Fortunes of the Dead

by Lynn Hightower

  She was in Dallas when she first got tangled. Following up a lead on a quarter-horse paint that had been sold cheap and quick and might be her Dandy. Dandy was a prize-winning barrel-racing horse, and he’d been stolen right out of his stall in the dead of night. People who didn’t understand about horses might think it strange that she would quit her old life and spend all her energy tracking Dandy, but anybody who felt the way she did about horses would probably shake her hand. They would understand that some horses depend on you, like Dandy depended on her. She knew how to clean his stall a certain way, with the bulk of shavings in the upper right-hand corner because that’s where he liked to stand and look out the window in the back of the stall. She knew to give him corn oil in the spring when he was prone to colic. She knew he was afraid of pitchforks, that he liked red delicious apples cut into chunks, that his favorite song was “Smile.” He would wonder where she was. He would wonder if she’d abandoned him. He might be back to the old nightmare life he had before she’d found him.

  And Dandy wasn’t just any horse. Dandy had champion quarter-horse bloodlines; he was a massive and flashy paint, and she’d trained him since she was thirteen. He was probably the third best barrel-racing horse alive, if he still was alive. He’d be past it now, all the action. But that was okay. She just wanted to take her baby home.

  These days Janis was out of ideas, and had been for years, and she’d finally let him go. Sometimes she would imagine finding him, working the rodeo circuit like she did. She could see him nickering to her, imagining how surprised and thrilled she would be, and how everyone in the rodeo would be amazed. That’s him, that’s Dandy, that’s the horse she’s been looking for and worrying about all these years. Isn’t it funny how life works out?

  Janis rarely indulges this fantasy, but it stays in the back of her mind—she can’t let go of all her hope. She lets the pain take hold because running from it is worse, and it washes through her and away, a wave of regret that is almost a memory. Then it goes, and she can focus. She needs to focus.

  Bull riding is the last event of the night, because it is the most dangerous, and the most exciting. It is also the most profitable. The cowboys who ride bulls will take any risk to win. There will be three clowns working the ring tonight: David Hopper, who provides the entertainment and looks after the barrel clown; “Clipper” Arnold, who rides the barrel; and Janis herself. Janis is the bullfighter, and one of the five most requested bullfighting clowns on the circuit. If it weren’t for her uneven temperament, she’d be number one.

  It’s cold out tonight; people are hanging together and drinking coffee. The lights in the arena flicker, and come back on. Janis is plenty warm enough in her padding and “bull”-proof vest. She sees the kid look her way and wave, cheeky thing, but she knows his heart has got to be pounding. No doubt he expects to stick the eight seconds through, but Janis knows better. Half of the experienced guys don’t even make it. If she was generous, she’d give him four seconds. She waves back and gives him the thumbs-up.

  “Hey, there, little Janis.”

  It’s a familiar voice, and Janis turns and lifts a hand to a cowboy named Jaco Walker. He rides a paint just like Dandy, and the horse nickers as he passes by Janis. Walker shrugs and shakes his head. He’s never understood the bond between Janis and his own prized horse, but he accepts it.

  He didn’t at first, not when he found Janis feeding the horse an apple. Janis knew better, of course she did, but this paint gelding reminded her so much of Dandy, with that same devil look in his eyes.

  Walker’s bellow could be heard all the way to the other side of the fairgrounds, and he had run at her like a Brahma bull.

  “Honey, I don’t let nobody even pet my horse, I’ll be damned if you’re going to feed him.”

  Knowing she was in the wrong just made Janis more angry, that ice-cold rage she saw no reason to swallow. She balled up a fist and she punched him. It hurt her as much as it hurt him. Next time she took a swing she would leave her thumb outside the fist, because the way it felt, it was probably broken.

  Jaco Walker was so taken by surprise, he lost his balance and fell over, then stayed put for a minute staring up at her and rubbing his chin.

  “Dammit. I can’t believe you did that.”

  “So hit me back, I’ll stand still.” Janis is too angry to be aware of the spectators, but this is the best show in town and the cowboys are gathering.

  “I don’t hit women, and I’m not going to start today because some pipsqueak like you has no manners. But you ought to know better than to feed somebody else’s horse, and this one here has a mean streak. You’re lucky he didn’t take your hand off.”

  “Don’t talk to me like I’m some tourist. I had a horse just like this once, except maybe a little meaner and faster.”

  One of Jaco’s buddies sticks out a hand, and helps pull Jaco up off the ground.

  “I severely doubt that, ma’am.”

  “And why is that, Cowboy?”

  “Because you couldn’t last on the back of my horse for two minutes without me holding the bridle and telling him to behave for Daddy’s little girl.”

  Janis is so angry, she is looking for a weapon, but Jaco takes her silence for retreat. “What’s the matter, little girl? Afraid to ride the big horse?”

  The horse is dancing sideways, reacting to the tension. No one here has ever seen Janis ride. She made a vow not to ride again until she found Dandy.

  “That’s what I thought,” Jaco says. Some of the men are folding their arms and laughing.

  “How about you put your money on it, Cowboy.”

  He is untying the horse from the fence, and frowns at her. “A hundred bucks says you can’t ride the horse over to the bullring and back. That’ll be just about worth the trouble of raising these stirrups.”

  “Hey, Jaco, don’t do it, she’ll pull his mouth.”

  Janis does not even look to see who said it.

  “Not for long she won’t,” Jaco says.

  She thinks about telling him to take the saddle off and riding the horse bareback, but there is something left of common sense. She hasn’t ridden in years and years, and she has no idea what kind of tricks this animal might have.

  She hears a voice pitched low behind her. “Go on, Janis, you can ride him. Jaco’s always bragging on the horse, but the only thing he really does is wheel and bolt after the first few lengths. So long as you let him know you won’t put up with that, you’ll be fine. He’s just a young horse, that’s all.”

  Wheel and bolt, Janis thinks. Wheel and bolt. She turns slightly to see who is giving advice. It is Clipper the barrel man, who has ridden more horses in his lifetime than Janis and Jaco put together. Working the barrel in the bullring is a sort of retirement. Dangerous enough, but no running and jumping on old bones that have already been broken at least once.

  Jaco leads the horse where there aren’t so many people and there’s plenty of room to fall. “Here you go, little girl, can I give you a leg up?”

  Janis takes the reins gently, and swings right up. She is fluid and graceful after all these years, and it almost brings tears to her eyes, being up on that horse.

  “Out of the way there, Mr. Walker.”

  Jaco looks up at her and is puzzled, like he is beginning to suspect he’s been had.

  A guy in the back howls with laughter. “Jaco, you dumb ass, don’t you know who she is? She’s that bullfighting girl.”

  “Yeah, Jaco, don’t you recognize her without all the makeup?”

  Janis chucks to the horse, who springs into a fast trot, and she eases him back just a little to see that he pays attention. She feels it right away, the way the muscles in his hindquarters tense, just exactly like Dandy used to do before he’d wheel and bolt. Janis slams her heels into the horse’s ribs as hard as she can, and the horse chuffs air and moves sideways. Janis kicks him again, only not so hard, just to get him busy with moving forward, which he does now, as if that had been his intention all
along.

  “Thatta girl, Janis.”

  “You keep that feller in line.”

  “Hell, she knew what that horse was going to do before he decided to do it.”

  “Best start unbuckling that money belt, Jaco.”

  Janis pays no attention. It is pure happiness riding this horse. She squeezes him just a little bit, like she would a tube of toothpaste, and he bypasses the lope for a full-fledged gallop. This horse has two speeds, all or nothing, and Janis thinks, Hell, ride it out.

  She runs him around the outside of the ring three times just to get the exuberance out, then pulls him back to an easy lope, then a trot, and has him prancing smoothly around the ring.

  Jaco climbs up on the fence and waves his hat. “I give up, little girl, you got that hundred dollars.”

  Janis takes the horse in a figure eight around the barrel, then rides him sedately back to the fence. She is breathless and bright-eyed, and there is pink in her cheeks.

  “You can keep your money, Mr. Walker, it was a pleasure just to ride your horse. And I was out of line, giving him that apple.”

  Jaco grins and slaps her back. “Anytime, little girl, anytime.”

  Janis is sweating through the padding. The riders have been falling like acorns out of trees, and a couple of these bulls have been serious handfuls. Clipper is perched on the barrel, ready to help a rider onto the only safe oasis in the ring, and David is one of the best at protecting the barrel guy. Janis has seen an inexperienced clown let the bull run right over the barrel, and worse still, seen the barrel guy abandoned and hung out to dry. Clipper is no fool, and he has only a handful of people he’ll work with.

  The kid is up next, and she is wondering what bull he’ll get when she hears the announcer say Godzilla.

  “Jesus Christ,” Janis mutters. The kid will be lucky to make it out of the chute.

  She puts a wad of purple gum in her mouth, and blows a furious bubble—another one of her personal trademarks in the ring. She exchanges looks with David and Clipper, and they’re all pretty much on the same page, which reads very simply: The kid is toast.

  Godzilla is a twenty-four-hundred-pound Brahma bull. Like most bulls, he’s fairly smart, and though they will look wild and out of control when they’re bucking, the bulls know just what they’re up to. If a rider anticipates the move of the bull, maybe shifting his weight, the bull will lunge in the opposite direction, leaving the rider in the dust, then switching back to go get him. Massive as they are, the bulls are amazingly agile, and they seem to get bigger and stronger every year. The worst is getting them off the cowboy when they are close in and tight, because she’ll have no room to maneuver for attention. The bulls are color-blind, no matter what anyone says, and the only thing that gets their attention is motion. It’s her job to get between the cowboy and the bull, not flap her arms around and call the animal bad names like some clowns without guts.

  Janis can see the kid positioning himself on the edge of the chute, and the crowd goes tense and quiet. They know some history of the bull, Godzilla, and they know that the cowboy is a first-time bull rider.

  Janis figures that the kid has so much adrenaline in his system his stomach will be roiling and nauseous. His first problem will be even getting on the bull in the chute. And when the chute flies open, and the bull leaps out, he will have to stay on his back for eight seconds.

  Eight seconds, with one hand free, and the other one wrapped in a braided rope that circles the animal’s belly. Eight seconds, with both legs clamped tight to the bull, and spurs dulled and not locked into place. Eight seconds of hands down the most dangerous sport there is.

  The judges will award one hundred total points, split between the rider and the bull, according to how they perform. No points at all for less than eight seconds. Not for the cowboy, anyway.

  The gate goes up. Godzilla makes a sound like a roar, and comes flying out of the chute already spinning.

  Lean forward, Janis thinks, stay over the hand, stay over the hand. But the kid has snapped backward and the next buck sends him whipping forward, then pinwheeling off. Janis is already running.

  “It’s a train wreck for the new guy,” the announcer shouts, and the crowd stands up and moans. “Looks like this boy is in trouble, his left spur is caught in the rope and … good Lord, that bull is dragging him around like a rag doll.”

  How quiet it seems, to Janis. Just the thud of her heart and the world on mute, because she is supremely focused, and her mind is moving quicker than sound waves, as the brain plans what the muscles need to do. There is only one damn way to pull this off, and it’s been done many times before, by herself included, but not with a monster like Godzilla. She’ll be lucky to get away with just a hooking.

  Godzilla has spotted her across the ring, and Janis runs straight at him. He finds the motion infuriating, and just as he lowers his head to charge her, Janis has a foot on his nose, and is running up and over his head. The crowd in the stands is screaming and cheering, and the bull is ready to kill.

  It is like being in the middle of a hurricane in an ocean of high waves and surf, and her brain cannot sort the sensory overload. Janis knows she is straddling the bull backward, with both hands on the rope. She sees the boot and the spur, and all it takes is to pull the rope loose on the side. Damn, okay there, she’s got it. The kid kicks and pulls his leg free. Janis sees this just as the bull whips her sideways, and she falls head over heels in the dirt. She is aware of her head slamming the ground, and the vibration as the bull charges her way. She should roll, and it’s a crapshoot on which way to go. Left, she decides, giving it all she’s got, and the bull churns the dirt where she was. And he’s way too fast, Lord have mercy, how can a bull that big whip sideways and get back at her so quickly. The ground is thundering again, and she is scrambling to her feet. She will try and vault over the fence, but she knows there is not time to make it.

  She catches motion from the corner of one eye, and sees that David has moved the barrel back and forth on the side of the ring, and is screaming “Come get me, Godzilla, you son of a bitch!” Clipper is up and waving his arms like a windmill. The insult is too severe for the bull, and Godzilla turns and charges after them. Janis looks behind her to see that, yep, the kid is out of the ring, then hears the impact as Godzilla connects and sends the barrel with Clipper on it spinning. David will need some breathing room to get Clipper out. She runs back toward the center waving her arms, and Godzilla, gratified by the blow to the barrel, is wheeling and ready to take her.

  The funny thing about this bull is that you know he’s going to move like a freight train, but you still can’t believe it when you see it. She waits him out for a second or two more, then whips sideways and heads for the fence. But this monster bull is way too smart—he has already turned and is heading not where she is but where she is going to be. Janis knows she cut this one a little too close, and as soon as she is in range of the fence, she vaults herself over and out of the ring.

  She is aware of the crowd in the background, the beat of her heart, the rasp of her breath. The ground shakes as the bull circles and tosses his head. He has dumped the cowboy and chased the clowns from his ring, and he is Godzilla, the King.

  He seems almost cheerful as he is herded on his way to generous feed, and a vet check.

  Janis closes her eyes for a moment and there’s not much in her head except the observation that the ground can sometimes be fine just to lie on. God, but she is covered in dirt and sweat and when she spits, there’s bull hair in her mouth.

  “She lost her bubble gum,” a familiar voice says, and she opens her eyes to see Clipper and David.

  “You going to lay there all night, you slacker?” David gives her a hand and pulls her up.

  Janis brushes dirt from the seat of her overalls. “How the hell many more bull rides we got left for tonight?”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The kid drifts toward Janis’s trailer one night when most of I the bandages are off. He kn
ocks softly. Janis closes the book she is reading on the Buck Branaman method of horse communication, and marks her place with a receipt from the Southern States Feed store. She looks out between the curtains of the window to see who waits so patiently.

  Her first thought, when she opens the door, is I was wondering when you’d get here. But what she says is, “Hey, how’ve you been?”

  “Alive, thanks to you.”

  It is the young cowboy, who reminds her of Hal. He’s brought a six-pack and a bouquet of flowers.

  “You mind if I come in?”

  Janis opens the door, and he steps up and ducks and stands in her tiny living room and kitchenette.

  “You want a glass for your beverage?” she asks.

  “Bottle is fine.”

  “Sit down then, won’t you?”

  “I brought these for you, Janis. You drink beer, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, Hal, I drink beer.”

  The cowboy opens two bottles, hands her one, and raises his.

  “To Godzilla, the biggest, meanest bull in the circuit. And to Janis, who literally walked all over him.” He takes the bouquet of roses and puts them in her lap. The flowers are fresh-cut and fragrant, their sweet scent already flavoring the room. “I got red, because that’s the color for passion.”

  “How old are you, Hal?”

  “Old enough, Janis.”

  She puts one of the roses in her beer bottle, and opens another to drink. “Old enough for what, Hal?”

  “Old enough to be your love slave.”

  Janis gives him points for making her laugh.

  She takes her time making a decision while the night wears down, and the fairgrounds around them grow still. The kid seems happy to talk or to listen and once his intentions are clear, he waits for her signal, and doesn’t push. He looks at her chest when he thinks she’s not watching; looks at her hair in the light, like he just wants to touch it, and that is good enough for him. He is easy to be with. He stops at two beers and won’t be tempted with a third.