One Step Over the Border

by Stephen Bly

  Shouts and crashes from the pen of bulls behind them turned their heads.

  “Thanks, Brick, but we’re not looking for girls tonight,” Laramie said. “Well, Hap’s looking, but that’s a different story.”

  He pulled off his hat and rumpled his hair. “You got one picked out?”

  Hap nodded at several departing barrel racers who waved at him. “Not here.”

  Laramie followed the line forward. “My partner only likes girls named Juanita.”

  “No foolin’?” Brick flashed a wide, dimpled grin. “I got this deal about only datin’ blondes. Then I up and swore off ’em for a whole year. I thought I was cured. But this little gal named Inga, with a Swedish accent, cornered me at the Holiday Inn in Tucson. So I rationalized, ‘Just a little one won’t be bad… I can quit any time I want.’”

  “You got hooked again?” Hap asked.

  “A horrible habit. Some days I can fight it better than others.”

  Two girls in bright-colored halters, shorts, and flip-flops sauntered by. Each wore a diamond stud pierced in her nose. “Hi, Brick,” the yellow-haired one called out. “You were awesome tonight.”

  He pulled off his straw cowboy hat. “Thank you, darlin’, you come back and see me in about five years, okay?”

  “Okay!” She giggled as they trailed off in the direction of the parking lot.

  He flashed a lopsided grin. “This ain’t one of the good days. You got your Juanitas and I got my blondes. Maybe goin’ cold turkey isn’t the right way to do it. Maybe I should just limit my blondes to one name. Only blondes named… Tiffany… and Kimmie… and Heather… and Brooke… hmmm. Did you say Juanita? Dadgum it, boys… one of my friends from Stephenville is a Juanita. Now I know you got to come to supper with me.”

  Hap smoothed down his thick mustache. “We do have to eat supper someplace. What’s this Juanita like?” He prepared for the reply with a mixture of curiosity and dread.

  “She’s Mexican, or Puerto Rican, or something Latin. Real purdy… with big, dark brown eyes and black hair. If I wasn’t hung up on blondes, I just might dance with her myself. Shoot, maybe you know her. I think she used to be up in Colorado… or South Dakota. I just met her a couple of weeks ago in Arizona. Her name is Juanita Guzman.”

  Hap’s neck tensed. One time when he was ten, he had lifted a hoof of a big gray stallion that belonged to his grandfather. The horse kicked him in the middle of the stomach and flung him against the corral fence. He felt like that now. Kicked in the gut. Fighting to breathe.

  “She won slack on Thursday night and is up again tomorrow,” Brick was saying. “I seen her around earlier tonight.”

  “I thought she was in Arizona.” Hap spun on his heels. His head swelled with pain inside his hat. “I’m goin’ to the truck to look after the horses. Pick up my check for me,” he called back to Laramie. When he got through the gate, and away from the lights, he bent over at the waist.

  It was a dry heave.

  Thirty minutes later, Laramie yanked open the pickup door. Hap sat slumped behind the steering wheel. Sara greeted him with the wag of her stub tail and a woof.

  “Hi, sweetie, is your daddy still in a grumpy mood?” Laramie slipped into the passenger’s seat and handed Hap an envelope, then scratched the dog’s head. “They let me cash your check: $289.45 each. Not bad for the third rodeo we’ve entered all year. Counting what we made in slack, we’ve hauled in over five hundred dollars each and still have the short go.”

  Hap mashed his temple hoping the pressure would alleviate the pain behind his left eye. “We’re goin’ to turn out of the short go.”

  “Why are we going to do that?” Laramie rolled his window down and drooped his arm outside. “We haven’t made a short go in over a year.”

  Hap chewed his tongue and forced himself to speak slowly. “You know dang well why. I don’t want to see that woman again, ever.”

  “Six years is a long time to not forgive.”

  “She ain’t ever asked forgiveness. Let’s drive to Presidio.”

  Headlights from a departing truck beamed across them like spotlights at a prison.

  “Two reasons we can’t do that. First, we got a chance to make another four to twelve hundred each if we draw a decent steer on Sunday.”

  Hap’s left hand tapped frustration on the steering wheel, but his right petted Sara as she nuzzled against his knee. “Money ain’t ever’thin’.”

  Laramie folded his share of the winnings and shoved them in his shirt pocket. “I thought money was the reason you are mad at Juanita Guzman.”

  “It ain’t just the money, Laramie. She lied to me and deceived me in a way that tore me in two.” His teeth locked tight. His mouth felt parched.

  “I was there, remember?” Laramie tugged a water bottle from the cup holder in the console. “That $6,120 she took off with was half mine.”

  “It was the way she done it.” Hap started the truck. “I’m goin’ to Presidio. How about you?”

  Laramie took a swig, then handed him the bottle. “I’m going to the dance at the sale barn. Brick said they serve free barbecued pork, and I’m hungry.” He got out of the truck, swung the door shut, then leaned back into the rig. “There’s a second reason we can’t leave now. It involves another girl.”

  “What girl?”

  “Sara.”

  Hap peered down at the dog, who now rested her head on his leg. “What about her?”

  “Annamarie said she’d come to Del Rio and pick up Sara in a couple of weeks at the most. It’s two weeks tomorrow. She’ll want her dog back. And I aim to be here when she returns.” He turned and ambled toward the lights of the arena.

  Hap turned off the diesel truck. He collapsed against the headrest, then shoved his winnings into his jeans pocket. One time, when Hap was in grade school, a teenage bully had chased him down the hall. He hid under Mr. Patterson’s desk for three hours. It was the last time he had backed away from a fight, but right now, he wished he had another desk.

  He scooted way down in the seat to make his presence less pronounced. “Sara, I don’t reckon I told you about this Juanita, did I? It was six years ago this month. Hap and I were at ‘The Daddy of Them All’ rodeo in Cheyenne. Frontier Days is the last full week in July. It thundered and showered ever’ afternoon. Not a cold rain, nope. It steamed hot and humid. Anyway, there was this barrel racer named Juanita Guzman.”

  Hap peered out into the hayfield turned parking lot. Trucks, horse trailers, and campers scattered like disorganized, giant tombstones, a silent witness to what used to be life. Seeing no human activity, he closed his eyes again.

  “I’d seen this Juanita around for a couple of years. She wasn’t my Juanita, but she ran close. She’s the kind of gal you dream about when you’re sixteen. I don’t know how to translate that to dog years. She’s the kind of gal, if you walk into a crowded room with her hangin’ on your arm, ever’ man in the place is thinkin’, There’s one lucky cowboy, and ever’ married woman is clutchin’ her husband’s arm.”

  Hap sat up, turned the key, then lowered both windows a couple of inches, letting in the aroma of French fries and old manure.

  “Anyway, she cottoned up to me that summer and we had some fun times. She’d laugh and say there wasn’t a better Juanita on the face of the earth. And who knows, maybe she was right. I liked the way her hand felt. I liked the way her lips felt. Shoot, little darlin’… I liked the way her ever’thin’ felt. That’s the closest I’ve got to givin’ up this quest.”

  Voices in the parking lot stopped him. In the shadows, a man held a little boy by the hand and packed a sleeping girl on his shoulder. Hap watched as the man tucked the children into car seats. He wondered if the guy knew how rich a man he was.

  Sara rolled on her back. Hap scratched her stomach. It felt soft like a rabbit pelt that’s been blow-dried.

  “It was so serious with this Juanita that we said if neither of us were married by the age of twenty-eight, we’d get hitched. At the t
ime, I berated myself for making that promise. But there were other nights I couldn’t wait five days, let alone five years.”

  When the drift of wind shifted, he could hear the distant beat of the bass guitar at the dance.

  “Well, we was gettin’ chummier by the week that summer when me and Laramie brought in the big bucks at Frontier Days. Finishin’ second to Speed and Rich was a big deal back then. About three in the mornin’, she came beatin’ on the side of our rig. Laramie had that old Ford of his and a camper he’d borrowed from Vin Dollarhide. Juanita was cryin’ hard when I went out to talk to her.”

  Sara rolled to her side and sighed.

  He continued to massage her.

  A white Dodge pickup’s engine started, and it pulled out of the parking lot. Diesel fumes lingered in the air.

  “She begged me to buy her truck, her trailer, and her two barrel horses. She said she needed cash in a hurry and would take the bus home. She was hysterical. I couldn’t get her to stop sobbin’.”

  A tall cowboy sauntered next to the truck and peered in. “Are you talkin’ to your dog?”

  Hap looked up, startled. “It helps her go to sleep.”

  “I know what you mean. My second wife was the same way.”

  Hap watched the stranger lope away. “Where was I? Oh, yeah… sittin’ on the front bumper, in the dark, me wearin’ nothin’ but Wranglers, she told me the story.

  “She said she got a phone call from her sister in Jackson. Her mom was in the emergency ward. She said their dad beat their mom up real bad. Juanita told me the reason she and her sister left home early was because he would come home drunk and…”

  Hap opened his eyes to make sure no one was around.

  “Anyway, she said she and her sister left home when her mom denied what they told her. The mom stuck it out, but he got worse after the daughters moved out. He’d go off on a rage and beat on the mother.

  “This time it was so bad they figured they had to move her and rent her a place of her own where he couldn’t find her. They were desperate for money.

  “Sara, a woman that upset… that troubled… well, I didn’t want her to sell her outfit. It was her life, her livelihood. When I got her calmed down, I told her she could take the Cheyenne winnin’s and go get her mamma settled. We’d figure out the details later. I told her to go right home and take care of things and we’d meet up at the Caldwell, Idaho, Night Rodeo…”

  Hap didn’t know how long he stared out into the night, but he didn’t start talking again until he heard a girl laugh, somewhere toward the bleachers.

  “She didn’t show up in Caldwell… or Ellensburg… or Pendleton… in fact, I never saw her after that night. Oh, but I heard plenty.”

  Hap noticed Sara’s eyes were closed.

  “Are you asleep? Maybe I’m borin’ you.”

  A loud bang on the side of a rig and a shout caused Hap to scan the parking lot. He surveyed the shadows but didn’t see any movement. The slight breeze carried over the smell of thick arena dust, old hay, and fresh manure. He locked his fingers and cracked his knuckles one at a time.

  Sara barked.

  Hap scratched her head.

  “Where was I? Oh, yeah. I hurt my shoulder and we headed home to Wyoming right after Pendleton. I got a phone call a week or so later. It was from Juanita’s aunt Becky. She had been trying to reach Juanita for weeks and heard that she and me were a number. Juanita’s father was in the hospital and had been asking for her.

  “I lit into that poor lady, telling her what I thought of Juanita’s daddy, how he treated his daughters and his wife. Aunt Becky got real quiet. Then she told me that the mother had died when Juanita was three years old, that there was no sister… no siblings at all… and that her father had raised her by himself. He was a teetotaler and Juanita ran off because he wouldn’t let her drink and carouse. Over the years, the aunt said, the only time she showed up was when she was short of cash. She ended with the warning that I should never lend Juanita money.”

  Hap recognized the tall, lanky, hatless cowboy swerving through the parking lot.

  “I tracked her down a couple times that next year. She was rodeoin’ in Arizona and New Mexico. When I called, she hung up. You can understand why I don’t aim to see her now.”

  Sara jumped up, jammed her front paws on the armrest, and let out two barks.

  “Yep, that’s Uncle Laramie. Maybe he’s bringin’ us some barbecue.”

  Laramie shoved a paper plate of steaming pork at Hap, then slid into the truck seat.

  “Did you see her?”

  Laramie shook his head. In the shadows of the contestant parking lot, he stabbed a bite of the sauce-coated meat. “Eli Keller said hello.”

  “Eli’s here?”

  “Just pulled out for New Mexico. Remember his little sis? She used to go down the road with him when she was a kid?”

  “She was a cutie.”

  “She’s still traveling with him, but now she’s Miss Rodeo New Mexico.”

  “Is she ridin’ that taupe-colored paint horse? I’ve never seen that color on another horse.”

  “Don’t know about that. You missed some other visits.”

  “I didn’t miss anything.”

  “This is good barbecue,” Laramie said. “I wouldn’t mind eating the same tomorrow night.”

  Hap wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. “You tryin’ to talk me into stayin’ for the short go?”

  “I think we should. We don’t ever turn out, you know that. We committed to this thing and we should see it through. Remember your lecture to E. A. Greene about how we never quit a job? Besides, we can use the money. Let’s stick it out a day and see what happens. Maybe Annamarie will show up looking for her baby.”

  Hap fed the boxer a French fry. “I’ll stay just as long as me and Sara can hang out here at the truck.”

  They tied off the horses’ lead ropes at the side of the trailer. Both men flopped on top of their sleeping bags stretched out on the packed brown grass pasture/parking lot next to the pickup. Sara slept between them.

  “A man cain’t go to sleep with a big ol’ dang shinin’ moon like that,” Hap grumbled.

  “Close your eyes.”

  “I did. I think I got thin eyelids.”

  “Pull a towel over your head.”

  “That’s easy for you to say. You can fall asleep any time you want.”

  “That’s not true. Sometimes people talk so much, a man can’t sleep.”

  Hap rolled over on his side. “I been layin’ here tryin’ to figure out what I’m goin’ to say if I see her.”

  “Don’t say anything. Just ignore her.”

  “I can’t do that. If she smiles and says, ‘Hi,’ what am I supposed to do?”

  “Be polite. Say, ‘Hello, Miss Guzman, I trust your life has been going well.’ Then tell her where she can spend eternity.”

  “Yeah, that’s kind of what I’m thinkin’.”

  “Good. That’s settled. Go to sleep.”

  “If she says she wants to try to explain it all to me, should I listen?”

  “Geez, Hap, it’s after midnight. Let it go for tonight.”

  “She probably ain’t as young and beautiful-lookin’ as she used to be.”

  “That’s right. She could be ugly and weigh enough to take on Mike Tyson. Go to sleep, partner.”

  “I ain’t never seen a good barrel racer who was plump, have you?”

  “Come on, Hap, give me a break. I’m tired. Real tired.” Laramie stood and dragged his sleeping bag to the front of the truck.

  “Where you goin’?”

  “I’m sleeping on the other side. See you in the morning, partner.”

  Sara’s growl caused Hap to roll over and reach for the dog. Three more panicked yaps and he sat straight up. The morning sky loomed dark slate gray. Ebony silhouettes in the contestant parking area slowly came into focus.

  Some of the shadowy forms hulked and glided like alien monsters in a cheap Hollywood
thriller.

  Sara growled at the two-thousand-pound beast that snorted and pawed hooves only a few feet from Hap.

  “Where did that dadgum bull come from?” He scooped up the quivering dog and jumped inside the cab of the truck, then scooted across and pushed open the passenger door. “Laramie, get in here!”

  His partner raised up on an elbow, then rubbed his eyes. “What’s goin’ on?” A one-horned Brahma bull thundered by only inches from Laramie’s sleeping bag.

  Barefoot and wearing only jeans, Laramie crawled into the truck.

  “The buckin’ bulls got loose,” Hap said.

  “Who’s rounding them up?”

  “I ain’t seen no one on horseback.”

  “Then let’s get going.”

  Laramie and Hap ran for the nervous horses, who strained against their lead ropes. Shouts echoed from the far side of the parking lot campground. Engines gunned. Horns honked.

  A huge, brindle shorthorn bull lumbered past Hap. Sara leaped from his arms and barked her way after the bull.

  “Sara!”

  Hap sailed his hat straight at the bull.

  The massive bovine whipped around and ignored the yapping dog. Instead, he glared at Hap, who reached down and scooped up his hat.

  “Come on, bull,” he shouted as he blustered into a clearing, away from Laramie, who was saddling the horses. “Come on, you snot-faced butcher shop bait!”

  The bull snorted.

  Sara snarled.

  Hap waved his hat. “Come on, your mamma’s a cheeseburger at McDonald’s!”

  The bull lunged at the black, beaver-felt cowboy hat. At the last moment, Hap darted sidewise and slapped the bull in the rear with his hat.

  “Come on, is that it? Is that your best shot?”

  The boxer ran up behind the bull with a tirade of canine curses.

  “Sara… no! Get back here.”

  The bull’s swift left hoof caught Sara midsection and flung the dog twenty feet. She staggered up, then dove under the horse trailer.

  Hap peered down to see if the dog was injured. He heard the snort, then felt the huge animal’s forehead slam against his backside. He reached around and grabbed the bull’s horns and was lifted straight up as the bull tried to toss him off.