Reflections - cover2

A Journey not Measured in Miles - Rash
Years ago when Rash brought home his Indian bride, the townspeople could not have been more shocked had he married a Dallas streetwalker. He
had met her somewhere in Oklahoma, having gone there to buy cattle. She was tall, dark, beautiful, aloof, and regal--an exotic princess.
Perhaps the locals could have accepted her if she had been short, fat, and ugly, as befitted their notions of an Indian squaw. But they had never
been able to forgive her cool elegance and the total indifference with which she countered their stares and whispered comments. She did not seem
to need people, so their attempts to belittle her simply did not exist for her.
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She built a large, rambling house of native stone on the ranch, bore Rash three children, quietly assumed control of the ranch, and took her place in
the myths and legends that surrounded the family. No one really knew her, but she liked the freedom that sort of anonymity gave her. Although a
gracious and generous hostess, she erected an invisible barrier between herself and others which precluded the possibility of intimacy and enabled
her to maintain complete control. Even touching her arm in a natural, easy way during the course of conversation would have seemed
presumptuous. She was not a person one touched physically, emotionally, or intellectually. She was one of those rare people who seemed
somehow complete -- nothing anyone could say or do would add to or subtract from her.
Rash could see her now in his mind's eye as he sped along the highway. God! She was still beautiful--perhaps more now than she had ever been.
Her sleek black hair, just beginning to show gray, pulled tightly back into a shiny knot at the nape of neck. She would be dressed in black, a highnecked
sweater and slacks, her neck encircled by Indian turquoise, her wrists heavy with silver.
His mind ducked farther back to their early relationship and he thought of her long, dark legs and slim hips. A terrible sense of loss and longing
filled him. Accustomed as he had been to coy, small-town girls raised on the Victorian ignorance and prudery of their mothers, he had been
astonished at her easy sensuality and lack of inhibitions. She knew far more than he about the mechanics of sex, and he gratefully allowed her to
initiate him, reveling in his good fortune. He did not let the “whys” bother him, and the obvious questions went unasked and unanswered.
Night after lusty night the revelations continued. It was during the last months of her first pregnancy, when both their sexual interests declined,
that Rash realized that he had never really talked to her, never expressed to her his fears and longings, his hopes and frustrations, never discussed
with her politics, philosophy, or religion. Their conversation was always superficial, and the lusty nights were never playfully discussed in the light
of morning. Though passionate, hers was a cold passion, a sterile flame that did not permit the growth of communication in other areas of their
lives. The realization of this lack in her created a great barren spot in his life. He had needed far more than a body-lover; he had needed a life
companion, a mind-lover.
As child followed child, even the passion died, and they became simply acquaintances that inhabited the same house and life. He respected her
ability to run the ranch for it relieved him of that odious responsibility; and he loved her as a man loves an old dream that never quite materialized.
She raised the children with the same detachment that she made love. The fact that all three had a rootless, directionless quality did not seem to
Opposite, Peoples Bank & Trust, established by Rash's father in Ryan, Oklahoma and managed by Rash after his father's death in 1939.
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