Read One in Every Crowd for Free Online Page B

I don’t remember.
    What I do recall was that unexplainable complications had arisen because we did not take the girl factor into consideration, rendering this mission impossible for me to carry out.
    According to Grant and Jimmy, the little sister started to cry when the dust had cleared and she found herself alone, in an alley, in this weird little town where her dad made her come for the summer, and the twins had to take her home.
    And when all three left, two weeks later, unkissed, Grant and Jimmy still considered me a major security risk.
    But I don’t remember my retreat.
    My Aunt Norah was seventeen, and babysitting us that day. She said I came flying up the driveway, dumped my bike on her lawn, streaked past her into the living room, and threw myself on the couch, sobbing incoherently.
    I would like to think that at this point she patted my head, or hugged me, or something, to calm me down, but we weren’t really that kind of a family. It’s not like I was bleeding or anything.
    She said that when I finally calmed down enough for her to ask me what was wrong, all I could say was three words, over and over.
    I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.
    Girls. We can be so complicated.

My Hero
    Webster’s New School
and Office Dictionary
defines a hero as a man of distinguished courage, moral or physical; or the chief character in a play, novel, or poem.
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    Her name was Cathy Bulahouski, and she was, among other things, my Uncle John’s girlfriend. She had other titles, too—my family is fond of nicknames and in-jokes—she was also referred to as the girl with the large glands, and later, when she left John and he had to pay her for half of the house they had built together, she became and was remembered by the men as “lump sum.” The women just smiled, and always called her Cathy.
    Cathy Bulahouski, the Polish cowgirl from Calgary. I’ve wanted to tell this story for years, but never have, because I couldn’t think of a better name for a Polish cowgirl from Calgary than Cathy Bulahouski.
    I remember sitting in her and John’s half-built kitchen, the smell of sawdust all around us, watching her brush her hair. Her hair was light brown and not quite straight, and she usually wore it in a tight braid that hung like a whip between her shoulder blades. When she shook the braid out at night, her hair cascaded in shining ripples right down her back to just past the dips behind her knees.
    She would get John to brush it out for her, she sitting at one end of a plain wooden table, he standing behind her on their unpainted plywood floor. I would be mesmerized, watching her stretch her head back, showing the tendons in her neck. Brushing hair seemed like a girl-type activity to me, but John would stroke her hair first with the brush, then smooth it with his other hand, like a pro. My father rarely touched my mother in front of me, and I couldn’t take my eyes off this commonplace intimacy passing between them.
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    The summer I turned eleven, Cathy was working as a short-order cook at a lodge next to some hot springs. She was also the horse lady. She hired me to help her run a little trail ride operation for the tourists. My duties included feeding, brushing, and saddling up the eight or so horses we had. And the shoveling of shit. I wasn’t paid any cash money, but I got to eat for free in the diner, and I got to ride Little Chief, half-Appaloosa and half-Shetland pony, silver grey with a spotted ass. Cathy and I were co-workers and conspirators. Every time we got an obnoxious American guy she would wink at me over his shoulder while he drawled on about his riding days in Texas or Montana, and I would saddle up Steamboat for him, a giant jet black stallion who was famous both for his frightening bursts of uncontrollable galloping and for trying to rub his rider off by scraping his sides up against the spindly lodge-pole pines the trails were lined with.
    I always rode behind my aunt; Little Chief was