Silver was your stock and trade, soldering, braiding the strands, setting stone into bezel, polishing rough rocks into smooth cabochons. Like the precious metal you worked, there was a soft side to you, and a stubborn edge. Once you showed us how to make a feather: cut the metal, heat the leaf-like shape then etch tiny lines with a sharp knife. You said they were more than ornamental; they could be useful, to cover error, as silver has a mind of its own, can easily slip and slide.
The fall from the ladder might have been a full mile down instead of the four feet that could be measured to the floor. You fell a full decade forward, head first from independence in the blink of an eye. Bones cracked but you’d been there before, knew you could come back but you kept falling, your brain tumbling toward a stroke. A week of hope, then another stroke. The town of Marathon rallied around you and in the way of small towns, when called upon, loved you well.
You went to Odessa to learn how to swallow again and when we saw you, you had become a much older man overnight, whispering, holding both my hands in yours. Only the week before we were eating at the Gage and you were savoring flamed Drambouie with style. Hand-made boots, Harris tweed hat, single-malt Scotch, a true-blue dog at your side. And silver, silver, silver on your satisfied mind.
The first time we met you showed me a piece of turquoise, both blue and green, a picture of the earth from the vantage of the moon. Then you brought out a square black pendant set in silver, made of hematite you found in Lobo Valley near Valentine. Not smooth, this stone, but bubbled as if it had frozen solid after coming straight out of the core of the boiling earth. You said it was your lucky stone, that it helped you survive cancer. You should never have stopped wearing it. But maybe some other stone was required for stroke – something like a star sapphire, clear as a cut piece of sky when you climbed that ladder reaching for the light, an amulet to catch you in mid air and hold you from harm.
Can you find us now from where you are – all of us who wear your bracelets and your rings and learned a little of your trade? We should be easy to pick out – a silver constellation you created. See, Dennie, our hands are shining.
