Dream Wheels (28 page)

“Ready?”

“Give ’er,” Aiden said tightly.

“Nod when you’re ready.”

“Go.”

Aiden felt Lionel’s hand press flat against his chest, steadying him, and the weight of it was comforting. He nodded hard.

The steer pushed hard into the sudden flare of open, and Aiden felt the first loss of contact with the earth. He leaned back, pushed his feet forward in front of the steer’s shoulders, pressed his free arm up and away and gripped hard with his rigging hand. The steer bolted twenty feet into the corral then
popped off a series of kicks and bucks, still running as hard as it could. Aiden felt the pocket in his groin, the press of shoulder bone against the cup of the athletic supporter and leaned backward slightly more. The steer thrashed mightily. He could feel its force with the inside of his legs and he caught a flare of blue as the sky flashed above him, then the swirling halo of whitewashed rails and the awkward tilting horizon of barn and mountain and sky again. From somewhere far away he heard Birch yell “Time!”

He felt the steer in running, thumping, jolting kicks that rattled him crazily and when he got the timing he threw his left leg over top of the critter and landed running, off balance and stumbling until he raised his head and saw the fast-approaching rails of the corral that he reached his gloved hands out to like a baby to its mother. He fell into the rails but caught himself with his arms and pulled himself straight.

The wranglers were whooping it up along the length of the corral. As he regained his breathing and felt along his ribs for hurt he stared straight at Birch and Lionel and said, “Again.”

“You must have missed him incredibly,” Johanna said as she and Claire worked putting up the horses in their stalls.

“More than I ever believed possible,” Claire said.

“I don’t think I could have done it.”

“There was no choice. He didn’t want me to see him there. Too much going on inside him, too much to handle on his own without seeing my pain too. I understand that now. I didn’t then, not for the longest while.”

“Still. I know how it feels.”

“You do?”

“There’s different kinds of prisons, Claire. But I can see my son in his.”

“How do you cope?”

Johanna finished brushing her horse, untied the halter lead and removed it, patted the horse gently on the withers and stepped out of the stall into the corridor. “I guess if loyalty wasn’t so tough it wouldn’t be a virtue,” she said.

“What do you mean?” Claire asked, finishing with her horse and stepping out to join Johanna in the corridor. Johanna nodded in the direction of another stall and the two women started to put up Victoria’s horse as well.

“I suppose I mean that what Victoria said is true. That choice is our superhuman power. We can bend things to suit us, just by choosing.”

“How?” Claire said. “I mean, why?”

Johanna grinned. “The natural thing would be to worry, fret over him, try to make things easy for him, coddle him. But that wouldn’t solve anything. In the end it would only hurt him more. So I have to choose to let him walk the path he wants to walk. Choose to be confident that I raised him with the principles that will save him. Choose to believe in him. And ultimately choose to not worry—the ultimate unnatural act for a mother.”

“Faith,” Claire said.

“Courage,” Johanna said. “Faith is what we earn when we have enough courage to face what’s in front of us.”

“Is that an Indian teaching?”

“It is now,” Johanna said.

“He rode the hell out of that steer,” Birch said.

“That’s a fact,” Lionel said. “One-handed all the way.”

“Steer’s a steer,” Joe Willie said. “Ten-year-olds ride steers.”

“Six times?” Birch asked.

Joe Willie looked up quickly. “He rode clean six times?”

“Thing is he woulda rode a dozen,” Lionel said. “The boy’s stoked up. He’d rode until we ran out of stock.”

“Clean?”

“Clean as I ever seen,” Birch said. “He got better with every ride, but it was the first time that really opened my eyes.”

“Same here,” Lionel said. He leaned on the veranda rail and faced Birch and Joe Willie. “All six were prime. Not a blooper or a crow hopper in the bunch. All arm jerkers and he never bailed out. Competition he’da covered on every ride.”

“Bullshit,” Joe Wille said. “Too tall. Too old. Too big. Steer’s a steer.”

“You should have seen it,” Birch said.

“I don’t want to see it. The two of you jacked up over a fluke is enough.”

“Wasn’t no fluke,” Lionel said. “The boy’s a rider. We’re trying him on the bull machine tomorrow.”

“You got to be kidding me,” Joe Willie said and stood up. “City kid, green as grass, nothing but attitude, and you’re thinking you want to put him on a brindle? Is that it?”

“Maybe not,” Birch said. “But he wants to try the machine.”

“So what’s Cowboy Copas up to now?” Joe Willie asked, stepping down onto the veranda steps.

“The boys are showing him the rigging,” Birch said.

“Jesus H.,” Joe Willie said. “Marce must have paid you a whack of money to get you to act this foolish.”

“Not about money,” Lionel said.

“What’s it about, then? Hungry for excitement?”

“Not a hair,” Birch said. “I only ever seen one pure natural in my life. Only ever got me close to perfection one time.” He looked squarely at his son, who tilted his head to the side
and eyeballed him right back. “And the fact is, son, it’s a rare thing. You can’t learn harmony like that. It’s put in you, plain and simple. And Creator in her wisdom puts it in some mighty strange places sometimes and all you can do is wonder. Wonder and let it play out.”

“Why?” Joe Willie asked.

“Because it’s the only way to find out what’s in it for you. Why the lesson come wrapped the way she’s wrapped.”

“Yeah, well, take the shortcut, I say.”

“And what’s that, son?”

“Put the sumbitch on four. If he holds on to that you might have something to talk about. If he face-plants like I figure, it don’t rightly matter how she’s wrapped.”

He eased his hat lower on his head and made his way toward the barn to prepare for his evening hike up Iron Mountain. As he passed the wranglers in the corral showing Aiden how to rosin the bull rope, he shook his head and spat on the ground. The boy looked up and the two of them stared at each other. Joe Willie stopped in his tracks. Aiden held the look. The wranglers looked back and forth at the two of them, waiting. Finally, Joe Willie shook his head and moved on toward the barn.

“Kid’s got stones,” he muttered.

Played out in slow motion the ride took on a ghostly quality. There was an eerie dreaminess about the way the violent bucking and twisting of the bull and the extension of the arms and legs of the rider came together then flowed apart. Slowed down to a few inches of tape per second, eight seconds of ride lasted more than a minute, longer with rewinds and freeze-frame. It was all about explosion. He could see that from the way the bull burst from the chute into the wildly gyrating spins, four-legged
leaps and explosive kicks that all appeared in slowed-down time like a giant horned accordion, collapsing, unfolding, collapsing again. There was an impossible elasticity that stretched out magically in the way the bull’s head and shoulders could twist one way while his trunk and rear went opposite while lashing out with his back hooves all at the same time. Then came the jaw-dropping breaches of gravity. Nothing that large and heavy should be able to leap that high. Not without thirty yards of running room to build speed. Not even then. Yet there it was. Elevated straight up from a force of propulsion that could only come from rage, a powerful wave of flesh rising unbelievably in slow motion with the rider on its back resembling a surfer far out to sea, reduced to flotsam, shrunk by the sheer tide of the bull cresting beneath the bull rope, building more and more momentum, waiting to crash him onto the hard-packed coast of the corral. It hung in the air, head thrown back then lowered, bawling, horns thrust fiercely side to side, globs of snot flung from its nose, the great shoulders hunched then stretched and the wide girth of it levitated suddenly over five feet of daylight beneath the dangling clatter of the clank belt. He felt the power of it. Awesome. Terrifying. Thrilling. Over and over he played the ride. Then others. Each time it was the same, the same cataclysmic release of energy, brief sometimes, brutal, punishing, and longer other times, the eight seconds an eternity, the inferno of it captivating, horrifying. He couldn’t get enough of it. Everything about the bulls called to him, called to a primal something he could feel in the gut, like the feeling he got just before a fight in the joint, a gathering of will, power and strength steeped in a vitriolic stew of fear, anxiety and sheer excitement. Played out in slow motion, the ride became magnetic.

Eventually, he turned his focus to the rider. He leaned closer to the television, the remote pressed to his chest, and
watched the lean power of Joe Willie Wolfchild. In slow motion the man rode like a ribbon flowing outward and inward, looped and straightened with every motion of the bull. There was an ancient, barbarian quality to the deep scowl on his face and a warrior-like intensity to the plant of him in the pocket, the spot behind the shoulders of the bull becoming sacred ground to be defended, protected and occupied relentlessly. Aiden paid rapt attention to the thrust of his legs, the spurring at the neck as though coaxing the bull even further into rage. He watched closely the small adjustments the camera caught, the tiny lateral moves to regain the pocket or the desperate hauls back into place when the bull forced him dangerously over the shoulders or backwards closer to the seat of the tornado. Every move became a battle. Every second a private struggle. All of it, everything, titanic, colossal, insane. He watched until his eyes burned and the tiredness forced him to normal speed. The thrashing Joe Willlie endured was purely violent. Nothing in his experience prepared him for the brutality of those moments, and as he watched the rides he began to see the links, the seamless unity between Joe Willie and the bulls forged in a quality of courage he’d never experienced either. He watched every ride. He watched the man walk toward the camera after, hat thrown off, hair askew, the hard grimace slackening visibly into a great easy grin, the elastic strength of him impressive in its easy stroll toward the camera. In the background the flash of bull fighters chasing the monster back to his lair. The man, oblivious now, at ease and pointing to someone in the crowd, grinning, waving, safe back home on earth again to await the next challenge.

Claire wrestled with the martingale. Victoria told her to tack up the same horse she’d ridden the night before. She could be
a spooky sort at times and needed the extra rein to keep her from throwing her head around during the ride. The trouble was, Claire couldn’t figure top from bottom now. She’d done it with Johanna’s help, and obviously there was a way to hook it to the bridle, but try as she might she couldn’t discern it. The length of leather lay in her hands and she willed herself to stare it down long enough to figure it out.

“You lost there, ma’am?” someone said behind her.

She turned. Joe Willie stood there with a length of rope coiled around one shoulder. He stared at her placidly and she found herself struggling for words.

“Well, yes,” she said. “I’ve got the rest figured but this has me bamboozled.” She held the martingale out toward him, and Joe Willie nodded.

“Here,” he said and shrugged the rope off his shoulder. He took the rein and stepped into the stall beside her. The horse nickered, threw its head about and stamped its back feet. Joe Willie moved calmly, chucked at it and rubbed the underside of its neck. The horse settled and he called to Claire. “You want to turn it over like this, then snap it here and here,” he said.

“Thanks,” Claire said. “Pretty dumb, huh?”

He looked at her in the same placid way. “No,” he said. “Dumb woulda been to ride off without it.”

“Yes. I wasn’t about to do that.”

“Not dumb then.”

“I guess not.” She held out her hand. “I’m Claire.”

Joe Willie wiped his hand on the back of his jeans. “Joe Willie,” he said.

“I know.”

He nodded. He pulled the left arm up from where it hung at his side and put the hand in the pocket of his jeans and shifted his feet a little like a shy little boy. Claire saw slackness
of the fabric along his arm and the birdlike boniness of the wrist. Joe Willie caught her look. He bent to retrieve the coil of rope. Despite herself Claire dropped down to grab it for him and they almost collided at the depth of the crouch. Their hands were on the rope.

“I got it,” he said tersely.

“I’m sorry,” Claire said. “I just thought …”

“I got it,” he said again.

They stood up at the same time and faced each other, mere inches apart. She had to look up to make eye contact, and he looked out over her head at first, gazing side to side. She took a step back.

“Thanks,” she said.

“Welcome,” he said.

“Would you like to come?” she blurted out.

“I don’t ride,” he said.

“What a shame,” she said and instantly regretted it.

He hitched the rope around his shoulder and stepped around her to make his way down the corridor. “Ma am,” he said as he passed, touching the brim of his hat with two fingers.

She watched him limp out of the stable. He was tall and lean and young looking but there was a hardness to him, something she likened to Aiden in the way he drew himself in, closed up and went away to some private place.

“That could have gone a whole lot better,” she muttered to the horse.

“Trick is the grip,” Lionel told him.

“It’s your hold and your release all at the same time,” Birch added. He handed Aiden a thick leather glove. He showed him how to use the rosin to make it sticky, tacky, like flypaper, and to wrap it tight to his hand.

Aiden flexed it, and the palm crackled. Raising it to his face and looking at it, he felt stronger, more capable, the glove in its oversized thickness giving his fingers a talon-like curl when he flexed them.