This Is the Story of a Happy Tombstone

Ann Patchett has just watched her then boyfriend/now husband Karl ride off on the back of a motorcycle as he hangs on for his life to the narrow, naked waist of Rhonda. Help me, Rhonda, help, help. About the time she thinks Karl might never come back (a legit thought), he comes back, gleefully dismounts like a kid on Christmas morning who got exactly what he wanted, and then Rhonda rev’s the same invitation in the direction of Ann. “Go!,” Karl says. And she does, hanging on for her life to the same narrow, naked waist of Rhonda. What follows is an experience nothing like the assigned Winnebago narrative up to that point, for instead of seeing the world from the inside of that aluminum can (“Winnie”), Ann Patchett strapped on the back of Rhonda’s bike becomes the world. Her exposure results in a string of declarative “I am” statements: I am the mountains...I am the asphalt...I am the birds in the sky. Ann Patchett threaded the eye of the needle. She dismounts changed. Now she carries the knowing: “People are more than willing to die on motorcycles because for that moment in the Badlands of South Dakota they are truly and deeply alive.”

I’m reading her essay “My Road to Hell Was Paved” before work. It’s 3:30am and I’m eating three boiled eggs, steel cut oats afloat in honey, all of it washed down with two cups of coffee. And I’m falling more in love with Ann Patchett. Yes, yes, sure, her writing, those essays, God what a writer. And the bookstore, God what a bookstore. But also her. I mean, you can’t wrench the woman from the writing. Ann Patchett is cool, and I love cool people. From what I’ve read of her and about her (not all but a lot), Ann Patchett doesn’t want to simply experience life, she wants to live, live, live. A direct descendant of Auntie Mame. Or Wyatt Earp.

O.K., not much of a segue, but I believe such things are overrated. Yes, Wyatt Earp, specifically as portrayed in Tombstone, the 1993 western that in my opinion ages fine like wine. Ann Patchett on the back of a motorcycle caused me to think of Wyatt Earp. I know, I know, the mind is a junkyard. Why? Because what Wyatt (Kurt Russell) in George P. Cosmatos’ version is searching for is exactly the same thing Ann Patchett, at one time and I betcha still, is searching for—living.

[NOTE - Dear reader, yes, there are historical inaccuracies in Tombstone. It’s a movie.]

Here’s a tender conversation between Wyatt and Doc Holliday (Val Kilmer).

Doc: What did you ever want?

Wyatt: Just to live a normal life.

Doc: There's no normal life, Wyatt, it's just life. Get on with it.

Wyatt: Don't know how.

Doc: Sure you do. Say goodbye to me. Go grab that spirited actress and make her your own. Take that beauty from it, don't look back. Live every second. Live right on to the end. Live Wyatt. Live for me. Wyatt, if you were ever my friend - if ya ever had even the slightest of feelin' for me, leave now. Leave now... Please.

Wyatt: Thanks for always being there, Doc.

God that gets me every time.

If you’ve gotten lost in my junk heap, let me help. Ann Patchett’s now husband/then boyfriend Karl I see as essentially Doc Holliday telling her, “Go! Grab that narrow, naked waist of Rhonda and don’t look back. Live, Ann. Leave. Live.” And she does. I don’t know Karl, but I suppose back then he could’ve thought she might not come back. Now that’d of been a helluva western, huh?—Ann Patchett rides off into the sunset with Rhonda. Giddyup. But if you love something, let it go. Even if it goes grabbing the narrow, naked waist of Rhonda. Yet here’s the deal. She came back, back to Karl and their rickety romance (slightly bolstered by Rhonda screaming at her, “That man loves you!”) and their rented Winnebago and her assignment for Outside magazine, and then on back, or maybe better “forward,” to Tennessee and more writing and a dog and novels and marriage and a bookstore and...and living.

O.K., back to Wyatt. After all the shootin’ and killin’ and “Hell’s comin’” and Doc dyin’ (the windswept West has little use for g’s), Wyatt left, took off after Josie that spirited actress. He found her in Denver, he stood in the doorway stripped of everything but a poetic pick-up line: You ever see the sun come up over the Rockies? It hits all of a sudden, and below there's California, and you swear you're lookin' at Heaven (what a line). And it was enough for Josie to grab the narrow, belted waist of Wyatt and whirl outside as snow falls and Robert Mitchum gravelly tells us that at Wyatt Earp’s funeral Tom Mix wept.

God that gets me every time.

As Ann Patchett wraps up her assignment, she’s fallen in love with the Winnebago, and more importantly with Karl. When they return “Minnie,” they pause at the thrill of buying one, an Airstream Classic and motoring in it back, or rather forward, to Tennessee. But they decide no, aware of what their friends and polite society would say. But had they said yes, she writes: “We wouldn’t mind.” They knew, like Wyatt and Josie, that in order to truly and deeply live, you have to be willing to die. Friends and polite society be damned. Yep, it’s the willingness.

To live every second. Live right on to the end.

Thanks, Doc.

Thanks, Ann.

Oh, and thanks, Rhonda.

*Essay collection - This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage (Harper, 2013).