A horse lay on his side on the pave­ment at the inter­sec­tion of Clear Val­ley Road and Long Val­ley Road. He wore the signs of old age, a scruffy brown coat, bloat­ed girth on a skin­ny frame, pro­trud­ing ribs and hip bones. A crowd of about 20 peo­ple had gath­ered around him. A man pulled on his reins while oth­ers pushed him and prod­ded him. “Come on, Papa! Up now! Get on up! Up you go!” The old horse lift­ed his head fee­bly, let it fall back to the con­crete, and heaved a long slow breath.

Wear­ing rid­ing breech­es and boots, a gaunt woman with close-cropped dark hair and tat­tooed arms stood over the horse, scowl­ing. “There’s noth­ing wrong with him,” she said. “He’s stub­born. He just doesn’t want to get up.”

I parked my car across the street from the crowd and got out. Lon­na, a horse own­er and long-time mem­ber of the Hid­den Hills Eques­tri­an Com­mit­tee, ran over to me with her cell phone in hand. “I’ve been try­ing to reach a vet, but no one’s avail­able. Do you have some­one you can call?”

My call to my vet went straight to voice­mail. “Hey, Doc. This is Ken Oder. It’s an emer­gency. A horse is down on Clear Val­ley Road in Hid­den Hills. Call me as soon as you can.”

Lon­na tried anoth­er num­ber and raised a vet’s assis­tant. Her boss was in the field, but she said she’d try to reach him. “The horse is 38 years old,” Lon­na told her. “I’m afraid we may need a hauler, too.”

I walked over to the horse. His head lay list­less­ly on the pave­ment, his tongue lolling out of his mouth, a small pool of blood under his muz­zle. His breaths came in irreg­u­lar heav­ing gusts.

I knelt beside him. The blood came from a cut on his low­er lip. It didn’t look seri­ous. I didn’t see any oth­er wounds. I ran my hands over his legs and ribs. I felt no breaks. No swelling.

Most trou­ble­some was his posi­tion, lying flat on his side. Hors­es can’t stay down for long. They sleep stand­ing up in the “stay” posi­tion, three legs locked with a back leg bent at the hock and fet­lock, ready for instant flight if a preda­tor approach­es. They can lie down for short breaks to take pres­sure off their legs, but if a horse is recum­bent on its side for too long, its weight restricts blood flow to vital organs and com­press­es the lungs.

Hors­es rarely make it into their late 30’s. A 38-year-old horse is rough­ly equiv­a­lent to a 100-year-old man. This old horse was liv­ing on bor­rowed time before he went down. If we couldn’t get him up soon, he would cer­tain­ly die.

The gaunt woman in rid­ing gear stood a few feet away talk­ing with anoth­er woman.

“What’s his name?” the oth­er woman asked.

“Casey.”

“What hap­pened to him?”

“Hell if I know. I was lead­ing him down Long Val­ley when he fell down for no reason.”

The horse was bri­dled. No hal­ter. No lead line. A sad­dle lay beside him that the men who tried to get him up had tak­en off him to ease his breath­ing. The woman wasn’t lead­ing him when he fell. She was rid­ing him. About 5 feet 4 and bone-thin, she was a light load, but still heavy enough to break down this old geld­ing. It angered me. No one, not even a small child, should have climbed on this old horse’s frail back.

A truck pulled up behind me, and my vet got out. I was great­ly relieved to see him. He’d worked mir­a­cles for my hors­es, and Casey need­ed a miracle.

“Thanks for com­ing so quick­ly,” I said.

“I came as soon as I got your mes­sage. I was afraid it was one of your horses.”

“Not mine, thank God, but I hope you can help him.”

The vet looked Casey over. “First thing we have to do is get him up.”

“They tried. He couldn’t stand.”

“Prob­a­bly because his head’s down­hill on this lit­tle slope. He can’t get his back legs under his weight. We have to turn him around.”

No small feat. Hors­es weigh 1000 to 1200 pounds on aver­age. I asked the strongest-look­ing guy in the crowd to help me, and togeth­er we man­aged to pull Casey slow­ly around by his tail until his back legs were down­hill. When we let go of him, he rolled over on his bel­ly into a sit­ting posi­tion like a Sphinx, his head up, his legs tucked under him. I twist­ed his tail and pushed him, but he wouldn’t stand.

“I’ll get him up,” the vet said. He unspooled a hose from a bar­rel of water in his truck bed and sprayed it over Casey’s head. “They hate this,” he said. “It always works.”

Sput­ter­ing and shak­ing his head, Casey got his rear hooves under him and pushed his hindquar­ters up in the air, but he was still down on his knees in front, like he was pray­ing at the altar of the god of old hors­es. With a great effort, he lift­ed one front leg and got his hoof on the ground, then the oth­er leg, heaved his front end up, and stood on all fours.

The crowd cheered.

“Let’s see how he walks,” the vet said. I led Casey across the road and back. His gait was slow, but regular.

While the vet went to his truck to get his bag, I stood beside Casey, stroking his head and neck. His big brown eyes were dull, and he didn’t look at me.

The vet checked him over, then gave him a shot of Banamine, a pain reliev­er that reduces inflam­ma­tion. The vet told the woman wear­ing rid­ing gear that Casey was exhaust­ed but not seri­ous­ly injured.

Think­ing I’d offer to help her take him wher­ev­er he was stalled, I asked her where she was head­ed with him.

She snatched the reins out of my hands. “Well, I’m not tak­ing him any­where after the trick he pulled! He’s going straight back to the barn!”

She stormed away with­out a word of thanks to the men who tried to get him up, Lon­na, me, or the vet.

“If she doesn’t pay you, I will,” I said to the vet.

“That woman’s the train­er,” he said. “I know the own­er. She’ll pay.”

As the vet and I watched her lead Casey up Clear Val­ley, I won­dered what kind of train­er would think it was a good idea to ride a 38-year-old horse. Casey plod­ded along behind her, breath­ing hard, his head down. They turned onto a trail­head and dis­ap­peared behind a hedgerow.

I thanked the vet again for com­ing so quick­ly and for sav­ing Casey’s life. We shook hands, and he drove away.

The next day I rode Jack­son on Hid­den Hills’ trails, search­ing for Casey’s barn. I found him stand­ing in a cor­ral below High Ridge Road. He was up and eat­ing hay. Over the next few weeks, I returned to his cor­ral twice more. He seemed okay.

On a Mon­day morn­ing in late March, I rode Marge up that same trail. When I came to the cor­ral, it was emp­ty, and the fence was down.

A young boy wres­tled with a post-hole dig­ger, set­ting new posts along the old fence-line. Know­ing the answer, but hop­ing against it, I asked him what hap­pened to the horse that was penned in the corral.

“The man say the lady’s old horse, he die,” the boy said.

I stared at him for a few moments, grip­ping Marge’s reins tight­ly, my jaw clenched.

“I am sor­ry, señor.”

“Gra­cias,” I said.

I rode Marge back to my barn. I gave my hors­es extra treats that day and lin­gered with them longer than usual.

I was read­ing Paulette Jiles’ nov­el, Stormy Weath­er, the day I learned Casey had passed. That night I came to the part where Ross Everett advis­es his girl­friend not to become emo­tion­al­ly invest­ed in her horse, Smoky Joe. “Don’t get attached to a horse, Jea­nine. We always out­live them. Except the last one.” I set the book aside and thought about that passage.

I bought my first horse sev­en years ago. I have five now. I’m 77. Wil­son is 25. Arthri­tis is eat­ing away at his spine, and he has trou­ble con­trol­ling his back legs. Lily is only 15, but she has equine melanoma, arthri­tis in her hocks, and old injuries that nev­er healed right. Wil­son and Lily will prob­a­bly go before I do. Jack­son and Marge are 17. I hope to give them a close race to the fin­ish line. Dol­ly is 10. She’s prob­a­bly that last horse.

I haven’t fol­lowed Everett’s advice. I’ve giv­en my hors­es my heart. It will break when they leave me and the wound will nev­er heal, but I don’t regret forg­ing my bond with them. When they’re gone, I’ll still have sweet mem­o­ries of our part­ner­ship on thou­sands of great rides, the nick­ers that greet me when they see me com­ing, the nuz­zles on my shoul­der, the sense of peace, the com­mu­nion, the love giv­en and returned. The good times far out­weigh the immense, over­whelm­ing grief that will fall over me at the end.

I ignored Everett’s coun­sel with Casey, too. I bare­ly knew him, but some­times you can feel the spir­it of a horse with the touch of your hand. When I stroked Casey’s head and face, I sensed he was a good old soul, who had tried hard to do what was asked of him. The day he fell, he was worn down, sad, and strug­gling to find the will to make a come­back. I’m glad he suc­ceed­ed, if only for a few weeks.

His pass­ing cost me some pain, but I don’t regret lay­ing hands on him. He deserved affec­tion and respect. He was a good horse to the end.

Rest in peace, old boy.

Open­ing Day, 1981 T‑ball sea­son. Yan­kees v. Red Sox. Top of the first inning.

Bob, the Yan­kees tall gan­g­ly head coach, knelt beside his lead-off hit­ter and son, Ste­vie, a wiry lit­tle kid with sandy hair and two miss­ing upper front teeth. Bob placed the ball on the tee and guid­ed Ste­vie into a bat­ting stance, feet spread apart, back elbow up, front elbow down.

In the field, Arnold, the Red Sox head coach, a short mus­cle­bound for­mer col­lege wrestler, stood on the pitcher’s mound behind his son, Arlo, a freck­le-faced red­head with two miss­ing bot­tom front teeth. Since the bat­ter hits the ball off a tee in T‑ball, the “pitch­er” doesn’t pitch, but he is the most impor­tant field­er because most “hits” trick­le off the tee into the infield a few feet beyond home plate. The pitcher’s job is to rush in, grab the ball, and throw it to first base.

“Fielder’s crouch,” Arnold said to Arlo. Arlo bent his knees and pound­ed his fist into his glove.

At the tee Bob stepped back from Ste­vie. “Give it a lev­el swing.”

Ste­vie launched a mighty twirl. Thunk! The bat struck the tee a foot below the ball. Near­ly decap­i­tat­ed, the tee fell over like a dead sol­dier and spilled the ball into foul ter­ri­to­ry. Bob hopped for­ward, col­lect­ed the ball, and reset the tee. “This time keep your eye on the ball all the way through the swing.”

Stevie’s sec­ond wind­mill grazed the top of the ball and flipped it off the tee to drib­ble five feet down the third base line where it rolled to a stop.

Both Arlo and Ste­vie froze, star­ing blankly at the dead ball.

“Go!” Arnold shout­ed, shov­ing Arlo. Arlo stum­bled for­ward, then charged the ball.

“Run!” Bob screamed at the top of his lungs. Ste­vie flinched, pan­icked, and took off toward third base.

Arlo scooped up the ball and wheeled toward third.

The third base­man, Rob­by, a drifty tow­head­ed kid, stood on third base at parade rest, grin­ning vapid­ly at a pigeon fly­ing over right field.

Arlo hurled the ball at Robby.

From the bleach­ers Robby’s mom bel­lowed, “Rob­by! Get in the game!”

Star­tled, Rob­by snapped to atten­tion and spot­ted Arlo’s fast­ball zoom­ing direct­ly toward his face just in time to raise his glove instinc­tive­ly in self-defense. Pop!

Bar­rel­ing up the third base line like his life depend­ed on it, Ste­vie ran through the bag at the same instant the ball hit Robby’s glove.

“Out!” Arlo yelled, pump­ing his fist in the air.

“Was not!” Ste­vie cried. “Safe by a mile!”

“Great catch, Rob­by!” Robby’s mom yelled.

Dazed, Rob­by stared at his glove, won­der­ing how the ball got there.

Coach Bob wan­dered out to the mound and joined Coach Arnold. “What just hap­pened?” Bob said.

“Your kid ran to third instead of first,” Arnold said. “My kid field­ed the ball and threw him out.”

“Actu­al­ly, Ste­vie beat the throw.”

“You kid­ding me? It doesn’t mat­ter if he beat the throw. He’s auto­mat­i­cal­ly out. He ran to third instead of first. He played the game backwards.”

“Your kid did, too,” Bob said defensively.

Arnold looked at Arlo and Rob­by and sighed. “Yeah, they did every­thing right except for the back­wards part. How the hell we gonna explain this to them?”

“It’s too com­pli­cat­ed,” Bob said. “Let’s start over. I’ll make Ste­vie run to first this time.”

“Deal,” Arnold said.

In 1981, Bob was my bar­ber. Dur­ing a hair­cut in his shop in the LA Bonaven­ture Hotel, I told him I’d signed up to coach my son’s T‑ball team. He emit­ted a low whis­tle. “Tough­est job I ever had.” He told me the Yan­kees-Red Sox open­ing day sto­ry. “Too many rules and not enough action,” he said. “I almost went crazy.”

Bob was right. Even with five dads help­ing me, we couldn’t keep the Phillies on track. Dur­ing drills kids wres­tled each oth­er, wan­dered off aim­less­ly, or sprawled in the grass and gazed at the clouds. Only con­stant vig­i­lance pre­vent­ed play­ers from prac­tice-swing­ing their met­al bats with­in range of anoth­er player’s head. The sud­den appear­ance of a fly­ing grasshop­per would bring a game to a com­plete halt, and if there was a patch of mud any­where on the field, the play­ers always found it before the coach­es did.

I didn’t go total­ly crazy, though, and I got to spend a lot of time with my son, so I vol­un­teered to coach K‑division soc­cer in the fall. Like T‑ball, a mud pud­dle or a stink bug could stop a game cold, but oth­er­wise coach­ing soc­cer was a lot eas­i­er. Not as many rules, and no dead time. You throw the ball on the ground. The kids mob it and scrum up and down the field with no idea what they’re doing. If the ball coin­ci­den­tal­ly rolls into the goal dur­ing a game, the par­ents and kids go wild.

I coached my kids’ teams for sev­er­al years after that. All their teams were good, but the best team rel­a­tive to its lev­el I ever coached was my daugh­ter Devon’s 1986 K‑division soc­cer team, the Green Meanies.

The first day of prac­tice, I asked the kids what name they want­ed to give the team. This is not always a good idea. The Bloody Mag­gots, for exam­ple, but this time it worked out well. Our uni­forms were green. Devon said green rhymed with mean, and that sparked the name. The team Mom, Cindy, made a dark green team ban­ner cen­tered with the big round head of a blond-haired kid, his face con­tort­ed, his teeth bared.

The name and ban­ner soon became infa­mous with­in the K‑division. Youth sports leagues strive to achieve bal­ance among com­pet­ing teams by using skill rat­ings to select ros­ters of approx­i­mate­ly even tal­ent, but five-year-olds have no track record, so place­ment in the K‑division is ran­dom. Ran­dom place­ment usu­al­ly works out okay at that age any­way, but that was not the case with the Meanies.

That team was loaded. Five of them, includ­ing Devon, would grow up to become high school soc­cer all-stars, and even the less­er tal­ents on the team were good lit­tle ath­letes. Most of them had been play­ing soc­cer in their back­yards since they were tod­dlers. In the first prac­tice, they passed the ball, drib­bled with con­trol, and shot accu­rate­ly with both feet. I didn’t have to teach them anything.

In the sea­son open­er, they faced the Red Drag­ons. Jor­dan scored a goal for the Mean­ies on the kick-off. Thir­ty sec­onds lat­er, Chris scored. Then Mar­cus hurled the ball into the goal from mid-field on an out-of-bounds throw-in. Devon scored. Jor­dan again. Then Tay­lor. Rob­by. Chris again.

Green Mean­ies 8 – Red Drag­ons 0. And that was only the first quarter.

The rules of the K‑division are designed to make every kid feel like a win­ner. There are no goalies to make it eas­i­er to score. Coach­es roam the field to pro­vide instruc­tion and praise. There is no score board, and no one keeps score. Except, of course, the par­ents, who have neon score­boards inside their heads.

Dur­ing the first quar­ter break, the Drag­ons’ coach jumped me. “Back off, man! You’re run­ning up the score!”

“I didn’t mean to run it up, ” I sput­tered. “It all hap­pened so fast.”

He rolled his eyes.

Ok, sports­man­ship first, I thought. I held three of the super­stars back near our goal to start the sec­ond quar­ter. The oth­er two super­stars prompt­ly scored. I pulled them back, too, where­upon Mar­cus pow­er-kicked a goal the entire length of the field. “Don’t aim for the goal,” I told the phe­noms. “Just pass the ball to the Mean­ies up front.” On an aver­age team the Mean­ies up front might have gone the whole sea­son with­out scor­ing a goal, but with per­fect pass­es from the back field, each scored mul­ti­ple goals in that first game. Near the end of the third quar­ter, my inter­nal neon score­board blew a fuse. Some­where around goal 20 I lost count. Mean­while, with the five super­stars play­ing back, the Drag­ons couldn’t advance the ball past mid­field. They goose-egged the game.

That first game set the tone for the Mean­ies’ sea­son. They mowed down every team they faced, scor­ing more than ten goals in every game while nev­er giv­ing up a sin­gle oppos­ing goal, and that was with me doing every­thing I could to hold them down.

At the end of the sea­son, I didn’t have to make up pos­i­tive stuff in my speech­es when I pre­sent­ed them with tro­phies. I couldn’t praise them enough. They were all great play­ers and great kids.

The Green Mean­ies ruled the K‑division forty years ago. They’re all grown now, and I don’t know where they are or what became of them.

Except for one Meanie.

Half-time, last game of the South Pasade­na K‑division 2024 sea­son. I stood beside Logan, grand­son num­ber two and star of the Teal Rap­tors. He drained his water bot­tle and looked up at me. “We nev­er lose,” he said in a pur­pose­ful­ly deep voice with a grave­ly seri­ous expres­sion on his face.

“You ever hear of the Green Mean­ies,” I asked him.

He nod­ded. “Mom told me.”

“They were real­ly good,” I said.

“We’re real­ly good, too,” he said.

Logan ran back on the field and scored two goals in the sec­ond half.

No one keeps score in the K‑division, but I hap­pen to know the mighty Teal Rap­tors won that game and every game they played that sea­son. This should be no sur­prise to any­one. After all, the Rap­tors were mere­ly uphold­ing a win­ning tra­di­tion hand­ed down to them from the pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tion. Coach Devon, you see, was a proud Green Meanie.

My interof­fice phone line rang. “Hey, Ken. It’s Paul. Can you come up to my office?”

“Sure.”

I climbed the inside fire stair­well from floor 43 to 46 and walked around the tow­er to Paul’s office. Tall and lean with dark brown hair, he sat at his desk, smok­ing a cig­a­rette. “Close the door,” he said.

I closed it and sat in a chair across from him, my back to the bank of win­dows that looked out over LA.

He stubbed out his Marl­boro and looked me direct­ly in the eye. “I have cancer.”

I couldn’t process most of what Paul said after that. About all I remem­ber are the words “aggres­sive” and “late stage.”

I cried.

In 1990, Paul and I were in our ear­ly 40’s, and we were attor­neys with the law firm, Lath­am and Watkins. If I had ranked my friends back then, he would have placed in the top ten.

I pulled myself togeth­er. “Is there any­thing I can do?”

“Don’t give up on me.” He told me about surgery to remove tumors and scrape the lin­ing of his lungs to stim­u­late his immune sys­tem. It sound­ed hor­rif­ic. He did his best to appear hope­ful, but I could tell he knew the score.

We talked for a long while about fun times we’d shared. Then he said he had to call the next friend on his list. We hugged. I went back to my office, closed the door, and cried some more.

He was gone in three months. An emo­tion­al wreck at the funer­al, I got it togeth­er long enough to give my con­do­lences to his wife. She told me Paul had trea­sured our friend­ship, and the way she said it, I knew it was true. I’ve car­ried that with me ever since.

Thir­ty-three years lat­er, I noticed a small mole on my shoul­der near my neck.

Because Cindy is fair-skinned and sus­cep­ti­ble to melanoma, we fol­low a reg­i­men of six-month check­ups with a der­ma­tol­o­gist. At the next exam, I asked him to look at the mole. “It’s noth­ing to wor­ry about,” he said. His ver­dict remained the same for two years.

Last spring the mole grew larg­er and dark­er. One after­noon in June, my daugh­ter and I were in the pool watch­ing my grand­kids. “What’s that on your shoul­der?” Chelsea said.

“Just a mole. The doc­tor says it’s nothing.”

“I don’t know, Dad. It looks bad.”

That night I awoke from a sound sleep at 3 am. My first con­scious thought came to me in a clear qui­et voice: “Get that mole off your shoul­der, or it will kill you.”

It scared me bad. I went to the der­ma­tol­o­gist. He again said the mole was harmless.

“I want to take it off,” I said.

He agreed to remove it, gave me a shot, and sliced it off. “There’s dark tis­sue under the mole,” he said, sound­ing con­cerned. He cut into it.

“I only gave you a local. Are you in pain?”

It was killing me. “No pain,” I said.

He cut deep­er. “You must be in pain.”

My shoul­der was on fire. “I’m fine. Make sure you get all of it.”

A few days lat­er, he called with the biopsy’s results. The mole was benign; the dark tis­sue beneath it was can­cer­ous. “I excised what I could see,” he said, “but this is an aggres­sive type of melanoma. You’ll need surgery to remove all the can­cer cells.” He’d already called the City of Hope (COH), the top can­cer treat­ment cen­ter in the region, and jammed me into the crowd­ed cal­en­dar of its lead melanoma surgeon.

The dermatologist’s sense of urgency alarmed me. “How bad is this?” I asked.

“Hope­ful­ly, we caught it ear­ly. If it hasn’t metas­ta­sized, you should be all right.”

I hung up the phone and stared at it. The mole had appeared two years ago, but the can­cer­ous tis­sue under it may not have been there as long. The sur­geon will remove it, and I’ll be okay, I thought. I decid­ed not to tell any­one until I knew more.

A few days lat­er I met with the sur­geon. In his fifties with a full head of gray hair, he told me my form of can­cer, melanoma beneath the skin, was rare. It could have tak­en root in anoth­er part of my body and spread to that spot, or if it orig­i­nat­ed in my shoul­der and had been there awhile, it could have spread to oth­er loca­tions. “I need to know if the can­cer has metas­ta­sized before I oper­ate on your shoul­der,” he said. He sched­uled a bat­tery of tests over the next six weeks, fol­lowed imme­di­ate­ly by the shoul­der operation.

The surgeon’s diag­no­sis fright­ened me. “Could this be fatal?” I asked him.

“Try not to wor­ry,” he said. “We’re very good at what we do.”

Stunned, I walked from the hos­pi­tal to my truck. Mem­o­ries of Paul, Papaw, Thom, Stephanie, and oth­er friends, who lost bat­tles with can­cer, flood­ed my mind.

I got lost dri­ving home. I pulled to the curb, cut the igni­tion, and took deep breaths.

A cou­ple years ear­li­er, a nice gray-haired lady dri­ving a black Escalade hit me and my gro­cery cart as I walked from a Ralph’s store through a cross­walk. I wasn’t hurt, but she fell apart, sob­bing hys­ter­i­cal­ly. It took her a long time to calm down enough to tell me she’d just been diag­nosed with pan­cre­at­ic can­cer. I helped her park her Escalade and called her husband.

The Grim Reaper blind­ed the nice lady that day. Now he squat­ted on the hood of my truck. I punched my home address into Google Maps and fol­lowed the voice com­mands, crawl­ing along at a tur­tle-pace in the slow lane.

When I got home, I told Cindy. Pos­i­tive and sup­port­ive as always, she didn’t flinch. “You’re strong! If they find some­thing, you’ll beat it!” My son and daugh­ters said the same. So did my good friend and horse­back-rid­ing instruc­tor, Janet. And my rid­ing bud­dy, Alecia.

Every­one was con­fi­dent except me. That night in bed in the dark trapped inside my head with the boogey­man, I was cer­tain the can­cer had metas­ta­sized. I cat­a­logued all the recent symp­toms I’d ignored that might be can­cer relat­ed. Those hard cramps last week, stom­ach can­cer; my aching joints, bone can­cer; occa­sion­al headaches, brain can­cer; severe chest con­ges­tion, lung can­cer. I imag­ined var­i­ous scenes with the sur­geon deliv­er­ing dif­fer­ent dead­ly diagnoses.

Show some courage, I told myself. You’re 77. You’ve lived a long full life. Can­cer cut Paul down in his prime, but he faced death brave­ly. Go out proud and brave, like he did.

I don’t want to go out! I love my life. I want to stay with Cindy, my kids and grand­kids, the hors­es, P.D., my friends. I don’t want to die!

Get a grip. You’re not going to die. You don’t know any­thing yet. You don’t even know if the can­cer has spread.

Yeah, well, I know some­thing is grow­ing inside me right now that could kill me.

And so it went. On and on. All night long.

At dawn, I drove to the barn and went to Lily’s stall. An Azteca gray mare, she has equine melanoma. There is no cure, but it isn’t always fatal. She may live out her life with the can­cer or it may kill her, and there’s noth­ing I can do to influ­ence the out­come. (See Lily’s Song for more about her.)

I groomed her, then stood beside her, look­ing into her soul­ful eyes. I placed my fore­head against her neck and put my arm over her back. Even if they love you, most hors­es pull away when you hold them close for too long. That morn­ing, Lily stood still for me. I don’t know if she knew, but it felt like she did.

Lat­er, back at home, I reached out to my phys­i­cal fit­ness train­er, a can­cer sur­vivor. She gave me under­stand­ing and encour­age­ment and told me about an “affir­ma­tions” web­site. It seemed hokey to me at first, but over time, I found reas­sur­ance in its sooth­ing mantras: I am strong; I will let go of neg­a­tiv­i­ty; I choose well­ness and peace; I choose faith over fear.

In the 1970’s, I taught Eng­lish Lit­er­a­ture to high school seniors. One of them lat­er became the top intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty attor­ney in the nation. Now in retire­ment, he’d been diag­nosed with can­cer and was under­go­ing treat­ment. “I’m scared crazy,” I wrote to him.

“This ‘not know­ing’ stage that you are in might well be the hard­est part of the process,” he wrote back. “I hope and pray the can­cer has not spread. That is the hope and prayer of all in our club. But if it has spread, to a small or large degree, you are smart and capa­ble and sur­round­ed by a great med­ical team and fam­i­ly, and you will deal with it as best as you can. That’s all we can do.” His steady guid­ance through the com­ing weeks calmed me down and gave me hope.

Mean­while, my can­cer tests went for­ward. Most of them were famil­iar to me from pre­vi­ous ail­ments and some seemed designed only to deter­mine if I was healthy enough to sur­vive surgery, but I ago­nized over each one, con­vinced it would dis­cov­er more can­cer. Thank­ful­ly, my anx­i­eties went unre­al­ized. One by one, the results came in negative.

The last test, the big moth­er of them all, the one I feared most, the PET CT Whole Body scan, came at the end of the six weeks. My daugh­ter, Devon, drove me to COH’s radi­ol­o­gy depart­ment. They inject­ed me with radioac­tive flu­id, placed me on a gur­ney, and slow­ly slid me through a giant donut, cap­tur­ing inter­nal images of my entire body, start­ing at my feet and mov­ing up to the top of my head. If there were can­cer­ous tumors inside me, the donut would find them. The tech­ni­cian said the results would come back in three days, just before the shoul­der operation.

That night I dreamed I rode Lily on a moon­lit trail. We entered a dark for­est with branch­es arch­ing over us. Deep into the tree tun­nel, Lily stopped sud­den­ly; her body tensed; and her ears pricked for­ward. Peer­ing into the night-shad­ows ahead, I could bare­ly make out the form of a big roan and a black-robed rid­er. Lily screamed, whipped around, and sprint­ed back the way we had come. Grab­bing her mane to hold on, I heard the thun­der­ing hoof­beats of the roan behind us, gain­ing ground. I awoke just as we broke out of the trees into the moonlight.

I was still fright­ened by my dream when I got to the barn at dawn. Lily was skit­tish and flighty, but she calmed down when I stroked her neck and rubbed her ears. I did, too. I stayed with her a long time that morning.

On the day of my oper­a­tion, they stretched me out on a bed in the nuclear med­i­cine room and inject­ed radioac­tive flu­id into my shoul­der to track blood flow to the near­est lymph nodes. For the can­cer to spread from my shoul­der it would first infect “sen­tinel” nodes that would car­ry the can­cer else­where. The pro­ce­dure would iden­ti­fy any bad ones the sur­geon would need to remove. The tech­ni­cians worked on me for two hours, then wheeled me down to pre-op.

The sur­geon came in. “The Whole Body scan was good,” he said. “It found no can­cer any­where oth­er than in your shoulder.”

Sit­ting by my bed, my son, Josh, pumped his fist. “Yes!”

If I hadn’t been exhaust­ed, I would have jumped up and cheered.

Now, it all came down to the shoul­der surgery and the poten­tial­ly infect­ed lymph nodes. They rolled me into the oper­at­ing room, and the anes­the­si­ol­o­gist knocked me out.

I awoke in the recov­ery room with a ban­dage on my shoul­der cov­er­ing an inci­sion three inch­es long. I was telling the nurse about Lily when the sur­geon came in, smil­ing. “I got all the can­cer. We didn’t take any lymph nodes. They all looked good.”

That was the night of Sep­tem­ber 9. I’d got­ten the best pos­si­ble results on all the tests; the surgery was suc­cess­ful; and my lymph nodes appeared to be clear. I was elated.

I thought can­cer was done with me, but in the post-op meet­ing, I learned that mem­ber­ship in the can­cer club is like the Eagles’ Hotel Cal­i­for­nia. You can check out, but you can nev­er leave.

Can­cer is resilient. It might be hid­ing in clus­ters of cells too small for the tests to detect, wait­ing to blos­som into new tumors, or it might sprout inex­plic­a­bly again in a new loca­tion, like it did in my shoul­der. “We will observe you,” the sur­geon said. He ordered a round of tests for next Feb­ru­ary, includ­ing anoth­er PET CT Whole Body scan. After that, he plans to slide me through the big donut every six months. If the can­cer comes back, the sur­geon will find it ear­ly to give us the best chance of beat­ing it.

Cancer’s Hotel Cal­i­for­nia is a big place with many rooms. Can­cer vic­tims pay a dear price for most of them: chemother­a­py, radi­a­tion, abla­tion, immunother­a­py, stem cell trans­plants, hor­mone ther­a­py, bone mar­row trans­plants. Not me. I got off easy, at least for now. I got the best room in the build­ing, and it cost me almost noth­ing. No real pain. No sig­nif­i­cant sac­ri­fice. Just six weeks of wor­ry and the prospect of peri­od­ic tests going forward.

Although my lit­tle skir­mish didn’t require the colos­sal strength, bound­less sta­mi­na, and lion-heart­ed courage so many can­cer patients bring to their gru­el­ing bat­tles against the dis­ease, it scared me enough to change me for­ev­er. It gave me a price­less gift: The real­iza­tion that each day of my life is pre­cious. Of course, I knew that all along. We all know it. But I know it in a dif­fer­ent way now. I know it deep down inside, and I nev­er for­get, even for a moment.

So, it looks like Lily and I will out­run that big roan and the angel of death for a while longer. Each day, I’ll feed the hors­es at dawn, walk P.D., ride Lily and my hors­es over the trails of Hid­den Hills, love Cindy, hug my chil­dren and grand­chil­dren, keep my friends close, and give thanks from that new place deep down inside for that day and every day yet to come.