Dream Wheels (31 page)

“But your grandson?” Mundell asked.

Victoria could see Claire watching her carefully. “Well,” she said, “everyone thinks it takes courage to get on a bull. That a man’s gotta be crazy or stout-hearted or both. But the truth is that it takes a lot more courage to decide to ride a bull than it takes to get up on one. Takes gumption to choose that. And when you’re a mother you want that sort of grit in your kids—the pluck to face the hard stuff head on. That’s what you work for. That’s your job.

“So when they choose it outright like Joe Willie did, you stand by that. Because that’s your job too. And when they’re hurt, even as bad as my grandson got hurt, you stand by that too, because you’re the one that put that heart there, that courage, those guts, and it’s your job to believe that they’ll connect to it again, to show them that faith, even if it hurts to watch that journey unfold.

“The courage is in the decision to be brave.”

Claire looked away across the corral. The iron filings gathered themselves around the attractant.

Joe Willie sat on the top rail of a holding chute and watched. He could have done it in his sleep, this ritual of preparation, but as he saw his grandfather and his father coaching the kid through the elaborate mechanics of readiness, it took him back to his own early days. The days when the thrill of the ride lay right here, in the sunlight and the dust behind the corral, in the smell of rope, leather, rosin, bull dung and in the high, arching push of nerves that felt like they were drawn across the surface of the skin, itching, raw, pulsing. Nothing changed. There was
no room for change here. Instead it was predictable, a hushed, anxious, deliberate, matter-of-fact preparation, a gathering of energy that allowed a cowboy a gradual release of tension in the small acts of ritual. He watched Aiden rosining the gloves, then the bull rope, yanking downward on it hard with the gloves to burn the stickiness into every fibre, then testing it for tackiness and grip. He watched him strip and climb into the large athletic supporter and the knee pads before pulling up his jeans. He nodded solemnly as Aiden pulled the Kevlar vest around his ribs that would protect him from the raking of horns when he was on the ground. When Aiden closed his eyes and pushed his head back against the thick roll of padding around his neck, Joe Willie found himself breathing harder, deeper. Then the pantomime. Lionel acted it out first, then Birch, then Aiden: standing with legs spread wide, the rigging hand down at the groin, the free hand held up and away from the body, each of them mimed the upper action of the body that would happen after the bull erupted out of the chute, their talk pointed, sharp, eager. It was a bizarre dance, strange and baffling to the eye but necessary as a warm-up and a reminder of what was to come. When he watched Birch lead Aiden through the stretches, the impact-specific twists and rockings that got his whole body ready, Joe Willie felt all of it. Then, finally, the clank belt. They inspected the heavy length of rope that girdled the bull with the brass cowbell attached, the clunk-and-clatter device that drove the bulls wild. Satisfied that it was sound, they gave the kid a solid slap on the shoulder and led him to the chute. None of them looked up. None of them had the time. None of them could spare the focus. He understood that.

He heard the thwack and rattle of the boards when the bull thumped into the chute. It bawled wildly, and the solid
thunk of its horns on the sides of the chute was as fresh to Joe Willie’s ears as if it were yesterday. The men moved more deliberately now. The wrangler at the back end of the bull pushed harder, spoke to it with a voice high with tension, cussing, commanding it, edged it up tighter to the head of the chute. Birch clambered over and began fixing the pull rope to the front of the chute, his eyes widened with excitement, flicking them up at Aiden, who was straddling the chute on the top rails. Beside him on the scaffolding behind the chute, Lionel coached him downward rail by rail until he settled for the first time on the broad, muscled back of the bull. It reared, its great snout tossed upward, and the boy scrambled up against the rails again. The men around the chute snapped at each other, hard directions, all verbs, all business. When it calmed, Lionel directed Aiden back down onto the bull’s back. He slapped it firmly, let it know he was there, then began hauling on the bull rope. Lionel showed him how to wrap it over the palm of his hand. Joe Willie watched, unblinking. Lionel leaned in closer, whispering last instructions to the boy, who sat still, his face tight across the cheekbones, a fierce look in his eyes, breathing through clenched teeth. When they were ready Lionel reached one hand over his shoulder and pressed against his chest to steady him, reassure him, and the kid pushed the hat down low on his head, grimacing now, the cords in his neck standing out in red relief as he nodded vigorously to Birch, who yanked hard on the rope and backpedalled quickly to open the chute.

At first it seemed like the bull wouldn’t move. Then it kicked out of the chute madly, driving into the open with its rear legs, launching into a running series of bucks before spinning to the left away from Aiden’s grip. The boy spurred it, his free hand moving in sync with the kicking-out motion of his legs. The bull spun quicker, kicking furiously. Around and
around it spun in a tight circle, and Joe Willie could see the kid leaned out, back, flat to the spin, his knees kicked up, driving his feet to the bull’s shoulders, the free hand clear of the bull and himself. The spin slowed but the bull bucked harder, higher, running a few short sharp steps then bucking again, and at the last it leaped high with all four legs, the back hooves kicked out hard into an arabesque, the violent ballet of bulls, and landed again and kicked itself wildly counterclockwise, sending clods of dirt flying hard into the bleachers so the onlookers had to duck them and Aiden spurred it and lifted that free arm high and wide and free and Joe Willie held his breath to see it and he could see every move like a slowed-down tape and he recalled all of it, all the aching glory, all the pain, the anxiety, the violence, the release, and he remembered how he loved it so and then Birch yelled “Time!” and he felt himself breathe. The pickup riders moved in swiftly, hemming the bull in on each side, and it ran, the bucks subsiding until finally Aiden could reach out with one arm and haul himself off. The pickup man made sure the bull was clear before he dropped Aiden carefully to the ground. The bull trotted into the chute leading out of the corral. It was over before Joe Willie realized the hard clench had cramped his hands on the rail. He loosed them, rubbed them to ease the cramp, climbed down from his perch and began walking away toward the quiet of the equipment shed, his heart beating hard against his ribs.

His whole body ached. That was the first thing he noticed. Then he noticed that the smile wouldn’t disappear from his face. Try as he might he couldn’t stop himself from breaking into a giggle, then a full smile and a laugh. God, it was good. As Aiden towelled himself off after the shower he couldn’t believe the feeling that coursed through him. It was electric but
purer than that, keener if that were possible. Sharper than anything he’d ever felt. There was bruising at the inside of his thighs and on his butt and a gathering tightness in his neck and shoulders, but they were little more than minor bothers to him now. He felt alive. It was like there was an open chamber in his chest, filled with the cleanest air he’d ever breathed and all the light he could imagine. He wiped a circle of condensation from the mirror and peered at himself. He looked the same but he felt like a whole new person. He could see himself in the hard sunlight of the corral, the bull spinning like a dervish, dust billowing around them, the taste of it glasslike in his mouth, whirls of image at the corners of his eyes, clouds, sky, ground, sky again, and the sharp grunts of the bull beneath him, its coarse hide against his legs, the feel of it, monstrous, colossal, hard as wood and then the push of it like a fist against his tailbone, rattling the entire length of him, the jarring as it landed grinding tooth against tooth in his mouth, the vaguely metallic taste of blood, the stretch of back muscle, the brutal wrench at the shoulder of his free arm, the strain of rosined rope against his upturned palm like being branded by the rigging, then the crazy, impossible release of gravity as the bull jumped at the last, all rules of earthbound existence exempted in one final burst of challenge and the sound of language in his ears jangling and strange before the pickup rider helped haul him off. He wiped sweat from his brow and smiled again. God, it was good.

Claire leaned against Johanna and cried. They sat in the shade of the main barn away from everyone and she cried. Leaned in against the other woman’s chest, her arms looped around her shoulders.

“I know,” Johanna said softly, “I know.”

“I was so scared,” Claire said.

“Yes.”

“I couldn’t breathe.”

“I know.”

“But that’s not why I’m crying now.” Claire looked up at Johanna.

“I know that too,” she said.

“He looked so free,” Claire said. “So free that he didn’t need me anymore.”

“I know,” Johanna said again and hugged her close. “We all know.”

“What do you think, Pap?” Birch asked.

“About the kid?”

“Yessir.”

“I think he’s got some go,” Lionel said. “Learns fast. Good athlete.”

They were resting on the veranda, the four of them, drinking tea and eating fresh-baked cookies Victoria had made.

“Scary good, I figure,” Birch said.

“What’s scary?” Victoria asked.

“He’s good, Mama,” Birch said. “Flat-out good.”

“So?” Johanna asked, prompting him. She understood that Birch often put things together aloud the first time.

“Well,” he said, giving his head a scratch, “born naturals can be a stubborn bunch. That’s why they only ever come along once in a long while. Gives the rest of us time to consider.”

“Consider what?” Johanna asked.

“Consider how much it means to us.”

“Rodeo?”

“I guess, but anything, really.”

“Come on, son,” Lionel said. “Get to the meat of it.”

Birch stood up and stretched. He tilted his hat back on his head and rubbed his face with one hand. He settled against the veranda rail finally and began to twist a smoke. “It gets to be the life of us, rodeo. It’s how we live, the measure of our days. We breathe it like air. But breathin’s so natural we never think about it. Leastways until something comes along that makes us catch our breath. Then we gotta think to start it up again.

“We breathe different after that. Like we’re sucking in a different kind of air. They show us what Creator can do, them naturals. Plop down a heaping helping of talent in the most unlikely places and ask us to watch. Put it in Joe Willie and we were all fascinated, right from the get-go. Made our world brighter, that boy, made rodeo brighter for all of us.”

He stopped to light the smoke and take a few draws. He was a thoughtful man and thoughts uncoiled in him as languidly as a practice tossed lasso.

“And the fact is, that it’s in that boy, in Aiden, and I’m plain flummoxed to tell you why. Shouldn’t be. Should be in a cowboy, someone born to it, raised in it, breathed their first lungful of it. But it’s not. It’s in a green-as-grass city kid with problems. I seen the way he rode that bull today and it scared me. Scared me on account of now I gotta give him that world. I gotta give him rodeo. What I know of it, how I feel about it, what I dream of it. The whole shebang. Because it isn’t just a ride anymore. Not just a thrill. It’s a calling for him. I think you all seen that.

“I gotta give him his way in it. Show him what it means beyond the riding. Offer him up the straight goods so he can learn to honour it his own self. Coach him, be a guide. So I sure as hell better know what it means to me, why it moves me, how it works in my gut, how it makes me wonder—because
that’s what he’s gotta know, that’s what he’s gotta build a ride on. Nothing less.”

“You’re talking about tradition,” Johanna said.

“Hell yes, tradition,” he said.

They sat in silence and watched the sun work its way behind the mountains to the west. The valley seemed to absorb the falling light, the shapes and colours of things beginning to disregard their daylight boundaries and melt into each other, everything becoming purple easing into blue-grey. As they watched it they saw Joe Willie walk out from behind the main barn and head out toward the trailhead at the foot of Iron Mountain. He walked confidently, purposefully, and it gave them each a small joy to see it.

“Maybe it’s not yours to do,” Victoria said.

Birch exhaled the last of the smoke and pinched it out against the railing. “Never considered it, Mama, but maybe it’s not.”

He pushed against the mountain. He bent into each step and drove himself hard up the face of it. The muscles in his repaired thigh ached but he wanted to feel their burn, needed it, craved it. The image of that ride and the memory it triggered angered him more than anything he could recollect besides his own last five seconds on a bull. He saw himself in that kid. That was the thing of it. He saw freedom there. Freedom. The whole huge, aching depth of it, and he knew how it felt in the lungs, the head, the bruises, the bone-deep soreness, and in the soft, warm pool of the heart, how it sat there beating, calling you, relentless, insistent, endless, a part of you forever. He recalled how that felt and he drove himself harder against the face of the mountain. Damn kid. Cocky, smartassed, city-bred ex-con. He had no logical reason to be
such a natural. No sane explanation for the way he stuck to that critter. There was nothing in his raising and nothing in his experience to qualify him to ride the way he rode. Free. Free and reckless and wild as any sumbuck that Joe Willie ever saw. Except himself.

He drove the right leg into the next few steps and kept his eyes glued to the rocky, gravelly, pine-needle-strewn bed of the trail. He knew how it felt. He remembered the exhilaration of finding the ground again that first time, stumping wide-legged in the chaps across the infield, the sunlight hard against the white rails of the corral, the dust caked on the teeth and the air feeling like it blew clean through him, the sky suddenly endless and open, like if he closed his eyes he could drift up into it, the sound of the clump of the retreating hooves a dull counterpoint to the breath of him, measured, deep and hard. Yes. Freedom had a feel. Like having silk inside. Like everything was glassine, smooth and cool. Like there were no edges anymore. That’s what the kid felt. That’s how he would react—and he didn’t deserve the joy. He wasn’t a cowboy. He was a city kid, lacking any connection to this at all, something to talk about on the street corner, a thump-on-the-bar-for-a-beer story he’d tell in his fat old age to others as fat and old and as removed from the life as he was. That’s what pissed him off the most. The waste of it all. Bull riding was more than a simple spill in the dirt. It was an honour. It was pure privilege. It was the ultimate tribute to courage for the rider and the bull, a contest of will, respect and dignity. Not for the light-hearted, not for piss-ant city boys. It was the grand heritage of rodeo and everything it entailed. He drove hard against the mountain, eager for the strain and the sweat and the ache of it.