He chuckled at that.
“The other thing about Scottie McFadden was that he and I were the same age. And, like me, he had been blessed — or cursed — with the gene that gave us a youthful appearance. What many people saw as a brash young blowhard who could be forgiven his indiscretions because of his youth, was actually a mouthy, would-be Cassanova who — like me, at the time — was quickly approaching his forties. He still had that same youthful appearance when they buried him.
‘Unlike most feuds….”
“Hang on!” I interrupted. “Are you telling me that Scottie is dead?”
“Yeah, poor fella,” Jimmy Brown said. “And it couldn’t have happened to a more deserving bloke. He apparently climbed aboard a horse he was breaking without first checking his gear. It appears there was a goat’s head burr caught up in his saddle cloth. As soon as he climbed aboard and tucked himself down into the saddle, the burr buried itself into the horse’s back, and it went ape-shit. From all reports, Scottie stuck with him for about fifteen minutes.
“Whether it had something to do with what you’d said to him that night or something else had happened, I don’t know. But he’d started drinking a fair bit more than he had in the past. He’d also become a bit more nervy than he’d ever been. Whatever the reason, he no longer had the confidence or the stamina he’d once had. There was a time that he would have ridden that horse all day and all night if need be; burr or no burr.
“Those who were there say it was his best-ever ride. But Blind Freddy knew that he couldn’t keep it up. Exhaustion finally beat him, and he was thrown. While his ride might have been notable, his dismounting was apparently less so. I was told that his flight through the air looked more like a half-filled sack of potatoes than the graceful dismount of an expert horseman.
“His landing was even less graceful. Sadly — at least for a number of the ladies of the district — he ended up breaking his neck.
“They held an open casket funeral service at the Catholic church; a service that was attended by quite a large crowd. The ladies of the parish were inconsolable — none more so than my ex-wife, with whom Scottie had taken up residence following my departure. The gentlemen of the area — the husbands of the ladies of the parish — were there, I believe, to confirm that Scottie McFadden was actually being laid to rest and would no longer pose a treat to their marriages.
“It appears that, no matter how much they tried, The morticians were unable to get the kink out of Scottie’s neck. He went to his grave with his head permanently cocked to one side as if asking, “Really? Is this all there is?”.
“I was working up in the Gulf at the time and flew down for the funeral, just as you’d told them I would do; he was my cousin, after all. I stood beside my ex-wife at the casket and sat beside her in the church. She even held my hand for a while — she actually reached out and gripped it tightly. That was a first; at least for many years.
“The wake was held at the bowls club. It was there I learned that Marleen wasn’t really my ex-wife as neither she nor I had instituted divorce proceedings. She even suggested that I should move back to Uranus and resume my husbandly position in the scheme of things.