Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black by Cookie Mueller

Author:Cookie Mueller
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2015-01-09T16:00:00+00:00

British Columbia - 1972

I accidentally burned a friend's house to the ground once. The friend didn't approve. True, it wasn't entirely my fault; I was a guest along with three other guests.

The friend was away for the burning that evening, Friday the thirteenth, November 1972.

I had just left Baltimore after filming Female Trouble with John Waters and needed a vacation somewhere other than were I was living, Provincetown, Massachusetts.

I went to visit my friends, Tony and Laura, in British Columbia, right on the edge of the Canadian Rockies, minutes from the Kootney River, outside a little town called Nelson.

They were married and it was their first home. They lived there with a girl named Vickie who was part owner. There were three bedrooms upstairs, with quite a view from the guest bedroom, where Max, Howard, Don, Loo and I slept in two beds.

It was land with no boundaries, no discernable perimeters anyway, and there was a barn where the. boarded horses were supposed to be kept, except they were too wild to feel comfortable in a barn. There, too, was a half-finished log cabin, and a two-story tree house with blue glass windows Vickie was building all by herself.

There were lots of animals, a mean male goat tied to a plum tree, three mild-mannered milk goats, four horses, three cats, two dogs, an intelligent pig and very dumb chickens.

I've known a few chickens in my time and they're all really stupid, even though they lay perfectly good eggs.

The first couple of weeks I stayed there, my only interest was riding the horses, except they were practically un-catchable; they romped in their acreage of fenced woody hillsides, hiding behind trees, galloping away whenever they saw somebody coming with a bridle and a pail of oats.

The only horse I could ever nab regularly was the big brown gelding, Mory. He was fairly docile once bridled, but had been hit by a Mack truck years before so he was spooked. When anyone was on his back, he always hallucinated obstacles in his path, so he would leap suddenly to one side or the other with no warning, throwing the unwary equestrian's fanny into the dirt. Since there weren't any saddles it was always a test.

I once caught the smart young mare, who was fast and hard to handle. She was an incredible ride; I had a great time until she threw me and came back to trot on my stomach. I never thought I could lose interest in horses so fast.

The night the house burned down, Tony and Laura were across the river at an all night party. Vickie had gone to Vancouver for the weekend on an antique buying spree. The house was full of the stuff. The guests, Don, Loo, Howard and myself were busy that evening with Don's cocaine and old photographs. Max was crying upstairs; he didn't want to go to sleep at all. Finally I brought him down with us. I was really angry at him.

When we ran out of cocaine and photographs, Don went out to his little Volkswagen to get more.

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