Louis Vuitton in Deer Hide, How Long Have I Been Gone?

copyright©Jerry D. McDonnell, 2011
Published in Over the Transom, #22, 2011




by
Jerry Dale McDonnell

Her hair was long past done: a homeless hairdo styled by the falling rain. Rags were far from riches. Shoes were worn Converse canvas. But behind her, firmly gripped in hand, a Louis Vuitton suitcase followed . . . on wheels at that. Her black-plastic, garbage-bag raincoat shining from the wet like patent leather shoes. Her wind-cured skin spoke of an age of maybe old. And all this on Market Street a few blocks shy of the district called financial. San Francisco, the Bay Area. I was history late far in the back of the line behind the Indians and the Mexicans. But I had a history there too. Once upon a time.

I watched her plodding down Market Street, slow stepping, eyes down but alert for danger like she’d maybe been doing when the coyotes and foxes shopped in the territory now the habitat of Macy’s and the Mac store . . . maybe back then carrying, or wearing, cured furs. I recognized the vigilant walk, each step purposely placed, the scouting eyes, the hunt of the hunter, now maybe the hunt of the hunted.

How long had it been? How long had I been gone? Not much in the telling of since the California Grizzly Bear now lived only as an image on the flag. They say it was the biggest brown bear ever, bigger than the Kodiak up north where I live now. An era, a way passed since Grizzly Adams walked his bear companions down these streets. Bears and bulls are now just financial shorthand.

My time wasn’t that long ago. Yet, in my time across the bay we hunted quail in the hills, caught steelhead in the creek that ran on the edge of the old Hayward High School campus. Fly-fished for trout up remote creeks from Castro Valley all the way to Pleasanton where now free parking at the shopping centers is considered a right as were the campfires of old. Rode our bicycles through Russell City where poor black people lived in weathered shacks (now industrial parks) akin to the edge of San Francisco Bay. We caught sand and leopard sharks. Sold them shark innards wholesale to a black man who sold them retail to a Chinese man in San Mateo. A six point muley buck once held his ground in the intersection of Grove Way and Strobridge Boulevard on the cusp of Castro Valley and Hayward’s invisible border while I was buying a quart of milk for Mom at the grocery.

Maybe that wasn’t a Louis Vuitton suitcase she was pulling. Maybe it was cured deer hide with a handle and wheels that have evolved from a time we can’t see through the dark, one-way glass windows of limousines. Maybe she’s been walking there since . . . maybe this all grew up around her. Maybe in her hunter’s eyes she can still see the bear stalking the deer. Maybe she has a name we don’t remember. Maybe a face we can no longer see.
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