Page 457 - Some Dance to Remember

Some Dance to Remember 427

clothes and his typewriter into his Rabbit and drove north from the City,
across the Bridge, to the ranch.
Kweenie wrote to him. “I adore Armageddon. It seems you finally
understand what men do. January sends her love. We’re producing music
videos. Come down to see us.”
He traveled nowhere. Kick was always out there on the edge of his
mind. Warm afternoons he often sat on the exact spot in his field where
Kick’s helicopter had landed. His fever continued. He wrote a sheaf of
unmailed letters to Kick.

Sometimes now, I can go a half-day and you never cross my
mind. Then I see a man who looks vaguely like you. Dreams
die hard when they don’t come true. Loving somebody shouldn’t
make you suffer pain, but pain seems to be the essence of being
in-love. Maybe that’s why you warned me from this pain. I was
the one who was wrong. For all I loved you, I didn’t love you
enough. I wanted you to be in-love with me, and all that could
have done was cause you the pain it has caused me.

Sitting in the field, Ryan felt something mammoth fly between him
and the sun. He didn’t see it, but he felt its huge shadow pass over him.
He heard the chop-chop of its wings. It was not the multicolored bird that
Annie Laurie had hung over his crib. He felt primordial fear. He was a
man with a primitive killer beast, a giant hawk, circling over him, waiting
for him to drop. It was the first time Ryan ever experienced genetic fear
of being eaten alive.

14

For my part, in the next year, I became his frequent houseguest,
spending more and longer weekends at Bar Nada. One Saturday he dis-
appeared and I found him sitting in the chicken yard. Rhode Island Reds,
Barred Rocks, and Araucanas fought each other for the cracked corn and
lay mash he had spread across the ground. Ducks jostled the chickens
aside. A peacock and peahen strutted unruffled through the quarreling
birds. “This has become my Castro,” he said. “A chicken yard is everything
you need to remember about pecking order.”
I handed him an envelope from Kweenie. A rooster, turned on by the
flurry of hens fighting for food, mounted a Barred Rock who squatted
bored under his awkward pumping. Inside the envelope was a pink page

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