Chasing the Dream

by Paige Lee Elliston

  Amy felt eyes on her as she stood glaring out the picture window, and she turned to face into the room. Bobby and Nutsy were sitting side by side and staring at her. Neither animal moved. Amy looked into their eyes and felt her anger begin to melt. It was perfectly still in the living room—in the entire house—as if the animals’ concentration on her had washed away all sounds.

  The staring contest seemed to go on for a very long time. Amy read the love in the eyes of her animals. Her shoulders relaxed slightly, and she unclenched her hands. Then, as if on some cue that Amy wasn’t aware of, Nutsy broke eye contact and began licking a forepaw. Bobby too looked away, nodded his head as if agreeing to something, and burped loudly. Amy collapsed to her knees in laughter, pulling the pup and the cat close to her, hugging them until they squirmed to get loose. Then she fell backward onto the carpet, stretched out her legs, and gazed up at the ceiling. I’ll do what I need to do. If I have to find a job of some kind to keep things together here, that’s what I’ll do. I’m not broke yet—I still have some money, I still have some time to write before the bottom drops out. And one way or another—soon or in the future—I’ll finish The Longest Years, and I’ll be proud of it.

  Bobby whined at the back door, and Amy realized she was hearing him for the second or third time in the past few minutes. She clambered to her feet and hurried to the door. Bobby opened it the last few inches with his body as he hustled by her and squatted almost immediately within a few feet of the house. Relieved, the dog found his rawhide knot and brought it back to Amy. She was about to throw it when she heard hoof beats in the pasture. The thudding stopped Bobby too. He forgot about the game of fetch and swung his head toward Jake’s pasture. “Bobby,” Amy said, her voice steady. “No.” The pup held his pose for a long moment, still gazing toward the pasture. Then, he turned to Amy and waited for her throw.

  “Good boy,” Amy said. “Goooood boy, Bobby.” They walked around the edge of her garage; Bobby kept perfect pace with her strides.

  Wes Newton was on his gray horse, urging one of the mares to leave the others and head for the steel building. The mare was reluctant, but Wes’s horse performed like a dog herding sheep, turning the mare, driving her toward the building. Wes saw Amy and waved; he raised the loop of lariat he carried to greet her. He called something to another cowhand sitting on his horse near the back fence, and the cowboy spurred his horse, formed a loop from his lariat, and tossed it over the mare’s head, making the entire process look as easy as smiling at a friend. Wes rode to the fence and reined up close to it, waiting for Amy to walk over.

  He eyed Bobby. “Looks like the pup learned his lesson, Ms. Amy. I watched you get after him after he ran Mal’s horse. I gotta say this—you handled your dog just right. Whaling on a good dog doesn’t accomplish a thing, but your no worked jus’ fine.”

  “Bobby’s a quick learner,” Amy said. “I didn’t see you out in the pasture when all that happened. I guess I wasn’t seeing much but Mallory’s horse and my dog.”

  “I was out back there, hooking up the bush hog to the tractor. I seen an’ heard a good part of it.”

  “You heard what Mallory said about Jake, then?”

  Wes nodded. “’Bout him being her man and all that? Yeah, I heard it.” He shifted in his saddle and rested the hand holding the reins atop the saddle horn. “I wouldn’t pay much attention to anything she says.”

  “She certainly lit into Bobby and me. I know my dog was in the wrong and that Jake’s horses are expensive, but—”

  “Wasn’t no reason for all the raggin’ on you,” Wes interrupted. “That pup of yours maybe never before saw a horse in motion. That’s why he had to chase it. I’ve seen you playing with him when the mares was out grazing, and the pup didn’t pay them any mind.”

  “Well, there’s no sense in my worrying about it now,” Amy said.

  Wes nodded. After a moment, he said, “I hear you’re goin’ to the rodeo Saturday.”

  “Yep.” Amy smiled. “I’m looking forward to it. It’s my first time, except for what little I’ve seen on TV.”

  “It’s a whole other thing when you see it live, right in front of you. I wish I could go along, but Jake’s got me here, kinda running things while he’s gone.”

  Amy was about to respond when the cowhand who’d roped the mare whistled shrilly and called for Wes.

  “Speakin’ of which,” Wes said, “looks like Wade’s havin’ some trouble getting that ol’ gal inside.” He tipped his hat to Amy, wheeled his horse, and set out at a fast lope. Bobby whined deep in his throat as he watched the horse race away, but he didn’t move from his place next to Amy.

  Together they walked to Amy’s front door. Instead of going in immediately, Amy sat on the top step of her porch, Bobby next to her. The silence was broken by the faint sound of feminine laughter coming from the direction of Jake’s house. It irritated her, and she felt foolish that it did. When she heard the laughter the second time, she took her dog and went inside, slamming the door behind her.

  Saturday morning Amy was up and showered by 6:00 a.m. As she fed the animals and started her coffee, she let her mind take her where it would. She remembered the velvet evening with the embers of the fire in the grill fading to a dim red, and the plates and empty cups on the picnic table marking their meal. It was the end of a fine evening—and perhaps the beginning of something else. And today she’d spend the entire day with Jake.

  Bobby picked up on Amy’s excitement as she moved about the kitchen, humming happily, packing her Igloo cooler with the thermos of iced tea, half an apple pie, a pint of French vanilla ice cream, and two huge roast beef sandwiches on oversized Coldwater bakery rolls. In a separate bag Amy carried two servings of Bobby’s kibble, his rawhide toy, a handful of paper napkins, and two small bags of potato chips. She glanced around the kitchen to make sure she hadn’t forgotten anything, clicked Bobby’s new leash to his freshly purchased collar, and led him through the door to the garage. He hopped into the Jeep as soon as Amy opened the door, and situated himself on the passenger seat, as anxious to get rolling as Amy was.

  A good day, Amy thought as she backed out of the garage. This will be a good day.

  The weather couldn’t have been much better. The sun smiled down from a deep azure sky, with only snippets of pure white clouds appearing toward the western horizon. It was cooler than average for late July in Montana—seventyeight degrees—which made it ideal for rodeo.

  The map Amy downloaded from her laptop wasn’t necessary since the run to Porterville was a one-highway trip. She rolled through Coldwater, making the one traffic light, and set her cruise control at sixty-eight when she hit the open highway. She marveled at the beauty of the prairie around her and at the fact that she’d so rapidly and completely left civilization behind. She was alone on the road without another vehicle visible either in front of or behind her Jeep. Rather than click on the air-conditioning, Amy lowered her window and the one next to Bobby a few inches and let the fresh air circulate through the vehicle. Bobby stuck his snout out through the opening, and the breeze pushed his tongue to the side like the trailing necktie of a hurrying businessman.

  The “Porterville—12 Miles” sign appeared on Amy’s right side. It, like many of the state and local signs she’d seen in rural Montana, allowed light to peep through a series of punctures in the metal—indications that hunters had used the signs to sight in their high-powered rifles. Amy grinned. Sure, it was damage to state property. But, in a perverse way, the bullet holes were a manifestation of the Old West spirit and attitude of her adopted slice of America. When she saw a hand-lettered sign in front of a farmhouse, saying, “Old Records and Books for Sale,” her grin expanded to a full smile at the happy realization that in the months she’d lived in Coldwater she hadn’t seen the word old spelled olde a single time.

  The rodeo posters, bright and colorful, tacked to power poles and to the posts that supported the mailboxes of the occasional farm or ranch, began to appear about te
n miles outside Porterville. Amy passed a pair of teens on horseback—a boy and a girl—both dressed in what appeared to be their best Western clothing. Rodeo fans, she thought. She gave them plenty of room as she pulled by.

  The fairground was easy enough to find—Amy followed the signs and arrows. It consisted of several acres of unpaved parking lot surrounding a long rectangle of bleacher-type seating. Although the first show of the day wasn’t scheduled until 2:00 p.m., a haze of dust hung over the parking area, and pale blue smoke rose from the grills of the concession stands. Bobby, now standing on the passenger seat with his forepaws braced on the window ledge, couldn’t seem to move his head rapidly enough to take in the new sights or sniff the air greedily enough to absorb the myriad scents. “I know, Bobby,” Amy said to the collie. “It’s all brand new to me too.”

  There didn’t seem to be any protocol to parking. Pickup trucks, cars, and vans were arranged in ragged rows, with a cluster of larger trucks and horse trailers in a roped-off section at one end of the rectangle of seating. Amy immediately noticed that one of Jake’s large stock trucks was backed up to an open gate. Men—all of whom were dressed in jeans and boots and wore cowboy hats—meandered about inside the roped-in area. Several of them carried clipboards. A couple of them tossed loops at upended buckets. One intense young cowboy sat on a bale of hay as if it were a horse and swept his legs back and forth as if spurring a bronc.

  Amy parked next to a pickup with a decal reading “Bull Riding—America’s #1 Sport,” hooked Bobby’s leash to his collar, and stepped out of her Jeep into the world of Montana rodeo. She walked beyond the parking area to let Bobby relieve himself and then headed back to the main entrance to the arena—the area where the concessions and booths were set up. The scent of coffee had reached her, and the fact that almost everyone she saw carried a steaming Styrofoam cup sent her to a Porterville Chamber of Commerce booth advertising “The Best Coffee in the World.” Heads turned as Amy and Bobby walked by. Women smiled at her, and men nodded and grinned. One old gent in a wheelchair winked at her and said, “Handsome dog you got there.”

  Amy bought a cup of coffee—Twenty-five cents? It would have been two-fifty at a fair or festival in New York—and wandered toward the bleacher seating inside the rectangle. A small tractor was dragging the dirt of the arena floor and putting a cloud of grit into the air behind it as it chugged along. The numbered chutes the riders and animals would emerge from comprised the end of the arena farthest from Amy. Above the chutes was the announcer’s booth, a square structure with an open, glassless, picture-window-type view of the arena. Country-western music played through the scratchy, static-ridden public address system. Amy watched the men around the booth, hoping to see Jake. It didn’t really surprise her that she didn’t find him gabbing and laughing with the cowboys and the announcer’s staff. He’d told her he had to be in a dozen places all at the same time until a show got rolling and he had some time to watch the action. She recalled the excitement in Jake’s voice as he described the events to her. He loves this stuff, she’d thought then. He really and truly loves it. It’s not a way to make a living with his animals—it’s a major part of his life.

  Both Amy and Bobby were fascinated by the sights, sounds, and smells around them. There was a freshness, a scent of newly painted wood and good strong coffee, of prairie breeze and burning charcoal and mesquite, of polished leather and arena dust, that helped make the experience a captivating one.

  Wade, a cowhand employee of Jake’s that Amy had seen around several times, caught her eye from the booth and waved to her. She led Bobby over to the man and smiled at the crispness of the Western shirt he wore and the actual crease in his jeans.

  “You’re looking good, Wade,” she said.

  The cowhand blushed as he crouched to stroke Bobby. “You aren’t looking half bad yourself,” he said. “I didn’t know you were a rodeo fan.”

  “Well,” she admitted, “this is my first one. Jake invited me to watch from the announcer’s booth with him, so I guess we’ll have the best seats in the house.” She watched a young guy in huge, raggedy pants, a falling-apart shirt, and a massive cowboy hat walk away from the group at the booth. “I get a kick out of the clowns. They must go over great with the kids who—”

  “Uh... Amy?” Wade interrupted.

  “What?”

  “Those boys—don’t call them clowns around rodeo people,” he said, his eyes holding hers. “They’re called bullfighters, and they have the most dangerous job in rodeo. All of us—fans and contractors and especially the guys who ride—have nothin’ but respect for the bullfighters.”

  “I didn’t know,” Amy said. “Thanks for setting me straight.”

  They stood together for a moment, surrounded by the movement and the color. “Have you seen Jake?” Amy asked. “I saw his truck over behind the chutes, but I haven’t seen him yet.”

  Wade pointed to the rear of the arena. “He’s probably lookin’ after the stock. They got him set up off behind where the trucks and the competitors parking is—kinda beyond where you saw Jake’s stock van.” Then, Wade pointed directly across the arena. “They got him a travel trailer to stay in—a big Airstream—parked over there, all hooked up with electric and water. If he isn’t with the stock or in the booth, he’s probably at the trailer.”

  “I’m sure I’ll find him sooner or later.” Amy smiled. “Thanks, Wade. See you later. I want to explore some more.”

  Wade tipped his Stetson and returned her smile. “You enjoy your first rodeo, now,” he said.

  Amy nodded. “I’m sure I will.” It had been a grand day so far, and the actual rodeo didn’t even start for several hours.

  More vehicles—mostly pickup trucks—were filling the spaces in the parking lot. People greeted friends, and laughter and the squeals of young children seemed to drown out the unrequited-love song rasping out of the pole-mounted speakers. Bobby paced at Amy’s side, every so often moving closer and licking the hand that held his leash. Once, a handsome chocolate Lab glared at Bobby as the pup yipped a greeting. Amy grinned as the Lab’s throaty growl sent Bobby tight against her legs.

  She stopped at a hot dog stand and asked for a bowl of water for Bobby, which was immediately handed over with a couple of ice cubes floating in it. Again, Amy marveled at the grace and attitude of the people she’d come across in Montana.

  Bobby drinking a good part of a quart of cold water made it necessary to find a place for him to get rid of some of it. Amy walked well beyond the parking lot to a stand of scruffy desert pines that afforded a small splash of shade. She allowed her pup to select a spot, and then she sat in the grass with her back against the trunk of a pine. The sounds of the fairgrounds reached her, but everything was softened by the two hundred yards between the rodeo and the stand of trees. She rested in the shade, idly stroking Bobby’s back as he stretched out next to her.

  After ten minutes or so Amy stood and brushed the grass from her jeans. Bobby stood too, looking up at her, tail moving from side to side slowly, questioningly. “Back to the rodeo,” she said. “Let’s see if we can find the guy who asked us here today.” She checked her watch; it was going on noon. The parking area, she noticed as she walked back, was filled to its capacity, and new arrivals were stashing their trucks and cars in the pitted, overgrown acres beyond the ground that had been cleared. Others—those with four-wheel drive—braved a wet couple of acres that would trap and hold normal vehicles.

  Jake’s bucking horses were grazing in a pipe enclosure much like the one Amy had seen in Jake’s indoor arena. Two bulls, their coats shiny brass, stood in a separate enclosure, looking as peaceful as a pair of sleepy kittens. Bobby eyed the bulls but kept pace with Amy, not hanging back for a longer look. Beyond the corrals Amy could see down the side of the arena to where, about at its midpoint, a travel trailer stood next to a power pole. The sun had begun bearing down, and Amy realized how thirsty she was. She envisioned the tall glass of iced tea—or ice water or anything cold
and wet—she hoped would be waiting for her in the Airstream.

  The pre-rodeo show had started inside the arena. As the final notes of the “Star Spangled Banner” floated across the prairie, the jubilant thunder of the crowd’s cheering followed. Whatever happened next in the arena brought laughter and then more cheering from the audience as Amy trudged toward the trailer.

  The heat was beginning to get to her; she tugged a handkerchief from the pocket of her jeans and wiped her forehead. Her mouth and throat felt like she’d eaten a sack of sand. She glanced at Bobby and saw that his tongue was limp, dry, coated with dust; he was as thirsty as she was. She quickened her pace. Bobby, at first reluctant, felt the urgency and hurried along with her.

  The trailer was situated so that the hookup was toward Amy and the entrance to it faced the fairgrounds arena. It was larger than most of the trailers Amy had seen on the road. The chrome fittings of the unit were shiny and reflected the sunlight like the finish of a polished car. The sound of Jake’s laughter—faint but unmistakable to Amy—reached her. She opened her mouth, ready to call out to him—and then she stopped walking so quickly that Bobby hit the end of his leash and was yanked off his front feet for a second.

  Intertwined with Jake’s masculine laughter, the voice of a woman—and the laughter of one—floated to Amy across the twenty or so yards that separated her from the trailer. The angle put the pull-down awning over the door in her view, and as she moved to the side, she was able to see the three metal steps that led to the ground.

  On the steps Mallory stood with her arm loosely around Jake’s waist, laughing again. There was a yellow bath towel draped around Mallory’s neck, and even at the distance it was easy to see that her hair was wet—fresh from the shower. Mallory leaned into Jake, turned her head to him, got up on her toes, and kissed him on the cheek.