THERE WAS THIS TIME WHEN I WAS KID. Like waking up in a dream. Older brother out in the front yard practicing his swing. Starting to get ready for baseball, which meant that I was starting to get ready for baseball, too. Clouds in the sky fluffy and white and feeling closer than clouds usually felt, like maybe someone was holding them up back there, like they were props in a play. The underbelly of each one chalky and grey like a Crayon, like I had never seen before. But maybe I just never looked at them like this. Paying attention.

Don’t know if I’m ten years old or if I’m thirty-one years old and I’m looking back at me who’s ten years old. Same thing, I guess. Same me.

No breeze.

Marcus practicing his swing. Motioning for me to come over and join him. Says he’s going to show me how it’s done. Only been doing this for an hour, max—probably more like ten minutes —but already he’s an expert. Always good at whatever he tries. Tells me that we’ll both be hitting home runs soon, like that’s the entire point of the game, to hit as many of them as you can. Says it in a way that lets me know it’s true.

But first, he says, focus on your swing.

Start here: with how you stand. With how you plant your feet. With all ten of your toes down in the dirt. Makes you wonder if that’s the usual number of toes you’re supposed to keep down there, in the dirt.

He starts swinging for the fences. Says that’s what he’s aiming for. But when I look around there are no fences because we’re in the yard and our house is right there next to us. Maybe next summer we will build them, fences to hit balls over. Until then it’s just us and the pine trees and the tall grass at our knees, all of it reaching for the sky.

Focus.

My older brother standing in front of me and slightly to the side. Practicing his swing. I’m leaning forward, checking out what exactly it is he’s doing with all ten of his toes that’s so special. The secret to hitting home runs, he says. But then something quick and violent happens and it feels like this: from the corner of my eye I catch my brother’s bat moving hard and fast towards me, and I try to move my head away, I try and get away from it before my brain’s finished thinking about it, processing it, in time to avoid it, but then there’s a flash of heat and space where my brain tells me my nose

The air air moving hard of the wooden bat my brother is swinging hard, like it’s rushing away from him, like it’s making room for things, and then what’s directly behind the air moving, which is the bat itself. Meeting my nose. And in a bad way, I guess. Because my brother drops the bat right away and looks at me like something just froze him up, like he just saw a zombie and I am that zombie.

And then he’s screaming, and there’s liquid pouring down over my top lip, into my mouth. And I’m reaching up to check where exactly this liquid’s coming from, trying to find the source of it, because that’s how things work when things stop working. Brain doesn’t know what just happened. Taking some extra time to catch up. Telling my hand to investigate. Rain? Nope. Blood? Yup. Looks that way. You’re more than just dripping, too, kid. That’s what my brain tells me. Says, You’re leaking like a rowboat just smashed into a splintered log.

Marcus running inside now, yelling for Mom and Dad like those two words, Mom and Dad, like they are one long word and they are stitched together.

So I start yelling too, but different kinds of stuff. Bad-word stuff. Right then and there in the front yard. Because I’ve been hearing the words at school and it feels kind of like I’ve been holding them in for this very moment. Waiting to release them on the world. Realizing all at once why grown-ups use them. Noticing how the words grab the attention of everything around me. Feels like maybe even the birds are watching me now, even the clouds.

Has everything always been this close?

There was this time when I was a kid. Waking up in the middle of a dream. Sleeping in my brother’s room because... well, because nightmares. And with him I felt safe. And he’s leaning over towards me in the darkness, telling me not to cry, asking me what it is that’s happening in those dreams of mine that’s so scary. What are you seeing in there? But all I can tell him is that when I wake up it’s like I have lost something and I’ll never have it back.

Ice pack against my face and everyone’s giving me all the attention I could ever want, but Dad’s reminding me that those bad words aren’t okay to use, even when I’m hurting.

Grandma sneaking me a single Skittle before dinner, just the one, kneeling down in front of me and whispering in my ear, saying, Nothing you do from the heart will ever be wrong. Which is a silly thing to say but that’s Grandma for you. Does a lot of that lately. And everyone’s too busy feeling bad for me to get too upset about the words I was using anyway.

Ten toes down. That’s what I’m thinking.

And the single Skittle that Grandma handed me, which is soft and kind of mushy in my hand, turning white like maybe she was holding onto it for a while before she gave it to me. And I wonder for how long. And I wonder if she was planning on eating it herself but then my brother accidentally nicked my nose with his bat mid-swing. Looking at Grandma’s hand now, seeing that she’s got the color from the Skittle smeared on her palm. Which kind of grosses me out when I look at it. When I focus on it. So instead I look around at other stuff. And I pop the skittle in my mouth. And it’s soft and warm and I start chewing on it, but in a sneaky way because dinner’s almost ready.

And it’s windy outside now. Dark, too. Branches from the toyon bush beyond my bedroom window scratching against the glass like a goblin that’s trying to reach up and pull me down somewhere. But not today, goblin. Because now I swing hard and for the fences. Nothing but home runs for me. Ten toes in the dirt all the time. Chest out. Not sure if I’m still talking baseball.

Grandma talking in her sleep. And I’m listening to it, thinking about that word Dad used with my older brother that one time, calling what she’s got sundowners. Which sounded to me like something he made up right there on the spot.

Feel bad for her though because when she talks in her sleep it’s like she’s visiting the past and it doesn’t sound like the past wants her visiting. Whimpers in her sleep like she’s running from something, or chasing something that can’t ever be caught.

The wall between our rooms thin like something you could punch through if you kept all ten toes down in the dirt, and if you swung hard and for the fences. Everyone’s asleep except Grandma and me. Because Grandma’s both awake and asleep at the same time, because the sun is down and she’s a sundowner. And then there’s me, who is just awake because I guess I’m a night-timer.

Talking in her sleep. Mumbling things. Telling me all about the horses that she used to steal.

Like having a dream and then realizing you’re having a dream and then waking up in your dream. And for a moment you are alive there, too. Alive in both worlds. But then your brain catches you and wakes you up from the one because that’s too many skies to be under all at once. Because even just the one sky is sometimes too much.

And then things start clumping together. Memories sticking to each other like they’re getting rolled in glue before they leave her.

But for whatever reason the horses remain stabled. Guiding her, I guess. What horses do.

Couldn’t remember what day of the week it was for a while, or sometimes even the year. Or how old she was. Or if she had a doctor’s appointment. Stuff like that. The skin between her eyebrows pinching together whenever she would ask a question.

Never felt like I had much of an answer for her though. Like there was always something else that she was asking me, some secret question hidden in the words.

Never could figure it out.

Felt bad about it for a while. Changed the subject as gently as I could. Tried to play along. Tried to not linger or get my feet stuck thinking about it, which was mostly an easy thing for me to do back then, I guess—was a kid and mostly only thought about stuff the one time.

Told myself that she was just getting older and when people got older things start leaving. Figured that’s what the horses were for. Strong backs to carry things away.

Noticed the holes in her brain getting larger. Pieces of who she was starting to fall through them. More than just memories, too. Like before when you’d look at her you’d see lots of color. Messy blotches of it. Color bleeding onto more color. Leaking. Like holding up a painting to the light at just the right angle and saying to yourself, Yup, that’s her. The paint running down the canvas, streaking. That’s Grandma. But now when you look at the painting it’s just a bunch of different shades of gray like bloated clouds. Like you could smell the rain they were carrying.

Like waking up in a memory, and Grandma’s asking you a question and then asking you the same question again right after. Strangers starting to notice. Tossing sympathetic smiles your way at the bank, or at the check-out line in grocery store, or from the lady who hangs out on the corner of Bristol and Memory, with the jeans that don’t fit right.

But this was all later, I think.

Running errands with her. Running errands for her. Trying to help in the ways that you can. Putting something together in your mind one day as you’re watching her stare blankly at a turned-off TV in a pizza parlor. Learning from the way her expression changes and sinks when people toss those sympathetic gestures around, piecing together in your mind that memory and awareness are two separate things entirely, much as you might sometimes confuse them, and that Grandma knows exactly what’s happening to her because of course she does. Just doesn’t have the first clue how to fix it.

Changing kindness. Giving her questions like it’s T-ball, questions that you know she has the answer for, like what’s your favorite thing?

My favorite thing?

Yeah. In the whole world.

Her face scrunching together, deep in thought. Saying, animals, probably. Horses most of all.

Smiling at her. Pretending like you didn’t already know that’s what her answer would be. Hiding it from her like she used to hide easter eggs at the ranch for you and your brother. Avoiding wet cow shit like it’s a bunch of land mines and laughing, all of you together. And sunshine. And the sound of the creek and the frogs and the cows in the distance. Coyotes and fiddleneck, and bushes of stinging nettle, and wildflowers of every color on every hill from here until forever.

Asking me now, What are your plans for the future?

Playing along.

Same questions she’s always asking, but giving her a different answer every time. Doing your best. And then, after a while just rephrasing the old answers. And then not even doing that anymore. Getting tired of it. Giving her the same thing every time like it’s leftovers for dinner. Feeling deceitful about it at first, but then even that starts slipping away like sweat off a horse’s back.

Slick.

Remembering how she used to have red hair, the color of autumn, with streaks of brown like rot in a red barn door. Looking at it now and seeing more gray. Like the color in her hair and the color in her mind decided to leave at the same time. Decided to hold hands on their way out.

Wanting to reach over and kiss her on the forehead but not knowing how to do that.

Noticing how much she enjoys it when people pretend, but pretend to not be pretending, most of all from her grandsons.

Asking, Have you done something with your hair, Grandma? No? I don’t believe you. It looks great. When are you going to start looking your age?

Her telling me that it’s all so silly to say such nice things. Blushing every time anyway.

Never once asking me to stop. Hands up and in front of her, palms out, like she's trying to touch the kindness buried in each and every lie as it crawls slowly towards her. Saying, Oh quit! A smile covering the whole of her face. You don’t really think so, do you?

Of course I think so.

Ten toes. Chest out. Bleeding-heart liberal until she met Grandpa, who wasn’t your real grandpa, but was the only grandpa you ever remember having. A rancher with swollen fingers and a cigarette that was always hanging loose and unlit from his mouth. Like the plan was to chew on it rather than smoke it. Backflips into the peanut-shaped pool on your eighth birthday. One of those fun-size packs of Skittles always in his breast-pocket. Always a little warm and a little mushy and the color bleeding onto the wrapper. Always having a handful ready for when his grandsons would visit. Three hundred plus head of cattle. Five work horses, too, he told us, on top of that. But his favorite horse? His favorite horse was retired. Laughing whenever he told us that. Like the image of it alone, a retired horse, was the best joke he had. Just hanging around now, he said. The horse. Pulling grass and sleeping all day. Turning Grandma into something beautiful, like that’s what she always wanted to be, anyway.

Like the things that we forget about ourselves never existed in the first place.

Like there was nothing before what there is now, I guess.

A cup of apple juice on the coffee table in front of her. Sitting on the couch in the living room reading a book about the wild wild west. About ranching and horses and how big the world used to be. Colorful photographs taking up the whole of each page.

A great book, she says.

And I’m in the kitchen making myself a turkey sandwich but I hear her when she says it. So I walk over to sit with her. Ask her if she wants half of what I made but she doesn’t hear me because she’s living in that book. Freckles of dust hanging in the air in front of her face.

She says it again, A great book.

A great book, I agree. A real beautiful thing.

Playing along.

Ten toes in the dirt.

Chest out.

Older now than I was before. Couldn’t tell you by how much, though.

They’re beautiful, she says.

The horses? I ask, taking a bite of my sandwich.

She points to one. A photograph of a brown horse with a white back. This one’s an Appaloosa, she says. Used to steal one just like her from the old man down the road when I was a girl.

I laugh a real laugh. Pinch a bit of turkey and bread that fell out my sandwich and landed on my jeans, and I toss it back in my mouth. A real horse thief, huh? I ask, smiling at her like it’s something new, something I hadn’t heard already a million times in her sleep.

Thin walls. Something you could punch through if you stood right.

A grumpy old man, she says. That’s who I took her from. Always shaking his fist at something.

Laughing again. Something real.

Gypsy was her name, she says. The horse. And I always brought her back when I was done.

Thought you said you stole her?

Her eyes bright and wide. Smiling now with me. Laughing.

Isn’t that more like borrowing?

Ignoring my questions. Telling me how she didn’t even know they were called Appaloosas at all back then. Heard an Indian boy who lived down the road call Gypsy that once. Called her something else first, though. Called her painted. A painted horse. Thought that was the breed for a while.

No way, I say. That’s something.

Always liked the sound of it. The word, or the words together like that, a painted horse. Stuck for whatever reason some things stick and other things don’t.

I take a long look at her face, her smile sinking away in thought towards the table, towards the apple juice at her side like she’s a kid who just got back from school, just waiting for her parents to point her in a direction. Waiting to be told where to go.

So I take another bite of my sandwich, and I nod at her in agreement. And I tell her, Yeah, she was beautiful, Grandma. Real beautiful. That painted horse. The one you stole and then brought back.

Something real.

Ten toes in the dirt and a painted horse named Gypsy tugging on grass, laying in the shade of an old oak tree, waiting for a girl to come down the road and steal her.

I miss her, she says.

I know you do, Grandma.

I miss the way she used to look at me.

I know you do.

Will you do me a favor?

Setting down my sandwich and putting my arm over her shoulder. Pulling her close. Her head leaning against me like I once saw her do with Grandpa towards the end.

Will you remember her for me?

Nodding at the wall. Trying to hold something back. Telling her, Yeah Grandma, of course I’ll remember her for you. I’ll remember all of the painted horses you stole. And I’ll remember all of the horses you left unpainted, too. I’ll remember them all for you.