by Leslee Green
Linda started crying again and curled up onto Blake.
“She doesn’t sound like a very nice lady.”
Linda shook her head.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
“Well,” Blake said as he reached for something he had set behind him in the back of the truck, “I know it’s not exactly a night to celebrate, but I brought you something.” He handed her a plastic bag with something inside and, noticing that the bag was somewhat unpresentable, he said, “I didn’t wrap it because, well, why would I?”
Linda pulled back the plastic and, in the dark, could see the shine from the dress she wore to the barn dance. Her hand ran over the details of the lace.
“You bought it?”
Blake nodded, the brim of his cowboy hat moving up and down. “That’s why I had to leave earlier, the store was going to close.”
Touching the dress reminded her that the night of the dance now felt like years ago. It reminded her what a dream it had been, spending the time she had with Blake.
“You could have done it tomorrow.”
Blake shook his head. “Not gonna be here tomorrow.”
“You’re leaving?”
Blake nodded.
“Why?”
“I have to go down to Helena early to meet up with the guys, plan some things. Set up a few travel partners. I’m gonna meet a kid who might be my road buddy down in Australia. He only just went pro, but I hear he’s alright.”
“And you’re not coming back before the rodeo?”
“No, we’re just going to hang out for a few days and loosen up on some practice bulls. I do it before every season with some of the guys. A friend has a house there in Helena.”
“And then after the rodeo?”
“You know what happens after. I hit the road.”
Linda didn’t want to cry onto her dress and she covered it with the plastic.
“This is it, then.”
“No. I’ll see you at the rodeo.”
Linda tried bravely not to let the tears come, but it had all been so much.
“But I don’t know if I can go to the rodeo!”
“What’s stopping you?”
“I told you! I don’t know if I can take Carl to the dog food guy!”
“We’ll figure something out.”
"No, we won't!"
Linda said, less reasonable as the tears came.
“We’ll think of something. Everything’s going to be just fine,” Blake said as he rubbed his hand in circles on her back.
"No, it won't. You're going to Helena."
“Helena’s not so bad.”
"Yes, it is," Linda said, defeated, crying, and rambling. "You guys are going to go to a bar and dance under a disco ball, and then some beautiful girl in a ball gown is going to come dance with you and a waiter's going to have champagne and everyone's going to take shots off each other like spring break and then you'll fall in love with her."
Blake was impressed with her imagination.
“Have you ever been in a bar?”
“No.”
“That’s not usually what happens.”
“What happens?”
“You drink pitchers of flat, cheap beer in a place with a sticky floor and either play darts or pool, neither of which are any fun.”
“Then why do you go?”
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t go.”
“I have to.”
Linda wiped her eyes and Blake rubbed the rest of the hysterics out of her shoulders. Finally, she took one of those quivered breaths at the end of tears and was done.
“Thank you for the dress, Blake,” she said, her nose stuffed.
“I couldn’t let it go to someone else.”
“Too bad I’ll never wear it again.”
“Sure you will. At the rodeo.”
“Do you really care if I make it?”
“Of course I do, I need you there!”
“Why?”
“Because I’m flat broke, for one, I spent my last money on that dress.”
“If you’re looking for money you are absolutely talking to the wrong person.”
“Not from you, but I could use a check from that rodeo.”
"Well, I can't help you with that. Sorry."
“Sure you can. I need someone in the stands cheering me on to calm my nerves, keep me focused. It helps a lot.”
“You’re forgetting one thing, Blake. Helena is only twenty miles from here, you’re gonna have lots of people there cheering for you.”
“But I need someone I care about.”
Linda didn’t know how to respond. If only Blake knew how much she cared about him.
“I’ll try to make it, Blake. But to do that, I’ll have to sell the mule.”
“Would she really fire you if you don’t? Take everything away?”
“I think so.”
“There might be another way. If you wait ‘till after the rodeo, and I win something, I could buy the mule.”
Linda shook her head.
“It’ll be too late then.”
“Then you’ll just have to decide what you want.”
“I don’t want to choose between you and Carl.”
“You really think she would lose her best worker?”
“She would lose the stables! She doesn’t care. She already spent the money it’s worth and it doesn’t bring in much.”
“It does now!”
“She doesn’t care. She’d be just as happy getting rid of me.”
“Maybe somebody else will buy the mule. I’d try to find someone but I’m leaving.”
“Not for the price we can get from the factory. You really don’t have any money?”
“Not enough. I’ve seen how fat he is and they pay by the pound. The start of the season is always the lightest time of year. I just have enough to travel with.”
“What about the big win in Laramie? Or the other big prizes?”
“A couple big checks over nine years doesn’t go too far. It costs money to get around and I borrowed some early on that I had to pay back. I’m sleeping in the truck until I get a check, and I’ve never won anything on the first few rides of the season, it always takes me a while to loosen up. That’s why I need you there. If you come, maybe I could place with a check. And if I do, I could buy the mule.”
“It’ll be too late.”
"No, it won't. She's not going to sell him."
"Yes, she will! If I go, she'll sell him anyway, she told me that!"
“Maybe you could, I don’t know, hide him somewhere.”
“Hide a mule?”
“I don’t know.”
“This isn’t a sit-com. I’m not going to hide him in my room. And I can’t steal him anyway. There isn’t a good answer for this.”
“We don’t have one. Not yet. But maybe we’ll think of one in time. Or maybe someone else will come along and save the day.”
“Maybe,” said Linda, thinking of her elusive fairy godmother. “And if that doesn’t happen,”
“He’ll make a lot of dogs very happy.”
Linda lowered her head and shook it.
“So cruel. The world is so cruel.”
“It’s not so bad.”
For a while, only the cowbell made noise and it got so dark they couldn't see each other, and it got cold.
Blake turned the heater on in the truck, even though it was the beginning of summer.
The ride home was too short and Linda wished she could stay out with Blake, but he seemed to have things to do.
When the truck pulled to a stop, Linda had the gut-wrenching feeling of knowing that, if she didn't end up making it to the rodeo, this was their goodbye. Their magical adventure was over.
She put her arms around his neck and held on.
“I’ll see you in a few days,” he said.
But, just in case, she held on for a little longer.
“You really think it’ll make a difference if I
get there?” she asked, weighing her options.
“Yeah.”
“Why?” she asked, pulling away from him to see his face and interpret it.
“You don’t know?”
“Not really, no.”
“I would kiss you but I still don’t think you’d get it.”
Linda put her arms around him again and pressed her cheek against the buttons on his chest.
“You can kiss me if you want to, Blake.”
But for now, they only held each other.
In time, Blake made his way down the road in his truck.
When the sound of the engine was gone, Linda stepped out into the middle of the street, alone, not seeing much but looking left and right.
“Fairy godmother?” she asked, hoping.
But there was no response.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Linda was exhausted from the stress of emotion. She heard the drone of the world that hums after hours of worry and a night of no sleep. After the crickets give way to the morning birds, the roosters, and the sun.
The sunlight looked green as it crawled over the hills; a trick of tired eyes that stung as the ground brightened up underneath her.
The trees and grass passed outside the car window with her forehead pressed against it, floating along. Feeling the vibration of the car and the cold of the glass, she fell asleep.
When the engine died in the parking lot, it awoke her, and she sensed Carl nearby.
With a sunken heart, she approached the barn, the steady incline of the path feeling like the sheer slope of a high mountain.
When she slid the door on the barn open, she saw that the animals were not alone inside it, and she was relieved.
There, gently stroking the bristly hair on Carl’s head and feeding him carrots in the morning sunlight sneaking through the holes and gaps in the barn wood, was her fairy godmother.
“Boy, am I glad to see you!” Linda said with a hoarse, tired voice.
The woman continued to stroke the animal.
“I can’t even begin to tell you how happy I am you’re here. My stepmother is trying to make me sell Carl for glue or dog food or something.”
The woman only continued nurturing the tuft of mane on top of Carl’s head with her dirty fingernails and feeding him the carrots, Carl showing no prejudice against her.
“Yes,” she said, “he knows.”
“So what’s the plan of action this time?” Linda asked, trying to sound positive. “You have some magic up your sleeve to fix this situation?”
“Who does Carl belong to?”
“Some farmer. I only met him once, when he dropped Carl off.”
“But who does he belong to now?”
“He’s been abandoned. He belongs to the stables.”
“So, your stepmother owns him.”
“I should own him because I should own the stables.”
“But you don’t.”
“No.”
“Is your plan to steal him?”
"No," Linda said, not comfortable with the idea and having nowhere to put him.
“Is your plan to buy him?”
“No. I can’t.”
“Sell him to someone else?”
“No.”
“It doesn’t sound like there’s anything you can do about Carl. You may just have to accept that.”
“But don’t you have an idea? Isn’t that why you’re here?”
“No. You’re the one with the ideas, I only help with them.”
“You’re not going to help me?”
“Do you want me to help you or help Carl?”
“Helping Carl is helping me.”
“No, I didn’t come here to save Carl.”
“Why did you come?”
“I came to tell him what might happen to him. I thought he might want to know.”
“Oh yeah?” she said, patronizing the woman. “How did he take it?”
“He’s a tough mule.”
Linda came closer to Carl and gave him a scratch on his face, not seeing any way out. “I know he is.”
“What would you do if there wasn’t a problem with Carl?”
"Go to the rodeo," Linda said.
“Is that what your heart is set on doing?”
Linda thought about it for a moment, though she already knew the answer.
“Yes.”
“I think you should listen to it.”
Linda couldn’t bear the thought of leaving Carl, knowing what would happen to him. But she still had hope.
“If I do end up deciding to go, will you help me get there?”
“Yes.”
“That’s what fairy godmothers do, right? Get people to places?”
“Yes.”
"I think I'm beginning to understand," Linda said ironically because it was the opposite of what was true.
“Good,” the old woman said.
“I’ll think of something to do with Carl.”
“Good luck,” the old woman said, running out of carrots.
“How could somebody do this to the poor animal? Moving away and leaving him behind like this.”
“I already told you,” the woman said, “the things that some people discard have great value to others. The key, Dear, is taking a moment to determine what has great value to you,” she took Linda’s hand and placed something small into the palm, closing her hand around it, “and hang on to it.”
The woman looked out through creased, sunburnt skin into Linda’s eyes, telling her something.
When they broke eye contact, Linda opened her fist and saw the two glass earrings she had worn to the dance.
“They go with the dress.” Her fairy godmother said, hobbling towards the exit, seeming to have been no help at all.
“How did you get these?”
“You left one with the dress and Blake gave me one. He traded it for your location.” The woman said as she left. “It’s not magic.”
The little earrings sparkled in Linda’s hand, their light dancing around on her skin.
“Too bad.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
There was a ridge behind the Stagecoach that stood high over the town and the plains that drifted endlessly beyond it. It stood with great posture against the flat sky and flat earth and the thin slice of atmosphere between.
The top of the ridge was guarded by a cliff drop-off rock formation known as a rimrock where the slow incline up the hill suddenly thrust itself into sheer rock cliff that circled the hill it was on like the wall of a castle and barred visitors from entering the high ground above it. The top of the rock flattened out and formed a tabletop mesa that overlooked the trees and homes that Linda herself was rooted in and grew from.
Rabbits and marmots lived on top of the rock, looking down from the clouds onto the plains. They lived with the raptors and birds of prey that flew below and nested high on the rock. They lived with the cliff swallows and the rock wrens, but also with the prairie falcons, the great-horned owls, and the common nighthawks, all of which fed on marmots and rabbits. Even the turkey vultures were there, circling the skies, preparing to pick every bone clean from the gravesites of the small mammals.
The little animals spent their days carefully, staying in cracks and holes, worrying about birds, the price of living in the sky where they didn’t belong. Yet these were the kings of rodents, digging in the clouds, looking down on predators, sooner or later being caught. A lifestyle that granted admittance exclusively to the animals that were equal parts foolish and brave.
A rider who knew where she was going could take a narrow formation of natural stairs up a break in the rimrock and make her way on horseback to the top of the ridge. There, she would find herself alone. Other stairs had been made over the years, some of them ancient, but most had crumbled and fallen down the face of the rock. Only one remained.
Linda knew the stairs that rose all the way up. She climbed the old stairs on the back of an old horse, into the clouds, and saw what the mar
mots saw, standing tall on the horse on top of the rock, above everything.
Vultures were beginning to circle below over something new.
Coyotes looked up at the rock, howling and wondering, angry that the rabbits they sensed above them would, in the end, not be theirs. If they avoided the hawks as well, they would go to vultures instead, or worms if nothing else.
What did it matter?
A fat marmot was sitting near the entrance to his burrow on a flat rock at the edge of a cliff, holding a flower in his hands and eating it. A vast world stretched beyond the marmot as he filled his cheeks. Down below, the town of Stagecoach sat among the grass and trees, becoming denser near Main Street and thinner in the distance, dissolving away into open prairie like cotton candy in water.
Linda stayed on top of the rock for a while, observing the wildlife, watching things get eaten; living and dying, until at last she came to the conclusion that she herself was brave enough to attempt something foolish.
CHAPTER TWENTY
“All I need is more time.”
“And what good is more time?”
“With one extra day, I can get you the money for Carl.”
“You can already get me the money I am asking for by moving the animal to the meat trader.”
“I have another way to sell him.”
“It has considerable value if sold for meat.”
“I can you get you the same amount of money.”
“You’re aware that they pay by the pound?”
“And he’s very fat, yes, he looks like a pregnant donkey. I know what he’s worth.”
“How are you planning on obtaining that kind of money?”
“I’m going to get it from Blake.”
“Why can’t you get it now?”
“He’s going to win it at the rodeo.”
“And if he doesn’t qualify for a check from the rodeo?”
“He will.”
“And if he doesn’t, you won’t have any way to pay.”
“No, but he’ll qualify.”
“But if he doesn’t?”
“Then, I’m sorry?”
“That isn’t good enough.”
“I’ll figure something else out if that happens.”
“I don’t want something else, I want the amount of money that I am able to get for him.”