Blossom Promise (5 page)

Vern looked quickly at Michael. “What kind of trouble did you have in mind?”

“All kinds!”

“Like?”

Michael glanced down at his feet.

“Like what kind of trouble?”

“Well, like landing, for instance.”

“You’re worried about landing?”

“Yes, frankly, I am. I mean, sure, we’ll land somewhere. I just want to make sure it’s at your house. And not only that, I’d like to have your grandfather standing by the creek with that long rope of his. Then if it looks like we are going on downstream, he can throw us a line. Your Pap could lasso us if he had to.”

Vern sat down heavily on the edge of the raft. He stared at the ground.

This was the first time the dangers of the voyage had been mentioned. Up until this moment, it had been all glory and excitement and fame, the stuff of which adventure stories are made.

“What if we don’t land at all?” Vern said thoughtfully, his voice barely audible over the rush of the creek.

“That would mean,” Michael said, “that we keep on going. Then if we still don’t land, we’d go over White Water Falls.” Michael swallowed before he continued. “White Water Falls—I saw a picture of it in the newspaper last week—White Water Falls right now looks exactly like Niagara Falls.”

“The last thing I want to do is go over White Water Falls,” Vern said.

“Take it from me, going over White Water Falls would be the last thing you would ever do.”

There was a silence, then Vern said, “One time my brother Junior—” Vern only had one brother, but this was important enough to identify him. “One time my brother Junior was going over the falls, and he put blowed-up garbage bags under his arms and waded out in the creek. Then he got scared and didn’t go.”

“Your brother Junior’s smarter than I thought he was.”

“And that was before the flood.”

“Maybe,” Michael began. “No, never mind.”

“Go on, say what you’re thinking.”

“Well, I was just thinking that we could tie a rope on the raft—like a tether, and test the current before we set out. Then if it doesn’t feel just right, if it doesn’t feel like we can stop anytime we want to, we can pull ourselves back to shore.”

“That’s a good idea.”

Vern jumped to his feet. He was already pretty sure the current was not going to feel right. At least he was sure enough so that he didn’t want to run up and call his family on the telephone.

Or maybe he should, he thought. Maybe he should allow Michael’s mother to hear. It would be a sort of relief to hear her stern “Ab-so-lute-ly not!”

“Where are we going to get more rope though?” Michael said. “We’ve been using vines for the last hour.”

“Clothesline?”

“We have a dryer.”

“We could tear up some old sheets,” Vern said.

“Whose?” Michael asked. “My mom gave us her one old sheet for the sail, remember?”

“All right then, more vine, but it’s got to be strong vine, and we’ve got to braid it.”

Both boys started up the hill. Both were relieved to be going into the woods for vines instead of starting down the creek. The creek at their backs seemed to have risen dramatically just since the interrupted countdown.

At the top of the hill, Vern paused. Michael looked at him.

“And if either one of us doesn’t think we ought to go,” Vern said, “then it’s off. We won’t go, right?”

Michael hesitated only one second before putting out his hand. Vern looked down in surprise. He had never shaken hands with anybody before; he thought only grown men shook hands. Obviously he had been wrong. This was a situation that clearly called for a handshake.

Vern took Michael’s dirty hand in his and they shook.

Pap leaned against a tree. Drops of water dripped from the branches and rolled down his tired face, mingling with the sweat. Pap pulled out a ragged bandanna and mopped his brow.

“I got to rest, Mud,” Pap said. He had begun to pant. “I ain’t as young as I used to be.” He stopped talking to save his breath. “Junior’s going to have to wait on us just a little longer.”

The truck horn had sounded one more time. Then it had stopped. Now there was only the rush of the creek and his own labored breathing.

Pap saw a nice boulder up the hill and he stumbled toward it. He sat down with a heavy sigh. His body sagged with fatigue.

“I knowed this rock was put here for a reason. Sometimes, Mud,” he said, pausing again. “Sometimes it seems like the whole world’s been made just for my comfort. I need a rock to set on, and one’s right there. I need a tree to help me up a bank, there’s a tree.” There was another pause. Then, “A man can’t ask more out of life than that.”

Mud was using the rest time to move up and down the hill, nose to the ground. The only visible part of him was his tail, flying over the weeds.

Pap said, “Mud.”

Dutifully Mud raised his head and looked in Pap’s direction.

“I just wanted to know where you was. Go on about your business. Go on.”

Mud disappeared into the weeds. Pap began to rub his arm.

Ever since Pap had started practicing his rope tricks—this was to be a surprise for the family—he was going to do his old rope routine on the rodeo circuit this summer if he could get in shape, but ever since he had started practicing, his arm had been hurting. Sometimes it hurt even when he hadn’t practiced, like right now.

As usual, Pap shrugged off his pain. It would be worth it. What were a few aches and pains compared to being on the rodeo circuit again?

As Pap sat there on the stone, rubbing his arm, he remembered what a dashing figure he had been in those early days. He would come out in the arena dressed all in black—black hat, black boots with silver horse heads on the sides, black cowboy shirt, shiny black pants.

His ropes—he had different length ropes for different tricks—would be coiled beside him. One by one the announcer would call out the tricks. “Cowboy’s Wedding Ring … Butterfly … Ocean Waves …”

Pap would twirl his ropes vertically, horizontally, step in and out of them, make them into curlicues. There wasn’t anything he couldn’t do with ropes when he was a young man.

His act came between events in those days, and so naturally he would not have been surprised if some of the people had left the stands—that was when people generally got refreshments and socialized, but they never left during his act.

They stayed in their seats, even the ladies. That’s how he met his wife—Maida—she hung around to tell him how much she had enjoyed his act, and he took her picture with his Brownie Kodak.

His next-to-last trick was Around the World. He used a huge coil of rope, ninety feet long, for that. He made a loop and began to open it over his head, feeding out the rope so the loop got bigger and bigger.

When it was whizzing overhead, all ninety feet of it, when it reached full spread, Pap would give one final turn and let it drop around him like a skirt.

There was always extra interest in his last trick. It was Pap’s specialty. As a closing stunt he wrote his name, one letter at a time, in the air with his rope.

“B!” The crowd spelled it out with the announcer, drowning him out. “L! O! S! S! O! M!”

Then Pap bowed and took off his black hat to the crowd. His hair was jet-black then too. The applause was like thunder.

The memory captured his mind for a moment. He could see himself in the arena, lit up so bright it was as if the sun itself had decided to ignore everybody in the universe and, for one glorious electric moment, spotlight him alone.

He blinked his eyes as the memory began to fade. “Of course,” he went on, trying to bring himself down easy, “I probably couldn’t spell my name anymore. I haven’t got time to practice, but maybe I could get a silver cowboy shirt to match my hair. Maybe I could paint my old boots silver. Maybe I could—”

Mud bounded into sight then. He paused and looked at Pap for instructions. His tail wagged deep in the weeds, setting them in motion.

“Yes, we better be getting on home,” Pap said. “We better go.”

Still he continued to sit. He sighed. He closed his eyes for a moment. Then, rubbing his arm, he got up from the rock and started walking.

Maggie was sitting in the contestants’ grandstand, eating a bucket of popcorn. She had never enjoyed anything so much in her life.

For the past two days, Maggie had had no appetite at all. “Now, you have to eat,” her mom had told her. “You can’t starve yourself and ride in rodeos.”

“I’m not starving myself.”

“You aren’t getting sick, are you? I just don’t know what I’m going to do if you get sick.”

“No, Mom, I am not sick.” Maggie shook off her hand. “I’m fine.” Maggie didn’t want her mother to know she couldn’t eat because she was nervous.

“Well, then, why aren’t you eating? This is one of the best foot-long hot dogs I’ve ever had. Is there something wrong with yours?”

“No.”

“Then eat!”

“That’s what I’m trying to do. Anyway, you’re supposed to chew hot dogs a lot. People have choked to death on hot dogs.”

“You don’t have to tell me,” her mother said, diverted at last. “My first cousin choked on one and almost died. That was before this new method that’s running around. We pounded them on the back then.”

“Did it work?”

“You know her—Maureen.”

Maggie had nibbled at her hot dog, playing for time. Sooner or later her mom would see some of her friends and say, “Shug, do you mind if we drop you at the motel and go for a few beers?”

“Not at all,” Maggie would answer. That would give her a chance to wrap up her hot dog and feed it later to a stray cat that hung around the motel.

Her mom had carried on so much about Maggie starving herself that Maggie thought she would be the happiest woman in the world when she started eating.

Well, now she was eating. She was wolfing down popcorn as fast as she could, and her mom didn’t even notice. Her mom was sitting beside Maggie, twisting her neckerchief between her fingers. Maggie couldn’t understand why her mom was nervous. The performance was over. They had done great.

Again she offered her mom some popcorn. Her mom didn’t notice. “Mom, popcorn?” Vicki Blossom glanced down at the bucket as if she were trying to figure out what it was. Then she shook her head.

Maggie didn’t understand that either. Her mom loved popcorn. Her mom always said rodeo popcorn was her favorite food in the world.

Maggie heard a vendor yell, “Ice cream.” She ate even faster. As soon as she finished this bucket she was going to get a Popsicle. Rodeo Popsicles were good too.

Maggie shoved her white hat up on her head. The late-afternoon sun had dropped behind the stands and was no longer shining in her eyes, but Maggie didn’t want to take off her hat. It identified her as one of the Wrangler Riders.

The rodeo was almost over. Only the bull riding event and the bull fighting were left.

Joe Nevada was saying, “While we’re setting up the fence for the bull riding event, which only takes two or three minutes, we’ll say a word about the bull riding contest. The tough contest is reflected by the scoreboard. We had nearly eighty contestants this year.”

Maggie was eating popcorn out of the palm of her hand now.

“Now, here’s the first bull rider, folks, out of chute eight. Boy, talk about breaking out of there. I like this. We got one going. Look, Ma, there’s nothing to it. Riding bulls on a Sunday afternoon. You don’t even get your chaps dirty. It’s a seventy-eight score for Steve.”

Maggie turned up her bucket and let the last crumbs of popcorn fall into her mouth. She glanced around. A sun-burned girl with a cooler was right in front of the stand. “Ice cream!” she called.

Maggie wiped the grease off her mouth with the back of her hand. “Over here,” she called. To her mom she said, “Can I please have a dollar? I’m starving.”

Her mother didn’t answer.

Maggie held out her hand. She snapped her fingers to get her mom’s attention.

Her mom said, “Not right now,” in a tense way.

“Mom—”

“Don’t bother me.”

Maggie looked hard at her mom. She was startled by the expression on her mother’s face.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“I know something’s wrong. Mom, maybe you shouldn’t be watching this. Maybe we should leave. You don’t have to watch it just because you said you could. If it brings back what happened to Daddy …”

“I want to watch it, all right? Oh, what do you need?”

“Nothing, never mind.”

“What do you need?”

“A dollar,” Maggie said.

“Here, now don’t bother me again.” Vicki Blossom reached in her jeans pocket and handed Maggie a crumpled five-dollar bill.

Maggie didn’t want the Popsicle anymore but she bought it, pulled off the paper, and took a bite. She offered it to her mother. As she had figured, her mother didn’t even notice.

“Why don’t we go back to the motel?” Maggie said. “Please, Mom.”

Her mom didn’t hear her.

“And now in chute four we have the match of the year,” the announcer said. “A two-thousand-pound brindle bull, voted Bucking Bull of the Year, and he’s being ridden by one of the all-time greats—Cody Gray.”

Maggie’s eyes were riveted on her mom now. Vicki Blossom was holding her neckerchief over her mouth.

With a sickening lunge of her stomach, Maggie remembered that was what her mom used to do when she watched Cotton Blossom ride.

Her mom’s eyes were fixed on chute four. Maggie had never seen her mom so intent before. It was as if Maggie’s father were in chute four, instead of some stranger.

“Is it somebody you know?” Maggie asked.

Her Popsicle was forgotten. The ice cream was melting, running down her fingers.

“A friend.”

“I never heard of him before.”

“I asked you not to bother me.”

“I want to know.”

“Oh, Maggie, you’ve heard of Cody Gray all your life.”

“No, I haven’t. Who is he?”

Her mother didn’t answer.

“When did he get to be a friend?”

Again, no answer.

Her mom reached out abruptly and took Maggie’s arm. She squeezed it tight. This was something else Maggie remembered from the old days. “Let me hold on to you,” her mom was always saying when Cotton rode bulls.