Legend of Colton H. Bryant

In order to maintain my attention, a book has to have at least one of the following: (1) excellent writing; (2) an enticing story line; or (3) overflowing knowledge, well-presented. Very few books have more than one of these; most books have none. Fuller's recent story of the life and untimely death of Colton Bryant, 1980-2007, in an oil rig accident in WY, has 1 1/2 of these traits: the writing is excellent and the story line is fairly good. She evokes a WY I have grown to know, and even admire, in my six trips to the National Spelling Bee in Cheyenne from 2004-2010.

Whenever a book has either (1) or (3), I spend time, after reading it, reviewing the book and taking extensive notes on the evocative turns of phrase or the knowledge richly presented. Then I try to memorize or internalize much of the writing or knowledge. This essay, then, introduces some of Fuller's more memorable turns of phrase, taken primarily from the first 100 pages of this short (200 page) book.

A Slight Digression

There is some knowledge in the book, and I smiled as I read about one piece she introduced. When discussing the way that weather, wind and economic boom and bust affect the WY pysche, she introduces the "Gillette Syndrome," a term coined by psychologist ElDean Khors in the mid-1970s to describe the variety of ills, such as increase in crime, drug abuse, alcoholism, violence and the high cost of living, visited upon that WY town in the wake of the oil boom in the 1970s (p. 84). I was not only grateful to file the term away in my mind, but I decided to look up Dr. Khors and discovered that he is a therapist in Great Bend, KS, a mere 45 minutes from where I taught for six years. Even more interesting to me is that he is a 1950 graduate of Geneseo (KS) HS. Geneseo is a small town in the northern part of Rice County, on Highway 4, just a mile or so east of the intersection with State Highway 14. I lived about 25 miles to the South, in Sterling. The latest population of Geneseo and its environs is about 550, with 1 black and 2 hispanics in town. The median cost of a home is $26,000. Hm. Maybe this is where all my friends can move, worried that they will outlive their social security and die in abject penury... The Kansas plains have given birth to a wide and impressive range of sober, thoughtful people.

To The Book

As an author, I am aware of my strengths and, painfully so, of my weaknesses. There are few that can ransack diverse fields of knowledge and present them with such clarity, skill and panache as I. But I need coaching in rich descriptions of nature and persons, as well as presentation of conversations. I am spending my life looking for the words that are worth 1000 pictures, and each time I find a phrase or many phrases that capture the essence of some aspect of life, I want to stitch it to my soul. Thus, when I began to note that Fuller was especially powerful in her descriptions, I immediately listened raptly, as a disciple at the master's feet. Here are some phrases I found:

p. 24. "Wyoming is repeopled every time there is another oil boom, transience refreshed and history forgotten." People come from all over to "repeople" the place, and they are "weighed down with new heartload of all the old reasons for starting fresh."

Note the powerful way Fuller uses contrasts. We have the notion of something being "fresh" but, in reality, it is "old" before it even begins. Delusional thinking like this probably ends up leading people to the kinds of ills Kohrs identified. But it all begins with these two exceptional sentences.

p. 26. She is describing Bill (Colton's father's) feel for time, especially the (maximum) eight seconds that you get to ride a bull before you are either 'home free,' thrown off or dead. "The saddle-bronc rider's trick is slowing down time until you knew the shape of it, until you could possess it, until it was yours to stretch out or shrink." This is part of the "full, fat poetry of eight seconds." Is it possible, I mused, to do this with all of time, so that one's life is both a hymn of praise, a symphony of diverse sounds and experiences, and a gift back to the world? As I think about that, I want to possess time, to learn the shape of it, to stretch it out and shrink it, to derive all from those eight seconds or two minutes or ninety years that it can possibly offer.

p. 30. In describing the bleak mid-late November physical appearance of Evanston WY, where much of the book takes place, she writes: "The town, stripped of summer ice-cone stalls and fall leaves and not yet covered with snow or Christmas lights, was depressing the way a hangover is depressing, a low-grade headache of a place that must have seemed like a good idea at the time." Both funny and visual. The most visible insitution in Evanston is the state mental hospital, and it comes in for mention on several occasions as people question the mental capacity of their friends or family members.

p. 34. When describing Colton's interaction with his best friend Jake, she likened a danger facing Colton to hypothermia, "where you lose your higher functioning first.." "and the way Jake talked Colton didn't have an excess of higher functioning to lose in the first place."

p. 50. She excels at the description of the barren WY land. "There was a lacy netting of mist coming off the lake, all secret with what it knew about water and air and the difference between the two." Do lacy mists know things? Yes, of course.

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