Cherished Love (Cherished Cowboys 1)

by Charlene Bright

  It was the night of graduation. Colton was happy…and he was sad…and scared. Things were about to change in a big way. His guitar was in the back with Tommy, and he was listening intently to the King, ready to echo the tune with his own amateur fingers.

  Wade and Tommy had already had more beers in one sitting than Colton had ever seen.

  * * *

  The big bull, a roan, was difficult to handle, but somehow the boys coaxed it into the loading chute and closed it in. The bull protested, bucking against the sides of the chute, snorting loudly, and digging his hooves into the hard ground.

  Tommy looked hopeful, in a way Colton had never seen. Wade was slurring almost imperceptibly to anyone but his best friend, but his gait was steady and balanced. Wade looked at both of them and then raised his arm and let out a whoop.

  Colton and Wade prepped the bull, while Tommy watched, his face in the shadows. Colton was spotting Tommy as he climbed into position to get onto the beast, while Wade was tasked with making sure the bull could not escape. The animal who had protested while getting into the chute was eerily still and quiet; only an occasional snort really reminded them that there was a dangerous creature inches from them.

  Tommy climbed onto the chute and straddled the bull, stepping down the gate’s rungs as Wade had said to do. He felt the power of the animal, its raw strength. As he worked to position his hand, he could feel its hot breath wafting back over him in the cooling breeze. The glow of a distant wood fire was a stark counterpoint to the inky darkness, and despite his obvious excitement, Tommy shivered.

  For all of the last year, Tommy had asked Wade about bull riding. His town-centered background meant he only knew what he’d seen on TV and the few times he’d seen the NHSRA Club amateur riders at the weekend rodeo, and he had asked Wade to go over it again and again. How the rider needs to loop the rope around his hand, snugging the last under the ball of his thumb for quick release. How to put on the short spurs, and how they were used to only hold the animal, not to actually goad it…the cowboy’s weight on the back would be enough. The purpose of the bell on the rope to give it weight and to anger the bull further. Eight seconds and a bullhorn sound later, and the ride would be over.

  * * *

  According to what they learned later, the bull was named Behemoth, and though not of Biblical proportions as the name might suggest, he weighed in at 1,802. His registration listed him as a Montana-bred bull. He was fresh from the farm, and up to Graduation Night had not been ridden.

  Colton warned that the imagery was going to be horrible, and made sure they were all ready. Wade lowered his head and then let out a sigh and acknowledged to himself that getting the truth out would be helpful, would put some of his demons down, might even let him regain his own reasons for living—reasons that he’d thrown into that collapsing arena long ago.

  Colton continued narrating, and the ride was on.…

  (0.0)

  Behemoth’s head went up violently the second Tommy had lowered himself on it. His calm occasional snorts became loud warnings. The big red-hide beast pushed forward and the chute gate opened. The animal roared into the arena, completely beside itself with rage at the human on its back. Wade and Colton were stunned into paralysis before it could register that the bull had carried their friend away from the safety of the chute. Tommy’s hand held, and the forward motion slid him backward on the animal, into a classic “tripod stance,” hand and each thigh contacting the beast and keeping the rider stable.

  (0.50)

  Once he reached mid-arena, Behemoth turned his motion into a hard spin to its left side, very tight. Tail and rear in the air, it pushed Tommy’s body forward on the tripod, and Tommy began sliding inward. Instinctively for safety he almost touched the animal with his free hand, but a shout from his right—from someone, a blurry spot in his vision—caused him to reassess, raise the hand high. He dug in the left heel, pushing his body back into position, almost as an afterthought. He was working solely on instinct, and so far, instinct was serving him well. Wade and Tommy, now fully aware, were scrambling for something to distract the bull.

  (0.75)

  The left heel harried the bull, and Behemoth responded. With a toss of his mighty head, the beast began a dive-leap-dive strategy, first pushing Tommy back toward its haunches, then tossing him forward. With each leap, the move was more pronounced, and on the third of these, Tommy’s forehead collided, hard, with the back of the bull’s head, nearly knocking him unconscious, and causing him to bite into his own tongue. In the process, the animal’s trajectory had him headed at the fence, and his kicks turned to a running leap. Blood poured from Tommy’s mouth, creating a partial mask of crimson in the stark light and dark of the corral floor.

  (1.0)

  At the wooden rails of the corral wall, the bull pushed his left shoulder into the fence, tearing at Tommy’s knee, trying to dislodge him. A sharp tear in Tommy’s jeans occurred and the sound, out of context, was horrifying for the Tommy’s friends. Behemoth caromed back into the arena. Tommy was now sliding down the left side of the animal, and it keyed on him. Behemoth leapt into the air, his velocity speeding Tommy’s fall. Wade was in the arena now, waving his hat vigorously and hollering at the bull to keep it away from the novice rider now in the manure and sawdust, the dirt and the blood. Tommy was screaming at the top of his lungs, his arm twisted, the wrist broken from the violent dismount. Even as he tried vainly to dodge, Behemoth ran him down, its weight pulling the young man under his hooves. Tommy was in the dust, under the animal, on the ground.

  (2.0)

  Colton and Wade were screaming at the bull. Colton leapt to the dust in the corral, but twisted his ankle and fell. He lost sight of Tommy and Wade in the melee.

  (3.0)

  Behemoth, still not fully free from the rope, leapt away from Tommy. He landed a solid right leg kick to Tommy’s head in the process. Tommy went down like a lump in the middle of the arena.

  (4.0)

  The roan beast turned in place, this time right-handed circles. In a hurry to free its haunches of the remaining rope, the bull began fundamentally hopping in place. Behemoth was over Tommy again, now lost in the dust and uneven lighting. The sounds of impact between bull and body were gruesome, wet, and many. Wade, now on the corral floor and moving, charged the bull, in an attempt to drive off the monstrous animal and to do something for his friend.

  Colton could see that Wade was in tears and terror, only thinking of what had happened to Tommy. The rope finally dropped loose, and Colton was ready. He opened the gate to the holding pen, and Behemoth sensed an escape, ignoring the boy who was running his way, running to his friend who lay motionless on the ground.

  Wade reached into the dust and the dirt and gathered Tommy’s broken, bloody body into his arms. He carried him to the safety of the grass beyond the arena. Tommy’s arm, the shattered one, hung limply, swinging back and forth.

  * * *

  Colton, Mallory, and Wade stood in silence for a while. Wade started to speak a couple of times, tears welling in his soft blue eyes, making them sparkle more than usual. Finally, lowly, he concluded the story, as only someone who was there, who had done what he did, could do. “We raced Tommy to the hospital, but they said he was dead when they looked at him, as we already knew. They weren’t sure what had happened, but Colton and I weren’t in any shape to talk.

  “Outside the hospital in the dark, Colton and I made a deal with the devil. I must have overlooked the gate latch. I guess I was in a hurry and excited and drunk…and stupid. If I had just done what Colton had made me promise I’d do, Tommy would be alive today. I was certain that I could get Tommy on a bull and back off safely. I believed I could handle it all and never once considered what Colton had tried to tell me, that it was too dangerous.

  “Everything that meant anything to me broke that night. My relationship with my parents—because I didn’t come home that night, or for the next three days. My friendship with Colton—because my actions had
gotten Tommy killed, and then forced him to keep a secret for more than ten years. My dealings with the Greeleys, because they had been depending on Tommy—for the bonus from the military. And most of all, my own character. In one night, I learned what I was.

  “I am a bull rider. What that one animal took from me gives me the will to know I can take on what any four-hoofed creature can deliver. I can let someone I care about die in front of me and still make my living on top of the beast that killed him. I am a liar and a cheat and a thief. I lied about my experience when I signed up for the circuit. I cheated my friends by taking from them, giving nothing back. And I am a thief, taking the one thing that the Greeley family depended on. Their son.

  “So for ten years, I have hidden this last chapter, this last page of Tommy’s life, in order to keep the rest of my lie alive. Because that truth the bull rider in me, is all I have left.”

  His tears rolled, unabated down his rugged cheek line. His eyes searched out Mallory’s. “Mallory, I am telling this part now, because you need to know what kind of man I really am and why I can’t be the man you need. The worst of it is that I like the life I made on the road as bull rider. The highs you get in defeating the bull, in making the bell, are more intoxicating than alcohol, more exhilarating than any drug. The women that seek you out, the buckle bunnies, are just as high on the thrill of having you, as the rider does making the bell on a bull. It’s flattering the way they check you out, like a bull on the auction block, and if you want, you can even get them to fight one another for the right to go home with you.

  “These can’t be easy words to hear, and they are killing me to say them…but the truth is, the bull rider in me doesn’t deserve someone like you. Colton did this, I know, to save you from this truth. I will never be what you need, and if you think you want me, it’s just the lie I’m trying to start again. In three weeks, my hand will have recovered, and the bull rider will again emerge, and this tender cowboy standing here will be gone again. I can’t make up for what I’ve done, and I can’t change who I am.”

  He turned to his friend. “Colton, I have to thank you for this, because I needed a way to say goodbye to Mallory before I had the chance to break her heart. I see now I could never even earn the right to be with her, no matter what reasons I might have for wanting, desiring that life. You’ve shown me what I am, what I’ve become. So in three weeks, after I get the doctor’s clearance, I will head down to Tucson to practice, to get back into shape. I guess we can work out the details, Colton, but, for now, I will call this goodbye.”

  With that, before either of them could respond, Wade was on his heels, and walking away, not looking back, his face taking on a solid, unbreakable look that he’d perfected over the last decade. He was no longer in pain; now, as it was ten years ago, it was complete agony.

  Chapter 8

  “Shut up,” Mallory said when Colton started to speak. She was beside herself. There had been times when her brother had been right before, and she’d had to admit it, loudly, usually just after he’d tortured her as young siblings do. This time, however, his obvious desire to be seen as the “wise one” was just more than she could handle.

  His purpose hadn’t been to hurt, or to even break up the seemingly inevitable between his sister and his best friend; his only intent had been to clear the air. He’d hoped that by giving Wade that opportunity, the Wade he’d remembered, the friend that had saved Tommy from the bullies countless times, the hero he knew, would re-emerge and perhaps explain himself. Instead, his friend had fled, and his sister’s heart was breaking despite his best efforts. She was going to need time and space to work through this. He’d seen her make bad decisions before; this time, she would thank him later for the pain he was saving her.

  He reached out to her, but she pulled away and looked up at him. Tears were streaming down her face. “If you think this is over, you’re very mistaken, my dear brother. I am not giving up on Wade Williamson. Not just yet. I know there’s more to this.” Then she turned and ran from him toward her Explorer.

  * * *

  The afternoon had turned gray, drab, and Mallory felt an unseasonal chill in the air.

  As she jumped into the cab of the Explorer, her mind was already churning on the details that she could add to the research she had already begun before.

  Tommy had died. Wade and Colton had protected their own interests and their own families from the details.

  Mallory had to know more. She started the Explorer, put it into gear, and pulled out, a horsetail of pebbles and dust spraying across the parking lot. First stop: the hospital.

  Cindy wasn’t surprised to see Mal’s Explorer driving up to the visitor parking; whenever she had problems with adapting to the small-town dynamics of Cherish, Mallory came to Cindy for advice and commiseration. It wasn’t that Cindy was older; in fact, they were about the same age. But Cindy had never left town; as a matter of fact, when she’d tried to go to Bible Camp as a child, she only made it three days before she was calling, crying and begging to go home. For that reason, she was clearly a resource on small-town survival.

  It was a surprise, however, to see the determination in her eyes, a decisiveness that defied description. Mallory was less than her normal jovial, chatty self when she walked up to the counter.

  “Hey Cindy…can you pull up old medical records here or do you need to access the main one in the office?”

  “Well, hello to you, Mallory. All business, eh? Sure, I can do most of it from here. But I can’t give you information of a personal nature, unless you get a subpoena.”

  Mallory realized at that moment that Cindy was right; she’d come in with so much on her mind, but she didn’t need to be so rough on her friend.

  “Sorry, Cindy, I’m just doing some side work for a friend, and the details are not really that important, but it concerns the Greeley family. Can you pull up the coroner’s report?”

  Cindy nodded, started tapping keys and looking intently at the monitor. “Didn’t Victor Greeley work for the McCall’s Truck Stop about the time we were in high school?”

  Mallory nodded, starting to flip through a magazine. She hoped Cindy wouldn’t put two and two together, but Cindy was a lot more on the ball than Tara.

  “And didn’t you pay Mary McCall a visit about a month ago?”

  Focusing on the magazine to the best of her ability, Mallory kept her lips pursed, but felt like cringing. “Mm hmmm.”

  After some scribbling on a notepad, Cindy started across the office toward the file cabinet, apparently finding the desired records. Cindy returned across the office, a manila folder in one hand, but stopped short of offering it to Mallory. Just as Mal reached for the folder, Cindy pulled it back, a look of grave seriousness on her face.

  “You can’t look at these. Not only is it unethical, not only can I get fired for it, I could even go to jail. I am not going to jail for you, no matter how much I love you; and don’t think I don’t know what you’re looking for. There is enough guilt to go around in the past. I recommend that you leave this alone, because you are only going to get more hurt and pain than you deserve. What happens in Cherish, like Vegas, stays here.”

  She put the folder on her desk blotter, then turned back into the bowels of the office. “I gotta go do rounds. Be back in a half hour if you need me.”

  Mal looked down at the folder that Cindy had left on her desk.

  * * *

  The folder for Thomas A. Greeley was thick, thicker than Mallory would expect a medical record to be for a young man who died in his prime. Within were some of the basics: a copy of his Little Rock birth certificate, a checklist of his vaccinations, and a few details—blood type, health conditions at a few check-ups. A few other things were events that one might expect for a kid: tonsillectomy at six, appendix at twelve, broken arm.… Then, it became less typical of a teen. In the spring of 2003, Tommy had begun having violent headaches. She thought she remembered Colton and Wade commenting on “Tommy having one of his head
aches” a time or two.

  From there, the majority of the rest of the folder’s contents were MRI reports, blood test results, extensive doctor notes—including notes from an oncologist. Mallory’s brow furrowed. Cancer? Scanning a couple of the reports, she caught the words “tumor,” “inoperable,” “treatments refused.” The last report was from early May, 2004:

  Patient reports lack of appetite and lethargy. Headaches more intense. Discussed prognosis with parents. Investigating need for hospice care soon. Unable to tell parents how soon. Suspect two to four months, but impossible to tell at unusually young age.

  The final section of the file contained an autopsy report of the injuries sustained and police report. This report included notes on the state of the tumor, indicating fatality within a month.

  Mallory carefully put the folder back onto Cindy’s desk and furrowed her brow. What does this mean? Did Tommy know? There was one way to find out. Mallory needed to see someone and then she had a phone call to make.

  * * *

  When Wade left the rodeo grounds, his mind was going a million miles an hour. Tommy’s death had always bore considerable weight in his mind, and it was only when he could keep it suppressed, buried beneath his successes, his trophies, or his injuries that he could live with himself.

  Colton was doing right to protect Mallory from him. It had been his horrible decision to tell the police, Tommy’s family—everyone—that neither Wade nor Colton had been present when Tommy had gotten onto the bull, that they had been down at the truck, drinking and playing music, that Tommy had said he needed to take a leak, and that they had run as fast as they could when they heard the rampaging bull, but they had been too late. Once the investigation concluded Tommy’s death had been an accident, Wade had hoped he could find a way to do right by his friend. But his bad decisions continued, from joining the circuit the next week, to seeking out anything to numb him and quiet his mind, to Lilah…all had demonstrated his flaws, his lack of character.