When the Legends Die (21 page)

Two days later they buried Red in the dusty little graveyard, just Tom and Meo and the undertaker and his helper and the preacher. The preacher, a tired little pinched-face man in a shabby black suit, said the service by rote and read a short, impersonal prayer. Meo crossed himself and muttered something in Spanish, and Tom whispered part of an old chant in words he had almost forgotten. Then the undertaker’s helper began shoveling the dirt into the grave, the clods thumping hollowly on the black coffin.

Tom gave the preacher five dollars and would have given him a ride back to town if he had as much as said thank you. He didn’t, so Tom left him to walk or go back with the undertaker. He and Meo drove back into town, paid the doctor and the bill at the hotel. The undertaker had already been paid, before the funeral, so that closed matters. They headed for home.

Meo sat silent for a long time. Then he said, “It costs money to die.”

Tom nodded. Most of the money had come from the roll of bills Meo had given him the night they got word Red was sick. Red’s own money, in a way, money that Meo had taken from Red’s pockets. And he thought of Red’s words: “I never could save a dime. Somebody always took it off me.” Well, some of Red’s money went to give him a decent burial.”

A little later Meo said, “Now it is my place.”

“Yes,” Tom said. “It’s your place now, Meo.”

Meo gave him a quick glance, as though surprised at having no argument about it. “When my time comes,” he said, “then it is your place.”

“Don’t worry about that, Meo. I won’t be here long.”

“You going away?”

“I’m going to Odessa in a few more weeks.”

“Odessa?” The name seemed to mean nothing to Meo.

“Odessa, Texas. That’s where the big rodeos start the year.”

“So. You make the big rumble.”

“I’m going to make the big rumble, yes. Do you want to come along?”

Meo shook his head. “I rode my horses. I am an old man.”

It didn’t matter to Tom whether Meo went along or not. Nobody else can live your life for you. You have to ride your own furies.

He said, more to himself than to Meo, “I’ve got a lot of riding to do.”

“What?” Meo asked.

“I’ve got a lot of horses to ride,” Tom said.

O
DESSA WAS JUST A
small southwestern Texas town, but because its rodeo opened the season it drew big crowds and long rolls of contestants. Veteran riders and ropers went to Odessa to test their skills and reflexes and weigh them against the inevitability of time. Newcomers went there to see if youth and hunger for glory could outweigh experience in the arena. Many newcomers were weeded out at Odessa. Some persisted a few more weeks, as the circuit moved across the Southwest and crept slowly northward with spring. A few, the fortunate, skillful few, stayed and rode to glory.

Tom Black was one of the newcomers, and at first he was lost in the detail and the routine. But he found a hotel room, paid his entry fees, studied his draws and had time to appraise the horses and listen to the talk. He had heard most of the talk before, but the horses were new, trained buckers, big, mean, and natural outlaws whose violence was fostered and encouraged. The veteran riders discussed them and swapped stories about them. Tom listened and looked and drew his own conclusions, knowing that all talk ends when you are astraddle a bronc and the chute gate opens.

He had ridden enough horses, heard enough crowds, been in enough arenas, that he thought he wouldn’t be tense or nervous when his turn came. But his hands were sweating and his legs were quivering as he sat in the saddle awaiting the signal for his first go-round ride. The signal came, the bucking strap was jerked tight, the gate swung open. The horse lunged twice, ducked, the rein slipped and Tom was almost thrown. Fortunately, the horse was a rhythm bucker. Tom recovered and finished the ride clean, but as he walked back to the chutes he knew it was a mediocre ride. He hadn’t been thrown; that was all he could say for himself. But his first ride was over, his first ride in the big time.

He lay awake that night going over every wrong move he had made, and he did better the next day in the second go-round. But he still was too tense, trying too hard, and he knew it.

Then in the finals he drew a horse so mean and full of fight that he had no time to think of anything or do anything but ride. For the first time at Odessa, he rode the way he knew he could. When the scores were announced he placed second in the final round, won enough place money to pay his hotel bill. The money mattered little. He had begun to find himself. That
did
matter.

The Odessa show closed and he went on to the next show, and the next, and the next. The lists began to thin out as the newcomers dropped out. But Tom Black was still there, doing better in each show. Then, in Fort Worth, he made two spectacular rides and knew the glow of satisfaction, the triumph of mastery. That was the turning point.

In the next two months he rode eight shows and finished in the money in six of them. The crowds began to know him by name, to watch for him. He was talked of as the best first-year man on the circuit. Then, before he realized it, he began to lose. He finished out of the money in three shows in a row before he remembered Red Dillon’s bitter words: “You start riding for the crowd and you forget what you’re there for.” He was no longer riding to Red’s orders, but he was riding for the crowds, trying to be a hero. He stopped listening for the cheers and became a rider, a man fighting it out with a horse. He began to win again.

The weeks settled into a pattern. There was the long drive to a strange city, the strange hotel room, the strange arena. There were the events that meant nothing to him, the bull riding, the calf roping, the steer wrestling, the trick riding, sometimes the inconsequentials of a horse show. There was the waiting, the long, dull hours of waiting. Then the one thing that mattered, the bronc riding, the battle between man and horse. Three rides, three brief moments when he came fully to life. Then the pattern started all over again.

The weeks became months. Summer passed. The circuit reached Albuquerque and for some reason, he didn’t know why, everything went right for him. He drew the worst horses he had drawn all season. His timing was perfect. He made three all-out rides, and he won every go-round, placed top in the averages, took the big purse.

The night the show ended he decided to skip the next show, drive home and see Meo, take a few days off. The break, he decided, would do him good. The next morning he bought a new car. Then he bought two cartons of groceries and headed for home.

He reached the cabin in midafternoon. Meo was in the garden, pulling bean vines. When Tom went to greet him the old man peered at him and said, “Who are you? You bring news about Tom?”

“I am Tom, Meo,” Tom said.

The old man shook his head. “Tom,” he said, “is a boy, like this,” and he held his hand at shoulder height. Then he bent to pull another bean vine.

Tom put a hand on his shoulder. “ Boys grow up. Come help bring in the groceries, Meo.”

Meo went with him to the car and they carried the cartons into the cabin. Tom set the jars and boxes on the table and Meo examined the label on each one, just as though he could read, before he put them carefully on the shelves beside the fireplace. When they had finished he said, “Get the cups,” and he poured coffee and they sat down and looked at each other.

Finally Meo said, “You have been gone a long time. Too long. Tomorrow we finish harvesting the frijoles.”

Tom tried to tell him about the big circuit, where he had been, what he had done, and especially about Albuquerque, which he was sure Meo would understand. But Meo only waited for a pause long enough to say, “And next week we harvest the chilies.”

Before he went to bed that night Tom went out and hid all his money but ten dollars in his car. Sometime during the night he wakened and saw Meo going through the pockets of his pants, but the ten dollars was still there the next morning.

Tom helped with the beans for three days and they got them all harvested and threshed. The third evening Tom said he was leaving the next morning. Meo seemed to pay no attention, but at breakfast the next morning he said, “You come, you go, just like him.” He smiled, wryly. Tom finished eating, put on his coat and hat, and said, “I’ll be back late in November, Meo.” And the old man said,
“Vaya con Dios,”
then added,
“y el diablo.”
It was his farewell, “Go with God, and the devil,” and Tom didn’t know, or much care, whether it was a blessing or a curse.

He caught up with the circuit, rode it through, week by week, till the last week in November, then called it a season and went home. He felt entitled to a month’s rest.

Meo made no pretense of not knowing him. He gloated over the groceries, as before, then set out the coffee. “Now you come back to stay?” he asked.

“For a month or so.”

“Then?”

“Then I go back, ride some more.”

“You win this time?”

“Sometimes I won, sometimes I didn’t. It was a pretty good season.” There was no reason to tell Meo that he had been named the best first-year man on the circuit.

Meo peered at him, speculating. “You bring a bottle?”

Tom knew what Meo was thinking. He had stopped out on the flats, before he came down to the cabin, and hidden most of his money in the car. “No bottle,” he said. Then he reached in his pocket and drew out two hundred dollars in tens. He spread them on the table, divided then into two equal piles and pushed one pile over to Meo. Meo counted it, then asked, “This is what you win?”

“That’s your share. And,” he added, “you don’t have to roll me for it.”

Meo folded the money carefully and put it into his pocket. He shrugged, smiling to himself. “We do not tell all we know, eh? We are of the old people, you and me.” He chuckled, then got up and set out bowls and dished out beans and chili. “Eat,” he ordered. “The frijoles are good, big and strong. They make a big rumble, bigger than you make.”

Tom stayed a month, then packed his gear and was on his way again, back to Odessa and the big circuit. He was a second-year man now. He took up where he had left off, won the number-two purse in the first show, then took top money in the next one. Nobody could win them all, but if his luck held he would break the tradition that a good first year is always followed by a poor second season.

For three months he was in the money in every show, and rodeo people began to say that Tom Black was on his way to the championship, something practically unheard of for a second-year man. Then in May he began to override the horses, pressing too hard. He finished out of the money in one show, took fifth place in the next, then was thrown for the first time that season. And realized that he had been playing to the crowd, trying to overpower every horse he straddled. He eased off and began to win again.

Then it was June, hot, sweaty June. The heat never bothered Tom, but it seemed either to slow down the horses or make them extra mean, depending on the horse. His first go-round horse was the mean kind, but he rode it clean and hard. For the second go-round he drew a horse he knew, one he had ridden six weeks before. It was a ducker and dodger that bucked a tight pattern close to the chutes.

As he saddled up he decided to power it from the start, try to work it out away from the chutes, then give it its head and let it give him the worst it had. He resined his chaps, dried his hands, eased into the saddle and measured his rein. The announcement blared. “Coming out of Number Two Chute, on Nightmare, Tom Black!”

The gate swung open. The crowd roared. The horse lunged out in the pattern Tom remembered, three quick jumps, then a duck and a dodge. He powered its head around to the left, to prevent its spin to the right and back toward the chutes. It made another lunge, tried to duck, and he powered it again, and it seemed to go crazy. It reared, danced, squealed wildly, then lunged right, toward the chutes, lunged again.

Number One Chute was empty, its gate swung back, a helper holding it. As the horse lunged toward the chutes, the helpers scattered. The horse plunged against the open gate, struck it with its shoulder. There was a crash and a splintering of planks and the broken gate swung loose. Tom tried to power the horse into the open, but it lunged wildly, reared, plowed into the broken gate and struck the chute full force. Tom, fighting the rein, was thrown heavily against the chute.

The horse screamed, kicked madly. Men shouted. The crowd groaned. Tom, on the ground inside the empty chute, saw blood spurting. In the lunge that threw him, the horse had impaled itself on a splintered plank. A sliver broad as a man’s hand had pierced the horse’s chest like a huge bayonet, then broken off. Still screaming, the horse went down, hoofs flailing, frantic head pounding the ground.

Pain stabbed through Tom’s chest and he was gasping for breath, but he pulled himself to his feet and reached for the chute to steady himself. A new stab shot up his right arm. Then an official pushed through the milling riders and helpers and held a pistol to the doomed horse’s head. The roar of the mercy shot was like a jagged prong through Tom’s chest. The horse let out all its breath in one last long gasp, then relaxed, dead.

Someone was shouting in Tom’s ear, “You hurt?” He turned and saw a youngish sandy-haired man with a black bag, the arena doctor.

Tom said, “No. Just… shook up.”

The doctor watched his face, saw his quick gasps for breath. “Can you walk, or shall I call a stretcher?”

“I’ll walk.”

They went to the first-aid room and the doctor stripped back Tom’s shirt and made a quick examination. He loaded a syringe, jabbed it in Tom’s left arm. “This will ease the pain. Your right arm’s broken and probably a few ribs.” He turned to an older man. “ I want X rays of his right arm and his chest. I’ll be at the hospital by the time they’ve got the pictures.”

Half an hour later Tom was in a hospital bed and the doctor was splinting his arm. “The radius is broken,” he said, “the big bone. But the ulna’s all right.” He reached for the tape. “And you’ve got four broken ribs. I’ll have to tape you. That’s all I can do for them. But you’re going to lie here a few days till we see how your guts are.” He gave him another shot. “You’re through riding for a while. I’ll see you tomorrow.”