Dream Wheels (33 page)

“Yes.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“I don’t know. I just feel it.”

“Feelin’s not doin’.”

In the flicker of the lamps Claire could see the matched intensity of their faces. She walked to the open door of the shed and gazed across the blackness to the mountains that sat like a serrated edge to the world and she felt them watching her. She’d worked for a moment like this. Everything she’d done for the last two years had been in preparation for a moment of choosing. She’d just never expected it to be wrapped in cowhide. She looked directly at Joe Willie.

“I came here to answer a dream, Mr. Wolfchild,” she said. “Right up until now I thought it was mine. I thought coming here would bring me and my son together again after everything that happened. I thought it would get the glue
back between us, make us stick again. But it’s not my dream that’s important. It’s my son’s. I’ve never given him the chance to find one before—and now he has and I’m telling you, I’ll see he gets the chance. Here or somewhere like it. I’ll see to that. I will.”

“Gonna take longer than the time you got.”

“I’ll see to that too.”

She seemed taller suddenly. There was a grit in her like Johanna’s and he grinned in recognition. “I imagine you would,” he said. “Thing is, kid, that dreams get busted up too. Gotta be tough enough to handle that.”

“Are you?” Aiden asked.

Joe Willie lifted the arm and flexed it at the elbow. He huffed out his breath. “I’m getting there,” he said.

“Deal, then?” Aiden asked.

“You gotta do everything I tell you. No questions, no attitude, no games.”

“Same.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“No. I know trucks, you know bulls. Deal’s a deal.”

“Not quite,” Joe Willie said.

“What’s left?”

“You,” Joe Willie said, pointing to Claire.

“Me? Me what?” she asked.

“You have to know everything too. Every trick, every choice, every move, every danger. Just like my mother knew. Like my grandmother knew. You’re in on everything or we don’t do anything. When he lands he’s gotta land with you. You gotta be there. Regardless.”

“I can handle that.”

“I believe you can. And, kid, if you got half what she’s got inside you, you might make a rider.”

Aiden stepped away from the truck and Joe Willie stepped away from the table to meet him. They stood facing each other again but the silence was easier this time. Joe Willie reached out a hand. Aiden took it and gave it a firm shake. Behind them the truck sat solemnly in the dark, waiting it seemed, and when she moved to stand beside the two of them, Claire could almost swear she heard it settle a little deeper on its springs like an old woman sinking into her favourite chair.

h
e walked into the kitchen and turned on the light. It was too harsh for morning and he turned the knob that lowered it until he found a level he could deal with. Outside the land was purple, greyed in the dimness. There was a thick scud of cloud that hugged the ragged line of mountain, and he could see the rain at the end of the valley. Leaning into the window screen he smelled it. He’d never tried to smell the rain before. It was how he imagined mercury must taste, and as he hauled the moist coolness into him he smiled to think of it. The bulls were in the field. There were seven of them. From here they looked like he imagined buffalo would look, all humped like boulders against the grass and sky. The light made the small moves they made look solemn, and he believed he could see the hard coal of their eyes glint across the space between them, making the air electric in their sight of him.

He stepped through the door onto the veranda. In the cool air his breath plumed and he could see them breathing
too. They turned to face the narrow end of the valley as if they wanted the mercurial taste of the rain in their lungs, and he could see the swish of their tails as they stepped slowly away from the house and him. They rolled as they walked. The weight of them pressed into the earth with each cloven hoof, and he could feel the power of them, the severity of their girth. He stepped out onto the steps, and some of them turned their heads as though they sensed him. He crossed the stretch of grass and across the driveway, the pop of gravel from his boot heels turning them toward him. When he got to the fence he leaned on a post and smoked, watching them. In that faint light their eyes glimmered like mirrors and he imagined how they held him in place, laid him out against this charcoal world, fitted him into the backdrop of ranch, valley and mountain and wondered if there were too many jagged edges to him to place him there securely, if the city and the joint had excised whole chunks of him, made fitting anywhere a gamble, or whether the hard fact of his blackness made entering this seemingly white world possible at all. He pinched out the smoke against the top of the fence post and felt the need for coffee. When he turned toward the house again he saw him curled under a blanket on the veranda swing, staring at him flat and expressionless as a bull. He hadn’t a hat on, and from where he stood the blanket gave him the look of an old-time Indian, history etched into the crevices and lines of him so that when he spoke, Aiden was surprised it wasn’t guttural, savage, the ancient tongue leaning clumsily into English.

“Early for you, ain’t it?”

“I guess.”

Joe Willie’s hands appeared from under the blanket. He lit a cigarette, then waved the pack toward him. Aiden took it and leaned against the railing while he lit up. When he’d
taken the first draw he tossed the pack lightly into Joe Willie’s lap.

“There’s coffee,” Joe Willie said.

“I’ll get to it. The smoke’s good for now.”

“You anxious?”

“About what?”

“Bulls.”

“Not from here.”

They laughed.

“We start today,” Joe Willie said.

“Good.”

“Nervous?”

“I guess.”

“It won’t be what you think.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ll see. You’ll need to coffee up. And eat. It’s a long day.”

Aiden took a long haul on the smoke and turned to look at the bulls again. They’d drifted farther into the pasture and the distance made them look softer, amiable almost. “All right,” he said.

Joe Willie nodded. “All right,” he said.

The thing about bulls, Birch figured, was that they never learned the difference between horizontal and vertical. It was all the same direction to them. Once you got up on them there wasn’t any consideration of gravity or the general restraints of physics. They were plumb mayhem. It made reading them impossible. Even the ones you drew before, the ones you rode a handful of times, could surprise you with a new twist, spin or crazy elevation. They could learn. That was the amazing thing. He’d seen a bull change from one ride to another. When you drew a bull a few times it sometimes felt like he knew you
before you slid down onto his back. Like he recognized your weight, the pressure of your legs, the feel of your knuckles through the back of your gloved hand or the bony point of your arse. A cowboy could feel that knowing, sense it in the calm wait of the bull in the chute. No bawling, horn tossing, showing off or the leaning in they sometimes did to crush your legs against the rails or stomping the feet and shimmying the loose folds of their skin to unsettle you. Nope. At a time like that a bull was stone and you could slap him all you wanted with your free hand and you couldn’t get him to stir. That’s when you knew you were in trouble. Stone-cold bull. Well read and dangerous. When a bull had a read on a man there was only ever going to be one winner. Unless the cowboy up on him was special or just plain dumb lucky.

He leaned on the corral watching the stock mill about and waiting for the kid and Lionel to appear. He hadn’t been on a bull for years. Still, it was something you held on to, something irreplaceable, world-changing and mysterious as discovering you could lie. It took a powerful heap of doing to rig up on a bull. Birch had always had the heart for it, but that particular magic that makes champions didn’t exist in him. He only carried the love of it. The bruises and breaks were a rite of passage to a world most people never got the chance to feel or even comprehend: a brutal, unpredictable world inhabited by laconic, drawling men who spit courage as easily as tobacco chaw. Birch could never really leave it, and bringing someone to it, introducing them to the spectacular nature of it, seeing them move from awe to admiration, never failed to make him smile.

“Mite relaxed for a working man,” Lionel said.

Birch turned to greet his father. “Where’s the kid?”

“Don’t know. Said he’d be here.”

“Likely nervous.”

“Likely. He rode some good yesterday, though.”

They leaned against the rail to study the bulls together. “Pick out four, I imagine,” Lionel said. “Ought to be enough for one day.”

“There won’t be any bull riding today.”

They turned to see Joe Willie stumping toward them. Aiden and Claire were with him.

“What’s that you say, son?” Birch asked.

“I said there won’t be any riding today. Not for him.”

Birch and Lionel exchanged looks. “Young fella wants to learn to ride a bull,” Lionel said.

“Then that’s what he’ll get. But he’ll earn it first.”

“What are you talking about, son?” Birch asked.

“I’m training him.”

“Training him?”

“That’s right. And there won’t be any rigging up today.”

“Wait a minute,” Aiden said. “We agreed. We made a deal.”

“Deal we made was truck for bulls,” Joe Willie said.

“Yeah. So why aren’t I riding?”

“You’ll ride when you’re ready to ride.”

“I’m afraid I’m a little lost here, boy,” Lionel said. “What’s going on?”

“Turns out Pretty Boy Floyd here’s a mechanical genius,” Joe Willie said. “Figures he can get the old girl on the road again. So we made a deal. I teach him not to kill himself and he teaches me how to fix up the truck.”

“So how come there’s no riding today?” Birch asked.

“He ain’t ready to ride.”

“What are you talking about?” Aiden said. “You saw me ride that bull.”

“I saw you ride a tame bull that a toddler could ride. I saw you stretch dumb luck out for eight seconds.”

“Dumb luck?” Aiden stepped up close to Joe Willie.

Joe Willie took the same measured step toward him and they stood face to face while the others watched. “Dumb luck,” Joe Willie said slowly.

“Bullshit.”

“A handful of videos and a jailhouse attitude won’t make a rider out of you, kid.”

“Did so far. Got you to make this deal.”

“What got me to make this deal was the truck. That’s all I care about.”

“You’ll get your truck, but I want to ride.”

“When you’re ready.”

“When’s that?”

“When I say.”

“You said it starts today.”

“I said it won’t be what you think.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

Joe Willie held the hard look but stepped back, then turned to the corral and pointed to the bulls milling about as though sensing the tension in the air. He hooked one boot heel on the bottom rail. “It means you need cowboy muscle to do a cowboy job. You’re gonna need a stronger back and shoulders and arms and legs than you ever believed. Mucking out stalls is good for that. So is tossing bales, stacking oat stacks and pulling fence. Cowboy work. That’s what’ll get you ready.”

“That wasn’t part of our deal.”

“I’m afraid it was.”

“How so?”

“You do everything I say. No questions, no attitude. That was our deal.”

Aiden looked at Claire.

“Don’t look at her,” Joe Willie said. “You want to be a cowboy, be a cowboy. Mama can’t help you with that. There’s no shortcuts, kid, and from right now you’re a working cowboy.”

“Is this really the best way?” Claire asked. “Shouldn’t he train specifically?”

“He is,” Joe Willie said. “Riding bulls is a tradition. It came from all this. Everything you see around you. This life. When you cowboy, your focus comes from there, from the sense of that tradition, that heritage. The best cowboys, the best riders have that focus. But you gotta live it to get it.”

“So he’s going to train by doing ranch work?” Claire asked.

“You cowboy from the ground up.”

“What do you mean?” Aiden asked.

“I mean it’s the land. The dirt,” Joe Willie said. “You get you a feel for that and it never leaves you. It gets in your lungs, your nose, in the creases of your hands, the lines on your face. When you ride bulls it gets in the seat of your pants, the flat of your back, or sometimes you face-plant hard, right into it. But you come to love that dirt because you work in it every day. It’s how you breathe. Good cowboy’s gotta have that in him. Only way to get it is by getting down in the dirt and learning how to love it. Marce brought you here to work. That’s what you’re gonna do.”

“When do I ride?”

“When you cowboy up.”

“When’s that?”

Joe Willie gave him a level look. “You’ll know,” he said. “We’ll all know.”

Ranches exist beyond the stretch of ordinary time. Even Wolf Creek was prone to the same casual slouch. There were
seasons for everything and time had a slippery quality, a greasy-in-the-hands feel that lent itself to an unfolding of events that surprised a person with the easy suddenness of their return. Ranch people stayed busy through the tide of a year, and the markers that announced time passing were as familiar as old friends on a country road, something to wave at, smile and maintain direction. So changes in routine were shocking. Time slid to a stop in a spray of dust like the hooves of a roped steer. Victoria considered that as she watched her men heading out onto the flat plain of the ranch. Behind her Johanna rattled dishes as she collected them off the table, busying herself, giving hers elf a distraction to arrange thoughts around. When she brought them over to the sink the two women stood looking quietly out the window.