Consider All the Possibilities

by MICHAEL SMITH

It was unseasonably warm in Paiute that first weekend of November 1997 when I began hearing voices. Three weeks prior, I’d had my abdomen opened to remove cancer near my cord—better to go in from the top and then repackage the organs, the doctor had said, than go in from the back. Laid up in bed, without the distractions of appetite and the usual comings and goings, given too much time and a calculating mind and a real crisis of mortality to fester over instead of the trivia I seemed to handle so well, I was paralyzed by all the what-ifs and what-nexts. All I needed to be brave and centered and live in the present was some very simple information that no one could provide—a promise that I would be cured.

It had been my friend Livingston's idea to travel south from the city to Paiute to get away from it all for a weekend of camping and biking and general bullshitting, he unaware of the full extent of my physical and mental demise—and of the doctor’s orders to avoid strenuous physical activity for four to six weeks—and had he known, he would have never asked. But he did ask, and I did not say no. 

Paiute is a ghost town in November, too cold for adventure, and it was vacant this time except for us, who, in taking this journey, had bound the sun to suit our desires: she rewarded us generously with a column of light wherever we went. The earth availed herself to us and held a spot for us less than ten yards from the River Zumbro, a wide, slow-moving body that beckoned: "Come near, and listen, and I will make you quiet inside." We watched her weave and slip and absorb our thrown stones fluently. We listened and heard nothing and I was still not quiet inside. She was not pretty and not ugly, not blue or green and not brown either. She was lined on either side by low olive-colored vegetation and high, jagged burnt-orange rock formations. The rocks that boasted upwards were too wild to be the work of God, too unyielding to be manmade, somehow birthed within the space between God and man.

We were not professional adventurers; we had only a flimsy tent and half a bucket of gas for the conflagration. Like Neanderthals, we sallied forth here and there, collecting dead brush and wood. We erected a perfect Scout teepee—the remnant of that training—two-thirds as high as Livingston. The fire raged easily in the dry night, shouting without sound and lighting up the ghoulish cliffs that would have crushed us but for the safety of the flames. The hometown minister had once said that the devil may have had a role in Creation, and I believed it now, seeing these looming formations sneer down while I looked up at the stars only inches—or an infinity—away. 

Now I believe that God lives on one of those big stars, far, far away, and that night I guessed at which star it might be and wondered how I would get there. Would the cancer get me there sooner rather than later, and if so, why did I fight the means to that celebrated end? Or was the cancer the devil’s creation to lead me to despair? Then I remembered the words of my mother when I had put the question to her: “Consider all the possibilities, and all of them are true.” It sounded right, but what the hell did it mean?

The blaze’s warmth brought awareness to my skin, my breath, to parts neglected by overconcern for others, and eventually all sensation became one: a feeling of incandescence, of intoxication without drink. Then the fire said: “Speak your secrets to me, and I will consume them.” Our tongues were loosed and Livingston and I talked of innocence and boyhood; our crimes as teenagers—mainly vulgarities and what we wanted from girls and withholding ourselves from what was possible; “I caught this morning morning’s minion”; distant lands; parents and siblings; life and death. The night drew on and we made our battle lines with more wood to the fire and retrenched again and again. We grew weak, stopped adding fuel, and our commitment to witness the night’s surrender dwindled with the flames. We faded into our bags in the tent that was not eighteen inches away. 

When the sun rose, it made further slumber impossible. We laughed at the holes in the tent—hot ash—and considered how to extinguish the still warm logs. Without announcing his intentions, Livingston grabbed one by the cool end and launched it into the river, a clever idea that we were both proud of. To our surprise, the log stood on its end and bobbed in the water, the hot end still in the open air, light orange and smoking. We were cavalier, rebels with no cause, and watched with anxious eyes as the log refused to sink or even twist on its side. The river pushed it beyond view, and yet we looked on for a time until the River Zumbro simply said: “Do not worry. I am full of water.”  

We changed into our biking gear and Livingston removed our off-road bicycles from the top of his car. He fiddled with them for a time until they were ready. The trail to Red Hat Mine begins as a dirt road for vehicles and ends steep and hard on top of the rock. The strength in my legs felt familiar as they pushed me along behind Livingston, who stayed close to me but could have easily flown up and back before I was halfway. His body was short, sinewy, compact; his gift was boundless energy. My gifts were different, mostly in my head, and for both of us, our strengths were also our downfall and our need for salvation in the first place. 

Several miles in, the trail steepened and my legs revealed that they preferred the flat to the hill. I alternately stood or sat in the saddle to rest parts of my legs while using others, or walked my bike at times to keep within sight of Livingston. I became aware that my stomach was an accordion to which the rest of my body was attached, and in the center of this accordion, running vertically twelve inches, was a blade of fire. I considered my incision, sensed it as something earthy and one-dimensional, more companion than enemy, as part of my body but external to myself, and in such light, I understood my wound and did not fear it. From above, the sun singed my brow and the tops of my legs and wrung salt into my eyes and mouth.

The path turned to boulder and angled sharply upwards. I unsaddled for a moment of rest and water. The sky was pure blue and cloudless; I was ashamed—I had not noticed. Resting, I gave in to temptation, recalled the precise words my doctor had used in delivering my prognosis, analyzed those words, weighed them, connected them with his facial expressions, projected statistics through time, ruled myself into or out of various risk categories. Then the hill interrupted in a commanding voice: “I am here, climb me. Your fears are not useful here. Your past and your future do not matter to me. Climb me! Climb me! Climb me.”  

I wept, asked the mountain’s forgiveness, and resaddled. I cannot say that I did not again dismount or that I did not fall. I pushed at times as much as half a pedal more than I thought possible, and sometimes this was enough to keep momentum, sometimes not. On occasion, Livingston’s tire tracks were visible in sand on top of the rock, giving clues about which way he had climbed; this failed generally since he was stronger than me, but at least twice it was a way I had not thought of, and it did work. I modified my approach, moved back in my seat to keep balance, but lost power; I moved up to gain leverage and was front heavy and toppled down more than once, but knew to take the blows on my shoulders instead of my wrists.  

Without warning, the trail delivered us to a wide, flat sheet of rock, maybe half a mile round, and Livingston stopped for the first time. The zenith. But there were no signs or guest books or cameras; nothing to touch as proof. “Come over here,” said Livingston, who had walked another fifty yards ahead. “See that over there?” He pointed at a formation in the distance—more like a sombrero on a slant, rust in color, but it more than sufficed as Red Hat. Was her shape intentional or accidental? Then Red Hat said: “Remember me.” Livingston knelt down, found three flat pebbles, and stacked them on top of each other. I did likewise, shutting my eyes and pressing my fingers into each before making the altar. I would like to think that both monuments still stand today, but I know better.    

The initial descent was an exercise more in patience and cunning than effort, letting gravity pull the bike down while navigating over and around the boulders. But Livingston’s best moment was still ahead, for once back on the dusty access road, my legs quit. I say my legs quit and not I quit because there was strength and intention still, but the tendons were rigid and locked and would not allow the muscles to perform their work. Livingston circled behind me, put his right palm and outstretched fingers just above my tailbone, and with his left hand on his bike pedaled the remaining miles for the both of us. I comprehended how much Livingston had condescended that day as I was moving faster now with him pushing me than I had at any time on my own. The only sign of his own fatigue was when he briefly removed his hand to unfasten his chinstrap. I told him I regretted having held him back and he replied that he was not the one with the stitched-up abdomen. 

Dusk settled upon us as we returned to camp. We would not sleep here again tonight. Livingston packed the car while I recuperated. Sitting on the bank of the Zumbro, I tossed a few pebbles into the water, finding a deep spot that made a pleasing tympanic echo. How many pebbles, rocks, boulders would it take before the river noticed? “Infinity,” she murmured. I laid my head back and took in the faint commencement of starlight, counted to ten, a hundred, a thousand—the same star from last night I had wondered about. Sensing an opening, the thousandth star said, “You can tell me anything.” I said, “I am afraid.” The thousandth star responded: “Close your eyes.” I closed my eyes and could still see the stars; these passed and I was shown the same blue cloudless sky I had seen earlier; this passed and I was shown a sky of black thunderclouds. I said: “Which is my fate?” The star said: “Why must it be only one? All are your destiny. The elements live in constant harmony and conflict: river and rock; day and night; mountain and valley. These are not opposites but are part of the same. You too are element.”

I had cancer, I did not have cancer; I would live, I would die; life is happiness, life is sorrow; I will return to God soon, I will return to God later; I will suffer, I will not suffer—all were simultaneously true, none excluded the other, and if I were bold enough, I could hold them all in my infinite heart and live in bounty and not fear. 

I was startled by the voice of my friend. “You ready to head out?” Wordlessly, within the expanse of a breath, we bade farewell to the elements and got into the car. City limits were visible within three hours; another hour yet and I knelt down, expressed gratitude, and climbed into bed. As for my friend Livingston, I would like to tell him thank you, thank you for what you did the first weekend of November 1997. But he would say, no, thank you, so it remains unsaid.