The Things Left Out:Like Francisco Gomez And Aldeano's Tear Poem by Dennis Ryan

Sunday morning, May 1,2005

"If I could have made this enough of a book it would have had everything in it... There is nothing in this book about Francisco Gomez, Aldeano... who came home to be a matador and is now scarred and marked worse than anyone except Freg, his eye twisted so a tear runs down his nose."
- Ernest Hemingway, from the final chapter of DEATH IN THE AFTERNOON

"They say that everyone loves Italy once and that it is well to go through with it young...
As in all such things you cannot select what you will be fond of... "
- Ernest Hemingway, from the disgarded introduction to the final chapter of DEATH IN THE AFTERNOON

Perhaps the most important things had been left out: how we dove
behind Deadman's Reef, our catch-bags floating on the surface,
how we cleaned the crawfish, then took them upbeach to Harry's
and gave "Harry" a half-dozen so he would broil the rest for free—
and the beer, of course, and how it felt to be single, fast and free;
how on the drive home through Eight Mile Rock the funeral party's
brass band had played during the processional, how we had crossed
paths, had stopped in hopes of finding Jesus, only to find instead
an old woman singing hymns alone in an empty church.How we had
played tennis at the Holiday Inn with Erica Moultrie and the tourists,
the Argentinians who talked so lovingly of GuillermoVilas. How we
had played football at Rugby Club, three Americans on an English side,
then watched Ian Dallas playingrugby so hard in that late Sunday light.
How, at morning assembly, they raised the flag: "Black for the people,
Yellow for the sun, Blue for the ocean, Bahamas, Bahamaland we love you."
How Joe and I had flown to Eleuthera and Bimini in those small cargo planes,
flying so low we could see sharks swarming in light-green ocean water.
And how John and Dianne, Shirley and Margo, Jim and Ann, Bob and Joanie
were sitting round that table at Fat Man's; and meeting her there, a friend
of a friend, down from New York on a week's vacation, how I didn't realize
what was happening at first, and then, oh well, her eyes, so brown, and then,
how her eyes looked into mine, and then many things—many things happened,
the most important, the things left out: like Francisco Gomez and Aldeano's tear.