The Dance
"God is good, but never dance in a small boat."
Vin Tanner looked across the campfire to Chris Larabee, who sat staring into the fire with a frown. And when he failed to expound on that odd bit of wisdom offered up without preamble, Vin laid down the harmonica on which he'd been playing random notes that weren't quite random and said, "That supposed to mean something?"
"Supposed to."
Chris kept his gaze on the fire. And after another minute's silence and another, he looked up and away from the fire to the man watching him across it, his frown deepening. "Why'd you do it, Vin? Why'd you dance like that with Charlotte?"
Vin was still for a moment, the question taking him by surprise, Charlotte Richmond and the wagon train in which they'd traveled months in the past and not spoken of between the two men since. Then tucking the harmonica into a pocket, he leaned back onto his elbows, his turn now to gaze into the fire. "It was just a dance."
"No, it wasn't." Chris's tone was puzzled but sure as he tried to understand why it was the tracker gave his heart so easily, following wherever it led -- whether on the trail to Brazil or to a dusty cemetery filled with cowboys hell-bent on hanging a man. "It was a lot more than that, and you know it. It was you throwing your heart at another man's wife -- and right in front of him, God and everybody. It was you giving up everything you had to run off with her. So why'd you do it? Why would you have taken that kind of risk? You had to know the boat you were in was way too small to take that kind of rocking. You had to know how likely it was that it would capsize and toss you into water over your head. Yet you stood right up and started dancing. Why? And why do you do that with every boat you ever step into?"
Vin shrugged. "I know how to swim."
And to him, it was that simple. Yet still Chris couldn't grasp that willingness to risk losing everything, having risked and lost and found himself drowning still. And sitting there in the dark and the cold after a long day's ride, wondering where the trail he traveled was leading, he tried again. "But don't you ever get tired of fighting to keep your head above water?"
Vin was silent for a long time. Then looking up from the fire and over it to the man waiting for an answer to a question he'd never asked himself, he searched out both, slowly saying, "I heard tell of a story once, about that fella Jesus and those friends of his. Seems He sent them out in a boat without him, and a bit of a storm blew up. Night come on and the waves were tossing that boat about fierce enough to set them to wondering what was going to be the end of it. And my guess is they was all wishing Jesus was there with them, figuring He could save them if nothing else could. Then long into the night, He come. But He weren't in no boat -- He come straight across the water through the waves, walking on them like He was on dry land and not having to worry about drowning."
His eyes lost their focus, the fire and the cold it kept at bay forgotten as he tracked through a wilderness of words to come at the question and the only answer he had to give it. "He could have found a boat, Chris. Hell, He was the Son of God, so I don't reckon a little thing like that would have thrown Him none. But He didn't. He walked right out onto the water and into the waves after his friends." He shook his head. "I figured at the time I heard tell of it that he couldn't have been too bright. But the more I've pondered it, the more I reckon He knew just what He was doing. His friends were in that boat, probably scared to death of dying. Their boat was strong and so were they. But to them, that bit of wood was all they had keeping their heads above water. Yet Jesus didn't need a boat."
His eyes came back into focus then on the man watching him across the fire. "You know why that is, Chris? You know why He didn't need a boat?"
Chris shrugged. "Guess it was like you said -- He was the Son of God. And I don't reckon a little thing like that would have thrown Him none."
He smiled, but got only a solemn look in return.
"That's what I figured too," Vin softly returned. "At first. But then it come to me that it wasn't about thumbing his nose at what couldn't hurt Him or even proving who He was. It was about showing folks that life ain't just about keeping your head above water or drowning if you can't. It's about walking into the storm to find what matters in life when it would be safer to sit huddled in a boat. Or better yet, to sit safe at home before a fire and make do with what you got."
Back went his gaze to the fire burning bright before him. "I reckon a man can do what's safe and make old bones, die in his sleep at ninety. But what does he have to show for his long life at the ending of it? A boat rotten with age and ashes in a fireplace?"
"Beats having nothing to show for your life but a broken heart."
"Is it?"
The question was soft, the tone curious. And the blue eyes that lifted to green were free of regrets.
It was Chris' turn once again to stare into the fire, lowering eyes filled with regret for everything he'd ever set his heart on and lost, too many boats capsizing beneath him to be willing to trust himself to wood and waves again.
Then soft words drifted over the fire. "I ain't sorry for that dance, Chris. Even knowing how things were that I didn't see, even knowing now how it all had to end, I wouldn't go back and sit that dance out for anything in life. I don't know the right or the wrong of it, nor whether I'm going to have to answer for it some day. I only know that it was in me to dance, to step out into the waves and risk sinking into them. And maybe that's what happened in the end -- maybe I didn't dance very far out onto that water before it closed over my head. But for a time, I was a part of the storm instead of being beat down by it. I was a part of her laughing in my arms and nothing stronger than the two of us together. And I won't never be sorry that I didn't sit safe on shore and miss that. I won't never be sorry for dancing instead of sitting life out safe and sure so that I don't get hurt. A long life that ain't got nothing in it of trying and losing and sometimes winning -- even if only for a short while -- ain't much of a life at all. Not to me, it ain't."
He lay down and rolled into his blanket. And turning his back to the fire, he added more softly still, "Jesus walked on them waves. But I reckon he could just as easily have danced. And I'm betting he did."
He fell silent then, the only sound in the wake of his words that of the fire crackling, wood burning to give light and heat, all that it was consumed in the giving. And staring into that fire long into the night as wood turned slowly to ash, Chris poked at the dying embers, light and heat in them still, if fading, the ashes a fine dust that was at the end of all things, no matter how long they held out against their dying. And that being the case, he thought that maybe Vin was right, that maybe it wasn't the ashes that mattered but the light given out in the burning, that maybe it was better to go out in a blaze of fire than to rot slowly away into dust, better to risk drowning by dancing on the waves than to never dance at all.
He stretched out onto his bedroll then, pulling it warmly around himself. And while he wasn't yet ready to risk setting foot to the waves, as he drifted into sleep, he thought that maybe, come morning, he'd ask Vin to teach him how to swim.
The End