A Cowboy in Tibet, Mike Burns [reading like a writer .TXT] 📗

In the little town of Colives, Oklahoma, in the fading light of a mid-summer day, the red ball of the sun slowly sunk behind the flat horizon, with the twelve-storied Colives Hotel’s black rectangle standing beside it like a piece from a broken frame. The frame’s gone, and the picture’s escaped, thought Chad Elphick. I heard of stranger things in my time, though!

The twin grandsons in his lap reclaimed his attention. Chad III had helped ease the boots off his feet, straddle-wise, while Grandpa Chad had helped him along by pushing his backside with the other foot. Grady Elphick, the other twin, had relieved Chad of his cowboy hat earlier, but now he plunked it back down on the old, bald head.

The old man sat on his wicker chair under the roof of the spherical gazebo, and stared out at the horizon. Aside from its fading sun and the abandoned motel, it was also marked by windmills and powerline towers jutting up like straw stubble against the darkening blue. He was gathering his wits. He knew what was coming when Grady put his hat back on him. That meant they were shifting gears into story-telling mode.

There’s worse ways to spend retirement, the old farrier told himself.

“Grandpa, can you tell us an old cowboy story?” Chad III had plucked up the gumption to ask the question tonight. Usually it was Grady that asked. Grady looked suitably miffed that Chad III had beat him to the punch this time.

“Well, I’ll tell you, son, I mean grandson…of mine,” the old man began at random. “My grandpa had somethin’ happen to him once. He was a farrier, too, like me and my pa, y’ know.

“Anyways, he was in San Francisco, lookin’ for work, ’cause he’d just lost his job at a ranch up north. Somethin’ about the owner thought he was tryin’ to be too friendly with the owner’s wife, or somethin’ like that.

“So, he runs into this fella in a Okie bar along the Barbary Coast part of Frisco, and this fella asks him what he does for a livin’. Grandpa, he tosses back a whiskey, like, an’ he tells him ’Well, I shoe horses and such-like. I got my rig close by.’

“He was careful not to say too much about his rig or where it was, as there’d be plenty of people that weren’t above stealin’ a wagon loaded down with the tools of the farrier’s trade in them days--the forge, the flue, the bellows, the tongs, anvil, spikes, nails, horseshoes, molds, dies, ingots of steel…”

“The fella looks all thunder-struck, and says, all excited-like, “Well, we been lookin’ for a farrier. How’d you like a steady job for the next three, four, maybe five years, an’ at twenty dollars week?!”

“Well, grandpa thinks about it, and says, ’Sounds real interestin’. What’s the job?”

“This guys says to him, ‘Got a offer from a Chinee fella, an’ he’s gotta lotta money, an’ says he already bought him a shipment of other stuff, stuff he’s keepin’ secret, and gonna ship it to China, and from there up to his customer in Tibet.’ The Chinee fella was bein’ middle-man for the fella in Tibet. “

“Oh yeah,” said Chad III. “I heard’a Tibet. It’s the place in China that people wanna help get free. I seen it on bumper stickers on some’a them cars by the university.”

“Yeah…I guess.” The old man paused, having momentarily lost the thread. “You were sayin’ the guy in the Okie bar offered him a job in Tibet, an’ sayin’ he had a shipment’a stuff for Tibet.” This was Grady prompting.

“Right,” said Elphick. “So, yeah, my great-great-grandpa takes him up on his offer.

“They set sail from Frisco on a big clipper ship, and got to Hong Kong in China, right before the monsoon season. The weather bein’ bad, they had to wait there three months. ‘Course, there was lots to kill time with. Gamblin,’ the women of Hong Kong…”


The boys’ mother, sitting on a wicker chair of her own, intervened for the first time. “Grandpa, let’s keep it G-rated. Little ears…” He couldn’t see her in the dark circle under the gazebo, but he knew the expression she’d have on her face right now. “Right!” he said quickly.

“Anyway, they killed time till the monsoon was over. Then they busted their humps getting’ across China and to the foothills of the Himalayas--you know, the tallest mountains on earth--before the next monsoon came, the followin’ year. They went by horse, by camel, by carriage, by rickshaw, by palanquin, them and their whole baggage train of stuff they shipped across the ocean, ‘cludin‘ Grandpa Elphick‘s farrier rig--and they got to the foothills and settled in for another monsoon season.

“This time, they were stuck in a little village, with nothin’ to do but hang out with the locals--all ten of ‘em. All they did was gamble, drink butter tea, smoke opium--don’t ever do that, boys!--and try to cheat travelers outta their money--when they wasn‘t robbin‘ em. They kinda stayed on good behavior with the large, well-group o’ travelers in their midst, but they still bore watchin’.

“But there was another traveler with ‘em, a Tibetan monk name ‘a Blessed Lightning. Come to find out, he was goin’ to the same place they were goin,’ a place called Ganden. He thought they were goin’ there for the same reason he was goin’ there--to pay religious homage to a monk that was called the Ocean of Wisdom, and who was more or less the ruler of Tibet.

“Fact was, they were goin’ there to capture the Ocean of Wisdom, an’ take him to India with ’em, and hold him for a ransom in gold--the ransom to be paid to ‘em when they was in India, an’ ready to take a ship out of there, and back to Hong Kong, and then another one back to Frisco. This was what great-great grandpa Elphick had found out from the Chinee middleman durin’ the trip across China. The monk didn’t have no idea what they were up to.

“Come springtime, they were crossin’ the Himalayas. Durin’ a terrible snow-and-rain storm, a big bolt of lightning struck the spire of a temple way up on a hill as they were travelin’ in the valley almost directly below. The statue on top’a that spire was sheared clean off the spire, and tumbled down to the valley floor below, landin’ right in their path. Grandpa Elphick, the middleman, and Blessed Lightning the monk was all at the head of the column, and the narrow little trail was only about seven feet weed. The statue landed there and blocked their way. They took a good look at it--they didn’t have a choice!

“The monk, Blessed Lightning, he turned all terrible-pale, and started tremblin’ from head to felt-booted foot. They asked him what was wrong--had he been hit by fallin’ debris that missed them?

“ ’No,’ he said. ’You men are in terrible danger. The statue--look at it! Her hand is stretched out--and pointing at you!’ I was true. The statue was of a woman, wearin’ only swirlin’ skirts and big golden chains around her neck with large, gold-sculpted pendants, and gold circlets on arms and wrists and ankles. A massive, tiered gold crown sat on her head, on top of streaming black REAL hair. Her body was in a position of dancin’ wildly, poised on one foot with the other in the air, one arm pointed above her head--and the other pointed right at the Chinaman from where she lay on the ground now. An’ this is what had the Tibetan monk so scared and excited now.

“He was looking from the Chinee middleman to the statue and back again. ’This statue wasn’t that way when it was on the spire of the temple. It changed as it fell. The lightning bolt was no accident. A goddess--Palden Lhamo--is warning you away. SHE caused the lightning. SHE changed her statue’s shape. SHE caused it to point to you, because she knows you have evil aims in mind. SHE wants you to leave Tibet, and never return!’ “

“The Chinaman, who had acted friendly all durin’ the trip, now suddenly acted all hateful an’ haughty-like. He said ‘You superstitious Tibetan simpletons are all alike! Don’t be ridiculous! It was a bolt of lightning, and nothing more. Let’s push this thing out of the way, and be on our way.’ The monk looked horrified, then got all self-righteous and said, “I have passed by this temple dozens of times in my life. I KNOW what the statue looked like when it was on the spire. It was the goddess, but she was seated in the lotus position, not stretched out like a swimmer with a pointing hand outthrust! It changed shape, I tell you! It is an omen!’

“Now Grandpa Elphick spoke up, and said, ‘He’s lyin.’ That couldna’ happened. He’s probably tryin’ to slow us down for some kind of ambush. I had a Cree holy man try to pull the same stunt on me in Oklahoma once. Look around!’ Ever’body in the column looked around. The Chinaman, he had one of the Chinee porters open up a parcel on a yak’s back, and pulled out somethin’. What do y’ think it was?’ Chad Elphick paused for the first time, and invited a little audience participation here.

Chad III paused, and mused aloud, “I dunno. Ropes, to help pull the statue out of the road, maybe?”

“Not quite,” Grandpa Elphick responded. “It was a whole parcel’a Colt .45 six-shooters. An’ a box’a ammo, enough bullets to fill all six chambers for each pistol! That took a few minutes, ‘cause none of these Chinamen had handled a six-shooter before. They coulda been ambushed while they were fumblin’ around, droppin’ bullets off the side and jumpin’ ever’time one went ‘bang’ on the rocks below. But, finally, they had ‘em all loaded, and ready for the ambushers!

“Then the Chinee middle-man said, ‘We’re safe for now. Let’s throw this fool monk and this statue off the path and go on!’

“He started forward to do it, and several of the Chinee porters came forward to help. Grandpa Elphick held back for some reason, feelin’ uneasy about the whole thing, somehow. I think he was still thinkin’ about the Cree holy man, and the bad things that had happened to the people that killed HIM---but that’s a different story.

“Anyway, he hung back, an’ the others, they done it, throwin’ the statue and the monk off the narrow path, an’ the man an’ the statue bounced down the side of the mountain, end over end, the monk’s cries ceasin’ after the first collision with a boulder, the