Improbable Fortunes

by Jeffrey Price

  Mrs. Svendergard was not just thinking of Buster when she made that suggestion. She had received an unexpected phone call that morning from a golf properties consortium in Coral Gables, Florida. A famous golf course architect, Gordon McClain III, had flown over her property in an UltraLight airplane on the way to Phoenix and was taken with the eccentricity of her topography. This was his specialty in golf course architecture—finding the challenging sites in what he called the “American vernacular.” Mrs. Svendergard wasn’t interested in the vernacular side of things as much as she was in the price per acre. He said that his consortium would not be willing to go over four thousand per. They would spread the payment over ten years. Mrs. Svendergard said that would be fine with her and gently put the phone down in the cradle. She quickly scribbled the figures on the back of a nudist magazine called Svenska Exposures that was by the phone. She ciphered 640 times 4,000 divided by 10. She looked at it again. Could this be right—256,000 a year? Zella and Gil only lived on forty thousand, and they had spent like Romans! The way she figured it, she could live for thirty or forty more years and never have to lift a finger! She could leave narrow-minded Vanadium with its freezing winters and live her dream: the Brisa Suave assisted living nudist commune in Costa Rica. Mrs. Svendergard broke down and cried. Buster, who was in the kitchen cleaning up the breakfast dishes, assumed she was on the phone talking to a relative who was offering condolences and came to put a comforting hand on her shoulder. Mrs. Svendergard looked up and blubbered at him.

  “My God, I can’t believe this has happened to me.”

  “Ah’m sorry, Mommy.”

  Buster was going to be a problem. There was no way she could take him to the most famous nudist colony in the world. Buster would be an embarrassment to her. Time and time again, she tried to explain to Buster that looking at someone naked and sexual stimulation were two different things. But despite her patient pedagogy, Buster stubbornly insisted on parading around the house with an erection. If this was her chance to finally get out of Vanadium, she wasn’t going to miss it because of him.“I’ll send somebody up for his clothes,” said the sheriff.

  “They’re in the car,” Mrs. Svendergard said.

  Sheriff Dudival looked around at the people at the funeral heading for the parking lot. There was the quiet Mary Boyle from the Buttered Roll. Mary was a good person in her early thirties married to Bob Boyle, a one-time star on the rodeo circuit. The sheriff put in an emergency call to the Vanadium Women’s League.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Learning the Ropes at the Boyles’

  Mary Boyle was in the back of the Buttered Roll stuffing tarragon tuna fish into beefsteak tomatoes when the little bell rang on the door. It was Sheriff Dudival acting as emissary for the Women’s League of Vanadium.

  “Hello, Mary, may I speak with you for a moment?”

  She wiped her hands on her apron and came out, a look of dread on her face.

  “Certainly, Sheriff. Anything wrong?”

  “No, no. I just wanted to know how things were going for you at home.”

  “You mean, since Bob…?” She didn’t complete the sentence, which would have been: “…beat the living crap out of me and I dialed nine-one-one convinced that he was really going to kill me this time but then I begged you to not arrest him because it would’ve only made life more difficult for me than it was worth and you didn’t?”

  “Yes, since then.”

  “Things are great,” she said. “Thanks for asking.”

  Yes, the sheriff had not arrested Bob, even though the law said it was mandatory. This was but another of the laws that Sheriff Dudival felt better left to his discretion. Mary refused to go to a women’s shelter and she had three young children that she would have had to take care of herself—no daycare being available in Vanadium in those days.

  “Happy to help,” he said. “But, uh…” He tilted his hat back to scratch his head. “I was wondering if you might do a little something for me.”

  The Boyles lived behind the Buttered Roll, the restaurant Mrs. Boyle had bought before she married Bob, a rodeo star who’d been a regular customer. Like most newlyweds, they’d had big dreams. Theirs was to buy the defunct Victorian Vanadium Hotel on Main Street. It had been built in the forties to house the mining executives who then frequented the town, but when the mine closed, the place had gone to seed. The asking price was $140,000. Mary thought that they could refurbish the place to its former glory. With pencil and paper, Mary and Bob sat down every night and worked out a financial plan. They would support themselves on the Buttered Roll income and bank Bob’s rodeo winnings.

  The Boyles’ savings plan went into effect and was working well—even after they had their first child. Mary was still able to run the restaurant and manage the baby. It became a little more difficult after the second child, one year later. At that point, she had to close the restaurant for dinner and serve breakfast and lunch only. Her third child was born autistic. The Vanadium school wouldn’t let him stay in kindergarten. They said he disrupted the class. So, Mary had no other choice but to home school. The Buttered Roll was now only open for breakfast.

  In the meantime, Bob’s career had taken an unfortunate turn. A Brahma bull, by the name of Insult to Injury, threw him fifty feet in the air—after nearly amputating his right hand when it wouldn’t come free of the harness rope. Insult charged as he scrambled for safety. He hooked Bob through his shirt and threw him down on the ground and then proceeded to stomp on his groin with such force that his scrotum was forever crimped around the edges like one of Mary’s sage and butter raviolis. Bob rarely finished in the money after that. He told Mary that their family problems were a distraction and he couldn’t maintain focus, but the truth was the incident with Insult caused him to lose his nerve. He became unstable—the slightest incident would set him off. If the kid at the Dairy Queen told him that they’d run out of butterscotch dip, he’d storm out looking for someone’s head to rip off. He’d show up at the High Grade just to pick a fight. But after the news spread about his flattened testicles, no one took him seriously as a brawler. So, he took the fight home.

  If you’d asked him, Bob would have told you that he loved Mary more than words could say—and he meant it. But deep down he suspected that she considered him a loser. Sometimes he would go to stroke her hair or caress her face, and find himself hitting her. When his autistic son acted up, Bob would try to hug him into stopping, but wound up shaking him until foamy spittle flew from his mouth. When his daughters protested, he whipped them with his champion rodeo buckle.

  After Sheriff Dudival came to the house the night of the 911 call—and acquiesced to Mary’s request that he not be arrested—he nevertheless made it clear to Bob that if he ever saw Mary in town with a bruise or a black eye, he would personally drive him to Canon City State Prison. Bob knew that Sheriff Dudival meant business, so after that he made sure he wore Mary’s quilted oven mittens when smacking her.

  As for Buster, Bob beat him up in the guise of giving him boxing lessons, but Buster considered himself fortunate that a male role model was actually taking the time for him. In appreciation, Buster tapped out a pie plate portrait of Bob depicting him astride a rip-snorting bucking bull. Bob regarded his tribute gimlet-eyed.

  “Who the hell is that supposed to be?”

  “Why heck, Pop…it’s you.”

  “I meant, the bull.”

  “The bull?”

  Bob, in his post-traumatic state, believed the bull to be Insult to Injury and further, that Buster had rendered him aboard his old nemesis to have a laugh at his expense. He grabbed Buster by the hair and pulled him down, sideways to his height.

  “Friend, you done woke up the wrong passenger!”

  “Ow, Pop! The bull don’t have a name. He’s jes’ ‘Bull!’”

  Bob’s eyelids fluttered a few times as if a hypnotist had just snapped his fingers and
told him he could stop being a chicken. He took a deep breath and let go of Buster’s hair.

  “Sorry, kid. One of these days, I oughta go git my head examined.”

  “Ah’ll git rid of this plate direkly, so yool never have to think about it, Pop.”

  Buster started to walk to the trashcan, but Bob stopped him.

  “The hell, you say! What you done there is special… It’s like I’m on my own damn coin!” He looked at it again, this time admiringly. “I’ll tell you somethin’ I’ll never tell her. I wish you were my son—instead a that re-tard, Bob Jr,.” he said, gesturing back to the house.

  “Aw, he’s all right, Pop. He’s jes a lil techy.”

  “Crime of it is, I was hopin’ to pass down everthang I knew about cowboyin’, but there you damn have it!”

  Buster swallowed hard and dared to speak.

  “Uh…ya think you could teach me?”

  Bob may not have known how to send an email or chip a golf ball with a fifty-six degree wedge to make it hop twice then stop dead six inches from the flag, but before he lost his confidence, he could throw a rope around the engine of a moving train and rope a steer and tie its legs together in nine seconds flat.

  “Why the hell not?”

  They started off with a thirty-foot extra-soft rope. Bob taught him how to lay it out, to coil it, make a spoke and swing it. Bob taught him how to throw a Figure Eight that could catch the head of a steer and his front legs. He taught him the Roll Over to catch all four legs. He taught him how to throw a loop standing, and he taught him how to throw one on a moving horse. And when Bob was sure Buster had the fundamentals, he taught him the surefire stuff to impress the girls. In a few weeks time, Buster was able to do the Slow-motion Roll across his back, the Tiny Loop Scoot along the ground like he was walking a dog, and the crowd pleasing Texas Skip with two ropes—alternating jumps between each one without taking off his hat.

  As for riding, Buster had already proven in the Vanadium Labor Day Rodeo that he could stay on a horse. Bob had actually been in the crowd that day—marveling along with everyone else. But as Bob now pointed out, staying on a horse was not exactly the same as riding a horse.

  By way of illustration, Bob led his bay mare into the corral. He grabbed her mane while holding the reins and then, in one smooth motion, swung himself up in the saddle. His posture was upright; his knees lightly making contact with the rib cage of the horse, but from the knees down his legs flared out, his boots in stirrups—the weight on the balls of his feet, heels down. He let the reins drop. The bay waited for the light to change. Then, Bob gently touched her left underflank with the back of his spur and she moved her hips to the right. He tapped under her right side and she sashayed to the left. Now, Bob leaned slightly forward in the saddle and the horse began to trot. He put pressure on her with both legs and she began a slow, graceful lope in a circle. Bob’s ass never left the saddle; his pelvis rocking back and forward with her movement—all the while with an odd look of bliss on his face that Buster had never seen when Bob was inside the house.

  Teaching Buster, in the weeks and months ahead, produced in Bob unexpected vigor. He began to love cowboying again as Buster’s unalloyed enthusiasm recorded over his own fear. So when he saw the ad for the Copenhagen Rompin’ Stompin’ Show in Ranch World magazine, he threw caution to the wind and mailed in his entrance fee.

  Before Bob left for the arena in Cheyenne, Wyoming, he gave Buster, as a gesture of gratitude, a lariat—which he had braided himself some twenty years ago—when cowboys still used Plymouth Yacht Linen. He jury-rigged a surrogate roping critter with real bull’s horns so Buster could practice throwing the lariat while he was away. All of this may have been small potatoes to recommend Bob as a member of the human race, but it was something. In fact, the minister even mentioned it at Bob’s funeral.

  Bob arrived in Cheyenne in the early evening and checked into the Cock Robin Motel. He ate the sandwich that Mary had made for him, did some push-ups and sit ups, then went to bed. That night, he had a dream that he was going to be killed by a bull. The next morning, he tried to brush it off, but when he went to the arena to sign in and get his number, his delicate mental state came under attack.

  The more successful cowboys had flown in on their own Cessnas. That was the first thing that irritated Bob; that he had to drive all the way there in a twelve year-old truck with a bad front end. Then there were the obligatory jokes about his crushed testicles. To make matters worse, he didn’t draw a very good bull. But he made it to the buzzer and he didn’t get hurt, so that smoothed his hackles somewhat. He placed fourth and won $1,500. A rodeo clown, who he used to go drinking with, felt sorry for the ribbing the other cowboys had given him and counted out six white crosses for Bob’s ride home. However, Bob didn’t take the present in the spirit in which it was given.

  “I should have the ten thousand dollars, not this shit!” And that may have been Bob’s problem in a nutshell—not to poke fun at Bob’s anomalous anatomy. When you’ve been the best at something, nothing less ever seems good enough.

  The 450-mile trip home was a hellish drive in a howling spring snowstorm. It took him thirteen and a half hours to get back to Vanadium. Buster was outside when he saw Bob’s truck pull up, still covered in ice and snow. Buster had the presence of mind to make himself scarce when he saw what Bob’s glazed eyes looked like. The house was a mess. The kids had runny noses, and everyone was screaming. His autistic son, Bob Jr., was singing the hook to a pop song in a black lady’s falsetto—over and over again. Bob started counting to ten. His mouth was dry, and his breath was putrid from the white crosses and the bile of his own bad temperament. He went to the refrigerator and grabbed a beer. Mary was in the kitchen—noisily grinding walnuts for an order of banana cake, which had to be ready by six. Bob tried to stand there nonchalantly like the loose-jointed, laconic cowboy he used to be. At this very moment, he was of two minds. He was either going to call upon all of his strength to act normal, tell his wife he had won a little bit of money, or he was going to take the Hamilton blender and bash her head with it.

  Buster was standing on the back of Bob’s pickup throwing a lasso at his surrogate roping steer. Over and over again he flung it, tied it off on one of the aluminum cleats on the perimeter of the truck bed, jumped down and wrestled it to the ground and tied its wooden legs. That’s when he heard the screams from inside the house. He left his rope tied to the steer and ran inside. The kids were all crying. Mary, a deep purple gash above her right eyebrow, was being dragged from room to room. Buster didn’t know what to do. He had never confronted a full-grown man before. He stood there and watched as Bob punched her and kicked her. Suddenly, he found himself flying across the living room in slow motion and into the back of Bob Boyle’s legs. Buster threw him down, took a stretch of rope from his belt and quickly cinched it around Bob’s ankles. Mary woozily got up and went to the kitchen where she retrieved two ten-inch Calphalon fry pans and clanged Bob’s head on both sides until his blood rolled off the catalogue-promised non-stick surface. She was able to get in three more cymbal crashes before Bob worked the ropes off his feet, broke her nose and ran howling like a banshee out of the house.

  He started up his truck and hit the gas sending a rooster tail of loose gravel up against the building. His ears were ringing as he tore down Possum heading for Piñon. Bob had no idea that he was dragging the practice steer—still tied to the truck. Up ahead, the Red Hat Produce man was backing up the street to make a delivery. Bob put his foot down on the brake, but his boot went right to the floor. He smacked into the tailgate of the produce truck going fifty miles an hour. He survived the actual collision, but then, the momentum of the surrogate steer sent it flying through the back window of the cab. The bull’s sharp horns, which Bob had attached with baling wire, smashed through the glass. One of them pierced the back of his neck, passed through his brain stem and out of his astonished mouth.


  Sheriff Dudival arrived on the scene, and, together with Mary and Buster’s testimony, worked out the cause of death. Bob was not able to stop the truck because his brake line had been cut.

  “Mary says you put up a pretty good fight with Bob. Is that true?”

  “Ah don’t rightly rem’ber much ’bout it.”

  “Do you know how the brakes on a vehicle work, son?”

  “Yesssir. Ya put yer foot down on the petal and that’s what stops ’er.”

  “Do you have a pocket knife?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “May I see it please?”

  Buster dug around in his jeans and came up with a rusty old pocketknife.

  “You didn’t cut those brake lines with this pocket knife, did you son?”

  “No sir. Ah did not.”

  The sheriff ran his thumbnail along the blade to see if there was any residue.

  “Okay,” said the sheriff handing it back to him. “You can go back inside now.”

  There was an inquiry into Bob’s death. The sheriff had noted in his journal that the brake line on Bob Boyle’s vehicle had been chewed through by a marmot… Marmots, as groundhogs are called in the area, often chewed through the under-hoses of cars left parked outside for a long time. It was possible that a marmot chewed through the brake line of Bob Boyle’s truck; however, no one in his or her right mind believed it. Dudival, himself, kept a little piece of the questionable brake line in his evidence safe. Ultimate cause of death: brain trauma caused by bull’s horns.

  Anyone you talked to in Vanadium was now convinced that Buster had not only killed Carlito Dominguez and Gil Svendergard, but Bob Boyle, as well. The question that weighed most heavily was why Sheriff Dudival was protecting him.

  Mary had decided that Buster’s presence in the house would only be a constant reminder to her children of what had happened to their father. At the inquest over Bob’s death, she informed Sheriff Dudival of her decision. As one might imagine, Buster had become difficult adoption material.