The Legend of Colton H Bryant

by Alexandra Fuller

  “Not so as you’d notice.”

  “Holy crap.”

  Colton stripped off his shorts next, limping and hopping, tangled in his belt, and then he stood on the edge of the cliff with nothing on but his boxers. The water, twenty-six feet below him, was running fresh off the mountains, snowmelt all pale green and dense with cold. Colton’s flesh stood up in prickles of windshield. He spun his arms around and around, backwards and forwards until they were fit to wrench right out of their sockets. The fly of his boxers was gaping open, although you could tell he hadn’t noticed, the way he was grinning like a fool and everything was hanging out for all the world to see. There were girls on the edge of the cliff too—they had just arrived in a Chevrolet—and they were propping each other up, giggling, bundled up in sweaters and scarves.

  “Holy crap,” said Jake, “his Old Glory’s hanging out.”

  “Holy crap,” said Cody.

  Jake got out of the car, followed by Cody. “Hey,” he yelled, waving his hands, “jump!”

  “Come on, you pussy,” yelled Cody, “jump.” He was out of breath. “Holy crap,” he said to Jake, “he is completely clueless.”

  “What about you?” shouted Colton back.

  “Jump!” shouted Jake.

  “I just got to get me warmed up a bit,” said Colton. He started to jog in place and run in circles, his knees pumping, his arms going like helicopter blades.

  The girls folded up over themselves and squealed.

  “Hey, look at that,” said Colton, pausing his warming-up exercises. He pointed to the car. “Those girls are definitely checking me out.”

  “It’s because your Old Glory is hanging out for everyone to see,” said Jake, breathing hard with the effort of running.

  “That’s what we been trying to tell you,” said Cody, arriving at the edge of the cliff. “Your fly is wide open.”

  “Well if they ain’t seen one yet, there’s no better time than the present,” said Colton, spinning a few final laps, waving and smiling at the girls like someone who just won a contest. Then he jogged to the edge of the cliff, spread his arms out, let go of the earth, and hollered like Tarzan, “Ahhhh-ah-ah-ah-ahhhh,” his legs wrapping around the air like corkscrews. When Colton hit the water, Jake peered over the edge of the cliff to see him struggling in his barely drowning dog-paddle for the bank, chin lifted to the sky. “I did it! I did it!”

  The girls laughed and clapped and said what an idiot that boy must be to jump so high into a river and what a double idiot to swim in this cold water and what a triple idiot not to know his fly was open. After that they got chatting to Jake and Cody and someone suggested building a fire, which seemed like a good idea to Colton who had come shivering up from the river by then and before long a great crackling bonfire warmed the edge of the gorge and someone brought out marshmallows and someone else had thrown scarves over Colton’s shoulders and around his neck and everyone was talking about how Colton had been standing there on the edge of the cliff with his Old Glory out for everyone to see and Colton was laughing, “He-he-he,” and jogging in place to get warm, dressed now in nothing but wet boxers and a wrapping of scarves. “He-he-he.”

  18

  BULL RIDING

  All Over the West

  A few days later, the rest of their lives started.

  Jake knew he’d end up on the oil patch sooner or later, but meanwhile he got a job at the state mental hospital in Evanston working with the kids for a year. He was good at it too, maybe because he’d come close enough to landing a spot in the bin himself and he understood how easy it is to misplace yourself out here: loaded guns in unlocked closets, crack-cooks in trailer parks, windows painted black to block out the sun in the high lonely hell of the middle of nowhere. Vicious circles, Jake knew, could feel particularly vicious when they were closing in around your own neck.

  Cody got on the bull-riding circuit. He got lined up at small rodeos in some towns you’ve never heard of and some towns you’ve not only never heard of but that you couldn’t even find on a map. And still that boy rode and rode as if he were in the big time, the uncrowned bull-riding King of Las Vegas, the Emperor of Denver, the Terror of Cheyenne. No matter how many bulls dislodged him, or got after him, or nearly gored him, Cody never seemed to get so that he wanted to quit. But neither did he seem to get any better at it. He rode all the big sky a small-time rodeo bucking bull could throw at a kid and he still couldn’t feel his way to the end of eight seconds.

  Colton emptied the bank of all the money he had, which wasn’t much, and he chased rodeos with Cody. The way Colton saw it, a boy has to do what a boy has to do, and if it was riding bulls, then so be it, and a boy riding bulls in little wiry western towns needed someone to cheer him on. So Colton drove the Mazda to the rodeos and pulled the bull-strap once they got there and stood with a boot propped up on the rails of whatever no-name rodeo arena he found himself at and he yelled encouragement at Cody and he slapped Cody on the back when it was all over, put ice on the bruises, and kept the Mountain Dew cold. So you could never say that Cody and Colton didn’t put a lot of heart into bulls that summer. And in between the kicked ribs, and the long hours on the road, and the crappy food, and the nights sleeping on saddle blankets in some rancher’s field or in warehouse parking lots on the outskirts of town—and a lot of times even then—they had a whole bunch of fun.

  “This time,” said Colton, driving into the dusty parking lot outside Pinedale in the Upper Green River Valley for the mid-July rodeo, “keep your chin up and look at the horizon.”

  “What in heck do you know about it?” asked Cody, spitting.

  “What my dad’s told me,” said Colton.

  “Exactly. You ain’t never done it.”

  “Sure I did. I’ve rode bulls a time or two,” said Colton. “Wherever you look is where you’ll end up.”

  “Well then, you must’ve been looking up your ass.”

  Colton laughed, “He-he-he.”

  “Anyway, I don’t want to end up on the freakin’ horizon,” said Cody.

  “Well, it’s better’n ending up on the freakin’ ground,” said Colton.

  “Okay, okay. Just shut up already and let’s get ’er done.”

  So Cody put on his vest and his leather glove and he taped his arm and worked the cricks out of his ribs and his neck and strapped on a knee guard while Colton checked the roster.

  “You’re in chute two.”

  “Which bull?”

  “I forget,” lied Colton.

  “Holy crap, they’re gonna put me on the Ripper, ain’t they?” said Cody.

  On the other side of the arena, there were maybe fifty people on sun-buckled bleachers, sharing picnics and blankets and passing bundles of babies between them—a community made intimate by the public business of watching their sons and lovers and other people’s sons and lovers get thrown around like rag dolls on broncos or bulls. On tailgates on either side of the bleachers, people had set up picnics and folding chairs. A few cowboys were already a little drunk in that optimistic, shiny-eyed way you get from drinking weak beer on a hot day.

  Then a little girl in a white cowboy hat galloped into the arena with a Stars and Stripes bigger than the body of her horse and belted out the national anthem in a high, brave voice and Colton and Cody and everyone else with a heart covered it with a cowboy hat. A horse tied to the trailers called out for its herd and the little girl’s horse stretched out his neck and cried back and just like at all rodeos from one end of the country to the other, America was born again in all its sentimental, painful bravado. Then the music ended and everybody with a hat jammed it back on their heads and the little girl galloped out of the arena and the serious business of the rodeo began.

  The first bull rider was released into the arena, his fist in something like a Black Power salute, spurs stroking back and forth along the bull’s shoulders. Eight seconds is as long as it takes to read this sentence, and the whole world contained in the violent dance of those mo
ments. But the cowboy didn’t make it to the eight-second bell. He was thrown down hard about three hard, screwdriving twists into his ride. Even from across the arena you could hear the wind leave his body, the insult of flesh connecting to earth. The bull continued to buck and twist, spitting sand up against the rails. Then he registered that his rider was no longer on top of him and so he flattened out and spun around the arena a couple more times looking for the offending party while the clowns tumbled around and tried to distract him with flags and hollering. But the bull didn’t care about the clowns. He had a look in his eye that suggested he had some unfinished business with mankind, cowboys in particular. Eventually the pickup men managed to get behind the angry beast with horses and chase him out of the gate. The bull still looked murderous.

  “Holy crap,” said Cody.

  “Just do your freakin’ stretches,” said Colton.

  Cody uncertainly caught his ankle behind his back, held on to the rail in front of him, and tugged. Since the cowboy who had just been thrown by the bull didn’t look as if he was getting up anytime soon, the commentator started up with a stash of “my wife” jokes. An ambulance edged between the row of jeans and plaid shirts that lined the fence, but the commentator sent it back. “I don’t think we need the meat wagon,” he said. “He’s still alive. I saw his toe twitch.”

  More of nothing happened. The sun was setting now behind the great, glacier-sweet Wind River Mountains. “Look at that, folks,” said the commentator, “a real Wyoming sunset.” And it was, if Wyoming means big sky bleeding into mountain peaks, mad bulls, and a flattened cowboy. At last the cowboy stirred and was helped to his feet. He hobbled out of the arena.

  “No score for that cowboy,” said the commentator. “Come on, boys, let’s rodeo.”

  Now Colton hung over the chute with Cody white-faced and hardly breathing, one leg over the top rail, ready to lower himself onto the bull contained in the tight area below.

  “Breathe, Cody, for the love of crap. You’re gonna pass out if you don’t breathe.”

  Cody gulped. Then he nodded, settled himself on the salty black back in front of him, and Colton tightened the bull rope around the bull’s flanks and someone else opened the gate and there was a pile of dust and then it cleared enough and there was Cody getting slapped up and down on the back of the bull and every time that slab of bull came up to meet Cody’s back you could hear the air leave the lungs of both of them, “Uh-huh,” the deep grunt of the bull and Cody’s air coming out in high painful exclamations. It sure makes a body wonder, doesn’t it, that if cowboys are such a myth, then how do you explain that their pain is so real?

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” said the commentator, “Cody Eaton, all the way up from Evanston, Wyoming.”

  There was a splattering of applause.

  “Hold on, Cody!” Colton yelled. “Look up! Look up! Look at the freakin’ mountains. Oh, holy crap.”

  “Riding the bull we like to call the Ripper,” said the commentator. “Ladies and gentlemen—this animal is one ton of hide, hooves, horn, and hate.”

  “Holy crap,” said Colton again, watching Cody get whip-lashed.

  And then there came the “O” expression on Cody’s face as he ran out of seat and came hopping up the bull’s neck, ran out of neck, and then hit the dirt with his face first. Now he still had to jump up, with what few wits he had left, and run for his life while the bull swung his head around trying to get the boy in his sights. The clowns ran into the arena then and the country music went up, uncomplaining and nostalgic, and Colton scrambled around to the gate to open it for Cody.

  “Man, you almost had it,” Colton said.

  Cody had a reverse-raccoon face, mud where sand had combined with sweat framing white, frightened eyes. “Seriously?”

  “Seriously. For a moment there, I thought you were definitely gonna walk out with the belt buckle.”

  “Really? You think so?”

  “I know so. They just put you on the sonofabitchest bull they got. Man, they robbed you.”

  19

  PARADISE ROAD

  Upper Green River Valley

  It was dark by the time Cody and Colton left the rodeo grounds. The team-ropers were still left to ride—midnight cowboys who still had to go home after riding and feed their horses and check on cows and pray to God for better rain and do whatever else it is cowboys do before rising again at dawn to do it all again. Hardly anyone stayed to watch the rest of the rodeo once the bull riders had gone. Behind Cody’s Mazda, as they drove away from the arena, a trail of pickups and horse trailers reflected pink dust in their brake lights, and behind the line of cars and the commentator’s box, the Wind River Mountains sheared blackly against a moonlit sky. In front of the boys, beyond Highway 191 onto which they soon drove, were the great high plains of Wyoming, a seemingly endless dark swell of silence, like a ship-less sea.

  “Let’s sleep out there,” says Colton, pointing out into the plains. “They don’t charge you for your money in God’s hotel.”

  “I heard about some idiot got lost out there a few summers ago and the cops found him with his head in a badger hole.”

  “Doing what?”

  “You never heard about that?”

  “Nope.”

  “I’m telling you the honest truth.”

  “Was he looking for badgers?”

  “I don’t know about that. By the time they found him, he was dead.”

  “Holy crap.”

  “Yeah. Fried his ass in the sun from what I heard tell.”

  “Holy crap,” said Colton again.

  “Most likely a meth head,” said Cody.

  “No kidding.”

  “That’s a losing war, for sure,” said Cody.

  “Most definitely,” said Colton.

  The boys found a gravel road that led out onto the plains, Paradise Road it said. The road followed the New Fork River’s descent from the mountains into the rest of the great wide world. The little Mazda’s headlights picked up wave after wave of sagebrush as far as the imagination could stretch, the swell of blue-green replenishing itself, always more where the last mile came from. Taken one step at a time, a person might think never to eat all the miles that make up these plains, just as it might seem impossible to swim the sea one stroke at a time. Although, like the sea, the endlessness of the plains’ open abundance is an illusion. Nearly all the plains are already swallowed up, paved over, plowed under, flattened, hardened, drilled. You can drive across what’s left of what is wild in an afternoon or less.

  Colton wound down the window and stuck his head out. “Smell that! Whee-haw!”

  Cody hung out of his side and the boys drove along like a couple of hunting dogs, breathing in the summer-cool mountain air and the salty scent of deer and antelope and the vague hint of a wildfire somewhere west of here. Once in a while a pronghorn startled out of the sage and sped in front of the pickup before zigzagging back into the darkness. Two or three lonesome ranches pooled light from the top of barns or from the front of a porch. And then, right far out in the distance, like a couple of tiny Eiffel Towers lit up for the sheer romance of it, there were two drilling rigs powering into the earth after pockets of natural gas.

  The boys found a flat spot near the road behind a sign that said this land was administered by the Bureau of Land Management and that it was critical winter habitat for big game, closed to off-road traffic in the summer and closed to any traffic during the winter. “They sound kinda paranoid about this place,” said Colton. He made a circle of stones and looked around the sagebrush for firewood. “Man, ain’t nothing much out here to burn,” he said. “I’ll have to break out our emergency store.” He dug around in the back of the Mazda for wood, then he made a fire. The boys laid down a couple of sleeping bags upwind of the smoke and downwind of the Mazda. Then Colton pulled out a Tupperware of Kaylee’s meatloaf and a couple of cans of Mountain Dew and he said, “This is the life, eh?” The boys ate and drank and dipped a little chew and the
n they stretched out on top of their sleeping bags and tucked their hands behind their heads and watched for slow satellites sliding through the blackness, sending television and weather reports and telephone conversations back to earth, and shooting stars, which, in a sky this dark, showered down too numerous to count.

  “How you feelin’?” asked Colton.

  “Okay.”

  “You got pretty beat up by that sonofabitch bull.”

  “Not too bad,” said Cody.

  Colton grunted.

  “I’ll make it to the eight seconds next time.”

  “Sure you will,” said Colton.

  “Sure I will,” said Cody.

  Then the boys went quiet and watched the sky some more.

  “Do you ever wish when you see one of them shooting ones?” asked Colton.

  “Sometimes,” said Cody.

  “So what would it be? If you had one wish.”

  “To be bull-riding champion of the world,” said Cody.

  “Holy crap,” said Colton. “That’s a good wish.”

  “What about you?” said Cody.

  “I guess,” said Colton. “I wish I could be just like my dad.”

  “Holy crap,” said Cody. “I dunno if shooting stars can do all that. That’s gonna require the entire universe to collapse.”

  “He-he-he,” said Colton.

  Cody spat. “Ha,” he said.

  20

  DRILLING ON THE RIGS

  Utah

  So it went all over Wyoming, Utah, and Idaho from one small-town rodeo to the next until Colton ran out of money. “Mind over matter,” he said then. “I don’t mind, so it don’t matter.” And he pawned a watch to fill up the little Mazda’s tank with gas and off he and Cody went for another round of punishment in another dusty arena in another place where the coffee tasted of unfiltered ditchwater and Stars and Stripes shredded in the dry wind from the tops of the commentators’ boxes and America wore its heart in its mouth while bulls ran wild over sand and the sun set like heartbreak. But by the middle of August Colton found himself having to write bad checks to help pay for the Mazda’s gas—which didn’t feel so bad as it sounded. The way Colton saw it, checks were just some kind of citified promise that if he had had the money, or maybe when he got the money someday, he’d be good for the whole amount—bad checks written with good intentions, in other words.