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Chapter 18
Bob was so right. Or
was he? To relive his time of agony, the total darkness, the helplessness,
was the last thing he wanted to do. What was the bit about reconnecting
with humanity?
Having this tossed
at him during the end of this special event with Sally was muddling. He
was making an effort to open his world to others, wasn't he? The good friend
who Bob had proved to be might be wrong about this. It was beginning to
sound like psychological junk.
Too dispirited to eat
the supper Mrs. Mead had left for him. Ream sank into a near stupor, close
to wishing he could disappear into a hole. Talking wouldn't help, he was
sure. Nothing would, and a real relationship with Sally was nothing but
wishful thinking.
The clip-clop of horse's
hoofs, and the sound of a saddle creaking broke into Ream's depression.
He pulled himself up and went out on the porch, almost unable to greet
Gus. When he was led to say hello to Biffer, he leaned his head up against
horse's neck and stroked his mane.
"Climb on, you can
ride over to my place. I've got a camp fire going with a late supper and
we can chew the rag."
"Thanks, but I'll walk
too," Ream managed to say. He hadn't pulled himself together enough to
ride, and so they walked together, the three of them, the reins thrown
over Biff's neck. Ream stumbled once and then put his hand on the saddle
horn and walked along like an old man being guided.
Gus liked to
cook outdoors and had a campfire pit surrounded with red-brown Sedona rocks
between his home and the barn. There was coffee and a pot of beans bubbling
on the fire. He grabbed a bowl and dished out a portion. They sat on a
fallen log and Ream held the steaming bowl, facing the unseen fire, comforted
by the warmth, the smell of burning wood and the crackle of the flames.
"Thanks, Gus. You're
a real friend. I was feeling really defeated tonight."
"You got good reason
to be, all you been through in the last few months. It's gotta start catching
up to you. It don't ever go away until it works its way outside you. Something
like what happened to you happens to a man, his body heals in a way, but
what's inside him don't.
Something happened
to me in the war that was similar. I took a bullet in my chest and my whole
life was ruined for years afterward. The bullet come out the next day but
the poison took years to get out. You got to get it out and then bury it."
Ream reacted, "Sometimes
I wish the bullet had been in my chest too, right through my heart! What
good am I going to be to myself or anyone else without having even myself.
I didn't just lose my sight in the shooting, I lost myself."
"I know, it makes
you damn mad," empathized Gus.
"Mad! I'd do worse
than murder the jerk because of what he did to me. He didn't just take
my sight, he raped my soul. Just a punk, they said, needing money for a
fix. He was out on parole. The whole country needs to reconsider letting
those guys on the streets.
It was hot, and I stopped
for a soda pop. I was filling a large cup with ice when the lights went
out. I never saw the guy or heard the shot. I never saw a thing again and
never will. Just blackness, where there was sun and shadows and stars in
the night. No stars now. Just blackness the rest of my life. Worse, I am
in it alone and can't find myself.
When I awoke in the
hospital my head was bandaged, but I never dreamed it would be forever
that I would not be able to see. I was stunned and apathetic for those
first few days, waiting for the bandages to come off, with all the nurses
being very kind. I didn't know I was going to be blind. Maybe the doctor
didn't know either, but I think maybe he did. When he told me the news,
I wanted my hands around the neck of the guy who did it to me. I used to
be a gentle person, but until you're on my end of this, you don't know
the meaning of an eye for an eye. Only a blind man can repay the unforgivable.
I'll tell you what
really ripped it. A screwball shrink came into the hospital room afterwards
to see me. Well, this guy knew only how to stand on your neck while you
were trying to get up. The old kick-butt approach. At least now, thanks
to Bob Howard, I understand what really happened to me inside."
Ream knew all of what
he was saying didn't make perfect sense, but it was close enough, and it
felt good to lash out at something, even if it wasn't rational. The venom
had to come out kicking and screaming.
Gus tended the fire
and sat down again, this time next to Ream, and said, "I know-- in the
war, ten minutes of horror can steal your whole life. You can sob in your
sleep for years afterward."
Gus leaned forward,
his mind flipped back through the years. "I was in the second wave arriving
on the beach. Nearly everybody in front of me was dead or dying. Everything
was smoldering and quiet. We left the landing craft, then at the point
of no return, when it could hurt us the most, the machine guns opened
up.
The entire platoon
was annihilated except for me and my sergeant. I was shot in the chest.
Then an enemy soldier, who was no more than a boy, charged me with a bayonet.
He stabbed me in the stomach and was about to finish me. My sergeant, even
though he was wounded, shot the boy through the nose, blowing off the back
of his head. His brains fell on me, and that's the way I spent the night
and part of the next day, waiting for help. It was my sergeant's dying
act. I was left alive, alone. I was the lucky one. All I kept thinking
was, why me?"
Ream reacted,
"My God Gus, you've been through the horror too. We really do know what
happened to each other. It's the same wound, only inflicted differently.
Bob was right-- knowing you are not alone makes all the difference."
"Yup, there are too
many big questions running around in your head to try to resolve yourself.
At least Iknew other guys who had gotten shot up when I was in the hospital.
You don't know how broke up inside you are until you meet someone who has
been broke in half like a match stick too.
Maybe that's why I
feel a kinship with horses the way I do. You can booger them up real bad
real quick, and permanent. I've seen it done too often. But you can un-booger
a horse. It's what makes a real cowboy different.
Remember when
we talked about the Principle? About the one thing I said I would tell
you about later? Well, that piece of the puzzle fits here. Sometimes
the Principle can help mend something nothing else can reach.
One time I saw a horse
get tied up in his reins. Someone had knotted the reins together and let
them drop in front of the horse. The horse put his foot through the reins
and got hung up. He panicked and fought with everything he had to get loose.
He was thrashing so hard you couldn't get close.
He fought so hard he
exhausted himself and fell to the ground in utter ruin. The fear was so
great the horse paralyzed himself into believing he couldn't get up. He
just lay there frozen. He didn't know he could get up. Even when I un-tied
him, there was no will to get up.
Couple of ways to deal
with this. Snake says you got to put a bigger fear on a horse. He'll kick
it, and yell at it to humiliate it. If it doesn't work, he'll jump
on the horse and walk all over him. He says it brings the horse back to
its senses, and calls it his Big Foot Cure. There's something deeply wrong
in this.
Well I have a
different approach. I join the horse's world, I get down next to his head.
With a low voice and soft hands, I talk real slow and real calm till he
catches his breath. This gives the horse back to himself, and that way
he can mend himself. It's a cowboy's soul blessing. He'll get up
then.
You and I know the
difference between the two ways of handling it because we have had a horror
so great it got trapped inside us. There used to be a time when mentally
anguished people were chained to the wall and fire-hosed with cold water
to shock them into reality. You could say the same thing about Snake's
Big Foot Cure.
Snake don't know it,
but he's just passing on the poison given to him. Heard his father beat
on him a lot as a kid so it's in his nature."
"Snake's cure reminds
me of Bob Howard's Suffering Servant. Gus, have you heard the story?" asked
Ream.
"I think so. Something
about unjustly beating your servant to relieve your own pain. Like the
horse, the servant won't open his mouth to defend himself," said Gus.
"It sure sums
up Snake. Gus, there's something else been bothering me. I suppose I could
kid myself believing it all happened for the best, but I can't. I'm not
the kind of guy who can believe God doesn't let anything bad happen or
the stuff about his moving in mysterious ways."
"Have some coffee?"
Gus said, pouring Ream more coffee. "Lots of ways to look at it, just like
there are a lot of ways to handle horses. I'm not sure you want to hold
it against God. But that's up to you.
I've got my own ideas
about what folks call God, and I don't talk about it much because nobody
knows what the other fella means when he uses that word. Lots of special
ways to go looking for God in the city: religion, churches, even secret
ceremonies and substances. It just seems like you always get the special
way but not God.
Tending cattle, we
didn't have much time for church or scripture. Yet, when I got to camp
at night, my spirit was peaceful. I was wondering about this one time when
I noticed the same thing happened to others. I'd read it in their faces.
One year I worked up at the Grand Canyon taking dudes on trail rides. Thirty
people would come back from their ride with this peculiar radiant afterglow
expression on their faces. It was always there, yet most didn't take notice
of it.
All I know is,
there is a sweet transparent something, talking calm and slow to us out
there on the trail. It's holy, and it releases freedom, not fear. Delicate,
barely noticeable, it frees us up inside in the same way we help the hung
up horse by talking slow. Everybody has to find God in their own way. For
me, this sweet presence is an experience. It talks to me with something
bigger than words. It's not something I have to accept on faith.
Lots of viewpoints
around here in Sedona. Some say we're interdependent in the web of life,
and others say we should be at one with the universe. As for me, I am me,
and my spirit is free like the horse, belonging to no one else, not even
God, except as we exist in each other.
The way I see
it, every living critter has been blessed with dignity and unrevocable
freedom. That freedom wouldn't be complete if God stepped in with anything
more than the grace of just being there. I don't expect the calm presence
in the stillness to solve my problems any more than it could punish me.
You could fill a bunkhouse full of us who have been through a similar war.
There's a common bond between us that allows us to re-spark the deepest
part in each other. A part which is closer to us than we are to ourselves,
and it's alive in every living creature. Like in the horse who couldn't
get up. It comes from some place behind your knowledge or will. You may
have to deal with the blindness, but like the horse, you're all right underneath."
(It was the way Gus
said it, as if he had come a whole lifetime to this time and place, waiting
for the right moment. Bear, who was Gus's friend from the Cowboy Poets,
had done a similar thing for Gus once when Gus had a tumor in his neck
which was bulging like an egg.
Bear waited in the
background at the hospital all day while the nurses prepared Gus for an
operation. It was here Gus met Johnny, Sally's son. Bear waited for the
right moment. Cowboys know words are useless until someone can listen
deep inside.
There is a perfect
moment when the doors and windows to the soul are open. Bear walked over
to the bedside, took off his hat and said words which sank through Gus,
"You're gonna be all right." The tone and the inflection had a healing
effect, and the way he said it put Gus immediately at peace. It wasn't
because the operation would be a success, but because he was talking to
something deeper. Knowing that whatever happened, Gus would be all right
inside.)
With the same spirit,
Gus stood and put his hand on Ream's shoulder. He said, "I've been where
you are right now. You're gonna be all right. You have been all along.
Like the horse, you have tricked yourself into believing you can't get
up. You may not know this yet, but there is a part of you still living
that the horror never touched. You can't know this until something or someone
re-kindles it. It's there just waiting for that to happen."
With his hand on Ream's
shoulder, in that moment and in a cowboy's way, Gus spoke holy words. He
had given Ream back to himself and had passed along the spoken and unspoken
remedy which could mend a broken spirit. It was a "Cowboy Soul Blessing."
Gus was the kind of
man who could touch another man and provide comfort. When men really solace
each other, there comes a point when both find a deeper meaning in being
men. This concept was previously unknown to Ream. Even Ream's father had
not overcome the barriers between the two of them in this way. The realization
deep inside him opened the gate. Ream was set free, and he felt himself
flooding into sobs. Stumbling, he found his way to the horse and hung his
arm around Biff's neck. Gus knew to let him be.
When it was over, he
returned to the log. He and Gus talked about everyday things until the
fire died down. Ream felt like a load of concealed misery had been externalized
and left in the dying embers. Bob was right. When pain is shared, it is
easier to bear.
"It's late," said Gus.
"Ponduro, my stable hand, is visiting his family in Mexico for a few days.
You'll have the whole bunk house to yourself. Why don't you spend
the night?" |
