The Harder They Fall (44 page)

Next I got thrown in jail by a judge I knew well from my career of getting in misdemeanor trouble. He was a district court judge in Wyoming. One of the first judges to start the drug court program in that state. And I was one of his first appointees to this program. I had been given a six-month sentence for domestic violence. I told the judge that I couldn’t quit drinking, and he said, “It sounds like you need some help.” He said, “I don’t want to throw you in jail. I’d rather help you if I can.” I never forgot those words, but I was so resistant to authority that I told him, “I need to be in jail.” You see, I’d been on probation and violated it, so I’d get thrown back in jail for ten to fifteen days. That happened many times. I was in jail three or four times for being drunk in public. I was just a nuisance. After six months in jail, I was sent to another treatment center. There I met a girl, started a relationship, and within a couple of months, I was drunk again.

The pattern of my life was so … I knew I could read the future and tell you what would happen. The girls that I met and was with were alcoholics, except for my wives. They didn’t really drink. Most of the women I was meeting were codependent, looking for a man to take care of. I couldn’t be with anybody unless they were drinking and using. I always wanted that serene picture of having a normal person in my life, some kid,
and being okay. But I knew I wasn’t okay, and I couldn’t ask for help. I truly needed help getting sober. I had never been by myself. I always had someone to drag through the mud with me, because I had such a great fear of being alone. Anyway, I found a job that paid five hundred dollars a month. I got a nice house outside of Cheyenne, and I stayed sober. I bought me a pickup. I hadn’t had a vehicle for five or six years. I stayed sober and got offered a bunch of jobs for more money. I wasn’t making enough money. But I was told by a friend that “You need to keep that job. You’re living by yourself, and you’re learning something.” And I learned that it is okay to be by myself. About two years went by, and then I got a phone call saying that Dad was dying. That was another thing that set me off. My dad was always dying because of his heart problem.

About that time, Brenda decided to visit me and introduce my four-year-old daughter to me. I panicked. I said, “God, here’s this responsibility again, and I can’t handle it.” Then I couldn’t deny it anymore. She was definitely my daughter. She looked exactly like me. Once again I got scared. I quit my job, left, and went to Nevada. There I gambled and got drunk all over again. But I couldn’t get Brenda out of my mind, and how much she cared. The fact that I had this responsibility and that I was ignoring child support—that was another fear factor for me and a good excuse to run and start drinking. If I stayed at my job, they would have garnisheed my wages. They’d already taken everything from me. I don’t have no money. I knew if I went on like this, I’d probably spend the rest of my life in prison. So I came down here to Wickenburg, and I quit for a year. I got a job on a ranch. Brenda and I got married, for the second time. I’ve been married four times. Twice to two women. I started working at this ranch, and right away I got hurt. I got bucked off a horse and hurt my back. I couldn’t work, couldn’t straighten up. I had to have another back surgery. Anyway, we moved into town because the ranch needed the place we were living in. They needed someone who could work. They kept me on as long as they could, but I just wasn’t getting any better. I also wasn’t attending any alcohol recovery meetings. I knew in the back of my head that I was aiming for trouble. Workers’ comp told me they weren’t gonna pay me because my back was a pre-existing condition.

I had no job, I owed rents, I had a wife and daughter to take care of, and I panicked. I went and bought a bottle, and that was my last drink. That was over three years ago. I started back in the recovery program for real this time. In reviewing my life and looking at the choices I’d made, I knew down deep in my heart it was me. Nobody else had done this to me. I knew I had run out of options. I was going to die a drunk if I didn’t stop. I also thought that there was a convening power in my life that was pushing me to where I’m at now. Wanting me to be sober.

My dad passed away in these last three years. That was a big loss to me. I loved my daddy even though he was a drunk. So, I finally surrender and start going to these recovery meetings every weekend. I was working twelve hours a day at a welding shop. The thought of rodeoing hadn’t entered my mind. I didn’t think I could do that again because I had been so busted up from horse wrecks and previous rodeos. I also knew I would be able to get drunk again. You know, my grandfather was a cowboy. So was my dad. Cowboys and drunkenness was all I knew. I never saw a cowboy that didn’t drink. It was part of the West. So being in a rodeo just wasn’t an option no more.

Horses. I love horses and love ranch work, so that’s what I was going to pursue. A couple months went by and I met some people here at Gatehouse [a treatment center in Wickenburg, Arizona]. I started to hear what they had to say and where they came from. I actually started to listen to people.

You know, in the Navy, I’d been around the world three times. Every once in a while, I’d go to a meeting just to keep the officers off my back. To look good and show ’em I was doing something about my drinking problem. I never went with the intent to stop drinking.

After about eight months of sobriety, I got offered this job at Gatehouse Academy for a lot more money than I ever made in my life, but still thought, “I don’t have anything to offer anybody. I haven’t been sober that long.” But I went ahead and made a decision to give it a try. A year went by, and I was really getting into the program. Dealing with my character defects and asking God for help. Trying to help other people. I was moving forward and staying sober. It’s better than getting on any bucking horse in the world!

I never experienced anything like this. You know, I’ve helped my mother and I’ve helped my sister and my brother, but to help some of these kids in recovery … Whoa! … You know, I’m forty-five years old and some of them are seventeen and eighteen and they’re getting a wake-up call. I’m like Rip Van Winkle, asleep for twenty years.

I thought I was destined to be a ranch hand, a cowboy, in a go-nowhere job, until I went to work at Gatehouse. After about a year here, I started to find some happiness. I started to find some serenity. I’m meeting all kinds of wonderful people. I got friends that come here to visit me. People call and say, “Hey, Destry, we hear you’re sober. Is that right?”

I even started thinking about rodeoing again. I got all fired up about it. I got a brother-in-law who’s fifty-four years old, and he started riding bulls again. He’s been sober twenty-three years. So now I have the courage, without anything to alter my mind to lend me the artificial courage. I still have the passion for horses and rodeo. I also think that it’s sort of a test to see if I was ready, ready to stay sober while being around the rodeo crowd. And I’d do it again tomorrow if the opportunity presented itself.

My first rodeo in Prescott, I entered the bareback riding. I hadn’t been on a bareback horse in about sixteen years. I joined the PRCA [Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association] and went to the rodeo. I was standing behind the chutes, talking to a couple of cowboys. They gave me some guidance about the different things they are doing. I climbed up the chute and sat down on my horse, and pretty soon it was over. I got bucked off. I got up and walked out of the arena and discovered that my wrist was broken. There was some big pain, but I told my wife that if I’d had a rodeo the next day, I would have rode because of the elation I was feeling. That I did it and I didn’t have to drink!

You know, I drank to get the courage to ride, the courage to do a lot of things. If I had to talk to somebody that I was afraid of, I’d have a couple of drinks. I needed a couple of shots to get on a bucking horse, to push me to the edge. There were times where I’d have no memory of getting on a horse. I’d always have a couple of shots. I went to a lot of rodeos in the military where I’d enter as a local contestant (not as a member of the cowboy association at that time). And every time I rode, I’d go behind the
chutes to take a shot or two of whiskey … liquid courage! The courage I didn’t have to follow through. Otherwise I couldn’t have done it because of the fear. The fear of getting hurt, looking bad, not being able to cover your horse (ride him in the required time). This last time I felt better. Whether I got bucked off or not, it didn’t matter. It was just something I had to prove to myself. I had to experience it clearheaded.

Before I was always there for the drink and chasing the girls. I wasn’t there to get on the horse. The party. That’s what rodeo was to me. This was the first time I went to the rodeo to get on the horse, and I plan on doing it until I can’t.

I met a girl whom I got pregnant when I was seventeen. She was twenty-four. I was going to do the honorable thing. Since I was in the military, we were going to get married in a military chapel. Three days before the wedding, she comes to me and says, “You’re not ready for this, Destry. You’ve got too much living to do. You can’t handle this right now.” She said, “I’ll tell him about you when the time is right.”

I was twenty-one when I’d entered a rodeo and got hurt, and in the hospital, I wrote a poem about how things go with being a cowboy on the rodeo circuit. It goes like this:

I was sitting at the bar back home.

I was staring at my beer, and stoned.

This big fella walked in and come up and sat down,

And me and him got to talkin’,

And he asked me what was wrong.

I looked at him and decided to tell him my unhappy song.

I said, “I was just thinkin’ about a girl that left a long time ago, with a boy I didn’t know.

I was thinkin’ what my boy’d grow up to be,

And I was praying to God that he was nothing like me.

But you see, Stranger, she moved away from where she used to stay.

All she left me was a letter that said I had a son whose eyes were brown.

So I traveled through the years from town to town.

I finally said I’d quit lookin’ and came back here.

But through those years became nothing but a drunken ole rodeo clown with a lot of cares.”

You know that big fella looked at me with a tear in his eye,

And for a moment I thought he was going to cry.

This is what he said …

He said, “You can quit lookin’ now,

’Cause you came to the right town.

That lady you was lookin’ for, well,

I’m sorry, sir, she passed on about nine years before.

Well, me, I’ve grown and became a world champion in professional rodeo.

So put down your drink. Get rid of those tears.

You ought to be happy.

I know I’ve never met you before—

I’m your son, Dad. It’s been almost forty years.”

I wrote that poem when I was twenty-one and thinking about the girls that I’d left, and how I had a boy I was never going to see, and about drinking and the despair and loneliness that go with it, and how life has a twist and a turn.

So the lady took off and went back to San Diego, and my mom got a letter saying she had a baby boy. He’d be twenty-seven. He called me not too long ago. I was in the hospital with a broken back. I’d entered a rodeo and got hurt, just like when I wrote that poem, only today I am sober with a beautiful loving wife and daughter. I am thankful for what God has given me in my sobriety. Of course, there were many people and events affected negatively by my alcoholism and behaviors. Today, by being sober and of service, my life and behaviors have changed.

(musician)