English Creek - Ivan Doig

by Ivan Doig

  Possibly the pinto’s general irritation with the world rather than the diet of Tollie’s voice produced it, but either way, Coffee Nerves now went into his biggest eruption yet. Below me in the chute he began to writhe and kick, whinnying awfully, and I redoubled my life grip on the corner post as the thunk! thunk! of his hooves tattooing the wood of the chute reverberated through the seat of my pants.

  "Careful," Ray warned, and I suppose sense would have been to trade my perch for a more distant site. Yet how often does a person get to see at close range a horse in combat with mankind. Not just see, but feel, in the continuing thunks; and hear, the pinto’s whinny a sawblade of sound ripping the air; and smell, sweat and manure and animal anger in one mingled unforgettable odor.

  Coffee Nerves’ hammerwork with his hooves built up to a crash, a splay of splinters which sent the handlers tumbling away from the back of the chute, and then comparative silence. Just the velocity of air through the pinto bronc’s nostrils.

  "The sonofabitch is hung up," somebody reported.

  In truth, Coffee Nerves was standing with his rear right leg up behind him, the way a horse does for a blacksmith to shoe him. Except that instead of any human having hold of that wicked rear hoof, it was jammed between a solid chute pole and the splintered one above it. As the handling crew gingerly moved in to see what could be done about extrication, Tollie enlightened the crowd:

  "This little pinto pony down in six is still proving kind of recaltrisant. The chute boys are doing some persuading and our show will resume in just a jiffy. In the meantime since this is the cowboys’ Christmas so to say that reminds me of a little story."

  “Jesus, he’s back on to Christmas" issued from the chute society. “Will somebody go get Tollie a goddamn calendar?"

  "Dumb as he is," it was pointed out, "it’ll take two of us to read it to him."

  “There was this little boy who wanted a pony for Christmas." Somebody had gone for a prybar to loosen the imprisoning poles and free the renegade pony of chute six, but in the meantime there was nothing to do but let Tollie wax forth. Even at normal, Tollie’s voice sounded as if his adenoids had gotten twined with his vocal cords. With the boost from the address system, his steady drone now was a real ear-cleaner. "Well you see this little boy kept telling the other kids in the family that he had it all fixed up with Santa Claus. Santa Claus was going to bring him a pony certain sure. So when Christmas Eve came they all of them hung their stockings by the fireplace there."

  "If I hang a woolsack alongside my stove," somebody in front of the chutes pined, “suppose I’d get Velma Simms in it?"

  "And the other kids thought they’d teach this little boy a lesson. So after everybody had gone to bed they got back up again and went on out to the barn and got some ladies, excuse my language, horse manure."

  "Quick, mark that down," somebody advised up to Bill Reinking.

  "That’s the first time Tollie’s ever apologized for spouting horse shit."

  "And filled his stocking with it. So the next morning they’re all gathered to look and see what Santa Claus left each one of them. Little Susie says ‘Look, he left me a dollie here in my stocking. And little Tommy says ‘And look he left me apples and oranges in mine.’ And they turned to the little boy and asked ‘Well, Johnny what did Santa leave you?’ And Johnny looked in his stocking and said ‘He left me my pony but he got away!’ "

  There was that sickly laughter a crowd gives out because it’s embarrassed not to, and then one of the chute men called up to the booth that they had the goddamn bronc freed, get the rider on him

  before he raised any more hell.

  "BACK TO BUSINESS!" Tollie blared as if he was calling elephants, before Bill Reinking managed to lean across and shove the microphone a little farther from Tollie’s mouth. “Back to business. The bronc in chute six has consented to rejoin us. Next man up last one in this go-round on a horse called Coffee Nerves will be Dode Withrow."

  I yanked my head around to see for sure. Yes. Dode was up top the back of chute six, gazing at the specimen of exasperated horse below. Dode did look a little soberer than when I met up with him by the beer booth. He wasn’t any bargain of temperance yet, though. His face looked hot and his Stetson sat toward the back of his head in a dude way I had never seen him wear it.

  Ray was saying, “I never knew Dode to enter the bucking before."

  Which coincided with what was going through my mind, that Dode was the age of my father and Ray’s. That his bronc-stomping had taken place long years ago. That I knew for a certainty Dode did not even break horses for his own use anymore but bought them saddle ready from Tollie Zane.

  "No," I answered Ray, "not in our time."

  I had a clear view down into the chute as the bronc crew tried to keep Coffee Nerves settled long enough for Dode to ease into the saddle. The pinto went through another symphony of commotion, kicking and slamming sideways and whinnying that sawtoothed sound; but then hunched up motionless for a moment in a kind of sitting squat, contemplating what next to pull from its repertoire. In that moment Dode simply said "Good enough” and slid into the saddle. As if those words of Dode’s were a curfew, the gapers and gawkers of the chute society evaporated from the vicinity where Coffee Nerves would emerge into the arena, some of them even seeking a safe nest up on the corral.

  “One of our friends and neighbors Dode is. Rode many a bad one in his time. He’ll be dancing out on this little pinto in just one minute."

  It honestly occurred no more than a handful of seconds from then. Dode had the grip he wanted on the bucking rope and his arm was in the air as if ready to wave and he said in that same simple tone, "Open."

  The gate swung, and Coffee Nerves vaulted into the arena. I saw Dode suck in a fast breath, then heard it go out of him in a huhhh as the horse lit stiff-legged with its forefeet and kicked the sky with its hind, from both directions ramming the surprise of its force up through the stirrups into Dode. Dode’s hat left him and bounced once on the pinto splotch across Coffee Nerves’ rump and then toppled into the dust of the arena. But Dode himself didn’t shake loose at all, which was a fortunate thing because Coffee Nerves already was uncorking another maneuver, this time swapping ends before crashing down in all stiff-legged style. Dode still sat deep in the saddle, although another huhhh reamed its way out of him. Maybe imagine you have just jumped from a porch roof to the ground twice in about five seconds, to give yourself some idea of the impact Dode was absorbing. He must have been getting Coffee Nerves’ respect, for now the bronc exactly reversed the end-swapping he had just done, a trick almost guaranteed to catch the rider leaning wrong. Yet Dode still was up there astride the pinto.

  I remember tasting dust. My mouth was open to call encouragement to Dode, but there was nothing that seemed good enough to call out for this ride he was making.

  Now Coffee Nerves launched into the jump he had been saving up for, a real cloud-chaser, Dode at the same instant raking the horse’s shoulders with his spurs, both those actions fitting together exactly as if animal and man were in rhythm to a signal none of the rest of us could hear, up and up the horse twisting into the air and the rider’s free left arm high above that, Coffee Nerves and Dode soaring together while the crowd’s urging cry seemed to help hold them there, a wave of sound suspending the pair above the arena earth so that we all could have time to fix the sight into memory everlastingly.

  Somewhere amid it all the whistle blew. That is, off some far wall of my awareness echoed that news of Dode having ridden Coffee Nerves, but the din that followed flooded over it. I still believe that if Coffee Nerves had lit straight, as any sane horse would do descending from a moon visit like that, Dode would not have blown that left stirrup. But somehow Coffee Nerves skewed himself half sideways about the time he hit the ground—imagine now that the ground yanks itself to one side as you plummet off that porch—and Dode, who evidently did not hear the timer’s whistle or was ignoring it, stayed firm in the right stirrup, nicely braced a
s he was, but the pinto’s slewfoot maneuver jolted his boot from the left one. And now when Coffee Nerves writhed into his next buck, cattywampus to the left, he simply sailed away from under Dode, who dropped off him back first, falling like a man given a surprise shove into a creek.

  Not water, however, but dust flew up around the form which thumped to the arena surface.

  The next developments smudged together. I do know that now I was shouting out "Dode! Dode!" and that I lit running in the arena direct from the top of the corral, never even resorted to any of the poles as rungs to get down, and that Ray landed right behind me. As to what we thought we were going to accomplish I am not at all clear; simply could not see Dode sprawled out there by himself, I suppose. The pickup man Dill Egan was spurring his horse between Dode and Coffee Nerves, and having to swat the pinto in the face with his hat to keep him off Dode. Before it seemed possible my father and Pete were out there too, and a half dozen other men from out of the grandstand and Alec and a couple of others from the far side of the arena, their hats thwacking at Coffee Nerves as well, and through all the commotion I could hear my father’s particular roar of "HYAH! HYAH !" again and again before the bronc finally veered off. "Fell off the rainbow on that one right enough," Tollie was blaring. So that registered on me, and the point that the chute society, this once when they could have been useful out here in the arena, were dangling from various fence perches or peering from behind the calf chute. But the sprint Ray and I made through the loose arena dirt is marked in me only by the sound that reached us just as we reached Dode. The noise hit our ears from the far end of the arena: a tingling crack! like a tree breaking off and then crashing and thudding as it came down.

  For a confused instant I truly thought a cottonwood had fallen. My mind tried to put together that with all else happening in this overcrowded space of time. But no, Coffee Nerves had slammed head-on into the gate of the catch pen, toppling not just the gate but the hefty gatepost, which crunched the hood of a parked car as it fell over. People who had been spectating along the fence were scattering from the prospect of having Coffee Nerves out among them.

  The bronc however had rebounded into the arena. Piling into that gatepost finally had knocked some of the spunk out of Coffee Nerves. He now looked a little groggy and was wobbling somewhat, which gave Dill Egan time to lasso him and dally the rope around a corral post. This was the scene as I will ever see it. Dode Withrow lying out there with the toes of his boots pointing up and Coffee Nerves woozy but defiant at the end of the lasso tether.

  Quite a crowd encircled Dode, although Ray and I hung back at its outer edge; exactly what was not needed was any more people in the way. Doc Spence forged his way through, and I managed to see in past the arms and legs of all the men around him and Dode. And saw happen what I so desperately wanted to. When Doc held something under Dode’s nose, Dode’s head twiched.

  Before long I heard Dode give a long mmmm, as if he was terrifically tired. After that his eyes came open and he showed that he was able to move, in fact would have tried to sit up if Doc Spence hadn’t stopped him. Doc told Dode to just take it easy, damn it, while he examined Dode’s right leg.

  By now Midge and the Withrow girls had scurried out and Midge was down beside Dode demanding, "You ninny, are you all right?" Dode fastened his look on her and made an mmmm again. Then burst out loud and clear, "Goddamn that stirrup anyway," which lightened the mood of all of us around him, even Midge looking less warpath-like after that. I could just hear the razzing Dode was going to take from his herder Pat Hoy about this forced landing of his: "Didn’t know I was working for an apprentice bronc stomper, Dode. Want me to saddle up one of these big ewes, so’s you can practice staying on?"

  Relief was all over my father as he went over to the grandstand fence to report to my mother and Marie and Toussaint. Ray and I tagged along, so we heard it as quick as anybody. “Doc thinks it’s a

  simple leg break," my father relayed. "Could have been a hell of a lot worse. Doc’s going to take him to Conrad for overnight just to make sure."

  My mother at once called out to Midge an offer to ride with her to the hospital in Conrad. Midge, though, shook her head. "No, I’ll be all right. The girls’ll be with me, no sense in you coming."

  Then I noticed. Toussaint was paying no attention to any of this conversation, nor to the process of Dode being put on a stretcher over his protestations that he could walk or even foot—race if he had to, nor to Coffee Nerves being tugged into exit through what little was left of the catch pen gate. Instead he, Toussaint, was standing there gazing into the exact center of the arena, as if the extravaganza that Coffee Nerves and Dode had put on still was continuing out there.

  The walnut crinkles deepened in his face, his chuckle rippled out, and then the declaration: “That one. That one was a ride."

  * * *

  There of course was more on the schedule of events beyond that. Tollie inevitably thought to proclaim, "Well, folks the show goes on." But the only way for it to go after that performance by Coffee Nerves and Dode was downhill, and Ray and I retained our fence perch just through the next section of calf-roping to see whether Alec’s seventeen and a half seconds would hold up, Contestant after contestant rampaged out, flailed some air with a lariat, and came nowhere close to Alec’s time.

  It had been a rodeo. English Creek had won both the saddle bronc riding and the calf-roping.

  * * *

  While the rodeo grounds emptied of crowd Ray and I stretched our attendance as long as we could. We watched the wrangling crew unpen the broncs and steers and calves. Listened to as much of the chute society’s post mortem as we could stand. Had ourselves another bottle of pop apiece before the beer booth closed. Then I proposed that we might as well take a horse tour of Gros Ventre. Ray thought that sounded dandy enough, so I fetched Mouse and swung into the saddle, and Ray climbed on behind.

  We had sight seen most of the town before wandering back past the Medicine Lodge, which by now had its front door propped open with a beer keg, probably so the accumulating fume of cigarette smoke and alcoholic breath wouldn’t pop the windows out of the place. As Dode Withrow would have said, it sounded like hell changing shifts in there. The jabber and laughter and sheer concentration of humanity beyond that saloon doorway of course had Ray and me gazing in as we rode past, and that gaze was what made me abruptly halt Mouse.

  Ray didn’t ask anything, but I could feel his curiosity as to why we were stalled in the middle of the street. Nor was it anything I could put into words for him. Instead I offered: "How about you riding Mouse down to your place? I’ll be along in a little. There’s somebody I got to go see."

  Ray’s look toward the Medicine Lodge wondered “In there?" but his voice only conveyed, "Sure, glad to," and he lifted himself ahead into the saddle after I climbed down. Best of both worlds for him. Chance to be an unquestioning friend and get a horse to ride as well. I went into the blue air of the saloon and stopped by the figure sitting on the second bar stool inside the doorway. The Medicine Lodge was getting itself uncorked for the night ahead. Above the general jabber somebody toward the middle of the bar was relating in a semishout: "So I told that sonofabitch he just better watch his step around me or there’s gonna be a new face in hell for breakfast." My interest, though, was entirely here at the seated figure.

  The brown hat moved around as he became aware of me.

  “ ’Lo, Stanley," I began, still not knowing where I was going next with any of this.

  “Well, there, Jick." The crowfoot lines clutched deeper at the corners of Stanley Meixell’s eyes as he focused on me. He didn’t look really tanked up, but on the other hand couldn’t be called church-sober either. Someplace in between, as he’d been so much of our time together on the mountain. "Haven’t seen you," he continued in all pleasantness, "since you started living above ground."

  Good Christ, Stanley had noticed my ducking act that day I was digging the outhouse hole and he rode by. Was my every momen
t visible to people anymore, like a planet being perpetually studied by one of those California telescopes?

  "Yeah, well. How you been?"

  “Fine as snoose. And yourself ?"

  "What I mean, how’s your hand doing?"

  Stanley looked down at it as if I was the first to ever point out its existence. He still had some doozies of scabs and major bruises there on the injury site, but Stanley didn’t seem to regard this as anything but ordinary health. "It ain’t bad." He picked up the bottle of beer from the counter before him. "Works good enough for the basics, anyway." And tipped down the last of that particular beer.

  "Can I buy you a snort ?"

  “No, no thanks."

  "On the wagon, huh? I’ve clumb on it some times myself. All else considered, though, I’d just as soon be down off."

  It occurred to me that since I was in this place anyway it didn’t cost any more to be cordial. The stool between Stanley and the doorway was vacant—an empty mixed-drink glass testified that its occupant had traveled on—so I straddled the seat and amended: “Actually I would take a bottle of orange, though."

  Stanley indicated his empty beer bottle to Tom Harry, the nearest of the three bartenders trying to cope with the crowd’s liquid wants.

  "When you get time, professor. And a sunjuice for my nurse, here."

  Tom Harry studied me. "He with you?" he asked Stanley.

  "Closer than kin, him and me," Stanley solemnly vouched to the barman. "We have rode millions of miles together."

  "None of it aged him that much," Tom Harry observed, nonetheless setting up a bottle of orange in front of me and a fresh beer for Stanley.

  "Stanley," I started again. He was pushing coins out of a little pile, to pay for the latest round. Fishing up a five-cent piece, he held it toward me between his thumb and forefinger. “Know what this is ?"

  “Sure, a nickel."

  "Naw, it’s a dollar a Scotchman’s been squeezing." The fresh beer got a gulp of attention. For the sake of the conversation I intended I’d like to have known how many predecessors that bottle had had, but of course Tom Harry’s style of bartending was to swoop empties out of sight so no such incriminating count could be taken. I didn’t have long to dwell on Stanley’s possible intake, for some out-of-town guy wearing a panama hat zigged when he meant to zag on his way toward the door and lurched into the pair of us. Abruptly the guy was being gripped just above the elbow by Stanley—his right hand evidently had recuperated enough from Bubbles for this, too—and was retargeted toward the door with advice from Stanley: “Step easy, buddy, so you don’t get yourself hurt. In this county there’s a five-dollar fine for drawing blood on a fool."