I got through the funeral, but just barely; and afterward, I took off for several days, making the rounds of one Denver saloon after another. Perhaps I was subconsciously attempting to drink myself to death. I don't know. I did know that I could not stay in the house Mallie and I had lived in.

Everything in the house reminded me of her, and I began to feel her presence in familiar places—the parlor, her small sewing room, the kitchen, our bedroom. Sometimes I could swear I saw just a fleeting vision of her as she disappeared beyond a doorway or down a hallway. Of course, I knew I was imagining those apparitions.

Then one evening, a week or so after the funeral, I was sitting on the front porch of our house taking long swigs from a bottle of Kentucky bourbon. I had consumed abo...

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