Weeds in Bloom (16 page)

Nova Scotia, 1960. Maris and Mantle. Rodeo stock. Each bull weighed over a ton. Rob at a delicate 230. (Photo by D.A.H.)

“Working one of the chute gates.”

My breakfast arrived, by Rita. The plate wasn’t hot, yet it wasn’t cold either. No complaints. For garnish, there was a slice of orange and a parsley sprig.

“Daddy, I’m fixing to fret at you again. A hundred times you been told how I worry about you and
rodeo work
. Not at your age. I’m trying to keep you safe and me sane.”

He sighed. “It’s what I know, honey. Since we give up our cattle, working a rodeo’s all I can do. I don’t handle nothing else.”

“Nuts to that,” she said. “You could locate a part-time over at Ferguson’s Nursery. A geranium don’t weigh no three thousand pounds, and it won’t kick your guts apart.”

Rita flounced off to sling plates at other customers. She really did hustle at her job.

Her daddy turned to me. “She’s my daughter. Only child I got. Jacky got kilt about ten year ago. Maybe more. He was my boy. But he bought it bull riding. Skull crushed. Leastwise he didn’t die digging up a daisy.” As I was nudging eggs across a yellow-stained plate, mopping my mess with half a biscuit that weighed more than a hockey puck, Rita’s father introduced himself. “My name is Spell-man Gatling.”

“Rob Peck.”

“People don’t usual call me Spellman. I git called Spook mostly, or sometimes Spooker.”

“Pleased to know you, Mr. Gatling.”

He smiled with sorry teeth. “Golly be, don’t nobody much at all ever give me a Mr. Gatling.”

“I will, if it’s okay.”

“Okay.” He paused, for some reason. “Rita’s my daughter,” he said once again, perhaps because of pride, or maybe just plain age. He leaned close. “I eat here for free.”

“You’re lucky,” I lied.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “I certain hit it lucky to beget a gal like my Rita Louise. She’s awful good. Oh, she’ll snap at me. But Rita’s a comfort in lots of ways.”

“Even if she nags you about glasses?”

Spook muttered something. “Yeah, I s’pose.”

“Tell me about your rodeo.”

Eyeing my snowy hair, he asked,
“You
entering?”

“No. I’m not young enough to risk my neck. Years ago I tried it once, and it was a pile of pain. A bronc named Undertaker’s Pal stuffed everything I owned up into my hat.”

Spook Gatling winced. “Bronc riders usual walk strange. Most of ’em are outside bones more broke than the Ten Commandments.”

Mr. Gatling made me smile.

He smiled back, which wasn’t too easy, seeing as he was understocked in teeth. “I rid bulls,” he said. “Didn’t stick to the buzzer anytime except once. But it failed to put me into the money.”

After braving another gulp of diner coffee, I asked, “Is it hard to earn a living on the rodeo circuit?”

The old man chuckled.

“Naw, it ain’t hard. Just impossible.”

I laughed too.

“Over at the Silver Spur—that’s the rodeo we got going twice a year nearby—you’ll spot a plenty old rodeo pokes, like me,” Mr. Gatling explained. “They’s all chasing poverty on a lame leg. A man don’t break a horse as easy as a horse can break a man. Neck or wallet.”

Rita arrived with his breakfast.

To me, she said, “Daddy eats the same ho-hummer every morning, day in and day out. Ain’t he a
mess!”

His plate was heaped with white steaming grits, fried spuds, a couple of crumbled biscuits topped with gravy, a few sections of a fresh orange, plus a side order of soft buttered toast. All of it appearing simple to chew. Knuckles up, Mr. Gatling worked a fork with one twisted tine. “Yup, some breakfast. Stick with a winner, my friend, and it’ll stick to you. Ribs and spirit.”

Spook whacked into his food as if suspecting it was still alive and fixing to escape. I was already outside my breakfast. Although not quite ready to slide off a stool just yet, because I wanted to get to know Spook Gatling. To know Rita Louise as well, but not in a romantic way. Honest.

Gumming grits, Spook looked at me.

“Rita ain’t fooling me none,” he said.

“Oh, she isn’t? How so?”

“She claims that I can take my meals here for nothing. That’s not true. Rita pays Henry, her boss, out her own pocket. I mean, whatever I eat is took out of her pay.” He sighed. “It bothers more’n I let on. Gnaws at me. Inside. Ought to be
me
helping Rita.”

“Is she married with a family?”

“Used to. Billy run off. Left her with a baby, and bills. Never seen Billy again. He was in rodeo too. But quite a time ago, a Saturday night it was, Billy’d tipped up too much booze. He won money that day. So some hot little buckle bunny nabbed him, and they run off together the next afternoon.”

“What’s a buckle bunny?” I asked, knowing the term, yet hankering to hear Spook’s assessment.

“Oh, just a shapely little gal in too-tight jeans that chases one silver-buckle rodeo star after another. A saddle tramp. Anyhow, that’s the last Rita Lou and the baby smelt of her husband.”

“How old is her baby now?”

“Rita told me recent.” He dunked half a slice of toast into his coffee, ate it, and suffered a brown riverlet to drip off his chin to his shirt. “I recall. She’s nineteen.”

It surprised me.

“Her name’s Lark.”

“That’s a pretty name for a girl.”

Rita slapped my check on the counter, facedown. “Come back and see us now. Hear?”

“I’ll do it.”

When she’d hurried off, Mr. Gatling whispered to me. “Lark ain’t normal.”

“What’s wrong with her?”

“She just never growed up much. And couldn’t learn to speak. Makes a few noises, like if’n she’s
scared, or hungry. Lark don’t say things to make sense. It hurts plenty to hear her try. I know it cuts Rita.”

I paid my bill at the CASHIER sign at a far end of the counter, near the kitchen door, no doubt positioned where Henry could oversee the transactions. Rita was a cashier as well as a waitress.

“Thank you, Rita.”

“You’re more’n welcome, cowboy.”

“The breakfast was right passable. And delightfully served. You can tell Henry, if you like.”

Rita made a face. “I tell that rascal plenty. Mr. Quick Henry and his busy back-room hands.”

Her father stood beside me, selecting a toothpick, causing me to wonder how he would employ it.

“It was a pleasure meeting your daddy, Rita,” I said. “He’s a decent gentleman.”

Instead of looking at me, the waitress eyed her father. “No, he ain’t. He’s a ratty old rodeo-broke scorpion, Spook is. And it’s a waste of affection to tolerate him.”

“I bet you waste plenty his way.”

She winked. “Too dang much.”

“Come on,” Mr. Gatling said, nudging me. “You and me ought to sneak-stroll over to the arena place and see what’s happening. Maybe hoot up some mischief. Or flirt a gal.”

His voice sounded eager, as though a rodeo was racing his blood. Spook was itching to play a small, inconsequential role in one more show, and hear another banjo band blasting out “Dixie” or a Rebel yell as a chute gate opened. And stand an inch taller, watching a solitary horse and rider circle the dirt arena at a gallop, flapping Old Glory on a pole.

“A good idea,” I said.

“Before noon, Daddy,” said Rita, “you best pop around at the eyeglass place, to git your new cheaters. You promised me. Somehow I’ll pay ’em their twenty smackers.”

He nodded. “Thanks, sugar bun. I’ll tend to Lark anytime you need. I looked in earlier. She’s asleep. And the dog’s on duty.”

As she eyed her father and me, Rita’s face softened to a gentle smile. “Okay, you two handsome ol’ cowbucks go whoop it up. But please try to maintain safe. Hear?”

There was a sign on the cash register: NO NEED TO TIP AT COUNTER. It’s always sport to bend a rule. Especially if the so-called tenet doesn’t hold a lick of horse sense.

I left a tip for Rita.

For all of Rodeo Week, the happiest twenty bucks I’d fritter away.

T
HE ABOVE HEADING IS ALSO A HYMN
.

Haven Peck, the dear father I knew for only the first thirteen years of my life, used to sing it while swinging a scythe to harvest hay on our farm. Or broadcasting seed from a shoulder sack. And, like a hymn, this final chapter is a cleansing by confession, a private peek into my mind.

Warning: A
simple man might oversimplify. Yet this man prefers point-blank simplicity to complication. The following conclusions are mine only, not intended to be yours by contagion. In fact, I’ll be happy if you disagree. Even happier if you ignore my guide irons and forge a few of your own.

1. Movies are funniest when cop cars crash.
   

2. Our planet Earth is female. Seed her and she’ll bear fruit. Our atmosphere (pollen in the wind) is male.
   

3. People who sweat and have calluses on their hands sound more horse-sensible to me than men with manicures. If I possess wisdom, much of it originated from a father, a mother, an aging aunt, and my American Indian grandmother … none of whom could skillfully read or write. An old Vermonter with whom I slaughtered hogs advised me: “Son, work the job you hold with all your might, and you’ll not have to work it forever.”
   

4. Strong folks are seldom
   offended
   . We’re too busy accomplishing, helping others, and rapturing in our success.
   

5. No matter how tender you care about people, you’ll not alter anyone. Best afford them the noblest gift a man can offer a neighbor. Acceptance.
   

6. For fifty years, my dearest pal was probably Fred Rogers, the soft-spoken Mister Rogers of television. He was best man at my wedding. But I could never convince him that his next book should be entitled
   Strangers Have the Best Candy
   . We were the antithesis of each other, yet disagreed without becoming disagreeable.
   

7. Maturity has at last enabled my refusing: a flirtatious lady, a shot of Chivas, and a game of poker. But when encountering a piano, I’m irresistibly compelled to play it.
   

8. A man can be a confirmed atheist and still feel uplifted by the teachings and parables of
   one magnificent Nazarene carpenter.
   

9. My first wife and I were married for thirty-five years. Although divorced, Dorrie and I still are devotedly respectful of one another. We and our current spouses are close friends. Both ladies were librarians.
   

10. In athletics, if given a choice, I’d prefer to play well and lose, rather than play poorly and win.
    

11. Book writing is borrowing hunks of leather from leathery folk, tooling them into a saddle, and then riding a wild mustang to meet a bear.
    

12. Because we destroy the habitats and lives of so many mammals, reptiles, birds, fish, insects, and trees, one might conclude that all of life on Earth is sacred, with the exception of humanity.
    

13. Health is a personal responsibility. It is not a governmental concern (or a taxpayer’s burden) that some people prefer forks to exercise, smoke to fresh air, or booze over orange juice.
    

14. Women, be wary of men who don’t own land. Manhood, like trees, is rooted in earth.
    

15. The media term
    adult language
    is a lie. We are telling children that
    filth
    is grown-up. Years ago, and using a broken Crayola, I was misspelling four-letter
    adult language
    over a urinal when I was nine.
    

16. A hero is a gentleman. Among men, reserved gentility takes more guts than home runs or touchdowns.
    

17. Events I choose to write about are often the tender touchings by rough rogues. Folks I treasure most are the stalwart men and women with whom I performed arduous
    labor
    . My memory washes their feet. For me, gritty work is more sacred than poetry or prayer.
    

18. Every honorable Southerner should, with pride, display our Confederate Battle Flag. If we are too spineless to do this, the banner of our heritage will be disgraced in the hands of neo-Nazis, skinheads, members of the Klan, and other loutish lunatics. Considering the fine young men who fought and died for it (a majority were not slave owners), the Stars and Bars deserves to fly upon a loftier staff, in our hearts and in history.
    

19. Please, just once, let’s build a school where the cafeteria is smaller than the library. Better yet, no cafeteria at all. And no junk food or soft drink machines.
    

20. Schools, once again, ought to be
    small
    neighborhood schools, and completely autonomous. No systems. And no political busing: kids can walk, strengthen their bodies, and help a taxpayer. Today’s huge school invites discipline problems; ergo, who then becomes the principal? A football coach with the I.Q. of a Tic Tac.
    

21. Communism is a
    flop
    . It has pathetically failed all over the world.
    

22. Happiness is being married to my Sam, a brilliant and beautiful Southern lady, granddaughter of Robert E. Lee Youngblood and the finest catfish cook in Dixie. Best of all, she calls me Sweet P.
    

23. I exalt Dr. Jack Kevorkian far more than doctors who keep elderly patients alive, suffering and paying doctor bills.
    

    

24. I won’t respect Third World men until they honor Third World women.
    

25. Research is outdoor work. Getting off pavement and getting dirty.
    

26. How do you determine if a dog is male or female? Easy. When it drinks from a toilet and leaves the seat up, it’s a male.
    

27. Heaven is a Pearly Gated community.
    

28. It’s always darkest before you’re dumped.
    

29. A wise investment for a county, state, or nation is buying land to be forever wild.
    

30. 1 love a kid who tells me the name of his dog or cat. But my favorite fan letter came from a boy named Charley. After the “Hi Rob,” only seven words: “I like your books better than literature.”
    

31. When the war finally ended, in one way or another we all came home wounded. Yet fervently thankful.
    

32. The basis for my success is that I write about what people
    do
    . Not what they ought to do.
    

33. Wish not for apples. Grow strong trees.