MARK ANTHONY JARMAN // 38
MARK ANTHONY JARMAN
WHAT WOULD JESUS’S ROBOT DO? B
ill’s landline had been severed by a section gang digging by the CN tracks, so at night he’d call me long distance from his truck, Bill’s cell getting better reception out in the yard under the meteor showers and spooky northern lights and magpies shifting in the poplars. Then one day, a stroke zaps Bill’s head inside his farmhouse. He struggles, but can’t move, can’t get to his phone, held to the floor for two days and his cellphone sitting out in his damn pickup truck. Bill’s legs and arms won’t function, and Bill can’t crawl to the cell in his truck. His old landline phone right in front of him, made useless by a railroad gang. I hate the idea, my friend Bill trapped two days while I wander freely and bike by the river with no clue. Does his dog, Jagger, wonder? His bomb-proof horse, his cattle puzzled and hungry, no sign of Bill, no water, no food. In the cabin, Bill tries to haul himself up, he is tough (cowboy up), but he keeps falling and hitting his head, making things worse. He crashes over a wooden chair, tries to crawl into bed and loses his balance and hits his head on his homemade bed built of big peeled logs.
B
ill shoes horses for a living. Over the eons, my friend Bill has been hit on the head so many times: a concussion from falling on ice, kicked by ornery horses, the occasional drunken punch. And the metal rasp that flew from another horseshoer’s hand. Two farriers working horses side by side: Buddy whacks a rangytang mare, the iron rasp comes free of its wooden handle, rises up above them, then dives to gouge Bill’s head as if a guided missile. Bill’s hard head covered in blood at emergency. Near Stony Plain he was bucked off a big horse, thrown down onto cement and knocked out cold, falling from a horse into emergency. How many contusions and concussions? So many times in and out of
emerg, but now Bill is staying put in the hospital for long-term therapy, a bleed in his brain, his left side crippled by the stroke, and he is left-handed. So, friend, learn to button your shirt, learn to walk, learn to use your phone without dropping it on the hospital floor. His cracked phone repaired over and over. Now his boot-cut jeans and rodeo belt-buckles are too complicated. His younger sister Kathleen says, “I feel so sorry for Billy, a cowboy forced to wear sweatpants.” I suppose a robot would not have such malfunctions. Bill the cowboy says, “I’m going crazy here. I hate being bathed by the staff as if I’m an old derelict, which I guess I am.” Bill has Irish ancestors, but he has a Spanish look, olive skin, brown eyes, dark eyebrows; in another world maybe a bullfighter or unruly vaquero. In the hospital his pay TV keeps cutting out without warning. On TV a wide receiver runs a ghost motion and the quarterback throws a rope. The sports announcer says, “But I diverse,” which makes me laugh. The nurses discover his secret stash of painkillers that he is taking on top of the pills they dispense. He has a history of pain from working with heavy horses; feels the nurses don’t give him enough meds. They are mad at his secret stash and he is mad that they take away his collection. Bill hates the hospital the way he hated our high school, hated being cooped up. His father Mickey, a no-nonsense electrician, mad at Bill skipping classes, drove him right to the school door, but Bill would walk inside the brick building and leave by another xit. Bill’s siblings excelled at school; Bill was the black sheep, the puzzle. You’re killing your father, said Bill’s mother. You’re killing your mother, said Bill’s father. Bill’s older brother, a prosperous, handsome doctor, crashed his mountain bike hurtling down a steep trail and knew he had broken his neck. Paralyzed from
