The End of FUN (44 page)

“Well!” said Isaac. “I can tell you when I woke up this morning I didn't expect to be doing
this
!”

It was pretty badass alright—the next question being: Who was going to drive Evie's car? You could tell no one wanted to do it. It's not every day you get to save a couple horses from a wildfire.

“Fine,” said Evie. “It's my car. And I
am
the girl after all. And the girl never gets to do the fun stuff.”

“Now, now,” said Sam. “I distinctly remember you did something fun just this morning. What was it? Oh, yes: you made me get up at four
A.M
.”

“I'll drive,” said Isaac.

“Really?” My sister turned to him with shining eyes.

“I don't get to drive much in the city. And certainly not on a dirt road while simultaneously outrunning fire. I'll park your car where it's safe and jog back to help. Here. Take this.”

Man, let me tell you, when he handed Evie the lead rope she lit up like a little girl. Like she was 13 again, like that time she won the math contest. It occurred to me that you could do a lot worse than a guy like Isaac. It also occurred to me, as I watched him drive away, that with my ankle all busted up I probably should've caught a ride with him, but on the other hand I'd given an oath of service to these horses.

After another fifty yards, however, I was having second thoughts. Up to this point I'd been going off of adrenaline, but now the adrenaline was gone. With each step I discovered I could put less and less weight on my foot, until I was pretty much just straight-up hopping.

“Hold on. I need a sec here.”

Sam and Evie slowed. The horses slowed. As for me, I couldn't move. My ankle had become a tender, throbbing brick. I couldn't put any weight on it.

“We've got to keep moving!” said Evie.

“Dear,” said Sam, “we can barely see the fire from here.”

“It's right on the other side of that hill! And have you not noticed which way the wind is blowing?! Let's go!”

“Evie, I can't walk.”

“Then hop! Come on!”

“Evelyn, listen to your brother. He can't walk.”

“I'll call Isaac. He can come back with the car and get Aaron.”

“What if I ride the horse?”

My sister laughed. “Yeah, that's not going to happen.”

I hopped over to the white horse. “Don't worry. This one's super-gentle. Anne told me.”

“No way. You are
not
riding a horse. Sam, tell him he is not riding a horse.”

But Sam, good old Sam, was like, “Have you ever ridden a horse before?”

And I was like, “Yes, as a matter of fact.”

And Evie was like, “The county fair doesn't count.”

And Sam was like, “Well, it has to count a
little
….”

And Evie jabbed her finger at him. “You be quiet, Sam! Not another word. No more big ideas. And YOU”—she pointed the finger at me—“you are NOT riding that horse.”

So I rode to town on a white horse that morning, no shit.

It wasn't easy getting up there, but with Sam and (grudgingly, protesting every inch of the way) my sister, I was able to do it. Even with the two of them grunting under me, I could barely get my leg up to the level of the horse's back. Finally, I had to just slide up there on my belly and sort of scooch around until I was in a huddled position, one arm wrapped around its neck, the other clinging to its mane. The horse stepped backward, shifting to adjust this new weight. I clung on like a monkey at the windy top of a tree.

“Well, don't grab its HAIR!” Evie yelled.

Like I said before, you forget how big a horse is until you see one up close again—and that goes double for when you sit bareback and feel all the muscles moving. There was this, like,
kinetic tension
to it, like it was an effort for the horse to go human speed, like if it wanted to it could be doing 30 mph in five seconds flat. There's a reason they call it
horsepower
.

But hey, I was doing something new and exciting. Riding a freakin' horse! And it was weird. And it was cool. And it was actually kind of fun. Like
real
fun. And also terrifying. And at the same time I was trying to keep from dying, all these voices kept ringing through my head. All these voices having to do with holes. Katie, who warned me about the hole that can't be filled. Shiloh, who correctly taxonified me as an ass
hole
. Anne Chicarelli, who told me everything was
holy
. I was feeling kind of funny.

“You might try sitting up more,” said Evie. “You're kinda bear-hugging the thing.”

First she doesn't want me to get up, and now she's an old ranch hand, a certified equestrianaut? She had a point, though. But it wasn't as if I could just let go all at once. I took my time, first loosening my grip enough to sit up, then slowly moving my hands to the base of its neck, not quite clutching the hair but ready to grab on at any moment. And whaddya know? She was right. It was a lot better that way.

In order to maintain balance, I fixed my eyes on the nearest moving/stationary point, which happened to be the back of Sam's head. I looked at his pink scalp shining through his thinning hair. After a while I began to wish I had a hat to give him, because the sun was up now and we still had a ways to go.

An idea occurred to me. Steadying myself with my right hand, I lifted my left hand from the horse's neck and slowly raised it into the air, stretching my arm until the shadow of my hand rested upon Sam's head, covering the pink spot like a little shadow yarmulke.

And as I did this, something weird happened.

I felt a coolness on the back of my head. Like a cloud passing between the sun. I reached back to touch it, but as soon as I did, the heat was there again. I raised my hand again to cover Sam's head. The coolness returned.

It was like,
??

I moved my hand away from Sam's head again. The heat returned.

And then this
other
feeling—I can hardly explain it—but this other feeling suddenly came over me. It was like the whole world opened right up. Like someone had rung a bell. And it was like I suddenly understood—or more like
remembered
—because it's like I
already
knew it. I'd known it all along, only I'd forgotten it. We
all
know it, we just keep forgetting it, because we keep distracting ourselves with fun and FUN
®
and whatever else. But here it was. All of it. It.
Everything
.

And it was all OK.

And also
more
than OK. I don't even know how to say it. Everything was OK, and everything was also kind of terrifying, but everything was also good, and it was magical. It was the light, and the light was everywhere, and it was every
thing
—including me—I was part of it, too—and it was all part of me. And it was
wonderful
. And by
wonderful
I mean the old-school definition: full of wonder. And by
full of wonder
, I mean
holy
.

That's when it really hit me.
This is holy
.

All of it. It's all just the thing that it is, and it's amazing and it's here, and we're in it, we're swimming in it, just like we're swimming in the shit, except it isn't shit. It's more than shit. It's above, beyond and
including
shit. This world—how can I even explain it? The whole thing is filled—I realized it then—the whole thing is
overspilling
really—with holy wonder.

And a single word came to my lips and drifted away: “Wow.”

And but listen: if all this sounds crazy or platitudinous or whatever, I understand. Most of my life, if I'd told myself what I just told you, I would've told myself to go jump off a garage. But not this time. This time I felt it. I knew it. We're all entitled to our little revelations, right? Not Revelations
™
soap (YAY!) or NüRevelation
™
face cream (YAY!), but
real
revelations. And this one was real, and it was good, and I had to share it with someone, and now I have shared it with you.

I shared it with my sister and Sam and Isaac, too—out there on the ridge at the edge of town where Isaac came jogging to meet us. I told them everything I've just told you. And the three of them stood there blinking at me in the holy morning light, and then, Evie said:

“Are you
high
?”

And I was like, “Maybe?”

“What's
that
mean?”

“Well, I did eat some pills. I thought they were aspirin.”

“You
thought
. Oh my God! My brother is
hallucinating
on
pills
!”

How could I even explain it to her? That it didn't matter what I was doing. Because maybe I was and maybe I wasn't, but everything was OK. It was
more
than OK. It was good and wonderful and holy. It really, really was. I sat there on the horse checking out the scene and thinking to myself,
This is wonderful; that is wonderful. This is holy; that is holy.

Evie? Holy.

Sam? Holy.

Isaac? Cain? Abel? Holy, holy, holy.

It was wonderful, holy, all of it and everything—filled and spilling over with pure holy wonder: the ground, the brush, the fence, the power lines, the hills behind my grandpa's place, the smoke rising into the sky…

Not long after that, Evie dragged me to the hospital. I pleaded to stay out there and enjoy the holy wonder of it all, but she was done conceding. She'd already let me ride a horse, almost die in a wildfire, and O.D. on pills—and that was enough. We waited in the waiting room, and then the doctor checked my reflexes and blood pressure, but everything was fine. I wasn't dying of drugs. My ankle was broken, though. I'd fractured it. As my reward, I got one of those big boot things (YAY! for medicwear
®
) and crutches, and it took forever, and then I had to fill out paperwork.