Chapter Eighteen
Among the first things Rick and some of his friends did after we moved in was to repair pasture fences and secure the coop, which we promptly filled with chickens. The coop had a small enclosure so the birds could range safely outdoors during the day. We were the delighted beneficiaries of the hens’ efficiency (with essential help from the rooster) in converting leftover food waste into eggs that tasted bright yellow compared to the bland off-white flavor of eggs from corporate poultry. The horses, mules, and goats must have thought they’d died and gone to heaven with all that space and grass. Our domestic cats stalked and pounced on rodents while our dogs chased the cats, the rodents, each other, and the feral barn cats we had inherited.
My children’s and my activities that summer included unpacking boxes, cooking for ourselves and Rick and all the men helping him, eating, washing dishes, housecleaning, laundry, riding horses, milking goats, gathering eggs, hiking, gardening, baking, canning, swimming in the creek, and swimming in the pool. Rick’s activities included swimming as well as equine care, building, repairing various structures, and oversight of other people’s activities. It was a lot of work, but the results were commensurate with the amount of effort expended, as opposed to the naked, heartfelt labor an artist can put into a project for months or years only to watch it go unappreciated by an indifferent public.
Charlie had just moved to a Los Angeles suburb with good public schools. Toward the end of the summer we agreed that it was time for Molly, now nine, to return to the public school system. Levi would stay in Idaho with me. Rick’s friend Che, now called Richard, would live in the caretaker cabin with his son, who was the same age as Levi. I would homeschool both boys.
During the summer we had spread out and occupied most of the rooms in the lodge, but when I returned from delivering Molly to Charlie in late August (a delivery only slightly less painful than her birth) the cooler morning temperatures made it clear that we were going to have to contain ourselves in a smaller space within the lodge. The roof was poorly insulated, and there were too many cracks between the logs to chink them all before winter. Rick hung blankets over doorways to close off most of the rooms in the house. Our family would occupy two bedrooms above the kitchen, laundry room, and dining room. As with the multipurpose room in our cabin at Burgdorf, we would eat, read, sew, do crafts, and conduct lessons in the dining room. There was an indoor bathroom off the laundry room—two amenities for which I was very grateful. Though I already missed Molly, I knew she would thrive in California with her father. I had adapted to the size of the lodge and felt completely at home there. I was so glad to find peace and contentment in my new environment that I was unaware of a developing situation that would make it increasingly difficult to retain that perspective.
The seller had told us that a couple in their sixties, Thurlo and Dorothy French, were the social center of a small group of summer homeowners four miles downriver. A couple of days after we moved to the ranch we had driven down to meet the Frenches and let them know that although I was planning to lock my gates, they and their immediate neighbors were welcome to drive through, and so were their guests. As Rick handed the paper with the combination to Thurlo, Dorothy surprised me by saying, “I’ve been listening to your Tapestry album for years. I just love your song ‘Beautiful’!”
“Well, aren’t you nice to say that!” Then, quickly, to take the focus off me, I said, “Your home is so lovely. Did you build it or was it already here?”
Dorothy was more than happy to talk about herself and her home. Our conversation continued along typical lines of new neighbors getting to know each other. The Frenches were so pleasant and hospitable that on the drive back upriver I remarked, “Aren’t we lucky to have such agreeable neighbors!”
Our home lay along the Salmon River between Stanley (pop. 100) and Clayton (pop. 26). Farther downriver was the county seat, Challis (pop. 2,500).* In order to acquaint ourselves with our new community we had subscribed to the local weekly, the Challis Messenger. One popular column reported that this family had motored to Idaho Falls to welcome a new granddaughter and that family had driven to Salmon to visit an aging parent. Another column gave gardening tips while waxing poetic about seasonal changes in Round Valley and the surrounding mountains. There were obituaries, church news, 4-H Club news, and school news. I was inspired to characterize the writer of each letter to the editor with a simplistic, wholly subjective formula: if a writer expressed an opposing view she was opinionated; if he agreed with my view he was impassioned.
The sheriff’s report detailed a bleaker side of the community. One of the most common incidents, particularly in winter, involved someone driving off the road into the river. Local residents had a saying: “There’s two kinds of people ’round here: them that’s driven into the river, and them that’s gonna drive into the river.” I had no wish to be included in either classification. More often than not, an excessive intake of alcohol by someone was involved. With three bars in Clayton and a handgun in just about every household, violence sometimes erupted in the form of a shooting. Sometimes the consequences were deadly. A few months after we moved in, a woman living a few miles upriver was arrested and later convicted of killing her husband with a shotgun.
There were also public notices in the weekly paper. By law, it was required that the minutes of the monthly meetings of the county commissioners be published in the Messenger. I found the minutes of little interest until one day in the summer of 1981 when Rick called me over to show me what he had just read. The minutes reported that Thurlo French had come to the meeting to ask the commissioners to declare the road that ran through Robinson Bar public. Thurlo went on to say that he hoped that a declaration of public road by the commissioners would force Carole King to open her gates so the public could continue to drive through her property.
Excuse me??