Your mother
stood over
the washtub
the steam rising upward

she poked the boiling wash
with what she called
her copper stick
pushing it down

and around now and then
wiping sweat
from her brow
and you stood watching

seeing her push
the washing down
with the stick
as if she were a good pirate

plunging with a sword
the bad pirates
from some skull
and crossbones ship

and when she lifted the stick
water fell back down
like grey watery blood
what’s for dinner today?

you asked
it’ll have to be cold meat
and beans and mash
as it’s washday

and I still
have much to do
she said
and yes it was Monday

and Tuesday was stew
and so you left her
with the washing
and imaginary pirates

and the steam
and heat
and went out to play
in the Square with Jim

then along under
the railway bridge
to meet Helen
with Battered Betty her doll

and take a walk
to the Neptune’s
fish & chip shop
for 6d worth of chips

and held Helen’s hand
on the way back
to the Square
then to that place

under the railway bridge
and kissed and left her there.

ELSIE FLIMMERWON, you got a job now with a jazz outfit in vaudeville.
  
The houses go wild when you finish the act shimmying a fast shimmy to The Livery Stable Blues.
  
It is long ago, Elsie Flimmerwon, I saw your mother over a washtub in a grape arbor when your father came with the locomotor ataxia shuffle.
  
It is long ago, Elsie, and now they spell your name with an electric sign.
  
Then you were a little thing in checked gingham and your mother wiped your nose and said: You little fool, keep off the streets.
  
Now you are a big girl at last and streetfuls of people read your name and a line of people shaped like a letter S stand at the box office hoping to see you shimmy.

.
The *** Down Show Down
Old Grandpa tune his fiddle with pride.
Uncle Joe on the old banjo
Dad he was willing to go on the old washtub.
I had my spoons in my hand ready for the old showdown.
In walked the Matfields with a smile on their face.
Thinking this hoedown was their place.
It all began in one face pace song after song and the dance was right on a faster pace.
Orange Blossom special was the Matfeilds last song.
But old grandpa had one more to be done.
As the cheer rang out old Rocky Top began to play.
The place jumped with joy and began to perform with pride.
Because old Rocky Top Tenn is our home town you see.

Washing Kai in the sauna,
The kerosene lantern set on a box
      outside the ground-level window,
Lights up the edge of the iron stove and the
      washtub down on the slab  
Steaming air and crackle of waterdrops
      brushed by on the pile of rocks on top
He stands in warm water
Soap all over the smooth of his thigh and stomach
      “Gary don’t soap my hair!”
      —his eye-sting fear—
      the soapy hand feeling
      through and around the globes and curves of his body  
      up in the crotch,
And washing-tickling out the *******, little ****,
      his ***** curving up and getting hard
      as I pull back skin and try to wash it
Laughing and jumping, flinging arms around,
      I squat all naked too,
                                          is this our body?

Sweating and panting in the stove-steam hot-stone  
      cedar-planking wooden bucket water-splashing  
      kerosene lantern-flicker wind-in-the-pines-out
      sierra forest ridges night—
Masa comes in, letting fresh cool air  
      sweep down from the door  
      a deep sweet breath
And she tips him over gripping neatly, one knee down
      her hair falling hiding one whole side of
      shoulder, breast, and belly,  
Washes deftly Kai’s head-hair
      as he gets mad and yells—
The body of my lady, the winding valley spine,
      the space between the thighs I reach through,
      cup her curving ***** arch and hold it from behind,  
      a soapy tickle                a hand of grail
The gates of Awe
That open back a turning double-mirror world of  
      wombs in wombs, in rings,
      that start in music,
                                          is this our body?

The hidden place of seed
The veins net flow across the ribs, that gathers  
      milk and peaks up in a ******—fits
      our mouth—
The ******* milk from this our body sends through  
      jolts of light; the son, the father,
      sharing mother’s joy
That brings a softness to the flower of the awesome  
      open curling lotus gate I cup and kiss
As Kai laughs at his mother’s breast he now is weaned  
      from, we
      wash each other,
                                          this our body

Kai’s little ******* up close to his groin,
      the seed still tucked away, that moved from us to him  
In flows that lifted with the same joys forces
      as his nursing Masa later,
      playing with her breast,
Or me within her,
Or him emerging,
                                          this is our body:

Clean, and rinsed, and sweating more, we stretch  
      out on the redwood benches hearts all beating  
Quiet to the simmer of the stove,
      the scent of cedar
And then turn over,
      murmuring gossip of the grasses,
      talking firewood,
Wondering how Gen’s napping, how to bring him in  
      soon wash him too—
These boys who love their mother
      who loves men, who passes on
      her sons to other women;

The cloud across the sky. The windy pines.  
      the trickle gurgle in the swampy meadow

      this is our body.

Fire inside and boiling water on the stove
We sigh and slide ourselves down from the benches  
      wrap the babies, step outside,

black night & all the stars.

Pour cold water on the back and thighs
Go in the house—stand steaming by the center fire  
Kai scampers on the sheepskin
Gen standing hanging on and shouting,

“Bao! bao! bao! bao! bao!”

This is our body. Drawn up crosslegged by the flames  
      drinking icy water
      hugging babies, kissing bellies,

Laughing on the Great Earth  

Come out from the bath.
Gary Snyder, “The Bath” from Turtle

Off the dusty
reckless trail,
my two angry-feet
stared back at me
from across my kingdom-
a claw-footed
tin-lined
copper washtub
manufactured in St. Louis
for wayward Western royalty,
just me and my feet.

From under the bubbles,
I swore there would be no trouble.
Between a thick-veneer of desert ****,
I told my toes not to be alarmed,
to hang tight,
'cause this was going
to be our night for peace.

The last thing I saw
as we drifted into serenity
was my twin 44's
hanging quietly
in my well worn holsters.

Yessum, there's were rare times
out here, out here
in the desperado-hinterlands,
where quick hands
could bury a man
and his two feet.

I felt my hands tremble
at the thought of tomorrow.
But for tonight,
this quiet peaceful evening,
me & my feet
were surely safe
from any
immediate harm.

Amen (for these peaceful easy feelings).

Wood popping in the fireplace.
Eating homegrown food at dinner and saying grace.
Baking bread on the old wood stove.
Picking peaches from the grove.
Taking baths in the old washtub.
Heading to the creek for a scub.
Working hard from dawn to dusk.
Going to church on Sunday was a must.

Chapter 13: An Uncertain Trail  
Cutty was once again headed down a trail with an uncertain end.  He didn’t feel good about the riders ahead or what their true intentions were.  Jimmy had said: “They are probably cowboys from the Bar Circle T Ranch,” but he had only been guessing.

He charged up the rapidly darkening trail…  

The only thing he was sure of was that he was forever duty-bound to a code that had taken him captive so very long ago.  It never mattered the circumstance or the odds of success.  When her voice called—and his honor was once again at risk—everything else became subservient to his sense of duty.

It had first called his name in Central Park over twenty years ago.  He had been hunting pirates behind a pond, on the east side of the park, when the message was first handed down.  It was delivered in the scream of a young girl coming out of a small cave on the far side of the pond.

As the bats flew out of the cave, all of the other boys ran.  Cutty never wavered, as he covered his head and charged.  Inside, was a defenseless seven-year-old girl who had wandered away from her nanny.  Cutty covered her with his jacket and led her back outside. As the other boy’s heckled and jeered, he never stopped or even looked their way.  That young girl’s name was Miss Shepperd, but Cutty had heard the nanny call her Destiny—Destiny Shepperd.

Cutty was now riding his five-year-old horse at a full gallop and the white sweat from the horse’s withers had covered his trousers.  His knowledge of tracking was enough to tell him that the shoe prints were becoming more pronounced the further west he rode.  He was gaining on them.

Five miles later, there was less distance between the front and rear hoof prints of the riders ahead.  They had slowed down.  They were now either cantering or walking their horses. Cutty decided to get off and walk his horse until he was sure.  He knew his horse could use the rest, and he needed the quiet to be able to hear what might be up ahead.  

He walked for twenty minutes, as the tracks in front of him became fresher and fresher.  There was no doubt in his mind that the riders ahead of him were walking their horses too.  

It was now late into the evening, and he thought he heard voices coming out of the trees ahead.  As he edged closer, he could smell wood smoke and hear the sounds of a fire.  Cutty knew the other mounts would smell his horse in the night air before he got much closer.  He decided to tie his horse to a tree thirty feet off the trail.  He had learned from the Gurkhas in Nepal how to move soundlessly through the brush.  He held his sword close against his body, as he advanced through the dark.

The trail started to enter a deep ravine.  At the bottom, he could see five horses all tied together.  Fifty yards past the horses was a raging fire.  These men were not worried about being seen.  Cutty listened for voices as he moved past the horses.  The sounds that he heard in the night air were emboldened with inebriation.

These Men Were All Drinking

“Good,” Cutty said to himself.  “A drunken adversary is only half the threat that he is when sober.  This adjusts the odds a little more in my favor.”  Still, Cutty wasn’t going to take anything for granted.  Five drunken cowboys, if that’s what they were, could still be a lot for him to handle.

He checked the cylinder of his Colt .45 to make sure it was fully loaded.  He didn’t want to repeat the mistake he had made when rescuing Adrian on that hill in Portugal.  After chasing the Basque Assassin, Bakar, through the hills above Lisbon, he had forgotten to reload after shooting at him and several of his men.

He was sorry now that he hadn’t asked Jimmy for his Colt, Model M1902.  It would have given him eight rounds in case the six in his Colt .45 were not enough.  The Colonel had always told him that, … “In direct confrontations, there is very little chance to reload.  Most fights are over by then.”

The M1902 was a semi-automatic pistol developed by John Browning for Colt in 1902.   It was an improvement on an earlier design.  The military version had a square and lengthened grip frame allowing it to carry an additional round in the magazine.  It fired eight rounds of .38 ACP from its six-inch barrel.

With his Colt .45’s capacity of only six rounds, Cutty would have to be deadly accurate with each shot.

DEADLY ACCURATE IS WHAT HE HAD BEEN BEFORE!
  
As he came out of the woods and passed by the horses, he tried to move quietly so as not to startle them and give himself away.  
The lead stallion whinnied as Cutty brushed by him in the dark.  The noise was loud enough to arouse two of the men and they came to investigate.  Cutty moved further off into the shadows until the men were satisfied that the horse had only been reacting to a small animal in the brush.  The two wobbly figures mumbled to each other as they walked back to the fire…

“We’ll teach that filthy redskin a lesson about wandering this far off of the reservation,” the bigger of the two said.  “His body will only strengthen our story about the missing cattle.  When we get done with this running iron he’ll wish we had killed him when we killed his horse.”

All five men were now seated again around the fire and passing two bottles of whisky back and forth.  There was no sign of Not-Many-Prisoners anywhere.  Cutty said a prayer that he was still alive.  Based on what the one cowboy had just said, he was pretty sure that he was.

But Where ?

A running-iron was a free-handed branding tool that allowed the cowboy to create a design of his choice on the animal with its hot glowing tip.  Unlike the forged designs of most branding irons, the running-iron allowed the brander to change, or go over, an existing design making it a favorite tool of rustlers throughout the west.
Cutty circled around the ravine to get closer to the fire.  The five men had continued to drink, and their words got louder as their attention span’s diminished.  As the sparks danced in mock adoration …

Cutty Started To Plan


Chapter 14: Right Toward The Fire

He looked down at the gleaming brass on his blouse.  As an afterthought before leaving home, he had stuffed it into his satchel.  He wasn’t sure why, but he thought that maybe—just maybe—it would be useful in some way.  The buttons were now alive in the distant glow from the firelight.  They would appear as multiple sets of eyes coming out of the dark.

Cutty looked intently at the five men as they continued to pass the two bottles around.  Their faces were greasy and unwashed, and they sat with a demeanor that gave away their intentions.  They were among the lowest of men ...
  
These Men Hadn’t Seen A Washtub In Over A Year

Cutty remembered back again to his cowboy friends in Abilene and Dodge City—they looked nothing like this.  They had been righteous and straight, and their posture and speech only reinforced their true makeup.  They were nothing if not respectful of those around them and totally dedicated to their craft.  Cutty appreciated that. Their loyalty to the ranches they worked for equated to his unwavering commitment to a life of duty and honor.

Those Men All ‘”Rode For The Brand”

He had developed a kinship and brotherhood with those cow hands back in Kansas, and he had made himself a promise to one day go back and visit them again.  He knew as he made that promise to himself, going back was something he had never been able to do before.  He hoped  this time it would be different.

“All right, who’s going first?” Cutty heard from the cowboy seated at the far end of the fire. “Who wants to put the first mark on that filthy redskin?”  “I’ll do it, Jack,” said a man seated ten feet to his left.  “I’m going to burn a dark groove right between his two beady eyes.”  
“OK, Pete; you and Bill go get that stinking Piegan.”

At this point, Cutty had not seen Not-Many-Prisoners, but he knew he had to be close.  The two men walked toward where the horses were tied and within five minutes were back.  Each man had Not-Many-Prisoners by an arm, and the Piegan Elder was slumped forward and struggling to walk.

Cutty Had Walked Right Past Him

“I don’t think he liked being tied to that horse, Jack.  He about pitched a fit when we cut the ropes and took him down.  Bill gave him a good jolt to the head with his Peacemaker to get him to behave.  I don’t think he’ll give us any more trouble.” “Good, you and Bill tie him to those two small cottonwoods over by the water.  Then we can let the real fun begin.”

Some Of These Outlaws Were Carrying Colt .45’s

Cutty couldn’t believe that he had walked right by Not-Many-Prisoners when he had entered the ravine.  “How could I have missed him so close in the dark?”

Not-Many-Prisoners had been tied cross-saddle to the biggest of the five horses.  It had been the fourth one back as Cutty passed by in the dark.  After tying him to the saddle, the outlaws had covered him with a canvas tarp making him impossible to see.  It also made it almost impossible for him to breathe.

Not-Many-Prisoners was lucky to be alive.  Had Cutty been able to see and untie him, it would now be two against five and they would still have had the element of surprise working for them.“I wonder if Not-Many-Prisoners knows I’m here?  He may have heard me as I walked by, especially when that lead horse whinnied, and has kept quiet to protect me.  Or, he may have been in such rough shape, that he missed me entirely.”

Cutty wasn’t sure of Not-Many-Prisoner’s mindset but he was sure of one thing ...he didn’t have much time.   As the vile, and now drunk, outlaws tied Not-Many-Prisoners to the cottonwoods, Cutty hurried back to the horses.

He quickly and quietly untied them from each other—he needed to make a statement.  The cowboys were still drunk, and a drunken man’s imagination often gets the better of him.  He was hesitant to do it, but he felt he had no other choice…

He Unholstered His Colt


Chapter 15:  A Different Brand Of Justice

The horses had been bound together with a technique that Cutty had never seen before.  They had all been tied to a forty-inch branch that allowed them to move freely and graze without getting tangled.  It lowered down as they fed and then rose when their heads straightened back up.

Cutty vowed to remember this for the future.  It provided for both security and a limited amount of mobility.  It had been invented by the Cheyenne and was used extensively throughout the southern plains. The Colonel had been right when he said: “The Native Americans are noted for their prowess in stealth and tactics.” Cutty untied the horses from the branch, and—with three of the reins in his right hand and two in his left—started to walk them slowly toward the fire.

He knew his next move would be costly, but he needed to create as big a diversion as he could.  It would only leave five shots in his Colt, but the effect would be worth the bullet, at least that’s what he hoped.
.
He Reminded Himself About Hoping Again

The Colonel had warned Cutty repeatedly about hoping.  “Wishing for a certain outcome is not worth the mental effort you will put forth.  Keep your attention focused on the task at hand.  That will afford you the best chance of success.”

Cutty slapped the lead stallion on its **** as he fired his Colt up into the night sky.  At the report of the gunshot, all five horses took off toward the fire like they were being chased by the underworld god, Hades.  Entering the mouth of the ravine, there was not enough room for them to go around and avoid the fire.

They Charged Straight Through

The horses charged across the fire as the five cowboys looked on in drunken horror.  There was smoke and flying embers everywhere.  Two of the cowboys at the far end stood up and tried to run but were trampled by the horses before getting very far.  The lead cowboy, Jack, managed to get to his gun before leveling it in Cutty’s direction and firing.

Cutty redrew his Colt while dropping to one knee.  He sighted his big .45 and fired before Jack could get off a second round.  The bullet went straight through Jack’s right shoulder causing him to drop the big Peacemaker as he fell back away from the now-scattered fire.  
Cutty picked up Jack’s gun and ran toward where Not-Many Prisoners was tied.   As he cut his restraints, he handed him Jack’s gun saying: “There are five shots left in the cylinder.  Here’s six more rounds in case you run out.”

They both turned to face the startled cowboys who were now crawling through the dirt trying to make sense of it all.  With a KIAI that none of these rustlers had ever heard before, Cutty advanced.  One by one, he grabbed the men and threw them face down onto the dark ground.  He then yelled to Not-Many-Prisoners: “Tie them up with their hands behind their backs.  I’ll tie the one that I shot after I check on his wound.”

The KIAI Had Been For Not-Many-Prisoners Benefit

Cutty checked on Jack’s shoulder.  It was bleeding profusely, but it was a clean wound and the bullet missed any bone or cartilage as it passed through.  Cutty grabbed the bandana from around Jack’s neck, ***** as it was, and wrapped his shoulder.  “This will help to stop the bleeding,” Cutty said.  “Keep pressure on it with your other hand.  It’s better than you deserve, but you might just live if you keep it from bleeding out before you get to a doctor.”

Jack had been staring at Cutty’s blouse as he doctored his wound.  “So, you some kinda government agent?” Jack asked, as Cutty started to walk away. “I’m a Major in the United States Army here to investigate charges that rustling has been taking place on government land.  I can see now that the rumors have been true.  In addition, you were getting ready to commit capital ******.  I am ordering you, and your men, to stay here until my detachment comes back to pick you up.

If you’re not here when they arrive, they will hunt you down like the wild dogs that you are.  I need to get this Indian Scout back to headquarters. We know who you work for and what you’ve been doing.”

“You Are All Under Military Arrest”

Cutty tied Jack’s right hand to the top of his other arm. He knew he had just stretched the truth, but he wasn’t above doing that if a man’s life hung in the balance.  He looked across the scattered but still burning embers.

Not-Many-Prisoners had a look on his face that Cutty had not seen from any of the Piegan Elders before.  El Cristo had been the first to look at him that way when he had mortally wounded his son, Elligretto, in Seville.  His expression transcended the present moment as it acknowledged Cutty’s immortal warrior spirit.

Not-Many-Prisoners ran into the darkness in the direction that the horses had just gone. In less than ten minutes he was back with all five of them in tow.  “How was he able to find them in the dark and to have done it so quickly?” Cutty wondered.
  
Horses, when frightened or startled, will often run for miles without stopping.  He was sure when he fired that shot from his big Colt, those five had been both.  The Colonel’s assessment about Native Americans—a breed of men Cutty had only met once before in Abilene—rang true again tonight.

At West Point, Jimmy had been masked in eastern tradition hiding the best parts of himself.

Cutty Jumped On The First Horse As He Yelled

We were poor when I was young;
I had a washtub for a crib;
lug nut for a teething ring,
corn shuck for a bib.
But my crib did have a mobile;
on loan from dear ol Dad;
a worn and torn old photograph,
of a pork chop he once had.
He'd borrow it most every night,
when time to feed the family group;
and dip it in hot water,
so we all could have some soup.