| Subject: If it rains on my grave |
Author:
Holly
|
[
Next Thread |
Previous Thread |
Next Message |
Previous Message
]
Date Posted: 15:59:44 04/01/04 Thu
It was the first decent day in August. The only problem was, it was raining. I called my friend Beth.
"Do you want to go riding?"
"I don't want to go riding in the rain."
"Oh, c'mon, it'll be fun."
She really didn't want to go. She didn't really want to tell me no. She said, call the place, see what they say, and call back.
I called the place. "Will you take me riding in the rain?"
"You don't want to go riding in the rain."
"I do. I really do."
Silence. Then again, "You don't want to go riding in the rain."
"Yes, I do."
"No. You don't."
"Who is this?"
"Who's this?"
That was the first real conversation I had with Bob, on the day that I met two of the loves of my life: Bob, although that would take a few years, and my first horse.
I went riding, but not in the rain. Diamond T Ranch had a force field. I didn't know about the force field that day. All I knew was that it rained like hell all the way to Diamond T, but at Diamond T itself, the sky was sullen, but dry.
That day, that ride, ws it for me, in so many ways. I learned to ride, really ride, at that place. I learned to drive a team. I learned to tell a story out loud - sometimes, the story was an outrageous lie; sometimes, I just veered off the truth. But if I managed to entertain the dudes (paying customers), I could get myself a pretty big tip.
Most of this, I learned from Bob. His favorite catch-phrase: No guts, no glory. He usually said it just before doing something to scare the shit out of my horse (and me on the horse's back). One time when he said it, I was giving him a ride out to get his horse, both of us bareback on my horse. He gave my horse a whallop with both heels sending us on this alternating barrelling full-board running and absolute hissy fit bucking rampage. And then,
he covered my eyes.
We weren't right for each other. I don't know how we got to be boyfriend and girlfriend. We were friends all the way through high school, and it wasn't until I went away to college that we started to date once in awhile when I was home. Things could get pretty hot and heavy when I was home, then cool while I was gone. One time (that I know of), he brought a date to the ranch - and let her ride my horse.
Mostly, we just enjoyed each other's company. Especially when both of us were working. Especially on days when the Diamond T force field failed.
Usually, it didn't. Summers in Minnesota can stultify you between storms. You could work for weeks in drenching het without seeing even a drop of rain. Then, you'd get a freak out of a storm. Sometimes, a tornado, even, and those days were the salad days for the Diamond T trail guides. No trails to pull, no shit to shovel (back then, the horses lived outside and the shit just washed downhill), nothing to do but play the radio, oil tack and play Kings in the Corner. God, I loved the smell of neatsfoot oil and wet leather.
Mostly, those days didn't happen. We'd gather in the morning, excited about thunderstorm warnings, only to watch the clouds part around us - and answer the calls coming in.... "Are you open if it's raining?" "Will you take me riding in the rain?"
You don't want to go riding in the rain.
I know this, because one of the other things I learned was that the Diamond T force field worked a lot better over Diamond T proper than it did out on trail. Oh, and, um, stormy days called for a bra with "good coverage." I learned that one the hard way. Bob pointed. Bob laughed. Bob gave me a sweatshirt.
When we moved to the new place, the force field moved with us, and the rain became even more precious as the crowds became bigger and more persistent.
Bob and I broke up after college, got back together, broke up again, got back together. Sort of. It was the beginning of the first worst time of my life. In less than a week, my father went completely insane for awhile (turned out to be a medical problem), a neighborhood mom who'd been THE adult one went to if there was a problem one couldn't take to one's parents died suddenly, my horse came up lame and had to go to the U of M for tests, and Bob had a car accident and exploratory surgery to check on something the post-wreck x-rays had shown. That was Monday through Thursday. Friday, it was bad news from the U - my horse had to go down. When I got called to the phone a moment later, I thought Bob was calling to find out about my horse. He wasn't.
He was calling to tell me he had cancer. I said, "Bob, today is not the day to fucking lie to me," and hung up. See, Bob had told me when we were sixteen that I could kiss him on the cheek (bet). When I went to do that, he turned and kissed me, pretty passionately, on the lips. Bob had told me that Klansmen in Florida were using homeless people's babies as sharkbait. Bob told me he was going home when he was going to parties... without me. Bob told me that he and his friends had pulled a camel off a cigarette billboard and had taken it to the Minnesota Zoo (THAT turned out to be true). Years later, he would tell me that he didn't love me and that he was going to be fine.
So, I didn't believe him until his Mom called me back (and laughed about my hanging up on him).
Bob had more fun with cancer than most people have with a puppy. The doctors amputated his leg below the knee, so most people couldn't tell anything was wrong. One of his favorite games was to pretend to start a barroom brawl and then laugh at the drunken shock that ensued when his brawling partner would turn the leg around backwards.
My favorite (to my shame) was the time he told my friend's three-year-old, "Pull my boot off."
I left early the next year for Dallas, then L.A., then New York. My first worst time in my life had been mostly about other people's misery, but seeing things go so wrong so fast shook me, and I was bound to see and do everything before the same shit happened to me.
I met XH1 at around a time when Bob and I were talking about maybe giving it one more try. And I fell in love for the rest of my life. Bob knew it, and he knew I was too much of a chickenshit to say anything that might hurt him. So he cut me loose.
And then he died. His best friend told me that his last words were, "If it rains on my grave, you'll know I'm happy." And it did. The day of the funeral, it poured.
I struggled for years to wrap my brain around that whole thing. I felt like I'd killed him (because, after all, the world does revolve around me) by not loving him the right way or enough. I felt like I didn't deserve to be happy. And I felt like Bob should have told me the truth, so I could have sat at the death vigil, I guess. I lived five miles from the cemetary for five years, and I didn't go. I drove by it on my way to work and on my way home. I didn't go.
Finally going did nothing to free me of self-absorbed guilt, not even when the churchbells rang as I put my hands on the headstone.
Some days, I still don't feel free - which is probably why I am writing this. But the turning point came one summer day when I stroked what had come by then to be a cemetary habit. I stole some daisies (just a couple) from the guy next door to Bob. As I laid them down, it started to rain, and I could smell pasture.
And I knew what Bob had meant. I knew why he had chosen this place. And I knew it was time to quit being such an asshole.
[
Next Thread |
Previous Thread |
Next Message |
Previous Message
]
| |
Feedback: 