“The boy was young and had all his hopes, while Deets was older and had fewer. Newt sometimes asked so many questions that Deets had to laugh—he was like a cistern, from which questions flowed instead of water. Some Deets answered and some he didn’t. He didn’t tell Newt all he knew. He didn’t tell him that even when life seemed easy, it kept on getting harder. Deets liked his work…yet he often felt sad. His main happiness consisted of sitting with his back against the water trough at night, watching the sky and the changing moon.
He had known several men who blew their heads off, and he had pondered it much. It seemed to him it was probably because they could not take enough happiness just from the sky and the moon to carry them over the low feelings that came to all men.”—Larry McMurty, Lonesome Dove
Every now and then, the memories returned; recollections of once known spirits no longer of the world: known faces with spirits left forever mysteries. Ryan remembered them in youth: young and eager, harder working than the most, that never seemed to want, but maybe needed, attentions readily shunned when offered. Ryan always thought the dismissal of such humility, but in retrospect, maybe it was a self-doubt, presence of a self-debasing force, absence of knowing one’s worth or having a healthful self-love. Maybe what they lacked was also why they seemed so driven, until something in them changed, and the drive died too.
He remembered them as they were then—fearless and combat proven. They would forever be that to him. He never saw them grow into their after-men, how they would change with age and further lived years. Neither did they.
He remembered Asher, who in a jealous rage did ugly things before turning the ugliness upon himself.
There was Reynolds, abandoned by one of the two things he loved most in life—the Marine Corps. Before leaving town and the only profession he ever loved, he took one last hit of an opium pain-killer learned as habit when the Corps no longer prescribed. Maybe it was an accident. Maybe it was intentional, but it ended with is other great love left as widow.
He remembered Lisordo, quiet and hardworking, never saying much and, days later, Cooks following in same. He remembered the last of their pictures, the emptiness in eyes, a despondency that shows when souls exist unexpressed.
Ryan knew and lived with the same eyes. He knew the feeling but not its meaning until reaching the after-darkness and viewing the same fate written on a history that did not live. Marshall had been the same as Lisordo and Cooks—disappearing into the kind banality of a good life—a respectable police officer in a quiet town, little heard of, until news found its way out without mention to reason why.
Why?
What drives one to release their hold—to commit in fall from the precipice of life’s fight—instead of will one more step in climb, to continue, however difficult the path.
Ryan thought of his own life. Maybe for some it was the absence of a precipice at all but a life of emptiness without challenge or purpose that drove men to give up, to determine to lay in the shade and die rather than continue without cause.
Ryan thought to his own Dark Day. For Ryan, it was a rope and not a gun. He drove alone with it for hours. He thought of it around a shelf in the workshop as he hated himself for drinking mind and actions into an oblivion the night before. Had he not hated and thought so little of himself, he might have tried; but when he imagined, the vision was of his own fucked-upedness not even getting that piece right and strangling—face turning red then blue—as his legs kicked with nothing beneath instead of a clean, sharp snap.
The morning of that despair, his wife left with kids and gave no hint to where they’d go.
His soul was empty. There was nothing to cry, nothing to feel…only emptiness. With the emptiness, rope, and dark thoughts: he drove most of the day.
She messaged him that night, telling him not to “do anything stupid.” Ryan answered that he wouldn’t, sharing nothing of his emptiness and contemplations.
He spent the night alone in confrontation with his broken-self. What next?
He held his grip.
His life possessed disappointments: in what lived and what did not, with what he had and what he went without. There was always reason for jealousy if one desired more or what already belonged to another. There was always reason for bitterness in cause from slights deliberate, accidental, or imagined. There was always reason to be cold when recognizing others’ faults, failings, and imperfections—humanness—discovered when living close to other souls. Life was full of reasons to be and remain broken. We and life become where we let our spirits linger.
Those days, Ryan held in Darkness.
Still, God works even in the devil’s designs. In the darkness, he saw the moon and stars; and on a star he prayed more than wished: “God, forgive me. Grant me another chance.”
The sky stayed clear. The stars held in shine, and come morning, he was granted blessing of new sky and another day.
Sometimes, that is all one needs to begin and change it all.