A Thousand Tomorrows & Just Beyond the Clouds Omnibus (24 page)

She looked away and coughed twice. “It was a quote from some guy.” A hawk circled overhead and she raised her eyes toward it. “He’s dead now.”

“Too bad.” Cody kept his voice even. He hated talking about death. “What’s the quote?”

“Before he died, he told people, ‘Soon you will read in the newspaper that I am dead. Don’t believe it for a moment. I will be more alive than ever before.’ ” She looked at him, beyond his confident facade to the terrified places of his soul. “That’s what I want you to say about me, okay, Cody? Tell everyone.”

“Ali…” He placed his hand on her cheek and cradled her head against his chest. If only she could stay this way, safe in his arms.

“I mean it.” She covered his fingers with hers. “It won’t be long. Tell them I’m not dead, I’m alive.” She hesitated and when she talked again there was a smile in her voice. “Tell them I’m riding with Anna, chasing her across the fields and playing hide-and-seek in the bushes. Okay, Cody?”

“Do you…” He didn’t want to say the words. “Do you really think it’s soon?”

“Yes.” She coughed again, and the struggle was back with every breath. “Will you tell them?”

He turned himself toward her, framed her face with his hands and kissed her, a kiss that willed life into her, one that wanted her to be wrong about the timing. But he wouldn’t keep her waiting, not for another moment. He pulled back and searched her eyes. “I’ll tell them.”

“Thank you, Cody.” She pulled the reins to one side and headed into the barn.

He climbed off first and then helped her down. She walked around and stood in front of Ace, the horse she’d ridden and counted on and competed with for a decade. Ace, who for years had been her only friend.

For a long time she stared at her horse. Then she leaned in, looped her arms around his neck and kissed him on the bridge of his nose. “Be good, Ace.”

With a single step, she turned to Cody and fell into his arms. Her tears came then, waves of them. Wrapped in his embrace, she shook, ripped apart by a sorrow that knew no limits.

He rubbed her back, and when she had control again, she looked up. “I’m not sad.”

A half smile raised his lips. “I can tell.”

She made a sound, but it was more cry than laugh. She brought her fingers to her mouth and shook her head. “What I mean is, I didn’t sit in a room and watch life through a window.” She held on to his shoulders and kissed him. “I didn’t
win a national championship, but I did everything else I ever dreamed of doing. And now… I’m not afraid.” She smiled, her eyes warming him to the core. “I just wish”—her voice caught and she waited a beat—“I just wish I could take you with me.”

“Oh, Ali…” He forced himself to find his voice. “Me, too.”

Once more she glanced over her shoulder at Ace. Then she turned and held out her hand. “Take me in.”

She didn’t look back again after that.

Not when they left the barn or when they headed into her parents’ house through the back door. From the moment she was inside, her breathing grew worse, more strained with every passing hour. None of the usual methods brought her relief.

Her decline was swift and sure, and she slept through much of it.

By that evening, Cody was convinced. The ride earlier that day, their conversation, all of it had been a miracle, nothing less. Ali might not get better, but they’d been given one single, spectacular morning, a morning that would forever cast light on the broken places of his heart.

Dr. Cleary was contacted, but he gave Ali a choice. She could come to the hospital and have a few more days. Or she could stay home with her family. Ali chose to stay home. The days blurred, Ali fighting her disease the way she’d always fought it, with rolled up sleeves and gloves off.

“I’m trying to hold on, Cody,” she told him one night as he lay beside her, studying her. “I’m still trying.”

“I know.” He ran his fingers through her hair, willing life into her, believing that somehow, someway, they still had a chance. “Don’t ever stop; there’s still a chance.”

Ali smiled. “That’s what… I love about you.” She swallowed, every word a breathless struggle. “You never stop… believing in me.”

“No, baby, never.” He leaned in and brought his lips to hers. “You can do anything.”

“Hold me.”

He worked his hands beneath her shoulder blades and hugged her lightly. Any pressure on her chest would make it harder for her to breathe. “Stay with me, Ali.”

“I will.” She pressed her face to his. “I’ll just… never let go.”

She lived two days longer than Dr. Cleary thought possible, clinging to Cody and life, and promising to never stop.

But in the end it wasn’t enough.

On a clear late-April day, two weeks after their morning ride, Ali died in his arms.

For a long time—after her parents left the room and after someone had been called to come for her body—Cody held her, clinging to her, breathing in the smell of shampoo still fresh in her hair.

The media learned the story overnight. Hundreds of cowboys and barrel racers and organizers from the Pro Rodeo community attended the funeral. Ali Daniels was no longer a mystery, and they were collectively stunned at the truth, rallying together in their support of Cody and her family.

Cody’s parents and Carl Joseph flew in, too, surrounding Cody with a sort of love he had craved all his life.

Carl Joseph came up to him before the service. “Brother.” His lower lip quivered. “I’m sorry about Ali.”

“Thanks, buddy.” Cody crooked his arm around his younger brother and hugged him hard, rocking back and forth.

“She was a good horse rider.” Carl Joseph pulled back, his brow furrowed, sincerity and sorrow written in the lines of his face. He raised his hand and pointed to the sky. “Up there, you know what I hope?”

“What?” Cody still had one hand on his brother’s shoulder.

“I hope God gives her a horse.”

Cody closed his eyes and he could see Ali and Ace, running like the wind together, blazing a trail across the fields behind her house. He opened his eyes. “Me, too, buddy.” His throat ached from the sadness. “Me, too.”

Ali was everywhere that day.

She was in the eyes of her mother, quiet and stoic, mindless of the tears that streamed down her face. She was in the strength of her father, as he placed a bouquet of daisies on her coffin. And she was with Cody, also. In the way he took the microphone and talked about Ali, her determination and grace.

“Ali wanted me to tell you something.” He looked at the crowd of familiar faces. “You think she’s dead, but don’t believe it.” Her voice played in his mind. “She is more alive now than ever before.”

She was there when he returned to his seat and took his mother’s hand, and again in the long hug he shared with his father.

Cody thought it fitting.

Ali had taught him to love; and now that love would be her legacy.

But she never taught him how to let go.

And when the funeral was over, when his parents and Carl Joseph boarded a plane and headed back home to Atlanta, something happened that Cody didn’t expect.

The old anger came back.

Or maybe it wasn’t the old anger, but a new, unfamiliar anger, a feeling of rage and helplessness and a strange sort of not knowing. Not knowing what to do or where to go or why he should climb out of bed or how he was ever supposed to feel right again.

Whatever it was, habit suggested he keep it inside.

He stayed the summer at her parents’ ranch, most of it on the back of Ace. Out on the ranch, missing her, doubts peppered him like springtime hail. Why wasn’t she allowed to live? Heaven would have her for eternity; all he’d wanted was a few decades.

And why hadn’t she won the national championship? Strange, but some days that bothered Cody most of all. One barrel? One lousy barrel had made the difference? It wasn’t right.

“Cody, we’re all missing her,” her mother would say every few days. “If you want to talk, I’m here.”

Every hour made the strange feelings inside him clearer,
more intense. Finally he figured it out. The pain wasn’t anger at all; it was sorrow. A sorrow with fingers that sometimes squeezed his soul, creating an ache that spread from his chest to his shoulders and knees and feet. Other times sorrow was an ocean, deep and wide and vast, and he a lone swimmer, drowning, without any hope of reaching the shore.

Sorrow was a lot like anger.

He could hide it from people, but it was there when he woke up, and when he closed his eyes at night. And nothing, not the act of saddling Ace or tending the cattle or fixing fences or talking to Ali’s mother, made it any better. Cody Gunner knew only one way to deal with the pain.

By the sixth month he made up his mind.

He contacted the PRCA and, given the circumstances, permission was granted. Another rider gave him a room at his ranch in California where Cody practiced two months straight. That January in Denver, when the season started, Cody took a seat on his first competitive bull in three seasons. By then he had a reason, an intensity, a battle even greater than the one he’d waged against anger or disease.

This time the dragon that needed slaying was sorrow, a sorrow that would kill him if he didn’t fight it. With every amazing bull ride that season, he battled the sadness, the aching way he missed her. And with every ride he could feel her there, beside him. In him. He didn’t fly from one rodeo to the next the way he used to. This time he bought a trailer like Ali’s, and parked it in familiar places adjacent to the rodeos. Places where he and Ali had first found each other, places where he could sit outside and remember.

The season was a wild and reckless one, taking on bulls with a confidence that defied understanding. People in Pro Rodeo circles wondered if grief had made Cody Gunner crazy, getting on the back of a bull when his body held just one lung. A single jab of a bull’s horn and he wouldn’t make it out of the arena.

Cody didn’t care. The season was something he had to do, had to experience, and in December he stood in the winner’s circle, the national champion a third time.

A few days later he flew back to Colorado to get his things and tell Ali’s parents good-bye. His family was in Atlanta; he wanted to be there, too. That week, one afternoon he found Ali’s mother in the garden and handed her his championship buckle.

“It belongs to you,” he told her.

And it did. Because without Ali, without knowing her and loving her and missing her with an intensity stronger than any bucking bull, he would never have competed. He certainly never would’ve won. So the buckle belonged to her family—it was the one Ali had always wanted.

The season served its purpose.

Along the way Cody learned the truth about sorrow, and that was this: it would never leave. And so he did what Ali would’ve done. He took a deep breath, held it, and rushed full on toward it. He embraced it and entertained it, and finally he made peace with it.

Epilogue

C
ody opened a horse farm on a ranch outside Atlanta, and a year later his parents and Carl Joseph moved onto an adjacent piece of land. Some days, on warm evenings when Ace was in the pasture, Cody would squint from the back porch of his house, and always he would hear her voice.

Every time you ride Ace, every time you look at him, I want you to see me…

And he did, but not the way she had looked that last morning, thin and pale, breathing good-byes. Rather, he saw her alive and well and holding her breath, strong in the saddle, flying around a cloverleaf of barrels.

The way he would always see her.

Now that the rodeo world knew Ali’s story, Cody had no choice but to leave everything about her competitive years to the ages, a story that would be told again and again as young riders came up through the ranks. But the real story, who Ali was away from rodeo, would always belong to only
a handful of people, the way she had belonged to a handful of people.

And most of all, she would belong to him.

His favorite photo of Ali was taken on their wedding day. She was smiling, wearing her long white dress, daisies in her hair, eyes shining, convinced she would beat cystic fibrosis, that the bond between the two of them was stronger than medicine or disease or even time.

Whenever Cody stopped and looked at the picture, he was convinced of the same thing. Though she’d been wrong about beating the disease, she was right about one thing: The bond between them would remain until his dying day.

Flesh had failed Ali Daniels. But love never did; it never would. No matter how far the years took him from Ali’s life, her love would live on.

Because it lived on in him.

Author’s Note

This story was inspired by the hundred or so people each year who donate a lung to someone they love, someone with cystic fibrosis. All for the chance to buy a little time, maybe a thousand tomorrows, maybe a few more or less.

Ali Daniels’ experience with CF was individual to her, the way the disease is to each person who has it. Her situation was not intended to illustrate an average case or average limitations. I tried to keep her situation within the realms of possibility and reality.

Exercise is encouraged for people with cystic fibrosis, but not in a place with allergens and irritants that might harm the lungs. My research showed that it would be highly unusual for a person with CF to run barrels on the Pro Rodeo circuit. But determination and will made Ali Daniels special.

I chose to write about CF because of a little boy named Matt who has the disease. He plays basketball on my husband’s fourth-grade team. For Matt, there’s no talk about his future in the sport. No worries about potential scholarships
down the road. These
are
the good old days for Matt. He plays today because he loves it. He plays like an all-star, with his entire heart. In the same spirit that Ali Daniels rode horses.

In 1970 a child born with CF was expected to live only to age ten. That number has risen to a life expectancy today of thirty-two years. If you’re interested in volunteering or helping out the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, you can contact them at
www.CFF.org
. Their motto is
“Adding tomorrows every day.”