by Rex Burns
“Where’s Watkins?”
Something closed behind the man’s eyes, and he shook his head in small twitches. “He ain’t here either. I don’t know where he is. I swear to God.”
“Give me your wallet.”
The man’s good hand went slowly to his hip pocket, and his eyes said that he knew now what Wager was really after, and that Wager wasn’t a damn bit different from any other scumbag in the world.
Wager flipped through the little plastic windows for the driver’s license. It said Maynerd L. Riggs, and the tiny colored photograph showed him leaning stiffly away from the glare of the flash. It was a Colorado license, and that meant a set of fingerprints on file with DMV. Wager took it and tossed the wallet back to him.
“What do you want that for?”
“Where’s Jerry Latta?”
The head shook again. “Hey—hey, man, I don’t know. He lives up in Glenwood—he never comes here.” He wiped the blood from his lip with his thumb. “What you want with my driver’s license? Why’re you taking that?”
“I want to know who to kill if you lied to me.”
“I’m not lying—I don’t know where Latta is! He never comes here. Who the fuck are you, anyway? I thought you were a goddam cop!”
“I’m a man with a forty-five. If you come out that door, you can be a man with a forty-five hole.” He was halfway across the porch when he heard Riggs say, “You sorry son of a bitch, I ought to kill you,” and turned back, weapon ready. But the man wasn’t talking to Wager; he was glaring at the dog, whose wet muzzle poked cautiously around a doorframe.
CHAPTER 13
HE REACHED DENVER about sunup, the harsh glare burning his sleepless eyes as he coasted down the long grades of I-70. One of Jo’s favorite views of the city was from up here, where the highway crested the Front Range and you could see almost all the way to Kansas. Out of the broad, shadowed bowl of prairie stretching east from the foot of the mountains, clusters of office towers rose in dusty silhouette against the orange sky. He tried to see it with her eyes, and to imagine her on the empty car seat beside him. But of course she wasn’t. During the night when the car was filled with shadow, he could almost believe that she lay sleeping there. But the glaring light angling into the windshield took even that away, and his mind repeated for a countless time: She’s gone. Once he could convince himself of that, it would be easier. It might be easier. It did not make any difference whether it was easier or not, she was gone. That was a fact.
There were other facts, and the Sanchez boys were the most important right now. That was the fact he would keep his mind on. Wager, beginning to tangle in the morning traffic that flowed into downtown from the surrounding suburbs, pulled into a diner and bought copies of the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News. As he drank his coffee, he flipped through the pages looking for two things, notice of Jo’s death and rodeo ads. The first had not been picked up yet; the second he found in the News on a back page near the comics, a large drawing of a cowboy on a bronc. A regional rodeo of the Mountain States Rodeo Association, affiliated with the North American Rodeo Commission—top prize money in all categories, open to all contestants residing in the Mountain States region. Contestants from outside the region must be PRCA members. The shows were at 7:30 p.m., Thursday, Friday, and Saturday—Sunday at 1:30 and 6:30. Location: National Western Arena. Wager tore out the ad and gazed at it as he finished his breakfast.
The sun had moved to its familiar place over the ragged shadow of western mountains when Wager woke late in the afternoon. His visit to Jo’s parents had been, as he expected, grim. They still hoped she would be found alive, even though he had to tell them again there was no hope. Unlike Sidney’s mother, they did not hate him, though they had better reason. They could have hated him for taking her out there, they could have hated him for not saving her, they could have hated him for destroying the dream that she might still be alive. But they didn’t. Instead, soft-spoken and formal, they thanked him for coming by.
“Did she—was it a nice trip before the accident?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“That’s good. She loved the mountains … nature … We want her back, but if …”
They didn’t hate or accuse. But Wager did, and for reasons he could not tell them: he was the one who had goaded John Sanchez, he was the one who had told Jo there was nothing to worry about, he was the one she reached to in those last terrible moments when he failed her. He was one of those who had contributed to her death.
Kicking off the sweaty sheet, he soaked in the shower for a long time, trying to let the pummel of water erase the feeling of self-disgust that had awakened with him. It did not leave, but at least it sank deeper toward that area of his soul where all his other guilts had been shrugged. There it would fester and rot and, like gas, erupt through his dreams to leave him wide-eyed and numb, and waiting for the dawn and its refuge of daily routine.
The National Western Arena was on the north side of town near the old stockyards and across I-70 from the hulking green bulk of the Denver Coliseum. Wager swung off the freeway at the Coliseum sign and followed the flow of traffic toward the unpaved vacant lots that provided parking. Orange-jacketed attendants beckoned the traffic toward lanes marked $2.00, and Wager pulled in between a pickup truck and a station wagon full of bouncing children wearing cowboy hats and jeans tucked into their small boots. A harried woman screamed at one who darted toward the traffic, and her husband, another slung over his shoulder, said, “Stay right here—you kids want to see this damned rodeo, you stay right here with me!”
Wager crossed the busy street to a mesh fence where a cowboy leaned against a metal pole. On this side of the high-walled building, twilight was heavy and arc lights from the elevated freeway filled the sky with blue light and cast a spray of thin shadows from his feet.
“This is the contestants’ gate, sir—you with the rodeo?” A badge said “Arena Police.”
“No.”
“Ticket windows are around that way. Just cross the street and through that parking lot under the vidock, there.”
“Have John or James Sanchez come through yet?”
“I don’t know them. But they’re probably here—most of the contestants are by this time.”
“How can I get in touch with them?”
“The arena secretary’s office under the grandstand. In the south gate and turn left—it’ll be crowded as all get out. You can’t miss it.”
Making his way under the bed of a ramp leading up to the elevated freeway, he passed a line of tall cattle trailers.
In the mote-filled glare of spotlights high up the arena’s wall, he saw the pens filled with broncs and the massive, thick-bodied bulls. The horses stood patiently, chewing and steaming in the cool air. The bulls, their wide horns clicking together occasionally, moved with a slow, steady restlessness that reminded Wager of the river.
“Look at that one, Daddy—he is big!” A boy pushed against his knee to gaze closely at one of the animals, whose thick hump was as tall as Wager’s head. “Which one’s Jay going to ride?”
“I don’t know. We’ll find out when we get a program.”
Beyond the pens, a sand-colored building housed the tack rooms and stalls for the contestants’ animals. Through a partly open door, Wager glimpsed rows of horses’ heads and an occasional figure with a bucket or shovel working around the stalls.
“Sorry, sir, contestants only in here.” Another arena policeman smiled and propped a casual arm across the opening.
“I’m looking for John or James Sanchez. Do you know if they have a stall here?”
“Sure don’t. Do you know what events they’re in?”
“No.”
“If it’s not roping or steer wrestling, they probably wouldn’t be here anyway. You know where the arena secretary’s office is?”
“I can find it.”
He bought his ticket and a program, a booklet bright with the names of rodeo sponsors and the drawing of a cowbo
y being flung from a saddle bronc. The insert listed the Sanchez names three times in tonight’s performance, but that didn’t help Wager find them in all this crowd. The arcade under the grandstand was filled with people in western wear who milled slowly past booths that sold shiny commemorative pins or offered comic sketches while you posed. Others displayed saddle equipment and leather wear, and a few had trays of shiny badges and buttons with a variety of slogans. A cluster of cowboys stood in front of a dart game, five dollars for three tosses, and tried to win a GMC pickup truck. Another small crowd studied the samples of lariat rope hanging in one booth. Many wore satiny blue warm-up jackets with “Mountain States Rodeo Association” in white letters across the back, and a number of other colors and rodeo names decorated other jackets. He made his way through the crowd and past a snack bar whose serving line snaked out into the alley; beyond a beer booth, he saw a lit window and a bulletin board filled with thumb-tacked notices. From somewhere outside one of the stock entrances that cut across the arcade and slimed the floor with mud and manure, the scream of a whinnying horse knifed through the voices of the crowd.
Wager had to wait to get into the small office where men studied the lists hanging from whitewashed boards. Finally, he caught the eye of the woman hunched behind a small desk and busily scrubbing at something with a worn eraser.
“Can you tell me if John and James Sanchez have registered?”
“I hope so. Registration closed Monday. If they haven’t, it’s too late now.”
“I’m looking for them. It’s important to find them.”
“The message board’s right over there. If they’re here, they’ll find it.”
“I have to tell them personally,” said Wager. “It involves a death.”
“Oh? Now that’s too bad—let me check. Do you know what events they’re in?”
“Bareback, bronc, and bulls.”
“The rough stock, is it?” She turned to a master list and ran her finger down the names. “Here’s James—he’s up for saddle bronc riding tonight, on Tough Spot. He drew slack time for bareback and bulls.”
“What’s that mean?”
She looked up. “It means he already rode. He had his go-round this afternoon. We got too many contestants to pack them all in during the show, so everybody draws and takes their chances on what animal they get and when they ride.”
“What about John?”
“He’s already rode his bareback. But he’s up tonight for saddle and bull. He should be somewhere around the chutes if he’s not wandering around looking at the girls.”
“Can I get to the chutes without a pass?”
“Not in them, but you can sit right behind them if you want to. This is a good arena for seeing what goes on behind the chutes. Just take the next gate down to your left and that’ll put you in the seats closest to the chutes.”
Wager thanked her and squeezed his way out of the small office and back into the strolling crowd. A small knot of women in their late teens or twenties studied him as he came through the door, their eyes searching his waist for a championship belt buckle. But he didn’t have one, and he wasn’t a cowboy, and something about his eyes made them uneasily shift their gaze to someone else. He followed a jacket that said “Holloway Stock Contractor” out through a short tunnel leading to the arena. Here, clusters of cowboys talked and searched the passing crowd for familiar faces; one in a shiny red jacket flung his small saddle over a railing in front of the lower seats and hollered, “Gilbert—Gilbert—over here!”
Turning up the concrete steps, Wager made his way halfway up the green rows of wooden seats and paused to study this end of the arena. He could see behind the first three chutes and into the tunnel that led to the stock pens outside. Three more chutes were on the other side, but his view of them was blocked by the wooden superstructure bracing the announcer’s box. Already horses stood nervously in the white-painted chutes, an occasional hoof thudding loudly against a plank. On the packed dirt behind, half a dozen cowboys, their numbers bright squares on their shirts, worked over their bareback rigging to stretch the straps and grind rosin into the handgrip. Others wrapped tape around their arm, the one that would be yanked and jerked by the plunge of the horse’s head; and here and there a cowboy went through limbering-up exercises, twisting his torso, bending, pulling the kinks out of cold leg muscles.
High up in the opposite seats, an organist played something that sounded like “You Are My Sunshine,” and farther down the grandstands, in the central sections where rows of faces made animated pink dots, vendors picked their way up and down the busy stairs calling, “Cold beer—cold Coors beer!”
He bought one and carried it with him, sipping at its thick foam as he climbed higher and centered himself in the almost empty seats over the tunnel that led from the animal pens and under the announcer’s box to the arena. There, a flash of bright colors, the flag bearers were lining up, their horses prancing sideways and the pennants of the rodeo associations and sponsors wagging stiffly as riders anchored the flagpoles in their stirrup sockets. The organ music gave way to a woman singing “How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?” and inviting everyone to say arf-arf. On the platform just below Wager, the arena secretary and a battery of judges shuffled papers and double-checked the contestants’ names against the animals they had drawn.
The organ gave three loud chords and the singer thanked everyone and asked them to shift their attention to the announcer’s box, where Marvin Sutton would welcome all you cowboys and cowgirls to the second go-round of the fifteenth annual Mountain States Rodeo Ride-Off.
The arena lights brightened and an amplified voice asked, “Is everybody ready to rodeo tonight!” and milked louder cheers and shouts and applause to warm up the spectators. The arena behind the chutes filled with more cowboys as the flags of the Grand Entry galloped in a circle into the arena. At one of the gated chutes, a rider eased his bareback rigging over a nervous animal, and a stock handler fished with a hooked stick for the loose ends of cinch and flank strap. The organ music rose as the final pennants snapped and waved behind galloping riders, and the announcer called the crowd to their feet to greet the American flag and sing the National Anthem. By the time the last flag cleared the arena sands, the announcer was introducing the first rider, and Wager was having trouble making out any of the faces or numbers among the throng that now milled in the dim area behind the chutes.
Gate one suddenly yanked open, and the first bareback rider burst into the arena with a spray of muddy sand and organ music. Judges with clipboards trotted a safe distance from the flying hooves, and the pickup men circled their horses behind the twisting, jolting animal to wait for the eight-second buzzer. But the cowboy, his hat still floating in the air behind him, was yanked forward as the horse doubled, flying from the handgrip to crash loudly into the boards of the arena wall. A wad of black, gummy mud thudded onto Wager’s program as one of the pickup men galloped in to yank loose the horse’s flank strap, and the animal stopped bucking and turned quickly, head high and ears up, to trot toward the animal pens outside. He ran beneath Wager and out of sight while the rider, staggering slightly and holding his shoulder against movement, squeezed through a fence gate into the crowd behind the chutes. The second bronc rider was racing into the spotlights while the first cowboy sank onto a bench and two men in jackets with “Sports Medicine” across the backs began to feel around the dislocated shoulder.
Saddle bronc riding was fourth on the schedule, and the flow of cowboys milling or talking or leaning on the arena fence gradually changed with each event. John was listed to ride third, and his number was 343. The hometown following his name was Rimrock, Colorado, and his score last night had been a 68. Tonight, he would ride Duster, and the program insert had two blank slots behind his name so spectators could mark his time for the second go-round and the total score so far. James, too, was listed as coming from Rimrock, and he drew thirteenth spot. His horse was Knothead. Wager wasn’t sure which chute they would be
assigned, but as the steer-wrestling competition—launched from the far end of the arena to gallop toward the announcer’s box—moved into its final contestants, he squinted among the restless faces and numbers that moved constantly in the shadowy angles behind the fencing at this end of the arena.
There—612—James’s number. It lifted and fell on the back of a checkered shirt that leaned tensely over a plunging horse being locked into chute two. Wager moved down the aisle, edging past contestants who sat on the steps to talk with friends or relatives in the seats. At the chutes, cowboys sat in their saddles on the ground and stretched leather, while others strapped on their gloves with rawhide thongs and rubbed rosin onto sticky fingers.
In the chutes—quick glimpses of hairy legs or tossing heads—the saddle broncs were outfitted and cinched. Wager passed a cowboy who dropped his jeans to anchor a spine pad down the back of his pants; an arena policeman loosely patrolled the alley that opened into the chute area, and Wager saw John, hat jammed down far enough to fold his ears out, clamber up the wooden fences of chute two and straddle them to squat just above the brown heaving motion that was his animal. Face down and staring intently past his leather chaps, John focused all his attention on the horse waiting beneath him. Chute one slapped open to free the horse, and the audience cheered as the announcer howled, “Oh, no! That’s too bad, but let’s give that cowboy a big hand, ladies and gentlemen—that’s the only pay he’ll take home tonight, so please be generous.”
John nodded at something said by one of the cowboys and then eased quickly but lightly into the waiting saddle. The horse heaved up, white eyes catching the arena glare, and swung its teeth at a cowboy, who jumped away quickly and swore as the others laughed at him. The chute boss said, “Ready?” and John’s hat brim nodded and the gate swung open, baring the left side of horse and rider.
Duster leaped and twisted once, then ran in a series of short kicks straight for the arena barrier. It scraped its flank along the boards to brush off the rider, then fishtailed and spun, hooves cracking loudly against the fence. Plunging sideways, the horse lost its balance, and John, one hand high against the glare of spotlights from the arena roof, felt the horse stumble and plunge sideways. He yanked his feet from the stirrups, and as the animal thudded against the sand, he rolled frantically from the tossing head and flailing hooves to come up sprinting for the wall. A pickup man darted his horse between John and the bronc, and another chased after the now galloping animal to yank free the flank strap. The two judges stood talking together as John, slapping dirt from his hat, walked slowly back to the chutes. The crowd began chanting, “Reride, reride!” and the announcer, leaning over the rail of the box to hear the judges, was happy to answer them, “Yes, sir, the men with the clipboards say Johnny Sanchez gets a second chance—he’ll be having a reride and another shot at the money!”