“Why?” Joe Willie asked.
“Because it’s the only way to find out what’s in it for you. Why the lesson come wrapped the way she’s wrapped.”
“Yeah, well, take the shortcut, I say.”
“And what’s that, son?”
“Put the sumbitch on four. If he holds on to that you might have something to talk about. If he face-plants like I figure, it don’t rightly matter how she’s wrapped.”
He eased his hat lower on his head and made his way toward the barn to prepare for his evening hike up Iron Mountain. As he passed the wranglers in the corral showing Aiden how to rosin the bull rope, he shook his head and spat on the ground. The boy looked up and the two of them stared at each other. Joe Willie stopped in his tracks. Aiden held the look. The wranglers looked back and forth at the two of them, waiting. Finally, Joe Willie shook his head and moved on toward the barn.
“Kid’s got stones,” he muttered.
Played out in slow motion the ride took on a ghostly quality. There was an eerie dreaminess about the way the violent bucking and twisting of the bull and the extension of the arms and legs of the rider came together then flowed apart. Slowed down to a few inches of tape per second, eight seconds of ride lasted more than a minute, longer with rewinds and freeze-frame. It was all about explosion. He could see that from the way the bull burst from the chute into the wildly gyrating spins, four-legged leaps and explosive kicks that all appeared in slowed-down time like a giant horned accordion, collapsing, unfolding, collapsing again. There was an impossible elasticity that stretched out magically in the way the bull’s head and shoulders could twist one way while his trunk and rear went opposite while lashing out with his back hooves all at the same time. Then came the jaw-dropping breaches of gravity. Nothing that large and heavy should be able to leap that high. Not without thirty yards of running room to build speed. Not even then. Yet there it was. Elevated straight up from a force of propulsion that could only come from rage, a powerful wave of flesh rising unbelievably in slow motion with the rider on its back resembling a surfer far out to sea, reduced to flotsam, shrunk by the sheer tide of the bull cresting beneath the bull rope, building more and more momentum, waiting to crash him onto the hard-packed coast of the corral. It hung in the air, head thrown back then lowered, bawling, horns thrust fiercely side to side, globs of snot flung from its nose, the great shoulders hunched then stretched and the wide girth of it levitated suddenly over five feet of daylight beneath the dangling clatter of the clank belt. He felt the power of it. Awesome. Terrifying. Thrilling. Over and over he played the ride. Then others. Each time it was the same, the same cataclysmic release of energy, brief sometimes, brutal, punishing, and longer other times, the eight seconds an eternity, the inferno of it captivating, horrifying. He couldn’t get enough of it. Everything about the bulls called to him, called to a primal something he could feel in the gut, like the feeling he got just before a fight in the joint, a gathering of will, power and strength steeped in a vitriolic stew of fear, anxiety and sheer excitement. Played out in slow motion, the ride became magnetic.
Eventually, he turned his focus to the rider. He leaned closer to the television, the remote pressed to his chest, and watched the lean power of Joe Willie Wolfchild. In slow motion the man rode like a ribbon flowing outward and inward, looped and straightened with every motion of the bull. There was an ancient, barbarian quality to the deep scowl on his face and a warrior-like intensity to the plant of him in the pocket, the spot behind the shoulders of the bull becoming sacred ground to be defended, protected and occupied relentlessly. Aiden paid rapt attention to the thrust of his legs, the spurring at the neck as though coaxing the bull even further into rage. He watched closely the small adjustments the camera caught, the tiny lateral moves to regain the pocket or the desperate hauls back into place when the bull forced him dangerously over the shoulders or backwards closer to the seat of the tornado. Every move became a battle. Every second a private struggle. All of it, everything, titanic, colossal, insane. He watched until his eyes burned and the tiredness forced him to normal speed. The thrashing Joe Willlie endured was purely violent. Nothing in his experience prepared him for the brutality of those moments, and as he watched the rides he began to see the links, the seamless unity between Joe Willie and the bulls forged in a quality of courage he’d never experienced either. He watched every ride. He watched the man walk toward the camera after, hat thrown off, hair askew, the hard grimace slackening visibly into a great easy grin, the elastic strength of him impressive in its easy stroll toward the camera. In the background the flash of bull fighters chasing the monster back to his lair. The man, oblivious now, at ease and pointing to someone in the crowd, grinning, waving, safe back home on earth again to await the next challenge.
Claire wrestled with the martingale. Victoria told her to tack up the same horse she’d ridden the night before. She could be a spooky sort at times and needed the extra rein to keep her from throwing her head around during the ride. The trouble was, Claire couldn’t figure top from bottom now. She’d done it with Johanna’s help, and obviously there was a way to hook it to the bridle, but try as she might she couldn’t discern it. The length of leather lay in her hands and she willed herself to stare it down long enough to figure it out.
“You lost there, ma’am?” someone said behind her.
She turned. Joe Willie stood there with a length of rope coiled around one shoulder. He stared at her placidly and she found herself struggling for words.
“Well, yes,” she said. “I’ve got the rest figured but this has me bamboozled.” She held the martingale out toward him, and Joe Willie nodded.
“Here,” he said and shrugged the rope off his shoulder. He took the rein and stepped into the stall beside her. The horse nickered, threw its head about and stamped its back feet. Joe Willie moved calmly, chucked at it and rubbed the underside of its neck. The horse settled and he called to Claire. “You want to turn it over like this, then snap it here and here,” he said.
“Thanks,” Claire said. “Pretty dumb, huh?”
He looked at her in the same placid way. “No,” he said. “Dumb woulda been to ride off without it.”
“Yes. I wasn’t about to do that.”
“Not dumb then.”
“I guess not.” She held out her hand. “I’m Claire.”
Joe Willie wiped his hand on the back of his jeans. “Joe Willie,” he said.
“I know.”
He nodded. He pulled the left arm up from where it hung at his side and put the hand in the pocket of his jeans and shifted his feet a little like a shy little boy. Claire saw slackness of the fabric along his arm and the birdlike boniness of the wrist. Joe Willie caught her look. He bent to retrieve the coil of rope. Despite herself Claire dropped down to grab it for him and they almost collided at the depth of the crouch. Their hands were on the rope.
“I got it,” he said tersely.
“I’m sorry,” Claire said. “I just thought …”
“I got it,” he said again.
They stood up at the same time and faced each other, mere inches apart. She had to look up to make eye contact, and he looked out over her head at first, gazing side to side. She took a step back.
“Thanks,” she said.
“Welcome,” he said.
“Would you like to come?” she blurted out.
“I don’t ride,” he said.
“What a shame,” she said and instantly regretted it.
He hitched the rope around his shoulder and stepped around her to make his way down the corridor. “Ma am,” he said as he passed, touching the brim of his hat with two fingers.
She watched him limp out of the stable. He was tall and lean and young looking but there was a hardness to him, something she likened to Aiden in the way he drew himself in, closed up and went away to some private place.
“That could have gone a whole lot better,” she muttered to the horse.
“Trick is the grip,”
Lionel told him.
“It’s your hold and your release all at the same time,” Birch added. He handed Aiden a thick leather glove. He showed him how to use the rosin to make it sticky, tacky, like flypaper, and to wrap it tight to his hand.
Aiden flexed it, and the palm crackled. Raising it to his face and looking at it, he felt stronger, more capable, the glove in its oversized thickness giving his fingers a talon-like curl when he flexed them.
The bucking machine sat in the middle of a veritable sea of thick blue padding. When Aiden put a foot to it and pushed, it offered little give, not at all like the feathery give of the hay and mattresses under the rope barrel. The machine itself was eerie. It was cut to look like the trunk of a bull. There was even a rubber head and horns mounted to the front end. The rectangular riding block was covered in hide and the bull hair was coarse, wiry. It sat at a steep angle, the rear of it kicked up sharply. In his mind Aiden tried to imagine what the rest of the bull might have looked like in that pose, rear legs thrown back and high, the head cast to one side trying to hook the rider’s legs with the horns. He squeezed his fingers together and the crackle of the rosined leather exhilarated him. He walked around the machine, his feet sinking into the blue padding, and tried to imagine himself whirling around and up and down at the same time, reversing direction on the rise, the strain at the wrist eased some by the rapid kicking out of his legs and feet. There was a tornado coming, and he felt the electric tickle of its approach on his skin. He gave the machine a final firm slap.
“Anything else I should know?” he asked Birch.
Birch pointed to a hay bale set on its narrow side. “Ride that first,” he said.
“You’re kidding me,” Aiden said.
“No, I’m not. Get you a seat on that bale and I’m gonna show you how to use your arms.”
Birch showed him how to throw his legs out, how to keep the free arm up and away at the same time. It seemed silly at first, like a child’s game, but when he sat on the bale and went through the motions Aiden got the first glimpse of how hard this would be. The legs and the arm had to work together. When they did he could feel the weight of his body centre on one small area of his butt, one remarkably tiny area that was keyed to fit the same fragment of the bull’s body, the pocket right behind the shoulders. The flinging outward of the legs coupled with the raised arm centred him in the pocket, and as he went through the spurring motion he saw in his head the images of Joe Willie’s rides and tried to mimic them.
“Ready?” Lionel asked Aiden.
Aiden looked at the machine. It sat idle but seemed filled with ominous intent, like a bad-mannered dog. “No,” he said. “Let them go first.”
The Hairstons cackled.
“Chicken, huh?” Jess said.
Aiden just looked at him passively and moved to sit beside Mundell, who drank slowly from a coffee mug.
“Nervous?” Mundell asked.
“Some,” Aiden said. “I want to watch it first.”
“Good thinking. See what you’re in for.”
“Yeah. Something like that.”
Jess got up onto the machine and settled himself into the grip Birch showed him. When he nodded, the wrangler at the controls flipped the switch and the machine began rising and falling, turning slow circles at the same time. Aiden watched carefully. Hairston managed to make his way awkwardly through a minute of the action before Lionel held up a hand and the wrangler stopped the machine. Jess leaped off the machine and sprawled into the padding. His face was red when he stood up and high-fived his brother, who mounted up for his ride. Lanny fared as well as his brother, and when his ride was over the Hairstons celebrated, whooped wildly. Aiden never once took his eyes off the machine.
“Ready now?” Birch asked.
Still staring at the bucking machine, he walked to it wordlessly and tightened the glove as he approached. He leaped up onto the machine, he watched as Birch instructed him on the rigging. He felt the elevation from the floor. He felt the rough texture of the rigging and flexed his grip a couple of times before he looked at Birch expressionlessly.
“Give ’er,” he said. He locked eyes with the wrangler at the controls, unblinking and aware of every muscle in his body. Slowly he raised his free arm up and away, setting his jaw firmly and forcing himself to concentrate. Then he nodded.
It was like being pushed upward and forward by an invisible hand directly under his hips. When he felt the force he raised his arm a little higher and pushed his legs outward. He immediately felt the pressure in a rectangle of space at his tailbone. He concentrated on that. As the bucking machine whirled around and tilted he willed himself to copy the moves he’d watched Joe Willie make and he felt elastic, strong and in sync with the machine. Then the dips and pushes came quicker. They were giving him more. He set his jaw tighter and focussed. The circles seemed tighter, but he held his seat. He felt more power surge through the machine and he was aware of a sudden loss of contact with horizontal and vertical. The only thing that existed was the cyclone. His only focal point became the pocket, and he spurred outward and raised his free arm to maintain it. When even more power came he felt the hard junction of his wrist and rope. He held it. There was a high whine in his ears as the machine worked harder, accompanied by creaks of leather and the throaty sound of voices raised in excitement. He was juiced. The adrenaline forced his mouth open and he closed it again, gritted his teeth and spurred and pressed outward with his free arm, feeling the thrum of the motor against the inside of his thighs and the air cool and moist against the sweat of his face. He felt a power in him that was electrifying and freeing and primitive, and when the machine began to slow he gathered all of it, all the joyous, rapturous, hair-raising thrill of it and kicked away from the machine with one leg, twisting his torso hard the same way and felt the separation and the sweet empty of the air before he landed on his feet in the thick blue padding.
“How high did you turn it?” he asked, dry throated.
Birch raised five fingers.
“Again?” he asked, swallowing hard.
“You bet your ass, again,” Birch said.
Damn. There was no way past it. He was going to need help. While the beam across the roof of the equipment shed was strong enough to bear the weight of pulling the engine block up and out of the truck, there was no way Joe Willie was going to be able to haul it himself. He tried, but the weight and the motion required two strong arms, maybe more. For a while he toyed with the notion of buying a hoist and frame from town, but there was something about the feel of the old girl that told him that she’d prefer old-fashioned sweat and gumption. Besides, there was a small thrill in being able to say that he’d done the work up to this point with his own power, and he was determined to see it through with the pure strength of hands and arms. Arms. Funny. He had a burgeoning faith in the left to lift and twist when he needed it. Sure, there were things he couldn’t do with it, normal things, everyday things that pissed him off to think about, but it had come a fair way with his effort. He still hated to look at it. He still sought to hide it when anyone was around and though he much preferred solitude over visibility the damn thing was stronger, less prone to tremble, moved more easily in the destroyed shoulder socket. But it was still ugly. That wasn’t going to change. Ever. He rubbed it now as he considered asking for help. He could almost curl his thumb and fingers around it. Damn. The muscles had atrophied so badly that when he turned it over so the palm of his hand was upwards the boniness of it made his hand look like a small paddle, meatless, and flat.
He hated to ask for help. It meant he was incapable. Invalid. He rubbed the arm and sat in the cab of the truck. This was his arena. This was his challenge. It was how he’d learned to fight. Alone in a saddle or tied in the rigging, there was no need for anyone else. Ever. A man found his own way up there, relied on nothing but his own instinct and know-how, trusted only the power of his own body, the strength of his own mind and the grit of his own gumption. Help was something you ac
cepted from the pickup riders and the bull fighters once the fight was finished. This fight was far from finished, but clearly there was no way past it. He smoked.
“Damn,” he said.
They were standing around the main corral watching the wranglers load bulls in the chutes. He walked up purposefully. Lionel caught his approach out of the corner of his eye and nudged Birch.
“Need some help,” he said.
“That a fact?” Lionel said.
Joe Willie rubbed the stubble on his chin and toed the dirt with his boot. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s a fact.”
“What kind of help, son?” Birch asked.
“The old girl,” he said. “I gotta haul the engine out of her.”
The wranglers edged closer to catch the conversation. The Hairston brothers were owl-eyed and slack-jawed in that awed way of rodeo fans, and it irritated Joe Willie. The convict kid just leaned one elbow on the fence and looked at him with an unruffled air. That irritated him even more.
“How you figure on doing that?” Lionel asked.
“Rope,” he said.
“Chain’d be a mite safer,” Lionel said.
“Rope,” Joe Willie said shortly. “I got a rope.”
“Okay. We’ll do it with a rope then. Pulley?”
“What?”
“Figure maybe drive a pulley into the main beam and haul her out that way. Easier,” Lionel said. “A few more hands and we can guide her to wherever you wanna put her.”
Joe Willie nodded. He hadn’t considered that. “All right,” he said.
Birch explained what needed doing, and the Hairstons and Mundell agreed heartily. Aiden held his position on the fence looking calmly at Joe Willie and his father. Finally, he nodded and moved to join the others.
Dream Wheels Page 23