It cheered him to think of Jake Arnett Jr. being stuck inside attending to ledgers and phone calls from brokers and lawyers, while Stretch got to spend the daylight hours outside, either on a horse or near one.
“Yeah,” said Hip, “so the guy can handle a pencil—I’d like to see him handle a horse!”
“Ha,” said Curly, “not when his office chair is his saddle!”
Hip’s eyes squinted in a gesture indicating thought.
“Not when his . . . not when his chaps are a business suit!”
That’s right, thought Stretch, appreciating his friends’ support as well as their humor. Penny’s in love with a cowboy, not a businessman.
Only trouble was, Jake Arnett Jr. was both.
Live Field Report/Sense-O-Gram
To: Charmat
From: Tandala
Last night I “closed down the joint,” which means I didn’t leave the tavern until the bouncer told me I had to. It was Square Dance Night—Bow to your partner, Charmat! Bow to your corner! Now circle right! Smell the sweat and the hopeful cologne, contemplate the lacy petticoats and their peek-a-boo allure, notice the man in the turquoise shirt and how he struts like a rooster, unaware that his barn door’s open. Feel that sense of harmony when everyone’s in step with the caller, and the easy forgiveness when the short woman in the yellow dress messes up her Pass-Through. Hum the “Ozark Rag” without tapping your feet. I dare you.
8
After a week so heavy with heat that every living thing, from flora to fauna, was limp with it, the skies had filled and unleashed a morning’s worth of rain, promising a clean, fresh evening for the big party.
It wasn’t one of his fancy, raise-a-zillion-dollars affairs; this was the annual Fourth of July celebration, put on to show his employees, friends, and neighbors what a good guy Jake Arnett was.
It was easy for Stretch to feel benevolent toward his boss while cruising by the long table set out in the yard, laden as it was with all manner of barbeque, salads and side dishes, fresh fruit and grilled vegetables, baskets of corn bread and biscuits, and cakes, cookies, and a divinity the Arnett’s cook was justly famous for.
“Hey, Dash—you responsible for any of this?” asked Stretch, waving his fork toward the food.
“Nah, they never let me cook for parties,” said the cook. “Too many bland palates they’ve got to cater to!”
Stretch refilled his plate and took it over to one of the gingham-covered picnic tables arranged under the ash trees.
“Sweets for the sweet,” he said, handing both Penny and Aunt Ludy pieces of the divinity they had requested.
Hip looked hurt. “So where’s mine?”
His reflexes were quick enough to catch the short rib Stretch threw at him, and he attacked it like a rabid dog.
“Can’t take him anywhere,” said Curly to Penny.
“How ’bout a kennel?” suggested Aunt Ludy.
Jokes were passed around the table as easily as the pitcher of sun tea, and Stretch was filled with a contentment that made him feel almost buoyant. He put his arm around Penny; if he were going to float away into the blue open sky, he was going to take his pretty brown-haired girlfriend with him.
“Having fun?” he asked, his fingertips drawing circles on her ballerina neck and down the slope of her bare shoulder.
“Sure am,” she said, offering a smile so sweet it could have been wrapped and sold at a candy store.
He wanted to take her by the hand and rush her into the empty bunkhouse.
“What are you thinking?” she said, leaning into him so that her breast flattened against his arm.
“I can’t say it in polite company.”
Stretch was ready to kiss her—to hell with Aunt Ludy sitting right across from them—when the warm yielding body that was Penny’s straightened up, and she said, “Hey, there’s Jake Jr.!”
For everyone else, the sun still shone high in the blue Texas sky, but for Stretch a dark cloud rolled in, casting a shadow across the entire day. Jake Jr. had been away from the ranch for nearly two weeks—traveling on business for his father, Penny had mentioned casually—and Stretch had gotten used to his absence. So much so that his presence made Stretch want to hit somebody—preferably Jake Jr.
“Well, how’s everybody doing?” asked the young scion, sitting down to a table he hadn’t been invited to. “I must say, Penny, you’re looking even prettier than the last time I saw you.”
Stretch’s teeth clenched.
“That goes double for you, Miss Ludy.“ he said.
“Fast talker,” said Aunt Ludy, trying not to bare her dentures in a smile.
Under the table, Stretch’s fists clenched.
“And hey, Stretch,” said Jake Jr., and Stretch thought it wouldn’t matter what else the jerk said to him, he was ready to smack him but good.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” came a booming voice, and Jake Jr. and Stretch held each other’s gaze for a moment, knowing something had just been averted, before turning to face the ranch owner.
Jake Sr. was a big man, and although he wore a simple plaid shirt and jeans, there was no mistaking him for anything but Lord of the Manor. He had planted himself on a small rise of lawn, and taking off his worn Stetson, he thanked everyone for coming.
“I hope you’ve all had enough to eat, but not too much, because now it’s rodeo time!”
Cheers went up from the crowd.
“Rodeo time,” said Stretch to his friends. “What’s he talking about?”
“It’s a tradition at this party,” Jake Jr. explained amicably, as if Stretch were suddenly his dearest friend. “Anyone who wants to participate can.”
The black cloud was swallowed by the blue sky and Stretch was in the sun again.
“Well, shucks,” he said, standing. “I’m in.”
“Me, too,” added Hip.
“Sounds good,” said Curly, and then surprising everyone, Jake Jr. said, “Then let’s go get on those horses.”
“You’re going to be in the rodeo?” asked Stretch.
Jake Jr. offered a smile enhanced by years of orthodontia. “Any objections?”
“Jake,” said Penny softly, “what about your knee?”
“Knee’s all healed,” said Jake Jr. brightly. “In fact, I’d say now I’m good as gold.” To prove his point, he did three quick squats.
“Yeah, but can you ride?” asked Stretch, and later he came to think it was the dumbest question he had ever asked.
“Oh my,” said Fletcher, his voice buried in his folded arms.
Curly laughed. “Welcome back, Hip. Guess you’re not the beer drinker you thought you were.”
Lifting his head, Fletcher felt a sudden unspooling, as if someone had wrapped his head in cotton gauze and was now pulling it off. A gust of wind seemed to blow through his brain and he blinked twice, hard. When his eyes focused, he was looking into Tandala’s face.
“I’m glad you woke up, Hip, because I was just telling your friend here that we should be leaving.” Although her voice was light, a fierceness was telegraphed in her eyes.
“What?” said Fletcher, as groggy as if he’d been awakened from a coma.
“Guy can only take three beers,” said Stretch, whose slurred voice suggested he had taken many more. “I know grade school girls who could drink him under the table.”
As if an antenna had been fiddled with, the picture before him grew sharper and Fletcher realized he was back at Josie’s. But there was something new here, a tension as thick as the indoor fog of cigarette smoke.
“So,” he said, brightly, “how’d you do in the pool room, Stretch?”
“‘How’d you do in the pool room, Stretch?’” repeated Stretch, his mouth twisted as he mocked Fletcher. “How do you think I did? I beat everyone’s ass.” He leaned into Tandy, flipping her beaded braids of hair with his pointer finger. “Except yours. Yours is an ass I’d really like to—”
“—say,” said Curly, whose place next to Tandy had been
stolen by Stretch while the old cowboy had been visiting the head. “That’s enough of that.”
His words, made sodden by alcohol, lacked authority, yet Stretch felt it necessary to shove his old friend and tell him to shut up.
“Now,” he said, turning back to Tandy, “what do you say you come on home with me? Because I’ve never been with anyone with skin as dark as yours and I really like chocolate, and—my God!—your titties and that ass we were talking about are just about the biggest things I’ve ever seen, and I’d love—”
“—come on, Tandy,” said Fletcher, gripping the alien by the arm. “You don’t need to listen to this crap.”
“That’s right,” said Curly. “Criminy, Stretch—where’re your manners, anyhow?”
His previous shove might have been considered playful, but the one Stretch now gave was not, and Curly was knocked to the floor, despite grabbing the end of the vinyl banquette.
“Hey!” he said, his voice full of insult and injury, and Fletcher, using the distraction of Curly’s tumble, pulled Tandy out of the booth.
But not quite fast enough.
“Let go of me!” she said as Stretch seized her other arm.
“Yeah, let go of her!” said Curly, who had staggered upright and now held an empty beer bottle in his hand like a club.
“What the hell?” asked Stretch, dropping Tandy’s arm as he lunged at Curly. The table rocked forward, and empty bottles and a full ashtray cascaded down its surface and crashed to the floor.
The sound and fury got the attention of other patrons who weren’t averse to perking up their evening by joining a bar brawl, and there was a sudden rush of bodies to the table.
Fletcher was shocked—physically and emotionally—by the fist that drove into his stomach. He was surrounded by men throwing punches and their beery, sweaty stench, surrounded by the sounds of knuckles meeting flesh. Dodging another curled fist, Fletcher heard Tandy yelp, and suddenly he was hurtling through space, as if he had been picked up and tossed by the world’s biggest bouncer.
Knowing it was pointless to question the hows or whys of finding himself in a Cadillac DeVille driven by an alien who looked like a Jamaican cowgirl, Fletcher decided to focus on the relief he felt in getting out of the melee with nothing more than a dull ache in his stomach.
“Whoa,” he said finally, rolling down the window and breathing in the cool desert air. “I have no idea what that was all about.”
“I do,” said Tandy, looking over her shoulder as she backed out of the parking lot. “It was about that vile man Stretch pinching and poking me and saying things like, ‘If you’ve seen me ride my horse, just imagine how I can ride you.’”
“Aw, Tandy.” Fletcher slumped, as if under the weight of Stretch’s crudeness.
“And that was hardly the all of it! I kept kicking you under the table to wake you up, but you wouldn’t, and meanwhile, he’s saying nasty things about my skin color and my anatomy!”
Fletcher was quiet, filled with shame and guilt over his failure to protect the alien from his own kind.
“I of course had been warned of human men, but warnings are a piffle compared to the real experience! I tell you—nothing would give me greater pleasure than to flush that brute down a black hole!”
A single bump of laughter rose in Fletcher’s chest.
“Or let him take a ride on an exploding nova!”
“Just punishment,” Fletcher concurred, as a car passed them, mariachi music pouring from its open windows.
Tandy had driven through one intersection, turned right at another, and now they had left behind the street lights and were in the desert, driving a road lit by stars and a moon that looked over them like a benevolent chaperone.
“But this shouldn’t be about me,” Tandy said as the Cadillac cruised along like an ocean liner, the sand a calm sea on both sides of them. She took a deep breath. “I am fine now. This is about you and what happened when you went away in the bar.”
“I did go away?” He was confused, unsure of the realities he had been in and out of. “It wasn’t just a dream?”
“It was way beyond a dream, mon. So tell me about it.”
Taking off his cowboy hat and setting it on one knee, Fletcher leaned his head back on the leather headrest and broke into a grin.
“Tandy, I was Hip when he was a young man!” he said, the memory of which was like yeast in him, filling him with a rising softness. “A boy, really. I was Hip when he first got together with Stretch and Curly—and Stretch wasn’t at all like the jerk he was tonight!”
“I certainly would hope not,” said Tandy.
Fletcher told her all about Jake Arnett’s ranch, about Curly with hair, about the trick-riding practice sessions after church.
“I met Stretch when he was twenty-one—he used to drag me and Curly to church every Sunday, plus he never cussed!” Fletcher chuckled. “He didn’t just think the world was his oyster—he thought the world was his oyster and he had the exact tool to pry it open!”
“That I can believe,” said Tandala. “But what were you like?”
Fletcher shrugged. “I was a kid, too. More of a follower than a leader, I guess, and . . . and pretty happy. It was easy for me to be happy.”
“That’s a nice thing to know about yourself, isn’t it?”
“Sure, but it’s not really me-Fletcher we’re talking about. It’s me-Hip, remember?”
The cool night air was fragrant with sage, and like a dog Fletcher stuck his head out the window to gulp it in. The wind on his face brought tears to his eyes, and for a long moment he reveled in the speed, the sound of the car wheels on gravel, and the deep, dark, perfumed night.
“You know what Stretch told me once as we rode after church?” he asked, when he finally sat back in his seat. “‘God holds all of us in his lap; our problem is we’re like squirmy kids, always trying to get off.’”
A single pulse of light appeared on Tandy’s forehead. “How did he go from saying something like that to the things he said tonight? You must tell me everything, Fletcher.”
And he did. By the time he got to the part about the Fourth of July rodeo, Tandala had pulled off the road, past a sign that promised food and gas in fifty-four miles.
“The thing is, Stretch had grown up on a turkey farm,” said Fletcher. “How did he ever think he could outride someone who’d grown up on a real ranch?”
Hip had been heartened when he saw Curly ride into the corral, sliding off one side of the saddle and pretending to run alongside the horse before boosting himself back into the saddle and then off the other side.
The audience had clapped and whistled, and when Curly draped himself over the side of his horse so that his head was nearly touching the ground, Hip thought, No one can touch Curly. He’s going to win the rodeo and everything will be all right.
The older cowboy finished his routine by twirling his pistols while standing on the back of his horse, and as he rode out of the corral Stretch rode in.
“He started off big, bringing himself up into a handstand on the saddle,” said Fletcher. “I’d seen him fall off his horse a million times practicing that trick, but he didn’t fall now and the crowd was going nuts.
“Technically, Curly was the best rider out there, but both Stretch and Jake Jr. had youth on their sides. And both of them had a lot to prove.” Fletcher explained the tricks Stretch had performed and how in his estimation Stretch had never performed better.
“When he was done, he rode out, waving nonchalantly, like he was taking a stroll past the crowd. The thing was, he was standing on top of a horse.”
Fletcher’s chuckle didn’t last long.
“Then Jake Jr. rode out. And no, the jerk couldn’t do his own routine—he had to humiliate Stretch by doing the exact same tricks. The exact same tricks, only better.”
“If he did the exact same tricks,” said Tandala, “how could he do them better?”
Fletcher chose to think the alien was not being sarcastic
but was genuinely confused over the semantics of the language.
“Well, see, after he got himself up on a handstand, he had to take it further and do a one-handed handstand.”
In a flash, Tandala was outside on the hood of the Cadillac, attempting to perform a handstand. Her skirt fell over her like a curtain, briefly revealing a pair of shiny pink underpants encasing a sizable posterior before the alien/gymnast collapsed into the windshield with a thump so loud Fletcher expected it to crack. In a second, she was back behind the steering wheel, brushing off her sleeves and breathing hard.
“Are you all right?” asked Fletcher.
“It seems my corporeal body is not as graceful as I would like,” said Tandy. “Hoola, baby. And I was just trying a two-handed handstand.”
Relieved that she hadn’t hurt herself, Fletcher allowed himself to feel irritation.
“How many times do I have to ask, Could I please get a little warning before you do something like that?”
“Sorry, but I must act when the spirit moves me.”
Fletcher put his cowboy hat back on and folded his arm across his chest, mumbling something about being shocked into an early grave.
“Don’t worry, Fletcher. I will not reenact the other stunts. Suffice it to say, I can assume that when Stretch did a somersault, Jake Jr. did a somersault and a half.”
“That’s right. And when Stretch leapfrogged onto the saddle from the back of his horse, Jake Jr. leapfrogged onto the saddle and then sprung off the front. He’d had years and years more practice, and it showed.”
Fletcher shook his head, remembering how Stretch had lost color, as if all blood vessels leading to his face had been cauterized.
The crowd’s explosive applause designated Jake Jr. the winner, and after he dismounted, his father slapped him on the back, and congratulations were offered by all, including Penny, who offered an outstretched hand. Not satisfied with this paltry prize, Jake Jr. pulled her to him and kissed her on the lips with the force of an industrial-strength vacuum cleaner.
“I thought for sure there’d be bloodshed,” said Fletcher. “But instead of going after him, Stretch just turned away. Turned away and walked back to the bunkhouse. He was packing his bag when Curly and I got there, and when we asked where he was going he said, ‘Away from here,’ and Curly said, ‘Me, too,’ and I said, ‘Me, three,’ and we left the ranch in Stretch’s old pickup. Penny chased us, hollering, ‘Honey, what’s wrong? but Stretch wouldn’t turn around. You wouldn’t even know by his face that he was upset, unless you noticed the bone in his jaw twitching like a live wire.”
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