Oklahoma Review, 17.2

Ken Hada Wild Bill

It's 8:42 pm., Sunday night and I'm bored. I've been restless all weekend, passing time with non‐ descript distractions to thinly disguise an anger underneath it all. But now, as I sit listening to Nanci Griffith and switch between Hearts and Solitaire on the computer for the umpteenth time, you cross my mind. I get a glimpse of you, alone in your little white, native stone house up on a hill. No doubt by now you are laying in bed on this cold early spring night ‐‐ a night that can make you feel especially lonely because three days ago spring promised sunny 70 degree skies only to fall back to 40 degree blustery days. Like the daffodils that outline your front gate, we open to the sun only to be squeezed shut again.

I see you, Wild Bill, struggling from your elevated hospital chair turning for one last look around your cluttered living room before you extinguish the light and head through the darkness to your bedroom.

On the wall, pictures of a daring, smiling young cowboy standing by his prized horse "Trigger" penetrate in silhouette through the dusty twilight. You grieved like a widow for Trigger, but then a glow quickly illuminated your face whenever you spoke of him. Lower, by the light switch, A Farmers Coop calendar, yellow from bygone months lingers on a headless finish nail. Your handwritten notes reconstruct a busy month, a history overlooked. Beside your chair a table supports your whole existence as it has now been reduced. Your giant, red‐letter edition King James Bible is opened to the passage you last read this afternoon. Its dog‐eared pages contain favorite underlined verses along with sanctified thoughts scribbled throughout, as if Moses himself would be envious of your transcriptions. To the side a pile of unopened junk mail marketed for senior citizens who evidently have nothing to do but sign their lives away. A wrinkled pad with dozens of phone numbers is close by. The preacher and members of your old congregation, a few neighbors, the rural fire department, the sheriff, the ambulance, your daughters, the electric coop and rural water.

Alone, trusting an unsteady metal walker, you push your way through the dark following a familiar path between cedar door jambs. I can hear you now talking out loud to Jesus as you approach the room where you sleep. You turn your back, and with faith, fall downward into your ancient bed. Wincing in pain, with cracking knees you struggle to settle in. Your disfigured fingers pull the covers over you.

I wonder if you get lonely Wild Bill? Your boys have been gone for many years now. They are locked up in an institution, "for their own good," it was said. To keep them safe I suppose.

Still, I remember them happy, free, hard‐working, in love with life. Together you milked better than a hundred goats morning and night, not to mention tending the beef cattle, crops and the multitude of other duties that comes with managing 400 acres. Alone, you raised them. You made them responsible for their chores. You didn't pity them in their sickness. You taught them to believe. You let them play. You were a good dad, never mind what the social workers say.

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