Ride, Cowboy, Ride!

by Baxter Black

  Pica rolled over and snuggled against KroAsha. Then she laid her head in KroAsha’s lap. The crying stopped; her breath became regular.

  “Is all dis be drainin’ you, Honey? Or is it somethin’ else be botherin’ yo’ sweet little mind?” asked KroAsha.

  Without lifting her head Pica asked, “Have you ever tried to fight not liking somebody?”

  “Tell me ’bout it, Sweetie,” KroAsha encouraged.

  “There’s this guy. I thought I really liked him, but he just keeps making me mad. It just seems like he is giving me every reason to think he’s a jerk. Why can’t I see that? It’s like a giant sign warning me, but every time I try to go to sleep he crawls from that corner where he stays in my brain and floats to the top, and I get funny feelings and angry feelings. I toss and turn, lay there thinking ’til late at night.”

  KroAsha could tell Pica something about love. Forty years old, two daughters over twenty, neither married and both pregnant. All of them victims of loving men who felt no obligation to stick around.

  But she remembered the long nights, tossing and turning and hoping and plotting. She never had a relationship that lasted more than two months. Then, to see her daughters follow in her footsteps. She’d shed tears many a night, crying herself to sleep.

  “Tell me more,” KroAsha said kindly.

  Pica poured out her heart for fifteen minutes about her run-ins with Cooney.

  KroAsha got to laughing so hard that she nearly smothered Pica! Finally, through exhaustion or frustration or survival instinct, Pica’s tears turned to laughter. Spent, she leaned back on the headboard and relaxed.

  “Well, Darlin’” said KroAsha, “it sounds like y’all have never had a decent conversation, much less a good, pucker-up, tongue-lashin’, four-alarm kiss! And that first e-mail he sent, dat by the way, you quoted to me p-xactly, don’t fit wit da rest of his sorry behavior. Either he didn’t write it his ownself, or . . . the god of bad luck is smilin’ on dat po’ boy!

  “If it was me, dat’s what I would want to find out first! Is he really capable of dat kind of feelin’s he done spelt out fo’ you in cyberspace, or is he shallow as the army of ‘love ’em and leave ’ems’ that have followed me home my whole life?”

  KroAsha realized that her girl-talk companion had fallen asleep with her head resting on KroAsha’s shoulder. She waited several minutes, then carefully slipped from the bed and e-mailed her boss and half-brother, Turk Manniquin.

  BOSS MAN,

  Our little girl is mentally and physically drained. I would suggest an immediate weekend in the Bahamas. Maybe three days of no phones, no interviews, no pressure. We’ve got CNN in four days, three different interviews. She’s tough, but we’ve put a lot on her little shoulders. We better take care of her. Let me know,

  Yo faithful rosebud, KroAsha.

  CHAPTER 26

  August 21, Sunday Morning

  Detour to Goose Valley

  On Lick’s advice, Cooney and Straight pulled into the parking area of the tribal police headquarters of the Goose Valley Indian Reservation just south of the Idaho-Nevada border in town of Owyhee. They didn’t need to be in Washington State until Wednesday afternoon, so they had a couple of days to kill. The morning was starting to heat up.

  “You sure about this?” asked Straight. “I tried to check it out on the Internet, and there is no listing under ‘Roanhorse, Aroma Therapy’ or ‘Stone’s Soul Cleansing and Aroma Therapy Trading Post.’”

  “Trust me, Lick knows this guy from way back and thinks he can probably change your luck,” answered Cooney. And maybe mine, too, he thought. What Lick had really said was that “Straight has his head up his butt about being a celebrity, and somebody needs to pull it out for him. Give him a new point of reference.”

  They walked up to the counter in the police station.

  “Can I, uh, help you?” asked an Indian officer seated behind a desk.

  “Yes, please,” said Cooney. “We’re tryin’ to find a man named Stone Roanhorse.”

  Officer Sherrill Em stood and walked to the counter opposite Cooney and Straight. She was in her mid-forties, solidly built with jet black hair. “Is something wrong?” she asked.

  “No. He’s just been recommended to us,” said Cooney.

  “For his therapeutic treatments?” she asked.

  Cooney looked at Straight with a nod. Maybe Lick did know what he was talking about.

  “Well, I’m not sure . . . A friend told me he could help us . . .” Cooney started.

  “May I ask who?” interrupted Sherrill.

  “Lick Davis is his . . .”

  “Well, kiss my Native American . . . heart!” she said, startled. A vision flowed through her mind of a mustachioed cowboy asleep on her couch, ol’ Al, and a mixed-up girl she knew twenty years ago.

  “You know him?” asked Cooney.

  “Uh, yes . . .” she paused. “Where does he live now?”

  “Arizona, down on the border,” he said.

  “Do you know if he married that woman, that woman that was called Teddie Arizona?” she asked.

  Cooney looked at Straight and asked, “Do you know Lick’s wife’s name?”

  Straight thought a moment, then replied, “I’m not sure.”

  “Sorry,” said Cooney. “Anyway, Lick said we should see Mr. Roanhorse. Does he have a phone?”

  “Yes. He has a cell phone, but he, uh, doesn’t answer it. But you can drive to his trading post. That is what he calls his house.”

  Sherrill gave our two needy bronc riders directions, and forty minutes and three wire gates later they pulled up to a cinder-block building brightly painted with palm trees, turtles, and an Indian chief smoking a pipe. There were also a dozen or so vehicles in various stages of dilapidation parked around the yard and a corral with two horses.

  Stone Roanhorse appeared in the doorway. He was a shrunken, big man. His face was lined with wrinkles, and he was wearing red flip-flops. “Gentlemen,” he greeted them, “I wuz hoping you would come by. Did you bring any chardonnay or Skoal or smoked oysters? I am having a strong sensation of craving for those smoked oysters.”

  “No,” said Cooney. “We might have some Cheetos in the camper, but we cleaned out the rig this morning. Wait, we’ve got twelve boxes of freeze-dried crab jerky. One of the vendors gave it to us. All you add is water. You reckon that would work?”

  “The jerky sounds tasty, but those Cheetos, you know they make your fingers orange and sticky, and it is hard to roll a cigarette with sticky orange fingers. So, is that the reason you have come to my trading post and therapy sweat lodge, to bring Cheetos?”

  “No, no. We have come upon the recommendation of my friend, Lick Davis, so that you can change the bad luck of my bronc riding friend, Straight Line, here. Lick speaks very highly of your ability,” explained Cooney.

  “Ah, Lick. I have never known his last name. He is a close personal friend of my blood brother, Al Bean, who passed out permanently one or two years ago. They buried him, but sometimes he speaks in my dreams. Is Lick still living on this side?” asked Stone.

  “Yeah, he’s fine. In Arizona,” said Cooney.

  “Did he ever marry that woman that he and my brother Al saved from the helicopter cavalry?”

  “I dunno,” said Cooney. “I know he is married is all.”

  “Humm.” Stone went into a thoughtful mood, then revived. “So, what is it that I can do for you?”

  Cooney explained his Pica problem, and Straight confessed to his riding slump. Stone listened patiently, then pronounced, “I can save you both. Using a unique combination of nutritional supplements, breathing exercise, and an ancient Anastazi aroma therapy, it may be possible to realign your magnetic luck hydrants.

  “I have treated many famous people in Hollywood who suffered from r
ider’s block. You may think that only the brain is afflicted when the block strikes a rider, but it is often more than just constipated composition. It is important to free the indoles and skatols that are trapped within the alimentary pipelines coursing through the body,” obfuscated Stone.

  “What does that have to do with bronc riding?” asked Straight, beginning to have doubts.

  Stone seemed stumped for a moment. “Ah,” he said, “you thought I said ‘writer’s block.’ What I really said was ‘rider’s block.’ They are maligned simultaneously along the nervous pathways, and it is an easy mistake for you to make. By merely altering the location of the candle flame I can free the blockage from both brain and bowel.”

  Our two cowboys appeared confused.

  As possibly are you, reader. Remember that Stone is practicing the modern art of perception over reality. Though he is not a medicine man, he speaks as if he is one. His livelihood depends on being able to convince the patient that ancient therapies and abandoned treatments that have been relegated to the quackery graveyard and were never approved by the FDA are what you really need to be well again.

  At this point Stone resorts to his most convincing exhibit of proof, his ace in the hole: a celebrity testimonial . . .

  “Do you trust Lick?” asked Stone.

  “I guess,” said Straight.

  “Then there you have it! Would Lick . . . what was his last name? . . . lead you down the path to personal injury and ruin? No! I tell you, Lick will tell you, you will leave your rider’s block here in the soot on the top of the sweat lodge! You shall ride to victory on the wings of a new confluence!” pronounced Stone.

  “But first we must obtain the proper natural ingredients for our change of direction.”

  Stone stepped out onto the wooden pallet that served as his doorstep. “You,” he nodded to Straight, “go to Mountain City and return with forty-eight candles, four heads of cabbage, a five-pound bag of Anastazi beans, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, a case of sparkling carbonated water, and a six-pack of tequila, any brand will do.”

  “Your friend and I will begin preparation for the fire.”

  Cooney followed Stone around behind the house. A respectable distance away was gathered a cluster of car bodies arranged in the manner of a down-sized Stonehenge.

  “I guess you’ve been to Alliance,” chuckled Cooney.

  Stone was stonefaced.

  “Never mind,” said Cooney.

  The car collection turned out to be Stone’s sweat lodge. The car bodies formed a circle sixteen feet in diameter. A pit four feet deep filled the circle . . . if a pit can fill a circle. Sturdy, peeled lodgepole pine rails supported the roof like a teepee, conjoined at the center. A smoke hole the size of a basketball filled the peak . . . if a hole can fill a peak.

  The roofing itself was a colorful mishmash pattern of blue, brown, and silver plastic tarps, saddle blankets, bed sheets, quilts, Superman capes, dresses, kilts, down coats, coveralls, and one very large piece of orange shag carpet.

  Stone led Cooney down earthen steps into the lodge. It was cooler than Cooney expected for such a warm August afternoon.

  A fire pit lay unflamed directly beneath the smoke hole. The pit was shaped like a keyhole, the handle being lined with bricks that supported a thirty-six-inch-by-eighteen-inch grill for cooking.

  Animal skins covered the floor. Cinder blocks were scattered like icebergs in the Bering Sea, each supporting several candles.

  CHAPTER 27

  August 21, Sunday Evening

  In Stone’s Sweat Lodge

  Two hours later Cooney, Straight, and Stone were lying around the fire on large bean-bag chairs. Each wore only a hair-side-out goatskin loincloth and a cowboy hat.

  They had drunk a flagon of powerful prune punch, chewed a little peyote, and dined on Stone’s ritual stew. It was heavy on Anastazi beans, cabbage, and fruit high in fructose.

  Stone’s conversational voice had taken on the timbre of a professorial chant: “. . . the hieroglyphics of prehistoric Egyptians shows them using what in the Native American healing arts is called puk tu chee, in white man lingo a ‘virtual’ colonic irrigation. Not a real hosing, simply a gaseous cleansing. According to ancient cave paintings we, too, once practiced the live-time fireman’s flush like they do today in Ojai, California. But it was just too messy. Maybe if we could have rented a drive-through carwash or even a fountain we could have pulled it off, but we have chosen to cleanse our innards with natural gas.”

  Straight was paying attention to the lecture, but the picture of Stone sitting on a propane tank bobbled his mind for a moment. Or maybe it was the gas bubble just to the left of his navel.

  “. . . It is to dispel bad humors that reside in you that prevent you, He Who Talks With Stumbling Lip [referring to Cooney] from choosing the right words to say to achieve consummation of a certain beautiful maiden. Or . . . in your case, He Who Rides Like Mating Wombat [referring to Straight], does not allow the coordination of your motor skills needed to ride a bronc like an eagle rides the current,” explained Stone.

  An explosive flatus rocked the room, punctuating his point and fluffing his loincloth. Kaboom! Poof!

  Straight jumped, and Cooney flipped backward off his bean-bag chair.

  As candle flames were unfluttering and getting back to normal, Stone remarked with enthusiasm, “Oh. A very good start.”

  He passed around another cup of powerful prune punch and Valium. “We shall reach into your inner depths, unlocking your reticence, permitting your visions to be verbalized and explored.”

  A sneaky slipstream whistled out from underneath Straight like a cobra from a snake charmer’s basket. The whistle ended with a whip-cracking screeeeee! Snap!

  “Ooo, He Who Rides Like Flapping Sock! That is what we call ‘A-Lee-O,’ the writhing eel! Look at the candles around you. They are now drawn back, looking down their noses at you. It is a good sign. Soon you will get a glimpse of your vision.”

  Whack! Thummmmp! Three candles blew out in front of Cooney.

  “Speak to us, Stumbling Lip!” encouraged Stone. “Your words will become Metamucil to the ears of succulent maidens. Here, drink more punch!”

  The next ten minutes descended into a cacophonous orchestra pit of tooting, tumultuous, turbulent tubas, trombones, and trumpets, stuttering saxophones, and fleeing piccolos. Candles closed their eyes, covered their wicks, and held their noses. Some flickered and flamed out, others, braced with a zephyr of methane, kicked on, and relit their smudged, waxen partners.

  “Can you feel the spirit of our Pharaoh of Phlatulence, the Master Blaster, the Trigeminal Titan of Throaty, Throbbing Thurifiers, the one, the only Toot in Common? Can you feel him moving inside you?” asked Stone. “Let him speak through you! Three, two, one!”

  To the untrained ear one might have been reminded of an extended crash between two bugling elk and a dirt bike.

  Attracted by the noise, one of Stone’s dogs trotted down the steps, barked, sniffed the air, and shook his head as if he had a bee in his ear. Then he raced back the way he had come.

  Straight rose in a trance from his poof pillow. He stumbled but caught his fall. At the apex of his three-point stance, his innards under great pressure, a summer squash-shaped cloud of gas was released. The cloud struck a clutch of candles. The sweat lodge lit up like a moonshine raid!

  Sparks and flashbulbs of fire crackled through the heavily charged atmosphere. Spider webs in the roof crannies ignited.

  Straight stood at attention, looking up at the smoke hole. Stone was reminded of his favorite movie, A Man Called Horse.

  “I can see Pegasus,” said Straight in a breathy voice.

  Stone let a silence linger, then said, “Is he bucking?”

  Straight stared more intently through the smoke hole and said, “He is bucking. Ver
y smooth. Up and down, rock and fire. He would be beautiful to ride.”

  “Can you reach him?” asked Stone politely.

  Straight tried, then shook his head.

  “You must try. Release yourself from the tightness that holds you back. Cleanse yourself of the fecowhiffs that bind you.”

  Straight strained. Slowly he began to rise. Pots rattled on the grill, candles lay sideways, and Cooney’s hat blew off as Straight mounted to the sky like a rocket lifting off Cape Canaveral. He disappeared through the smoke hole.

  Cooney was unfazed. He had partaken of the tequila. He was . . . Mellow Yellow. Seconds, minutes, or hours passed, he didn’t know. To Cooney it was a timeless interlude until Stone spoke.

  “She is here,” he said.

  “What does she look like?” asked Cooney politely.

  “She is a redtailed hawk with the head of a fox. She has a question . . . which one are you?”

  “How shall I answer?” asked Cooney.

  “Straight,” said Stone.

  “He is riding Pegasus,” answered Cooney.

  “No. Answer her straight,” instructed Stone.

  “Ah, okay,” said Cooney, understanding. “You mean without capitals.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then the answer is, I am both.”

  Some would consider his answer profound. Some would call it inscrutable. The redtailed hawk considered it . . . Evading the question. This was pointed out to Cooney.

  Stone channeled Pica HawkFox: “Who were you quoting in the very first e-mail I received from you?”

  Deep inside Cooney an answer assembled and flowed like organ music from his mouth: “The words that passed my lips flowed directly from the soul of my being, circumnavigating all the warnings and signposts that suggested caution: Ego adjustment! Preening, bravado, vanity, common sense, and self-protection ahead!

  “I am filled with the wonderment of a sky full of stars, the yearning of a young Mexican house finch that has lost his lover, and the conviction of a cowboy strapped to Cupid’s arrow that is aimed directly at your heart.