Bull Rider

by Suzanne Morgan Williams

Now, I knew Mom was pushing me off, like a phone solicitor, but I’d have my board. And I kind of wanted to see Ben. It worked for me.

  I called Mike back. “I have to go,” I told him.

  “You’re never around anymore,” he said. “I’m thinking about teaching Favi to skate.”

  “Right.” I laughed. “Like Favi would do that. She’d rather work on that old Volvo of your dad’s. Wait till I get my board back. Wait till grades come out. And we’ll have plenty of time to board at Thanksgiving, promise.”

  I rode over with Grandpa Roy. This trip was longer than the last one. There was snow east of Reno, which wasn’t bad, but we hit it again crossing Donner Pass. I thought we might sit there all day, waiting for the traffic to move along. Grandpa Roy pumped the windshield with washer fluid to keep it clear, and I watched the snow pile onto the slabs of granite and stunted trees. You can almost touch the quiet when it snows up there. I tried to save it in my mind so I could use it in the city.

  It didn’t work. As soon as we got down the mountain, the snow switched to rain, which is plenty noisy, and the traffic went nuts. The closer we got to Palo Alto, the more I tightened up. We checked in at the same motel but had two rooms this time. We dumped our stuff and drove to the hospital. Ben was just coming out of his physical therapy session. He looked better, but it was a hard day for his speech. He groped around for words, and he managed, finally, to put them together.

  “Hey, bro’…look,” he said, pointing to his feet.

  I eyed his slippers and I thought I saw one move. “Is that—?”

  “Yep. A toe move…told you.” He beamed.

  Grandpa took his wheelchair and pushed him toward his room.

  “So how long before you can move the rest of it?” I asked.

  “Cam, hush,” Mom said. “That’s good progress, isn’t it, Ben?”

  “Afraid so. I’m getting better with my hand too…. Like Captain Hook,” he said to Lali.

  Her eyes got round. “He’s mean,” she said.

  “Lollipop, no one could be mean to you,” Ben answered. He mussed her hair with his good hand. We got back to his room, and he and I arm wrestled, for real, pressing our elbows on his hospital tray. His movement had come back in his right arm, and he was strong. I didn’t have a chance. He pinned me. “I win—still.” He grinned.

  “I let you,” I said, but we both knew I hadn’t.

  “Hey, remember Matt Burton, my buddy from Georgia?” Ben’s words began to come out easier. “They’re sending him for an operation. On his face. Next time you see him, he’ll look better. Plastic surgeons, they do great stuff.”

  Mom looked away. I was pretty sure it had to do with Ben’s own scars. My throat lumped up. Grandma Jean dealt out a round of poker.

  “Let me see those cards,” Grandpa Roy said.

  “You doubting me?” Grandma asked.

  “No, I’m sure of you. Sure you mark those cards. Let’s see the corners.”

  Grandma Jean slapped his hand. “Don’t play, then. Lali trusts me.” We all busted out laughing. Lali trusts everybody.

  Grandma and Grandpa, Lali, and me left the hospital early to let Mom and Dad have time to talk with Ben. Lali fell asleep in the motel room, and I went down to the truck to get my skateboard. “Take the cell phone,” Grandpa said. “Don’t go far, and call if you need us.”

  Finally, I was out the door, free, and pumping down the street. The wheels sang in my ears. How long since I’d been loose on my board and with all this concrete? I jumped off the curb. I skated along a main street for a while, but the cars were everywhere, so I turned up a side street. The vibrations from the wheels buzzed up through the board to my feet. A couple of blocks in, I saw two kids on skateboards. One was tall with red hair, and the short one was Asian. I called to them. “Is there a skate park around here?”

  “No, we use the parking lot at the mini-mart. They don’t care, unless the owner’s there.”

  “So where’s that?”

  They looked me over. I’m guessing they were trying to figure if I was worth their time. “You any good?” the taller one asked.

  “I can ride,” I said.

  He picked up his board and spun the wheels around. “Where do you live?”

  Now this could be tricky. Salt Lick wasn’t exactly glamorous. “Nevada,” I said.

  “Nevaahda?” The way he said it grated on my ears. “What are you doing here?”

  “Visiting my brother,” I said.

  “So where’s he live?”

  Instead of answering, I started down the street on my board. “Where’s that mini-mart?” They got on their boards and swerved around me to lead the way. I followed.

  The mini-mart lot was big and almost empty. We drifted around it for a while and then I started doing some tricks. The taller kid stopped to watch. I did a kickflip across the concrete at the front of a parking spot, jumped up on the curb, and cruised to a stop in front of the mini-mart door, right next to the NO BIKES, NO SKATEBOARDS sign.

  “So how long are you staying at your brother’s house?” he asked.

  “Not long, we’re leaving tomorrow.”

  “Well, are you coming back?” he asked. He looked excited, like we could board again.

  “Yeah, I’ll be back. He’s in the VA hospital, getting therapy.”

  The kid’s jaw dropped. “So, what happened to him?”

  “An IED hit him in Iraq.”

  “A what?” the short one asked.

  “IED—improvised explosive device. A street bomb.”

  They both stared at me. “Iraq? No way! How’d he get stuck going over there?”

  “It was his orders.”

  The short kid frowned. “Man, I wouldn’t go. You couldn’t get me in the army for a million dollars. I might go to Canada.”

  “They don’t make you join the military, stupid,” the tall kid said. “Not yet, anyway. This kid’s brother had to sign up. That’s sick.”

  I pushed my fingernails into my palms. No one talked like that about Ben. “He’s a Marine. He’s protecting you.”

  “Not anymore. He’s in the hospital, right?”

  “And he got there protecting you.”

  The tall guy glared at me. “Do you like this war or something?”

  “Nobody likes a war, but you can’t do anything about it but go fight. So don’t you go bad-mouthing what all those guys have done,” I snapped.

  “What kind of garbage do they teach you in Nevaahda? There’s always stuff you can do. How about thinking? Maybe blowing people up doesn’t make the world safer. And they’d have a hard time running a war without soldiers, wouldn’t they?”

  “Lay off of him,” the short one said. “His brother’s in the hospital.”

  “You don’t know anything about my brother,” I said. “Or the others.” I thought of Ben pulling Burton out of the house in Baghdad, leaving parts of his buddy’s legs behind. “You just don’t get it,” I said. The metallic taste in the back of my throat told me I was going over the edge. I wondered if it was like the smell Ben said would make you puke. I didn’t want to puke. I took off on my board before I punched one of them.

  The short kid called after me, “Don’t run off. He’s right, you know. You can’t run a war without soldiers.”

  I turned around and yelled, “And you wouldn’t have a country”—I kicked faster—“or this crummy town without them!” I pushed the board as fast as I could on the flat streets, backtracking to where I’d met the jerks. I wanted to break something, but the only thing I had was my board. Then I saw an orange tree, and the fruit was round and ripe, hanging just over my head. I reached up and grabbed one, then two, and three. I cradled the oranges in my arm until I saw a concrete wall. I smashed those oranges good against the wall. One for the tall kid, one for the short one, and the last one I plastered, hard, for the weaselly scumfaced dirtbag who triggered the bomb that tore up Ben.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  We visited Ben Sunday morning, and I co
uldn’t get the two skater creeps out of my head. “Can I push you around again?” I asked him.

  “Sure,” Ben said. We left the rest of the family playing cards in his room. “What’s up, bro’?”

  “I’ve got to know. Would you really go back now, if you could?”

  “Back to Iraq? Where’d that come from?”

  I guessed he’d forgotten our conversation, although he was talking okay today. I hated that. You never knew how he was going to be or what he was going to remember. “Doesn’t matter,” I said. “But I want you to tell me. Was it worth it?”

  Ben turned in his chair and stared at me. “That’s a lousy question to ask me. Would I go back? Geez, Cam, don’t ask that.”

  “You would, wouldn’t you? You’d go and save guys like Georgia. You’d do it again, wouldn’t you?”

  Ben slumped back in the chair. “It stinks. It all really stinks. Yeah, I’d go back. I’ve got buddies, brothers. They’re still there. I’d go. In a minute. But bro’, it’s crazy over there.” He thought for a while. “I remember when I got hit, they were in some buildings we drove by. I can see the street now. We traveled it to get out of town. They were waiting in an empty building. That’s where the sound came from. A huge sound. Boom.” He said it, waving his arm, like an explosion in a cartoon. “It hurt.” He pointed to his ears. “Blew me out of the truck, and I landed in the street. I remember that.”

  I didn’t know if I should ask for more. I decided to just listen.

  “They hate us, Cam,” he said. “We’re supposed to be the good guys.” His voice trailed off. Finally he said, “That’s not all of it. There’s Iraqis who come up and thank you. They’re scared, and they want us to stay and help. It’s confusing. Yeah, get them to put me back the way I was, and I’ll go back. I wish the crazy war never started.” He leaned his head back, eyes closed, and a line of tears squeezed loose on his cheeks. Mom had warned me he could get emotional from the brain changes. I didn’t ask what happened when he landed in the street, although I was dying to know. Instead, I turned the chair and pushed him back to his room.

  On the drive home, I read my history book so I didn’t have to talk. But instead of answering Killworth’s questions about the Korean War, I came up with more of my own. What happened to the guys who fought in Korea? What was it like when their feet froze or they stepped on a mine? Did they share their food with starving people? The words on the page got a life of their own. I pictured mothers peeling bark off trees to feed to their babies, the way cattle do in dead winter. I pictured Lali eating bark. My stomach knotted up, and I decided not to skateboard in Palo Alto anymore.

  Monday we had an algebra test. I passed, thanks to Darrell. Then Killworth reviewed our history.

  “What were the causes of the Korean War?” he asked.

  “The Chinese invaded Korea from the north,” Favi said.

  “But why?” Killworth asked.

  I tuned it out. Killworth didn’t have anything worth listening to.

  But while I was zoning out, I was remembering all kinds of stuff I’d tried to forget. Like talking to Tom Lehi last year, down at the Grange about his time in World War II. I asked if he liked seeing Italy, and he said there wasn’t much to see by the time he got there, so much of it was bombed out. “They called us the ‘Can Do’ unit. It was a frontline command, first ones in to fight the Nazis.” So the natural thing was to ask, wasn’t the front line dangerous? Tom said, “There were ten thousand men in my division—the Third Infantry—and by the time the war was over, forty thousand men had been assigned to it. The other thirty thousand, well, they say twenty-five thousand were killed or wounded. Imagine, all of those men.”

  “What about the other five thousand?”

  Tom shook his head. “I don’t know, they got reassigned or something. When you’re there, you aren’t counting.”

  “So, what about your friends?” I asked.

  “There were about ten guys I knew who were there, beginning to end. About ten, that’s all I knew of.”

  That’s what Tom Lehi told me when Ben was already gone to Iraq. I didn’t tell anyone then. And now I wondered how Ben would answer those same questions.

  Grandma Jean was about the only one who I figured would give me a straight answer, so I asked her that night when we were doing the dishes. “What’s the sense in people blowing each other up?”

  “You mean the war?”

  “Yeah, I mean Ben and his buddies. You saw them. They’re so messed up. What’s the use in that?” I waited for her to think. I knew she wouldn’t lie to me.

  “They’re the lucky ones, you know,” she said softly. “They survived, and the doctors know how to keep them alive. In other wars, even in Vietnam, if your brother was hurt like that, he would have died.”

  “Ben doesn’t seem so lucky to me.”

  She took her hands out of the dishwater and dried them off. She looked at me level, her eyes shiny and dark under the soft wrinkles of her eyelids. “Right or wrong, there’s nothing glorious about a war. So many people lose everything—their lives, their loved ones, their arms. It happens the same to people on both sides,” she whispered. “The suffering is terrible. Your brother’s lucky to be home.”

  “What if he’d been killed?” I asked.

  “He wasn’t,” she said.

  “But he could have been.”

  “Cam, you have to trust that the Lord doesn’t take anyone until He’s good and ready, and when the time comes, it comes. There’s a reason, especially if it’s someone young like Ben. He’s got a better plan for him.”

  “Do you believe that?” I asked.

  “I do,” she said. “Think of your cousin, Adam, drowned when he was only a child. What reason is there for that? But since he’s gone, I feel him near me every day. Ben’s got more to do on this earth, and Adam, he was needed in heaven.”

  I dried the iron skillet and put it in the drawer under the stove. Grandma Jean was like that pan, solid and honest. I just wish I could be as sure as she was.

  The phone rang and I picked it up. It was Darrell.

  “We got a bull ride going at Elko Saturday,” he said. “A couple of us are driving over. You want to come?”

  “I can’t do that, man,” I said.

  “What’s wrong with a drive to Elko? You got something else going? Or won’t your mom let you out of town?”

  I looked around the kitchen. Ben was gone, Mike was weird since I’d started bull riding, and Favi just wanted to talk about what was bothering me. My mom had my skateboard in her closet again until my grades came up. Nothing seemed right since Ben got hurt except the rush I got on the back of a bull. The phone line was dead quiet.

  “So, you coming?” Darrell asked.

  “Yeah, I am. For sure.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Lying to my folks was easier than I’d hoped it would be. I just said I was driving with Darrell to Elko, where he was picking up a motor off a guy he knew. Mom had always liked Darrell, and she even packed us a lunch—roast beef and horseradish sandwiches and a bag of corn chips to hold Grandma Jean’s tomatillo salsa. The good thing was, we were fixing to bull ride a hundred miles away from Salt Lick. There was no way anyone would see me there.

  It was the kind of day you remember and keep looking back on, wondering if it was as good as you thought or if somehow it was so good it was bad. We started out before sunrise. Darrell turned up the radio full blast. We had a thermos of coffee and the road was clear and dry. The sun rose after we’d turned east from Winnemucca, and the light flashed off the snowy mountains. The air was perfect, clear like glass.

  “I brought an extra bull rope for you,” Darrell said. “We’re going to get you scored today. It don’t do to keep you practicing without knowing what you might be able to do.”

  “But I just started,” I said.

  “Yeah, and you’re too old to start riding and too young to be as good as you are. You just rode two tough bulls. You’re something, Cam, anybody c
an see that. Time to see what the judges think.”

  I took a long swig of coffee and smiled.

  We got to Elko midmorning and Darrell drove us to his friend’s ranch. The pickups and horse trailers were already coming in. I saw some license plates from as far off as Utah and Idaho.

  “So is this a big deal?” I asked.

  “Just friends getting together before the winter sets in. We do some bull riding, roping, and stuff. Steve’s been throwing this for years. I told him you were coming.”

  “You didn’t know that,” I said. Darrell grinned and I thought maybe it wasn’t just Grandpa and Ben who were stubborn—maybe it was bull riders. Maybe bull riders figured things always turned out the way they wanted.

  We parked and headed toward the corral. There was a big bald man there with a clipboard. “Steve, this is my boy, Cam, the one I told you about. You know, he’s Ben O’Mara’s brother.”

  Steve reached for my hand and pumped it. “Ben O’Mara’s one heck of a bull rider. I can’t wait to see you in action. How’s Ben doing, anyway?”

  “As well as you’d think,” I said. Did everyone know Ben?

  “Well, you give him my regards, okay? That was a tough turn he took. Tell him we’re thinking of him. I’ve got you up fifth.” He looked me over. “You’re old enough, right?”

  I was about to ask, old enough for what? when Darrell said, “’Course he’s old enough. I wouldn’t bring any kids out here. He graduates this year, right? If they let him.” Darrell grinned.

  Steve eyed me. “Well, you’re sure tall enough to fill the bill. Got some shoulders on you too.” He looked me over like he was summing up a steer at auction. “This ain’t school, so we don’t care.” He elbowed me and winked. “Just as long as you’re eighteen and old enough to take your own chances. I don’t need anybody’s parents suing me.”

  “Mine won’t,” I said. Mom would kill me first.

  The Elko bull ring had a left-and a right-handed chute. There were some folks there selling Indian tacos out of the back of a trailer and some others who’d brought sleazy T-shirts to sell that said “Bull Buster” and “Eight Seconds of Heaven.” There was a barrel in the ring for the bullfighters to dodge behind if they got in a tight spot, and some makeshift bleachers along the side. Two old guys sat at a table midway round the ring. I figured them to be the judges. The timer had an air horn to call the eight seconds. The cowboys were lining up with their gear. Steve might have believed Darrell—that I was old enough to do this—but I felt young. Real young. It didn’t matter that I was the only guy in my class who actually had to shave every week. And I could skip that too, except for the black whiskers I got from the Carl side of the family. No, all these guys looked confident and cool. Could they see how nervous I was? Darrell handed me his second bull rope. I had that feeling again—that sane men would leave.