by Susan Juby
Another suitor arrived with flowers for Frank a minute ago. I think he’s the clerk from the jewelry counter at Zellers. Mom yelled at him and Dad laughed.
September 28
Where to start?
We got up at about six A.M. to get ready for the ride. Dad wore the same incredibly embarrassing getup he wears on the ride every year: jeans, an ultrasuede jacket with fringe, and a cotton fishing hat. The Mensa geniuses all wear the same thing except Finn, who wears his usual uniform of pilled-on-the-ass dress pants and satin bomber jacket with the idiotic cotton fishing hat. Oh yeah, but instead of crappy loafers he wears crappy vinyl ankle boots. It took Mom forever to wake up Frank. While we waited for her to get dressed, we had to listen to Mom get frustrated trying to fit all the health food and booze into the packs.
I’m not sure what kind of ride Frank thought we were going on, but I’m guessing it wasn’t a community horseback ride. She came downstairs wearing a shiny red one-piece jumpsuit covered with blue and yellow stars, black-and-white-striped leg warmers, some kind of half-bald feather boa, and silver slippers.
Dad and MacGregor stood staring at her with their mouths open. Mom, who was obviously jealous, told Frank that she looked wonderful but that slippers were inappropriate for riding. Mom made her put on a pair of old cowboy boots, which made her look like a confused cowgirl superhero.
And off we went to Tex’s place. He lives on a ranch out near Driftwood Hall. His spread has very nice fences, which is apparently an indication of how successful his big game guide-outfitter business is. He is a kingpin in the Smithers Saddle Sores club and lends horses to anyone who shows up for the annual ride without one. Well, actually he lends them pack ponies, which are sort of a lesser form of horse, as far as I can tell. For most of the attendees from town, the ride is the only time they get on a horse all year. And the only reason they get on the horse is to get loaded in a slightly different setting.
Dad and the other Mensa members worship Tex to an unhealthy degree. They all wish they were him, and their riding outfits are part of a sad effort to look like him. Tex has a lot of facial hair and dresses like a mountain man. He speaks only to make manly-type comments, and around him all the other men seem like frail grade-school girls. I don’t think he even has any electricity in his house.
Tex is notable because he is so armed. You would think he was American. His third wife shot him when he left her for another woman, and even after all that he still keeps a rifle rack in every room in his house and one in the barn. According to my dad, “Now that’s guts.” Tex is at least sixty-five or even older and on his fifth wife, who is around twenty-four years old. Mom doesn’t disapprove of Tex like she does of Marcus, because it’s understood that Tex’s wives work so hard, they have to be young. Tex’s latest wife, Gloria, is so strong she is almost as manly as Tex.
Tex’s hunting clients are usually American businessmen who fly into town wearing full combat gear and carrying semiautomatic machine guns in gun warmer sleeves. They pay Tex huge amounts of money for a big game hunt. I think they would probably pay just to hang out with Tex for a while. Probably the whole guided hunt is just an inconvenience they go through to spend time with the pure manliness and testosterone that is Tex.
When we got to Tex’s place, all the people without horses were being outfitted by Tex’s wife and his guides, Bone and Eugene. They are the original something-to-prove brothers. Even though they aren’t all that short, they spend a lot of energy overcompensating for not being tall. They stay on their horses as much as possible, and the rest of the time totter around on high-heeled boots. Their giant white cowboy hats add a good ten inches to their height, and they’re so skinny, they look like matching hat and boot racks. Bone and Eugene are from Houston, which is about an hour from Smithers and even smaller, but they’re sure never to correct out-of-towners who think they’re from Houston, Texas.
Today their younger sister, Georgette, was with them. She goes to school in Houston, but I’d seen her around town a few times. She didn’t look happy to be on the trail ride. She sat on her horse over by herself, looking cranky.
Marcus and Kelly were in Marcus’s taxicab having a fight. Tex oversaw things with a kingly air.
Everyone connected with The Outfit, as Tex’s place is called—Tex, Gloria, Eugene, and Bone—is cool in this very particular way: They all like to make dry little comments that make you feel like a waste of space. The Saddle Sores riders eat it up, just like Tex’s more-money-than-brains clients. I personally think that enjoying being treated like a moron is a sign of poor self-esteem.
Tex strolled over as we pulled up. He looked at us, then squinted his eyes at Frank and said, “Them pants’re gonna heat up somethin’ fierce if yer plannin’ on ridin’ all day.” Frank couldn’t stay still long enough to listen to his remark, and by the time he finished, she was halfway across the yard. Dad, the shameless Tex worshiper, got all embarrassed and apologized for Frank’s rudeness, but Tex just grinned and said, “Hell, I figure hot pants might be the point.”
We all watched, mesmerized, as Frank gamboled over to meet Death Lord, who was pulling up in his decrepit, primer-covered El Camino. Tex had to poke Eugene and Bone to get them to stop staring and keep working. I was sort of surprised to see Bob. He must really be settling into life in Smithers if he’s showing up for this event.
It was madness for a while as people milled around with their borrowed packhorses and others arrived aboard their own horses or pulling their horse trailers behind their pickups.
Tex’s steed was a huge palomino called Thunder or some other magnificent horse name like that. My pack pony was an unmagnificent little mare called Petunia. Marcus and Kelly got out of the cab and continued their argument aboard a pair of tiny bay ponies who had clearly seen better days. My father’s was a tall, elderly horse in shades of dirty gray with a sagging lower lip.
Finally, after everyone was mounted, and Tex and Gloria handed out maps of the trail, Finn pulled up in his car with the Second Sport logo taped to the back windows. Finn is always late for everything. Tex rode over to make sure that Bone got Finn set up.
“Howdy,” Tex growled. “Bone here’ll look after you. Have a good ride.”
Finn asked Bone if he could get one with “just a tad less dandruff, you know, for my allergies.”
When Bone brought her over, it became obvious that Finn’s horse was the absolute bottom of the barrel. She was a knock-kneed, swaybacked old brood mare with an attitude problem. When Finn clucked at her and slapped his legs against her sides, the horse laid her ears flat and snaked her head back to try to take a bite out of his leg. Finn has been on the ride every year since I can remember, but he still doesn’t seem to be clear on the mechanics of the bridle and reins. He just tried to get out of her way without falling off. He did a bit of a leapfrog maneuver behind the saddle and onto her rear. The old mare took the opportunity to do a bit of geriatric crowhopping. It was totally excellent to watch. Her stiff-legged bucks weren’t exactly bronco material, but they made Finn yell. Dad and the other geniuses rushed over to try to get the mare calmed down and Finn straightened out.
“It won’t stay still! It won’t stay still. For God’s sake, can’t you keep it steady?”
By the time I finished watching Finn learn to ride again, Frank was long gone. I rushed to catch up.
Once on the trail, Dad, Marcus, Kelly, and Finn all rode together to share the “fortified” coffee. Mom set out to find some of her folk festival friends. I kept Petunia moving back and forth up and down the line of riders. First I tried to catch up to where Death Lord and Frank were riding, near the front of the line. I finally found Frank in the middle of a group of men including Eugene and Bone. She was pretending to lasso each of them in turn with her feather boa and making a big production of tossing her head back and laughing. Frank is very theatrical. I rode with them for a while, hoping maybe to start up a conversation, but no one really noticed me.
I rode Petunia so slowly
that eventually the last-place geniuses caught up. By this time it was getting close to lunch, and they were thoroughly lubricated. Marcus and Kelly continued the fight that had apparently begun when they went to pick up Marcus’s girlfriend. They were fighting about whether Marcus should break up with her, because when they got to her house, she informed them that she was going to the Monster Truck Show in Houston with some other guy instead of the trail ride with Marcus. Marcus thought he should break up with her. Sensitive Kelly maintained that the Monster Truck girlfriend was “a really sweet girl” and she and Marcus had “something really special.”
Dad was trying to draw out the story of the whole relationship from sordid start to pathetic finish. Not to be negative or anything, but they were not an impressive group in their ultrasuede jackets and cotton fishing hats, dissecting every little bit of meaning from the words and actions of some dim-witted nineteen-year-old floozy. I noticed Georgette riding close by, listening with fascination. After a few minutes I sped up Petunia and headed for the lunch area on Tex’s map.
As I moved up the trail, Eugene rode up behind me. We were between groups on the trail, and he was the only other rider I could see. When I turned around to look at him, he smiled and asked how I was doing. I guess he was trying to start a conversation or something, but I wasn’t really interested. I was focused on finding Frank so I could get our maturity-inducing friendship off the ground. And besides, Eugene’s boots and hat suggested some pretty deep-rooted issues. He kept pace when I sped up again and didn’t seem put off when I glared at him.
“Do you mind? I’m riding here,” I said in my rudest voice.
“Nawdadawl,” he said, making it into one long Texansounding word. I couldn’t believe it. Next he would be trying to call me darling.
“So darlin’,” he said, reaching over and pretending to adjust my saddle blanket a little too close to my leg, “you like ridin’?”
Before I could decide on a violent response, he was interrupted.
“Oh my God, Eugene! You are such a hormone in a hat!”
Georgette rode up right behind us.
Eugene turned bright red and pulled his huge white hat down over his eyes and took off.
“Sorry about my brother,” she said. “Too many Nashville Network country music videos—that’s where he gets all his brilliant pickup ideas. In fact, that’s where he gets all his ideas.”
“Uh, thanks.”
“Yeah, no problem. You’re Alice, right?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m Georgette, reluctant sister of the rhinestone cowboy over there. I’ve seen you in the bookstore a few times.”
“I don’t work there anymore.”
“Little too crunchy granola for you?” she asked.
“Something like that,” I said.
“I like your shorts,” she continued.
I almost thought I didn’t hear her right. I mean, people usually aren’t exactly falling all over themselves to compliment my fashion statement. Especially not people my own age.
“You mean my gauchos?”
“Is that what they’re called?”
“Yeah. I got them in Prince George.”
She looked impressed.
Georgette was dressed like a prethrifting me—plaid shirt and jeans.
She caught me looking.
“Ah, you know. I can’t be bothered getting dressed up. I mean, I live in Houston, right? The idea is to get through and get out, you know what I mean?”
And I did, I really did.
“Well, I’ve got to get going. I have to find my cousin Frank. She’s the one in stars.”
Georgette laughed. “She’s hard to miss.”
She waved and I waved back and off we went.
By lunch the Saddle Sores Trail Ride was in full swing. Almost everyone had been drinking since we left the Outfit, and no one except the kids seemed interested in eating lunch.
Like I said, horse people are pretty wild. It seems like the minute even the most upstanding-type citizen gets a horse, some kind of cowboy–Lone Ranger thing comes over them and they start drinking heavily and having affairs and wearing “you can tell by my hat that I am a cowboy” clothes.
The lunch area on our ride up the Three Trails Pass was a grassy field on a steep hillside. There were several weathered huts in various stages of decay in the clearing. The steady horses were left to wander free, grazing near their owners. The less reliable steeds were haltered and tethered to trees at the edge of the field. Knots of riders sat scattered around the field.
After a quick sprout sandwich I made my way over to where Frank sat in the middle of a group of men. She was singing old-fashioned cowboy songs complete with coyote noises and everything. Between songs she would lean over and chuck one of her audience under the chin. She was paying special attention to Bone, giving him extra chucks under the chin and lobbing her ratty old feather boa at him more than anyone else. Eugene looked jealously on, and Bob glanced worriedly back and forth between the two of them, holding tight to his sparse beard.
Over on the other side of the field, Tex was in the middle of a story about the time he rode his horse right into a bar in Hyder, Alaska, to escape a grizzly that had been following him. Tex’s audience was almost as interested as Frank’s.
I wandered from group to group watching people’s inhibitions fall. They began to forget there were children present. MacGregor lay with his head on my mom’s lap, reading a science book. Mom’s friends got more and more specific about their sex lives. Mom, who’d had a few, didn’t add much to the conversation but made no effort to shield MacGregor. She probably took comfort in the knowledge that when MacGregor reads, he doesn’t hear anything, not even direct questions.
“Well, you would know, Diane. Come on, you sell the book at the store. You know, the one about tantric sex.”
“No, really. I haven’t read it.”
“Well, it’s out of this world. I swear. I practically levitated.”
Laughter, squeals, giggles.
Dad and the rest of the geniuses had gathered around Tex, who was telling about the time he rode through inner-city Detroit on his horse on his way across North America. He met up with a bunch of crack dealers in the inner city and apparently they discussed survival in the street and survival in the bush, and it turns out that it’s the same thing in both places.
Georgette sat listening and I thought about going to sit with her, but then I figured I’d better not push my luck. Our earlier conversation was one of the longest I’d had with a girl my age in years without the word bitch leaving someone’s mouth. No, I couldn’t take the risk.
I went looking for Frank but couldn’t find her. Her horse was still tethered on the edge of the field, but she was nowhere to be seen. I asked Bob if he’d seen her, and in a strangled whisper he said that no, he couldn’t find her either.
By this time it was late afternoon, and marital vows were beginning to break around the field. A few horse ladies were seen disappearing into the woods or the shacks with small, bowlegged men who were not their husbands.
Eugene came up and asked me if I had taken a look inside the far shed yet. I said I hadn’t. He asked if I’d like to go see it. I told him to get away from me, but not in a mean voice. Then I asked if he’d seen my cousin Frank, and he broke into a coughing fit and turned away, saying he had to go check the horses.
Someone lit a fire in the middle of the field as the afternoon cooled and the hot dogs came out of the packs and barbecue sticks were sharpened.
It began to get dark.
Shortly afterward Mom found me and asked if I had seen Frank. I hadn’t. Bob’s frantic pacing around the field didn’t seem to be producing any results. Mom thrust a package of tofu dogs into my hand, told me to go and eat with MacGregor, and announced that she was going to organize a search party.
Before she could get her plan off the ground, Tex came over and suggested that sending a bunch of inebriates into the pitch-black bush was maybe not t
he best idea. Then Mom started run-walking around the perimeter of the field calling Frank’s name. Some of her folkie friends tried to help but got confused.
“Yoo-hoo! Oh Frank!”
“What? I thought her niece was lost. Who’s Frank?”
“Maybe he’s that counselor over at the club for screwed-up kids.”
“Oh yeah? But wouldn’t that make him her nephew?”
“I guess.”
“I heard he’s a cutie.”
“Really?”
Peals of laughter and giggles.
“Yoo-hoo! Oh Frank! Cutie Pie! Come out, come out, wherever you are!”
Mom was interrupted in her jog around the field by a rockfaced horse lady who took Mom’s arm and whispered something to her and pointed to one of the shacks, outside which Bob was now pacing. Mom’s shoulders sagged for a second before she threw them back and hustled over to get Dad.
After a quick conversation Dad straightened his fishing hat and headed off to the shack. When Bob saw Dad coming, he turned on his heel and headed the other way. Then, obviously torn, he turned back to Dad. After a couple of directional struggles with himself, Bob finally met Dad at the door of the shack. They exchanged a few words, and Bob stood, looking shattered, when Dad turned impatiently away from him.
I would’ve gone in with Dad, but I noticed MacGregor watching everything. He looked small and tired, standing there holding his science book and rubbing his eyes. I went over and sat down with him. A few minutes later Frank emerged from the doorway with an embarrassed-looking Dad right behind her. Many minutes later Bone poked his head out and then slunk over to his horse. Only it wasn’t there. It was being held by my mother, who slowly led it over to where he stood.
Bob decided this might be a good time to practice his crisis-intervention skills and went to stand between my mother and Bone. It was a bad move, because Mom turned on him. I watched Bob get smaller and smaller and my mother get louder and louder. Bone stood absolutely still behind Bob, in an effort to escape notice. I heard the words disbarment and malpractice and “why the hell didn’t you do something?” as my mom shouted at Bob that she wouldn’t have believed that a counselor could be more incompetent than Mrs. Freison but now she’d seen it all. Bob protested feebly. “I tried. I’m so sorry. I couldn’t—” Mom wouldn’t listen.