English Creek - Ivan Doig

by Ivan Doig

  Of course, no response. Tourists were a lot scarcer in those days, and the chances that anybody would venture from North Dakota just to see the Gros Ventre rodeo were zero and none.

  “That’s right!" blared Tollie. “If I was you I wouldn’t admit it neither !"

  Tollie spieled on for a while, actually drawing boos from the Choteau folks in the crowd when he proclaimed that Choteau was known as a town without a single bedbug: "No sir they are all married and have big families !" At last, though, the handling crew was through messing with the chute alongside Ray and me, and Tollie was declaring "We are just about to get the pumpkin rolling. Bareback riding will be our first event."

  "Pumpkin?" questioned whoever it was in the chute society that was keeping tab of Tollie’s excursions through the calendar. "Judy H. Christ! Now the whistledick thinks it’s Halloween."

  About all that is worth mentioning of the early part of the rodeo is that its events, a section of bareback riding and after that some steer-wrestling or mauling or whatever you want to call it, passed fairly mercifully. Ray and I continued to divide our time snorting laughs over something either Tollie or the chute society provided. Plus our own wiseacre efforts, of course. Ray nearly fell off the corral from cackling when I speculated whether this much time sitting on a fence pole mightn’t leave a person with the crack in his behind running crosswise instead of up and down. You know how that is: humor is totally contagious when two persons are in the same light mood. And a good thing, too, for by my estimation the actual events of a rodeo can always use all the help they can get. Although like anybody out here I have seen many and many a rodeo, to me the arena events are never anything to write home special about. It’s true that bareback riding has its interesting moments, but basically the ride is over and done with about as it’s getting started. I don’t know, a guy flopping around on the naked back of a horse just seems to me more of a stunt than a sport. As for steer-wrestling, that is an absolutely phony deal, never done except there in front of a rodeo crowd. Leaping onto a running steer has about as much to do with actual cattle ranching as wearing turquoise belt buckles does. And that calf-roping. Calf-roping I nominate as an event the spectators ought to be paid for sitting through. I mean, here’ll come one yayhoo out after the calf swinging a community loop an elephant could trot through, and the next guy will pitch a loop so teeny that it bounces off the back of the calf’s neck like a spitwad. Whiff whiff whiff`, and then a burst of cussing as the rope-flinger’s throw misses its mark: there is the essence of rodeo calf-roping. If I ran the world there’d be standards, such as making any calf-roping entrant dab onto a fencepost twenty feet away, just to prove he knows how to build a decent loop.

  "Alec’s bringing his horse in," Ray reported from his sphere of the arena. "Guess he’s roping in this section."

  "So’s everybody else in the world, it looks like." Horsemen and hemp, hemp and horsemen. It was a wonder the combined swishing of the ropes of all the would-be calf ropers now assembling didn’t lift the rodeo arena off the ground like an autogyro. As you maybe can tell, my emotions about having a brother forthcoming into this event were strictly mixed. Naturally I was pulling for Alec to win. Brotherly blood is at least that thick. Yet a corner of me was shadowed with doubt as to whether victory was really such a good idea for Alec. Did he need any more confirming in his cowboy mode? Especially in this dubious talent of hanging rope necklaces onto slobbering calves? This first section of the calf-roping now proceeded about as I could have foretold, a lot of air fanned with rope but damn few calves collared. One surprise was produced, though. After a fast catch Bruno Martin of Augusta missed his tie, the calf kicking free before its required six seconds flat on the ground were up. If words could be seen in the air, some blue dandies accompanied Martin out of the arena. The other strong roper, Vern Crosby, snagged his calf neatly, suffered a little trouble throwing him down for the tie, but then niftily gathered the calf’s legs and wrapped the pigging string around them, as Tollie spelled out for us, "faster than Houdini can tie his shoe laces!"

  So when the moment came for Alec to guide the blood bay roping horse into the break-out area beside the calf chute, the situation was as evident as Tollie’s voice bleating from that tin bouquet of ’glory horns:

  "Nineteen seconds by Vern Crosby is still the time to beat. It’ll take some fancy twirling by this next young buckaroo. One of the hands out at the Double W he’s getting hisself squared away and will be ready in just—"

  The calf chute and the break-out area where each roper and his horse burst out after the creature were at the far end of the bucking chutes from us. Ray cupped his hands and called across to there:

  "Wrap him up pretty, Alec !"

  Across there, Alec appeared a little nervous, dandling his rope around more than was necessary as he and the bay horse waited for their calf to emerge. But then I discovered I was half nervous myself, jiggling my foot on its corral pole, and I had no excuse whatsoever. You wouldn’t catch me out there trying to snare a two-hundred-pound animal running full tilt.

  The starter’s little red flag whipped down, and the calf catapulted from the chute into the expanse of the arena.

  Alec’s luck. Sometimes you had to think he held the patent on four-leaf clovers and rabbits’ feet. The calf he drew was a straight runner instead of a dodger. Up the middle of the arena that calf galloped as if he was on rails, the big horse gaining ground on him for Alec every hoofbeat. And I believe that if you could have pulled the truth from my father and mother right then, even they would have said that Alec looked the way a calf roper ought to. Leaning forward but still as firm in his stirrups as if socketed into them, swinging the loop of the lariat around and around his head strongly enough to give it a good fling but not overdoing it. Evidently there had been much practice performed on Double W calves as Alec rode the coulees these past weeks.

  "Dab it on him!" I heard loudly, and realized the yell had been by me.

  Quicker than it can be told Alec made his catch. A good one, where all the significant actions erupt together: the rope straightening into a tan line in the air, the calf gargling out a bleahh as the loop choked its neck and yanked it backward, Alec evacuating from the stirrups in his dismount. Within a blink he was in front of the tall bay horse and scampering beside the stripe of rope the bay was holding taut as fishline, and now Alec was upending the calf into the arena dust and now gathering calf legs and now whipping the pigging string around them and now done.

  "The time for Alec McCaskill"—I thought I could hear gloom inside the tinny blare of Tollie’s voice, and so knew the report was going to be good—"seventeen and a half seconds."

  The crowd whooped and clapped. Over at the far fence Leona was beaming as if she might ignite, and down at the end of the grandstand my parents were glumly accepting congratulations on Alec. Beside me Ray was as surprised as I was by Alec’s first-rate showing, and his delight didn’t have the conditions attached that mine did.

  “How much is up ?" he wondered. I wasn’t sure of the roping prize myself, so I asked the question to the booth, and Bill Reinking leaned out and informed us, "Thirty dollars, and supper for two at the Sedgwick House."

  "Pretty slick," Ray admired. I had to think so myself. Performance is performance, whatever my opinion of Alec’s venue of it. Later in the afternoon there would be one more section of calf ropers, but with the main guys, Bruno Martin and Vern Crosby, already behind him, Alec’s leading time looked good enough to take to the bank. Tollie was bleating onward. “Now we turn to some prairie sailors and the hurricane deck," which translated to the first go-round of saddle bronc riding. I will say for saddle bronc riding that it seems to me the one rodeo event that comes close to legitimate. Staying on a mount that is trying to unstay you is a historic procedure of the livestock business. "The boys are hazing the ponies into the chutes and when we commence and get started the first man out will be Bill Semmler on a horse called Conniption. In this meanwhile though did you hear the one
about the fellow who goes into the barber shop and—"

  I never did get to hear Tollie’s tonsorial tale, for I happened to glance down to my left into the bucking chutes and see disaster in a spotted horsehide charging full tilt at me.

  “Hang on !" I yelled to Ray and simultaneously flipflopped myself rightward and dropped down the fence so that I had my arms clamped around both the top corral pole and Ray’s hips. Ray glommed tight to the pole with his hands. WHOMP! and a clatter. The impact of the pinto bucking horse slamming into the chute end where our section of corral cornered into it went shuddering through the pair of us, as if a giant sledgehammer had hit the wood; but our double gripping kept us from being flung off the top of the fence.

  "Jesus!" Ray let out, rare for him. "There’s a goosy one!"

  Our narrow brush did not escape microphone treatment. “This little Coffee Nerves pinto down at chute six has a couple of fence squatters hugging the wood pretty good !" Tollie was alerting the world. “We’ll see whether they go ahead and kiss it !"

  "Numbnuts," I muttered in the direction of the Zane end of the announcing booth. Or possibly more than muttered, for when I managed to glower directly up there, Bill Reinking was delivering me a certifying wink and Velma Simms was puckered the way a person does to hold in a laugh.

  Ray had it right, the pinto was truly riled and then some, as I could confirm while cautiously climbing back onto my perch and locking a firm arm around the corner post between chute and corral. No way was I going to take a chance on being dislodgd down into the company of this Coffee Nerves bronc. The drawback of this flood-the-chutes-with-horses system was that the first horse in was the last to come out, from this end chute next to me. While the initial five horses were being bucked out Coffee Nerves was going to be cayusing around in chute six and trying to raise general hell.

  The pinto looked more than capable. Coffee Nerves had close-set pointy ears; what are called pin ears, and indicate orneriness in a horse. Worse, he was hog-eyed. Had small darty eyes that shot looks at the nearest threat all the time. Which, given my position on the fence, happened to be me. I had not been the target of so much eyeball since the tussle to get that Bubbles pack horse up the side of the mountain.

  Ray was peering behind me to study Coffee Nerves, so he was the one who noticed. "Huh! Look who must’ve drew him."

  There in back of chute six, Earl Zane was helping the handlers try to saddle the pinto.

  My session of watchdogging Leona for Alec of course whetted my interest in the matter of Earl Zane, whom I ordinarily wouldn’t bat an eye to look at. Now here he loomed, not ten feet away from Ray and me, at the rear of Coffee Nerves’ chute amid the cussing crew of handlers trying to contend with the pinto and the saddle that was theoretically supposed to go on its back. Earl Zane had one of those faces that could be read at a glance: as clear as the label on a maple sugar jug it proclaimed SAP. I suppose he was semi-goodlooking in a sulky kind of way. But my belief was that Earl Zane’s one known ability, handling horses, derived from the fact that he possessed the identical amount of brain as the average horse did and they thus felt affinity with him. Though whether Coffee Nerves, who was whanging a series of kicks to the chute lumber that I could feel arrive up through the corral pole I was seated in, was going to simmer down enough to ccommodate Earl Zane or anybody else remained an open question.

  In any case, I was transfixed by what was brewing here. Alec looked likely to win the calf-roping. Coffee Nerves gave every sign of being the buckingest saddle bronc, if Earl could stay on him. Two winners, one Leona. The arithmetic of that was something to contemplate. Various geezers of the chute society were peering in at Coffee Nerves and chiming "Whoa, hoss" and "Here now, knothead, settle down," which was doing nothing to improve the pinto’s disposition. After all, would it yours?

  Distracted by the geezer antics and the Earl-Alec equation, I didn’t notice the next arrival until Ray pointed out, “Second one of the litter."

  Indeed, Earl Zane had been joined in the volunteer saddling crew by his brother Arlee, the one a year ahead of Ray and me in school. Another horse fancier with brain to match. And full to overflowing with the Zane family swagger, for Arlee Zane was a big pink specimen: about what you’d get if you could coax a hog to strut around on its hind legs wearing blue jeans and a rodeo shirt. Eventually maybe Arlee would duplicate Earl, brawny instead of overstuffed. But at present there just was too much of all of him, up to and including his mouth. At the moment, for instance, Arlee had strutted around to the far side of the announcing booth and was yelping up to his sire: “Tell them to count out the prize money! Old Earl is going to set his horse on fire !" God, those Zanes did think they were the ding-dong of the world’s bell.

  "How about a bottle of something ?" I proposed to Ray. The mental strain of being around three Zanes at once must have been making me thirsty. "I’m big rich, I’ll buy."

  “Ace high," Ray thought this sounded, and added that he’d hold our seats. Down I climbed, and away to the beer booth again. The tubs weren’t showing many Kessler and Select necks by now. I half expected to coincide with Dode again, but didn’t. But by the time I returned to Ray with our two bottles of grape, I was able to more or less off-handedly report that I had seen Marcella and the other Withrow daughters, in the shade under the grandstand with a bunch more of the girls we went to school with. Leona on one side of the arena, Marcella and the school multitude on the other, Velma Simms in the air behind us; I did have to admit, lately the world was more full of females than I had ever previously noticed.

  “Under way again." Tollie was issuing forth. "A local buckaroo coming out of chute number one—"

  Bill Semmler made his ride but to not much total, his bronc a straight bucker who crowhopped down the middle of the arena in no particularly inspired way until the ten seconds were up and the whistle blew.

  "Exercise," commented Ray, meaning that was all Semmler was going to get out of such a rocking-horse ride.

  At that, though, exercise was more than what was produced by the next rider, an out-of-town guy whose name I didn’t recognize. Would be rider, I ought to say, for a horse called Ham What Am sailed him onto the earth almost before the pair of them issued all the way out the gate of chute two. Ham What Am then continued his circuit of the arena, kicking dirt twenty feet into the air with every buck, while the ostensible rider knelt and tried to get any breath back into himself.

  "Let’s give this hard luck cowboy a—big hand !" Tollie advocated. “He sure split a long crack in the air that time."

  “You guys see any crack out there in the air ?" somebody below us inquired. "Where the hell is Tollie getting that stuff?"

  "Monkey Ward," it was suggested. "From the same page featuring toilet paper."

  But then one of the Rides Proud brothers from up at Browning, one or another of Toussaint’s army of grand-nephews he wasn’t on speaking terms with, lived up to his name and made a nice point total atop a chunky roan called Snuffy. Sunfishing was Snuffy’s tactic, squirming his hind quarters to one side and then the other with each jump, and if the rider manages to stay in tune with all that hula wiggling it yields a pretty ride. This performance was plenty good enough to win the event, unless Earl Zane could do something wonderful on top of Coffee Nerves.

  Following the Rides Proud achievement, the crowd laughed as they did each year when a little buckskin mare with a flossy mane was announced as Shirley Temple, and laughed further when the mare piled the contestant, some guy from Shelby, with its third jump.

  "That Shirley for a little gal she’s got a mind of her own," bayed Tollie, evidently under the impression he was providing high humor. Then, sooner than it seemed possible for him to have drawn sufficient breath for it, he was giving us the next loudspeaker dose. "Now here is a rider I have some acquaintance with. Getting set in chute number five on Dust Storm Earl Zane. Show them how Earl!"

  So much for assuming the obvious. Earl had not drawn the pinto; his and Arlee’s participation
in saddling it was only the Zane trait of sticking a nose into anything available.

  The fact remained, though, that Alec’s rival was about to bounce out into the arena aboard a bucking animal. I craned my neck trying to get a look at Leona, but she was turned in earnest conversation with a certain calf roper wearing a chokecherry shirt and I could only see a golden floss. Quite a wash of disappointment went through me. Somehow I felt I was missing the most interesting scene of the entire rodeo, Leona’s face, just then.

  “And here he comes a cowboying sonofagun and a son of yours truly—"

  In fairness, I will say Earl Zane got a bad exit from the chute, the cinnamon-colored bronc he was on taking a little hop into the arena and stopping to gaze around at the world just as Earl was all primed for him to buck. Then as it sank in on Earl that the horse wasn’t bucking and he altered the rhythm of his spurring to fit that situation, Dust Storm began to whirl. A spin to the left. Then one to the right. It was worth the admission to see, Earl’s thought process clanking one direction and the horse’s the other, then each reversing and passing one another in the opposite direction, like two drunks trying to find each other in a revolving door. The cinnamon bronc, though, was always one phase ahead of Earl, and his third whirl, which included a sort of sideways dip, caused Earl to lurch and lose the opposite stirrup. It was all over then, merely a matter of how promptly Earl would keep his appointment with the arena dirt.

  "Blew a stirrup" came from the chute society as Earl picked himself up off the planet and the whistle was heard. "Ought’ve filled those stirrups with chewing gum before he climbed on that merry-go-round."

  Tollie, however, considered that we had seen a shining feat. "Almost made it to the whistle on that rough one! You can still show your face around home, Earl!"