Kaylee nodded. “We understand,” she said.
Bill put his hand on Melissa’s arm and helped her to her feet. “Thank you, ma’am,” he said. “We’re ready to see him now.” He looked around at his family and barely nodded his head.
Colton was lying in a small white room on a bed, a tangle of wires and tubes coming out from under the sheets that were pulled up to his chin. His face was swollen and above his left eye a light gauze dressing covered a deep purple hole, like something that a body sustains on the battlefield. His chest rose and fell in time with the mechanical rasp of the respirator. His family stood around him in stunned silence. Nothing the nurse had said could have prepared them for the extent of Colton’s injuries.
Bill cleared his throat and nodded to Jake. “Would you perform the healing blessing, Jake?”
Jake and his father stood on either side of Colton and laid their hands on him. Jake was taking shallow, nervous breaths.
“Go on, son,” said Jake’s father.
Jake dipped his finger in the blessed olive oil. “Colton H. Bryant,” he said. “In the name of Jesus and by the authority of the Holy Order of the Melchizedek Priesthood I lay my hands upon your head and anoint you with this oil that has been consecrated in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.”
Jake looked at his father. Then he looked at Colton’s family. He shook his head. “It’s not the healing blessing he wants,” he said quietly. “It’s the final blessing.”
Bill nodded. “I know,” he said.
Kaylee started to cry.
“Oh my God,” said Tabby, “no.”
“He can’t be like this forever,” said Jake. “You know as well as I do.”
“I know,” said Kaylee.
Jake said, “It’s what he would have wanted.”
Merinda said, “I just want to open his eyes one last time then.” She walked up to Colton and gently opened his eyelids. “I know I’ll never see eyes so blue again,” she said.
“He doesn’t want to be around if he can’t even breathe on his own,” said Jake.
The nurse said, “You’ll need to leave the room then, when we…when we…”
“Thank you,” Kaylee said. She took a deep breath. “We understand.” She kissed Colton’s cheek. “I love you, son,” she said. “God knows, I love you. We need to leave for a minute, but we’ll be right back. You’re gonna be okay.”
Bill bent over too, but whatever he said to his son, he said so softly no one else could hear. Then he took Kaylee’s hand. “Come on, girl,” he said.
Everyone followed Bill and Kaylee out the door and into the waiting room where they waited in silence, as if their own breaths had been stopped.
Then the nurse came back into the waiting room. “You can go in,” she said. “He’ll slip right away now.”
Merinda was first to the door. When she saw Colton lying there all alone, his breathing stopped in the awful finality of the respirator’s silence, she cried out, “He’s all alone in here! We got to be with him. He’s all alone!” She ran to Colton’s side and took his arm and Kaylee took a hand and Bill took the other hand. “Everybody hold him,” Merinda said. “Hold him.” Preston held one foot and Tony took the other, Jake held one leg and Shad held another and everyone waited. “Keep holding him,” Merinda sobbed.
But Colton’s heart kept going, Da-dum, da-dum, da-dum.
“Say something,” said Melissa. “Say a prayer. Jake, say something.”
“Father,” said Jake, “take thy servant into thy hands and take care of him. Know that he was a good man.”
Still Colton’s heart kept beating.
“I brought him into this world,” thought Kaylee, “and I’ve got to be here to see him out of it. Oh God, please give me the strength to watch him die.” She stroked Colton’s hand. “Son,” she said, “I’ve got you. I’m watching. I’m holding you with all my heart. It’s okay, Colt. It’s gonna be okay. You did good. You did so good. You made me so proud…”
Bill squeezed Colton’s arm and he thought, “What she just said, son. It’s true.”
“Colton, you’re in good hands now,” said Jake.
“It’s okay,” Merinda told Colton, “we’re all here. You’re okay. You can go when you’re ready.”
Da-dum. Da. Colton’s heart stopped. Then it started again, da-dum, da-dum, da-dum, racing. For twenty minutes Colton’s heart kept beating. Sometimes it would slow down, even stop for a moment, and then it would come back in a panic. “Colton,” Jake said, “I promise you that for every breath in my lungs and every beat of my heart, I’ll take care of your family as best I can. You gotta let go now. Your time here on earth is done.”
Still Colton’s heart fought on.
“We love you,” said Bill. He leaned over and kissed Colton and said loud enough for everyone to hear, “I love you, son.”
Colton’s heart took one last run at it, Da-dum, da-dum. Dadum. Da-dum. Da. Dum. Da.
And then there really was silence.
No one said anything for a long time. And then Kaylee looked up at the ceiling and smiled through her tears, “Good luck, God,” she said.
Bill looked at Colton’s face, the hurt and the fight all quieted out of it now. “You said it, girl,” he said. “He’s gonna be one tough angel.”
48
RAINBOW
Upper Green River Valley
Colton H. Bryant was pronounced dead at 2:50 p.m. on February 15, 2006. For a long time after everyone else had left the room, Jake sat at Colton’s side holding his friend’s hand. He cried and cried some more until his eyes were almost swollen shut. After that, the nurse came and stood next to the bed and it was clear to Jake that he needed to let go of Colton’s hand now. “Holy cow,” said Jake, looking at the nurse, “he was my best friend.”
The nurse said, “I’m so sorry.”
Jake scrubbed his eyes with his fists.
“You take as long as you need,” said the nurse. “I can wait.”
Jake nodded. “I just got to do one more thing,” he said, “and then I’ll go.”
“It’s okay. You take your time.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” said Jake. He cleared his throat. “This won’t take long,” he said. “I don’t even know all the words.” He took a deep, shaky breath and then he started to sing, “If I should die before I wake, feed Jake. He was a good dog, my best friend throughout it all…” And then he hummed all the words he didn’t know and then Jake told Colton, “Okay, I’m leaving now. You’re gonna be okay. I’ve got to go.” After that, Jake walked down the corridor greasy with the smell of hospital lunch and back out into the world through the glass doors and into the parking lot. And there was the world, going about its business as if nothing at all had happened and luck and love were on the side of all God-fearing boys in blue jeans. None of which would ever be true again.
Jake, Tonya, and the kids left Salt Lake City an hour later. The storm had completely cleared by now, leaving nothing behind it but a blanket of white beyond the melted, grit-crusted roads. Such a stillness had settled over the land, it was as if the whole world had cried and blown and snowed itself into still exhaustion. Jake made it to Evanston before five o’clock. He only had one stop there.
“Where we going?” asked Tonya.
Jake said, “I just gotta make sure of something.”
He pulled into Front Street and stopped in front of Uinta Pawn. “I won’t be long,” he told Tonya. He went inside. The door made a cheap electronic bing-bonging noise. The place smelt of Colton’s boots, it was true. “Excuse me, sir,” said Jake to the man behind the counter. “I was wondering. Do you have anything in here belonging to Colton Bryant?”
“I’ll need to see a ticket,” said the man.
Jake pressed his lips together and looked above the man’s head at a mount of a four-point buck.
“No ticket, no deal,” said the man, turning away.
Jake said, “Colton’s dead, sir.”
There was a silence.<
br />
A tear rolled down Jake’s cheek. “Can you just give me his stuff?” he said. “I’ll pay.”
“So help me,” said the man, hurrying to the back of the shop. “I know you, you’re always paying his ticket for him, ain’t you? I know you.” He came back with Colton’s custom-made saddle, the one with colton in fancy western lettering on the back of its seat. He held the saddle out to Jake.
“He fell off a rig in the Upper Green last night. He died this afternoon.”
“Oh man. I sure am sorry to hear that.”
“What do I owe you?” said Jake.
“Not a cent,” said the man. “Please, just take it.”
Jake nodded and took the saddle.
“I just want to say…” said the man.
“Yes?”
“I just want to say, my condolences, sir. That boy was something else.”
Jake nodded and walked back out into the silent world with the saddle, climbed into the pickup, and got back on the road north.
Even the wind had stopped blowing, here, where the wind never ceases and the great, ponderous windmills on the ridge above I-89 looked frozen, they were so still. After an hour, Tonya slept in the passenger seat with Jake’s coat pulled up to her chin, the kids slept in their car seats in the back, and Jake drove on and on, past the Cumberland Cemetery to Kemmerer and from there through La Barge and Big Piney and Pinedale and finally to their little house across the road from the mesa, just a mile or two as the crow flies from rig 455.
It was dark by the time they got home. Tonya put the kids to bed and Jake took a shower and went and lay down on the sofa. When she came back from the children’s rooms Jake was staring up at the ceiling.
“What if it’s all a bunch of complete BS,” he asked, “and there’s no God and no heaven? What if there’s no nothin’ after this?”
“Don’t say that,” said Tonya.
“Well? What if?”
“I’ll bring you some hot milk,” said Tonya. “Maybe you’ll sleep.”
“I ain’t gonna sleep,” said Jake, and then tears overcame him and he couldn’t speak.
“Okay,” said Tonya, “whatever you need to do.” She fetched some milk from the kitchen and turned out the lights.
Against all odds, Jake slept deeply until dawn, although his dreams were disturbed and fraught and several times in the night Tonya heard him call out. He awoke stiff and surprised to find himself heartbroken. And then it came back to him, what had happened. “Holy cow,” he said. “I hate that.” He sat up and rubbed his head and then he got out of bed and went into the living room where the window looked across the mesa. What he saw next made him shout. “Tonya! You got to come here. Tonya!”
Tonya hurried over.
“Look,” said Jake.
Over the calm sheet of snow that lay beyond the head of the trashed-out trailers in the junkyard next door and beyond the road, right above rig 455, there was a steady, bright pillar of the end of a rainbow, and not a cloud in the cold, clear winter sky.
“I’ve got to get pictures of this,” said Jake. “That’s exactly where he fell. That’s most definitely Colton.” He grabbed the camera, put on some boots, and walked out to the back of the house. He took several pictures of the rainbow, all the time shouting and bouncing around in the snow. “Holy cow, Colton, I see you! I see you.”
He ran inside and fetched his cell phone and phoned Bill and Kaylee. “I’m looking at a rainbow over the rig where Colt fell,” he said. “You wouldn’t believe it. I’ve taken photos for you.”
Bill said, “Ain’t it a bit soon for Colton to be starting his angel act?”
Kaylee said, “Since when did Colton wait around for anything?”
And then the light shifted and all of a sudden the bright column of rainbow was gone, taking with it almost all of that rough Wyoming magic. And then, after that and for days and days and months and months to follow, there were only ordinary days—commonplace Wyoming blowing-empty days.
49
A MILLION-DOLLAR PERSONALITY
Here’s Colton’s coffin being carried up the snowy path of the Evanston LDS South Stake Center so pitiful slow it takes your heart with it to watch the men, as if the weight on their shoulders is more than mortal man can ever carry in all this pressing February sunlight. You will recognize, by their shoulders alone, the men who act as pall-bearers from this story. There’s Preston and he’s taking it on the chin, as always, so his shoulders are square and solid. And you can see Bill who has folded up his feelings so they are not available to the reading public, but his heart is just about to burst, carrying his boy out in public like this, in a box. There’s Jake, a good half a foot shorter than the tall Bryant men. The coffin barely weighs on him, but his soul feels tied to the earth, it’s so heavy. And Tony is there, wishing he could carry Tabby’s hurt along with the coffin, and JR, Colton’s school friend, is also under the shiny, sharp corners of wood, trying to keep the thing moving forward and almost knee-buckled at the thought of how quickly they all went from boys to this.
People stop by Kaylee on their way into the church. “A million-dollar personality,” says one.
“A great guy,” says another.
“He was one in a million.”
Kaylee smiles and nods but she doesn’t say anything. She’s afraid if she opens her mouth she will start screaming and not be able to stop. Jake has given her a bottle of Tylenol PM. “Colton gave me one of these after my car crash,” he said. “You should try one. They’ll knock you out.”
Kaylee said, “I don’t believe in drugs.”
“Me either,” said Jake, “but I think Colton would want you to take these for a few nights.”
Now Kaylee is wondering if it’s the Tylenol that’s making her feel untethered. Someone puts a hand on her arm and says something and she nods. She feels as if maybe she could stop breathing and float skyward and be with Colton.
“Are you okay?” Someone else presses her arm.
And Kaylee doesn’t want to let Colton down, not for anything. “Sure,” she says. “Cowboy up, cupcake,” she says.
Melissa sits in the front of the church, pale and tiny, watching the place where they will bring the coffin. She’s trying not to think about where she is, trying not to feel this. If she doesn’t feel it, she reasons, maybe it isn’t happening. But then there’s the coffin and the pallbearers in their pressed plaid shirts and blue jeans and Bill’s wearing the custom-made cowboy boots Colton bought him for Christmas. The world is getting a lot blurry for Melissa and her heart feels as if it’s being torn through her throat.
Jake stands to give the family prayer and then they play the song “Fishing in the Dark” and well over half the congregation starts to cry and most of the men don’t even seem to care who knows it. The church is full to bursting. They’ve had to open up the gym too and that’s also full to bursting. They’re all there, every last single one of them. The little Kmart Cowboys, all grown up and looking at their shoes right about now. And there’s those girls from school. There’s most of Colton’s crew from his days of flow testing and almost everyone from the rig. There are his teachers and ex-bosses and the parents of all his friends.
Merinda, Tabby, and Preston give their dedications and all the time Dakota doing somersaults and cartwheels at their feet and then Jake stands up to give the formal remarks and he tells all the Colton stories. He tells about how Colton was teased as a kid and came up with the magical words, “Mind over matter,” to deal with the pain of almost anything that happened to him. Jake talks about Cocoa and about how she ran away. He tells about the time Colton tried to retrieve a goose for him and he tells about Colton stopping the train. He has considered telling the story about how Colton had his Old Glory hanging out that day on the cliff, but he decides against it. Although he does tell how Colton was the most unlikely saint that God could have sent to earth. And now the whole congregation has dissolved in tears and men are openly weeping and not even bothering to wipe their tear
s with their sleeves and the presiding bishop, who truly didn’t know Colton from a badger hole, looks out at the sea of stricken faces and his heart contracts so that when he stands up he finds himself talking about how Colton was sent down to teach all of us about forgiveness.
And then they play Sara Evans’s “No Place That Far” and everyone piles back out into the fierce winter sunlight.
The family and a few friends drive over to the cemetery and Jake does the graveside dedication and they bury Colton in the trousers Melissa’s mother just gave him for Christmas a month and a half ago. They have filled his pockets with ketchup packets and toy F350 Powerstroke pickups and they have stuffed a toy elk and a toy horse into the coffin with him. And then it’s over.
Or it’s just beginning.
Either way, Colton’s gone.
50
EVANSTON CEMETERY
Evanston, Wyoming
It’s been well over a year since Colton was killed, but you can still easily spot his site from anywhere else, spilling over with offerings like it had been freshly laid and still more freshly grieved upon. It’s as if Colton and his grave stand in for every boy who died too young from the violence of Wyoming’s way of life—cans of chewing tobacco, gallons of Mountain Dew, everything you can think of to do with hunting, horses, fishing, mountains, guns, and trucks. There is a hanging basket on a trellis next to flowers and a black ball cap (bleached by the sun to the color of sucked licorice in places) with the words western petroleum embroidered onto its front in orange thread. A plaster Labrador retriever sits patiently at the head of the stone with a solar lamp in its mouth, so that the grave will always have light.
The Legend of Colton H Bryant Page 16