The arena was crowded, half the riders loping in one direction, half in the other. He witnessed a near collision and shook his head. If they aren’t ready now, he thought, they aren’t going to be.
He climbed up behind the chutes, where cowboys had stretched out on the boards, checking gear and working stiffness from their legs. Al hollered at him from the arena, where he was down checking gates. Kenny Swanson perched on the top rail with his knees pulled up. The number 12 was pinned to the back of his shirt.
“Aren’t you a little young for this?” Roddy said.
“How old were you?”
Roddy laughed and climbed up next to the boy. “Old enough to know better,” he said. “Your mother here?”
Kenny nodded at the stands. They were filling up with spectators.
“How’s she takin’ it?”
“What?”
“Earl’s still in the hospital.”
“She’s okay. She’s okay with it.”
“How’re you?”
“Be all right.”
“Scared?”
“Not of the horse.”
“What’s your ride?”
“Horse called Hailstorm, out of Texas.”
“Oh, boy.”
“What?”
Roddy shook his head.
“You know that horse?”
“Texas, huh? Hey, Al, you hear that? Kid drew Hailstorm.”
Al looked up from the arena, worry showing on his face. “Oh, boy,” he said.
“Bullshit.” Kenny looked from one man to the other until they laughed.
“Hailstorm,” Al said. “Never heard of him.”
Roddy had heard of him, though. He was a solid, healthy horse, a thick-muscled, brown gelding with a jagged scar across one eye. Looked like someone tried to break him with a two-by-four. But he gave an honest ride. Went out and did his job, no tricks.
Roddy lowered himself down in the sawdust beside Al. “Take it easy,” he said to Kenny. “We’ll buy you a beer if you live.”
“Sure,” Kenny said.
Kenny couldn’t sit still anymore. He climbed down off the fence and walked back and forth to stretch his legs. He dangled his arms and shook. He wanted to go take another look at Hailstorm, but he knew it would only spook him. Spook him, not the horse. It was better not to think too much.
But he hated waiting. If it were up to him, he’d go to town until they called for bronc riders. He wondered if Cynthia was there. He’d been looking all afternoon. Watching for her hair in the hot sunlight, waiting for a signal like a mirror flash. He pretended he wasn’t, but he was searching for her in the crowd. He walked back through the parked outfits.
He didn’t find her until just before the anthem. She was sitting in the stands beside a woman wearing a dress and high-heeled sandals. When Kenny climbed up, he saw the woman’s toes were brown with dust. Cynthia stood and introduced him to her aunt Helen. He stood with them with his hat over his heart while they sang and the queen and all the princesses rode flags around the arena.
Aunt Helen had gray hair, but she looked young. Even in the heat her dress was crisp, and she smelled of cologne. Kenny tried to tell from looking at her if she knew about his fight with Earl, but if she did, she didn’t show a sign. When he had to go, she shook his hand and wished him good luck with his ride. Cynthia winked and gave him a high sign.
He wanted time to go say hi to his mom, but at the last minute he decided not to. It would just make her worry, and he was worried enough for both of them. Mr. Gallagher and the whole team were at the chutes. Every person he knew was there. He had to make his ride.
“Cowboy from Montana next, ladies and gentlemen, and Kenny Swanson in the hole. Eight long seconds here, that’s all we’re lookin’ for.”
Kenny waited, all set, and then the crowd noise swelled like something natural, a high wind in the trees, and Kenny was only aware of hands on him and voices. He sucked in a deep breath and held it. Hailstorm bucked before the chute opened, ready to go, and they just let him out. He arched up in a hump and twisted. Kenny raked his spurs into the shoulder, jerking his knees, one arm in the air. He clenched his teeth to keep his jaw from taking the shocks. There was just that one, pure moment, when he felt all of his muscles work. As if the horse and he were spinning, up above the ground. Then the bronc bucked him off.
But he couldn’t twist his glove loose, and he flopped along the withers of the horse like a grain sack. He felt more than he heard the scare come up in the crowd. Finally his hand came free, and he landed on his shoulder blades, so hard he couldn’t breathe. Then his lungs sucked in dust.
Lenna wanted to jump the rail, race across the arena. She saw the clown run out, lift Kenny from under the arms in one motion, drag him to the rail. She didn’t see the rest. The crowd made way for her, and she ran to the gate where the ambulance had been parked all day, its rear doors open. By the time she arrived, Roddy Moyers was holding Kenny’s forehead while he sat on a canvas cot and threw up in the dirt. His face had taken on a pearly blue color, and his hair was flattened by sweat.
The male nurse from the ambulance grinned down at her. “He didn’t take no harm,” he said. “Just shook up.”
She stood beside Roddy and waited for Kenny to stop coughing. Kenny waved a hand at her. He couldn’t talk.
“We don’t think he broke anything,” Roddy said. “But he needs to go for pictures anyhow.”
Kenny coughed and tried to speak.
“Take it easy,” Roddy said. “Soon as you can walk, we’ll take a trip to town.”
Kenny held his breath and his words came in a slow croak. “What did the judges say? Did I make the ride?”
“You sure as hell did,” Roddy said. “Damn near rode that horse to death. We couldn’t get you off.”
“First twelve-second ride we’ve had in years,” one of the men joked, and everybody laughed. Lenna felt the tears before they came, tried to smile at Kenny. Someone handed her a crumpled, warm bandanna from his back pocket. She tried to look away, but Roddy put an arm around her shoulders.
“He’s all right,” he said. “Just the scare. Happens all the time.”
From the corner of her eye, she saw the girl Cynthia walk near and nod at Roddy.
“Nice ride,” she said to Kenny.
He looked up and grinned. “Thanks,” he said. The color was coming back into his face, and he stood up, wincing. His shirt was torn from the cuff to the elbow, the skin rubbed raw and dark with dirt.
“We better get you into town,” Roddy said.
Cynthia looked at Kenny. “You want me to come along?”
“Yeah. Sure.”
“Well, whoever’s goin’, let’s go,” Roddy said. His truck was pulled up close, and he reached with one arm under Kenny’s shoulder to help him walk. Lenna saw there wasn’t room for four. She took a step back.
“Mom?” Kenny called back to her.
“I’ll follow you,” she said. She waved. “Go on ahead.”
When the truck had pulled out toward the road, she folded the borrowed bandanna and handed it back to the fellow who had lent it to her.
35
Kenny stood in the emergency room, waiting for his mom to finish filling out papers. His ribs had been taped so tight he could hardly breathe, and already he had itches underneath the bandages.
“Nothin’ hurts so bad as a cracked rib,” Roddy had told him. “But there’s really not a lot to do. Gets well just as fast if they tape it or they don’t. Hurts a little less with tape.” He’d gone back to the rodeo but said he’d stop back later on.
Cynthia stood out on the ambulance dock, drinking water from a paper cup. Kenny filled a cup at the cooler and followed her out. “I’ve spent too much time in here,” she’d said.
He always asked her, “How’s Earl,” but this time she gave him a different answer. “I think he’s going to make it. I don’t know why. I just do. But even if he does, it will be a long time before he can work again. He might not wor
k again.”
“Who’s going to run the ranch?”
“Dill and the hired man. They’ll take on more hay crew. Earl can still give orders. As soon as he could talk, he started yelling for the nurse. My aunt Helen just laughed. ‘Not a thing wrong with his lungs,’ she said.”
Kenny drank his water and crumpled the cup in his fist. He tossed it down on the asphalt, where the orderlies had dropped a mess of stubbed-out cigarettes.
“You sure?” Kenny said. “You sure you have to go?”
She turned and looked at him, just looked without smiling or blinking. “You think I won’t miss you?”
The sound of her voice was different, sad and serious at the same time. She wanted an answer. He put his hand on her shoulder, for balance, and so she couldn’t hug his ribs. He kissed her on the mouth. He felt no hurry and no fear. When he stopped, he stood back. “I’m going to miss you more,” he said.
Roddy’s truck pulled in just as his mother came out the swinging doors.
“Roddy’s giving me a lift home,” Cynthia said.
Kenny was surprised. But his mother nodded.
“Good luck,” Lenna said. She reached out and touched Cynthia lightly on the arm. “Good luck,” she said again.
Cynthia started to leave, but Kenny stopped her.
“You ever need anything,” he said. “Anything at all.”
“I’ll call you,” she said, winking at him. “I’ll call you.”
She walked down the steps to Roddy’s truck. Kenny waved as the truck pulled out, and Roddy honked.
Kenny told his mother he had another question for the nurse. Could she wait there one more minute? In the hospital, it wasn’t hard to find Earl’s room. Kenny listened outside the door, then, as quietly as he could in boots, walked close to Earl’s bed. The old man’s eyes were closed, and his breath made a soft, wheezing sound, like wind at the edge of a field.
Kenny couldn’t really sit, so he leaned against the other bed, planning to watch this man who might die. For Cynthia, he had prayed that Earl would live. But this man could send him to jail.
The old man’s eyes opened slowly. He looked from side to side, hardly moving his neck. “Cissy?” he said. “Is Cissy here?”
“Not now,” Kenny answered.
Earl suddenly fixed his eyes on Kenny’s face. An anger sparked through them that made Kenny fear he would have another heart attack. He started to back out of the room, to go find help.
“No,” Earl said, and the look faded into a simple tiredness. “I’m not going to die yet. I just want my girl.”
“I’ll get somebody to tell her,” Kenny said. “First I have to ask you what the sheriff said.”
The old man winced. “Said to throw the book at you. Two-time offender.”
Kenny stared directly into Earl’s eyes. “No,” he said. “I was trying to help her.”
“We’ll see about that.”
Kenny left the room and met his mother back at the emergency entrance. She tried to give him a hand, but he waved her away. His ribs hurt so much it was all he could do to keep his balance going down the stairs.
In the truck, Roddy tried to talk Cynthia into stopping at the café, but she shook her head.
“I don’t want to see all those people,” she said. “Have to say good-bye again.”
“You have to get right home?”
“No,” she said. “I’m packed. Dill’s driving us to Bonneville Falls in the morning.”
“Might be your last time,” he said. “Let’s catch the fireworks.”
They left the truck on Main Street and walked down among the parked horse trailers. Families were picnicking in fold-out chairs set up in half circles. A trailer filled with tack for sale was open, saddle blankets hanging on the guy wires of a tarp. They found a place to sit on a stack of hay bales piled behind the fair building. From there, they had a clear view of the sun going down over the mountains and of the new arena where the fireworks would shoot up over the grandstands.
“So,” Roddy said, “you’re going.”
She didn’t answer. She leaned away from him, her elbows resting on her knees, her long back curved. In the dusk, her hair gleamed silver, and Roddy felt an almost unbearable urge to touch her.
She had changed so much since he’d been gone. It took him some time to figure out what it was that was so different. She was calmer. It was something in her voice, he realized.
“Any way to change your mind?” he said.
She turned around, surprised. Just then, the first of the rockets hissed out in the dark and blossomed in a spray of light above them. The horses tethered to the trailers lurched and whinnied, and a dog barked, then whimpered and began to howl. A muffled pop, pop, pop went off, and molten-blue comets arced into the sky.
“Let’s go,” he said. He couldn’t stand to sit there while the rockets scared the horses half to death.
“Where?” she said.
“Come play for me? Just one last time?”
He drove her to the ranch house and watched while she sat down at the grand piano. He loved it that she could play anything, songs he’d heard on the radio. Tunes he could only hum for her.
Afterward, she told him what had happened with Kenny and her dad, and about going to see Harold.
“It was nothing, really,” she said. “But my dad punished me for all those years.”
“You’re leaving something out,” he said.
She looked at him, confused.
“It started with your dad,” he said, “but then it was you, too.”
She reacted, pulling back, a look of anger on her face. “How is this your business?”
“That’s what I mean,” he said. “It’s one thing to want people to love you,” he said. “It’s another thing to let them.”
“Who exactly loves me?” she said, her voice caught between anger and tears.
He reached out and pulled her close. He lifted her and carried her into the darkened room where he’d been staying. He kissed her face, her neck, the soft hollow just above her collarbone. He wanted to tell her, “I love you,” but instead, he helped her with her clothes and ran his hands down her long arms. For the first time, it seemed to him, she turned her body in toward his and moved like a grown woman, her mouth and fingers speaking to him as if he were—as if they were—an urgent, complicated piece of song.
He awoke in the silver before dawn, watching the light beyond the windows fade from dark to softer gray. He woke her and drove her across the valley. They crossed the river, and he let her out at the foot of her own road. He sat in the car and watched her walk up the ranch lane. Halfway up, she turned around. Her old dog loped over the rise and sank down at her feet.
36
Kenny felt as if he might be a hundred. Every place on his whole body hurt. His bruised muscles hurt just under the skin, and he couldn’t find a way to sit or sleep that didn’t cause a stabbing pain. His mom brought him two aspirins and a glass of water.
“Come on,” she said. “We’ll walk downtown and get an ice cream. Be good for you to walk around. Doctor said, ‘Get up and move around.’”
The aspirin caught and dissolved in the back of his throat. He gulped from the glass of water to get rid of the bitter taste.
“After a while,” he said, and his mother went back to the kitchen.
He lay on the couch propped up on pillows, looking out the window. The sky was a kind of blue he only saw in the heat of summer, an empty blue with too much white in it. The whole rest of the summer seemed to him like that blue sky, no clouds. A flat, empty place where nothing happened. He could smell it in the house. That summer smell of dust and dampened floors where his mom was cleaning.
He had a sense that Roddy would be leaving again, and Cynthia had gone to the city, a place Kenny thought of as very far away. A dark, cold place crowded with hundreds and hundreds of people.
More than anything, he felt left. Left with all the plans he didn’t even know he’d had. It was as if
he’d gone to sleep and had a dream where he forgot to go to practice. Where the buzzer went off, and he didn’t even hear it. When he did sleep and dream, he dreamed about riding the horses in the Moyerses’ far pasture. The dampness and the river smell of the grass. He thought of the white goat, the shimmering hide his dad had never sent him.
The sheriff and the county prosecutor had talked to his mother at work. Earl was on his feet but talking about pressing charges. His mother didn’t know where the money would come from if they had to hire a lawyer. Kenny knew the county didn’t have much evidence; it was his word and Cynthia’s against Earl’s.
When Lenna was called upstairs, the prosecutor sat behind his scarred oak desk and told her what charges could be filed. He took statements from Mrs. Dustin and the paramedics on the scene, considered that Kenny had been trespassing and that he’d been accused of trespassing before. Jeff stood by in his sheriff’s khakis. They looked at her with no apologies. When she demanded to know why Earl would do such a thing to a boy, they wouldn’t answer. As she was leaving, the prosecutor warned her to keep her kid away from Earl. If he’d kept quiet, she probably would have, too. But she turned around and glared at them.
“No,” she said. “You keep Earl away from my boy. I mean it. You try to hurt that boy, and I’ll hire a lawyer and put you all to shame.”
The next few days, she stayed home watching over Kenny, waiting for a call from the courthouse. Her threat had been an empty one, a bluff, and she knew those men would go a long way to save face. But it finally came to her, at first as a feeling, and then as certain knowledge. Earl would not ask Cynthia to testify. Still, she couldn’t keep herself from dreading that the phone would ring.
Love and Country Page 23