“I know. I could see that.”
There were little crinkles at the corners of his eyes and they deepened, along with his smile, as he turned back to look at the road.
“I do that sometimes,” she said. It had been a long time since anyone had cared. “I bite my nails when I’m thinking—”
“Doesn’t bother me. I don’t care if you chew ’em up to your elbow.”
“It’s a bad habit. I only do it when I’m really worried.”
“Then I guess you better tell me what’s up before you don’t have any hands left.”
She kept right on biting on that thumbnail, absent-mindedly, occasionally looking out the window in order to avoid looking at him while she told him about her visit with Mandy.
“I don’t know which one scares me more,” she said finally, “that ex-husband of mine or his rotten mother.” She kept looking out the window, trying not to cry. “I mean, can you imagine Ray and Tina doing that stuff in front of Mandy? It’s so awful. Not only is she just a kid, but Jesus, she’s his kid. Doesn’t he care at all? I mean, I wouldn’t care if they killed themselves with their drugs and whatever other disgusting stuff they do, that’s their funeral. But they’re endangering my daughter’s life with that crap.
“And as for that mother of his, not only is she trying to poison Mandy’s mind against me—that’s wicked enough—but she’s trying to poison my daughter’s mind against herself! How can she do that? How can people be like that? What pleasure do they get out of hurting a little girl?”
“That ex-husband and his girlfriend, sounds like they’re downright dangerous. What you need is a good lawyer.”
“Sure! You know what a good lawyer costs? And anyway, I don’t know how to find a real good lawyer, even if I had the money, which I don’t. I’d have to take off a few days, go to Salt Lake or maybe St. George. I don’t even know how to begin.”
“You got any money?”
“I’ve saved some.”
Cal shook his head. “Not many so-called ‘good’ lawyers will even turn on their meters for less than about twenty thousand. Case like this, probably much more.”
“That’s what I figured.”
“So what are you planning to do?”
“I don’t know yet. I have to figure out something.”
“Well, we better do just that,” he said, the big smile spreading across his face again as he watched her chewing hard on that nail. “Or you’ll wind up looking like that statue. You know the one, in some museum over in Europe. The naked lady with no arms.”
She didn’t laugh. Impatiently, irritated with herself, she yanked her finger from her mouth and made herself keep her hands in her lap.
“What do you know about naked ladies?”
He didn’t answer her right away, just kept looking at her, and his smile settled into something different.
“I know about naked ladies,” he said at last.
There it was again, that confusion of feelings tumbling through her. She wanted to respond, she didn’t want to respond. She tried to look into his eyes, she tried to look away from his face. He was so attractive, she was so afraid. She wound up staring at his boots, stretched forward to the floor pedals. His long legs were lean and hard and a little bit bowed, like all true cowboys’ legs, which made him walk with a slightly rolling gait, graceful, like a sailor.
That made her remember.
“How’d you hurt your leg?”
“Nothing special. I got in a wreck. Tell you about it sometime. Anyway,” he said, pulling the truck off the road into the clearing that overlooked the valley, “here we are.”
They had arrived at Jamie’s private spot.
In the daylight, the place seemed even more solitary that it had under the nighttime blanket of moon and stars and cricket sounds. Solitary, that is, if you didn’t count the lizards and birds and other critters.
Again, Cal let her go ahead of him so he could watch her as she climbed up through the dry brush to her red-rock bench. The shafts of sunlight, beginning to lengthen as the sun moved westward, caught at her hair, making it go through all its golden changes from bronze to the purest white. His eyes traveled over her, enjoying the rhythmic movement of her body.
Maybe, if he’d kept his eyes where he was going, maybe then he’d have seen the pointy little rock that was sticking straight up from the yellow-red ground, right in his path. The tip of his boot caught at the base of the thing, and he went suddenly flying forward, out of control, landing hard on his left knee.
“Aaaahhhh.”
Jamie turned sharply at the sound of Cal’s half-strangled cry, his gasp of pain, and she saw him down on the ground. The color had drained from his face, his eyes suddenly staring and hollow.
“Jesus,” he whispered.
He was lifting himself on his right knee, bracing himself with one hand dug into the ground, the other clutching at his left leg, just above the knee, trying to keep his weight off it. His hat had gone flying when he fell, and as he bent his head in agony, trying to catch the breath that had been stunned out of him by the piercing pain, the thick black curls fell forward over his forehead.
She ran back and dropped to her knees next to him.
“Cal! What is it? Are you all right?”
He lifted his head toward her as he tried to catch his breath and she was alarmed by his color, suddenly gray beneath the dark tan. A cold sweat was standing out on his forehead, brushed by his hair, and a film of pain glazed his eyes.
He focused slowly on her eyes, and he took several very slow, very deep breaths as the color slowly came back into his face. At last, like a boxer clearing his head after a knockdown, he shook his head sharply a couple of times, exhaled heavily once or twice, and slowly, gingerly, pushed himself up to stand on his right leg, keeping his weight off the left one. Then he limped stiffly over to where his hat had fallen, bent awkwardly to pick it up, and set it firmly back on his head.
“Come on, little lady.” He was climbing painfully. “Let’s get up to that rock. I think I need to sit down a mite,” he muttered under his breath, “before I faint.”
Jamie scrambled up behind him, wanting to help and not knowing what she could do. She reached him just as he sat down heavily onto the red sandstone and stretched his legs in front of him, pressing his hand hard on his thigh, trying to ease the pain that was knifing up and down his leg.
“Whoo-ee.” He wiped his hand across his forehead. “Doc said it would hurt if I banged it. He didn’t tell me about seeing stars.” He tried to smile at her. “That’ll teach me to watch where I’m going.”
“You scared me. I thought I was going to have to carry you down the mountain.”
She didn’t know she’d put her hand over his, as though trying, unconsciously, by her touch, to heal the injury. He looked down at the small hand, with its nails ragged like a child’s, resting on his big rough one. He took another deep breath.
“Why don’t you tell me what happened, Cal? Tell me how you got hurt.”
“I got in a wreck.”
“A wreck?”
“Yeah. That’s what they call it. A wreck. I got wrecked by about twelve hundred pounds of the meanest piece of devilment on God’s green earth. Goes by the name of Whipcord.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Well, I guess now it’s my turn to tell the story of my life.”
He looked up to where a hawk was leaning into a canyon updraft, cruising high, letting it carry him west beyond the mountain. Cal watched the hawk and imagined it could see, from up there, all the way to Nevada, all the way to Bennion, up in the northeast corner of the state, all the way to the C-Bar Ranch.
“It’s a big spread,” he said, “a couple hundred thousand acres, all cattle, and it’s been in the Cameron family for four generations. Dad always had a couple of rough-string riders on the ranch to break the young horses, and from the time I was just a tad I just couldn’t get enough of hanging around those fellows. Some of those guys could watch a horse rea
l close and understand it as plain as if it was talking English. They could read every move, like an ear just flicked a little forward would catch a man’s tone of voice, or how they’d lift up a lip or tighten it down against their teeth when they’re nervous, or crimp their tail down between their legs, or you’d see the tension of a shoulder muscle or a change in their breathing. I got so I could read a horse as well as any full-grown man.
“I wasn’t no more than eight or nine years old when my dad let me start helping with the young foals, breaking them to the hackamore, coaching them real gentle to a proper lead. Riding just came natural and I was breaking the yearlings to the saddle by the time I was ten. And the rougher the horse, the more I wanted to take him on. I just couldn’t say no to a challenge. Just let one of the hands point to some ornery animal and say, ‘Hey, Cal, bet you ten bucks you can’t ride old—whoever—over there. Sonofabitch is the meanest damn thing on four legs,” and right away I’d just have to climb right up on him, and if the mean damn sonofabitch had already cracked a few cowboy ribs or heads, why, I’d be that much more eager to take the buck out of him.
“Of course I’d already had some practice. I’d started in the Little Britches events when I was just eight, and then later rode with the Elko High School rodeo team.”
“I’ll bet you were good.”
“Well,” he was obviously embarrassed, “I took the state titles in the bareback and saddle bronc events in my first year on the team, when I was thirteen. My dad said it was important to find out what it feels like to be a winner and he thought I ought to have the chance to pick up a little money along the way. So we built a little arena and a practice chute and I worked my way up to finally getting my PRCA card. That made me a professional rodeo cowboy, and I started competing in the big events. My mom fretted some—you know how moms worry—but she knew there’s no way to tie a cowboy down unless he’s willing to be tied, and I was starting to win the big championships, so she just congratulated me and I guess she held her tongue that time I smashed my wrist up in Ogden. And then again when I broke my leg at the Nationals in Las Vegas.” His smile was maybe a little triumphant, understandably. “That wreck in Vegas cost me the world championship, but I made it up the next year, and pretty soon I was getting to be a really big-money winner.
“Then, last July, down in Mesquite, there was this small event they called the ‘Mesquite Stampede,’ and I figured it was a quick opportunity to pick up some easy points before heading up to Salt Lake for the Mormons’ big Days of Forty-Seven celebration on the twenty-fourth. That was one rodeo I never missed and I was looking to make some real money on it.”
“I’m guessing something changed your plans.”
Cal was silent for a long time, his eyes staring into the past, his mouth tight with the anger that was still hard to control.
“Yeah,” he said finally. “Yeah, my plans got changed, all right. I hadn’t counted on Whipcord.
“There was this big storm coming on—you could see the lightning getting closer—and the air felt funny, even had a funny smell to it. Like it was getting heavy, full of electricity. There was something unhealthy about it. Unnatural.”
Cal nodded his head slightly, remembering.
“The guy producing the Stampede, Scotty Matthews, he kept riding around the rails, banging on them, telling us to hurry up, wanting to finish all the events before the rain got to us.
“I’d drawn this new horse, Whipcord, and I was already up on the rails, getting ready to lower down onto him. He’d just been added to Scotty’s rough-stock string, and none of us had any book on him yet, but right off I didn’t like the feel of him. Not that he acted wild or anything—would have been better if he did, maybe—but he just didn’t feel right. That horse was too damn quiet. I could feel it as soon as I was on him, and all the time I was fixing my rigging and the guys were getting the flank strap placed, all the time I was trying to get a feel for him, he just seemed too quiet. Not peaceful or anything like that, just quiet—like a bomb with a fuse burning closer. And mean, like he had a plan. “Not that I mind a rough horse. Hell, that’s what you need if you’re going to get points, and points is what it’s all about.”
Jamie knew enough about rodeo to know what it took to get those points. It took finely-tuned reflexes, a delicate touch that lets the rider pick up the animal’s natural rhythm, and plenty of suppleness. It took the strength and the readiness for one hell of a bone pounding while riding that half a ton of throw weight. It took breathing and patience and superb coordination to be slammed backward repeatedly, back and back flat against the horse’s bucking hindquarters to keep that free arm always in the air, keep his boots raking up forward of the horse’s heaving chest.
Jamie could see from Cal’s face that something must have gone awfully wrong that day, back in Mesquite. He’d gone completely quiet, just sort of staring into space, and his body rocked a bit, back and forth, while his hand gripped the aching leg
“If you’d rather not talk about it.” She paused, expecting an answer. But Cal seemed not to have heard her. His face had gone pale and there was a light sweat above his lip. For a long, long time, he was silent and he seemed to have forgotten she was there. She realized Cal had disappeared into the memory of that awful day.
Even as he held the top of the gate with his free hand, steadying himself in the saddle with his rigging-wrapped fist in position between his legs, he wished this horse would do something to start his motion, start reacting to the man on his back, start reacting to the flank strap, start something! But this damned animal was too quiet. Not like he was going to sleep or anything. Nothing like that. This horse seemed to be all attention, all mean intelligence, too smart to telegraph his plan. Cal could feel the tension in the animal’s big muscles. The horse made only the tiniest shift of his weight, a kind of hitch of his shoulder. Nothing more than that, but it felt ominous. Like the damned animal planned some kind of a surprise for his rider.
But you can’t wait around all day to converse with a horse. He had to get this show on the road. Cal knew he was as ready as he was going to be. He leaned back on the horse, digging his crotch up tight against his hand, positioning his spurs well forward, where they would have to be when came out of the gate, up against the horse’s neck. He concentrated on the animal—getting ready to read the moves that were coming—and on settling himself just right, alert, not tense but with the adrenaline moving. He knew he was ready. What he didn’t like was how he still couldn’t pick up any signal from the animal.
Just too damn quiet.
Cal nodded. “Okay! Let ’er go”
And the gate opening to his left was released.
Cal knew to expect the explosion out of the gate, the whipping turns around the ring, the blur of spectators and pick-up men and colors and noise, the nothing-else-like-it crashing union of man and horse, waiting for the eight-seconds signal when the ride was over and—on those special days when everything was going just right—almost wishing the buzzer would never come, that the magnificent ride could go on forever.
But Whipcord hadn’t read that script. Or, if he had, he’d just torn it up. Whipcord had a script of his own.
A good horse will come out of that gate into the arena and right away he’ll proceed to do his stuff. But not Whipcord. You could almost hear him snickering. He didn’t even try to come forward into the ring. God knows how he got the power to do it from a standing start, but Whipcord went straight up, with all four feet propelling himself powerfully into the air. And he didn’t just go up. As he went up, he twisted to his right, and he didn’t just twist. He had something special waiting for Cal. With all his leaping, corkscrewing, half-ton weight, that sonofabitch leaned to the left! He ground his withers right into the metal hinge of the gate, and right there, between horse and hinge, Cal’s kneecap caught the full crushing, twisting, splitting impact.
The pain that screamed through him knocked him out instantly and he was already unconscious as Whipcord’s motio
n spilled him like a handful of matchsticks into the dirt.
The blessed blackout didn’t last long, and he opened his eyes to see rodeo clowns and pick-up men bending over him, their faces intent, talking to him, but he couldn’t figure out what they were saying. Then their faces receded as they moved back to let the ambulance attendants get the stretcher to him.
As the medics lifted him, in the moment before he passed out again, he imagined he could hear that damn horse laughing maliciously.
Jamie waited through all his silence until finally Cal straightened up and took a deep, deep breath. His color came back and he returned to the present.
“Happened a year ago,” he said. “I just drew a bad horse and he messed me up. Permanently. It took a lot of surgery to repair the damage, and they had to put in some artificial parts. I just came out of the cast a few months ago and the knee is still pretty tender.” The hand that was still gripping his injured leg was white at the knuckles and his free hand, resting on his other knee, was clenched into a tight fist. She watched the muscle in his jaw working as he stared out over the valley, and she saw that he was struggling with an intense anger. “I’ll be just about good as new in a few months, but the doc says I’m not going to rodeo anymore. That’s the part I haven’t got used to yet.”
“That’s rotten luck.”
By now of course, she had recognized his name. The rodeo tour didn’t reach into her remote part of the state, but the fame of its stars got some circulation, even in Sharperville. But she’d never heard the report of his accident, and she probably wouldn’t have paid it much attention if she had. A rodeo wreck was a common enough story, and Jamie had other things to think about.
“Really rotten luck,” she repeated. “To have it all end like that—” She didn’t know what else to say.
Cal nodded. “What the hell,” he said, trying to conceal his bitterness. “I guess I got enough trophy saddles and silver buckles and other doodads to show off to a hundred grandchildren. And there’s plenty of people would say the rodeo circuit is too tough a life anyway, that I’m lucky to be out of it. That’s what my mom says. I was traveling all the time. Only time I’d get to see my folks in Nevada was if there was a rodeo nearby. You’ve got to put a lot of points together if you want to make money in the rodeo business, and that means you got to hit as many events as you can. I bet I entered maybe fifty rodeos a year, all over the country, from Madison Square Garden in New York City to little county fairgrounds in Oregon.
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