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Show taught me to ride and to handle horses. When he was in highschool I gloried in his exploits on the football field, quarterback, captain of the team. By that time I slept in a double bed with Davy, who got up with me, ate with me, followed me around. In summer with our dog we explored the riverbottom, swam in the Uncompahgre, hunted in the underbrush, picked asparagas, ace squaw-berries. I taught him how to do chores and how to shoot the new bolt action .22 with a six-shot clip, later taught him to shoot the new 12 gdttge pump action shotgun. I taught him to ride and we rode often, always, horses, horses, horses. When I was in highschool I played football with a passion, for my father and Henry and Davy as well as myself, though I ended up as a guard, blocking down there in the dust while halfback stars like Ross Jaeger ran over me to touchdowns. On cold winter nights Davy and I cuidLed spoonfashion in bed to keep warm. Usually I let him gof to bed first to warm it, and I would slip in later and move up very close to him and try to push him a little out of his warm place so I could get more of it, and then 1 would lie in the rich, heavy heat of my brother asleep, to the immensely silent, mysterious dark, happily waiting for sleep. But one night I grew overaware of Davy's breathing and was siezed with the thought that it could stop. In fact, it did stop. My eyes popped open with fear. We all do it, stop breathingland hang there in the middle of sleep, I & M we're testing the pale horse, but I didn't know that, I just knew he stopped for several seconds which seemed like minutes, and I was stiff with terror. For months after that I would lie in fear beside him listening to the irregularities and stoppages. It was not just his precarious mortality which terrorized me, it was also my powerfessness to do anything about it. In those shortjlwiAgr, dark«toe«*e days in Chicago I remembered my motherland dreamed of her warmth, how there had been no safer nor warmer place tnan in her lap, close within her arms. I remembered her smell; I remembered being sick and her cool hand on my fevered brow. It was almost worth beins sick to get |
