ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS

3. BLACK CROW

★ Leonard ★

The next morning, I slowly open my eyes, thinking that I had the worst nightmare in my entire life. When I look through the window of my room, it is pouring rain outside. My brain slowly starts to function, and I try to bring myself out of my bed. The house is tranquil, and all I can hear is the noise of the rain hitting my roof.

To get out of my bed, I extend my leg to the floor and step on a soft tail. A bundle of white fur jumps up to greet me. It is Bianco, my Maremma sheepdog that I have grown up with.

When I walk down the staircase, I hear someone making a noise down below. When I walk into the kitchen, my mother is preparing morning coffee.

As soon as she sees me, her face turns to sorrow, and she holds me firmly in her arms. At that moment, I know I didn't wake up from the nightmare; I am still in hell. My mother slowly tells me what we need to do today.

"At 2 p.m., all of us are attending Beth's funeral. I know that it is hard for you to face reality, but you got to do this today. For the rest of the day, you should take it easy."

While my mother is talking to me, I stare at the dripping coffee. It is pitch black, just like what I see my life became: a total blackness.

I don't remember how I got to the cemetery. When I return to myself, I stand right in front of the coffin where Beth is quietly resting. The gray clouds completely cover the sky. The rain is pouring down from the dark sky as if all of Weatherford is crying for her death.

All of us are dressed in black and holding black umbrellas to keep us from getting wet. I couldn't care less about being wet. By the time our priest started to talk, I was completely soaked.

The priest who was supposed to marry us with joy yesterday is preaching a story of sorrow. I don't hear anything he preaches because I don't care what he says. It doesn't matter to me any longer.

Nothing makes sense anyway.

Nothing!

After he finishes preaching, I mechanically grasp the rope connected to the coffin and lower it to the bottom of the grave. Once her coffin is resting permanently at the bottom, friends and family start to pray and throw roses down to her coffin.

Now it is my turn to say farewell to Beth. I close my eyes and clasp my hands tightly before throwing a single white rose onto her black coffin.

"I love you always, always, always."

When I open my eyes, the stark contrast of white roses against the dark black hole makes me feel nauseous. When I look away to keep my tears from falling onto the coffin, a single black crow is staring at me from the cross-shaped headstone of another grave. He is staring into my future, and my future is as bleak as the eyes of the crow.

The next day, and the next and the next, I sleep in my bed without ever leaving my room. There is nothing I want to do but sleep with my sorrow.

After a week has passed, my mother finally comes into my room to talk to me.

"Leo, I might not completely understand what you are going through. I want you to know that all of us care about you."

She puts her hand on my shoulder.

"You have been alone in this room for more than a week. It is probably time for you to come out and start to face reality. You start to think about your next move because Beth is not going to come back in your life."

Then she hugs me and walks out of my room. I know she is right about what she said, but I don't know where to start.

I am completely lost.

I have always had Beth for as long as I can remember. I have always loved her since my first memory of her. We were practically born in the same place at the same time. We have lived right next to each other, and I was born only a few months earlier, sixty-nine days to be exact.

Our mothers were best friends, and they raised us together as playmates since we were babies. We lived on the outskirts of Weatherford, Texas. It is a short one-hour drive from Dallas to the east.

My parents have a ranch for raising cutting horses, and so do Beth's. We are living in the cutting horse capital of the world. Not many people are familiar with cutting.

It is a western-style competition that originated with ranch horses that worked herds of cattle. Ranchers used the horses to separate specific cows for branding, vaccinating, castrating, and worming.

Local competitions started among ranchers and cowboys to earn bragging rights for having the best cutting horses. In 1898, the first cutting competition was held in Haskell, Texas. Now there are many competitions held all over the US for serious prize money. It goes up to thousands of dollars or even millions.

It is a serious business in Weatherford. Many people come from all over the world to acquire or train horses from our ranches. Beth's and my parents are both breeders and trainers of cutting horses. Since we were little, our lives revolved around horses: feeding and cleaning them, maintaining the stables, and so on. At the ranch, there are always things to do all year long.

Cutting is very straightforward. There is a herd of cattle in front of a cutting horse and a contestant in the arena. The rule is to isolate one cow from the herd and keep it away from the pack for two and half minutes of the competition. A judge or panel of judges will score a run on a scale from sixty to eighty, with seventy being average.

It is truly amazing to see how a superb cutting horse moves. An excellent cutting horse possesses an innate ability to anticipate or read a cow's intended moves. He or she responds instantaneously, matching a cow's every move, head to head, to control it. The elite equine athletes stop hard and turn sharply, almost synchronously, as the cow turns to keep it separated from the herd.

 Beth and I also competed in some local Steer Roping competitions.  It is a type of competition in a rodeo where a steer is released from a starting shoot. A timer is started, the cowboy comes out of the gate on a quarter horse. 

Typically, they chase down the calf, the cowboy or cowgirl throws a rope to catch it, and once the rope is on it, the horse halts then begins to back up as the cowboy jumps off the horse to pull the rope taught.

The cowboy runs to the steer, grabs it by the horns, throws it down onto the ground, and ties three of its legs together to prevent it from running away. It is usually done on a highly trained "Quarter Horse" with a Western saddle so that the rope can be wrapped around the saddle horn.

I hate to say it, but Beth was a much better contender than I was. She had a natural knack for it, and somehow she could create a strong unity with her horse. Her horse did everything to please her. She always won prizes.

She was a true cowgirl.