Return Me

to Mistwillow

by

Terry Wright

     Windblown dust swirled down Main Street as Jake Stratton made his way past wood-plank buildings toward Mistwillow’s trading post.  Weary bones ached.  His hollow chest panged.  Another morning had gone by and still there’d been no word from his son.

     Wearing ashen gray clothing, passers-by nodded.  Gentlemen tipped dusty hats, and ladies curtseyed, even as the wind tore at their soiled gowns.

     “Good afternoon, Jake.”

     He grumped, knowing they were only trying to be nice, to be upbeat and hopeful in spite of the fact that his son was missing.  Robert was a fine boy, ten years old and destined to run the family store--until that fateful day, November 7, 1882.

     “Telegraph lines still down?” a man asked as they crossed paths.

     “Damn storm,” Jake replied.  He’d never seen anything like it, day after day, year after year, the wind and dust ever-present, the sun but a smudge in a gray sky.  Mistwillow, Colorado, once bustling with miners and traders and wagons and horses, had become a colorless, odorless scar on the land.

     “Maybe the stage will be in today,” the man said and moved off, the tempest swallowing him.

     Jake knew the stagecoach hadn’t stopped here in years, a hundred and fifteen, to be exact.  So why would it come today?  And if such a miracle were possible, then Robert would be on that stage, stepping down from the coach, waving to a relieved crowd.  The sky would clear, and marching bands would play.

     Tumbleweeds rolled by. Their whish-whish-whishing sound broke Jake’s reverie.  Turtling his neck, he strode the boardwalk, fought the sting of tears flooding his dry eye sockets.  “Robert, when are you coming home?”  The question went unanswered, as usual, and not knowing sustained Jake's grief each hour of every day.

     He came to the sign that hung from beams under his storefront porch: Stratton’s Trading Post, Established 1853.  With dirt grating his throat, he entered the store, bell tinkling behind him.  His boots scattered inch-deep dust, dust that blew in through broken windows.  One day he planned to sweep.  One day he planned to fix the windows.  One day when Robert comes home.

     Marianne, wearing her best Sunday dress, gray with dust, greeted him from the stockroom door.  “Any word?”

     “Nothing.” He walked to the sales counter.  “No telegram, no mail.”

     She wiped a glass with a dusty rag, but the glass didn’t get any cleaner.  “Maybe tomorrow.”

     “If tomorrow ever comes.”  He’d spoken those words every day since Robert disappeared.  And every day Marianne offered the same hope for tomorrow.  In fact, every day she wore the same dress, and stranger still, she hadn’t aged a day.  

     A dizzying sense of déjà vu hit Jake like a board.  “What happened to us, Marianne?”

     “Eerie isn’t it, the storm?”

     It was more than that.  “Day in, day out, nothing ever changes around here.”

     “Don’t be loony.”  She set down the dirty glass, picked up another and began wiping it, unconcerned that her efforts were futile.  “Things change enough for me.”

     “You don't even change your clothes.”

     “Why this old dress? It’s my favorite.” Then she scowled.  “When’s the last time you wore anything different?”

     Looking down at his dusty pants and threadbare shirt, he couldn’t remember owning any other duds.  A bath would be nice. He sniff-checked his armpits. Didn’t smell bad.  In fact, he didn’t smell anything at all, or taste anything, either.  “We never drink, we never eat--”

     “We never touch,” she put in, “like husband and wife.”

     He missed her in that way, more than the taste of cold beer or a juicy steak.  But he wouldn't speak of such personal topics.  “You know how I feel about you.”

     “Then stop your complaining.  Change could ruin everything.”

     “Worse than this?”  He leaned against the counter and surveyed his inventory of goods awaiting buyers.  Stacked shelves of flour, wheat, beans, and jerky lay in dusty ruin.  Wilted dresses hung from wall pegs like gray ghosts.  Spider webs adorned the boot rack, and the pickle barrel had rotted out long ago.  Not a single customer had come in, not a miner, not a trader, not a Ute or Cheyenne.  Not since November 7, 1882. 

     Jake spit dust, grappled with yet another day of failure.  “It’s my fault.”  He slumped onto a stool at the counter, dirt puffs flying.

     “There you go again,” she said, rubbing the filthy glass.  “Don’t blame yourself for what happened to Mistwillow.”

     Head in hands, he remembered how soldiers had rounded up all the Indians and herded them off to reservations.  Half his trading business was gone with a snap.  “I couldn’t fight the army.”

     “And it’s not your fault the gold rush ended so soon.  Most miners headed south to Cripple Creek or west to California.”

     Another twenty-five percent of his business had moved away.  “And the beaver,” He recalled thousands of pelts traded across this dusty counter.  “They’re so scarce now, trappers moved north to Wyoming and Montana.”

     “So, we’re in a little pinch.”  She gave up on the dirty glass, grabbed another and rubbed it with vigor.  “There’s nothing you could have done about it.”

     Jake knew the town of Golden, to the south, flourished, having established the nation’s first commercial gardens, which supplied wheat to three flour mills on Clear Creek.  Boulder to the north became a center for education as the first Colorado schoolhouse opened there.  And to the east rose the metropolis of Denver, the new hub of Rocky Mountain commerce.  All Mistwillow had left was this trading post, but no customers--not a living soul.  “How much longer do we have to go on like this?”

      “At least we have each other.”

      “I wish Robert would come home.”

     “Careful what you wish for, Jake.”

     Wind screamed through broken windows.  He watched the sheet almanac sway.  Suspended from a beam with twine, it hung over the counter for easy reference.  The last sheet read “Election Day.  November 7, 1882.”  Somehow, time had stopped in Mistwillow.  He wanted to rip off the page, tear it up, but he couldn’t destroy his only link to his son. 

     He never should have come to Colorado.  That’s what George Stratton thought as he drove the rented ‘97 Ford Expedition north out of Golden.  A steady stream of traffic flowed in both directions on Highway 93.  November air felt mountain crisp, the sky a cloudless blue, the perfect day for a final farewell to Grandpa Robert.  

     Riding shotgun, Carol fussed with a map.  "I don't see Mistwillow anywhere." Her voice seethed with frustration. 

     “Look closer.” George didn't dare glace at the map himself. He had to keep a watchful eye on the traffic-clogged winding road.  “It’s gotta be there somewhere.”

     An oncoming semi blew past, buffeting the SUV.

     Carol wadded the map like old newspaper.  “This is a damn waste of time.”

     “Shh!  Don’t swear in front of Grandpa Robert.”  George indicated the back seat where he’d fastened a safety belt across Grandpa’s upright ceramic urn.

     “You’re crazy as the old man.”

     “He was smart enough to finagle us into doing this.”

     “Don’t remind me.” 

     Grandpa had left a final wish in his will:  Ashes to ashes.  Dust to dust.  Return me to Mistwillow.

     He was cremated fifteen years ago.  Since then, his urn sat on the mantle, awaiting the right time and circumstances for a trip to Colorado.  Grandpa Robert had been specific: his ashes had to be spread on November seventh.  Any year.  Didn’t matter.  But only in Mistwillow, somewhere on the road between Golden and Boulder.

     George sighed. “I wonder why this town was so important to him.” 

     “He made it up.”

     “And why today, November seventh?”

     “Are you listening to me?”

     Okay!  He had to admit something wasn’t right about Grandpa Robert.  Kooky.  That was the best way to describe him.  Actually he wasn’t just a grandpa; he was more like a great-great-great grandpa.  He’d lived to be a hundred and nine, his mind sharp as a pin when his heart gave out.  All those stories about being raised by Ute renegades, robbing trains, taking a squaw at fifteen, nobody believed any of it.

     And now this, Mistwillow, a town that didn’t exist on the map.  But George was hard-pressed to believe Grandpa would put a lie in his last will and testament.  The place where he’d spend eternity was at stake.  George had to give him the benefit of the doubt.  “There’s gotta be a sign along here somewhere.”

     A red sports car passed him doing ninety.

     Carol crossed her arms.  “It’s a wild goose chase, I tell you.”

     “Just keep your eyes peeled.”

     Rounding a curve, George tapped the brakes, an instinctive reaction to a dust storm blowing across the highway up ahead.  Speeding southbound traffic emerge from the dirty gray cloud as if it wasn't there.  Clenching his molars, George gripped the steering wheel as he watched the red sports car disappear into the storm without even slowing down.  

     George braked harder, but the dust swallowed the Expedition in a blinding gray fury.  Just as suddenly, the paved highway dropped off to a bone-jarring dirt road.  

     Grandpa Robert’s urn tipped over.

     “What the hell is this?”  George didn’t know whether to stop or press on.  The thought of being rammed from behind forced his foot off the brake.  Blowing dirt must've covered the pavement like drifting snow; they’d be through it in a few seconds.  He held his breath, but there seemed no end to the storm.  Odder yet, he hadn’t seen a single vehicle traveling either direction.  They were suddenly alone in a tunnel of churning dust.

     His throat seized.

     “There,” Carol shouted, pointing.  “The sign--it’s the sign.”

     Nearly obscured by whirling dust, a lone wooden post held up a crooked, jagged-edged board with the word Mistwillow scrawled on its face as if it were written with a trembling hand. 

     “How about that.”  He swallowed dryly.  “Grandpa wasn’t crazy after all.”

     “It’s not on the map, George.  It can’t be real.”

     “Seeing is believing.” He cocked his head to the back seat urn.  “We found it, Grandpa.”

     “Turn around, George.  I’m not kidding.”

     “He’s going to get his final wish, honey, his ashes scattered in the wind of Mistwillow.”

     “Go back!”

     The Expedition sped past the sign. It teetered and fell over.

     “The stage is comin’ in,” someone shouted down Main Street.  “The stage!”

     Jake shot up from his stool at the counter.  “Hear that, Marianne?  The stage.  It’s coming.  Robert’s home!”  He made a dash for the door.

     She dropped the glass she’d been wiping.  “No, Jake.  Don’t go out there!”  With the speed of the wind, she reached the open doorway first and blocked his exit.  “It’ll be the end of Mistwillow, the end of you and me...”

     Citizens gathered in the street, their gray and dusty faces wrenched with concern.

     “--And them.”

     From the swirling dust cloud, the roar of hooves pounding earth drew nearer.

     “My son is on that stage.”

     “Our son.” She grabbed the front of his tattered shirt.  “He’s the only reason we’re still here.  We exist in your grief, Jake.” She shook him.  “Without that, we’re nothing.”

     “But I want him back.”

     “And sacrifice us all?”

     “What’s to lose, Marianne, this eternal dust and wind, thirst that can’t be quenched, hunger that can’t be satisfied, our passions unfulfilled?”

     “It’s better than nothing, Jake.  Let the stage pass.”

     His sunken eyes hardened to granite. “I can’t.”  He pushed her aside and stepped out on the boardwalk.  This was the moment he’d been waiting for, the miracle, and no amount of nagging would keep him away from that stagecoach.

     Marianne slipped around him, put a hand on his chest.  “At least let the people of Mistwillow have a say.  You owe them that much.”

     “Their fate is already sealed.  I don’t owe them anything.”  He turned to address the crowd.  “My son is home.  Our day of rejoicing has come.”

     “Your day,” a man shouted from the dusty street.  “Your day, Jake Stratton.”

     “We made our peace,” a woman put in.  “Now you make yours, Jake.”

     Pounding hooves, snorting nostrils, and creaking leather approached at a heart-throbbing pace.  After all these years, he was about to see Robert again.  He could hold his hand.  Hug him.  They could toss a ball and go fishing under clear blue skies.

     “Meet the stage, Jake,” someone else shouted.  “Go to your son.”

     Marianne jumped in, “But Mistwillow will be destroyed.”

     “A little late to worry about that, don't you think?” November 7th 1882, the largest earthquake in Colorado history had leveled Mistwillow. There were no survivors, except Robert. He had gone to Denver that day.

    The dust cloud parted.  Six black stallions in silver harness broke through, knees rising with mechanical precision, hooves coming down like pistons striking the ground.  The driverless coach thundered up to Stratton’s Trading Post and groaned to a stop.

     “Go on, Jake,” someone said.  “Open the door.”

     He looked over the gray faces of his fellow citizens, saw relief in their windswept eyes.  “Thank you,” was all he could say, but he said it from the bottom of his tormented soul.  He turned to Marianne and hugged her. “And thanks for helping out with the store.”

     “Don't do it, Jake Stratton.”

     He kissed her sunken cheek and stepped off the boardwalk.  At the coach door, he grabbed the smooth handle and felt a tremor in the ground under his feet.

     “It’s a ghost town,” George said as he parked the Expedition in front of a broken-down building with a boardwalk, its wood planks rotted with age.  A canted sign swung in the wind: Stratton’s Trading Post.

     His stomach knotted at the sight.  Mistwillow, dusty and eerie, its main street lined with leaning and weathered buildings, was obviously part of his past, his heritage perhaps, something Grandpa Robert had wanted him to see.  But why?  What was the old coot thinking?

     “Creepy,” Carol whispered.  “No wonder it’s not on the map.”

     Tumbleweeds rolled across the deserted street.  As George watched out the windshield, he felt disjointed from reality, somehow transplanted to a bygone era.  Dust collected on the hood.  Already the Expedition’s black finish looked powder gray.

     “Let’s get this over with.” Carol shoved open the door.  “I want to go home.”

     A gust of wind swirled in.

     Turning to the back seat, George saw the tipped-over urn.  The lid had fallen off.  Grandpa’s ashes were spilled on the seat.  The remainder was still salvageable, he reasoned; set the urn upright, take time to say a few words before spreading Grandpa’s ashes.  But before he reached back to grab the urn, he saw Carol fighting the wind as she took hold of the back door handle. 

     “Wait!”

     She opened the door.  Howling wind rushed in and blew open the opposite door, creating a wind-tunnel effect that flung the urn out, shattering it on the ground.  Grandpa’s ashes suddenly became indistinguishable from the blowing dust.

     Fighting panic, George jumped out, scooped up dust and ash, and let the mixture sift through his fingers.  Ashes to ashes.  Dust to dust.  Return me to Mistwillow.  He looked up and down the windblown street, felt a presence he couldn’t explain.  “What are you up to, Grandpa?”

     Ground rumbling, Jake opened the coach door.  The dark interior beckoned him.  He moved closer, either out of curiosity or fear; he didn’t know which: curiosity of seeing Robert there, or the fear of Marianne being right about Mistwillow's final demise.

     “Robert?”

     The earth lifted and heaved.

     “Are you in there?”  He held on to the rocking coach, heard wood planks crack behind him.  “I’ve waited a long time for you.”

     “Father?”  The voice of an angel emanated from the doorway.  “Where am I?”

     Jake couldn’t hold back his tears.  “Mistwillow, son.  Let me have a look at you.”

     A gust of wind blew dust from the coach.  As the cloud dissipated, an old man appeared before him, stooped over, warty chin, nose bent, and hairy nostrils flaring.  “I knew you’d be here,” Robert said in a gravelly voice, his bushy gray eyebrows cocked at an angry slant.

     Stepping back in disbelief, Jake felt only repulsion for the creature standing before him.  Where was his ten-year-old boy, the blue sky, and the marching bands?  “You’re not my son.”

     “My name is Robert Stratton,” he rasped. “That makes me your son, Daddy!”

     The ground shook.

     “You can’t be.”

     “I’m a hundred and nine years old.  What did you expect?”

     Buildings splintered and crashed to the ground.  Falling debris crushed panicked Mistwillow citizens.

     “I want my son back!”

     “Daddy, I’m home!” Robert spread his arms like Jesus Christ.  “This is what you get for killing my mother.”

     A porch beam fell on Jake, knocking him over.  Marianne ran to him, knelt at his side, held his hand.  “Why did he say that, Jake?”

    Robert cackled.  “Wanta toss the ball, Daddy? Wanta go fishing?”

     “He blames m-me,” Jake sputtered, “that you died that day.”

     “It was an earthquake.  How could he?”

     Jake coughed up dust.  “Robert wanted us to go with him ... to Denver ... to the horse show ... but the store needed a good dusting.”  Jake now realized the irony of his miserable existence.  “He begged me to let you go instead, but I wouldn’t allow it.”

     The ground quaked, split like forked lightning.

     “Hold my hand, Daddy.  You got what you wanted!  Give me a hug.”

     Clinging to his wife’s arm, Jake feared spending eternity with his crazed son.  Only now did he understand his mistake.  “We should’ve gone to Denver, Marianne, but the store was more important to me than spending time with my son.”

     “It’s not your fault.”

     “I’m--”

     “Don’t say it!”

     “--Sorry.”  Jake’s grief turned to guilt, breaking Mistwillow’s fragile bond.

     Marianne screamed, crumpled to dust, and along with the entire town swirled away with the wind.  Robert collapsed into a heap of gray ash and was gone.  The last thing Jake saw, his skin peeling off, his hand and arm bones dissolving, and then nothing.

     The earth lunged one final time, cracking plaster walls in downtown Denver, the Boulder depot, and on the University of Colorado campus.  The 6.2 trembler was felt from Salina, Kansas, to Salt Lake City, Utah.  Mistwillow was forever lost.

     The blare of a truck horn sent George scrambling for the ditch.  “What the hell?”  He’d damn near gotten run over.  The highway had reappeared, the sparkling clean Expedition parked on the shoulder.  Traffic whizzed by.  He shook his head, tried to get a grip on what he’d just witnessed.  The dust storm was gone.  And Carol, too.

     Carol! Where did she go?  “Carol!”  Heart pounding with dread, he scanned the highway up and down but didn’t see her.  “Carol!”

     “George!”  She emerged from the other side of the SUV, windblown hair but otherwise unharmed.  “Are you satified now?”

     “Get in." He ran to the open driver's door, jumped in behind the wheel.  

     Carol joined him and buckled her seatbelt.  “What just happened?"

     “A bad dream.”  He started the engine.  “But you saw it too, right?  Mistwillow.”

     “I don't know what I saw.” 

     He turned to the back seat.  The urn was gone.  A creepy-crawling feeling skittered up his spine.  Everything had happened just as he’d seen it.  Grandpa had gotten his last wish.  

     “Let’s go home, George.  It’s over.”

     “Is it?” 

     He floored the gas and merged with traffic heading south under a beautiful blue Colorado sky.