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Indium

James Bates

    My dad worked his entire life at the Traillee Lead and Copper Mine, about ten miles north of the border and near where I grew up. He was a loyal employee but ingesting all of those noxious fumes back in the forties and fifties finally got to him. Air pollution at the mine began getting cleaned up in the sixties due to environmental lawsuits, but by then the damage had been done. They think it had to do with the indium generated in the production of tin, but really that wasn’t the point. Dad’s lungs were shot, and he got winded easily. He was also prone to getting pneumonia and by the time I was sixteen the energetic man who built a three-room log cabin with me by his side six years earlier had become a shell of his former self.
    That being said, what he lacked in energy, he made up for in drive and enthusiasm.
    “Jamie,” he told me that winter when we were sitting by the fire, “You know one thing I’ve always wanted to do?”
    I was drinking a can of Doctor Pepper which tasted great after two hours outside in the minus twenty-degree February cold cutting firewood. I took a slug, swallowed and said, “No. What?”
    He was sitting in his rocking chair sipping on his ever-present whiskey. It helped with his cough, he told me. Anyway, what he said was, “I’ve always wanted to go to Nebraska. To see the sandhill crane migration.”
    I finished my pop, crushed the can and tossed it toward the trash can to the left of the sink. I missed.
    Dad pointed. “Better go get it.”
    I did.
    It might sound weird, but I liked being around my old man. He and mom had divorced when I was five years old. Mom married a guy I didn’t like, and I was being kind a jerk about the whole thing. She had my younger sisters Karen and Fay, so when Dad suggested that I come live with him she didn’t bat an eye. “Done, deal.” Or something to that effect would have been what she’d have said. I wouldn’t remember. In fact, I never saw her again. She and her husband and my sisters moved to Alaska so he could work on the pipeline and live the life of a mountain man or something.
    At least that’s what Dad told me back then. “Yeah, that’s Zeke Battson for you,” he said, shaking his head. “The guy always was kind of a wing-nut.”
    Zeke worked in the mine with Dad. Until he left with Mom, obviously.
    Anyway, Dad and I lived in our family’s small frame house on the outskirts of town until he decided to sell it and move out to Skunk Lake. Don’t let the name put you off. It’s a secluded and pristine jewel of a lake tucked into the foothills and surrounded by evergreens and birch and even has a couple of islands in it which are fun to explore. Our cabin is on the east side so every evening we can watch the sunset. It’s really pretty. With me by his side, helping as much as I could, Dad built the cabin over the course of a couple of years and we’ve been living there ever since.
    Dad had to quit his job due to health reasons about the time the cabin was finished. Our income was a small pension from the mine, which Dad supplemented by doing odd jobs around the area. I’d go to school and Dad and I would keep the cabin neat and tidy. He did the cooking and sometimes we’d go fishing on the lake for dinner.
    My old man also liked to make plans. One of them was to go to Nebraska.
    “What do you think, Jamie?” he asked, after I’d picked up my soda pop can and tossed it in the trash. I threw another log on the fire and settled back into my rocking chair next to his. “You up for it?”
    “I get to drive, right?” I hadn’t had my license for more than a year and loved driving. Heck, I’d even go birdwatching in Nebraska if it meant I could drive down there.
    Dad coughed into his ever-present handkerchief, wiped his mouth and quickly put it in his back pocket so I wouldn’t see the blood. Which I did, but pretended I didn’t.
    “Yep. We’ll take the old Chevy. It’ll be fun.”
    The old Chevy was a 1952 Belair. It was painted two-tone turquoise and white and had a 325 hp engine that ran like a dream. So what if it had some rust? Like Dad always said, ‘At least it’s paid for.’
    I pictured driving the car for hours at a time and going to the United States, someplace I’d never been. “Sounds good to me,” I told him, barely able to contain my excitement. “When are we leaving?”
    “Your spring break is coming up next month, right? How about then?”
    I hadn’t ventured more than twenty miles from the place I’d been born and raised for the entire sixteen years of my life. I was up for an adventure, and there was no need to twist my arm.
    “Great!” I shouted, my smile almost splitting my face.
    “Good,” Dad said, and took another sip of his whiskey. Then he lit a cheroot. When he saw me watching out of the corner of my eye, he grinned. “Don’t worry about the cigar,” he said, winking at me. “What more damage can it do?”
    He was right. Probably not much.
    The following week found us on the road. Like I said, I’d never been far from home so just crossing the border into the United States was an adventure. The guard wanted to see my driver’s license and then checked the backseat and the trunk. He asked where we were going and why.
    “I’m taking my son birdwatching,” Dad said, proudly, coughing quietly into his handkerchief. “Down to Nebraska.”
    “Nebraska, huh?” The guard stood back and looked at our car. “Sure this baby will make it?”
    Dad laughed, “My son,” he turned and grinned at me, “could drive this baby all the way to Florida and back if we wanted.”
    The guard smiled at me and made a note on his clipboard. “Well, you’re set to go. You can stay for up to six months. Have a good time.” He stepped back and I carefully accelerated away.
    Dad slapped me on the shoulder, “See how much fun this is?”
    I wasn’t too sure what he meant, but I had to admit it was pretty exciting to be on the road. Over the next three days we drove nearly fifteen hundred miles to get to our final destination. Our route took us through Idaho, Montana and South Dakota before we dropped down into Nebraska and headed for the Platte River in the southern part of the state. I didn’t tell Dad that I was having trouble with my vision. Ever since I’d gotten my driver’s license the year before, my sight had been getting blurry. Not all the time, but it seemed that logging the long-distance miles on this trip weren’t doing my eyes any favors. I didn’t tell Dad, though. I didn’t want to concern him because I was sure he’d have made us turn around and go back, something I didn’t want to do. Plus, I figured I owed it to the old man to get him down to Nebraska to see the sandhill cranes he was so excited about. I had no idea how many years he had left in those tired lungs of his.
    Around dinnertime on the third day, we pulled off Interstate 80 and into the dusty parking lot of the Willow River Motel. We rented a room for two nights, then drove around to the back, parked the car and went inside. We dumped our duffle bags onto the worn carpet and Dad said, “Let’s go look for some cranes.”
    “All right,” I said. He was excited about seeing the birds and I was picking up on it.
    It didn’t take long to find them. We went outside and I could immediately hear their voices. Their call was a unique, almost prehistoric rattling sound that was like a Canadian goose with something caught in its throat. Except the crane’s call was lots louder. I looked up into the sky, but, unfortunately, my eyes took that moment to go out of whack and everything turned blurry. I couldn’t see a thing. I reached out a hand to stabilize myself against the car, hoping Dad wouldn’t notice. He didn’t.
    Instead, he said, “Look. There they are. Three of them.” He pointed to the north, across the interstate. “I’m pretty sure it’s what the experts call a Family Unit,” he told me. “The young are born in the late spring in northern Canada and Alaska. They feed until the fall when they leave and migrate down to the southern United States and Mexico for the winter. Then they migrate north, stopping over in Nebraska along the Platte River to feed and build up their strength for the rest of the journey. Hundreds of thousands of them can be seen during a six-week period between the middle of February and end of April. It’s one of the wonders of the bird world to observe so many of them gathered in one place. The young one is called a colt and it stays with the parents until they get back to Canada.”
    “Then what happens?” I asked rubbing me eyes furiously to get my vision back.
    Dad was mesmerized watching the cranes as they flew overhead. “The parents send the young one on its way, and then they have another one.” He looked at me and was about to add something but saw me rubbing my eyes. “Hey, what’s wrong?”
    “Nothing,” I said, dropping my hands, happy that at that exact moment my vision began to return. “My eyes are just tired from the drive, I guess.”
    He bent forward and looked closely at them. “Hm. They look okay. A little red. Maybe we should stay here and rest your eyes.” He coughed into his handkerchief. “Or if we go anyplace, I could drive.”
    “No, I’m good,” I told him, happy my vision was returning to normal. I jangled the keys. “Let’s go for a drive and find some more of those cranes you’ve wanted to see.”
    Dad grinned. “You’ve got a deal.”
    Our motel was about a mile from the Platte River. Surrounding it were fallow corn fields where the sandhill cranes would feed during the day. Then groups of them would rise up and make their way to the river in the early evening. They’d land in the shallow water or on sandbars where they’d spend the night safe from roving bands of coyotes.
    As Dad and I stood in the parking lot talking, more and more flocks of cranes in twos and threes and tens and twenties flew overhead. They weren’t more than one-hundred feet above us. I could even hear their wingbeats as they went by. Their necks were straining and I could see them blinking their eyes. They flew so close together I thought for sure they’d smash into each other, but they didn’t. They maintained a distance of what seemed like inches, their movements so coordinated it seemed like I was watching a ballet in the sky. I had never seen anything like it before in my life. I could understand why Dad was excited to see them. I was starting to feel that way, too.
    “I read there’s a place about three miles from here where a county road crosses the river,” Dad said. “I read it’s a good place to go and watch the cranes.”
    My eyes were feeling better and my vision was pretty clear. Clear enough to drive, anyway. “Okay, let’s go,” I said.
    Fifteen minutes later we were there.
    These days, County Road 49 crosses the Platte River on a wide concrete bridge built to accommodate the thousands of people who come to Nebraska each spring to view the spectacle of sandhill cranes coming in to roost on the river every night during the month of March. Back in 1968, the bridge was an old wooden structure barely wide enough for two cars.
    “Let’s park over here,” Dad said as I drove up. “Off to the side. We’ll walk.”
    I pulled off the road into the weeds and we got out of the car. The sun was setting to the west, coloring the sky with a soft orangish-red haze unlike anything I’d ever seen. Overhead, flocks of cranes drifted in from the nearby stubble fields, their wings barely moving, their low rattling voices adding a sense of mystery to the already extraordinary event taking place around us.
    Dad put his binoculars around his neck and we walked out onto the bridge. The river was nearly a quarter of a mile wide and not more than a foot deep, flowing with a swift current from west to east. We watched in awe as cranes in groups of tens and twenties came in and landed. Once settled, they would ruffle their wings and walk around becoming acclimated to their tiny part of the river, calling non-stop. They reminding me of a family reunion and everyone getting together after being apart for a long time, all the while chatting about what they’d been up to. In a way, their behavior was very endearing.
    Dad’s eyes were sparkling, and he gazed first at the sky then at the river, his head in constant motion. “This is so amazing,” he whispered almost in reverence, like in a church. Then he smiled and put his arm around my shoulder. “Happy you came?”
    The longer I was around the cranes, the more they awed me. “Yeah,” I told him, grinning, “I really am.”
    We stayed until long after sunset, and it was so dark we had to use a flashlight to get to the car. We drove back to the motel and walked across the road to a truck stop for dinner. We were quiet during our meal, both of us lost in our own thoughts. Dad was happy he had finally seen the sandhill cranes he’d been so excited about. Me? I was a little worried about my vision. By the time we got back to the motel it was pretty blurry again.
    When I woke up in the morning, I couldn’t see clearly at all; my world was all grey and hazy. I was scared, but thought if I could get to the sink and wash my eyes, the water would help clear my vision. Plus, I didn’t want to spoil Dad’s trip with my problems. But when I attempted to get to the bathroom, I smashed into the wall next to the door.
    Dad woke up with a start, “What’s going on?”
    I just stood there, afraid to move, my hand glued to the bathroom’s door fame. “Dad,” I told him, holding back tears of frustration. “I’m sorry but I can’t see anything. Everything is really blurry and hazy.”
    Dad took over from there. He went to the motel managers, a young couple in their early thirties, and told them of my problem. The wife had her husband drive us to the nearest big town, Grand Island. I saw an eye doctor who I will never forget, Doctor Grace Hamilton. She ran a bunch of tests and then sat us down in her office. She put on a pair of reading glasses while she reviewed the results. Then she peered over them and said, “So, Jamie, you’ve never had an eye exam before this, I take it.”
    “No ma’am.”
    “What’s the problem?” Dad asked.
    She looked at both of us, then said to me, “Jamie, you’ve got a serious problem with glaucoma.”
    “What’s that?” I asked, my stomach becoming queasy. It sounded serious.
    It sort of was, but the doctor explained the condition could be treated with eye drops. “You’ll need to take them twice a day in both eyes. I’ll write you a prescription.”
    Dad was concerned. “Is he going blind? Is he going to be okay?”
    Even though I couldn’t see her very well, I felt Doctor Hamilton smile as she said, “He’ll be just fine.” I could feel her looking at me. “As long as you take your drops, okay, Jamie?”
    I felt my cheeks turning red, “Okay.”
    Dad stood up, “I’ll take good care of him. First thing I guess we need to do is get that prescription filled, right?”
    “Not quite,” the doctor said. “There’s one other thing.”
    “What’s that?” Dad asked, sitting back down.
    “Your son is going to need glasses.”
    “Really.” He was quiet for a moment, and then I felt him grin. “Well alright then,” he said, turning to me. “Looks like we’re going to have to stay in Nebraska for a little while longer.”
    Doctor Hamilton picked up on it right away, “You guys down here birdwatching?”
    “Yeah,” Dad said, “The cranes.”
    “Well, I’ll get Jamie fixed up with his prescription and new glasses. You guys stay around for a few days to make sure the drops are working, and if they are you’ll be able to leave whenever you want.”
    “Great,” Dad said.
    She smiled and shook his hand. Then she said to me, “Come on, Jamie, let’s get you set up so you can start to see again.”
    We stayed an extra two days. I started taking my drops right away and was fitted for glasses later that morning. It took a day or so to get used to them, but that was fine. Dad drove the county roads and I keep him company while we looked for birds and watched the cranes. When the time came to leave, I was used to my new glasses and could see well enough to drive us home. We took our time, though, and spent five days coming back. We were in no big hurry.
    Dad passed away ten years later in the fall of 1978. Since that first trip, we’d come back every spring to see the sandhill crane migration. We stayed at the same motel and even stopped in once or twice to say ‘hi’ to doctor Hamilton. I think Dad kind of liked her.
    The spring after he passed away, I made the journey to Nebraska by myself. I brought his ashes with me and scattered them off the bridge where we had stood that first time watching the cranes coming in to roost. I waited until everyone had left, then took the urn out of my pack back and waited until the wind was right. The stars were blanketing the sky with a cosmic brilliance that can only be found far from the lights of cities. The cranes were on the river talking back and forth with each other, and the breeze off the freshly plowed fields filled the air with a scented earthiness only found on the great plains in the springtime.
    I opened the urn and let the wind take Dad’s ashes away. “Good bye,” I said. “I’ll miss you.”
    I swear I heard him say, in return. “I’ll miss you, too, son. Come back here every spring. I’ll be waiting for you.”
    You know what? That’s exactly what I’ve done every year since, driven down to see the sandhill cranes. And to be with my dad, too.

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