by Kit Frazier
“To what?” I whispered back. “There’s a guy outside our door doing a crack deal.” I just stared at him, laying there with his eyes closed. “Okay. That’s it,” I said. “I want to go home.”
There would be many, many days when I just wanted to go home. We were together
for five years, and had more adventures than you can shake a stick at--some of the adventures were hilarious--some heartbreaking, but that's a story for another time.
In many ways, we grew up together. And I'm glad of that.
Part II: The One That Came Along . . . Directly
Chapter Seven
Rednecks should come with Warning Labels
“$50,000? Are you kidding me?”
I was having lunch and making wedding plans with a romance-writing Darlin’ Girl– any girl under the age of 30 is a Darlin’ Girl–and she told me she can’t seem to keep her wedding under budget, and her new motto seems to be “Who’s got what and how much can I get my hands on?”
“Well,” she repeated the Wedding Planner Mantra, “You only get married once.” I almost snorted sweet tea all over the wedding cake samples. I’ve heard that before, and from the very same people who have lured her with that line–the Wedding Planner’s Siren Song–“You’ve got your whole lives together, what’s another couple thousand dollars? After all, you only get married once . . .”
I wanted to say, Oh, honey, it’s a wedding, which is much different than a marriage.
A wedding is a big party where you wear a big white magical dress, and do the whole Princess-For-A-Day-thing, but once the confetti is cleaned up and the sticky stuff from the bubbles are scrubbed away–you are no longer a Bride, you are now a Wife.
The wedding is long gone, and the marriage, with a big pile of credit card bills, begins.
Not that I’m a pessimist, but I’ve been down this road before, and I’ve held the hands of those who also took the plunge and nearly drowned, and all I’m saying is–it’s a party.
Wouldn’t you rather spend $50,000 on a va-ca to Cabo or a down payment on a house?
But Darlin’ Girl has lived with her Mama and Daddy all her life, and has had everyone and their dog steppin’ and fetchin’ for her and she is used to a happy-go-lucky upper middle class life of limitless credit cards and MTV-style pool parties.
I’m having a hard time imagining this previously-pampered girl being happy in the single-wide trailer on a patch of dirt outside the city where her particular redneck lives.
Don’t get me wrong–it works well for lots of people, but the people it works for aren’t expecting their guy’s trailer house to be transformed into a palace, and their prince in a pickup to stop picking his teeth at the table and get up the gumption to start his own company–which is what she’s been telling me. And herself.
Here’s the thing. A redneck is a redneck, which is okay, if that’s what you want–I’m perfectly happy with mine. But it took me a couple of rides around the rodeo to get the right one.
And I know that my redneck is what he is, and there’s no changing him.
Luckily, we wanted the same things (for the most part)–to live in the country with lots of animals were I could write to my heart’s content and he could fool with the cattle and build things and do whatever else he does outdoors.
And you can tell Darlin' Girls ’til you’re blue in the face that when you get yourself a redneck, he is, well, a redneck. You’re not going to polish him up into Leo DiCaprio no matter how much scrubbin' him with Lemon Scented Pledge
And as someone who’s been there, I know I can advise all I want, but all Darlin' Girl hears is ringing sound of wedding bells. Same as we did when we were Darlin’ Girls.
But after a couple of rides around the rodeo, you come to realize that Grandma Jessie was right: You can dress ‘em up and take ‘em out, but when you get to the bottom of it, he’s still just a man, and a redneck at that.
I wish her the best, and will continue to help her with her big party, and hope all those Wedding Planner Sirens are right when they say, “You only get married once.”
Chapter Eight
Welcome to the Wild, Wild West
Falling in love is a lot like falling down a flight of stairs.
You didn’t see it coming, you certainly didn’t mean to, and once you’ve reached your destination you find yourself flat on your back, blinking at the ceiling and wondering, “How the hell did I get here?”
I often ask myself that on mornings when I can’t believe my life now is getting up at four-thirty in the morning to feed assorted livestock, fix lunches and check the weather.
It has always been my assumption that four-thirty only came once a day, and that it was firmly entrenched in a happy hour with my writer buddies.
But that’s what happens when you wind up marrying a cowboy.
Grandma Jessie used to say there are only three kinds of men in this world: the ones you play with, the ones you stay with and the ones who just need killin’.
And happily, not all cowboys are the same.
In the beginning (the play-with and stay-with stages), my first cowboy could do no wrong. The man practically farted hearts and flowers which is a neat trick if you can get him to do it. But as we neared the killin’ stage, I was tempted to chop off some his favorite parts and duct tape them to his forehead.
Since the law (even in Texas) frowns upon maiming your loved ones, I’ve amended Grandma Jessie’s Rule of Three to include two alternative endings.
The first is that if you can’t beat ‘em, you’re not using a big enough stick.
Face it. You’re just gonna have to out redneck your redneck. This isn’t hard, if you have in fact decided your cowboy is worth keeping. The trick is to just hang around with a redneck—any redneck—as long as you can possibly stand it, because sooner or later the redneckedness is gonna rub off on you. And honey, once you’ve been subjected to a certain level of redneckedness, there’s no amount of Extra Strength Clorox or mega-doses of the Discovery Channel that can scrub the redneckedness out from under your skin.
My preferred method of dealing with Cowboy One was the Redneck Catch & Release Program. You catch and keep your own personal cowboy and do the whole moon-pied, doe-eyed, hearts-and-flowers thing until one day he stays out all night and you have to restrain yourself to keep from Super Gluing his frank to his beans.
And when you’re finally to the point of wanting to back over him with his own tricked-out pickup truck, it’s time to take him back to the auto parts department at the Wal-Mart where you found him in the first place.
And, after you’ve drunk your bodyweight in bourbon and Diet Coke and all your good sense ran out the dog door and you decide to go get yourself another cowboy, don’t worry.
As Miss Jessie used to say, “There’s an ass for every saddle, and another one’ll be along directly.”
This is the story of The One that came along . . . directly.
Chapter Nine
Small Mercies & other Cowboy Miracles
“That red brangus is out again,” our rural route mail lady rolled her pickup down the fenceline where we were fixing posts. She sighed, leaning out her truck window and said, "I tried to get her back in the gate but she high-tailed it into the woods.
I swore and growled and, despite my tendency toward non-violence, visions of brangus burgers danced in my head.
That rotten heifer was why Chap and I had spent the past two days lugging around a big heavy fence-stretcher, working our way around the breaks that heifer made in the fenceline.
Chap didn’t even blink. He simply shucked off his leather gloves as we headed back to the truck to go search for the rogue cow.
She’s not our cow–we have short, stocky black angus– this long-legged, lanky, red she-beast belongs to Chap’s brother, but since she’s boarding with us, she’s our responsibility.
We knew right where to look–this isn’t the first time the heifer’s jumped the fence, and we found her right where w
e knew she’d be–across the busy highway in a stand of tall Johnson grass, gazing doe-eyed and moon-pied at the neighboring rancher’s enormous longhorn.
I can’t blame her. He is a beautiful bull and I’ve been known to gaze at him myself.
I scooted into the driver’s seat as Chap got down out of the truck and moved toward the heifer, speaking low, soothing words as he smoothed his bare hand over her cheek and led her, with no rope, prod or any other poking device, back to the front gate, where she followed him like a well-trained dog.
It never ceases to amaze me, the way animals, big, small, tame or wild, practically purr around Chap. And it never ceases to amaze me how gentle he can be. Especially since he spends a good part of autumn togged in camouflage and toting a rifle, lying in
wait for the deer he feeds all year long. I sit with him sometimes in the deer stand–why he wants me there I have no idea–I won’t let him shoot anything while I’m sitting with him, and without a book, I bore very easily and tend to fidget.
"Shh,” he told me on one cold, still November morning. “Watch.”
And I quieted and watched, and to my amazement, a rare, endangered golden- cheeked warbler cocked his head looking at us, perched on a prickly branch of a cedar tree.
The little bird hopped down one limb, cocking his head as he studied us, and then he hopped again and dropped right down, landing on the barrel of Chap’s gun.
I held my breath and watched in wonder as the bird inched up the barrel of the gun, studying us, and apparently satisfied with whatever it was he saw, he fluttered off, into the clearing.
I didn’t need to be hushed. I was speechless.
Chapter Ten
The Naked Truth: What to do when your dog eats the house
When I got home yesterday, my little blue border collie came running up, ears back, tail between his legs. “Uh oh,” I said, “what did you do?”
"He tore up the onion field,” Chap said, shucking off his leather work gloves as he came up from the back of the house.
I took Bodhi’s muzzle in my hands to ask him if this was true, and was treated to a big blast of onion breath. There was still onion stuck between his teeth.
I sighed. This wasn’t the first time the little beast’s been in trouble for tearing something up.
Last summer, while he was still a puppy and we’d just finished building the house, I gave both the dogs a bath, then I let them play on the grass until they got a little bit more dry.
I went upstairs to go get my laptop so I could join the dogs down by the water, and all of a sudden I hear this horrible, reverberating “CRUNCH, CRUNCH, CRUNCH!” and I don’t know what in the world it is, but I know it can’t be good, so I ran down the stairs, and flew out the back door, and there was Bodhi, laying on the porch. . . eating the house.
I couldn’t believe it.
He had 15 toys within snout’s reach, 13-thousand sticks to chomp on, and a whole other dog to play with, and he uses the house for a chew toy?
Poor Sam the lab was sitting there, watching him, like, “Dude. What are you doing?" I screamed, “Bodhi! Are you trying to get us both killed?” He just spit out a big chunk of house and looked at me like, “What?” Luckily, he took big chomps rather than chewed little bits, so I told him he was bad and put him in his kennel and went back and jigsaw puzzled the pieces back then Scotch taped it together so it wouldn’t look as bad when I had to give Chap the news.
I called my mama and I said, “What am I going to do? He’s going to kill us both! Should I call him so he’s not surprised when he gets home?”
Mama said, “Are you crazy? Then he’ll have an hour to stew about it until he gets home.” So, I put some beer in the freezer and went and took a shower to cool off and figure out how to tell him. He came home while I was getting out of the shower. I stood there, dripping wet and I said, “I have some bad news.”
And then I told him and was shocked at his reaction.” Well, let’s see it,” he said. With great dread and visions of my pup strapped to the front bumper of his truck, I got dressed and took him outside and showed him the taped up version of our brand new house.
I couldn’t believe it–He didn’t blow his top.
He said, “Work with him about not eating the house and keep him off the porch until he learns not to do that.”
Moral of the story: If you’re going to deliver bad news to a man, do it while you’re naked. And bring beer.
Chapter Eleven
Sharp Hooks, Smelly dogs and Fish Pee–Just Another Day in Paradise
13 stabs with a fish hook
2 smelly, wet dogs
1 blast of fish pee . .
.Just another day in paradise . . .
When Chap asked me if I’d ever been fishing, I said, “Of course. My grandpa used to take me all the time.”
Of course, my idea of fishing and his are completely different.
My idea of fishing is laying on a beach towel drinking a big glass of sugar-shocked iced tea and reading a good book, which is, coincidentally, very similar to my idea of working out.
His idea of fishing is poking a small fish with a hook, dunking him in the water—a mean trick because the little guy is back in the water where he belongs, and just when the little guy thinks he can make an escape, a bigger fish comes along, and they’re both goners.
But it’s hard to reconcile eating meat if you can’t bear to know how it comes to the table, and that’s the hardest thing about living this close to the land.
Living with a cowboy is a tradeoff. On one hand, it’s comforting to know that if the whole world went to hell in a handbasket, your guy knows how to start a fire with twigs, fix an engine with baling wire, and can, if necessary, make a meal out of almost anything, including twigs and baling wire.
This morning, when I boarded our little bass boat with a tall glass of iced tea and a good book, he looked at me like he always does, like we are from two different planets that barely share the same orbit.
I had agreed to go fishing with him in the morning if he agreed to go swimming with me in the afternoon.
The dogs boarded the boat with their usual exuberance, but even I was a little taken aback by the rotten fish smell and wet shaggy coats and the worst fish breath outside of a tuna factory.
They had obviously started fishing without us.
Chap set his jaw, but didn’t comment as the dogs took their seats in the back of the boat and readied themselves for more fish.
Dogs on the boat is my idea—and Chap obliges without comment.
I white-knuckled the seat handles as he jammed the little boat into warp drive—the dogs happily hanging off the sides, tongues lolling, fur flying. I’m pretty sure it was supposed to be fun.
He cut the motor and we coasted stealthily to the “secret spot,” the one where he had previously sunk our fresh-from-the-season Christmas tree, because apparently, fish celebrate the holiday off-season.
He baited two hooks, and looked at me expectantly.
Sighing, I set the book aside, and decided to heed my mother’s advice to share my guy’s interests—better this than hunting—and tentatively took hold of the pre-baited fishing pole he handed me.
I dropped the hook into the water, and gazed longingly at my abandoned book.To my horror and Chap’s astonishment, my rod bent—hard.
Something on the other end of the line took off, nearly taking me and the rod with it while Chap yelled, “Reel it in, reel it in!”
With a biblical amount of growling and bitching, I planted my feet, braced my knees, just as he’d shown me, and as I wrestled the beast toward the boat, it broke the surface.
I screamed. The dogs screamed. And I swear I heard the fish scream. I suppose it was a fish—it had the head of an alligator and the body of a four-foot shark.
I dropped the rod. Chap lunged forward and grabbed the rod just before it went over the side.
He turned and looked at me, waiting for me and the dogs to calm down, while the huge fish t
hrashed and flailed in the water.
Chap said, “It’s an alligator gar. They look mean, but they won’t hurt you unless you make them mad.”
I blinked. “He has a hook in his mouth—he’s already mad.”
Chap shook his head. “We’re going to let him go, but I have to get him in the boat to get the hook out—you going to be all right?”
I took a deep breath of relief. We weren’t going to haul this beast home.
I nodded and backed out of the way while he reached down and gripped the beast’s long, toothy, alligator snout and hauled it into the boat on it’s back, where it promptly shot a stream of urine right in my face.
Okay—it wasn’t exactly in my face, but it was close enough.
Shrieking, I yelped, “It peed on me! I didn’t know fish could pee and I sure as hell didn’t know there are alligators in the lake!”
Again, Chap looked at me like I was speaking tongues. “It’s not an alligator, it’s an alligator gar.” He snipped the hook from the beast’s long, sharp jaws and released it into the lake.
I must have looked horrified as I watched the big thing slink off into the water, moving its body like a snake.
I shivered. “You okay?” he said, helping me clean up. “I just want to go home,” I said. He nodded. “Then we’ll go swimming.” I stared at him, then down at the water where he’d just released jaws. “In a lake filled with fish pee and alligators? Not on your life bucko.”
Chapter Twelve
Mean Cats, Belligerent Toads and Sweet, Warty Revenge
“What is it with you and weird animals?” Chap asked, examining the scratches on my forearm, courtesy of the world’s meanest cat. “You know, other people have cats who actually like them.”
I had noticed a deep cut on mean kitty’s ear and a patch of fur missing from his back that needed tending. Our cat, it seems, is the neighborhood thug, and has gained quite a reputation with the local lizard, deer and dog population.