“You look as though you almost wanted to laugh.”
Johanna sat on the porch swing wrapped in a blanket.
“Have you been there all this time?” Claire asked.
“Yes. But you looked so entranced I didn’t want to bother you.”
“Good word, entranced. I guess I was. I always am.”
“It’s a powerful valley.”
“Yes. It must be wonderful to call it home.”
Johanna shuffled over on the swing and motioned for Claire to join her, and she spread the blanket out and draped it over the both of them. They sat in the swing and looked out over the valley in silence.
“Did you know? That night? Did you know that they’d break through it and get back to the work?” Claire asked.
“No. It was just important to let him know what they were working with.”
“Joe Willie?”
“Him too.”
“But the truck. How did you come to identify the truck that way? As a dream wheel?”
“Things carry stories, Claire. It’s why we keep things. Because the histories they bear make them precious. There’s no big Indian magic in that, we all know it or feel it. But like Victoria said—we forget. We forget how vital those histories are to us and we get lost in the price of things instead, their worldly value, their cost. That’s what we consider if we lose it.”
A hawk peeled a line across the sky. They watched it as it circled, riding the thermals, dipping and climbing without moving its wings.
“If your life’s been a constant process of losing and starting over, again and again and again, and all the things you ever had are always getting lost, where’s the history in that? What is there to hang on to?” Claire asked. “I’m asking for Aiden.”
“The dream itself,” Johanna said.
“What dream?”
“The one we all carry. Home, belonging, community, stories around a fire.”
“Sounds too easy.”
“Try it.”
Claire looked at her. Johanna sat calmly with the blanket draped over her, like an old woman in her shawl, comfortable in her years, confident in their lessons. “Okay,” she said.
The hawk flew closer and closer to the mountains until it dipped below the edge of the draw, disappeared as quietly as a lost thought. Claire let herself sink deeper into the morning, allowed it to seep into her, find its hollow and gather, pool quietly and follow the hawk into the stark warm breast of the mountains.
They’d pushed the truck forward one length so that the nose of her was stuck out the front of the shed. Then they’d dug the pit. By the end of that afternoon they’d stabilized the sides with boards and timbers so that they could stand in it and reach up with their forearms clearing the edge of it. It was hard work, but they fed off each other, neither one wanting to show any tiredness or discomfort, so that heaving the shovels of dirt and rock up over their heads and clear of the rim of the hole became a contest of silent power. They’d taken turns wheel-barrowing the detritus over to the lip of the draw and tilting it over, making sure the trips and loads were equal. When they pushed the truck back into the shed it nestled perfectly beneath the shed’s main beams.
The next day Birch and Lionel devised a plan for block and tackle using the beams for leverage, and when they lifted her the first time the beams held and the old truck swayed slightly as though she loved the new medium of the air and wanted to test it for speed and traction.
Aiden showed the Wolfchilds the weak points in her structure, the wear of age, the tiny fractures that would split and grow and cause more aggravation if left to carry weight again.
“We strip her to the chassis. The body can stay up while we sandblast it, repaint, and redo the axles,” Aiden said, lost in his study of the truck and not paying attention to the looks the Wolfchilds were giving him. “First thing to take care of really is the leaf springs. Either replace them or take them to a shop to weld. After that we can work on the axles and start thinking about what kind of motor we want to drop in. Dropping in a newer engine will make the work faster. No need to sandblast parts. The body will be easiest. She’s in such good shape we can sandblast and paint pretty fast. Not here, though. Shop in town, I guess. Same with the upholstery. Unless you wanna do it yourself, which in that case will add a hell of a lot of time.”
“Whoa, boy,” Birch said, laying a hand on his shoulder. “A little at a time now.”
“You sure know your way around a vehicle, Aiden,” Lionel said. “Never would have seen any of this myself.”
“Well, there was an old guy who ran the shop in the joint. Old Navy guy who knew engines and trucks inside out. Taught me a lot.”
“Wasn’t easy, was it?” Lionel asked.
Aiden looked up at the underside of the truck. “You don’t do time, you lose it. You spend all of it remembering, recollecting or dreaming of how you want it. You’re never in the moment you’re in. You lose all those.”
“I hear that,” Joe Willie said.
“Still, you learned something, didn’t you?” Lionel asked.
“Engines,” Aiden said. “That, and that I won’t go back again.”
“Powerful education, then,” Birch said. “Never been to jail myself. Never seemed a likely choice for success. But you come out okay.”
“Yeah?” Aiden asked.
“Mistakes are like bulls that throw you,” Lionel said. “You can never ride ’em different. You just learn from how you fell and climb back up there.”
“If you can,” Joe Willie said. “If you’re damned lucky you can climb back up again. Some mistakes change everything.”
“Some do,” Lionel said. “I guess the only thing you got control over is how you handle the change.”
“Yeah. Right,” Joe Willie said. “Now are we gonna actually do some work on this truck or are we going to talk about it all day?”
Claire was working on tack when she noticed Joe Willie leaning in the door of the tack room.
“Has he ever been hit? Hit hard?” Joe Willie asked.
“Aiden?” she asked, setting down the rag.
“Yeah. Like boxing. Or in a real fight. A mean one. One where he got pasted good?”
“I don’t know. I wouldn’t want to think so. And I don’t think he’s ever boxed. Why?”
“I need to ask you if I can put him in a ring.”
“What on earth for? He wants to ride a bull. Call me a city girl, Joe Willie, but I don’t think bulls wear boxing gloves.”
“They don’t. But they hit awful hard and he needs to know how to react when he gets clobbered.”
He stepped into the room and sat on a sawhorse they draped saddles on. When he looked at her she could sense the seriousness of his question. “When a man gets hit, square and flush and hard, there’s a fraction of a second of fear. Real deep, hard fear. In that fraction of a second the old flight-or-fight thing comes screaming to the surface. Most try to backpedal, run off, get out of the way of the next one because getting smacked hard isn’t an everyday thing. It takes some severe gumption to shake it off and stand up to it. He’s gotta learn to take a good solid shot without backing off. In eight seconds he’ll get clobbered like no man’s capable of hitting him and there’s no time for wanting off, for running. He needs to learn that. You gotta say it’s okay.”
“He’s big enough and old enough to choose,” she said.
“Sure. But this is your deal too. You’re the one that needs to be standing there when he lands. You gotta get used to seeing him take a lick. Gotta know you endorsed it.”
“It’s a tough business, isn’t it?”
“The toughest. Tougher than any jailhouse fight he ever had. These ones you gotta choose to take on. There’s one other thing.”
“God. You just asked me to okay my son taking a beating. There’s more?”
He grinned. “Nothing so tough. I want him to work with a gymnastics coach.”
“Well, that sounds a little more peaceful, something I could
get used to watching. But it seems like a strange combination.”
“Not really. He needs to learn how to move. How to always be in balance. How to control his body in the air. How to be graceful.”
“You’re kidding me.”
He looked at her seriously. “No. I’m dead serious. You look at a bull blowing out of the chute and you think it’s all mayhem, all violence and spur-of-the-moment action. But there wasn’t a bull I ever rode that didn’t think about what he was gonna do once he left the chute. Spin, blow or kick out. They choose that, and you never know coming out what to expect, how you’re gonna get hit. You need balance, you need rhythm and you need grace. Especially when you get thrown. You gotta be able to find your balance in the air, and nothing’ll teach you that like gymnastics.”
“Grace?”
“Grace.”
She looked at him and he met it evenly. There was a hardness to him, a toughness, but just under that was a pool of compassion, a gentleness that tempered it, eased it and made him manly. She could trust that kind of man with her son. “I don’t think I could ever equate riding a bull with being graceful. It seems more like you’d need to be strong and supple, slightly crazy too, I suppose. Not graceful.”
“Come with me. I’ll show you.”
He led her to the house, into the rec room, and knelt in front of the television leafing through a collection of videocassettes. He slid one into the player and sat on the sofa beside her. He thumbed the remote and the screen soon filled with a bull and rider exploding into an arena. He fast-forwarded, then stopped the tape at a point where the camera was focussed on the chute. Claire could see a rider poised for action behind it and the rope men bent strangely by the free frame in front. “Watch,” he said.
The tape started, and instead of the blur of action she expected Joe Willie had it set to slow motion. What she saw amazed her. A gigantic bull flowed out of the chute. It rose majestically, like a tidal wave, and launched itself into the light of the open space. On its back a cowboy flowed with it, the small of his back tucked in above his hip bone and tight behind the bull’s shoulder, his free arm rising like a flag with the motion. She could see each bunch of muscle in the bull’s hindquarters gather, compact, compress like huge fists and then the explosion of them opening in a wild thrust upwards, the height of the jump magnified by the slow, surreal timing of the tape. She felt her jaw drop. Beside her Joe Willie leaned forward and cupped his chin in his palms. The cowboy on the bull’s back stretched out incredibly, elastically, each tucking in of his knees accentuated by a long unfolding of the free arm above him and then the outward surge of his legs toward the bull’s shoulders followed by a pulling down of the arm. The tension was all gather and release, gather and release, and Claire began to see the poetry in it, the rhythm, the grace he spoke of and the pure, unadulterated thrill of wild captured and slowed to a snail’s pace. When he thumbed the remote and the streaming quality of the ride dissipated into the chaos of real time she found it hard to breathe.
“Oh my god,” she said. “Aiden.”
“He’ll be all right,” Joe Willie said. “But he’s gotta learn to feel that rhythm you just saw. Gotta know without a doubt that it lives there. Gotta know where it lives in him so he can match it up.”
“That was magical. I would never have believed it if you’d just told me. How incredibly devastating. How beautiful,” she said.
“Yes,” he said. “I haven’t watched that ride for a long time.”
“Who was that cowboy?”
“It was me,” he said, handing her the remote and walking quickly from the room.
At first it came easy. The trainer Joe Willie brought in reminded him of Johnny Calder and he liked his rough-and-tumble, no-nonsense approach to things. He listened closely and watched as the old boxer bobbed and wove and shadow-boxed around the ring. When it was his turn he took to it naturally, the athlete in him responding to the challenge to his timing, his balance, his ability to move. In the joint he’d only learned how to throw a punch, how to throw the combinations and move around the heavy bag. Calder had never allowed them to actually fight each other. So this new approach intrigued him, and he wanted to learn. He put himself into it and found an easy familiarity with the skill. The old pug tousled his hair, called him champ, and he liked it. Then the gymnastics coach turned out to be a pretty, fit little blonde, and he gave her all of his attention. She taught him how to stretch, and they worked on floor mats. At first the movements she showed him made him feel awkward, too big for his body, slow and tight, but gradually he limbered, and again his athleticism allowed him a measure of confidence and he responded well. At the end of that first day he felt enthused, capable and interested in learning more.
When the first punch landed everything changed. The old boxer was lightning quick and Aiden barely saw his hands move. When the jabs hit him they rocked his head back, and even with the thickly padded helmet he felt like he’d been pounded with a hammer. He pedalled backwards, trying to find a neutral space to gather himself, but the old fighter kept coming for him. His arms suddenly weighed a ton, and it was nearly impossible to think with the explosions of white in his head that followed the punches. There was an anger that came with being hit and it was this more than anything that enabled his body to remember the footwork he’d been shown. As the trainer bore in on him again he shuffled, left then right then back, bending at the waist like he’d been shown, and he felt the breeze of punches sailing past their mark. He felt elated. But then the old pro keyed on his rhythm and he got plowed again and again. After what seemed an eternity Joe Willie called time, and he collapsed on a hay bale in the corner of the ring. His head felt swollen and cottony.
After that the trampoline was nearly impossible. His body ached from taking blows to the chest, belly and shoulders and he was stiffening rapidly. But he didn’t want to appear weak and he stretched out hard with the coach and she showed him the basics of bouncing. He liked the feel of flying through the air. There was a freedom in it and he watched closely when she showed him how to find his balance in the air. She worked him through a simple routine and kept him at it for fifteen minutes. His legs ached. His arms got stiff again and he found it difficult to maintain his posture in the air. When he began to travel off centre she yelled at him, reminding him, and he struggled.
And then the mountain. After the training Joe Willie and his mother came with the horse and they set out on the trail again. In the beginning the peak they aimed for had seemed reachable, but after a full day’s work on the ranch and then the boxing and gymnastics it was all he could do to keep up with Joe Willie. It felt steeper, the footing harder, more elusive, and he seemed to sweat more. But the cowboy kept going and Aiden was unable to find any quit in himself. They climbed, and on the third night Joe Willie halted at a bend in the trail just beyond where the line of trees began to thin.
“Almost,” he said.
“Almost what?” Aiden gasped.
“Almost there. Up around this bend there’s one final push, one last hard climb and we’re at the meadow. The cliff face is around this bend.”
“Now?” Claire asked, looking around at the darkening sky.
“No. Too late now. Tomorrow. Tomorrow we’ll start earlier. Get there so we can watch the sun set. Bring tents, food, so we can camp.”
“Sounds good to me,” Aiden said. “Do I ride after that?”
“No,” Joe Willie said. “Not until you’re ready.”
“Jesus. When’s that?”
“Don’t know.”
“You don’t know? Who the hell knows, then?”
“You do.” Joe Willie signalled for Claire to hand a canteen down, and he drank slowly, watching Aiden. “You’ll show me when you’re ready.”
The boy scowled at him, then took the canteen he offered. He drank slowly like Joe Willie had, small sips over the course of a couple of minutes, then splashed a handful of water on his face and mopped it with his neckerchief. He walked away to the edge
of the trail and stood watching the sky. Claire and Joe Willie saw his shoulders slump, then his head dropped. He cupped his face in his hands, bent forward at the waist, then knelt slowly on the ground with one knee. Claire made a motion in the saddle to dismount and go to him, but Joe Willie stopped her with a palm on her leg. They watched him for a long time. Finally, he rubbed his brow with the fingers and thumb of one hand and they heard him moan, one long, deep, ragged moan, before he rose and turned to them.
“Best be some good fucking camping then,” he said.
Lionel showed him how to load the tarpaulins for balance and then helped Aiden tie them onto the packhorse. It was only an overnight stay and the gear didn’t amount to a big load, but the old man took his time and taught the boy exactly. He showed him how to work around the horse so it stayed calm, the reassurances he gave it in a low, soothing voice. Aiden listened carefully, biting down on his lower lip and watching intently as Lionel showed him the knots a second time. When they were finished the old man gave him a big clap on the shoulder.
“That’s your responsibility now,” Lionel said. “You got her?”
“I got her,” Aiden said and shook his hand.
“Good man,” Lionel said, and Aiden smiled.
The other Wolfchilds walked in as Claire finished saddling her horse. She’d chosen a fractious little half-Arabian mare she’d ridden three or four times. The horse was a handful, its Arabian blood giving it a wildness that had scared Claire at first but which she enjoyed tremendously when the horse settled and pranced its way around the round pen or galloped across the main pasture. She wanted to challenge herself by navigating the flighty little mare up the mountain just as Joe Willie and Aiden would do on foot scaling upward all the way to the peak. Handling the Arabian through the unpredictable footing would give both of them the necessary confidence for the long mountain trail ride Claire was planning for herself.
Dream Wheels Page 31