Lost Years
Throughout the
Dances with Rattlesnakes series, the reader has gotten a vague picture of
Johnny and Roy’s lives during their fifteen-year estrangement. Johnny relocated to Colorado, where he met
Ashton Riley, and where Trevor was born in 1992. Roy’s family grew and changed as his children pursued careers,
left home, and married. Roy suffered
the heartbreaking loss of his grandson Brandon Sheridan to cancer, while Johnny
suffered the heartbreak of Ashton’s rejection, and then leaving him to raise
Trevor alone. Roy and Johnny eventually
mended fences, and the friendship that was once torn apart by tragedy grew
strong again. But it would take another
tragedy for the men to talk about the years in which they had no contact, and
to finally get a complete understanding of what each other went through during
those lost years.
~ ~ ~
I smoothed my matted hair into place, then opened
the door that led into the kitchen. Johnny swiveled around when I entered and
flipped on the light. For just a few
seconds, he looked more surprised than he looked angry.
“What?” I held up the key ring so he could see
how I’d gained entrance. “You thought I’d come all this way, and then give up
without a fight?”
When all he did was glare at me through narrowed
eyes, I said softly, “Johnny, I came to help you. I’ll help you in any way I can. You just have to let me.”
“La-la-las ‘ime you...you ‘igh me, you hay...hay
go. Hay go ‘ell owe. Me...now
me...hay-hay you go, ‘oy. You go! ‘Ell owe! Go ‘ell owe...m-m-m-my sigh!”
I wouldn’t have thought it was possible for a man
with a cane to stomp away from me, but that afternoon, Johnny did. He retreated
to his office, leaving me standing in the kitchen to figure out what he’d said.
It took me longer to decipher his words this time. I was halfway through cooking supper before the meaning behind
his garbled sentences finally came to me.
Last time you fought me, you said I should go. You
said get the hell out. Now I’m telling you to go, Roy. You go! Get the hell out
of my sight!
I’ve often heard that words spoken in anger will
someday come back to haunt you. It had taken Johnny twenty years to hurl those
hateful words back at me, and though I was at his house purely out of
friendship and a desire to help, I knew the words had been a long time in
coming, and that I deserved them.
~ ~ ~