Bull Rider

by Suzanne Morgan Williams

  “Stay on your feet!” Mike yelled at me.

  “I’ll get it down before the skate jam,” I said. I picked up my board and walked past the porch to start over.

  “I wish they didn’t crash so much,” Mrs. Gianni said. “Ever since Mike broke his arm, in two places you know, I can hardly watch.”

  “Heavens, you should go to a rodeo,” Grandma Jean said. “There’s some bruising goes on there.”

  But there was nothing in skateboarding or rodeo to get me ready for the licking Ben had taken in Iraq. They moved him to Palo Alto at the end of September to a TBI rehabilitation unit at the Veteran’s Hospital. Mom flew to California with him. He could talk some now, and he even called me. “Hi, Cam.” His voice was slurred. “How’s skateboarding?”

  “Good,” I said. “How are you?”

  “Mom takes me dancing.” He made a sound I took for a laugh.

  “Yeah, right. When do you come home?” I asked.

  “Leave. They give me leave. Ask Ma.” He faded out, and Mom came on the line.

  “Isn’t he talking great?” she asked.

  I thought he sounded awful—like he was drunk. “Sure,” I said. “When are you coming home?”

  “It shouldn’t be too long. They’ll give him a thirty-day leave when the doctors here think he’s ready. They need to make sure I can take care of him. We’re working on that. I miss you, Cam.”

  I missed her too. By early October, the doctors had done all their tests, and they said Ben was ready to start his rehab. But first he got leave. The gray time was over. Ben came home.

  CHAPTER SIX

  If you just could have seen my brother before. He was wiry and strong, with a quick smile like my mom’s. He never left Salt Lick but he slicked himself up in a pressed shirt and clean jeans. The girls all followed him with their eyes. Even my friends wanted to hang out with Ben, and now that he was coming home, Favi showed up and walked in without knocking. “Hey, Cam,” she said. Then she picked up Lali and swung her around.

  “Isn’t this going to be so cool?” she said. “Aren’t you excited? Ben’s been gone for months and now he’s almost home.” She reached in the fridge and took out a carrot. She snapped it in half and gave a piece to Lali, then crunched down on the big end she had left.

  “Do you want a pop?” I asked her.

  She didn’t bother to answer.

  So all of us hung out—Grandpa Roy, Grandma Jean, Lali, me, and Favi—until we heard the motor on Dad’s truck. Lali grabbed the dog and jumped up and down on the porch. I leaned against the cherry tree—it looked cool and it would hold me steady. I was shaking.

  I peered into the Ford F-250 as it rumbled up the driveway, but I couldn’t see Ben. I realized he must be lying down on the cramped backseat. Mom was turned clear around, talking to him. Dad stopped, jumped out of the truck, and jogged around to the back. Grandpa met him from the other side.

  “Ben!” Lali called. She ran to the truck, climbed up on the running board and pressed her nose against the window.

  “Give him some room, pumpkin,” Grandpa Roy said.

  Together, Dad and Grandpa lifted out a wheelchair and then a rented hospital bed. I dug my heels in and pressed my back to the tree. Man, they were bringing in a whole hospital ward.

  I backtracked into the house and pulled my board out from under the bed. Our driveway wasn’t paved like Mike’s, but our patio was big and concrete. I went out the back door and pushed around in long circles. I heard them all talking. There was hustling and bumping. They were moving the bed in—and Ben. I glanced at the window and then turned the other way. I pumped my foot faster. The wheels roared, louder than their conversation. It was like balancing on the crossbar of a fence. I wanted to jump down, and I wanted to stay on top. Ben was inside, but my legs wouldn’t let me go in to see him.

  “Cam,” Mom called, “come on and say hello. We’re all here now, Cam.” I took a breath and kicked my board up into my hand. I could manage this, I told myself. I put a little grin on my face and walked through the back door. The living room was cramped with the hospital bed propped upright next to Mom’s piano. Ben was facing away from me, in a wheelchair. He wore a blue plastic padded helmet that looked like the kind boxers wear, but aside from that, from this angle he looked the same. My heart raced. “Hey, Ben,” I said.

  Grandpa Roy turned the wheelchair around so Ben could see me. I stopped dead. They hadn’t told me. He wasn’t just shot. His left arm was gone below the elbow. Instead of a hand, he had a metal hook. He had a red, welty scar running up his neck that stopped just below his chin. He smiled at me with his mouth, but his eyes looked tired. “No. No.” I covered my mouth to stop the words. No. Not my brother. They’d gone and blown him up.

  I escaped into the kitchen and Grandma Jean followed me.

  “Cam…” She just took my hand. Hers was cold. I couldn’t look at her. She squeezed my hand and went back to join the family.

  I called Mike. “I’m coming down to skateboard.”

  “Don’t you want to be there when Ben comes home?” he asked.

  “He is here, and I’m leaving. He’s got Mom and Dad and the whole family with him. I need to get out of here.”

  “Okay, no worries. I just thought you’d want to be with your brother. I didn’t mean you had to stick around,” Mike said.

  “It’s a mess and I’d rather board. Meet me at the Grange.” The Grange had a parking lot, and although we didn’t have ramps or anything there, it was halfway between our houses and you could get up some speed on the asphalt. I needed speed. I picked up my board and started out the back door, but Favi stopped me.

  “Where are you going? Ben wants to see you,” she said.

  “I doubt it,” I said. “You see him.”

  “Come on, Cam, you have to stay. You’ve been waiting so long for him to get home. You’ll hurt his feelings.”

  “Naw, he won’t care.”

  “You know he will, Cam. This is important.”

  “I’m meeting Mike,” I said. I walked past her.

  “You little baby. What do you know? Put that board down and stay or I’m telling your mom.”

  I might have stayed too, if she hadn’t called me little and a baby. I kept going and didn’t look back. No one came after me either.

  Mike was at the Grange, waiting for me.

  “So, why aren’t you home?”

  I pushed my board around the lot. The wheels got louder and louder. Mike threw his Oakland A’s cap at me. “Answer me at least,” he said.

  I jumped off the board. “You haven’t seen him. They didn’t tell me what happened. He’s not the same. He’s not Ben.”

  “You knew he was messed up,” Mike said.

  “But it’s different seeing him. Besides, they’re all mooning around him and they won’t miss me.”

  Mike didn’t talk any more. That’s what makes him cool—he shuts up when he needs to. We kept boarding until the sun dipped into the willow trees and the fall chill pulled goose bumps out of my skin. Then my mom drove into the lot. She rolled down the window.

  “Come on home, Cam.”

  I skated slower.

  “It’s dinnertime and I need you home. Ben wants to talk to you.”

  “About what?” I asked, still pushing myself enough to make her drive along next to me.

  “About things. He’s worried about you.”

  “He’s got his own stuff to worry about.”

  “That’s exactly right, so come on.” She stopped the car and opened the door. I picked up my board and got in.

  “You’re a big guy, Cam. You can handle this.”

  “You and Dad lied about him,” I said.

  “We didn’t lie. We just didn’t tell you everything. We didn’t know how much he’d heal, how much the doctors could fix. We thought for a while they could save his arm. And we didn’t want to worry you and Lali. You were just starting a new school year.”

  “Lali’s a baby, I’m not. You should have
said.”

  “Maybe. Everything happened so fast, Cam. Dad and I just had to get through each day. But that’s over now. Come home and be his brother. He needs you.”

  Now that was something to think on. Ben never needed anything, and if he did, he didn’t say. I’m guessing he didn’t like needing stuff, and that he didn’t like sitting in a wheelchair or wearing a helmet or needing his little brother. And you know, I didn’t like it much either.

  When we got home, it was almost dark and everyone but Ben was clearing the table and working on the dinner dishes. Mom pointed me in the direction of the living room. They’d fixed Ben’s hospital bed in the middle of the room, and he was asleep. The helmet was on the coffee table. Part of his head was shaved, and it was dented in like you’d pushed your palm into bread dough. It throbbed with his pulse. I watched him breathe for a while. Then, he opened his eyes and gave me a real smile. “Sit down,” he said, patting the bed.

  I reached for a chair and he patted the bed again. “Are you sure it’s okay?” I asked.

  “Yeah. You can’t hurt me more.” He almost laughed.

  I sat as close to the edge of the bed as I could. I didn’t want to bump him. “So, can you walk?”

  “They think, maybe. Later.”

  I looked at him for a while. “Does it hurt?”

  “I get big headaches, and,” he pointed to his arm and said, “that hurts.”

  I tried not to look at his stump or to stare at his head. “Were you scared?” I asked. While Ben was in Iraq, I tried not to think of the twisted cars or blown-out buildings they showed on the news. In fact, sometimes I pretended he wasn’t over there. But now I was asking, “How did it feel when…that…happened?”

  He started slow. He had to search around for his words, and as he talked they came to him even slower. “No time for scared,” he said. “Gone weapons searching, then.” He stopped again. “Bang,” he said, and turned his head. “This awful bad smell. Noise. Real loud. Gunshots are loud, Cam, but this was huge.” He paused again. “I can’t remember. That’s maybe good.” He looked back and forth around the room.

  “Ben, are you okay?”

  “Okay? You think I’m okay? See what they did to me? The noise…” He thrashed around, trying to sit up like he was going to take a swing at me and then he fell back onto the pillow. “Well, I’m here, right? I could be dead.” He gave me a big grin. “Here is better.” He looked at the ceiling and sunk deeper into the bed. “Cam, I can’t do…walk…It’s scary.”

  I flexed my own thigh muscles, just to feel how that worked, and I hoped Ben hadn’t seen it.

  “So, do you remember what hit you?” I asked.

  “IED—explosion. It blew me up, huh? Mom can tell you.”

  “I hate them for blowing you up.”

  “Hate’s a big word, bro’.”

  I choked up when he called me bro’. It was so hard for him to put the words together, but he got that one. Bro’. “Well, don’t you hate them? Don’t you just want to go back over there and kill all those guys ’cause they did this to you?”

  “Don’t know who to kill. And they already got me.” He touched his arm. It gave me the willies. “But no, I don’t hate them. They got their job and I got mine,” he said. He paused and added, “I just wasn’t so lucky.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  I’m guessing you haven’t lived with someone who’s been shot up. There’s a good piece of discomfort and awkwardness when there’s someone in the house, someone you love, who can’t do for himself. Ben needed help getting dressed on account of his arm, and getting in and out of bed on account of the paralysis in his right leg. Mom flexed his feet and legs every so often, so the muscles wouldn’t just fade away. We had to help him move so he didn’t sit too long in any one position—his skin could get sore and break. And there was the wheelchair.

  But the worst was the bathroom. He didn’t want any help in there, but, like I said, he was pretty messed up. And we didn’t have a shower downstairs, so he had to wash up in the sink. Ben would disappear into the bathroom and stay until you could just about feel his exhaustion. Then Mom would knock on the door to go in to help, but it embarrassed him. And her too, I think. They’d both come out quiet. Mom would move Ben’s wheelchair by the window, and he’d stare out while she got real busy in the rest of the house. We tried not to notice, but you really couldn’t help it, especially if you were waiting for the bathroom and had to go pee outside. Still, no one talked about it. And then, one day, Grandpa Roy, went to the bathroom door instead of Mom. You could hear him talking to Ben in there, and then they were both laughing. When Grandpa Roy wheeled Ben out, he set him on the porch and pulled up a chair next to him.

  “The calves put on good weight over the summer. The grass was good. This fall bunch should be healthy too,” he said.

  “How many calves?” Ben asked.

  And just like that, Grandpa Roy took over as Ben’s caretaker. We all relaxed a notch. Grandpa Roy, he was more like Ben’s brother than I was, I guess. And he wasn’t a woman, which helped some too.

  And there were other things. The house always smelled of medicine. Lali stopped playing catch with me outside and started sitting next to Ben. Since his brain had been scrambled up, he had to relearn how to read. So she read him comic books and her favorite picture books and he followed along. Some days he couldn’t string three words together, and other days he talked pretty good. And you never knew what he could remember. Mom got out the photo albums and left them around so we could point out stuff to Ben that we’d done.

  “Remember going to Sea World?” she asked.

  Ben looked at her blankly.

  “We all went. Except Lali. She wasn’t born yet. Remember, you loved the killer whale show?”

  Ben nodded, but you could tell that he didn’t remember it. I turned on the TV so he didn’t have to embarrass himself any more.

  That’s how it went. Mom worked long hours starting up a bookkeeping business, since the bank wouldn’t hold her job anymore, and with Grandpa Roy helping Ben, Dad always had extra work around the ranch. There wasn’t money to hire another hand, although Ruiz had offered to take a cut in his pay. Dad said no to that, so I had more chores too.

  One Saturday, in mid-October, Grandma Jean was bored. “Roy, it’s blasted quiet around here,” she said. “We should take these kids on an outing.”

  “You want to go fishing? They’re getting good walleye at Rye Patch.”

  “You’d scare the fish away with your old face,” she said. “Let’s go into Winnemucca and get some ice cream and see a movie.”

  I didn’t want to see a movie with my little sister and my grandparents. “I can stay here,” I said.

  “I’d rather fish,” Grandpa Roy said. “You take Lali and go. You can see a kids’ movie.”

  Lali clapped her hands. Grandma Jean got her rose-covered handbag, and they went off to the movies. Mom was gone over at Mike’s, doing the accounts for Gianni’s Irrigation and Plumbing. Dad, Oscar Ruiz, and a couple of ranch hands were clearing debris with the front loader. That left me, Ben, and Grandpa Roy in the house.

  “We should get out too,” Grandpa said.

  “Then why didn’t you go to the movies?”

  “That’s no place for Ben, and you want to come too, don’t you?” he said to my brother.

  Ben frowned and said, “No.”

  “Of course you do. You haven’t been anywhere but out on the porch since we planted you in the living room. It’s done then.” When he said that, there’d be no arguing. Ben couldn’t claim paralysis or pain or anything else. He’d just wait for his orders from Grandpa.

  “Where we going?” I asked, looking for my own instructions.

  “The bull ring.”

  Wow. What do you know? Grandpa Roy was still fixed on getting Ben to the bull ring, crippled or not.

  “I don’t want to,” Ben snapped.

  “You need to see those boys sometime, and Darrell called and told me they’
ve got some new bucking bulls they’re trying out. They brought ’em in from Elko. Come on, Cam. Help me get Ben in the chair.”

  “I’m not going,” Ben said. “I’m not s’posed to go out.”

  “Sure you are,” Grandpa answered. He reached for Ben’s helmet.

  “No helmet. Not there,” he said. He looked desperate.

  “Get his hat, Cam. You’ll go cowboy-like today.”

  Now, Ben wasn’t supposed to take unnecessary trips, and the rule was that he had to wear his helmet anytime he moved somewhere. It protected the hole they’d cut in his skull to let his brain swell out of his head when he was first injured. But Grandpa Roy was breaking the rules. I fetched Ben’s cowboy hat. Then Grandpa took Ben’s shattered arm and motioned for me to get his good one. Ben groaned when Grandpa touched his stump, but he flexed his elbow and bore weight on his upper arm. He bit his lip and helped us move him the best he could. We held on and he tensed his upper body, and we swung him, stiff-like, into the wheelchair. His good arm and elbow felt hard and warm against my hands. He was like an iron man above the waist. There was no thinking he was a kid or even a teenager anymore, although he was nineteen. When I pivoted Ben into his chair, I was moving a man.

  We did the same drill at the truck. Grandpa drove it up close to the porch where Dad had knocked out a railing. The porch and the cab were almost level, so we could move Ben onto the seat without lifting much. We got him in, and I ran to the other side and climbed in next to him. Grandpa straightened his hat and started the truck. Now, the roads from the ranch to the bull ring are mostly dirt and gravel. And they have enough holes and washboarding to give you a good jarring unless you go fast. So Grandpa hit the gas and I pushed up against Ben enough that he wouldn’t bounce around, and he held on to the door with his only hand.

  It was a bright day and fall was in full swing. The rabbitbrush was fuzzy with yellow blooms, and the willows were already half-bare. We crossed Salt Creek where the water tumbled through the rocks, ice cold from October’s overnight snows and afternoon melts in the high country. Ben rolled down the window and let the wind come through. Grandpa was right. It felt good to get out.