What Difference Do It Make? by Ron Hall Page B

when you see them in the rearview mirror.”

13
    Ron
    Like country folks, we sat around Deborah’s grave on hay bales . . . For the next hour and a half, we honored my wife.
    We sang old-time spirituals and country hymns, accompanied by two cowboy friends playing acoustic guitars. Warm sunlight filtered through the oaks, casting circles of gold on Deborah’s pine casket, so that the simple box she’d asked for appeared covered in shimmering medallions.
    T wo weeks after we buried Deborah, Denver and I drove back to Rocky Top. We’d buried her in a simple casket, covering the grave with a pile of rocks and marking the spot with a cross of cedar. The ranch is crawling with critters, from bobcats to wild hogs. Worried that wild animals might try to dig her up, I hadn’t slept since. Denver and I were on our way back to build a fence of stones and wrought iron around the grave.
    For more than an hour, we rolled west from Dallas in complete silence. Then, just as we crossed the railroad tracks in the little town of Brazos, Denver burst into laughter, as though bumping over the rails had shaken loose some buried joy. I shot him a sideways glare, irritated that he would find something to laugh about when God had seen fit to steal my wife.
    â€œWhat is so dang funny?” I asked.
    â€œMr. Ron, there ain’t nobody gon’ believe our story,” he spit out between chuckles. “We got to write us a book.”
    â€œWho is this ‘we,’ Kemo Sabe? You can’t read or write . . . just who is going to write it?”
    â€œWell, I’ll tell you my part, and you write it down. You know your part, so you write that down. Then we’ll put it together and make us a book.”
    Three weeks later, we raised the gates at what had gone from a lonesome stone-covered grave to a little family cemetery we named Brazos de Dios, which means “the arms of God.” There was so far only one family member in residence, but I knew I would join Deborah there someday, near her favorite spot where a leaning oak sheltered a natural stone bench in a covering of shade. Meanwhile, though, I had a problem. Half my heart was buried in the ground at Rocky Top. What exactly did God expect me to do now? Could He possibly want me to write a book with Denver? And if He did, what would I write?
    I thought I’d begin my search for answers in Europe. During my art-dealing career, I had often found Italy a refuge. I loved the pace of life there—walking up narrow stone streets, waiting for the pizza place to open, finding a vista and a sidewalk café where the only thing you have to do is dip your biscotti in your espresso. I’d spent wonderful times in the village of Positano, famous for lemons so bountiful that the scent of them floats on the air all summer. And who could resist the food— bombalonis (fresh-fried donuts), fresh gelato with crushed raspberries, that wonderful pizza. People might think I’d be looking at art, but when I’m in Italy, I’m eating.
    And now maybe, I’d be eating . . . and writing.
    After a ten-hour flight, I landed in Rome and checked in at the Hotel Columbus, located a stone’s throw from the Holy See. Standing in the cavernous lobby, I gazed up at the frescoed ceilings arching overhead, marked with beams of dark wood painted with geometric designs. The lobby had been slightly modernized, but through a broad passage I could see the colonnade leading back to the pope’s former residence, which stood right at the very entrance to the Vatican.
    A coincidence struck me. The Hotel Columbus was named for an explorer who five hundred years before had set out on an adventure. With little to go on but faith, he’d braved treacherous seas to discover a new land. Now here I was, fifty-five years old and also facing a new land, a new future entirely different from the one I’d envisioned less than two years before. But unlike Columbus, who