Chapter Thirty-Six
Allie
When Curtis came over to my house that night, he told me about the close call with Darren. Given that he had never particularly cared for Darren, Curtis seemed unusually shaken up about it.
“The whole time he was down there, I kept thinking about how she had died,” he told me as we sat together on the sofa in the tiny house. “Praying to God, ‘Please don’t let another person I love die like this.’”
“It makes sense that you would be worried,” I said reassuringly, running my fingers along his back. “I think if I had seen a loved one die like that, I would be afraid to go near a horse for the rest of my life. It takes a lot of courage for you to get up and go to work every morning.”
Curtis shook his head sadly. “Not courage,” he said. “Just knowing that I have to. Every time I go out there, in the back of my mind, I’m thinking, ‘This could be the day I die.’ It could happen in a moment, just like it did with her.”
I took his face in my hands and kissed him on the top of his bald head. “You’re not going to die,” I said. “You’re a much better rider than Darren is.”
“So was Christine,” said Curtis quietly. “She was one of the finest riders I knew. When there’s an accident, it don’t matter how good you are. Take all the precautions you want; you can still be dead within seconds.”
He clung to me with a new urgency, as if afraid he would lose me if he let go for even a second. “Sometimes I don’t know what to make of this world, Allie,” he said with a distant look. “There’s a lot of just plain cruelty and ignorance and anger, and it makes me wonder why we’re here, and why God made so many people, and why we’re all so rotten. And we’re only here for a day, it seems like, and then we’re shuffled off into the ground forever, and we stay there until who knows when? The rest of eternity, maybe. The only thing I really know for sure about this world is that I love you, and I think you love me.”
It was the first time he had ever admitted in words that I loved me, and I felt myself strangely moved by it. “You don’t have to just think it,” I said softly. “Believe me when I tell you, I love you, too.”
“I think I’m starting to,” said Curtis. And we sat there together in silence for a while longer, listening to the whirring of sprinklers through the living room window.
***
On Friday night after work, I drove with Lindsay back over to Curtis’ house. He was still getting ready but had left the front door open so that we could come in. As we entered the living room, the most wonderful smell wafted down from upstairs: a smell of sandalwood, pipe tobacco, and burning logs.
“Okay,” I was telling Lindsay, “but you have to go out riding with us tomorrow. I don’t care if you’ve never had a lesson; Curtis will teach you. He’s incredibly patient with new riders.”
“Is he patient with students he’s not in love with?” Lindsay asked.
Just then, Curtis appeared at the top of the stairs, wearing a stylish pair of boots and a pair of tight-fitting dark blue jeans, and surrounded by a cloud of cologne like a genie rising up out of a brass lamp. “You girls ready?” he asked.
“If you are,” I said with a grin. Lindsay let out a whoop of excitement.
We went back to the Palladium. It was a Friday night, and once again the place was filled to capacity. As we edged our way through the doors and along the wall toward the bar, we could hear the band playing a cover of Hank Williams, Jr.’s, “All My Rowdy Friends Have Settled Down.” A melancholy air seemed to hang over the room as the dancers, many of whom I recognized from our last trip, moved in slow procession.
“Can you believe he wrote this song before he wrote ‘All My Rowdy Friends (Are Coming Over Tonight)?’” Curtis asked as we stood at the bar waiting for the bartender to appear.
“I’ve never heard either of those songs,” I said, smiling. It was fun to watch him get flustered when I hadn’t heard some “classic” song.
“You’ve heard it, you just don’t know it,” came a voice from behind me. Surprised, I turned around to see a clean-shaven young man wearing a black cowboy hat. He was grinning. “It’s the song the old Monday Night Football theme is based on. ‘Do you wanna drink? Do you wanna party?’”
“I have never watched Monday Night Football,” I said, sounding offended by the idea. This time both Lindsay and Curtis stared at me in shock.
As if on cue, the band segued from “All My Rowdy Friends Have Settled Down” to “All My Rowdy Friends (Are Coming Over Tonight),” a rollicking blues-based song with a killer piano bassline. The change in the room’s mood was instantaneous. It was like that scene in Back to the Future where Marty gets up at the school dance and plays Chuck Berry for the first time.
The man in the black cowboy hat (who looked remarkably like a young Garth Brooks) came and stood next to me. “You like it?”
“The song, you mean?” I asked with a prickly feeling in the pit of my stomach. I hated talking to strangers in bars. “Yeah, it’s great. I think I liked the first one better.”
“This one works best if you dance to it,” the man said. “Care to join me?”
I stood there for an uncomfortable moment, not wanting to turn him down and offend him but also not wanting to dance. Not knowing what else to do, I reached for my phone and began pressing the buttons idly. “I’m good, thanks,” I mumbled.
“Sorry, I couldn’t hear you.” He raised one hand to his ear.
To my immense relief, Curtis came over and stood next to me, stony-faced and imposing. “She said she’s good, thanks.”
The young man jerked back in surprise, giving Curtis a confused stare. It was clear he wanted to challenge him, but Curtis was so much bigger and, at the moment, more threatening-looking that he dared not.
“Why don’t you just move along,” Curtis said. It wasn’t really a question. It was the sort of command a person ignores at his own peril.
The young man tipped his hat curtly and moved from the bar. The moment he was gone, I flung my arms appreciatively around Curtis’ neck. There was a lot I wanted to say, about how I hated being approached by strange men and how it had been a long time since a man had stood up for me like that, but it was so loud in the bar, and there were so many people crowded around us jockeying for stools that I held my tongue.