Rodeo Sweethearts

by Lilian Darcy

  Melinda felt better about their second outing to the Copper Mountain Rodeo. RJ had come with them, and even though he sloped off on his own almost at once, it felt good to arrive as a family. Jess had called to say she was hoping to get here as well. The drive from Bozeman would only take her around forty-five minutes or so.

  The crowds seemed even bigger today, but Rob gave Melinda his arm and she thought if she held onto it, she could be braver about everything. It really was so much fun. She’d loved the rodeo, in her teens. They stopped near the rails and caught some of the barrel-racing, then met up by chance with Kate, who was selling raffle tickets for a fund-raiser. Melinda wasn’t all that clear on the cause. “Quite a few people saw Jamie’s ride in the saddle bronc, yesterday,” Kate said. “They were impressed.”

  “Good for them,” Rob growled, and Melinda guessed that he was feeling a little ashamed of all the discouragement he’d given their second son, over the years.

  They were heading for a place in the stands, but had managed to see some more of the barrel-racing action on their way through, when they both saw a familiar outline ahead in the crowd.

  “Jamie,” Rob said.

  He turned and his face brightened at the sight of them. “Hey, you came!” He clapped Rob on the arms and then turned and engulfed Melinda in the biggest, warmest hug. It felt so nice, she couldn’t help laughing as she hugged him back.

  She and Rob had made this fine son of theirs, and RJ, and Rose, Jodie and Jess. That was a pretty good achievement in life, when you thought about it, five healthy, happy kids. A few problems, of course, like RJ’s shyness, but nothing that couldn’t be worked out.

  “Well, we were here yesterday, too,” Rob was saying. “But your mom needed to get home before we managed to speak to you. You did great.”

  “Not doing so good today, so far.” Jamie turned down his mouth. “Steer got away from me, and left me with a twisted arm and a nice bruise brewing up.”

  Melinda had a rush of disappointment. “Oh, we missed your ride, today?”

  That was her fault. Rob and RJ had been sitting in the pick-up with the engine warming, while she was still deciding which purse to bring. She felt bad, because Rob had warned her not to take too long.

  “Not the saddle bronc,” Jamie said. “That’s still to come.”

  “Well, we’re proud of you anyhow,” she said. In her head, it was an apology to Rob for the decision over the purse. Would he know that?

  “Looking forward to the broncs,” her husband said to Jamie, then added, “That was a real nice ride you had yesterday, and I’m not the only one who thought so.”

  “Who says?”

  “Your Aunt Kate.” He told Jamie what she’d said a few minutes ago.

  Melinda remembered something. “How about the girl yesterday? I forget her name.” Not Megan, but close. “The Austrian girl.”

  “Australian.”

  Oh, lord, of course! They’d been through this once already! She felt so stupid.

  “Don’t worry about it, Mom,” Jamie told her kindly, and reminded her of the right name, too. Tegan.

  “Tegan. Unusual.”

  “You might just have caught her,” he said. “She rode about ten minutes ago. She was the one in the purple plaid shirt.”

  It was lilac, actually.

  More importantly, Tegan had won her barrel race, it turned out.

  Tegan. It was a more common name in Australia, Jamie told her.

  They went with him to congratulate her, and she had a big grin on her face when they found her unsaddling her horse. She was such a pretty girl, blonde with a scattering of freckles you could only see in a bright light. “Did you see?”

  She was pleased with her ride, but didn’t realize she’d won until Jamie told her. Then she whooped and the mare shied a little and Tegan apologized.

  “That’s okay, honey,” Melinda said. “I love your pretty shirt.”

  They chatted a little more, and Melinda told Jamie that RJ was here, and Jess was hoping to be. Rob squeezed her arm again, and she knew he was pleased that she was relaxing and having a good time. Her stomach growled suddenly, and she realized how hungry she was. “Could we have something to eat? Seems like a long while since I’ve had rodeo food. Remember, Robbie, when we were dating?”

  “Long time ago,” Rob said, a little gruff. He was self-conscious. Didn’t ever think that parents of grown children should be romantic in public.

  “I still remember, though,” Melinda said, feeling stubborn about it. “Sitting in the bleachers with those corn dogs. I was wearing that dress with the flowers, pink peonies, and I had a bracelet on, with the charm you gave me…” The bracelet was a funny thing she’d made herself. Bright beads that didn’t really match her dress, or go with a silver charm. But who cared about tasteful color matching in the garish atmosphere of a rodeo, at sixteen?

  “We were so young,” she finished. She still had the charm, and she still wore it. She was wearing it now, in fact, on a special and much more suitable silver bracelet, with a whole lot of other charms added over the years. Rob had given her most of them.

  He smiled down at her, with a look that said, okay, we can reminisce and be a little romantic, if you like. “Sure, we can get corn dogs…”

  She asked the Australian girl impulsively, “Tegan, will you come?”

  “If you can wait for me to take care of Shildara, first.”

  On the way to the concession stands they found Jess and RJ, so they all joined together and had corn dogs as a family, finding a place where they could see into the arena. Jamie had to go get ready, but Tegan stayed. His ride was a little disappointing, and he wouldn’t do so well today, Melinda knew.

  He came back to them afterward, and they consoled him as best they could. Not everyone could be Ty Murray.

  Jamie mentioned someone else, a newer one, Trevor Brazile, but it was always Ty Murray that Melinda thought of. He’d won World Champion All-Around Cowboy six times from 1989 through 1994—the hardest years with the kids, when she’d spent so many nights sitting exhausted in front of TV watching sports, because they were easier for her messy brain to keep track of than crime shows and movies.

  Rob had seen that she was getting a little over-dosed by the crowds and the family and the need to stay polite and smiling.

  “Let’s head off on our own,” he said to her quietly, running a warm, heavy hand down her arm. “You made me remember that first rodeo, talking about your dress with the flowers. We could get strawberry snow-cones, sit right at the top of the stands.”

  “I’d love that,” Melinda told him.

  Jamie and Megan… no, Tegan… went back to the trailer parking lot, and RJ went off on his own again. He’d seen a couple of friends in the distance. Jess was meeting someone, and wanted to stay put so her friend could find her.

  Rob took Melinda’s hand and pretty soon they were doing just what he’d said – sitting right up in the top row of the bleachers, with a snow-cone each. She could see RJ down near the front with his buddies. He was laughing and talking, and that was good to see, when often he was so quiet…

  “None of them are married yet.” Her thoughts had gone off on a wandering track, wondering when RJ would find a girl-friend, wondering if Jamie and Tegan were serious about each other, wondering when she’d have to deal with new people permanently in her life, a part of the family, and this was where the thoughts had ended up. She didn’t know why she’d said it out loud.

  Meanwhile, the snow-cone ice was deliciously cold in her mouth, and her lips would be going all red and stained. Rob ate more neatly, heaping his spoon high with the sweet ice, but opening wide. He kept his mouth clean.

  “Well, not everyone gets married as young as we did,” he said.

  “Thank the lord!”

  “It was the right thing,” he answered firmly. “With Rose on the way.” He was old-fashioned about things like this. “And besides…”

  But he stopped and didn’t finish, and she
couldn’t guess the end of the sentence.

  She could feel his thoughts going off on a wandering track, and clung onto his arm so that the thoughts… or Rob himself… didn’t go too far off. He’d never been unfaithful to her, she was sure of that, but sometimes she couldn’t understand why he hadn’t. He had plenty of incentive, didn’t he? She was so inadequate as a rancher’s wife.

  They sat there, keeping pace with the snow-cones as they began to melt inside the waxed cups. It was strangely peaceful to be alone with each other in the middle of a noisy, excitable crowd. Melinda forgot to be wary of unexpected greetings or confusing movements. Rob’s familiar body felt so good, pressed close enough for her to feel his warmth. Surprisingly, he gave her a kiss, just a quick one, but on the mouth, and sweet and smoochy.

  “Rob?”

  “Your lips are so red from the snow-cone, I couldn’t resist.”

  “Hope it’s just my lips. Hope it’s not all over my face.”

  “It’s not, don’t worry.”

  They smiled at each other.

  Her attraction to him wasn’t what it had been during their teens. It was still there, and strong, but it was much quieter now. You couldn’t stay in that white heat of wanting when you’d been together for thirty years.

  She remembered the sizzling happiness and delight within her at that long ago rodeo. It was the day he’d first kissed her, right here in the bleachers, weather just like this – lucky for October. Such a sweet, beautiful kiss it had been. Tender and a little shy. Slow, like an exploration in the dark, even though it had been bright day at the time. Uncertain, in case maybe she’d only come out with him because she wanted to have a boyfriend to boast about. Some of the girls in school were like that.

  But that hadn’t been why. She’d loved him already, and her heart had been beating so fast when he’d moved close and touched her cheek to turn her face toward him.

  Her legs had been so weak after their kiss, she’d wondered if they would hold her up long enough to walk back to the truck. She couldn’t decide if she wanted to tell her girlfriends about it that day, or store it away like a special treasure.

  In the end, the secret of it had seemed too perfect to share, and she and Rob had been sleeping together already before anyone knew they were a couple.

  Sleeping together, then pregnant before her eighteenth birthday. Silly! So very young! She’d never once regretted marrying him, but she regretted – she wished –

  But, no, she couldn’t imagine any of it different, now, not even the day she’d had the pregnancy-induced stroke and collapsed on the kitchen floor and been unconscious until Robbie found her.

  “How can you say the kids wouldn’t think it was their fault?” she demanded of him, breaking into the quiet between them.

  Rob sat back, startled by her vehemence, and by the lack of warning, even though he knew what she was talking about. His voice went gentle, the way it always did when they talked about this stuff. “Honey, I just don’t think—”

  “No!” She yelled it, and a couple of people turned to look.

  When she felt overwhelmed by a situation, it often happened suddenly, and it happened this way now. She felt as if she couldn’t stand to sit here a moment longer. She had to get out of here, and she and Rob needed to talk. “I want to go back to the truck.”

  “But we’re talking.” Soft-voiced, reasonable, as if she was a child.

  And I’m not!

  She might be brain-damaged from that day, she might not be capable, since then, of organizing herself out of a paper bag – something else she’d heard said about her, by Rob’s mother, actually – but even if her higher cognitive function was impaired – this was from the doctor – she was an adult, a grown woman.

  When it came to the bigger picture, she could think, and feel, and process, and concentrate. She could read, write, add, multiply. She wasn’t stupid. Just impaired. And why put the burden of it onto her children, who were innocent?

  “We’ll talk when we’re out of here,” she told Rob.

  “Honey…”

  “I’m not as sweet as all that!”

  “Okay, but…”

  Suddenly, the thing she couldn’t stand was that he never raised his voice to her. She wanted him to. She wanted him to yell, and she wanted to yell back. “We’re going,” she said.