But then Preston left home and started working out on the rigs and he missed his kid brother and he started to feel bad about all the beatings he’d given him, so that fall, a few months after Colton’s fourteenth birthday, Preston announced he was going to take his brother hunting—and by hunting he meant deer and elk, which is entirely different from shooting jackrabbits and geese. And of course Colton said, “Holy cow,” and was packed and ready to go for about three weeks ahead of time. He cleaned his gun so hard it’s a miracle he didn’t rub the metal right off the barrel, he sharpened his hunting knife until it sang, he wore his orange wool hat all day and night, and he lay awake visualizing himself in front of a nice five-pointer, calmly taking it down with one shot.
The night before the hunt, the men stayed up around the table after supper—Bill, Preston, Grandpa, and Colton—and they told Colton their hunting stories and Colton got so excited and nervous he just about hopped out of his own skin. There isn’t a decent way to translate to most people the importance of a boy’s first hunt, because it’s all life’s lessons rolled into one day: endurance and tolerance; having the heart to kill and the soul to feel awed by another creature’s death; containing yourself and learning to be still; silence and companionship.
“We’ll go get you a nice little buck,” promised Preston.
“Elk,” said Colton. “I want to hunt an elk.”
Preston spat. “Let’s begin at the beginning, kid.”
Bill laughed. “That’s right son, one step at a time.”
But then Grandpa interjected about the time a fella he knew was out hunting a deer only to find a lion had been trailing him the entire day, and that reminded Preston about the bears up there on the pass, and so it went until Kaylee came into the kitchen and said, “Now you men have put just about enough stories into his head,” and packed them all off to bed.
Colton and Preston left Evanston for Togwotee Pass after breakfast the next day, Colton hanging out of the window of Preston’s pickup truck, “Whee-haw!” waving at his father and grandpa until Preston said, “Get your head back in here and wind up the window before we both die of cold.” They drove most of the day and set up camp on about eight or nine inches of fresh snow in the late afternoon, Colton built a fire and Preston set up the tent. The boys ate quickly, cupping their hands around their bowls for warmth. Then they set their food and plates in a bag up over a bear pole and contemplated their sleeping quarters. All they had was a little nylon two-man and Preston was six foot four by then, even without his boots on. “Let me get in first and get settled,” he said, disappearing into it with some difficulty.
“Holy cow, Preston,” said Colton, crouching down and poking his head into his side of the tent, “there ain’t no room for nothin’ in here ’cept you.”
“Lucky enough you’re a runt.”
“I ain’t a runt.” Colton squeezed in next to Preston, head to toe.
“Well, you ain’t full grown yet, by any means,” said Preston. “Least I hope not.”
Colton put his hands behind his head and streched out as far as he could.
“Look kid,” said Preston, “get your elbows out of my space, would ya?”
Colton kicked around in his sleeping bag.
“You sleeping with your boots on?”
“Dang right I am.”
Preston sighed, “Watch your language, kid.”
There was a long silence, Colton breathing hard into his hands and rubbing his legs together. “Holy cow,” he said at last, “I’m freezing.”
“That’s life for you,” said Preston. “Better get used to it.”
Before dawn the boys were up and tracking through the freezing crust of snow but they didn’t see much and it wasn’t until nearly evening that they got close enough to a three-pointer they’d been following since early afternoon to do anything about it. Preston crouched low. “Shoot now, kid,” he said. “Get a clean shot and shoot.”
“Now?” said Colton. He was like an aspen leaf, shaking.
“Kid, you got to get calm and shoot. Shoot it now!”
Colton brought the gun to his shoulder, the buck raised his head, Colton breathed out the way Bill had taught him and squeezed the trigger, and the buck tipped forward onto his knees and then slumped sideways.
Preston stood up to his full height, nodded, and spat.
“Holy cow,” said Colton. “Holy cow! I did it! I did it.”
“Yep.”
“I did it!” yelled Colton, dancing around in the snow.
“Now we got to get him dressed before dark or the grizzlies are gonna be having a teddy bears’ picnic.”
“Holy cow,” said Colton, running behind Preston, but his hand was over his mouth and he was already puking before they got to the buck.
“C’mon kid, better give me your knife,” said Preston. He pulled a piece of rope out of his pocket and tied the deer’s front legs to a tree, then he propped open its back legs with a branch. He jabbed the point of the knife into the deer’s breastbone and ran two fingers in front of the blade to the animal’s pelvis, moving its entrails to the side as the knife slid down.
Colton leaned with one arm against the tree and hollered up more of the contents of his stomach. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Holy cow,” he said. “I never could stand the sight of blood.”
“I spilled enough of yours over the years. You think you’d be used to it.”
“That’s different. I don’t mind so bad if it’s my own.”
By now Preston was sawing through the ribs.
“Man,” said Colton, sinking to his knees and puking some more.
“You got anything left to puke up there?”
Colton waved one hand at Preston. “I’ll be okay in a minute.”
“We don’t have a minute,” said Preston. He cut out the deer’s genitals and then he cut around the deer’s anus and tied it off with a piece of string.
“Holy cow,” said Colton.
“It’s okay,” said Preston. “It takes everyone a little differently.”
“Holy cow,” said Colton again, rubbing his eyes, “I guess so.”
By the time they got back to the tent with the deer slung between them the boys were exhausted. They hung the deer up out of reach of bears and washed the blood off their shoulders, arms, hands, and faces. Preston built a fire and heated up some water for coffee and made Colton eat some crackers. Then they piled into the tent and zipped it shut on themselves.
“Oh man,” said Preston.
“What?”
“This whole tent smells like your puke.”
Colton hiccupped miserably.
“It’s alright,” said Preston. “Just so the grizzlies don’t get wind of it.”
“Holy cow,” said Colton. “What bear’s gonna want puke-covered cowboy for supper?”
And then there was a long silence until Preston said, “Colt?”
“Yep.”
“That’s a nice little three-pointer you got.”
“Thanks,” said Colton.
“Now next thing you need to do is break a mustang.”
“Holy cow,” said Colton.
“That’ll teach you about everything you need to know,” said Preston.
“Everything about what?” said Colton.
“Everything about everything,” said Preston.
4
BILL’S PHILOSOPHY OF HORSE BREAKING
Evanston, Wyoming
They fetched the wild mare home from the Bureau of Land Management auction at Rock Springs for Colton’s sixteenth birthday. She was desert-tough and sandstone colored, with a touch of Arabian evident in the dish of her face. Maybe a few generations back a rancher or, more likely, a ranch hand had gotten tired of an Arabian’s uptight tail-twisting ways and turned it loose on the BLM to fend for itself. “Go tell it to the mustangs,” says the ranch hand, opening the gate, and the Arab, tossing its head in serpentines of willfulness, making for all the high-dry land it could pace betw
een it and the boredom of confinement.
But a handful of generations later, any refinement of sentiment that may have made its way through the bloodline and into her face had not stayed in this mare’s spirit or her general physicality. She had the sort of no-nonsense stride that indicated she planned to make miles before dark. She had hooves of iron, the shaggy remains of a winter coat on her like a moose, the startle reflex of a jackrabbit. And because of her very first introduction to the hands of mankind, she’d never be easy to catch.
She had been herd-torn in late spring by a helicopter. Rivers of horses flat-out panicked over the sage and baked red earth until fences funneled them into smaller and smaller corrals. The shouting humans, the sting of fuel in the air, the prods and ropes hot in the air, the great clanging metal that surrounded her were a terror beyond all instinct—an unknowable enemy—the way the ground picked and moved off from under her feet, rumbling at terrific speed with all the horses crammed flank to flank trying to stay upright against the tug of gravity as the truck banked corners. And then, after the shapelessness of freedom, the deadening dust and distinction of captivity. There was no moving away from it, no matter how much she flattened her ears and backed up into the sky.
They paid a hundred and seventy-five dollars for her and she would have been cheaper if Colton and Kaylee had sat on their hands and let Bill do the bidding. “You’re bidding against one another,” Bill told Kaylee. “What are you hoping to pay for the thing? We ain’t buying a racehorse here.” But now the horse was his and Colton was so excited that Bill made him sit on his hands the whole way home. “So help me, you’ll have us all off the road, you hopping about like that,” he said.
“He-he-he,” said Colton.
And the next morning before the sun burned the frost off the spring-sharp grass, Colton was out of bed, tugging on his Levi’s and his cowboy boots. He pulled a T-shirt over his head and covered his hair with a ball cap and let himself out into the paddock, the old black cat at his heels. “Don’t want to get kicked,” he told her, nudging her with the toe of his boot back onto the porch. He roped the horse then and got her into the round pen with some difficulty, the mare plunging backwards and Colton tall and skinny and whipped about as a cornstalk in a high wind on the end of her rope.
An hour into it, Bill came out of the cabin, a plug of tobacco in his lip, a tin of Copenhagen where it had sun-bleached a pale circle in his jean pocket, the old black cat tripping around his feet. “Move yourself,” Bill told her, “you make a man’s boots itch just to look at you.” He pulled his cowboy hat down over his eyes and propped his boot on the bottom rail. Colton was coming at the mare with his arms outstretched, like he was trying to direct an airplane on a landing strip.
“I’m gonna touch this mare in half an hour,” he told Bill.
Bill said, “Sure you will, son.” He watched their feet, Colton’s dusty boots stepping toward her, the mare’s black hooves pacing away from him. The boy making advances, the mare’s feet tense, ready to bolt.
“I got her under control,” said Colton.
“Sure you do,” said Bill.
Colton said, “Whoa now girl, steady,” and took a step forward.
The mare almost flipped over the rail.
“Crap,” said Colton.
The old black cat settled in a dusty nest, yawned, and closed her eyes.
The mare did a couple of laps of the round pen, checking the rails for a gap. She stopped at the gate, haunches bunched to the boy. Colton set a second lasso above his head then, eight beats in a circle like an eddy of silver water before he let it out and the rope went spilling over her neck. The mare felt the rope tightening and she startled back, her eyes walling white and her feet pounding, the rope pulling and pulling and running hot over Colton’s hands until she burned right out of his grasp.
“Stupid horse!” said Colton, throwing his ball cap on the ground so that the mare startled like he’d just thrown down a coiled rattlesnake.
Bill said nothing.
“Okay.” Colton picked his cap up and put it back on his head. “Have it your way.”
The mare sighed and stretched her neck out, sniffing the ground where the cap had been. Colton took a step forward. The mare’s head shot up and she snorted. “Don’t make me rope you again,” Colton warned, shaking his arms out loose by his sides. The mare took three bouncing steps away from him and stopped opposite the boy, her flanks pumping. When she stepped forward again, she caught her front hoof on the end of the lasso and her neck jerked up short. Her eyes went wide but she kept her nose level, the better to see, front, back, up, down—she was having a hard time figuring out where the danger was coming from.
“The boy’ll get wore out doing that,” Bill told the cat.
“You’ll get wore out doing that,” Colton told the horse. He lifted his hands up and came at her that way. The horse sawed back and forth against the rails, watching the boy out of the corner of her eye. At the last minute she blew up and belted past him before he could get a finger on her, spraying him with sand. “If I had a gun right now, I’d shoot you,” said Colton. “Stupid horse.”
That’s when Bill said, “Try giving her a name. You gotta call her something more than ‘stupid horse.’”
By now Kaylee was out at the round pen. She’s pretty in a delicate Farrah Fawcett kind of way with flipped strawberry blonde hair and pale blue eyes a little worn at the edges by four kids and life in a high, dry climate. She put her arm over Bill’s and he put his hand over hers. “How’s it going?” she asked.
Bill said, “About right.”
Kaylee smiled. She raised her voice and said, “Why don’t you call her Cocoa?”
“What?”
“Cocoa,” shouted Kaylee. “Let’s call her Cocoa.”
Colton said, “You can call her any way you like, but she’s still a stupid horse.”
“Watch your language, son,” said Kaylee. She went back into the cabin.
“Dang horse,” said Colton, spitting.
By now a pale layer of kicked-up dust reached waist deep in the round pen. Cocoa had soaked through the remains of her winter coat. She gave off a smell of ammonia and sweat. “If you’d just let me near you,” said Colton, “this would all be over.” He took a step forward.
Cocoa spat another lap around the rails, breathing hard.
“Stupid horse,” said Colton.
So it went all the rest of that afternoon and Bill watched, saying nothing, until it was too dark to see. Bill figured maybe tomorrow or the day after, or maybe the day after that, Colton would get to touch her. And maybe a day after that, he’d get to throw a blanket on her back. And maybe a month or so after that he’d have her well enough under his skin to know that he was better with her than he was apart from her.
There are, Bill figured, some things best learned the hard way.
5
BILL AND COLTON
Evanston, Wyoming
It would be a cliché and also not entirely accurate to say that Bill looks weather-beaten, because he doesn’t look beaten by the weather, or by anything else. So it might be better to say that Bill is a man uncovered by weather—blown and rained and sunned and snowed—to the essence of himself, more and more perfectly grained with every passing year. Stripped of unnecessary flesh in this way, he hangs faultlessly on his own bones, so self-contained that he couldn’t lose his fundamental nature even if everything else were lost. And maybe because of this, he bestows a perpetual half-smile onto the world, magnanimous under his black mustache, like he isn’t really taking any of this as seriously as other folk do.
So, even thinking about it hard, it would be difficult to say that Bill looks anything but iconic because other terms ordinarily applied to someone’s appearance—handsome or homely, for example—seem too trivial to apply to him. But it is easy to see how he inspired hero worship in Colton, and in everyone he has ever met, by the way he emanates soul. Tough-bound soul, like a monk. A high-altitude, big-sky, oil-dr
illing, saddle-bronc-riding monk who doesn’t have any special thoughts on the matter of celibacy or God.
He’s someone you’d never want to disappoint and it has nothing to do with anything he says, or even with anything he does. It’s just the way he looks at a person from the window of his cherry-red pickup or from the back of his buckskin gelding with that custom-made half-smile on his face, like whatever you’ve done, or are thinking about doing, Bill Bryant’s already seen worse, and anyway, the way he sees it, it ain’t any kind of business of his what kind of soul you’re in the process of choking down.
In Las Vegas once, Tabby, aged about ten, had to be physically pulled off a man who made a flip comment about Bill’s cowboy hat in her hearing and, almost beyond belief, had actually reached up and touched it. For starters, if there’s one thing you just know, it’s to leave a man’s cowboy hat alone. For another thing, Bill kept a couple of hundred dollars folded into the band inside of his hat against the event of an emergency. “Flat-tire money,” he called it. Also, no one had ever spoken to Bill in anything but respectful terms as far as Tabby knew and she didn’t see the benefit of it starting now, not on her watch.
The Legend of Colton H Bryant Page 2
