A Kingdom in a Horse

by Maia Wojciechowska

  Notable published works by Maia Wojciechowska

  MARKET DAY FOR ’TI ANDRÉ

  SHADOW OF A BULL

  ODYSSEY OF COURAGE: THE STORY OF ALVAR NÚÑEZ CABEZA DE VACA

  THE HOLLYWOOD KID

  A SINGLE LIGHT

  TUNED OUT

  HEY, WHAT’S WRONG WITH THIS ONE?

  DON’T PLAY DEAD BEFORE YOU HAVE TO

  THE ROTTEN YEARS

  THROUGH THE BROKEN MIRROR WITH ALICE

  TILL THE BREAK OF DAY

  THE LIFE AND DEATH OF A BRAVE BULL

  WINTER TALES FROM POLAND

  THE PEOPLE IN HIS LIFE

  HOW GOD GOT CHRISTIAN INTO TROUBLE

  Copyright © 1965, 1993, 2012 by Maia Wojciechowska Rodman

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Sky Pony Press, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

  Sky Pony Press books may be purchased in bulk at special discounts for sales promotion, corporate gifts, fund-raising, or educational purposes. Special editions can also be created to specifications. For details, contact the Special Sales Department, Sky Pony Press, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018 or info@skyhorsepublishing.com.

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  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Manufactured in China, October 2011

  This product conforms to CPSIA 2008

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

  ISBN: 978-1-61608-481-3

  Elsie McCoy

  and Oriancfs horse

  Chapter One

  What he liked most about traveling by train was the feeling of drowsiness that seemed to be part of the clattering of wheels against the tracks. Trains were made for daydreaming, he decided, and then smiled to himself. His father and the other rodeo men were not daydreaming; they were asleep, their long legs extended between the seats, their hats pulled down over their faces, their thumbs in the buckled belts of their jeans. It’s funny, he thought, how very alike they are, and how like them I have become.

  There was a time when he was not like them at all. There was a time when he was hardly aware that he had a father and that his father was Lee Earl. He lived with his mother then, and he would hide behind her when the thin stranger with a scar running the length of his face would come to visit them. His mother would tell him that this man was his father and that his father was a very famous all-around cowboy. But that knowledge did nothing to the boy; the man frightened him, and he was glad whenever he went away.

  He was only five when his mother died and the stranger he feared became the one and only person he now had. And as suddenly as his whole life had collapsed for him, a new existence began. His father became his whole world. He began to travel the rodeo circuit with him.

  “I want to make people laugh and the riders safe,” his father said when he explained to him his decision to become a rodeo clown. “And besides, being a clown will give me more time to be with you.”

  And now he was David Earl, Lee’s son, and that was something to be proud of, for Lee Earl was no ordinary clown. He was the greatest rodeo clown in the world. Lee Earl was a champion clown, the best, the smartest, the funniest, and the most imaginative and daring rodeo clown who ever lived. That’s what everyone said, and that’s what they wrote about him in newspapers and magazines.

  The fact that his father was the very best made up for many things—things like not having friends his own age, no school to go to, and no home besides a series of dingy hotel rooms. It even made up for not having a mother.

  “When you’re thirteen,” his father used to say to him, “I’ll let you come in with me. You’ll be the barrel man and I’ll be the infighter.”

  “Why can’t I start now?” the boy would ask. He knew the answer but hoped, each time they talked about it, that his father might change his mind.

  “Thirteen is early enough,” his father would say. “At thirteen you’ll be man enough for the job. Besides …”

  Besides, thirteen was Lee Earl’s lucky number.

  Waiting for that birthday was like waiting for snow in the Texas panhandle. But while waiting, he was happy because he loved everything about his life. He loved the traveling, the excitement of crisscrossing the wide expanse of the West and Southwest. He was part of the “suicide” circuit, part of men who have chosen gambling with their very lives. He loved the long evenings of sitting around with the rodeo riders, listening to them. They lied too much, smoked too much, drank too much, and were too quick of temper, but it was from them that he learned the reason why he, David Earl, would have no other life but the rodeo life.

  The stories they told of the great riders and their horses, of the memorable events they had witnessed or heard about, made the natural boundaries for that life. And within the confines of those boundaries he meant to live. Always. He and his father.

  While waiting for his thirteenth birthday, David was learning. He was learning how to be a rodeo clown. No one ever had to tell him what it was that the clown did. He saw that for himself. The clown was there not only to get laughs, he was there to divert the Brahman bull’s attention from a thrown rider. That was the important part, the part that was pure danger. For no man can outrun a bull bent on killing. The timing was the thing. Without timing there would be no live clowns, only dead ones.

  He learned most from watching his father. While the crowd saw a ludicrous figure in an outlandish costume—a bald-headed skullcap with a red fringe on his head, exaggerated makeup on his face—gawking at a thundering ton of bull flesh with lowered horns, the boy would watch his father’s feet; he would judge the distance, he would measure the speed of the turns, the bull’s and his father’s. He knew that behind the makeup his father’s face was as tense as that of any man risking death. He knew that his father’s brain became a machine, working with the accuracy of a watch. And while the crowd was in stitches at the clowning of the man who made the death ballet seem like slapstick, the boy saw that his father was saving the riders’ lives and, in exchange, risking his own.

  There had been many famous clowns before Lee Earl, and David knew what made them famous, but now his father was said to be better than any of them. Like them, he was tough and he was smart. And when he was hurt he would not show it. When one of his bones would break under the impact of an encounter with a Brahman, he would not tell anyone, not even his son. That was why the boy would watch his father sleep. If he saw him wince in his dreams, he would know that the hurt was not a minor one. He would have a doctor come in to examine his father in the hotel room early in the morning when he could not protest.

  But clowning was not everything to the boy. Like his father, he intended to make his name in other standard events, the saddle-bronc riding, the calf roping, bareback riding, steer wrestling, and Brahman bull riding.

  He knew as much about the horses that made the history of rodeo as he did about the men. The greatest of the “critters” was Midnight, the most magnificent bucker of the 1932-36 rodeos. He threw the best of the riders, and when he died, a cortege of three hundred men whose bones he had managed to break mourned at his funeral. And he knew about other horses who had a sudden and unending hatred of the saddle: War Paint, Miss Klamath, Yellow Fever, and Five Minutes to Midnight.

  But his special love was reserved for the horses that were friends rather than enemies of man. The American quarter horse, like its master, came out of a brutal struggle fo
r the survival of the fittest, and it had to be lithe, fast, and intelligent to win that struggle.

  As the train rushed through majestically beautiful but desolate Wyoming, David was thinking’ of the horse that he would buy for himself. On his thirteenth birthday he would become a clown. That day, only eight months away, would be the day he would begin to save for that horse. He did not even want to look around for one before he could afford to buy it. He could wait. The kind of horse he would buy was the kind he would know he wanted the minute he saw it.

  He had it all figured out—how he was going to board his horse, ship it from place to place, when he was going to ride it, and what he was going to teach it. He would, like his father, be a rodeo clown, but he also wanted to become a champion roper. And for that to happen he had to own a horse that was smarter than himself. A horse like Baldy. He had heard the old-timers talk of Baldy, and he knew that that horse could do anything but tie a knot. And that’s the kind of horse he was going to get for himself.

  The signs were all over the small Wyoming town. Nearly ten thousand people had come for the annual rodeo, some having driven as far as eight hundred miles to see his father, the rodeo’s main attraction.

  David was awakened, like so many times before, by the staccato beat of hoofs echoing from the buildings and the macadam pavement of the main street. He jumped out of bed to watch the horses pass under his hotel window. Each time he saw the parade of rodeo horses his throat would tighten. Soon he would be riding his own horse to the arena.

  There was a dust storm that day out in the plains beyond the town, and the gray-yellow of the blowing sand seemed to encircle the town in a sort of a prison. His father was putting on makeup that would make his face like a mask, unrecognizable; and David suddenly felt an impulse to tell him about the horse he intended to buy. There was something about the dust storm, and his father’s whitening face, that made him want to share this secret with his father. But he decided against it. He too was superstitious. He did not want to endanger the dream by talking about it.

  David was standing at the rails, alone as was his habit, not talking to anyone, when the bull riding started. Most rodeos limit a man to one bull ride, and only one bull is released at a time. To have two bulls and two riders come out at the same time was even more dangerous than the Texas “mad scrambles,” during which ten riders, ten bulls, and ten clowns are turned out at the same time. But David knew that his father was not worried. This was August 13, and thirteen was Lee’s lucky number. The two riders would not worry even if it were not the thirteenth. “With Lee Earl as the rescue man,” the saying went, “you’re as safe as in your own bed.”

  The bellowing bulls could be heard long before they came out of the chutes. They emerged, two of them, big and mean, with riders seated precariously on their huge backs. Each rider held the unbuckled rope with one hand, using the other for balance against the bull’s high kicks. Within what seemed a split second, the bulls collided one against the other. Lee had torn off his skullcap and held it as a lure in his left hand, while with his right he waved the dunce cap. At the moment of the collision he was so close to the animals that their impact sent him sprawling.

  Even before the people began to laugh at the sight of the clown in the dust, David knew that this was not part of the act, that his father did not mean to fall. He had vaulted the railing and was running toward his father who was already on his feet.

  “Get back! “ Lee shouted to David.

  But at that instant both riders were unseated. It happened so very fast that no one could later tell for sure whether the riders were midway coming down or still going up. Lee was caught, not by one animal but by both simultaneously. A horn of each bull tore into him and he was not tossed; rather he seemed to be ripped apart as the bulls separated with pieces of his clothing on their horns.

  David was on his knees at his father’s side when two shots rang out, and the two bulls were down and dead within seconds of their angry exit from the chutes.

  The arena filled instantly with people. Someone was pulling at David’s arms and he did not know whether he was being lifted or carried, but he struggled against the hands that held him, wanting to see, to reach his father. Tears obscured his vision and his own angry shouts of “Let me go!” were loud in his ears.

  In the ambulance as he sat at his father’s side he did not dare look at the white face below him but stared out of the rear window of the screaming vehicle at the dust storm moving closer to town.

  “I wouldn’t believe it if I weren’t seeing it,” the fat doctor said. David was just inside the door, not wanting to see what the blood was hiding. “The horns hit the hip bones on both sides and seemed to have bounced back.”

  An intern and a nurse were bending down over his father, and the doctor kept pointing his fat finger.

  “About fifteen inches of flesh torn clear from the bone!”—he gave a low whistle—”on both sides! And the bones are just fine. All we need to do is clean the wounds and stitch the flesh back together.”

  And that was that. A miracle, some said. David thought it had more to do with that day being the thirteenth of the month.

  Within three hours he was permitted to go into the room and talk to his father.

  “How do you feel?” he asked.

  “As if someone had tickled me,” his father said and tried to laugh. David knew the pain was bad, in spite of everything the doctor said. He had seen that look of pain before. But this time there was something new in his father’s eyes, a light he had never seen there.

  “They say you’ll be all right,” David said.

  “You and I. Both of us will be all right,” his father said.

  And with that he turned his face to the wall. It was not until the next day that David understood what his father meant.

  “As soon as they let me get up,” his father told him, “we’re taking off for Vermont.”

  “Vermont?” That was the end of the world. Up north, in the east, where there are no horses, no rodeos, nothing.

  “Your mother came from there,” his father was saying. “Once I promised her a house. I’ve been paying for one ever since you were born. I didn’t tell her about it because I wanted it to be a surprise. And now it’s ours.”

  “What for? What do we need with a house?” David said, shivering. He had never before felt a premonition of disaster. Now he felt it in the unfamiliar weakness in his knees, in the tightness of his throat, and in that strange light in his father’s eyes.

  “We’ll live in that house,” his father said.

  “But why? Why would we want to live in a house, in Vermont?” he shouted angrily.

  “Because—” his father began softly, but then his voice rose also in anger—”because I don’t want us to end up like the rest in some forsaken grave! ”

  It couldn’t be, the boy thought, it couldn’t be that his father had forgotten all about his promise. His father reached his hand to touch him, but David moved away from the bed.

  “When I first started to pay for this house,” his father said quietly, not looking at his son but toward the open window, “I was only thinking of your mother. But this last year I often thought that the two of us ought to belong somewhere. Normal people don’t live like we do. They greet each other on the streets by name. They walk into a store, and the owner knows what they came to buy. It’s a fine kind of life and you’ll love it—”

  “I’d hate it!”

  “You’ve got to understand,” his father said firmly, “everything’s changed now. I’ll never go back into that arena. Never again.”

  David ran out of the hospital, away from his father’s words, away from that light in his eyes, away from the sickeningly sweet smell of that room. The town was quiet now, with the rodeo gone and the dust settled somewhere else. He sat on a log, for hours, until darkness came, trying to figure things out. At first he thought that his father had turned into a coward, but he dismissed that thought. Why, then? All he knew was that his
father had broken his promise to him. He had waited until he was almost thirteen to tell him that the waiting was for nothing. His life now was finished. There was to be no future for him. And what he had to learn now was to forget the past.

  Chapter Two

  He hated everything—the town, the house, the school, the children, Vermont, and most of all he hated his father. In the first month he tried running away twice. He was going to go west, join a rodeo on his own; he would change his name and become a bronco rider, the best who ever lived. He would get himself a horse that would make old Baldy look like a donkey. There would be nothing in his life except that horse of his, no friends, no family, no memories. No one would be able to hurt him because he would never trust anyone; he would never count on anyone. A horse could not cheat you out of a dream; a horse would never lie to you.

  Both attempts at running away ended in failure. The first time he hitchhiked a ride. The truck driver seemed to him like a trustworthy sort of a man, and he told him his last name and almost confided to him that he had run away. They stopped for breakfast, and the driver must have called Lee. Within half an hour David was back home. What was so humiliating about that attempt was the fact that until the truck driver called, his father was unaware of David’s disappearance.

  The very next week David bought a second-hand bicycle with some money he had and tried running away again. This time his father caught up with him before night fell. And once again David felt humiliated. He was hungry and cold and pitying himself when his father found him.

  “I don’t want you to try running away again,” his father said on the way back. “I tried to make you understand why it is that I had to quit the rodeo. It would never have worked for us.” He paused and put an arm around David’s shoulders. “That was a dumb promise I made you. One day you’ll forgive me because you’ll understand that sometimes dreams have to end. I had a dream too, us, working together. It ended the second I saw you inside the arena.”