Dream Wheels

by Richard Wagamese

  “I hear ya,” Lionel said.

  “The boy ain’t much for engines. Never was. Never seen much use beyond the usual. Rebuilding’s a whole other tune.”

  “Go on,” Lionel said.

  “Well, the fact of the matter is, Daddy, that Joe Willie don’t come across as being too partial to much right now. Mystifies the shit right outta me how you figure on getting him off the porch.”

  “I’m gonna tell him he can’t.”

  “Can’t?”

  “Can’t do it.”

  Birch smoked awhile and gave his father a sidelong glance. “You got a mighty peculiar way with motivation,” he said.

  “Maybe,” Lionel said. “But think about it. Other than the back lot and the chutes, where does a cowboy spend most of his time?”

  “On the road, I suppose.”

  “On the road in what?”

  “In a truck.”

  “Exactly.”

  Birch nodded. “All right, but that still don’t get the boy off the porch.”

  “Maybe not. But, son, if you couldn’t have the whole deal, what would you want?”

  “Well, sir, I reckon I’d want me a little of it.”

  “Exactly. I mean to give Joe Willie a little of it back. See, right now he’s pining away for the whole deal because that’s all he can see he’s deprived of. Not being able to have it all hurts like a son of a bitch, and I figure the only way to ease that misery is by giving him a piece of it to hold on to. Trucks’n cowboys been one and the same for as long as there’s been a highway to a short go, and that old truck carried the three of us to a lotta shows in its time. Recollect?”

  “That I do,” Birch said. “But she was a clunker when I had her. There’s a lot of road under her. Maybe too much.”

  “Maybe. But I don’t think so. The road and all them miles is the whole deal now.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  Lionel smoked and looked across the ranch and valley toward the mountains. “When you hang ’em up finally, whether it’s hurt or old age, you find out that all you have left is the stories. You got Yuma, Yakima, Laughlin River, all them grand old names, all the people you met when you were there. But you got the stories of getting there too. Damn, I still recollect nine of us all piled into that old girl. None of us did a lick at Abilene and we pooled whatever slim pickins we had for gas and growlies and headed up the line the only way we could. We took turns sleeping in the box with all the gear and riding and driving up front. You get hold of people in times like that, get hold of them firm, in ways that most people never get a chance to and wouldn’t understand. The story of them times is what makes you who you finally become, and that old truck got a lot of stories in her. Not just yours or mine or my daddy’s. That old girl got the taste of every tale that was ever told in her along whatever stretch of highway she ever drove. She carries the story of our lives, son. That’s why I go and sit in her every night and it’s why I wanna turn the boy loose on bringin’ her back. She’s the little part of rodeo he can have still.”

  “But you’re gonna tell him he can’t.”

  “That I am.”

  “Why?”

  “What’s the easiest way to get a cowboy to do something?” Lionel asked.

  Birch laughed, took off his hat and slapped it on his thigh. “Tell him he can’t,” he said. “Tell him he surely can’t.”

  “Cowpoke’ll move mountains even when he don’t know it’s a mountain that he’s moving,” Lionel said.

  Birch ground out his cigarette with his boot heel. “It’s a mountain,” he said quietly. “It sure enough is a mountain.”

  They found a small two-bedroom apartment in a neighbourhood where Claire had never lived. It was a working-class neighbourhood, and the sounds of daily busyness rose off the sidewalks like a melody hummed in a low register and the sounds of children playing eased upward from the small park across the street in small waves so that the area became the wash of pale sunlight that fell through her living-room window. Claire loved it immediately. Lisa Keenan arranged a reduced rent in exchange for painting, and Claire fell into the work with a fervour she hadn’t experienced before. She chose a pale yellow for the kitchen and bath, a bluish green for the living room and bedrooms.

  “It’s the colour of sage in the mountains,” she told Lisa. The social worker had been drawn to Claire and her story and now that she had reclaimed her independence Lisa had become a friend and an ally. “I want to wake up to that colour. It makes me happy.”

  The two of them painted the apartment, and while it dried they shopped for used furniture. By the time Claire had outfitted her new apartment with the essentials it was a bright, charming, casual home. When she stood in the middle of it and looked around, Claire felt proud, strong and resilient. For the first time in her adult life she had built a life, or at least the foundation of a life, on her own initiative and drive, and the feeling within her was as close to freedom as she imagined that feeling to be. She sat on the window ledge and looked out over the neighbourhood and felt a sense of being set down somewhere, placed intentionally like a precious thing, a keepsake perhaps, and she found herself shedding silent tears in the sunlight of that window.

  “Don’t be sad,” Lisa said. “It’s wonderful. You have a wonderful new home.”

  “I know,” Claire said. “I’ve never had one all my own before.”

  “Never?”

  “No. There was always a man.”

  “Well, there’s just you now.”

  “That’s what makes me sad. I wish my son were here.”

  “He will be. But use this time, Claire. This apartment gives you a base. From here you can find a job, get some training, maybe take some college courses. Anything. You can choose anything now. By the time Aiden comes home you’ll be amazed how far you will have come.”

  “Really? It seems impossible.”

  Lisa sat on the window ledge beside her and took her hand. “You’re a very strong woman. No one could live the life you’ve led without an incredible amount of strength. You’re a survivor. And I know a place that’s looking for a woman who knows how to survive.”

  “A job, you mean.”

  “Yes. It’s a women’s centre. They do a lot of peer counselling and I think you’d be perfect for it.”

  “I have no training,” Claire said.

  “Are you kidding me? You have a master’s degree in survival, girl. Sometimes life gives you a better training, prepares you far better to reach people, touch them, affect them, than any other kind of schooling does. I’d trade my pieces of paper for half of what you know any day of the week. I’ve spoken to them already and they want to see you.”

  “No!”

  “Yes. I’ve given you a strong recommendation. They owe me a few actually, and I think you’d be wonderful. It doesn’t pay much. You wouldn’t have a whole lot after the rent and food here but they pay for training, college, and the pay goes up the more training you get.”

  Claire laughed. “College? I barely made it out of high school and that was years ago.”

  “You’ll do fine,” Lisa said. “If you put yourself into this with half the grit you showed me at Eric’s that morning, you’ll sail, girl. Trust me.”

  “I do,” Claire said.

  “Then trust yourself.”

  The two women sat on the window ledge in the sunshine and held hands. Around them they could hear the sounds of the neighbourhood through the open window and it mingled with the smell of fresh paint and sawn wood from the new baseboards so that there was a keenness to the air, sharp, redolent with energy and what Claire believed was possibility. She closed her eyes and drank it all in, filled herself with it.

  “I can do that,” Claire said. She stood and faced Lisa. “Now, let’s go and fill that refrigerator. I’ve got things that need doing.”

  Joe Willie moved to the front porch and settled himself on the swing seat. The easy back-and-forth motion took the feel of the weight of his leg away, and as he d
rifted into the sway it lulled the ache in his shoulder too. It was late morning and the brightness of the day irritated him. He clenched and unclenched his good hand and thought about all there was to do on a day like this. For a working ranch and a working cowboy there generally was never enough daylight to accomplish everything that needed tending to. But as he watched his mother work a colt in the round pen, the wranglers shifting stock from graze to corral and his father busy loading square bales into the barn, he knew there was nothing he could contribute. No one needed a hobbled-up, one-armed cowboy. Hell, he couldn’t even sit a horse to bring in steers. All he was good for was sitting in an old man’s porch swing watching life happen and waiting for someone to throw him a morsel of talk. Truth was, he didn’t even want that. He had nothing to say. Nothing that would fill an empty sleeve or the gaping hole in the centre of him.

  “Boy,” his grandfather said from behind him in the house. “You busy?”

  Joe Willie closed his eyes. “No,” he said. “I’m not exactly what you’d call frantic right now.”

  “Good,” Lionel said. “Let’s take a walk.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “I’m not kidding. It’ll do you good.”

  “Where?”

  “I want to show you something out to the equipment shed.”

  Joe Willie stared at him a moment, then shifted his gaze across the main pasture to where the shed sat a few hundred yards away. “You expect me to walk out there? With this?” he asked, pointing to the crutch.

  “Sure do.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “Could be, but we’re goin’ nonetheless.”

  “What if I don’t want to?”

  Lionel crossed in front of where his grandson sat and leaned against the rail of the porch. He built a smoke and kept his eye on Joe Willie all the while. “Fact is, boy,” he said, pausing to lick the paper, “I don’t much care what you don’t want. There’s something that needs showing and there’s something that needs saying. And it all takes place out to that equipment shed.”

  “You’re telling me what to do?”

  “I’m telling you. That’s a fact.”

  “What if I can’t make it?”

  “Then I’ll carry you.”

  “You can’t do that.”

  “I can and I will. If it takes me all damn day, I’ll get you there.”

  “Stubborn cuss, aren’t you?”

  “Gotta be,” Lionel said, and they looked at each other silently.

  Joe Willie saw his grandfather against the pale blue and green of the mountains to the west. He looked like one of those western portraits, as seamlessly part of that backdrop as the treeline on the mountains themselves. As he bent his head to light the cigarette, Joe Willie saw the wrinkles in his face etched sharply against the harsh flare of the match. He trusted the old man, had always depended on his guidance, his opinion, his experience in everything. Now was no different. Despite the aggravation he felt over the intrusion, he struggled to his feet and waved away the hand Lionel offered. “It’s that blasted important to you?” he asked.

  “Surely,” Lionel said.

  “Well, let’s go, then,” he said, and they moved slowly off the porch.

  It wasn’t easy. He hadn’t tried to walk across anything but floor and pavement, and the uneven ground pitched him off balance, but when Lionel offered a steadying hand Joe Willie ignored it and humped along harder. Even the dog seemed to understand the necessity for focus and padded patiently ahead a few yards, then turned and waited for them to catch up before skipping off again. Joe Willie hitch-stepped awkwardly, yard by yard, and by the time they were three-quarters of the way he was covered in sweat. Neither of them spoke. They stopped so Joe Willie could gather his breath, and when he looked at his grandfather Lionel could see fire in his eyes. The same fire he’d seen in the chute just before he would nod hard to the rope men at the gate, slapping his hat hard to his head, the tendons in his neck stretched to their limit in a deep, hard scowl of concentration and his eyes burning, already seeing the horse or the bull rocketing out of the chute, the energy of him focussed on one tiny pinprick of time. Joe Willie stared at the next fifty yards of ground, heaving deep breaths, then looked at Lionel and nodded. They covered the distance in about fifteen minutes.

  Joe Willie hadn’t been in the shed since he was maybe thirteen or fourteen, and as he gazed at the mayhem of artifacts and curios it amazed him that nothing had been moved in all that time. The truck still sat where it had always sat. The dog gave a yip and ran ahead to the driver’s door, where he thumped his tail against the oil-and-grease-stained ground and waited for Lionel to open the door.

  “We’re sitting in that?” Joe Willie asked.

  “Only place out here,” Lionel said.

  “Sure it won’t fall apart with our weight? The three of us?” Joe Willie asked, jutting his chin toward the dog.

  “She’ll hold up.” Lionel opened the door for him and Joe Willie leaned his good hand on the old man’s shoulder to get up on the running board. He sidled in and settled himself, then handed the crutch to his grandfather, who leaned it against the front fender.

  “I ever tell you about the Ping-Pong Pawnee?” Lionel asked as he stepped around the front and made his way to the driver’s side.

  “Don’t recollect it,” Joe Willie said.

  Lionel opened the door and the dog sprang in, licking at Joe Willie’s neck as he took his place in the middle of the seat and stared out the windshield. “Your great-grandfather told it,” Lionel said as he pulled the door closed. “Around 1908 it was. Daddy’d been with Pawnee Bill’s Wild West show. He was one of them wild red Indians getting shot off his pony in the big finale.”

  “I heard this,” Joe Willie said.

  “Not everything,” Lionel said. “Daddy’d been about everywhere he could have imagined with that show, Chicago, New York, Paris even. Thought he’d seen everything there was. But one day as he was crossing the lot to get his horse ready for the show, he saw something that changed his life—and mine, your daddy’s and yours.”

  “What was that?” Joe Willie asked, absently rubbing the dog behind the ears and staring out the windshield.

  “Well, there were some war chiefs in that show. Real warriors who’d fought the cavalry at the end of it all in the late 1800s. Great chiefs. Great men. Daddy said he was always proud to be around those men because he could feel the history in them. Said it made him feel more Indian. One of them was a great Pawnee chief. Pawnees were tough sumbitches. Fearsome fighters. Daddy said when you looked at that man, even then, even all painted up and wearing a headdress of painted turkey feathers and galloping a shod horse across an arena, you got a sense of all of it, how it had been one time, how powerful it was, the life our people led.

  “But as he walked across that lot that day he saw that great war chief all decked out in his regalia holding a ping-pong paddle and batting that ball back and forth with another chief while people laughed and pointed and someone took a picture. It changed it all for him. That scene. That image.”

  “Changed what?” Joe Willie asked.

  Lionel began to build another smoke. “Changed how he looked at himself, I guess. He couldn’t stomach being a cartoon Injun anymore. He walked out on old Pawnee Bill that day and rode his first rodeo a week later. Made the short go with the broncs and a fistful of cash and that was the start of it all for us. If Daddy hadn’t seen the Ping-Pong Pawnee none of us would’ve rodeo’d. Who knows what we mighta been.”

  Lionel finished twisting his cigarette and held out the makings to his grandson. When Joe Willie nodded he began building one for him too.

  “Coulda told me on the porch,” Joe Willie said.

  “Coulda,” Lionel said. “But I wanted you to see the truck.”

  “I seen her before.”

  “I know. But I never told you how she come to be.”

  “Still coulda told me on the porch.”

  Lionel handed Joe
Willie the finished cigarette. He lit both for them and they sat there awhile, smoking.

  “Well?” Joe Willie said finally.

  “In them days it wasn’t easy for us. Big-money rodeo was a white man’s game. The idea of an Indian cowboy seemed as off centre to them as it did to us. Daddy was one of the first to make a dent in it. When I come along all I knew was rodeo. Grew up with it. Got my schoolin’ in it. There was nothing else for me when I got to be old enough to choose and Daddy understood that—that it was my blood. I got to be a regular at the pay window and it was starting to look like I was on my way to the top. Course then there was no jetting or airplane riding around from show to show, a cowboy had to drive, and I had no wheels. Been bumming rides all along but that was mighty unpredictable at the best of times, and Daddy wanted to see me make it, wanted to see me be a champion. Only way was to have your own ride. This’d be the middle of ’41, the year I met your grandmother.

  “Anyhow, Daddy’d been saving up money for years and keeping it on the sly. One day he just drives this old girl up and hands me the keys. She was a beat-up and sorry-looking mess. Rancher’d used her for pretty much everything and she was covered in mud, dented up from wrangling steers, busted-off tailpipe so there was smoke curling up around both sides of the box and the inside smelling like old horseshit and wet cow dog. But she drove good.

  “I stood there with my eyes bugged out and he hands me the keys and says, ‘Well, she ain’t exactly dream wheels like the young bucks say, but she’ll get you where you wanna go.’ And she did. I fixed her up with winnings and we drove the hell out of her for two full seasons. When I got busted in Mesquite your grandmother and I drove here in her. She built this ranch. Everything that’s part of what you see was hauled here in this old girl, and when Birch went pro he took her on the road with him. She’s been to every place with a name that rings in a cowboy’s heart and she’s been sung in, puked in, slept in, cried in, celebrated in and likely or not had some damn good lovin’ made in her too.”