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hey said I was an athlete, they say I'm a cop, but I say I'm

a friend, a loving friend of women in a certain town, in the town where I was born, where I hope to end my days. The town is Waterfall Falls, a tourist stop along rural Interstate 5 well north of California. I patrol the streets downtown and the county roads that stretch into these mountains.

My dead little town whose sidewalks roll up of their own accord at dark would be all lit up from the stadium lights when I played softball here. We took the state championship that year. Whistles, cheers, the yelling, the kids in Nikes, the bleachers full, and later, the traffic stopping when they saw me on the street. I was fast, but I wanted to be more than that.

These mountains are bigger than I'll ever be, and older, and stronger. They range around us like a silent tribe of protectors. Their ancientness, their stubbornness, their Zen being-ness bring a serenity I've found nowhere else, though I long for it inside me.

And who am I? Who am I to forget to be humble, to dare to put our mountains into words? I am an Indian dipped in white blood, a child of this land and of the bigger world, one whose natures war with one another like most Americans. My blood is divided like the two forks of Sweet Creek that flow around Blackberry Mountain. Sweet Creek was named, after all, for my great-grandfather Thomas Sweet Water.

The cop patrols the Indian. The athlete runs from the white girl, although I don't know why sometimes, because we were all one family until some crossed the ice. The friend knows this twin creek rages through her friends. I watch them and see myself, though I feel very different from them. I watch them and know I am one of them, yet I am of this mountain, and I am descended from those who once were the original strangers to this land.

When I am not patrolling, not controlling the people who live here or visit, I sit in my office next to the post office, in this old brown wooden building we call the town hall. I sit here at the computer I use to track records and criminals and travelers. I sit here with my yellow paper pads and write the stories of my friends.

The Indian is an oral storyteller. The European is a writer. I put my friends in words to understand myself and to understand this life we live, though I've yet to understand either.

Still, I like the stories which I'll show someone some day. Cat probably, if I stand the test of time with her, and the kid in my life, Luke, so they know what treasures they are, are to me and to the mountain that cradles them in her hilly arms.

I'll never forget what Donny told me one time.

"I believe," she said, "that Chick loves me right down to this great big conflicted heart of mine which used to go off every which way like Sweet Creek when it turns into waterfalls. Because she does such a fine job of loving the dizzy old thing, it stays in one place now, almost as peaceful as those hills."

That was the day I realized, it's not about the waterfalls. It's about the mountain.