Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
moustache. Then she raised both hands, as if to cover her mouth, and said, “Look, it's
Harry . . .”
I swing from high and to the right, so hard that later my shoulders ache, and the ax
landswithaloudthwack,stucksodeepinLyndy'sheadityanksmealongwhenhecol-
lapses.Iscreamout,“Yousorryassbastard!”Hefallsover,twistingandscissor-kicking
like a pithed frog. Then his eyes start jerking around, so I use a boot to hold his face
into the snow and look away, listening to the wind pick up, suddenly aware of labored
breathing, the biting cold onmy wet cheeks. After acouple ofminutes he stopstwitch-
ing. Blood is fast soaking the snow around his head, and a wet stain spreads high on
thefrontofhispants.“Lyndy,”Ihowl,“goddamnyoumotherfuckingsonofabitch!”I'm
wearingglovesandleavenoingerprints,meetnooneontheroadbacktotown,andby
nightfallthesnowstormobliteratesmytiretracks.OfcourseInevermentionawordof
this to anyone nor suffer a moment's guilt.
Life tumbled on. Donna had become a born-again Christian before joining me in Ger-
many, and as our religious beliefs diverged I became more emotionally removed. We
kept up a cheery facade for the next few years but divorced when I finished my master's
and moved to the University of Tennessee.
For more than a decade I had no contact with Marsha's family and scarcely spoke of
her, even to close friends. In 1985, though, as an organ played
Finlandia
and I walked
up a church aisle during my own father's funeral, her dad reached out from a pew, took
my hands, and began sobbing. A few years later Mom and I ran into Robin and Dee at
a Dallas cafeteria, and after a round of introductions Dee said that once in a while she
still has a good cry for Marsha. Then as we left my mother reminded me that police
had found Lyndy slumped over the steering wheel, mortally wounded and clutching the
.22 pistol he'd used to kill his estranged wife. Minutes earlier their child had been left
with friends; a fifteen-page note on the seat read as if the couple had acted jointly, but
a judge emphatically ruled the incident a murder-suicide.
“Well, honey,” my mom said, unaware of the anger I harbored, “maybe it's just as
well Lyndy took his own life.”
There followed Ph.D. work and an academic career, as I became absorbed in the prac-
tice of natural history. Along the way, I've taught at three fine universities, sagged under
academic fads and skirmishes, then bounced back by refocusing on organisms, having
learned to trust Alfred Russel Wallace's emphasis on life's paths instead of its peaks.
5
I studied rattlesnakes with Henry Fitch as both he and the Museum of Vertebrate Zoo-
logy approached their hundredth birthdays. I've been counseled in tropical ravines and
high Andean passes, mesmerized by the sexy elegance of maned wolves on the Brazilian
cerrados,
and humbled by a pissed-off African elephant. Attention to nature's intricacies
has convinced me that we are no more permanent than earthworms or oaks, and rather
than hope for eternity I revel in the moment and savor relationships, seeking joy in work
itself. Revenge and sorrow no longer weigh so heavily either, and when memories well
up I celebrate the special qualities of lost loved ones. I recall a young woman's cheerful
smile, reflect on my father's decency and admire how brother Will resembles him.
Still, though, as Jim Harrison said in
Legends of the Fall:
“Who reasons death any-
