Matt Gordon
Lost
Horse
I am the evangelist. I bring the good news. I also helped my father put a new door on the barn. The old one had been bashed in when our mare got away. There was a storm and she was spooked. She was the strongest horse we had, and when the storm got to its worst point she just couldn't take it anymore. She put her head right through the door and kicked her way out of the hole she had made. And she ran away. We never saw her again. We really don't know where she went. My father assumes that someone found her and took her, but I'd like to think that she's just hiding. Maybe she found a field where she can feed and there's a cave where she sleeps. Maybe it's a place where there aren't any storms. Or maybe it's a place where the storms don't scare her so much. My heart broke. I wonder if she was scared of the the barn in that storm. It creeks when it rains and gets so awful dark. I’ve been scared of that barn. I learned to be scared in that barn. Fear is the essence of preaching, and when I speak to people I always remember what it feels like to be afraid. You might think that having God by my side would fill me with confidence. That it would make me feel invincible. But that's not what happens. God opened my eyes to all the sin and the depravity and the recklessness of the human congregation. God's interested in the darkness. That’s where I can do the most good. He expects me to go to that darkness and open up my mouth and start speaking. The funny thing is that God doesn't give me the words. I have to find them in myself. And even though He's the one that led me into the wretched slums, He abandons me there. He expects me to handle it all. When I was a boy, I had a bad accident. I was sleeping in the loft of the barn, and rolled off and fell 25 feet. l landed in such a way that I broke my hip and my leg and cracked my face. Everything was fixed, but my face was left scarred and lopsided. It was awkward and unsightly and I did not feel like I could go out during the daytime. So I would go to the barn with my horse, and I would groom her. Like any horse she loved it, but there was something about this horse that made me feel better. She would nuzzle me and touch me and sometimes she put her face right up against my scars. It seemed like she did it on purpose. Over time my feelings about the scars got better, and I told myself it was because of my horse. When I would take her out to ride in the sun, I became less and less afraid of the eyes that might see me because I started to feel like the scars were simply not there. So when she ran away, it was more than just the loss of a horse. She was a preacher, too. Her words were her actions. I wanted to be her. I wanted to “nuzzle” the people who might have scars or broken bones. And that's why I became a preacher. But when I came in contact with the damaged and the sick, I could not take them out to a field for a ride. I only had words, and they were sick of words. There were words printed all over everything they got in the mail. There were words that were spoken to them in ways that were not kind. And even though my words were kind, they were also quiet. I was not a storm. I was not going to scare them even though it felt like God wanted me to do just that. God is a storm. Maybe I am lost like my horse. I’d like to think that wherever she is, she is helping and healing. Preaching in her own way. Saving souls. Helping them find their way out of the darkness and into the clear light of the sun.
The dead love to dance. They climb out of their graves and listen to the rhythm of the spinning moon. They dance for hours, and the dance that they do is quiet. They are good dancers. There's something about being still in a coffin that teaches you how to dance well. Death is forever, and so you have so much time to learn the steps. So you dance! You don't need an excuse for it. You don't need a holiday or a party or a drop of liquor. It wouldn't matter. The dead don’t drink. I don't know what sparks them, but every night they are out there hoofing it up on their own burial mounds. I imagine that they fall out of touch with each other when they're buried in the earth. We tend to bury them close but not close enough. They forget how to speak when they’re underground. So when they come out to dance, they dance together. Even those who were shy in life are outgoing in death. It's a tonic. Life. Having the opportunity to live again. It literally lifts your spirits. And they make music out of everything. When you haven't had the chance to dance in such a long time, you don't need to have a flute or a cello or a brass band. You don't need a monkey and an organ grinder. All you need is the wind. The crickets. The sounds of humans suffering somewhere off in the distance. They start to jibber and jabber because they can't sing. They don't have ears. And even though they can’t see each other, they find a way to touch hands. They dance close like brothers and sisters because none of them wants to waste time with lust. That's what got them killed in the first place. Broken hearts. Broken promises. And now the only promise they have is that they will have to go back into the grave before too long. And that's a promise that they can't break. They are dead, and they will stay dead. And even though the living are in their beds dreaming endlessly, the dead are happy to be above ground if only to dance a jig or a waltz or a two-step.
There's never been a time in my life when I wanted it to be day instead of night. Everything that's tedious is connected to daytime. Going to school. Going to work. Waking up. Eating breakfast. Cleaning. Walking. Sunburn. Sweating. All the stores are open. All the banks are open. Churches. Traffic. The daytime is the time for tedium. It's when we age. It's the time when things are exposed and weak and rotten. A time for squinting. The time when the birds refuse to to shut up. All their squawking and flapping. Peck peck peck! But night time. That's when you can hear the televisions mumbling from the windows that are open because it's okay to keep your windows open at night. It's cooler. You can cheat on your boyfriend at night. You can go to a club with a friend and meet an Egyptian guy and dance with him and then go back to his place. That happens at night. You can eat popcorn. You can call all your friends. You can call all your contacts. And text your ex-boyfriend. At night time. Nothing counts at night time. Nothing adds up at night. If you get hurt at night, you don't have to stop. Just keep going. Keep driving. Keep walking. Keep talking. Let the night time absorb it all. It's a fixer. And if you're drunk or high, the night won't say a thing. The night might get high with you in the bathroom at the back of the club. And when you come out you'll see the tall Egyptian, standing there all clean and polished and new. On the Uber ride home, you can text your boyfriend and tell him that you're staying at your friend’s. The one from college. Farrah. Of course the problem is that when you eventually come home it'll be day and the sun is a snitch. And he'll tell on you so fast. Your boyfriend will listen to the sun because who doesn't listen to the sun? He's reliable. He's the center of the universe, for God's sake. And then your boyfriend will yell at you and throw things around and sit you down on the couch and tell you that you have to move out. And you have to get movers in the daytime. And look for apartments in the daytime. Starting over always happens in the daytime. Starting over sucks.
You know at this exact moment there are tens of thousands of people spread out on operating tables. They are knocked out by some powerful drugs. And they are waiting to be cut open. Some of them will have bones sawed. Some will have vital organs taken from them. Some of them will have noses shaved and corrected. And some of them will lose a breast or maybe two. But they are all there on tables waiting. I envy every one of them. Because I am standing here in the middle of a heartbreak. I am standing here in the middle of my own open heart surgery with my chest plate cracked and my ribs spread. My heart is leaking love all over the place. It's disgusting. There's no sterile field. No one has scrubs. There's just you and your need to leave. You're not clean. Your resentment and your jealousy are a danger to my asepsis. You're clearly the devil. You have come to strip me of the skin you once thought was so soft and beautiful. You used to stare into my eyes, and now I think you will carve them out and leave nothing. Two empty caves where I can see nothing. I can hear your heart beating faster than mine. Because you are angry at me. You hold a scalpel with your anger and that's not a good idea in any surgery or operating room. Because if all those restless waiting bodies were stretched out on tables, waiting patiently for the ether to kick in, if these bodies were the dishonest boyfriend of the surgeon girlfriend who had just felt the last bits of love leaking from their fingertips, maybe their fingertips would be greasy. Maybe something would slip. Maybe you would wind up with some surgical tools lodged inside of you. Maybe all of them would wind up lodged inside of you. Maybe every scalpel would be a sword that could slice you open, but there would be no silken sutures to sew you back together.
I don't know if it was the 7th grade or the 8th when we started drinking the whiskey, but we were young. Your parents had this enormous bar, and when they would host parties the guests who saw it would give them liquor as a gift. Coals to Newcastle. So they wound up with a lot of liquor. And you recognized that we could steal a bottle at a time, and your parents would never notice. And so we did. And we would mix it with Coca-Cola and play drinking games and wander around the neighborhood, half drunk. This was an early introduction to inebriation. We didn't do it often, to be honest. You were smart about the liquor and knew that one day we would run out. But slowly over time you would steal a bottle here or there. Southern Comfort. Perfect. And the boys and the girls would all meet together. I remember getting drunk and wishing I could tongue kiss each girl. Girls who were the girlfriends of boys. Girls who went to the bathroom with their boys. Even those girls who had a gay boyfriend and they would get somewhat naked together just for fun and laughs and exploration. I was always drunk alone. Drunk and alone. Drunk alone. This was not like playing tag in the backyard. That was fun. I blossomed back then. I was good at taking charge and telling stories. I told the stories that we would play out when we weren't playing tag. But as we got older, I couldn't tell the stories. I was afraid to admit the stories. The story of girls swimming in the pool at night, wearing nothing but their underwear. Looking at them in their underwear and thinking about how much I wished I was the water between their bras and their skin. You were clever. The girls always liked you. You would have the cute dark-eyed friend who had a crush on you. You would have the older girl who would make out with you in your Dodge Omni. I thought we were the same. Before the girls, we would roll dice on the table in your den. We would build characters and pretend to be heroes. I thrived, but you were clever. We were never the same. Your eyes were bluer and your smile was clean and you were better at playing tag. All of this turned into the girls looking down when you looked straight at them. Those coy smiles. Smiles that would widen and become hugs. Hugs that would tighten and become romance. You would steal the bottles and get us all drunk. But they didn't need to be drunk, did they? Not for you. But I did because I wanted to erase the smiles. I wanted to knock the smiles off the faces of the girls who gave their faces to you. They never were prettier than when they held your gaze, and I never felt pretty until I was completely shit faced drunk.
I am driving but I don't know why. There has been no mandatory evacuation, but in my mind I need to get out. The air raid sirens are screaming at me. I need to find my way into the arms of the people who will say my name correctly. I need to find a bunker. I need to be sitting on the couch or lounging at the dining room table with the people who don't mind that my head is weird. It's misshapen. If it were sold at the store, it would be sold at a discount. As is. As found. And somebody would be happy to take it, but when they got home they would find it's filled with bits and pieces that simply don't work. It's like hearing a rumbling and a rattle in the engine, and yet still I’m driving. I have the sense that something is going to go wrong. I'm on the highway and I know I should pull over, but I've got to get to where I’m going. I've got to get to the people who I know don't care that my head is going bonkers. If this engine (or my head) explodes, I’ll be a mess. My broken head will stage a coup. It will take over, and that will mean the end of me. There's not much mercy in war. Sometimes they take prisoners. I've been a prisoner for years. But on the battlefield? No. No one's looking for prisoners. Everyone's looking to kill. Why else would they give you a gun? When your gun is dead, you use your bayonet. I am stuck between two things. I'm stuck between the destruction and the highway or the comfort of my kin. My next of kin. And if I were found dead on the battlefield, what would be my dog tag? How would they know it's me? Maybe they would see there was a dent in my head. I wasn't wearing a helmet. A mortar crashed. It was fired from within me. And it exploded so that my thoughts were shrapnel. And shards of metal pierced my body and left me full of holes.