Rod Miller

From Father Unto Many Sons

“Prologue” from Father unto Many Sons

Blood and vomit mingled in a puddle between Abel Pate’s spattered boots. Head bowed, elbows on knees, he slumped on the edge of the board sidewalk, heaved, and added to the vile stew soaking slowly into the dust. Sweat beaded on his forehead and dripped without splash into the viscous mess. Again and again he heaved until only bile, then nothing but stringy spittle, dribbled from his lips and chin. 

Abel’s breathing slowed and the spasms stopped. He sat upright and stared without understanding at the knife in his hand, smeared with the blood of his uncle. Turning aside, he wiped the flats of the blade across the dead man’s shirt and let it rest on the stain. The body sprawled on the walkway next to him, head dangling over the edge, the deep slit across the throat leering at the boy like a wide scarlet smile. 

Using the bandana he had knotted around his neck, Abel mopped his face and pondered his next move. The town was dark and quiet. Abel guessed it would be three or four hours yet until dawn. He picked up Uncle Ben’s hat and brushed the dust off it and knew then what he had to do. 

He slid his uncle’s heavy knife into the shaft of his boot. He worked one arm out of the long linen duster, rolled the body over, pulled the other sleeve loose and tossed the duster aside. Sweat again moistened his brow as he hefted the lifeless feet and rolled the body off the wooden sidewalk that spanned a narrow gap between the stone block building that housed a bank and a wood-frame barber shop. He stepped down and sat on the street, braced his hands behind himself and with both feet pushed Uncle Ben’s remains under the walkway. Even for a boy grown to the size of a man, the dead weight made the job difficult. With the side of his boot, he scraped dirt and litter over the blood and vomit, turning it all to dark mud. Abel knew his work made no kind of concealment but figured it would buy him an hour or two come daylight and that would have to do. 

Dusting off his backside with both hands, he slid into Uncle Ben’s long coat. He lacked the dead man’s heft, but hoped it would not be obvious under the duster. Tugging the wide-brim hat low over his brow, he set off for his late uncle’s house, trusting the darkness and his feeble disguise to accomplish his mission. 

The Knowing

THE KNOWING

There ain’t a square inch of these thousands of acres 
I don’t know as well as the feel of the seat of my saddle.
I have ridden every rocky ravine and brushy gulch
where a mama cow might shade up a baby; away from
roundup and hot iron when lupine blooms and scents 
the air with a hint of sweetness. 

My horses’ hoofprints thread every square inch
of greasewood-stippled alkali flats and oakbrush-fleeced
canyons where big-shouldered bulls seek sun or shade
while burred switches swish flies and slings of slobber
slather hide from rump to rib, tails turned to kiln winds
seasoning the air with savory sage.

Nary a square inch of me is dry as lightning rips reeling 
clouds, releasing grass-greening torrents that lift dust 
and make mud. Raindrops become runnels become 
rivulets racing to alluvial fans; ruffled skirts hemming 
mountain ranges. A flash, a clap, a thunderbolt rolls with 
ozone odor that animates the air. 

Cloven hooves cut every square inch around the tank, 
braided trails that unravel as cows and calves line out
after watering, hunting tonight’s bedground. Doves 
mourn the fading sun, cedar branches cast off nighthawks 
to sweep insect swarms from silver skies as fired cast iron
smells of sourdough and supper.

Bedroll over every square inch of my saddle-tired frame, 
sleep comes soon and deep. Campfire crackles and snaps
unheard, soon dying to embers to await the stir that rekindles 
the euphoria of life all over again. A resplendent sun sneaks
a peek over eastern peaks then joins the morning, warming 
the fresh scent of day from the dew. 

Tabula Rasa

Written their history stands on tablets of stone in the churchyards.
from “Evangeline” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

TABULA RASA

Lost somewhere on the empty plains
Is a low spot that puddles when it rains,
Hinting at the location of my bones.
The only mark, the only impression,
I left on earth is this small depression
Out where the prairie wind moans.
    Out where the prairie wind moans.

Into my grave corruption followed,
Leaving a corpse empty and hollowed;
A cage of vacant bones wormed clean.
Dirt trickled down to fill the space,
Terra Firma subsided o’er my resting place
Out where the prairie winds keen.
    Out where the prairie winds keen.

All the way west in a broken line
Forgotten, sunken graves like mine
Are the only witness of our demise.
No rubbings, then, to reveal the tale
Of we who died on the pioneer trail
Out where the prairie wind cries.
    Out where the prairie wind cries.

Of granite tablets there are no traces;
No marble crosses mark the places
Of our rest by the westering trail.
No dates carved for death and birth,
Only a shallow in the silent earth
Out where the prairie winds wail.
    Out where the prairie winds wail.

And the River Ran Red

AND THE RIVER RAN RED
A song by Brenn Hill and Rod Miller

Bitter wind cries out of a moonless sky
canteens freeze to ice.
Horses stagger on, seventy miles by dawn;
victory comes at a price.

Drumbeats pound, songs resound
on cliffs bluffs above the river banks,
a Warm Dance to bring in an early spring,
and send the Great Spirit thanks.

     And the river ran red
     rolling with the bodies of the dead
     massacred on the banks of the River Bear.
     Blue-coated soldiers carried out killing orders there
     and the river ran red.

Hoofs test the edge of the bluff ledge
to the banks of the Bear below.
And the splash freezes quick and ice floats thick
in the black river’s flow.

Before the sun, before night is done
brass bugles sound the attack.
Through Beaver Creek ravine rolled the killing machine
and there was no turning back.

     And the river ran red
     rolling with the bodies of the dead
     massacred on the banks of River Bear.
     Blue-coated soldiers carried out killing orders there
     and the river ran red.

No surrender, no quarter,
now blood forever stains her shore.
With bayonet and gun, when their work was done
three hundred Shoshoni breathed no more.

      And the river ran red
     rolling with the bodies of the dead.
     And the river ran red.

From Massacre at Best River: First, Worst, Forgotten

“Introduction” from Massacre at Bear River: First, Worst, Forgotten

As rivers go, the Bear River does not amount to much. The Shoshoni who lived along its course call it Boa Ogoi, or “Big River.” 

In the well-watered East it would not merit such a name. Or even, perhaps, be called a “river.”  A run, more likely. A creek. Or—most appropriate given the events of January 29, 1863, along its banks—a kill. 

But out West, the stream the white men named the Bear is a mighty river and distinctive in its ways. 

It is the largest watercourse in North America whose waters never reach an ocean. 

It ends less than 100 miles from where it rises, but flows some 500 miles in the trip, draining seven-and-a-half-thousand square miles of mountains and valleys as it goes. 

According to the borders drawn on today’s maps, the horseshoe shape of the Bear River starts in Utah, flows north across the border into Wyoming, sneaks into Utah again but soon returns to Wyoming, then, in a sweeping left turn, leaves there finally for Idaho and continues its bend back into Utah, never to leave again. 

By the time the stream entered the consciousness of white trappers and mountain men early in the second decade of the nineteenth century, the Bear River, the Boa Ogoi, and its basins and canyons and mountains and valleys had been among the homelands of the Newe—The People—the Shoshoni—for eight centuries, at least. According to Shoshoni historian Mae Timbimboo Parry, they called this part of their homeland Mo Sa ad Kunie. 

Some forty or fifty miles as the crow flies, upstream from where the Bear River empties into the Great Salt Lake, a tiny tributary, whose flow today is occasional, drops onto the river plain and into the Bear on its right bank. On today’s maps—those detailed enough to trace such an insignificant watercourse—it is called Battle Creek, in remembrance of the events of January 29, 1863. 

Before that, fur trappers, and later settlers, called it Beaver Creek.

At Beaver Creek, and for some distance up- and downstream, the plains rise and the Bear River, over long centuries, cut itself a narrow valley. Curtained by 200-foot-high bluffs on either side, the stream meanders through an irregular mile-wide flood plain. On the right bank, the bluffs are cut and eroded and irregular, with easy access up and down. Above the left bank, however, the bluffs present a formidable obstacle; steeper, fewer cuts and coulees, more difficult to descend or ascend.

A short way to the southwest, less than a mile downstream from the mouth of Beaver Creek, hot springs seep out of the ground and on the coldest days spew plumes of steam into the frigid air. The warm water baths and high bluffs offer comfort and shelter to occupants of the valley from the worst of winter wind and storm, and made this place a popular winter camp for the Shoshoni for longer than anyone can remember. 

Among the Shoshoni today, and since January 29, 1863, the place is remembered as an unpopular burial ground. Not a cemetery. Not a graveyard. But a final, uncomfortable resting place for hundreds of their ancestors.