The bull kicked and spun in celebration of its freedom and the men raced around it trying to get to the man who lay in a heap on the ground. They disconcerted him. He wanted the quiet of the chute that led out of the arena now but the men darting around his head made it hard for him to find it. He speared his horns at them to clear them from his way. He kicked. The crowd roared and he saw the man he’d flung from his back try to stand. A hat was waved in his face and he charged at it. When his vision cleared all the bull could see was the man he’d thrown and the chute he wanted into beyond him. He charged toward it. He felt the puffy give of flesh and the snap of bone as he charged over the man and he kicked backwards once when he was past it and felt the dull thunk of contact. The crowd noise was shrill and hard on his ears and See Four trotted heavily into the chute to escape. As he moved deeper into the shadowed recess he felt time regain itself, reassert itself, and he calmed gradually, glad of the escape.
In the arena time was still in disarray.
book one
they came up through the draw and he watched the dog run rabbits. He ran low to the ground, his nose skimming the grass, ears flat against his head, tail straight out behind him like a rudder, back paws kicking up tufts of dust so that even in his stealth the flushing of rabbits from the brush took on the illusion of speed. When a hare bolted the dog gave a short burst of pursuit, then idled back into the low prowl again. The man admired the old sheepdog’s determination even though time had erased the speed and agility of its youth. The twenty yards or so of chase was all the dog could manage now, but fourteen years would do that to a dog.
The man wouldn’t mind a smidgen of that exuberance himself if he could get it. It was the best he could do sometimes to saddle up the old buckskin mare and take his evening ride. Old. Geezer. Coot. Funny how when you arrived at that marker, when you finally, irrevocably qualified for it, everything in your life arrived there with you. Old dog, old horse, old saddle. He laughed to himself. Eighty-four and he could still ride, still saddle his own mount, still muck out the stall and never suffer any ache. He never galloped though. Not anymore. No, him and the old dog and the old horse merely walked now, walked for an hour or so every night down the draw, along the river, through the trees awhile and then back up to the equipment shed to watch the sun go down behind the mountains then moseying homeward before it got too dark to cause the old woman any worry. The dog loped back and walked beside the horse, looking up at the old man as if looking for affirmation.
“I seen ya,” he said. “Them rabbits never had a chance.”
The dog skipped off a few steps and they eased out of the draw and onto the flat where the equipment shed sat at the far end of the main pasture. When they got there he dismounted, dropped the reins so the horse could graze, gave it a rub along the neck and walked toward the shed. He’d built it out here on purpose. It was his place. The one place on the whole ranch where no one interfered. Hell, no one ever really ventured there but him and the dog. It wasn’t much more than boards and beams but it didn’t need to be. Inside it was a maze of gear; tools, tack, saws, plowshares, axes, whiffletrees from the draft team he’d broken the ground with, engine parts, dead radios, a 1950s television, toys, snowshoes, rope, fishing gear and rusted guns. Most people might have labelled it a mess, a confusion of junk, but to him it was a museum. His story was here; the whole range of him in the hump and cluster and shadow and odour of the place. He loved the smell of old leather, oil, rope and wood. The way he figured it, smell was the one sense that allowed you to hold on to things, to remember, recollect, reassemble a life, and he came here to do just that. The dog and him would climb up into the cab of the old truck and he’d roll down the windows and sit there staring at the line and curve and lurch of everything, remembering with small, satisfied nods of the head. Eventually he’d focus on the panorama laid out beyond the door and he’d sit and smoke and watch the sun go down, the dog’s head laid across his lap.
When he’d first come to this valley there was nothing here but open pastureland and the woman’s dreams. Her family were descendants of the gold miners who’d first opened the valley, and the property the ranch sat on had been hers from the day she was born. Her brother’s and sister’s places were on the adjoining sections. When she brought him here he was incapable of seeing anything but she saw it all. It was like she could see directly into the future, and as they stood there, on a night pretty much like the one he’d just rode through, she told him how it would be. It turned out almost to the word and he loved her for that, though in the beginning he had his share of doubts.
Back then an Indian man and a white woman was still considered a strange union. The fact that he’d been nothing but a rodeo vagabond all his life and she was the product of a settled family with land and money and a local name did nothing to stall the talk when they got here. He drew back some when he was around people but she strode right into a room, daring anyone to say anything to her or about her, and when she introduced him it was with pride and a fierce, visible loyalty. He smiled. Folks never knew enough at first to avoid antagonizing her but they learned quick enough. Couldn’t help but. It took a year or so but when the neighbours and the townsfolk saw his industry, the dawn-to-dark routine he put in building and clearing and stocking the place, the fact he never drank like they expected him to and the fact that he and the woman clearly, outright loved each other, they mellowed and eventually, slowly, invisibly, they crossed the line into acceptance and, later, admiration. Now, sixty years later, they were merely Lionel and Victoria and the ranch was merely Wolf Creek and the talk was merely about their grandson, Joe Willie, the rodeo champion. Three generations of Wolfchilds had lived on this land and he nodded in satisfaction. She’d known all along that it would work. She’d known all along that love was enough to pan the gold of family out of the rough pastureland of this valley. She’d known all along that the lanky Indian cowboy she fell in love with at the Cheyenne Rodeo was the man she wanted to build it with, and he thanked her in his heart for that wisdom.
The busted kneecap he got in Mesquite in ’42 never healed up right, and after a season of trying to get past it, the bucking and falling got to be too much and he’d had to hang up the spurs. They’d driven here in the truck, with his tack and gear thrown in the back. Rodeo was his blood though, and once they’d got the place up and able to run, it was a natural choice for him to look at how he could still keep a hand in. Stock contracting was the easiest and surest way. With all his connections in the chutes and on the back lots they’d had a built-in market. They’d made the rounds of local rodeos looking for brood stock and the first bull they’d gotten turned out to be a prolific sire of rough-and-tumble bucking bulls. The horses were her concern and she’d proven to have a keen eye for the wild, unpredictable nature required for good bucking broncs. It hadn’t taken long. A few seasons later they were turning out prime rodeo stock every year. He’d given up the trucking end of things when they started to ship too many head and it kept him from the rodeos. He ached for it then, yearned for it like a lost love. But Birch took care of that.
Birch had been a solid rodeo rider. He knew the ins and outs of sticking to a bronc and he understood completely the narrow hunk of territory he needed to sit to ride a bull and how to stay there. He had a good career. The old truck had gotten Birch around the circuit too, and remembering that the old man reached out and rubbed a small circle of dust from the dashboard. Good truck. Loyal, like it knew its role in the Wolfchild scheme of things and had played it as long as it could. It died about the same time as Birch’s career.
Even though he was in the money more times than not, Birch never made the championship rounds. He was just a good, solid rodeo cowboy, never spectacular, never the whole deal. Not like Joe Willie. Nope, his grandson was a pure natural. Tall and lean, wiry, he was built to ride and from the moment he rode his first sheep you could see that this boy’s butt and the ground were not meant to meet up very often. He rode his first steer at five and
from there it was plain to see where he was headed. Birch and he had coached him on the bulls and the woman had taught him horses. He could ride anything. He was a national teen champion every year and when he finally went fulltime with the men it was largely no contest at every rodeo he entered. With a few good rides at the National Finals that night he’d be World Champion All-Round Cowboy: champion in the saddle bronc, bareback and bulls. It took a whole heap of cowboy to accomplish that, and Joe Willie was the purest rider the old man had ever seen. Joe Willie had made it possible for the ranch to become what it had. The championship money, endorsements and appearance fees went into turning the ranch into a successful family enterprise. Wolfchild stock was regarded as the prime rodeo stock to be had, and the family worked hard to maintain both the bloodline and their connection to the sport. For him it was the pleasure of all pleasures to look around him and see his family together in one place bound by the dust and dirt, the scent and sound of rodeo; family ties snug as a latigo strap.
The dog barked and the old man looked up to see her trot a horse up to the door of the shed.
“There’s been an accident,” she said.
“Joe Willie?” he asked.
“Yes. It’s not good, Lionel. It’s not good at all.”
Around him the light faded into night.
Claire Hartley barely moved. She kept her breathing small, short, measured, each dollop of air gauged to keep her awake and maintain the calm, the stillness, the safety of the scant space between the top of her thighs and the back of the man’s. Heat. The radiant warmth of her skin against his offered him sufficient assurance to sleep, snoring rhythmically, one hand thrown backwards, draped over her hip bone, the fingers contouring the curve of her buttocks. The whiskey smell spewed into the room with each snore. It seeped from his skin, hung in the air like the curses from an hour ago, and her throat constricted from its sour, sickly richness.
The sex had been rough. It always was. He’d been demanding from the moment he reeled through the door, sweeping her into a fierce bear hug, feet off the floor, twirling her in a clumping caveman dance around the kitchen, his coarse, unshaven cheeks scraping against the sensitive skin of her neck, chafing, his tongue darting lasciviously against the back of her ear. Then he’d plopped her down on the counter, spread her knees with one large hand and inserted himself there, pulling her closer, plumbing her with his tongue, the tang of ferment from the after-work beers cloying, nearly gagging her, and his hands kneading the press of her rump on the counter. No words. There never were. Only the grunt and moan and mutter of lust and her silence. It’s what hurt the most, her silence, the utter inability to even scream, protest, challenge the brutish intrusion, the invasion of her. She felt his hardness as he slid her off the counter, wrapped her legs about him only to keep from tumbling them both to the floor and felt the solid urge of him. The pots burbled gently on the stove, their wafted promise ignored, and she reached for the knob as they stumbled past but it slid beyond her outstretched fingers.
He’d thrown her onto the couch. She landed square on her back and bounced twice before her weight settled into the cushions. He’d stood there, unbuckling, unzipping, leering at her, talking now in a garbled mélange of curses and loutish description of her body, his desire, his intentions, his control. She didn’t move. That was her part, the one he wanted her to play, the one he needed performed in order for him to move into the realm he needed to inhabit. Acquiescence. Surrender. He needed surrender. The black woman silent before his power. She waited wordlessly and when he reached upward along her thigh and groped for the thin fabric of underwear, the humping of her rear was a preventative move more than invitation. He yanked them from her. He pulled apart the zipper along the back of the thin sundress and threw it from her. He forgot about the shoes. He always did. Instead he raised her heels above his shoulders and speared downward.
She went places after that. She closed her eyes and travelled to the places she’d gone to all her life when the noise and the motion and the vision got to be too much for her. She went to the imagined freedom of the mountains. She went to a splendid day with the wind bringing the scent of juniper and pine and sage to her as she rode along a trail dappled with shadow. She felt the gentle bump of the saddle pommel against her womanhood. She felt the sway and step of the horse’s girth between her thighs. She felt the polished leather rub rhythmically against her rear. She felt all that languid, sensual motion, the antithesis of this savage pummelling of her vagina. Then she went to the boy’s birth; the joy of it, the agony of bringing him to the light. The terrible hurt followed by the most incandescent beauty lying nestled in her arms. She went there.
The boy was out. He always was. It was an unspoken pact between them that he would stay away until nine or so before phoning and getting her mumbled coded reply that all was settled there. She was glad of that. Glad that they knew enough of survival to engage in this alliance of deception, to allow the venom to spew before coming home to perform the perfunctory roles of home and family for his convenience. She went to the life the boy and she had shared, the measure of his company the benchmark of what she knew as happiness.
The man arched and bellowed like a great whale. He turned her, lifted her into the position he required, slapped, gripped, squeezed, bit and battered her with his penis until the false stamina of booze gave way and he groaned loudly before collapsing on top of her, murmuring gentle noodlings of love in her ear on clouds of boozy vapour. Then he’d sleep. If she woke him he’d be angered and the sullenness would last all evening, taken out on her and the boy in spiteful looks and curses before the booze took over again and he slumped to the bed and gave them reprieve. That’s where she lay now. In the amnesty of orgasm.
Soon, when he made even the smallest of moves, she would rise and repair dinner, serve it to him at the coffee table where he flicked through the channels seeking a ball game or action movie to fill his night. Dinner, laundry, neatening was the dance she did each night. The avoidance dance that got her to the place where he slept and she could relax, think, plot the escape she craved but felt helpless to effect.
But tonight he turned. Turned and slipped a hand to her throat, pushing her back into the pillow and rising like an assassin in the dark. She closed her eyes and waited. Waited for the light of memory to take her back again to sunlight and space and freedom. It never came.
Foley had never seen anything like it. The arm had been torn from the socket and only the strength of the muscles had kept it from being separated from the torso. From the paramedic reports, he gathered that the young bull rider had been unable to free the latching hand from the bull and had been flopped about mercilessly for a good thirty seconds. It didn’t seem like a long time, but when Foley considered the prospect of being whipped about by a ton of animal it must have been an eternity. It must have seemed that way to the young cowboy too. All of the muscles had been ripped savagely. The deltoids, sub-scapularis, subspinatus and infraspinatus muscles were shredded. Shredded. The rotator cuff was gone. Just gone. Disappeared. Vanished, vamoosed, as the cowboys would say. Right now the shoulder sat completely out of joint, and Foley suspected that the whiplash effect of the bull’s thrashing coupled with the twisting of the cowboy’s body had done the same to the ligaments as well. But that wasn’t all that worried him.
The young man’s leg was fractured. Not merely broken but stomped, pulverized. Foley suspected the break had happened when the legs had been slammed to the ground and then the bull had galloped over him. The femur was a mess. When they’d rolled the gurney in through the doors the cowboy was conscious. That surprised Foley. Normally people in that much pain went into shock and lost consciousness, but the cowboy gripped his hand when he stooped to look at him and Foley had felt the coiled strength of his grip.
“Bad, Doc? Huh?” he’d asked.
“We’ll see,” Foley had told him.
What he saw he didn’t like. All the normal attachments that connected the arm to the shoulder were
gone. The joint could be pinned perhaps, but the pinning could easily render the arm immobile, incapable of the normal round operation that allowed the arm to be lifted, turned inward and outward, swung. The leg would never be the same. He’d walk, but with a severe limp, and Foley knew he’d never ride again. At least, not as a competitive rider, not as rodeo bull rider. From the initial X-rays Foley determined that the only solution appeared to be a rod down the middle of the bone itself and then a series of screws to attach the bone fragments. Six months down the road, after the cast was off, the cowboy could start strength exercises to build back muscle in the thigh, but the leg would never, ever bear the pounding of bull riding, perhaps not even riding a horse easily.
The young man slept. The morphine had defeated his gritty hold on consciousness, and Foley’s next move was to call in the bone specialist and prepare him for surgery on the leg. The arm would take some consultation, and Foley suspected the young cowboy was due for a lot of surgery over the next twenty-four hours. It was going to be tough, but from the tensile grip he’d felt earlier he believed the young man possessed an inordinate amount of strength. He’d need it.
A half dozen cowboys milled about in the emergency area. Foley had treated a number of them over the years and was always impressed with the way they shrugged it all off and began healing in their minds even before the necessary surgery. For them, it seemed, a broken bone was a way of life, and even the concussions, the fractured ribs, punctured lungs and assortment of other results of allowing yourself to be thrown about at will by a wild horse or bull were the price of admission to a lifestyle he couldn’t, with his Ivy League background, comprehend. This was different, however. This was being taken right out of the life. This was the end of the trail.
Dream Wheels Page 2