A Horse Named Sorrow

  And then in the distance I saw a shore: green grass, RVs, geese in formation in the distance coming toward me. It was Unity Lake, and all my relations, there they were again, in their white towels, sweating in the hot sun. I swam with all my might toward them, pulled and pulled to get away from whatever held me. But I was moving so slowly, and the birds were coming so fast. The formation of geese grew into a huge black cloud of birds, cawing—a murder of crows and vultures that dove like pelicans into the red lake of blood, scooping it up in their craws that then dripped like those skull cups held by wrathful deities in Tibetan tankas.

  I thought of the bardo then, and figured I must be dead. None of it’s real, Jimmy’d read to me—just the illusions of your own mind. Beyond hope and fear.

  And then the red water roiled and boiled, and from it rose a great white Buddha, enormous and fat, laughing, with blood running off his body from surfacing, and a big red clown’s nose and a giant red smile painted on his face. A black crow perched on one of his shoulders, the wind rustling its feathers, and he was seated on a giant lotus flower where kneeled the twins in their little towels like altar boys, both with holy jars of Best Foods Mayonnaise, full and overflowing with diarrhea. And all my relations on the shore grinning crooked like Eugene does, with a sigh, and then a big hearty laugh.

  And something pulling my leg.

  “Tell all the people that you see … ,” the laughing Buddha sang out, quaking. It was Jim Morrison’s voice from that song me and my mom would sing to evoke my father.

  “Tell all the people that you see …” And he just kept laughing, he could barely get the words out—and then he sprouted ten thousand arms and they all swung out like “cut it,” and there was a huge clap, and then black stillness.

  My eyes opened to red sirens in total silence. There were cottonwood leaves all around me, like I was up in the tree. The light of day, but overcast.

  Then the sound came … voices, radio dispatch, boots in gravel, and snapping branches.

  Some man’s voice: “I saw smoke, figured a car had gone off the road … so I stopped … but there wasn’t any car …”

  I winced. I was being put in one of those aluminum stretchers on ropes. There were two men, one on each side of me guiding the basket through the cracking branches and leaves, as the ropes began to pull me up. I wasn’t dead, and I smiled at them.

  My relations.

  One smiled back: “You’re gonna make it, buddy, you hang in there.” A horseboy.

  It was raining lightly, and I opened my mouth and I drank of it, closing my eyes, and as I did I saw Jimmy, in full health, dye-blond and scruffy, his big brown eyes and his say-nothing smile. He held one finger to his mouth, and with the other hand he reached out a wet finger to place on my tongue like a eucharist, and then he blessed me: In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. And I knew then that I was forgiven, … and Jimmy … it must be day forty-nine … Jimmy’s being born.

  Somewhere near the top I heard the man’s voice again:

  “That lightning bolt musta split that tree right in half, and covered him over … only reason I went down was because I saw something sparkling. … I’m a scavenger … steep though … but I’ve found a lot of things on the side of the road—once a whole Coleman stove, umbrellas, flashlights, shoes …”

  I opened my eyes to see him, talking to a fireman, next to his F-150. The Frogman of Wyoming … one last greeting from Jimmy …

  And into the ambulance I was trundled; the doors closed, the siren sang, and they took me to Buffalo.