Читать книгу Komatke Gold - Benjamin Vance - Страница 6

As an aside, we all know people make many mistakes in their lives, some big, some small. My biggest was Myra. I should be enjoying our children today, but they were never born. You can’t do it over because you only get one chance … don’t you?

I still hang my father’s death blanket on my wall, when I have a wall to hang it on. I only hope my fathers’ spirit is somehow connected to it, because it wasn’t until the day of his funeral I found out what a good man he really was, and how many genuine friends he had.

During his dying ordeal he’d favored Myra’s attention and asked her for a death blanket and an eagle feather to be buried with. Myra managed to get both, thanks to her grandmother. She got the real deals and not some tourist wool and dyed turkey feather. Her grandmother hid the feather in his casket and said she wished he could have held it. At the time it was illegal and the mortician would surely have objected to anything else “Indian.” I think it was what the dying man needed though; right or wrong, and he knew Myra and her grandmother would do it correctly. He trusted her more than he trusted me. Now, I understand why. From time to time I think about what a nice funeral it was, despite the barren, dusty graveyard. We can’t all push up pretty daisies I guess! I’ve thought about it almost every day over the years, but I’d never physically gone back to Parker and its small, bleak cemetery.

After the emotional hospital episode, I felt a bit chagrined and guilty, but certainly loved. What was I to do? I was married and had no business being with another woman. Somehow I had to grow up and stop this foolishness. So … within and over the next five emotionally misty days Myra and I made love about ten times in a motel room in Parker, at MCAS, and twice while recklessly negotiating certain sections of U.S. 95. I’d never given myself to a woman so willingly, completely, thoroughly, madly and happily. It wasn’t long before reality began to rear its ugly head though. We hardly ate, but we talked a lot during that quick lover’s eternity spent together. I learned her grandmother was the crying lady at my fathers’ funeral. The “little bird” was Myra of course and Myra could not go to the funeral for fear of the appearance of being involved with me. However, once she realized she was in love, she threw caution out the panaptsa. We both did … greedily.

I had no real reason to stay in Yuma any longer. Myra had family and career responsibilities; I had family and Army responsibilities. Late one night she was lying entirely on my body, softly rocking with sleep breathing and covering me with fragrant hair and those warm tickle spots, when my wife called my motel room. I have no idea how she got the number, but there weren’t that many motels in Parker at the time and I wasn’t at MCAS, so you figure it out.

Women know! I don’t know how, but they do. It had been several days since my father’s funeral, and I honestly was waiting on death certificates and other final papers. I had three days of leave left and I must have sounded too happy during my previous calls from Yuma, because I thought she knew. Guilt cut in at my dance. Myra would normally have left before sunrise, but she left after the call, with teary eyes. We talked freely and loved each other more intensely, for two more wonderful days, and then I left for MCAS, Yuma and the East Coast, a world away from my spiritual “Home”.