Finding Somewhere

by Joseph Monninger

  “Did you want Punch? Is that it?”

  “No, he’s your age, anyway, and he’s all wrapped up in you. I’m not man crazy or anything. It just feels like I’m walking around with a key in my hand, and I keep trying it in different doors and the locks never tumble for me. It sounds ridiculous, I’m sure. I’m sorry. And you’re meeting this amazing-looking guy.”

  Then she really cried. Two older women came in and looked at us, then passed by and went into stalls. I held Delores and let her cry it out. After a while she pushed off my shoulder and bent to the sink and washed her face. “Cowboy up,” she whispered, which is what the Red Sox said a few seasons back to get themselves rallied up. She dried her face and hands on paper towels. Delores loved the Red Sox.

  “You sure you want to go through with this date?” I said. “We don’t owe them anything.”

  “I’m just being a poop,” she said. “We’re in Blue Earth, for goodness’ sakes, where the western sky meets the eastern horizon.”

  “That’s awkward,” I said.

  She laughed.

  “Drew’s cute, right?” she asked, straightening her clothes.

  “Sure, he’s cute.”

  “Expectation is the enemy of serenity,” she said.

  “Where’d you get that?”

  “Fortune cookie,” she said, yanking me toward the door. “Let’s grab some cowboy.”

  Chapter 7

  DREW SHOVED A BIG CHEW OF TOBACCO INTO HIS MOUTH, then lifted his lower lip like a camel and wrapped it over the wad. He made a sucking sound as he did it, as if his saliva had rushed out to meet an old friend. I watched Delores’s eyes go wide when she realized what he had done. She looked at me. Then she reached over and grabbed the tobacco out of Drew’s hand and squeezed out a pinch and jammed it into her mouth. We were in the grandstands sitting on wooden bleachers. Not many people sat near us. The boys sat on the outside. The seats we were supposed to get down at ground level had been promised to a VIP, it turned out.

  “You’re a crazy girl,” Drew said, and stretched his legs out in front of him.

  Punch shook his head. Punch held my hand.

  I knew Delores was bored and a little manic. The rodeo didn’t end up being quite what we had expected. It had a sawdust ring and a lot of glaring light and constant music punctuating everything that happened. The announcer made a series of jokes we didn’t get, or didn’t find funny. I couldn’t keep my eyes off the gelding straps that made the horses buck, and when the riders bulldogged a bunch of calves, I thought they might break the animals’ necks. I didn’t like that, and neither did Delores, but we liked the clown who ran in and out at various times to amuse the audience. The clown’s name was Cecile, and he had a funny way, his pants droopy and his hat tilted on his head. He wore sneakers instead of big clown shoes. He needed the sneakers to run from bulls and to dodge in when a cowboy got in trouble. His real name, Drew told us, was Harry, but Cecile was his clown name. Clowns got gored, too, Drew said, and kicked and beat, but a good clown saved lives, and Cecile was a good one even if he had gotten a little older and hard of hearing.

  Delores and I liked the barrel racing, where women riders worked their way around a cloverleaf course and made the horse maneuver in tight circles and bends. Punch and Drew said barrel racing counted as the stupidest, most annoying event in any rodeo, and that it was put on for wives who used to be bored while their men participated in the rougher sports. When Delores and I heard that, we played up our enjoyment of the barrel riding because we liked being exotic to these boys and we liked seeing women doing something active. We were Easterners, not like the typical Western girls they dated, and we kept drawing the line, bright and wide, so they would see it.

  Being exotic is probably what made Delores take a dip of tobacco.

  “How is it?” I asked her.

  “It doesn’t stay together,” she said, her voice working around her open mouth. “I thought it formed into a chunk or something. But it’s like chewing rubber bands.”

  “You keep it in your lip,” Drew said, “but don’t swallow the juices or you’ll be as sick as Jupiter.”

  “I want it out,” Delores said.

  Drew handed her an empty soda cup. Delores yakked it up like a cat frowning out a hair ball. She used her index finger to get it all out. Then she grabbed a napkin from me and licked her tongue on it.

  “ ‘Gross’ does not begin to cover it,” she said.

  Drew smiled.

  “You two just aren’t rodeo fans,” he said, taking up a theme we had already covered. “You got to stop thinking about it and just enjoy it.”

  “What is it like to ride a bull?” I asked Punch.

  “Isn’t much fun,” Punch said, his eyes on a Ford F-250 that a local dealership had driven into the ring as a way of advertising deals. The pickup was black and had a bed liner and glistening hubcaps. Someone had buffed it like crazy. A truck never looked better.

  “Then why do you do it?” I asked.

  “Boys do some stupid things,” he said. “That’s the definition of ‘boys.’ ”

  “But what is it like?” I asked, my shoulder against his, my hand in his. I’d already decided I wanted to kiss him before the night was over.

  “It’s a lot of yanking on your arm,” he said, lowering his voice so only I could hear. “When you tie in, you hook your arm in, and when the bull starts to go, it’s your shoulder that gets it worst at first. Then after a while the whole world shrinks to the space right above the bull’s head. If it has horns—blunted, you know—then you see everything as the bull sees it, and sometimes your mind goes away completely and you just ride by instinct. I don’t know. Bulls don’t treat you right.”

  “Is it the danger you like?”

  He pursed his lips.

  “Never really thought of it that way,” he said. “Just a thing to ride, I guess. And a little prize money from time to time.”

  His hand covered my hand as simply as a glove.

  “You know,” Drew said, “we don’t have to stay. We could get out of here if you two want to. Can’t say Punch and I haven’t seen enough rodeos in our days.”

  “To go where?” Delores asked, apparently okay with taking off.

  “We could go get some food.”

  “What do you say, Hattie?” Delores asked, turning to me.

  “I’m ready,” I said.

  “There’s a Chinese place in town that’s good,” Punch said. “Some of the older guys go there.”

  A loud whoop marked the end of the advertisement for the Ford F-250. We stood. Punch held my hand and led me out. I liked seeing his profile under the cowboy hat.

  “WHAT I WANT TO KNOW,” DELORES SAID, A BOWL OF chicken lo mein in front of her, her fork dragging noodles upward, “is how come there is a Chinese restaurant in every town in the country. I mean, you can’t tell me some Chinese family in some small village in China decides one day to open a restaurant in Blue Earth, Minnesota. That doesn’t make sense. Who tells them where to go? And how come they don’t end up having maybe five restaurants in the same little town?”

  “They do sometimes,” Drew said, biting into a dumpling.

  Delores shook her head.

  “Someone has to be like the air traffic controller. Right? Someone has to say, ‘You open a restaurant in New Hampshire, and you other folks open one in Minnesota.’ I mean, does someone do a demographic check to see if the population is sufficient to support the restaurant? How does it all work?”

  “So you think,” Drew said, putting down his dumpling and shaking soy sauce onto it, “that a Chinese guy sits somewhere, and he has a map of the United States and he puts pins into different towns when a restaurant goes in? Is that what you’re claiming?”

  “I don’t know what I’m saying,” Delores said. “I’m just saying.”

  “Someone said Ray Kroc used to fly around the country and look down and figure out places to put McDonald’s outlets,” Punch said.

  “So maybe a
Chinese guy flies around,” I said, trying to push the conversation in a different direction. Delores and Drew could go round and round.

  “The McDonald brothers are from New Hampshire,” Delores said. “McDonald’s is New Hampshire’s gift to the world. Isn’t that just perfect?”

  Before Drew answered, the waitress came to fill our water glasses and check if we needed anything. She was a short middle-aged Chinese woman who took small steps. To start the meal, she had handed out radishes carved into swans and a wallet-sized menu with the name Han Se Chinese Restaurant on the front. Her name tag said Uh. I didn’t know if that was a misspelling or what.

  Punch held his water glass up to be filled. He thanked her. He had ordered orange chicken. His hat hung on the back of his chair. His hair was long and wavy and the color of pine shavings. I liked the way his jaw muscles flexed when he ate. Delores declined water, and so did Drew. I asked Uh to fill up mine. The food tasted spicy and strong.

  “So what are you all doing out here anyway?” Drew asked when the waitress had left. “What’s all this stuff about a horse?”

  “We are taking a horse out west,” Delores said.

  “Delivering it?” Punch asked, interested.

  “In a manner of speaking,” I said. “We stole it.”

  “You stole a horse?” Punch asked.

  He took a sip of water.

  “I stole it from a place I worked,” I said. “They planned to put him down.”

  “So you took him?” Drew asked. “Just like that?”

  I shrugged.

  “Where are you going to take him?” Punch asked.

  “We thought we’d put him out on a range somewhere,” I said. “Where he can be a horse.”

  “What’s he now if he’s not a horse?” Drew asked, starting to laugh.

  “I mean so he can live like a horse should live,” I said. “Be free for a little while.”

  “I see,” Punch said, and I believed he did.

  “So let me get this straight,” Drew said, setting down his fork and lifting his water. “You stole a horse to bring it out here and let it go? Is that it, more or less?”

  “You don’t understand anything,” Delores said.

  “But is that what you’re saying?” Drew insisted.

  “You can reduce anything,” Delores said, “and if you reduce it enough it sounds silly.”

  Drew smiled and shook his head. He picked up his fork again and starting pulling at more noodles.

  “I know a place,” Punch said, looking at me, then at Delores. “Not far from here, either.”

  “Where?” I asked.

  “An old rodeo guy named Fry. He’s got a big hunk of land outside of town here, and he lets some horses range over it. He’s got a deal worked out with a rodeo. The PETA people are always watching how the animals are treated, so when they get too old, at least some of them, they go out to Fry’s. He’d let your horse go free out there.”

  I looked at Delores. I felt my heart beating hard.

  “Speed’s been wobbly lately. He went down the other day and had trouble getting back up,” I said. “That’s his name, Speed.”

  “Well, sorry to say, it might be his time,” Punch said. “I could take a look at him. I grew up around horses.”

  I felt my throat close off a little. I wondered, looking at Delores and watching Drew eat, if maybe everyone all the way along had thought Speed was better off dead. The Fergusons had thought so, and so had my mom, and even Delores, in her way, hadn’t jumped in to defend Speed all the way across. Maybe I was being paranoid, I couldn’t tell, but it hit me that perhaps people had humored me and that I had been foolish enough, and blind enough, to imagine they agreed. Maybe Speed had always been my issue. Delores cared about him, but she wanted to go west, and Speed provided an excuse for the trip. I put down my fork and drank some water. I felt dizzy and light-headed.

  “You should bring old Woody over,” Drew said, half to us, half to Punch. “He’s the rodeo vet and a friend of ours. He could tell you in no time how sound your horse might be. There’s not a thing that man doesn’t know about horses.”

  “I could do that,” Punch said to me. “He’s a good guy, and he’d help you out.”

  I nodded.

  I lost my appetite and felt strange and grindy down in my guts. The guys ate awhile longer, but soon Uh came back with a check. Delores paid, which seemed right because the guys had treated us to the rodeo, and they left a tip. We took four fortune cookies from a big bowl near the front of the restaurant. Delores broke hers open right away, and it said You must watch the birds to know when the seed is sown. Punch read his, and I didn’t catch it all. Then Drew made us all listen while he said “ ‘A wise man carries a baby inside him all his life.’ ” I stuck mine into my pocket without opening it. I wasn’t being secretive or dramatic. I understood that if it said anything possibly related to Speed, I’d cry like a big blubber-puss, and I didn’t want to do that in front of two cowboys.

  When we got back to the motel, I told Delores I wanted to check on Speed, and Punch agreed to go with me. I grabbed a headlamp from our room, and Drew and Delores had a little good-night moment. They hadn’t hit it off, exactly, and neither one of them felt like faking it, but they hugged quickly, thanked each other, and called it a night. Delores looked dead at me as I left with Punch. She didn’t have to say anything.

  PUNCH KISSED ME BEFORE WE MADE IT AROUND BACK.

  He kissed me long and hard, pushing me against a wall between two doors. He tasted a little like Chinese food, and a little like minty tea, and his body felt as long and as tough as a streetlamp pole. I kissed him back. I had been kissed by boys before a couple times, but never anyone like Punch, never in Minnesota, never by someone I had known only a couple of hours. When he broke away, he grabbed my hand and pulled me free of the wall, and he said he had wanted to kiss me all night, sorry, was it okay, because his mother had brought him up to be a gentleman, and he didn’t mean to press me.

  “It was fine,” I said. “I wanted to kiss you, too.”

  He smiled.

  “Let’s go look at your horse,” he said.

  I said a little prayer of thanks when I saw Speed picking at hay near the line of bushes. Punch took my hand as we walked over, and I handed him the headlamp so he could use it to inspect Speed. Almost instantly I saw that Punch understood horses. He was calm to begin with, but as he put his hand on Speed, his manner became full and easy, like patting down a comforter, and he talked in a low, cadenced voice that took the tension out of my shoulders. Punch shined the headlamp down from above so he could see Speed’s face and eyes. Then he walked under Speed’s muzzle and ran his hand along the horse’s body.

  “Big guy,” he said when he was halfway down Speed’s flank.

  “Sixteen and a half hands,” I said. “He’s been a fair pony, if you know what I mean. He gave rides.”

  “Couple dollars a ride,” Punch said. “I know.”

  “How does he look to you?”

  Punch shrugged. The circuit between his brain and his lips took its time, I realized. He didn’t blurt things out, which was something I admired in him.

  “Of course,” he said eventually, “it’s hard to tell anything in this light. He looks dry and drawn. That might just be the trailer ride. He seems a little edgy, maybe, like he’s not feeling all here. This guy Woody claims a horse can go away in its mind when it needs to. That’s how your Speed seems to me.”

  “You think he’s done?” I asked, trying to sound casual but feeling my throat tighten.

  “I don’t know a thing like that, Hattie,” Punch said. “Let me bring Woody over. You know, one way or the other you could put him out on Fry’s land and let him be a free horse for a couple days. Then if he doesn’t seem to thrive, well, you can take care of things. If he does, then you’re all set.”

  I looked at him and nodded. It was the best plan, given how things had tumbled. He grabbed my hands and pulled me into him, but instead of hug
ging me he lifted me up right onto Speed. I had to swing my leg up to get it over, but Speed didn’t seem to mind. Even after he let go of me, I felt Punch’s hands under my arms, the pressure like the rubber ends of crutches up in my armpits.

  “There’s a good-looking boy,” Punch said. “That’s a horse.”

  “He was pretty in his day,” I said, to my surprise not feeling self-conscious around Punch.

  “I can see that,” Punch said, and took Speed by the halter and walked him in a circle. Punch studied him and told me to just walk him forward a little. Punch stepped back and shined the light on Speed’s legs and hooves, trying to see his gait. Punch squatted down and didn’t move for a while. I rubbed Speed’s neck and shoulders. It felt amazing to be on Speed’s back, amazing to have a cowboy squatting on the ground in front of me, watching.

  “You see anything?” I asked.

  “I see a good-looking girl on a nice horse,” he said.

  “I mean about the horse,” I said.

  Punch stood and shrugged.

  “He’s an old horse,” Punch said. “I can’t tell how sick he is, but I’ll be honest with you, Hattie. I don’t like his chances of making it through a winter around here. Not pastured. If you could keep him in a barn somehow, well, he might stand a chance. But even then I wouldn’t be sure. How old did you say he is?”

  “We don’t really know,” I said. “Old, though.”

  Punch stepped forward and lifted Speed’s head. He fanned back Speed’s gums and inspected the horse’s mouth. I knew he was examining the wear on the teeth. Anyone who tried to guess a horse’s age did that. When he finished, he walked to Speed’s side and held up his hands to me. I swung my leg over Speed’s back and slid off into Punch’s arms. He eased the drop and set me on my feet. He had strong hands.

  I moved back to Speed’s head.

  “I can get Woody to come over,” Punch said, “but I’m not sure how much he can add. I’m not claiming to be the last word on horses, but he just looks old to me, Hattie. I’m sorry to say it.”