Another Kind of Cowboy (2 page)

SEPTEMBER 7

MR. FORD LOVED
having a cowboy for a son. Sometimes Alex thought his riding was the only thing his dad had left to live for. Alex realized almost as soon as he got Turnip that he would not be taking dressage lessons. The horse came with a Western saddle and bridle as well as some erratic notions about steering. Apparently the alcoholic cowboy who'd trained him had done a lot of drinking and riding.

After the first few spills, one of which left Alex unable to remember his own name for most of an afternoon, his father hired a local girl to give Alex Western riding lessons. Meredith, a young woman who trained quarter horses and paints, was almost supernaturally even-tempered and unflappable. She
wore a uniform of braids and jeans and boots and looked seventeen, even though she was almost thirty.

Meredith taught Alex to ride and helped him retrain Turnip. “Getting his steering working,” she called it. Turnip was not a handsome horse, but he was a remarkably willing and honest one. Meredith liked to say he had more try in him than any horse she'd ever known. In that way he was a good match for his owner, who'd changed from an imaginative child into a serious, hardworking, perpetually stressed young man who was only able to relax when he rode.

Other than their shared love of hard work, Alex and his horse were an odd match. Turnip was short, big eared, and roman nosed. He paddled when he trotted and his tail was as sparse as his mane was abundant. Alex, on the other hand, was tallish and well-proportioned. Most people who noticed him also noted that he was graceful, though perhaps not everyone knew to call it that. He was thrilled when people asked if he was from out of town and he treasured the memory of the time a visitor to Meredith's barn asked, “Who's the rich kid?” because of the careful way he carried himself.

The unlikeliness of their pairing must have
appealed to Meredith's sense of humor, because soon after she started teaching Alex, she began bringing him and Turnip to horse shows. That was five years ago. At first Alex and his horse received pitying glances, as though there was something a bit pathetic about the slightly shabby old paint groomed within an inch of his life and his poised young rider. When Alex overheard one woman joke that Turnip's blanket probably had cost more than the horse, Alex bit back a tart retort about her atrocious haircut. The smart green blanket
had
cost more than the poker hand that won his horse.

Meredith had Alex enter performance-based competitions only, like trail and Western riding and horsemanship, because she knew Turnip couldn't try his way out of ugliness and odd conformation. Under her tutelage, the odd couple, as Alex and his horse came to be known, became the pair to beat on Vancouver Island.

After nearly five years of winning, Alex suspected that if he asked Turnip to fly, the horse would probably give it his best shot. Alex loved competing and took great pride in his horse's accomplishments, but he still thought longingly about dressage. He was held back by the worry that asking Turnip to do dressage
would be a bit like asking the old horse to fly. He also felt it would have been disloyal to leave Meredith to begin dressage training. Meredith was a first-rate horsewoman and the closest thing Alex had to a real friend.

Then there was the small matter of his father.

Alex's parents' marriage had begun to unravel soon after he got the horse. His mom announced she wanted a separation, and that she wanted his dad to move into a condominium in town. Instead, Mr. Ford purchased a recreational vehicle off his own sales lot and parked it in the driveway. He told anyone who asked that he wanted to stay close so he could keep an eye on the kids and on his wife's “gentlemen visitors.” He must not have kept close enough watch, however, because a couple of years after he moved into his RV, his wife informed the family that her affair with a local insurance adjuster was serious and they were moving to Florida together. The adjuster, who had long sideburns and favored skinny ties and pointy shoes, was at least ten years younger than Alex's mother. She said he reminded her of Rod Stewart.

Now, four years after he'd moved out of the house, Mr. Ford's trailer was still parked alongside the
house, and he was still living in it, even though his wife was long gone. He seemed to think that if he stayed very still and didn't change anything, she'd come back.

Alex didn't want to do anything to upset his father, who was in a precarious mental state, and switching from Western to dressage would definitely upset him. Mr. Ford never missed a horse show. He loved parading around in his expensive lizard-skin cowboy boots and tight blue jeans. He was always first into the beer garden at the shows and last out. Somehow, Alex couldn't see his dad getting the same kind of thrill out of hanging around dressage competitions.

Oh, but I would,
thought Alex as he stood near the dressage rings at the Fall Fling Horse Show. At any mixed-discipline show Alex always found himself standing at the edge of the dressage rings. He loved looking at the horses in their neat braids. He admired the riders, almost all of whom were female, in their tidy breeches and velvet hats. But most of all he was fascinated by the dressage tests. There was something about the precision of it that appealed to him.

Today he stood against the wall of a judge's booth, tucked into the shade of the roof, his face hidden
under the brim of his cowboy hat. When he turned to see who was up next he noticed a slender girl with bright blond hair tied in a neat bun at the nape of her neck standing just outside the warm-up ring. She held the reins of a huge horse in one hand and a pair of white leather gloves in the other. Alex was transfixed by the sight of the impossibly elegant girl and the gleaming, perfectly turned-out horse. The girl's white breeches and black jacket fit like they'd been custom-made. Her horse had to be nearly seventeen hands and seemed lit up from inside. The girl and her horse looked like an advertisement for gracious living.

Alex was so busy admiring them he was surprised when the girl turned her head slightly and stared right at him. At first he wasn't sure how to react, and he gave her what he hoped was a friendly smile. He'd fallen out of the smiling habit in the last few years. The girl looked away and he was flooded with embarrassment, standing there in his cowboy boots and big buckle, an unfamiliar smile sitting on his face like a fake moustache. The girl looked like she belonged in the pages of
Town and Country
and here he was, gawking at her.

Alex might be dressed like a cowboy but he didn't
feel totally comfortable in the role. Real cowboys dreamed of girls with big hair and tight jeans, bars with sawdust floors and cows and the open range. His dreams ran more to other cowboys as well as firemen, cops, and, for some reason he'd yet to figure out, paramedics. The less open range and the fewer cows, the better.

He realized that the girl, who had a pretty, fine-boned, inquisitive face, was staring at him again. Surprised, he nodded at her. In response, she turned and walked away.

Nicely played, Ford,
he thought.

He was about to make his way over to the dressage ring to watch her ride, when he felt a hand on his shoulder. Then another one.

“Alex,” said his sisters, speaking in unison. “You better come. It's Dad.”

He turned to look at the twins, who wore black T-shirts and the short, wide-legged pants from their kung fu uniforms.

“When did you get here?” he asked.

“Grace picked us up from practice. Sorry we missed your classes. Did you win?”

“Of course he won,” said Maggie. “He's related to us, isn't he? He's not some loser who doesn't win.”

“Solid point,” agreed May. “No one could argue with that logic.”

Sometimes fourteen-year-old Maggie and May, with their shiny eyes and glossy brown hair, reminded Alex of otters. Their relentless playfulness had the effect of raising his spirits, no matter what else he was fretting about.

“I did okay,” he said.

“Don't be like that,” said May.

“Humility has no place in the personality of the elite athlete,” said Maggie.

“Just ask Lance Armstrong,” added May. “You'd never catch him being all humble like that.”

Alex squinted at his sisters.
What were they talking about?
As usual, he had no idea.

“What's this about Dad?” he asked.

“He's plowed,” said Maggie.

“Totally smashed,” added May. “He's in the beer garden with some woman. Grace said you need to get him out of there before he ruins her chances with a vet student she's trying to pick up. She says he's about to open a large animal practice so he's ripe for either a relationship or a receptionist.”

“Dad?”

“No, the vet student.”

“I'm not old enough to get in,” Alex pointed out.

“Grace said that if the vet finds out she's related to Dad, he'll think she's not well bred,” said Maggie.

“Grace
isn't
well bred; she's Dad's sister,” Alex said.

Grace had been living with them ever since their mother had abandoned the family for a warmer climate and her insurance-adjusting boyfriend. Grace was supposed to be helping out, but she wasn't one to do housework. In fact, she was messy and disorganized and nearly doubled Alex's workload of chores. She was always available for conversation, however, and spent much of her free time trying to draw Alex and the twins into highly personal discussions about how they
really
felt about their hair and skin tone, which she then turned into opportunities to test out new cosmetics and innovations in hairdressing.

Grace was around the house quite a lot when she wasn't seeing anyone, but rarely glimpsed when she had a boyfriend. Her relationships never lasted longer than a month. Alex's theory was that her relationships never made it past her first home-cooked meal. Grace was a good, if overly adventurous, hairstylist but an extremely bad cook. Her cooking tended to taste like her hairdressing smelled.

It was just like Grace to expect him to get his father out of the beer tent so she could seduce some innocent vet student. Alex muttered a mild swear word under his breath.

“Don't worry,” Maggie assured him. “We'll wait for you outside. You have any problems, just yell.”

His sisters behaved as though they were Bruce Lee reincarnated as Caucasian female twins. Their supreme confidence in their physical strength was a source of mystery to Alex, who constantly suspected his body of betrayal on a hundred fronts.

Alex pulled his cowboy hat more firmly down on his head as he followed his sisters away from the dressage rings, past the looming red indoor arena, and over to the large white tent that housed the beer garden.

At the beer garden he stopped to let his sense of dread subside.

Alex glanced from his sisters to the two women who sat behind a table, guarding the entrance to the beer garden. He could hear Kenny Rogers on the sound system inside.

“Hey, honey,” said one of the women. She wore a brilliant pink T-shirt with the words
SAVE A HORSE
,
RIDE A COWBOY
written on the front.

“You plannin' on joining the party?” she asked.

“Maybe in three years' time he will be,” said her fellow door watcher, who had a wandering eye.

“I have to get my dad,” he said, trying to focus on the woman's good eye.

“I'm sorry, hon. No minors,” said the pink T-shirt lady.

May leaned forward and whispered, “You may have to put the moves on her before they'll let you in.”

“It's for the good of the family,” Maggie added encouragingly.

Alex ignored his sisters.

The door watchers finally relented. “Okay. But just you. The girls will have to stay out here. We can't have a bunch of kids running in and out of a licensed establishment.”

Alex shot his sisters a glance and then walked quickly through the doorway. It took him only a second to spot his dad, who sat near the entrance, deep in conversation with a red-haired woman. His aunt sat across the room beside a man wearing rubber boots and denim coveralls. Grace jerked her head toward Alex's father and grimaced.

Mr. Ford, whose drinking had become heavy and
constant after his wife left, was beginning to sag, as if about to pass out. It was one thing for him to pass out in the lawn chair outside his RV at home, another thing for him to do it in a public beer garden.

Alex walked over and said, as quietly as possible, “Dad?”

Mr. Ford turned his head. “Alex?” he said, as though speaking long distance over the phone to someone he never expected to hear from again.

“Yeah, uh, Maggie and May need to get home. And I'm done for the day. Meredith's going to trailer Turnip home later. So I was thinking maybe we could go.”

His father blinked at him and for the millionth time Alex wondered how his father could be so blind drunk yet appear sober to the untrained eye. Handsome, even.

“Are you ready to go?” Alex asked again.

“I can give you a ride later, Brian,” said the redheaded lady who sat next to his dad.

Alex frowned at the woman. She had thinning hair that was dyed bright red and eyebrows that had been plucked into surprised arches and penciled in for emphasis. She was dressed in an electric-blue business suit. Alex thought he'd seen her face somewhere before, but couldn't remember where.

“You're old enough to drive yourself, aren't you?” she said, giving Alex a thin smile.

He nodded reluctantly.
Why was she making this more difficult?
Her hot date was about to collapse onto the floor. If that happened it would take at least three people to get him up.

“Thanks,” said Alex. “It's just that he's got this thing he has to do.”

It was amazing to Alex how many women, with the exception of his mother, seemed to find his father attractive. Especially women of a certain age. Maybe they thought that his used RV dealership made him a good catch. What they didn't know was that his ex-wife had taken a good chunk of his income and his business had begun to falter.