last, breathtaking, invoice. The way the chair was set triggered in Charley a deep uneasiness. Meadowlarks sang, and a warm breeze came up from the canyons, but a cold dread reaching way back came over him. He shook it off and went inside, leaving the heavy plank door open to air out the stink of polyurethane and paint.