I think they call these eulogies. I’m not certain.
He wanted to be a cowboy. A ranch, six horses. He taught me to ride, way back in Texas.
I wanted to write this from the fountain at night. But it was raining.
He was a kung-fu master, that’s how we met. I was seventeen, messing around with some weapons on the front lawn one night.
“How’s your return strike?”
“My what?”
He crosses the street. Tall stride. Cornrows to his waist, and takes the nunchuks from me. “I’ll show you.”
I had my phone off, but it rang anyway. I think my mother can do that. She can tell when I’m sad, half a country away. She can defy doctors, stare down death and tell it, No thank you, I’m busy. And she can get calls through when my phone is on silent.
“Where are you?”
“I’m home.”
“I have bad news. Kenneth is dead.”
We’ve known Kenneth fifteen years. Since we moved to Texas. He and his wife would come over for Shabbos. His grandkids were on television. And he had his whole church praying for my mom.
He didn’t know that he was sick, that’s what my mother says. Suddenly they found a tumor. Suddenly he was in hospice. Less than three months. Just like that.
“I have to hang up,” she whispers. “Call me later.”
He was car broker. Lots of people start out in Versas, he said. I still drive that Versa. Seven years, a company, a new city later. I still drive that car.
I’m wondering who rides the horses.
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