Please…Please help me.  I sat on my knees and begged.  I didn’t know who I was talking to, (God?) and it didn’t really matter.  What mattered was the fact that I needed help and no one was tehre.  No one would answer.  I was left to be a beggar, staring through the ceiling reaching toward the sky…

Everything I’ve built…Everything we’ve built, worthless.  With these two hands and her love we built paradise.  When I was twelve I lost everything that mattered.  Wandering far from where I was born I was taken in by a rancher and his wife.  I was sixteen when I saw the land that I could only dream of owning.  Eighteen when I met the family who lived there.  Eighteen when I knew I loved the oldest daughter more than I could ever love that land.  Twenty five when I married her…

Running cattle and growing potatoes and alfalfa, alternating each year of course; I became known as Rich Man Dewey.  Possibly the only Indian in the West who didn’t have to work under a white man, this was after all, the 1930’s.  Life was great.  Clara gave me everything I lost and then some.  My dear Clara with who stood three feet taller than me.  You may laugh but her height would never matter to me.

I remember when I first confessed my love she said, “If I am to be with you and walk with you hand in hand, someone may think you are my child.”

“I’m not THAT short!” I exclaimed.  Before I could say anything else, she blushed and agreed to be my wife.

It wasn’t long before we had our first child and they just kept coming until we had six in all.  No matter how tired she was she would be up early, smiling her lovely smile and making me breakfast.  I would watch her move gracefully throughout the kitchen with her black hair loose and flowing well below her waist.  I wondered how she never caught it on fire.

I also wondered how we could manage to stay un-pregnant until her final female change.  It didn’t matter; we soon found out she could no longer have children and not long after that, our only son died.  Even as she cried and her eyes became puffy she was beautiful to me…I could do nothing but hold her and do my best to be strong for her.  I did it, I held her up.

Now I’m seventy and all that we built has all crumbled.  I’ve sold everything and our family has nthing.  Standing outside of her hospital room I fall to my knees.  I have no more money and they can’t save her.  A heart problem, that’s what they said.  Does it really matter?

Finally I get up and go to her.  Lying there so old and wrinkled, but to me she’s still the same.  I lie next to her and hold her.  I tell her everything will be ok.