Last Big Brave Words

It was the week before Shawn barricaded himself in his garden shed and swallowed a 12-gauge. We were drinking up in Creede at Tommyknockers. There were nine or ten of us, it was hard to know for sure. We had spent the day down the road at the old miners’ cemetery, walking through the graves. Lots of babies, hardly anyone over forty. People worked their bodies hard dropping into the inky depths every day, coughing themselves to death. They said things had improved in the last generation, but there wasn’t a free seat at the bar at two in the afternoon. We went in for beer but then the bartender knew a friend of ours back in Houston and so he bought us drinks. Then he called our friend and more drinks were bought over the phone. At some point I stumbled outside to get some air. It was cold, high up in those mountains. Breathing in felt like fire ants stinging inside my lungs. A mastiff padded up the street through the snowy twilight, rested his patient head against my hip. His weight against me felt like a silent understanding, like a hundred grateful years. When I thought to turn around, some of the guys were climbing up the mountain behind the bar. Drunken fools with flashlights, scaling the darkened foothills. Shawn was there, his arm around me. He said, “Remember. Wherever you go, whatever you do, chances are you won’t get hurt. That much.”