A story from Eureka, Nevada. The bar mentioned is a splendid one—a place of wild coincidence and strange visitations. That is, a standard country bar in Nevada. The woman I met there later took me for a ride in her pickup truck, which she drove as if she were piloting a rocket. I expected any minute to be weightless and looking in wonder down upon the earth.
She told me that afternoon: “We live in such rancorous times. When men hear us tell of any good thing happening, they call it sentimental. Such men, of course, are doomed.”
Because of a red-tailed hawk, a worn bolt on a pickup, and a tune played on a country fiddle, I gave birth to a girl on the first day of spring.
This is my story: one day I was driving along the dusty roads of backcountry Nevada, and that was when I saw the hawk. He was riding a steady wind out of the west, still and marvelous, as if he had married the air.
As for myself, I’d been living in a line cabin, trying to restore some order to my mind. I had been happy enough, and prosperous enough, working as an engineer at the University of Nevada; but I felt some terrible, acid shadow within. I felt as if everything was going exceptionally well, but that, lamentably, I was wasting my life. My mind was losing its suppleness and its future.
I took a leave of absence, moved to the line cabin near Eureka, and started to take my time with the world. I finally had a chance to read, for long hours, in joy. In the late afternoon I’d watch the sagebrush, spread out like a fragrant coverlet upon the desert, and attend to the light as it withdrew into the sky. I studied the coyotes. I followed the wind. I sought out the smallest insects.
It all led to that hawk. There he was, so inviting, because of his buoyancy and blessed concentration. I pulled over and watched, determined that I would stay with him, as long as he was there, even if it meant that he was waiting to fly among the stars. He hung there, gathering the grace of the blue desert sky. He looked in my direction, I swear, then let the wind turn him around in a long patient arc of wings and accomplished beauty. I headed on into Eureka.
On the far side of town, at about the same time, a car had stopped dead in a vacant stretch of road. Its U-bolt had given out.
By the time I got to Main Street, it was too late to do anything I’d planned. So I headed straight for a bar on the ground floor of an old lodging house, where I could read and take notes. I figured I’d stay late, down a warm whiskey, and head home. I was about to leave when an old man with a fiddle walked in and started to play. It was a lovely old country ballad; even the smoke in the bar wanted to stand up and slow-dance.
The young man whose car had broken down had walked all the way into town. He happened to be nearby just then. He was a musician, he heard the fiddle, and he came straight into the bar. And then straight up to me. I rose to dance with him. Right away, with their country smarts, the folks in the bar knew. After the seventh dance, they gave us a room. In that bed we traveled far into rough, sage-spiced country, where sweat is a form of light. The next day I took him home and we talked and made love, made love and talked, read books and walked and watched the stars—for weeks, and then months. We conceived a little girl. We will be together forever, in this world. Sometimes I think, in all the other worlds, as well.
If I had not stopped to watch the hawk, I never would have met him. If his car had not broken down, he would not have stopped at all in town. If not for the fiddle music, I would not have stayed at the bar, and he would not have entered the bar.
No one believes in destiny anymore. But this has not affected destiny itself. No one believes in beauty anymore, but the world is showing itself, beckoning us, hoping for us. No one believes in heaven on earth anymore, and so heaven is freely available.
No one believes in the old, sacred arithmetic anymore. If you add a hawk, a bolt, and a fiddle, what is the sum?