When my mother drove us from the ranch that summer I vowed to remember Robert Dawson is three years older than me. Robert Dawson taught my brother and me that summer how to hitch a saddle to a horse and ride it into the mountains. Robert Dawson is three years older than me. Before we left he told us how he would save his money and buy the frisky pony in the pasture up the road. He was the risktaker; he would shoot the moon. Robert Dawson is three years older than me. I was 10, so Robert Dawson was 13. Grandpa was the caretaker on the ranch, and when I came back years later Grandpa told me that Robert Dawson killed himself on a motorcycle. I see him riding that motorcycle to the mountains and I remember twenty-five years later Robert Dawson is three years older than me.
10 April 1988