Is it Everything I am?

A rewrite of one of my favorite tales

It was my first taste of the American West, and in the hot, afternoon sunshine I wandered along the dusty main street of Columbia, one of California’s first gold towns. Passing a saloon bar, complete with swing doors, and packed with tourists, I heard music emanating from a honky-tonk piano. The man playing had a mustache waxed to a point. His shirt sleeves held above his wrists by gold elastic gaiters. His look completed with a gold waistcoat, and finished with a pocket watch. The servers moving behind the bar wore swirling dresses and ribbons in their hair. Tourists loved the authenticity. It was easy to imagine a game of poker going on in the corner, at any moment an angry argument and a gunshot.

America is a nation of gun-folk. Then and now. Daydream as I might, there is nothing in its brief history to prove my daydream could not at any moment come true. The sound of bullets smashing glasses, splitting open a dozen dusty bottles of whiskey behind the bar, while screaming women called out for their lives, ducking under tables until the shots ceased.

I know that America still lives with violence in the same reckless and fearful way it has always done. But for a day this is the west of my boyhood dreams, and any minute Jessie James might come riding up Main Street, heading for the Wells Fargo Bank on the edge of town.

I managed to shake off my childish fantasy and headed farther up Main Street, leaving the town, and strolling along a riverbank before coming to a cemetery. We English have a fascination with old cemeteries.

The gravestones, many broken and fallen, were strewn among the trees. Many were sycamore trees, statuesque with multicolored peeling bark. I stopped periodically, struck by the youthfulness of the dead people. Dying, it seemed, happened a lot between the age of thirty and fifty, with few exceptions. It must have been a rough way to live. These people were the pioneers, European surnames, mostly, but Asian, too. I imagined the horse-drawn hearse coming from town the same way I had. I stood and let my eyes scan the varying types of headstones, seeing that women were buried next to their husbands. Children, too. Heartbreaking.

“Who yer lookin for, mister?” The boy said. I turned, surprised, not having seen him approach.

“I’m not looking for anyone, lad. I’m visiting from overseas,” I said. He looked to be around ten years old, with blue eyes. Dull, like the eyes of a lion when held in a cage. There, but not alive. I looked around, wondering where his parents were. “Do you live around here?” I said.

“I used to, mister, my dad ran the livery yard in the town until Jake Springer shot him dead.” He said, not looking up from the ground.

I almost choked. Should I laugh? If that was a joke, it wasn’t very funny. I at once thought the kid was having fun with me, a prankster. His friends out there, somewhere, hiding behind the trees, covering their mouths so as not to be heard laughing. The boy never moved, never looked up to see if I was interested in his story. His hands quiet at his side. There was something about his overalls, the material, a kind of sackcloth, his shirt torn and dirty with no collar at the neck.

“Really?” I said. I’m sure I was to act shocked, for indeed, it was shocking. The boy nodded, then turned away.

“Wait. So your dad is buried here?” I wanted to hear his story. I love stories. I spend much of my time writing them for my grandchildren. The boy turned to face me. He never spoke. Just raised his arm toward a grave. I felt a chill. Graves make me cry when I know who’s in them. I looked at the headstone. Jack Ridley. Died of gunshot wounds February 13, 1846.

“This is your dad?” I wanted to believe him. How he reminded me of myself. Make it up. Make it real. Lie through your teeth to tell a good story.

“Yep. That’s my dad, mister,” he said. His feet still pointing away from me but twisting his body at the waist. “Jake Springer is over there,” he said, nodding in the direction.

I kept my eyes open for a movement behind the trees, a snigger, a rustle in the leaves, something to give him away. But I didn’t take him for a rascal.

“Do you want to show me?”

“Sure,” he said and walked away. I followed. Such a boy, I thought. If not having a prank, living his own fantasy. But there was his face, those eyes, and the way his arm pointed. There’s a sad way to point at anything, the limpness, the heavy arm, a pointing that doesn’t really want to tell the way at all.

I followed on, noticing his shoes. Buckskin, I thought. The boy dresses the part. His overalls, blue, drained of their newness, stained with dirt. I never spoke.

The boy stopped at the foot of a grave, overgrown, ruined; the stone shattered. He pointed again. This time his arm was direct, straight, his index finger sharp out. He never spoke.

I stood with him but never spoke. After a moment or two, the boy kicked dirt over the grave.

“Bye, mister.” He turned and walked away. I wanted to say stay. But he wouldn’t have stayed. Not there.

He would have quite the joke with his friends. Another tourist taken in. I looked at what was once a headstone, broken now, and wondered if I couldn’t piece the thing together. I wanted to know what it said. ‘Here lies a bad man, hanged at noon, 1846’ or something. I put together pieces of broken stone. Had it almost complete. I stared at the time-crusted inscription.

‘Jake Springer. Shot dead February 1846. Lie in hell.’

Chilled, I dismantled it, leaving the crumbling stone in a heap. I recalled I hadn’t felt the heat of the sunshine until after the boy left. Of course, the boy couldn’t have been the son of Jack Ridley, shot to death in 1846. I had the feeling I’d been daydreaming again. I’m good at it. Anyone will tell you, anyone. ‘What are you thinking about now? Head in the clouds again.’

I followed the path along the river, admiring the splendor of the monkey phlox, iris, and wild geraniums, till I came to a pasture of yellow mustard spring wildflowers edged with oak trees. In the pasture was a building, the path to it gated. There was a sign. It was a school. Now a museum. Curiosity pushed me through the gate. The building wasn’t large and resembled a small church. The door was open. Inside there was limited space in which to learn, with four small desks and rows of benches. On the desks were pencils, pens fashioned out of quills sharpened to a point. I supposed to be dipped in ink for writing. There was a slate board, chalk, and erasers made of sheepskin. How must it have been to sit on rough wooden benches all day for lessons?

I remember I had books, a desk, a chair, and a window out of which to stare. In this classroom I went to the only window. It looked out over the rolling hills. I could hear the river, and imagined being a child in class, hearing the pots and pans banging against the sides of mules. Their owners hoping to find gold and a new life in California. In the room’s corner was a switch. I could only contemplate the sting of it.

I smiled, thinking how many times my backside had been slipper’d for fooling in class. I felt strangely cool again. I left the museum and headed out into the sunshine. The reason for my coolness was clear. It was the boy I’d met at the graveyard. He was whirling a lasso under a large oak tree. I stood for a moment and watched him. There was a stick jutting out of the ground and with an old rope, he lassoes this stick every time. I wondered how many tourists had he told his tale. Should I have given him a dollar or two for his entertainment — but what about those eyes?

They were not the eyes of a boy having fun. I walked over and, in the time-honored tradition, uttered the word, howdy.

“Howdy, mister. You been lookin’ in the old school?” He asked, not stopping the twirling of the rope.

“Sure. Reminds me when I went to school.”

“Wher’d that be, mister?”

“That’d be in England, lad. A long time ago.”

“I heard about England in school, mister. That’s a long ways off, right?”

“It is.”

“Sin Leng, he came from England on a boat, but he’s Chinese.”

“Sin Leng?” I asked, wondering what tale I’d be treated to next.

“He went to school here. His parents, they did laundry. He could get your shirts real nice. He never done our laundry. Ma, she did the washin’. I’d help sometimes, when I wasn’t at school. Some days it was so hard I wished I’d gone to school anyhow.” He continued to throw and rope, lassoing the stick in the ground.

“Did you miss school much? You know, you saying you didn’t like it and all.”

“Whenever I could, mister, whenever I could… you?”

“Yeah, me, too,” I said. I felt a smile cross my face. I was at ease with him. “Do you mind if I sit awhile?” I asked quietly.

“Won’t bother me none, mister. Folks don’t normally stay around me. You’re welcome anyway’s.”

“You’re pretty good with that rope,” I said.

“Dad taught me to rope. I’m the best in class and no mistake.”

“That’s right, your dad had the livery yard. So what do your friends call you?”

“Joey. He said and stopped roping the stick. He came a few feet closer and held out his hand. “I’m Joey Ripley.” It felt almost unreal. This boy walking toward me, holding out a hand to shake mine as if he were an adult. I took his small hand into mine and was surprised by his grip. Firm.

“Harry. Pleased to meet you.”

He hinted a smile. Just a glint of something that once was. His eyes never lit up. I felt if they did, they would make me cry. I knew that. I tried not to look.

“Folks don’t normally sit next to me. They shy’s away when I tell them dad’s in the grave.”

“Do you tell everyone, Joey?”

“Only them that stops close.”

“How long have you been good at roping the stick,” I said.

“I was school champion in 1848. I died that same year. Ma, she did everythin’ she could. The doc he said I got some pneumonia thing, I’d been coughin’ for a long time.”

That’s how I started out, I thought, telling lies and making them believable. I wanted to be loved and telling stories was the way I could make people love me. Those lies became more and more adventurous, more complicated, until today my lies are packed away in suitcases. Or given to my children to read. Books and books of lies all told with love, all told to show something of another life, another way.

“Then you’ll be dead, right, Joey?”

“Yep!’ Saturday morning, twelve noon. Ma cried real bad.”

The words didn’t even disturb him. He just let them fall out of his mouth. What talent.

“So you’ll be buried up in the cemetery, right?”

“They never lied me in the cemetery. I never knew why that was.” He said without emotion.

“Heck, you thought they would have lay you down next to your pa, right?”

“Don’t matter none, cos I gets to go see him every Saturday anyways.”

“Of course you do, Joey. Here, look, I have some English toffee; you want a piece?” I said, bringing it out of my pocket and held it toward him.

“That’s mighty kinda you, mister.” He took it eagerly. “I got to go now, it’s time. Thanks for staying a spell with me.”

Joey stood up and picked up his rope. He twirled it around his head and threw the loop dead center over the stick. Again he held out his arm. “Bye, now.”

I felt a surge in my heart from the way he said it. Was this it? No end to the joke. He was going to leave me like this. I watched him walk away and remembered following him in the cemetery, that walk, the listlessness of his life. As he walked away, I saw him reach into his back pocket and pull something out. He put that something on his head. It fit nothing so perfectly as that boy’s head.

“Bye, Joey,” I called out, “that’s a great hat.”

He disappeared out the gate and turned right, toward the cemetery. Unable to stop myself, I had to follow him. I knew I was intruding into the boy’s lie, but I knew I wouldn’t let on. I’d just smile and walk away, pleased he’d shared his fantasy with me.

As I entered the cemetery, following his steps, I heard laughter. It came down from the trees, rang around the graves, picking up leaves with its joy. I felt the sudden and desperate need to run toward the laughter, but it was all around, it was above and below me and at every turn; I was no closer. I felt a heart panic, as though I might miss the greatest joke ever told.

High above, the trees swayed in a wind that came out of nowhere. It whistled around the stones and cleared the leaves from the path. Such joy I never heard, such laughter only clowns can command, and yet it hung about me in the air. I stopped still. The laughter came round the corner and knocked me down. Such fun, such joy I never heard since I was a kid in the trees. I ran, without direction, like the wind itself, and I, too, was laughing. I was living Joey’s lie, the greatest joke ever told.

I ran and ran and ran, until suddenly I was back at the museum. I was standing at the gate. The laughter, I could then tell where it was as if it had been captured and placed in a small object, fighting to get out and sound everywhere. I moved forward, legs tired and trembling. I passed around the edge of the school building. I saw a man; he was holding aloft a boy, and the laughter was coming from inside the boy. The laughter that floated among the trees and hung down from the branches and swept up the leaves as its sound scurried to find its rightful place. Even from where I stood, I could see the light in Joey’s eyes, the life-light that sparked and shone and lit up his face.

I stood, frozen by the beauty of the picture before me. I knew that the man had to be Jack Ripley, that the boy on his shoulders was Joey Ripley, and the woman carrying the basket covered in blue and white gingham was the mother that had wept so hard for her son. Three figures in daylight. A family. I watched as Jack Ripley got down on one knee and placed his arm around the shoulders of Joey and showed him new tricks with the rope. It was twelve noon. The sun was as high as it would be. No shadows were visible. Then, in another minute, when the shadows began returning, Jack picked up his son, and with his wife they walked toward the stick jutted from the ground.

Carefully he lay his son down in the grass and together they knelt by his side, mother stroking his head. Joey never moved again. He lay motionless, the rope by his side. Together, Jack and his wife stood up. Hand in hand, they walked back toward the cemetery. I felt the sun warm me again. Dear God, let this not be true, let me imagine what I saw, but the laughter, the running, and then the laughter being captured inside the body of Joey, it can’t be a dream. Not possible. I shook my head and felt the wetness on my cheeks.

At the side of the stick was a stone plaque. On that stone was an inscription.

‘Here lies Joey Ripley, proud son of Jack Ripley and loving son of Katherine. Let Laughter live in your soul.’

I knelt beside Joey and felt the tears flow down my face. Is this it for me, I thought. To dream and imagine and tell tall tales.

Is it everything I am? A writer.

Thank you, Joey, for sharing the laughter in your soul.