by Leslee Green
As Linda made her way closer, she caught glimpses of his face and fractions of his sentences and had no idea how she would ever get a word in to introduce herself.
As she came up near them, the crowd caught on to the idea that Blake was a bull rider and there was a mechanical bull nearby (it wasn’t rocket science, but they were still very proud of their epiphany). They began insisting and cheering for him to ride and four of five of the women joined in a chant of, “Ride! The! Bull! Ride! The! Bull!”
Blake was a little more clever than your average Rodeo Joe, and he held his hand up, and his entourage responded by silencing themselves. “Alright, alright,” he said in a strong voice that caused other people to stop talking and that Linda could hear over the music. “I’ll ride the bull after one of you ladies hops on it first.”
“Nooo!” they whined. Blake smiled at his cleverness. The women around him, though wearing cowboy hats and boots, were no more equipped or willing to ride a mechanical bull than the small babies people were holding while drinking at the bar. They were fake cowgirls.
Their pristine hair and makeup would never withstand the turbulence of the ride, nor would their egos against being tossed through the air onto some smelly gym mats and sawdust. At least, Linda thought, her unhealthy commitment to the stables had given her this one advantage over these beauties.
To their credit though, every young woman in sight was wearing a summer dress, including her, and that does pose a problem when straddling a large object.
Besides that, she realized that there was only a slim correlation between riding old trail horses like she was used to and sitting atop a bucking hydraulic robot, but she mustered up the idea that part of being a self-respecting cowgirl was the willingness to try something that would almost certainly end by landing on her face, and the diligence to dust herself off after.
And on top of that, more than anything, she really wanted to see Blake take on the mechanical bull. She was a true fan, after all, and seeing Blake ride again in person, even if it was only on a robot, felt important to her in a way that would have been embarrassing if she told him. But it was only that his courage inspired her and, facing the things in her life, meant something. She could still feel and almost hear the moment she had seen it for the first time, sitting next to her father, and knew that she could feel that way again if only Blake was atop the bull.
She had to see him ride.
She fearlessly approached the mechanical bull, without ever announcing her intention. Pushing through the crowd, she reached under her legs in a very un-ladylike manner and yanked the back of her dress up through the front and bunched it together. “Crank it up,” she said to the ride operator, who was quite impressed with her extreme confidence and was more than willing to comply.
This machine had a real bull rope around it (not a little horn like some of the mechanical ones do), and she was able to slide her hand under it, palm upwards, just like she had seen Blake do in all the videos. She then raised her other arm up and to the side like she had seen the riders do, being sure not to cheat by using two hands, and she looked out into the crowd, her little boot earrings dangling by the sides of her head.
There were plenty of onlookers and she was getting support from the drunken, rowdy men, but she could not see Blake even from this height through the wall of admirers in front of him.
It didn’t matter, one of them would vouch for her and then he’d have no choice but to hold up his end of the bargain and ride this thing. But before that happened, she would have to endure whatever this mechanical beast threw at her. She hung on tight, with a few members of Blake’s jealous crowd taking notice and, with true grit and determination, prepared to show these fake cowgirls what the real thing could do.
Linda was right.
There was very little correlation between riding trail horses and cleaning stalls and riding this robotic death machine.
The ride operator had taken her request very literally and, when he started the bull, it immediately spun and bucked so hard that Linda was first tossed up into the air once, then landed back on the bull with her legs in the air, and was then given a proper launch into the stratosphere.
There was no chance that her underwear was not seen by many during her flight, but she was more concerned with not breaking her neck as she literally flipped through the air.
There were people excited to see the horrible landing coming up. There were people bursting with laughter at her certain embarrassment. There were children terrified at the acrobatic danger they were witnessing and, as she tumbled in flight, her boots pointing at the ceiling, there was one member of the crowd whose attention was caught and was held tightly with immediate and great admiration.
Blake Lockwood was very impressed.
The dense skyline of highly presentable women in front of him was juxtaposed against the refreshing sight of one girl in the background doing an uncontrolled cartwheel high above the crowd and rising like the sun over the heads of his indistinguishable entourage. A big smile appeared on his face right away, and it was genuine.
But what goes up, must come down.
Linda’s face smashed into the mat first, then she rolled, then landed back on her face in the sawdust of the barn floor. Lying face down and making the shocked crowd around her uncomfortable, she could have made snow angels in the dust had she moved her arms and legs.
But for the moment, she was content lying motionless on the ground and further making the people around her uncomfortable by causing them to worry if she was dead. Though she was not, she wasn't sure she would ever recover from this.
On her back, she felt a warm, strong hand run across her shoulders and felt the floorboard move as someone knelt beside her. “Hey,” a voice said.
She lifted her head and, with one eye, saw Blake Lockwood next to her.
Her face was covered with sawdust.
“Can you stand?” he asked her. She nodded and began pushing herself up off the ground. Blake reached his hand under her to steady her and she could feel his strength lifting her to her feet with ease. She wiped most of the sawdust out of her hair and off her face, revealing it to Blake.
“Can you talk?” he asked her next.
"Yes," she replied, but found herself tongue-tied in his presence.
As she cleaned sawdust out of her hair, he reached over and removed all the pieces that she had missed, and she was grateful.
He saw in front of her a girl unlike the others. Wearing no makeup and one earring, hair messed up (though she was fixing it), and wearing a pair of boots on her feet that actually looked like they had seen grass and dirt. There was only one question left to ask her.
“Can you dance?”
At first, Linda had to think about the question, embarrassed and surprised, but then Blake held out one hand to her.
Before she took it, a woman rushed in and was putting her hand all over Linda’s face as if she had a fever.
“Oh my, are you alright!?” the women asked, pretending to be concerned.
“You flew right off that thing! I mean you didn’t even stay on it for one second! You must be hurt!” said another, and also positioned herself between her and Blake.
The entourage was gathering and, in seconds, Linda would be closed out again. More minions moved in, some facing her and some facing Blake, and slowly they began to move the two apart. She was about to lose him.
"She's fine!" Blake shouted, and that was the last bit of acknowledgment of any kind he gave to anyone else but Linda.
His hand parted the others and found Linda’s and he backed up onto the dancefloor while pulling her with him. The song that the band was playing ended as if on cue, and for a moment the room was silent.
“Do you know what time it is?” Blake asked her.
With the seriousness of a heart attack, she responded.
“Square dance time.”
Blake nodded his head slowly. Two humans had never been more dead serious about tearing up a square
dance. The fiddle player kicked in and Blake put his arm around Linda and they started rocking.
They worked their way around to the music with Blake leading her and found a square to join with three other pairs. They stood for a moment facing the others, exchanged excited smiles with each other, and the caller started calling.
Together they sashayed like professionals, they boxed-the-gnat like ballers, and they threw down do si dos like mother flipping bosses.
The entourage of women that had become so attached to Blake had no choice but to stand awkwardly on the edge of the dancefloor, junior high school style, and watch other people have fun. And like the eighth graders they suddenly had so much in common with, they all suddenly forgot what to do with their hands, and began making awkward gestures and leaning up against things that weren’t designed to be leaned against.
It was a complete mess, but Blake could not see it even in his peripheral vision. He was there to have fun in his hometown like he did before he was famous, and he had found a way to do just that.
Linda was exhilarated and had a surreal feeling inside her. She realized that many of the emotions she had missed out on in her school days due to her commitment at the stable were catching up to her now, and she understood that the chance for what she was feeling at this moment was most certainly the reason why her peers had been so enthusiastic about the proms and formals that she had missed.
The eight dancers in her group joined hands in the middle to circle left and, as the room spun behind them, Blake and Linda locked eyes with each other.
“Circle right!” the caller shouted and everyone switched hands and reversed, and again Blake and Linda ended up across from each other and watched the whole world spin out of control while, in their eyes, their partner remained still.
They finished the square dance with a swing and held each other chest to chest in a ballroom position until the music ran out and the others began clapping riotously. But the two stayed together, their eyes still locked, and their bodies moving closer through the force of an unseen magnetism.
While Linda had little experience with what was going on, every woman in the entourage knew exactly what was happening. The ones who happened to be holding something in their hands literally threw whatever it was in defeat and turned and walked towards whatever was away from the man they had just given up on.
“Let’s slow it down a bit now, hear?” the caller said into the microphone, and slow, country music began to play.
Finally, Linda spoke.
“It’s been a long time since I square danced.”
"Me too," Blake said as someone flipped on a spotlight aimed at a disco ball and sent shattered slivers of white light tearing down through the dusty barn.
“Do you think we got out-danced by the others out there?” Blake asked.
“I do,” she said regretfully as beams of light caught the sparkles in her dress and her one earring.
"We'll get ‘em next time," Blake said as his mouth drew closer to hers, less concerned with competition than usual.
When they were inches apart, Linda answered, “Yeah, we’ll get ‘em all,” which caused Blake to hesitate and pull back to get a better look at Linda. Something about her was familiar.
“What did you say?”
"HOLY STROMBOLI!" She yelled in his face.
“That’s not what you said.”
Linda watched as her two ugly sisters, all made up in dreadful outfits and makeup, scoured the room from the entryway. There was only one person they could be looking for, and her face was two inches away from his.
“I have to go, now!”
Before he could get a good grip on her, she slipped from his grasp and started running toward the rear of the barn.
“Wait, hey!” he yelled loud enough that some of his love interests took notice. Emily and Caroline also heard him from across the room, and began to zero in.
Blake began to make chase, but as Linda slipped through the crowd, they were happy to let her pass, while Blake, on the other hand, had faces and hands and chests popping into his way faster than he could push past.
Before he knew it, she was out of sight.
“Hiyyy Blake,” a particularly obnoxious voice said in his ear, and he turned to see Caroline directly in his face.
He recoiled from her as if he had put his head in an unflushed toilet, and accidentally made an expression to match.
When he turned back to the sea of people beyond the women in front of him, any sign of Linda had been lost.
He hadn’t even gotten her name.
Outside the dance, Linda’s boots crunched against gravel as she ran into the dark, away from the lights of the dance, and slowed to a walk when she was a safe distance away.
Many people were surrounding Blake; talking, asking, laughing. But he ignored them. He was confused, and even hurt in a way.
But then, he remembered something.
With some effort, he broke apart the barrier of people in front of him and strode towards the mechanical bull. He stepped over a rope that was used to separate the bull from the crowd, and he turned his attention downward and found a landing skid in the sawdust that remained from where Linda had fallen.
Briefly, he raised his eyebrows, not realizing earlier how hard she had actually hit the ground, but then he bent down on one knee and patted the sawdust with his hand, looking for something. When he found it, he stood up and examined it.
It was a cheesy little earring shaped like a boot. He had suspected the girl he had danced with had lost it in her landing, having seen that she was wearing only one. He discovered that it definitely did match the other one that she was wearing, but he could not find any maker or mark on it whatsoever.
The only things he could determine about the little shoe were that it was slippery, and made of glass.
CHAPTER FIVE
“Change rein!” Linda shouted into the Stagecoach Arena.
Jenny, her eleven-year-old riding student, was trotting around the arena atop Mary, a black quarter horse.
Following her instruction, Jenny made a turn towards the center line of the arena and doubled back to change directions. Linda continued to watch her as she circled.
Part of Linda’s mind was elsewhere, as she could not help but attempt to make sense of some of the mystery and adventure of the night before.
After she had returned to the stables to change clothes after the dance, there was no sign of the old woman, but when she had entered the barn, she had noticed that the window sill that the woman had pointed out was brightly shining with a ray of moonlight, just as she had predicted.
Linda had disrobed and changed and left the dress exactly as instructed on the open window, along with the single remaining earring. They were gone in the morning.
She had thought about returning to the dance with the story that she was only looking for a ride home, which she actually would have appreciated having, but she couldn’t risk being called out by Blake in front of her sisters, who would surely have joined his small but loyal fan club by then.
Besides, her clothes, when she put them back on, wreaked much worse than she had thought earlier while she was still used to them. She didn’t really feel like offending the cowpokes at the dance, and she assumed that, though the square dance was nice, Blake had found another partner among his many admirers moments after she had left and quickly forgotten about her.
So, she started walking home and made it partway and got picked up by her stepsisters for the other part.
“Heels down, Jenny!” she instructed her student for the thousandth time.
Her sisters had described to her on the ride home how Blake had looked at them differently from all the other girls, and argued about who he was giving eyes to the most.
Linda couldn’t contain her curiosity and asked who Blake had ended up leaving the dance with. The sister’s explained that, surprisingly, he had ended up leaving alone, driving off in an old truck, and they theorized that it was mos
t likely because he couldn’t choose between the two of them, or because he could tell that neither of them was the type of girl he could just take home.
On the ride home, they never apologized for leaving her at the stable or not allowing her the chance to attend the dance. In fact, they never even mentioned it. Linda wondered, as she often did, what had made her stepsisters so cruel, but she was content on that night to act like nothing was out of the ordinary and be happy that she hadn't been caught.
“Okay, now ride the inside track!” Linda hollered to Jenny.
“I don’t know where it is!” she hollered back.
“Yes you do!”
Jenny skeptically tried to circle the arena around an invisible inside track a few feet away from the wall, which was hard to maintain around the corners, but Linda helped by encouraging her.
When the lesson was over, Linda helped Jenny dismount.
"I shouldn't have to tell you to keep your heels down anymore."
"It's hard, I'm too short," Jenny said as Linda attached a lead rope to the horse.
“No you’re not. Other than your heels, your posture is getting a lot better.”
"Thanks," Jenny said and began to move the stirrups up on the horse as she had been taught so they didn't bang into its belly. "Did you go to the dance last night?"
“Can you keep a secret?” Linda asked.
Jenny nodded.
"Yes, but you can't tell anybody," Linda said.
“Who would I tell?”
Linda shrugged and handed Jenny the rope. “You’re going to walk her now.”
Jenny began walking the horse around the arena. “Did you see Blake Lockwood?” she asked with a huge grin.