Bonnie and Clyde Files 40

Snow graced the path along the river. Clyde took point, Bonnie followed, and I brought up the rear. My phone registered a temperature of 37 degrees. The sun shined, the sky blued bright, and the current ran swift and clear. I wore black knit gloves vaguely reminiscent of something Bob Cratchit might wear. I blew visible puffs of breath and imagined them smoke from a fine cigar, a victory cigar I long to smoke, any victory, even Don Quixote ones.

I looked up to the clearcuts. The stark contrast of white upon black braced me. Nothing reveals the ugliness of clearcuts like the blanched beauty of snow. What else horrible is revealed to the world when beauty falls upon on massacre? I thought hard searching for another example, perhaps even one related to my personal life. Perhaps Bonnie and Clyde were involved.

We mushed through the ice and I noticed a hummingbird nest made of moss tucked inside a leaveless vine maple. The tiny nest held traces of snow and was quite possibly the most beautifully tiny thing I’d ever seen. A few yards later, I stopped for a treat break and to admire the leaning alder that leans another inch or two with every new visit. One day it will lean no more and vanish down the watershed. No one will hear it vanish. I’d sort of like to do the same thing when my time comes to journey down watershed. Only a superstitious fool thinks you’re going to travel upward to begin the next life and not down, not to hell, but down the watershed to the ocean, to be reborn in the birth of all things living.

I tossed a stick into the water and spooked some ducks. A blue heron lifted off from the pasture across the river. Something caught my eye in the middle of the channel, something yellow and rectangular, resting on the bottom. I moved toward the river’s edge for a closer inspection, a trait rapidly disappearing from American cultural life in the digital age. Bonnie and Clyde tailed me. Dogs are always up for closer inspection. They find truth that way. They can smell it. Smell my truth world.

That something in the river was an Oregon license plate. I couldn’t read the numbers but I knew it came from an Oregon vehicle and the design hailed long before the era when Oregon drivers got to choose a design (and cause) and pay for the privilege of doing so.

How did that license plate come to rest at the bottom of the Lewis and Clark River? I wanted that plate. I wanted to run it through DMV records and investigate an unreported murder or reported missing person. Perhaps I might discover the truth or a truth.

The bank was too steep. The water too cold. I’d have to wait for summer, but where I would be this summer? By that time, who or what will have given me closer inspection?

We resumed our walk down the path. Bonnie and Clyde seemed almost giddy in the snow. They had the fresh spunk that always seems to arrive with snow in places where snow rarely falls. I had it, too. I stopped, barked out,“Treats!” You treat snow hounds.”

Bonnie and Clyde quickly reversed course and started galloping toward me, churning up snow. It was like a cavalry charge from a Russian short story or 800-page novel. I bent over, grabbed a fistful of snow, formed a snowball, and winged it at Clyde. He caught it in his mouth and kept charging. They bowled me over and I dished out treats in surrender.

I rolled another snowball and was about ready to stuff a treat inside when Clyde came up and wolfed the snowball down right out of my hand! I laughed aloud, Bonnie showed up, and we three jinxed it up in the snow.

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