Sometimes I read a story that touches something raw inside of me, and stays with me forever. I cried like a baby, laughed like a loon, gasped in horror, sighed with happiness, and sat in shocked stillness, absorbed. This story was about many things, but the core was about fatherhood, I think, and loving your child no matter how outwardly deficient they appear.
So without further ado, some of my favorite excerpts (so far) from
YOUR COWBOY DAYS ARE OVER
"I don't think that'd be the best option for Ben right now," John says, thinking, over my dead body. He ruffles Ben's hair without looking down, the boy holding onto his leg, panting softly like a wounded animal. "He's had some pretty unique experiences so far and I'd rather stick to home schooling. I'm sure you wouldn't want all that knowledge corrupted by cultural shock or psychological trauma."
...Prostrate, Ben hums out of the range of human ears, head bowed so low his forehead brushes the floor. His fingers are stained with ink and poke out of rolled up sleeves, slipping under the hem of John's pant leg and over his boot, tracing patterns of inequality on the skin of John's shin.
He's still the most beautiful thing his father's ever seen.
I giggle like no other everytime I read this:
His first golf round ever. Abdul is Afghanistan's only professional golfer and owes his fussy gait to the Taliban who flogged the soles of his feet with a steel cable. John doesn't even play golf, but there's something about Abdul's weathered face, his irrepressible joy, his determination to reopen Kabul's golf club for business, that appeals to John's sense of the absurd. The green is brown and sandy; the only technique one needs is a good whack--especially at the first tee, hidden behind the carcass of a Russian tank. The fairways are studded with shrapnel, and John's stash of cigars and Chivas goes to bribing Jonesy's demining unit. When they give the all clear, Abdul borrows a dozen sheep from a cousin and sends them in. When that doesn't result in an impromptu mechoui, they meet for the first game.
At oh-five hundred, John and Abdul step onto the course, wearing helmets and body armor and grinning like loons. The sky is a piercing, royal blue, and Afghanistan is unbelievably beautiful. Some of John's guys--Mitch, Repro, Kalman, Rodrig and Dex--provide the cheering section. Sitting on beer coolers, they belt out the Star-Spangled Banner and the first measures of the Sououd-e-Melli, in horrifically mangled Pashto that could get them quartered. They yell "Fore!" when Abdul lifts his club, and "Fire in the hole!" when it's John's turn to swing. Only when John's at twelve over par and the entertainment attracts the local drug lord and the mujahideen, does someone remember to invite a medic.
No matter how I'm feeling at the time, this passage never fails to draw full-out sobs from me. Especially that third paragraph.
John has more pressing worries, because now it's Ben who can't make it through the night. The boy sleeps fitfully and wakes up wailing and panic-stricken, as frightened by his own shapeless screams as he is by the horrors in his head. Crying and choking on his own incomprehension, howling at the ceiling and the universe that couldn't even grant words for his terror, for his supplications and his brutal beginnings. There's nothing John can do but hang onto the thin body and grit his teeth against the impotence that could so easily be the end of him. But he can't let go, he's all Ben's got, no matter that it kills John to see Ben in so much pain; nothing has ever brought him closer to breaking than this child's suffering.
So they rock together, huddled in the middle of the bed, too far from daybreak for a hope of release, and John makes what few promises he can keep.
"I know, buddy," he whispers over Ben's frustrated growls, "you've got so much to say. But I hear you, I hear you, Ben, and tomorrow we'll walk to the top of the hill. I'll carry you on my shoulders," he stops, jaw locked, throat tight and raw; and Ben pants, eyes wide, "and you can shout to the sky and to the whole world. You can tell them. You let go of that barbaric yawp," John tries to laugh, but his lungs are filled with broken glass, "and everyone will know. We'll all be listening."
Teyla stands in the doorframe, her eyes hard and shining, a hand over her mouth like a shroud pulled over a stillborn scream. John stares at her, and he knows his whole face is begging.
They are enraged and undone, and it doesn't seem right that the universe could hold all of it.
"I love you, Ben. You're not alone. I love you so much. Breathe, Ben, please, breathe with me."
