A Horse Named Sorrow Read Free Page B

overtaxed by medicines; its heart that I loved and that loved me, the lips that first touched my hand, the eyes that looked too long, the say-nothing smile—gone and not coming back.
    And the elevator opened to the busy crisscrossing of suits and dresses and a newspaper vendor, and a young woman who just dropped her cup of coffee, transfixed over it momentarily. Will she walk on, curse, or look for a janitor? She walked on, the coffee abandoned, running in rivulets among the greasy, shoe-scuffed tiles that made the whole station look like an enormous public restroom.
    I rolled up to the booth so the lady could let me through the gate since the bike wouldn’t fit through the turnstile. She waved, went out and around, and, fumbling with her huge key ring, let me out with a smile. Then she ran my ticket through the machine and it buzzed.
    â€œYou’re short,” she informed me.
    â€œReally?”
    â€œTen cents.”
    I dug in my pocket and handed her a dime. What she’d said had reminded me of my father, since that word always did. Which was complicated, as I’d never met him. But he’d been short too. Until I was eight, I thought he was a dwarf. “If he was short, how’d he end up getting shot?” I’d asked my mother one rainy Saturday while we played dominoes.
    She’d given me the quizzical look over the edge of her glass as she sipped her old-fashioned. “Short doesn’t protect you.”
    â€œSure it does; he’s closer to the ground,” I’d responded, as if she were stupid.
    She’d sighed then, and, taking my little hand in hers, she explained what “short” was for the first time. He was scheduled to be heading home in ten days when it happened, and in Vietnam “short” was jargon for almost done with your tour.
    Like Jimmy, my father died in a hail of acronyms: ARVN and NVA, and VC, and NCO, and PFC, and LZ, and KIA, USA—and all the rest of them in that pile of papers my mother bequeathed to me on my eighteenth birthday. I counted and found that all twenty-six letters were involved; not a one guiltless. An orgy of acronyms; a PTA of them.
    Can I have the cherry?”
    She delicately pulled the maraschino out of her glass and handed it to me. Then she got up and headed toward the kitchen and her next old-fashioned while I went to put on the records because that’s what had to be done when I brought up my father. Otherwise, she’d watch TV and drink far into the night and not do the dishes and act curt the next day.
    My mother had a whole record collection of him . That’s where he lived, in their songs, and those that followed in the wake of his disappearance. Which meant we lived in the summer of love and then some, on up into the early ’70s, riding the wave of her once-upon-a-time as we played dominoes, mahjong, Yahtzee, and Scrabble. I’d memorize lyrics I liked and that I knew pleased her, which gave her no end of amusement: Feeling good was good enough for me , and Let me sleep all night in your soul kitchen , and Do you know the way to San Jose? I did, and pointed.

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    We parked the bike in the hall and tossed his gear in my cluttered, messy little windowless room, and I marched him grinning into the bathroom, which was miraculously empty. And I turned the lock behind us and ignored what came to six knocks during the course of our bath.
    Jimmy let me pull his shirt off and unbutton his trousers. It was no lusty come-on kind of thing either. Not at first anyway. It was just me preparing to bathe Jimmy. But I got all bunched up and heartbeat-giddy when I had him down to his shorts, and with sighing smiles we looked straight at each other and kissed long and crazy. I don’t remember how the rest of our clothes came off, but they did and fast, and the water making a racket filling the tub behind us, and his skin so silky and his scent so horse-sweat sweet—and someone knocking on the door.
    And