Read Online None of this Ever Really Happened by Peter Ferry - Free Book Online
Authors: Peter Ferry
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I'll go back to my community
in Ireland. The monastery is my home, the community my
family."
"I'll never leave this place," said Charlie.
"What place?" asked Lydia. "This ranch? Cuernavaca?
Mexico?"
"This ranch near Cuernavaca in Mexico." It was just a
clever answer until the next afternoon. Coming back to the
ranch we discovered that a long-awaited calf had arrived.
It was standing in the field on shaky legs beside its groggy
mother. Charlie threw open the car door, got out, and did
something quite unexpected. He started to undress. "Here."
He handed me first his shirt and then his pants. Then, muttering
something about needing to separate the calf from its
mother, he stooped and gathered the little cow still wet with
blood and afterbirth into his long arms. He hurried across the
rocky pasture wearing only underpants and work boots, and
I stumbled after him looking at his broad, strong back and
realizing a rather astonishing thing. This silly man whom I'd
been making fun of all this time was in possession of something
I hadn't even started looking for and hadn't known until
that moment that I wanted or needed. He was a complex,
original, troubled, many-dimensional, self-invented, flawed
and foolish but complete man, and he couldn't care less if I
was laughing at him. He'd probably known all along.
That night we sat on the lawn at Las Mañanitas drinking
cold white wine and eating camarónes al mojo de ajo, butter-flied
shrimp sautéed in garlic butter. It was our last night in
Cuernavaca. There was wood smoke, the scent of flowers,
some distant music and one of Charlie's stories in the air, and
as I watched him tell it, I smiled at myself. Charlie was the
guy I'd come to Mexico to find in the first place and I'd never
realized it.
I shook my head. What a boob.
4
. . .
THE LOVE NAZI
I WAS NOT SURE what I was looking for, exactly. It certainly
wasn't Lisa Kim. I knew that she was dead;
that much I knew for sure. But it may have been her
tracks, her trail, evidence of her, clues about the woman who
had written the letter that became for a period of time my
most important possession.
Maybe I was trying to get rid of the letter. I was. I wanted
to give the letter to Peter Carey or Peter Cleary and put an
end to the strange sense of responsibility that had come with
it. Responsibility was a thing I'd spent much of my life avoiding.
It's why I lived in an apartment, drove an old car, and
worked at a job in which my principal responsibility was to
myself and to large children most of whom I could browbeat.
It's why I lived with a woman who didn't want to get
married, and with whom I had no children.
For a long time I thought of responsibility as the other
side of freedom, and it was freedom that I most wanted. Not
the ramblin'-man freedom of a thousand bad folk songs, although
I'd listened to all of these and sung along with a few,
but the freedom to live my life on my own terms. It's another
reason—maybe the primary reason—that I love to travel;
you're never freer than when your only responsibility is for
yourself and a suitcase. My very personal definition of freedom
dated to a time I'd hitchhiked to New Orleans in college.
I was two days out of Chicago and somewhere south of
St. Louis after I'd stayed up late the night before in Macomb,
Illinois, when two soldiers picked me up. I fell asleep in their
backseat in the warmth of the late-afternoon sun. When they
turned off, they woke me and put me out on the highway,
and I realized as I watched them pull away that I didn't even
know what state I was in. I might have been in Missouri, I
might have been in Arkansas, and since there had been some
talk of Memphis, where I was headed that day, it was possible
that we had crossed the river into Tennessee. I didn't know
where I was, and neither did anyone else in the world except
the two soldiers now gone. No one. I was frightened especially
as the dusk came on, but the air was warm, the sky was
clear, and there were fields
in Ireland. The monastery is my home, the community my
family."
"I'll never leave this place," said Charlie.
"What place?" asked Lydia. "This ranch? Cuernavaca?
Mexico?"
"This ranch near Cuernavaca in Mexico." It was just a
clever answer until the next afternoon. Coming back to the
ranch we discovered that a long-awaited calf had arrived.
It was standing in the field on shaky legs beside its groggy
mother. Charlie threw open the car door, got out, and did
something quite unexpected. He started to undress. "Here."
He handed me first his shirt and then his pants. Then, muttering
something about needing to separate the calf from its
mother, he stooped and gathered the little cow still wet with
blood and afterbirth into his long arms. He hurried across the
rocky pasture wearing only underpants and work boots, and
I stumbled after him looking at his broad, strong back and
realizing a rather astonishing thing. This silly man whom I'd
been making fun of all this time was in possession of something
I hadn't even started looking for and hadn't known until
that moment that I wanted or needed. He was a complex,
original, troubled, many-dimensional, self-invented, flawed
and foolish but complete man, and he couldn't care less if I
was laughing at him. He'd probably known all along.
That night we sat on the lawn at Las Mañanitas drinking
cold white wine and eating camarónes al mojo de ajo, butter-flied
shrimp sautéed in garlic butter. It was our last night in
Cuernavaca. There was wood smoke, the scent of flowers,
some distant music and one of Charlie's stories in the air, and
as I watched him tell it, I smiled at myself. Charlie was the
guy I'd come to Mexico to find in the first place and I'd never
realized it.
I shook my head. What a boob.
4
. . .
THE LOVE NAZI
I WAS NOT SURE what I was looking for, exactly. It certainly
wasn't Lisa Kim. I knew that she was dead;
that much I knew for sure. But it may have been her
tracks, her trail, evidence of her, clues about the woman who
had written the letter that became for a period of time my
most important possession.
Maybe I was trying to get rid of the letter. I was. I wanted
to give the letter to Peter Carey or Peter Cleary and put an
end to the strange sense of responsibility that had come with
it. Responsibility was a thing I'd spent much of my life avoiding.
It's why I lived in an apartment, drove an old car, and
worked at a job in which my principal responsibility was to
myself and to large children most of whom I could browbeat.
It's why I lived with a woman who didn't want to get
married, and with whom I had no children.
For a long time I thought of responsibility as the other
side of freedom, and it was freedom that I most wanted. Not
the ramblin'-man freedom of a thousand bad folk songs, although
I'd listened to all of these and sung along with a few,
but the freedom to live my life on my own terms. It's another
reason—maybe the primary reason—that I love to travel;
you're never freer than when your only responsibility is for
yourself and a suitcase. My very personal definition of freedom
dated to a time I'd hitchhiked to New Orleans in college.
I was two days out of Chicago and somewhere south of
St. Louis after I'd stayed up late the night before in Macomb,
Illinois, when two soldiers picked me up. I fell asleep in their
backseat in the warmth of the late-afternoon sun. When they
turned off, they woke me and put me out on the highway,
and I realized as I watched them pull away that I didn't even
know what state I was in. I might have been in Missouri, I
might have been in Arkansas, and since there had been some
talk of Memphis, where I was headed that day, it was possible
that we had crossed the river into Tennessee. I didn't know
where I was, and neither did anyone else in the world except
the two soldiers now gone. No one. I was frightened especially
as the dusk came on, but the air was warm, the sky was
clear, and there were fields
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