English Creek

by Ivan Doig

  “Numbnuts,” I muttered in the direction of the Zane end of the announcing booth. Or possibly more than muttered, for when I managed to glower directly up there, Bill Reinking was delivering me a certifying wink and Velma Simms was puckered the way a person does to hold in a laugh.

  Ray had it right, the pinto was truly riled and then some, as I could confirm while cautiously climbing back onto my perch and locking a firm arm around the corner post between chute and corral. No way was I going to take a chance on being dislodged down into the company of this Coffee Nerves bronc. The drawback of this flood-the-chutes-with-horses system was that the first horse in was the last to come out, from this end chute next to me. While the initial five horses were being bucked out Coffee Nerves was going to be cayusing around in chute six and trying to raise general hell.

  The pinto looked more than capable. Coffee Nerves had close-set pointy ears; what are called pin ears, and indicate orneriness in a horse. Worse, he was hog-eyed. Had small darty eyes that shot looks at the nearest threat all the time. Which, given my position on the fence, happened to be me. I had not been the target of so much eyeball since the tussle to get that Bubbles pack horse up the side of the mountain.

  Ray was peering behind me to study Coffee Nerves, so he was the one who noticed. “Huh! Look who must’ve drew him.”

  There in back of chute six, Earl Zane was helping the handlers try to saddle the pinto.

  My session of watchdogging Leona for Alec of course whetted my interest in the matter of Earl Zane, whom I ordinarily wouldn’t bat an eye to look at. Now here he loomed, not ten feet away from Ray and me, at the rear of Coffee Nerves’ chute amid the cussing crew of handlers trying to contend with the pinto and the saddle that was theoretically supposed to go on its back. Earl Zane had one of those faces that could be read at a glance: as clear as the label on a maple sugar jug it proclaimed SAP. I suppose he was semi-goodlooking in a sulky kind of way. But my belief was that Earl Zane’s one known ability, handling horses, derived from the fact that he possessed the identical amount of brain as the average horse did and they thus felt affinity with him. Though whether Coffee Nerves, who was whanging a series of kicks to the chute lumber that I could feel arrive up through the corral pole I was seated in, was going to simmer down enough to accommodate Earl Zane or anybody else remained an open question.

  In any case, I was transfixed by what was brewing here. Alec looked likely to win the calf-roping. Coffee Nerves gave every sign of being the buckingest saddle bronc, if Earl could stay on him. Two winners, one Leona. The arithmetic of that was something to contemplate.

  Various geezers of the chute society were peering in at Coffee Nerves and chiming “Whoa, hoss” and “Here now, knothead, settle down,” which was doing nothing to improve the pinto’s disposition. After all, would it yours?

  Distracted by the geezer antics and the Earl-Alec equation, I didn’t notice the next arrival until Ray pointed out, “Second one of the litter.”

  Indeed, Earl Zane had been joined in the volunteer saddling crew by his brother Arlee, the one a year ahead of Ray and me in school. Another horse fancier with brain to match. And full to overflowing with the Zane family swagger, for Arlee Zane was a big pink specimen: about what you’d get if you could coax a hog to strut around on its hind legs wearing blue jeans and a rodeo shirt. Eventually maybe Arlee would duplicate Earl, brawny instead of overstuffed. But at present there just was too much of all of him, up to and including his mouth. At the moment, for instance, Arlee had strutted around to the far side of the announcing booth and was yelping up to his sire: “Tell them to count out the prize money! Old Earl is going to set his horse on fire!” God, those Zanes did think they were the ding-dong of the world’s bell.

  “How about a bottle of something?” I proposed to Ray. The mental strain of being around three Zanes at once must have been making me thirsty. “I’m big rich, I’ll buy.”

  “Ace high,” Ray thought this sounded, and added that he’d hold our seats. Down I climbed, and away to the beer booth again. The tubs weren’t showing many Kessler and Select necks by now. I half expected to coincide with Dode again, but didn’t. But by the time I returned to Ray with our two bottles of grape, I was able to more or less offhandedly report that I had seen Marcella and the other Withrow daughters, in the shade under the grandstand with a bunch more of the girls we went to school with. Leona on one side of the arena, Marcella and the school multitude on the other, Velma Simms in the air behind us; I did have to admit, lately the world was more full of females than I had ever previously noticed.

  “Under way again.” Tollie was issuing forth. “A local buckaroo coming out of chute number one—”

  Bill Semmler made his ride but to not much total, his bronc a straight bucker who crowhopped down the middle of the arena in no particularly inspired way until the ten seconds were up and the whistle blew.

  “Exercise,” commented Ray, meaning that was all Semmler was going to get out of such a rocking-horse ride.

  At that, though, exercise was more than what was produced by the next rider, an out-of-town guy whose name I didn’t recognize. Would-be rider, I ought to say, for a horse called Ham What Am sailed him onto the earth almost before the pair of them issued all the way out the gate of chute two. Ham What Am then continued his circuit of the arena, kicking dirt twenty feet into the air with every buck, while the ostensible rider knelt and tried to get any breath back into himself.

  “Let’s give this hard luck cowboy a—big hand!” Tollie advocated. “He sure split a long crack in the air that time.”

  “You guys see any crack out there in the air?” somebody below us inquired. “Where the hell is Tollie getting that stuff?”

  “Monkey Ward,” it was suggested. “From the same page featuring toilet paper.”

  But then one of the Rides Proud brothers from up at Browning, one or another of Toussaint’s army of grand-nephews he wasn’t on speaking terms with, lived up to his name and made a nice point total atop a chunky roan called Snuffy. Sunfishing was Snuffy’s tactic, squirming his hind quarters to one side and then the other with each jump, and if the rider manages to stay in tune with all that hula wiggling it yields a pretty ride. This performance was plenty good enough to win the event, unless Earl Zane could do something wonderful on top of Coffee Nerves.

  Following the Rides Proud achievement, the crowd laughed as they did each year when a little buckskin mare with a flossy mane was announced as Shirley Temple, and laughed further when the mare piled the contestant, some guy from Shelby, with its third jump.

  “That Shirley for a little gal she’s got a mind of her own,” bayed Tollie, evidently under the impression he was providing high humor. Then, sooner than it seemed possible for him to have drawn sufficient breath for it, he was giving us the next loudspeaker dose. “Now here is a rider I have some acquaintance with. Getting set in chute number five on Dust Storm Earl Zane. Show them how Earl!”

  So much for assuming the obvious. Earl had not drawn the pinto; his and Arlee’s participation in saddling it was only the Zane trait of sticking a nose into anything available.

  The fact remained, though, that Alec’s rival was about to bounce out into the arena aboard a bucking animal. I craned my neck trying to get a look at Leona, but she was turned in earnest conversation with a certain calf roper wearing a chokecherry shirt and I could only see a golden floss. Quite a wash of disappointment went through me. Somehow I felt I was missing the most interesting scene of the entire rodeo, Leona’s face, just then.

  “And here he comes a cowboying sonofagun and a son of yours truly—”

  In fairness, I will say Earl Zane got a bad exit from the chute, the cinnamon-colored bronc he was on taking a little hop into the arena and stopping to gaze around at the world just as Earl was all primed for him to buck. Then as it sank in on Earl that the horse wasn’t bucking and he altered the rhythm of his spurring to fit that situation, Dust Storm began to whirl. A spin to the left. Then one to t
he right. It was worth the admission to see, Earl’s thought process clanking one direction and the horse’s the other, then each reversing and passing one another in the opposite direction, like two drunks trying to find each other in a revolving door. The cinnamon bronc, though, was always one phase ahead of Earl, and his third whirl, which included a sort of sideways dip, caused Earl to lurch and lose the opposite stirrup. It was all over then, merely a matter of how promptly Earl would keep his appointment with the arena dirt.

  “Blew a stirrup” came from the chute society as Earl picked himself up off the planet and the whistle was heard. “Ought’ve filled those stirrups with chewing gum before he climbed on that merry-go-round.”

  Tollie, however, considered that we had seen a shining feat. “Almost made it to the whistle on that rough one! You can still show your face around home, Earl!”

  Possibly the pinto’s general irritation with the world rather than the diet of Tollie’s voice produced it, but either way, Coffee Nerves now went into his biggest eruption yet. Below me in the chute he began to writhe and kick, whinnying awfully, and I redoubled my life grip on the corner post as the thunk! thunk! of his hooves tattooing the wood of the chute reverberated through the seat of my pants.

  “Careful,” Ray warned, and I suppose sense would have been to trade my perch for a more distant site. Yet how often does a person get to see at close range a horse in combat with mankind. Not just see, but feel, in the continuing thunks; and hear, the pinto’s whinny a sawblade of sound ripping the air; and smell, sweat and manure and animal anger in one mingled unforgettable odor.

  Coffee Nerves’ hammerwork with his hooves built up to a crash, a splay of splinters which sent the handlers tumbling away from the back of the chute, and then comparative silence. Just the velocity of air through the pinto bronc’s nostrils.

  “The sonofabitch is hung up,” somebody reported.

  In truth, Coffee Nerves was standing with his rear right leg up behind him, the way a horse does for a blacksmith to shoe him. Except that instead of any human having hold of that wicked rear hoof, it was jammed between a solid chute pole and the splintered one above it.

  As the handling crew gingerly moved in to see what could be done about extrication, Tollie enlightened the crowd:

  “This little pinto pony down in six is still proving kind of recaltrisant. The chute boys are doing some persuading and our show will resume in just a jiffy. In the meantime since this is the cowboys’ Christmas so to say that reminds me of a little story.”

  “Jesus, he’s back on to Christmas” issued from the chute society. “Will somebody go get Tollie a goddamn calendar?”

  “Dumb as he is,” it was pointed out, “it’ll take two of us to read it to him.”

  “There was this little boy who wanted a pony for Christmas.” Somebody had gone for a prybar to loosen the imprisoning poles and free the renegade pony of chute six, but in the meantime there was nothing to do but let Tollie wax forth. Even at normal, Tollie’s voice sounded as if his adenoids had gotten twined with his vocal cords. With the boost from the address system, his steady drone now was a real ear-cleaner. “Well you see this little boy kept telling the other kids in the family that he had it all fixed up with Santa Claus. Santa Claus was going to bring him a pony certain sure. So when Christmas Eve came they all of them hung their stockings by the fireplace there.”

  “If I hang a woolsack alongside my stove,” somebody in front of the chutes pined, “suppose I’d get Velma Simms in it?”

  “And the other kids thought they’d teach this little boy a lesson. So after everybody had gone to bed they got back up again and went on out to the barn and got some ladies, excuse my language, horse manure.”

  “Quick, mark that down,” somebody advised up to Bill Reinking. “That’s the first time Tollie’s ever apologized for spouting horse shit.”

  “And filled his stocking with it. So the next morning they’re all gathered to look and see what Santa Claus left each one of them. Little Susie says ‘Look, he left me a dollie here in my stocking.’ And little Tommy says And look he left me apples and oranges in mine.’ And they turned to the little boy and asked ‘Well, Johnny what did Santa leave you?’ And Johnny looked in his stocking and said ‘He left me my pony but he got away!’ ”

  There was that sickly laughter a crowd gives out because it’s embarrassed not to, and then one of the chute men called up to the booth that they had the goddamn bronc freed, get the rider on him before he raised any more hell.

  BACK TO BUSINESS!” Tollie blared as if he was calling elephants, before Bill Reinking managed to lean across and shove the microphone a little farther from Tollie’s mouth. “Back to business. The bronc in chute six has consented to rejoin us. Next man up last one in this go-round on a horse called Coffee Nerves will be Dode Withrow.”

  I yanked my head around to see for sure. 11s. Dode was up top the back of chute six, gazing at the specimen of exasperated horse below. Dode did look a little soberer than when I met up with him by the beer booth. He wasn’t any bargain of temperance yet, though. His face looked hot and his Stetson sat toward the back of his head in a dude way I had never seen him wear it.

  Ray was saying, “I never knew Dode to enter the bucking before.” Which coincided with what was going through my mind, that Dode was the age of my father and Ray’s. That his bronc-stomping had taken place long years ago. That I knew for a certainty Dode did not even break horses for his own use anymore but bought them saddle ready from Tollie Zane.

  “No,” I answered Ray, “not in our time.”

  I had a clear view down into the chute as the bronc crew tried to keep Coffee Nerves settled long enough for Dode to ease into the saddle. The pinto went through another symphony of commotion, kicking and slamming sideways and whinnying that sawtoothed sound; but then hunched up motionless for a moment in a kind of sitting squat, contemplating what next to pull from its repertoire. In that moment Dode simply said “Good enough” and slid into the saddle.

  As if those words of Dode’s were a curfew, the gapers and gawkers of the chute society evaporated from the vicinity where Coffee Nerves would emerge into the arena, some of them even seeking a safe nest up on the corral.

  “One of our friends and neighbors Dode is. Rode many a bad one in his time. He’ll be dancing out on this little pinto in just one minute.”

  It honestly occurred no more than a handful of seconds from then. Dode had the grip he wanted on the bucking rope and his arm was in the air as if ready to wave and he said in that same simple tone, “Open.”

  The gate swung, and Coffee Nerves vaulted into the arena.

  I saw Dode suck in a fast breath, then heard it go out of him in a huhhh as the horse lit stiff-legged with its forefeet and kicked the sky with its hind, from both directions ramming the surprise of its force up through the stirrups into Dode. Dode’s hat left him and bounced once on the pinto splotch across Coffee Nerves’ rump and then toppled into the dust of the arena. But Dode himself didn’t shake loose at all, which was a fortunate thing because Coffee Nerves already was uncorking another maneuver, this time swapping ends before crashing down in all stiff-legged style. Dode still sat deep in the saddle, although another huhhh reamed its way out of him. Maybe imagine you have just jumped from a porch roof to the ground twice in about five seconds, to give yourself some idea of the impact Dode was absorbing. He must have been getting Coffee Nerves’ respect, for now the bronc exactly reversed the end-swapping he had just done, a trick almost guaranteed to catch the rider leaning wrong. Yet Dode still was up there astride the pinto.

  I remember tasting dust. My mouth was open to call encouragement to Dode, but there was nothing that seemed good enough to call out for this ride he was making.

  Now Coffee Nerves launched into the jump he had been saving up for, a real cloud-chaser, Dode at the same instant raking the horse’s shoulders with his spurs, both those actions fitting together exactly as if animal and man were in rhythm to a signal none
of the rest of us could hear, up and up the horse twisting into the air and the rider’s free left arm high above that, Coffee Nerves and Dode soaring together while the crowd’s urging cry seemed to help hold them there, a wave of sound suspending the pair above the arena earth so that we all could have time to fix the sight into memory everlastingly.

  Somewhere amid it all the whistle blew. That is, off some far wall of my awareness echoed that news of Dode having ridden Coffee Nerves, but the din that followed flooded over it. I still believe that if Coffee Nerves had lit straight, as any sane horse would do descending from a moon visit like that, Dode would not have blown that left stirrup. But somehow Coffee Nerves skewed himself half sideways about the time he hit the ground—imagine now that the ground yanks itself to one side as you plummet off that porch—and Dode, who evidently did not hear the timer’s whistle or was ignoring it, stayed firm in the right stirrup, nicely braced as he was, but the pinto’s slewfoot maneuver jolted his boot from the left one. And now when Coffee Nerves writhed into his next buck, cattywampus to the left, he simply sailed away from under Dode, who dropped off him back first, falling like a man given a surprise shove into a creek.

  Not water, however, but dust flew up around the form which thumped to the arena surface.

  The next developments smudged together. I do know that now I was shouting out “Dode! Dode!” and that I lit running in the arena direct from the top of the corral, never even resorted to any of the poles as rungs to get down, and that Ray landed right behind me. As to what we thought we were going to accomplish I am not at all clear; simply could not see Dode sprawled out there by himself, I suppose.

  The pickup man Dill Egan was spurring his horse between Dode and Coffee Nerves, and having to swat the pinto in the face with his hat to keep him off Dode. Before it seemed possible my father and Pete were out there too, and a half dozen other men from out of the grandstand and Alec and a couple of others from the far side of the arena, their hats thwacking at Coffee Nerves as well, and through all the commotion I could hear my father’s particular roar of “HYAH! HYAH!” again and again before the bronc finally veered off.