If Wishes Were Horses (26 page)

Trucks and cars pulled into the surrounding area, bouncing over the grass, parking in a more or less orderly fashion, with men directing participants one way and attendees another. Horses were brought in the beds of pickup trucks, in trailers of wood or steel, and quite a number were ridden to the rodeo. Etta and Johnny passed three groups of riders along the highway.

Johnny, keeping a sharp eye, drove through the clumps of vehicles, trailers, people, and horses to the far side of the arena and grandstands, where he drew to a stop, saying, “This looks like it’s gonna be the place.” At her puzzled expression, he gestured and added, “Those cars and trucks make up the outer line of the racetrack there.”

Looking out the dusty windshield, Etta saw the dirt track made in the flat ground and the vehicles parked in a line at the edge. It looked rather like a string of trucks and cars in a parade.

It was what was known as a bush track. There were hundreds of them throughout the rural areas, had been since there were horses and men on the land. As a child, Etta had often tagged after her father to such races at rodeos, and on a number of occasions, she and Roy had attended racing of this sort, although Roy preferred the stock shows and sales held in big cities, or going back East to the sophisticated, fancy tracks.

Etta had been to those tracks, too, and bush tracks held little resemblance to them. All it took to have a bush track was enough flat land on which to plow a track. There were no rails, no starting gates, no official time clocks. It was wild and woolly, without benefit of colors and professional jockeys. Most riders rode their own horses, and the horses were more often everyday working horses, used during the week to work cattle and brought for a day of fun and frolic, raced in Western saddles or no saddles at all.

Johnny’s door creaked open, drawing Etta’s head swinging around to see him, hat in hand, alighting from the truck. Etta peered through the rear window, seeing Johnny go directly to the rear to unload Little Gus.

She sat back in the seat, stared a moment out the dusty, glaring windshield, waited for Johnny to remember her. He didn’t.

She opened her door and slipped to the ground. Standing beside the pickup bed with a hand resting on her belly, she watched Johnny tie Little Gus to one of the stock pen rails and looked around at the commotion. Little Gus was not used to all the activity, and he pranced on his short lead, wild-eyed, snorting and whinnying.

Johnny said, “I’m goin’ to go get Little Gus entered in the rodeo race and see if Bitta Fudge’s here yet. You might should just stay here in the truck, keep out of the sun, and watch Gus.”

“Okay,” Etta said.

He walked off toward the arena. Etta watched him go, then looked at Little Gus, who was prancing and tugging on his lead.

“He’ll be back,” she said, reaching upward to stroke the horse’s neck. She tried to soothe him with her touch and voice, but he began pawing impatiently, and after coming close to getting her foot stepped on, she left him to his temper fit and got back into the seat of the pickup.

Sitting with her legs out the open door, she surveyed the activity around her. She saw a man leading a sleek, hot-blooded grey, no doubt of racing stock. Among these horses would be an occasional mount that had racing potential and whose owner wanted to try on the bush tracks, before sending it on to bigger tracks in New Mexico, or even perhaps back in Kentucky. The horses didn’t need to go on to bigger tracks to make a nice sum of money and fame, though. While the sophisticated amenities and rules might be somewhat missing, the racing at a bush track was every bit as exciting as a big fancy one—more at times, when things got crazy. And anything from five dollars to several thousand on a single bet could change hands.

Over at the arena pens, men were unloading cattle, and riders were entering the arena to exercise their horses. Several young men practiced roping a saw horse. Nearby two men with weather-toughened faces wearing Stetsons with the brims curled up so high on each side they were more or less useless, leaned on a pickup, talking and having beers, and next to them two women, in summer blouses, sexy, slim-fitting slacks, and little flat shoes, chatted. Noticing their short hair, Etta touched her own, which curled to her shoulders. She had been considering cutting it off to be more stylish.

A family of Indians rode past, one after another, father, mother, three children, grandfather, each with long braided hair, each on a fine pinto pony, riding straight-backed, looking neither right or left, exactly as if coming right out of an old museum photograph.

Etta stared, not realizing that she was doing so until the old, weathered man winked at her and grinned. She grinned in return, and then he turned his head once more stoically straight ahead.

The sky stretched like a clear blue ocean. The sun beat down through the windshield, and the breeze died, causing sweat to trickle between Etta’s breasts. People passing nodded politely, saying, “Howdy,” when they came within range. She recognized a few faces, but could not put names to them. After fifteen minutes, Little Gus quieted, although his ears remained pricked and his eyes wide.

Etta dug in the picnic basket and brought out a mason jar of cool tea, sat there drinking it and searching for sight of Johnny. Ten minutes more, and she got out of the truck and went to look for the restrooms. She kept an eye out for Johnny but did not see him.

Johnny was at the truck when she returned. “Are you okay?’’

"Yes."

He often asked if she was okay these days. She wasn’t certain what he meant by it. She was annoyed with him for leaving her so long, which didn’t mean perfectly okay, but she did not elaborate.

He was already going on to his intentions, anyway. Looking off and pointing, he said, “I’m gonna move the truck up a bit—there to the middle of the line. You’ll have a pretty good view of the track. These unofficial match races have to run on this outer side, ‘cause of the riders practicin’ in the arena. When Little Gus runs the rodeo race, though, he’ll run right in front of the grandstand. He’s up against three others in that race so far, but I imagine more will be comin’.”

Etta got herself up into the truck seat, and Johnny moved the truck up where he wanted it, trailing Little Gus behind. Then he got out, threw the pad atop Little Gus with one hand and his saddle over that with his other, all in a smooth movement. It was a Western saddle, but lighter made, a saddle Johnny kept for racing.

Etta watched through the rear window, deciding that she didn’t need to get out of the seat again.

Trailing Little Gus by the reins, Johnny came over to her open door and told Etta that he needed to exercise Little Gus and get the lay of the land, so to speak. Then he swung up into the saddle and rode off.

Etta, again sitting with her legs out the open door of the truck, watched Johnny join some other men on horseback beside Harry Flagg’s big two-ton truck. The distance was too great to clearly recognize the men. A couple of women rode up to them. Etta craned her neck to see. She judged the women to be barrel racers by the way they were dressed. They wore pale cowboy hats and pale blouses; one had a flourish of flowers on her blouse. After several minutes the group rode beyond the parking area, out of sight.

Etta sighed and eased her back. Her gaze rested on a brown horse tied to the back of a nearby truck. He looked back at her and blinked contently.

Some activity began on the track, drawing her attention. She watched men measuring, and a Popin’ John came chugging up with a small disk and began to work the ground, extending the track at the curve to give a longer straightaway. The heat gathering in the cab made Etta sleepy. She laid her head over on the seat back and dozed, waking with a start when a shrill cheer went up.

Lord a’mercy! She’d fallen clean asleep and missed a race.

Standing on the running board, holding the door frame, she tried to see which horses had been racing. It would be just her luck if she had missed Little Gus.

No—with relief she saw it had been a brown and a bay that had raced. The rider on the bay looked vaguely familiar, but this might have been because he wore jeans and shirt and hat just like every other man within sight.

Glancing around for sight of Johnny, Etta saw more vehicles and people had come. Two women walked past in slim-fitting riding pants and boots and spurs, pale blouses and Stetsons. They cast her curious glances and whispered something to each other.

Etta sat back down in the seat.

She caught a glimpse of the women between vehicles, saw how the sun seemed to shine on them and make them glow. Digging a lipstick from her handbag, she wrenched the rearview mirror around and colored her lips. Another look in the mirror, and she turned it away, threw her lipstick in the picnic basket, and sat back with a disgusted sigh. The baby inside her kicked. Then it seemed to wiggle round and round. Etta pulled the expensive blue linen blouse tight over her belly and watched the movement.

Tiring of this, she sighed deeply. The musky smell of sun-warmed dust closed around her. When she’d been standing on the running board, she’d caught a sweet cooling breeze, but she couldn’t go standing on the running board for any length of time, as her back began to ache. She looked back at the brown horse tied to the next truck, who was dozing with one foot cocked, quite satisfied with himself and his life.

Squinting in the bright light, she searched for Johnny. Activity down at the start of the track drew her attention. Not Johnny, but two riders positioning their horses, both paints, side by side at the starting line of the track.

One of the riders was an Indian, had braids whipping around when he turned his head and a tall feather in his dark hat. The other looked like a young boy; his dark, battered hat was so big it came halfway down his head, as if it stopped only by his nose.

Suddenly the horses sprang forward. Etta rose up on the running board for a better view. People were yelling, the horses were pounding over the ground, the riders bending low over their necks. The Indian won all the way. Turning his horse, he stood in the stirrups and gave a whoop. Several men held money high, and he rode by, snatching it out of their fists. The boy who lost rode off, no one watching him, Etta guessed, but her.

She sat back down and gazed out the dusty windshield. The baby inside her stretched, putting a foot painfully into her rib.

As far as Etta was concerned, the day was not turning out to be the highlight she had anticipated. She was not certain exactly what she had anticipated, but she had imagined more of Johnny in her day.

Johnny sat atop Little Gus beside Harry Flagg’s two-ton truck. Harry’s truck had become the gathering place for brisk bet placing. At the moment, Harry stood behind the flatbed, counting out money and paying off to outstretched hands. “Here you are, Miss Annabelle, you were right about that paint—those were wings shaped on his butt,” he said, handing bills to a rather plain woman in a shirtwaist dress.

Up on the flatbed, Harry’s serious-faced thirteen-year-old daughter sat furiously recording figures on a Big Chief tablet; Harry said of her, “She’s gonna be my accountant someday,” while three of Harry’s younger children ran all over the truck like wild things. Johnny had heard Harry Flagg had ten children.

Wiping his face with a handkerchief, Harry lowered himself to sit on the truck bumper. One of the wild children came and threw his arms around his neck, but Harry didn’t pay any attention. A plump girl came running. “Daddy, Mama wants ten dollars.” Harry produced several bills and told the child, “No more,” exactly as Johnny had already seen him do twice before.

The young Indian who’d earlier won a match race on his paint pranced his horse around, seeking a challenger. He rode over to Johnny and Little Gus. “You want to give me a try?”

Johnny shook his head. “I’m waitin’ for Bitta Fudge.” Everyone had been laughing about that, which was fine with Johnny. The more people laughed, the higher the odds.

“Well, race me instead. You might stand a chance, since my horse has worn down some,” the young man said, his eyes dancing.

Johnny acknowledged this as true, then added, “I’d say your horse is better than Fudge’s, so I’d better save mine.” The boy gave a shake of his head and went off to find someone who’d race him.

“You think Bitta Fudge done decided not to bother?” asked one of the men propped against the rear tire of Flagg’s truck.

“Maybe he doesn’t see the challenge,” another ol’ boy put in, chuckling and casting a disparaging eye at Little Gus and Johnny.

Johnny had grown a little worried that Bitta Fudge had decided not to come, or that something had prevented him coming. Either circumstance would mean Johnny would not get to race Little Gus against the horse he had specifically chosen, thereby lessening his chances of proving himself to Etta. The possibility of this happening caused Johnny’s hopes to dip low, but he tried to hold on to them. He could not afford to be down if he was going to race Little Gus at all. He had to keep his energy flowing.

At that particular worrisome moment, someone called out, “Here comes Bitta Fudge.”

Johnny looked over and saw the tall, thin man riding forward on the sleek blue roan he’d purchased from Harry Flagg. Mostly thoroughbred, the horse was quite a looker; it had won one out of the two races it had run, and expectation ran high for a great future.

To Johnny’s eye, the roan was one of those horses who was a lot more looks than substance. The roan’s legs were finely drawn, and it was light in the buttocks, and in clocking it running, Johnny saw the horse ran fast between two and three hundred feet, then petered out—which was exactly why he had chosen this horse for Little Gus’s first race. Little Gus was quick on the first stride, but his strength lay not as much in his speed but in his ability to go a distance and keep on going as hard as any horse Johnny had ever been privileged to ride.

“How-do, Johnny,” Bitta Fudge said. He was a friendly sort, if a little flashy. That was his weakness—flashy man liked a flashy horse. Today he wore a dark blue shirt with stars embroidered above the curved slit pockets, about like Roy Rogers would wear.