Two Medicine Read Online Free PDF

where the best
land was to buy, and what the state law required in terms of ranch
operation and land management. But the grind of reality and
distractions of the present had slowing caused that feverish
obsession to fade – not slowly, actually, it had quickly faded that
senior year like a candle in a jar puffing out into smoke – faded
into a joke.
    The practicalities of life
had slowly extinguished the ember of that childhood dream in the
ensuing years, and my obsession had been whittled away to a mere
nostalgic regret, to a mere joke to be uttered in a dive bar in
Atlanta on a Monday afternoon.
    “ I don’t know,” I said
with a frown. “I’m just sick of it all, sick of wasting my
time.”
    Even as I said this, I knew
it sounded whiney, self-pitying, but I couldn’t now stop once I had
gotten started, not after this morning, not after Holly’s scare,
not after this grind in which I felt trapped. These feelings were
actually growing more intense within me as each second passed as I
sat with Scott. I didn’t care if I sounded “woe is me.” I
had never felt
this level of dismay before, dismay bordering on a rage, and it was
starting to scare me.
    I raised a finger back at
Scott now. “There was my making it in music,” I raised a second,
“my publishing a novel…”
    Scott took a gulp of wine,
not looking at me, as I continued.
    “ My working on a ranch in
Montana,” third finger, “my marrying a beautiful girl,” a fourth
finger slowly raised.
    “ God ENOUGH!” Scott
suddenly slammed his hand on the table loudly, nearly knocking it
over as the glasses shook and spilled over. Steve looked up quickly
from the bar, frowning again.
    “ Fuck
all that!” Scott said angrily, his speech slurring slightly. “Fuck
this defeatist bullshit, man. That’s not you Will. You aren’t that type of
person. Go out and fucking get it – if you want it. If you got the
balls.”
    He looked closely at me,
as if seeing something strange in my eyes. “Where’s the guy that
put off college to tour in a band, against his asshole father’s
express orders not to, who ended up playing on stage with R.E.M.?”
he asked. “Where’s the guy that fucked his college Shakespeare
professor even though she was married and her husband is a
well-known cop?” He looked around the bar theatrically as if
looking for “that guy.”
    Both of those stories
about me were true, and Scott was always mentioning them when I got
down, but it didn’t necessarily make me feel any better as he
catalogued them. But then Scott looked back at me and grew serious,
leaning towards me.
    “ And where’s the guy who
talked me off the ledge that day, missing his college graduation
ceremony to do it?”
    I did feel something as he said that;
that story was the darkest time in Scott’s dark life. He was going
to kill himself, the only time I had seen him try it. He had taken
an entire bottle of Paxil and drank a half a liter of Vodka by the
time I found him. H had sent me a bitter and heart-wrenching
farewell via text, which I got right before the start of my college
graduation ceremony, with my father in the audience, gowns and hats
on and everything.
    It was so disturbing that
I got up from my row immediately, stepping past all my seated
classmates, and I called 911 as I ran to my car and drove off to
where he was. The next thing I knew I was on his bathroom floor, my
graduation gown still on, tears in my eyes, making him puke with my
finger down his throat as he lay on my lap, half dead, yelling at
him to wake up.
    He was put in a psych ward
for two weeks after that. They made him wear pajamas and told him
when he had to go to sleep at night. Just thinking of him there
still jarred me.
    I did not like to think of
that day at all and Scott never mentioned it either, until that day
in the bar, when I had pretty much lost my way. He brought up that
terrible moment, his darkest, most embarrassing moment, the moment
he looked the most foolish, desperate