When the Women Come out to Dance (2002) (20 page)

Her hand moved across the linen tablecloth to his with the cracked, yellowed nails and took hold of it, clutched it.

She said, "You're going to leave."

He said, "When it's time."

She said, "I know you. I don't know anyone else."

He said, "You're the loveliest woman I've ever met. An
d the strongest. Are you ready? I think the man coming now i s your husband."

It seemed strange to Ruben Vega that the man stood looking at him and not at his wife. The man seemed not too old for her, as he had expected, but too self-important. A ma n with a very serious demeanor, as though his business ha d failed or someone in his family had passed away. The man'
s wife was still clutching the hand with the gnarled fingers.

Maybe that was it. Ruben Vega was going to lift her han
d from his, but then thought, Why? He said as pleasantly as h e was able, "Yes, can I help you?"

Mr. Isham said, "You have one minute to mount up an
d ride out of town."

"Why don't you sit down," Ruben Vega said, "have a glas
s of wine with us?" He paused and said, "I'll introduce you t o your wife."

Sarah Isham laughed; not loud but with a warmth to it an
d Ruben Vega had to look at her and smile. It seemed all righ t to release her hand now. As he did he said, "Do you know thi s gentleman?"

"I'm not sure I've had the pleasure," Sarah Isham said.

"Why does he stand there?"

"I don't know," Ruben Vega said. "He seems worried abou
t something."

"I've warned you," Mr. Isham said. "You can walk out or b
e dragged out."

Ruben Vega said, "He has something about wanting t
o drag people. Why is that?" And again heard Sarah's laugh, a giggle now that she covered with her hand. Then she looke d up at her husband, her face with its blue tribal lines raised t o the soft light of the dining room.

She said, "John, look at me. . . . Won't you please si
t with us?"

Now it was as if the man had to make a moral decision
, first consult his conscience, then consider the manner i n which he would pull the chair out--the center of attention.

When finally he was seated, upright on the chair and somewhat away from the table, Ruben Vega thought, All that to sit down. He felt sorry for the man now, because the man wa s not the kind who could say what he felt.

Sarah said, "John, can you look at me?"

He said, "Of course I can."

"Then do it. I'm right here."

"We'll talk later," her husband said.

She said, "When? Is there a visitor's day?"

"You'll be coming to the house, soon."

"You mean to see it?"

"To live there."

She looked at Ruben Vega with just the trace of a smile,
a sad one. Then said to her husband, "I don't know if I want to.

I don't know you. So I don't know if I want to be married t
o you. Can you understand that?"

Ruben Vega was nodding as she spoke. He could understand it. He heard the man say, "But we are married. I have W
a n obligation to you and I respect it. Don't I provide for you?"

Sarah said, "Oh, my God--" and looked at Ruben Vega.

"Did you hear that? He provides for me." She smiled again
, not able to hide it, while her husband began to frown , confused.

"He's a generous man," Ruben Vega said, pushing up fro
m the table. He saw her smile fade, though something warm remained in her eyes. "I'm sorry. I have to leave. I'm going on a trip tonight, south, and first I have to pick up a few things."

He moved around the table to take one of her hands in his
, not caring what the husband thought. He said, "You'll do al l right, whatever you decide. Just keep in mind there's no on e else in the world like you."

She said, "I can always charge admission. Do you think te
n cents a look is too high?"

"At least that," Ruben Vega said. "But you'll think o
f something better."

He left her there in the dining room of the Charles Crooke
r Hotel in Benson, Arizona--maybe to see her again sometime , maybe not--and went out with a good conscience to tak e some of her husband's cattle.

*

*

TENKILLER.

At Kim's funeral--people coming up to Be
n with their solemn faces--he couldn't hel p thinking of what his granddad Carl had said t o him fifteen years ago, that he hoped Ben woul d have better luck with women.

"We seem to have 'em around for a year o
r so," the old man said, "and they take off or di e on us."

It was on Ben's mind today, along with a feeling of expectation he couldn't help. Here he was standing ten feet from the open casket, Kim i n there with her blond hair sprayed for maybe th e first time, her lips sealed, a girl he lived wit h and loved, and he was anxious to take off. G
o home as a different person. Maybe look up a gir l named Denise he used to know, if she was stil l around. Get away from the movie business for a while.

He could've taken 40, a clear shot across the entire Southwest from L
. A . to Okmulgee, Oklahoma, fourteen hundred miles, but took 10 instead, drove four hundred miles out of his way to look in on the Professional Bull Rider s Bud Light World Challenge in Austin. Getting away was th e main thing; there was no hurry to get home.

He thought he might see some of his old buddies hangin
g around the chutes, not a one Ben's age still riding. Get up i n your thirties and have any brains you were through wit h bulls. Ben entered the working end of the arena to the smel l of livestock, got as far as the pens shaking hands and wa s taken up to the broadcast booth. An old guy he remembere d as Owen still calling the rides.

Owen said, "Folks," taking the mike from its stand as h
e got up, "we have a surprise visitor showed up, former worl d champion bull rider Ben Webster, out of Okmulgee, Oklahoma." He said, "Ben, I liked to not recognize you without your hat on. Man, all that hair--you gone Hollywood on us o r what?" Owen straight-faced, having fun with him.

Ben slipped his sunglasses off saying yeah, well, he'd bee
n working out there the past ten years, getting by.

"Your name still comes up," Owen said. "I see a youn
g rider shows some style, I wonder could he be another Be n Webster. I won't say you made it look easy, but you sure sat a bull, and didn't appear to get off till you felt like it. Listen, I w ant to hear what you been doing in Hollywood, but righ t now, folks, we got Stubby Dobbs, a hundred and thirty-fiv e pounds of cowboy astride a two-thousand-pound Brahm a name of Nitro." Owen turned to the TV monitor. "You se e Stubby wrapping his bull rope good and tight. Ben, you don'
t want your hand to slip out of there during a ride."

"You're gone if it does," Ben said.

He had taken Kim to a rodeo in Las Vegas, explained ho
w you had to stay on the bull eight seconds holding on with on e hand, and you can't touch the bull with your other hand, an d she said, "Eight seconds, that's all? Hell." He told her sh e might last a second or two, being athletic. Kim said, "Bring i t on," waving both hands toward her body, "I'll ride him." He'
d miss the way things he said to her could become fightin g words.

"All right," Owen was saying, "I believe Stubby's ready
, tugging his hat down . . . And here we go, folks, Stubb y Dobbs out of Polson, Montana, on Nitro. Ride him, Stubby."

Ben watched the butternut bull come humping out of th
e gate like he had a cow's butt under him, humping and bucking, wanting this boy off his back in a hurry, the bull throwing his hindquarters in the air now with a hard twist, Nitro humping and twisting in a circle, Stubby's free hand reachin g out for balance, the bull humping and twisting his "caboose,"

Owen called it, right up to the buzzer and Stubby let go to b
e flung in the air, whipped from the bull to land hard in th e arena dirt.

"Well, you can hear the crowd liked that ride," Owe
n said, "it was a good'n. But it looks like Stubby's favoring hi s shoulder."

Stubby holding one arm tight to his body and lookin
g back as he scurried to safety, the rodeo clowns heading Nitr o for the exit gate, Ben thinking: Don't look back. You're a bull rider, boy, get some strut in your gait. Check the rodeo bunnies in the first row and tip your hat.

"You can ride to the buzzer," Owen was telling the crowd
, "and still get in trouble on your dis-mount. Ben, I imagin e you had your share of injuries."

"The usual, separated shoulders, busted collarbone. Tha
t padded vest is good for sponsor decals but that's about all."

"You think riders'll ever have to wear helmets?"

Ben said, "Owen, the day they won't let you wear you
r cowboy hat, there won't be anybody riding bulls."

"I know what you mean," Owen said. "Well, I though
t Stubby rode that train to score a good ninety points or better.

How did you see he did, Ben?"

They were waiting for the number to show on the monitor.

"I think the judges'll give Stubby his ride," Ben said, "bu
t won't think as much of that bull. He hasn't learned all th e dirty tricks yet, kept humping in the same direction. I'd hav e to score it an eighty-five."

And there it was on the monitor, eighty-five, Owen saying, "Well, Ben Webster still knows his bulls." Owen was looking toward the stalls now, saying that while the next ride r was getting ready they'd take a commercial break. Owe n turned off his mike and said to Ben, "Come on sit down. I w ant to hear some of the movies you were in."

"I was in Dances with Wolves
,
my firs t picture."

"What were you in it? I don't recall seeing you."

"I was a Lakota Sioux. Got shot off my horse by a Yanke
e soldier. I was in Braveheart. Took an arrow in the chest an d went off the horse's rump. Die Hard with a Vengeance I wrecke d cars. I got shot in Air Force One, run through with a sword i n The Mask of Zorro. I got stepped on in Godzilla, in a car. Let'
s see, I was in Independence Day . . ."

"Yeah . . . ?"

"Last Action Hero, Rising Sun, Black Rain . . . Terminal Velocity. Others I can't think of offhand."

"I missed some of them," Owen said. "I was wondering, al
l those movies, you have a big part in any of 'em?"

"I'm a stuntman, Owen. They learn you rode bulls, you'r
e hired."

A kid from Brazil named Adriano rode a coupl
e of bulls that hated him and were mature and had all th e moves--one of them called Dillinger, last year's bull of th e year--and the kid hung on to take the $75,000 purse.

Seventy-five grand for sitting on bulls for sixteen seconds.

Ben picked up three cases of Bud, a cold six-pack and a ba
g of ice for his cooler at the drive-thru Party Barn and aimed hi s black Mercedes SUV north toward Dallas, two hundred miles.

He'd cross the Oklahoma line and head for McAlester, hom
e of the state prison he used to visit with his granddad, Carl , and then on up to Okmulgee, the whole trip close to fourfifty--get home at three A . M
. No, he'd better stop at a motel the other side of Dallas, take his time in the morning and ge t there about noon. Drive through town, see if it had change d any. The last time he was home, seven years ago, was for hi s granddad's funeral. Carl Webster, who'd raised him, dead at eighty.

Ben was thinking, sixteen into seventy-five thousand wa
s around . . . forty-five hundred a second, about what you go t for smashing up a car. He had earned $485,342 less expense s his last year of bull riding, way more than he ever made in a year doing stunt gags.

The six-pack was in the cooler behind his seat, a cold Bu
d wedged between his thighs, Ben following his high beam s into the dark listening to country on the radio. The thre e cases of beer were in the far back with his stuff: travel bag s full of clothes, coats on hangers, four pair of boots--two o f them worn out but would break his heart to get rid of. He ha d boxes of photographs back there, movie videos, books . . .

One of the books, written before Ben was born, was a volume of Oklahoma history called Hell Raisin' Days that covered a period from the 1870s to the Second World War. Ben's grandfather and great-grandfather were both in the book. H
e had told Kim about them.

How Virgil Webster, his great-granddad, was born i
n Oklahoma when it was Indian Territory, his mother par t Northern Cheyenne. Virgil was a marine on the battleshi p Maine when she blew up in Havana Harbor, February 15
, 1898. He survived to fight in the Spanish-American War, wa s wounded, married a girl named Graciaplena in Cuba, an d came home to buy a section of land that had pecan trees on it.