nearly amputating his right hand when it wouldn’t come free of the harness rope. Insult charged as he scrambled for safety. He hooked Bob through his shirt and threw him down on the ground and then proceeded to stomp on his groin with such force that his scrotum was forever crimped around the edges like one of Mary’s sage and butter raviolis. Bob rarely finished in the money after that. He told Mary that their family problems were a distraction and he couldn’t maintain focus, but the truth was the incident with Insult caused him to lose his nerve. He became unstable—the slightest incident would set him off. If the kid at the Dairy Queen told him that they’d run out of butterscotch dip, he’d storm out looking for someone’s head to rip off. He’d show up at the High Grade just to pick a fight. But after the news spread about his flattened testicles, no one took him seriously as a brawler. So, he took the fight home.
If you’d asked him, Bob would have told you that he loved Mary more than words could say—and he meant it. But deep down he suspected that she considered him a loser. Sometimes he would go to stroke her hair or caress her face, and find himself hitting her. When his autistic son acted up, Bob would try to hug him into stopping, but wound up shaking him until foamy spittle flew from his mouth. When his daughters protested, he whipped them with his champion rodeo buckle.
After Sheriff Dudival came to the house the night of the 911 call—and acquiesced to Mary’s request that he not be arrested—he nevertheless made it clear to Bob that if he ever saw Mary in town with a bruise or a black eye, he would personally drive him to Canon City State Prison. Bob knew that Sheriff Dudival meant business, so after that he made sure he wore Mary’s quilted oven mittens when smacking her.
As for Buster, Bob beat him up in the guise of giving him boxing lessons, but Buster considered himself fortunate that a male role model was actually taking the time for him. In appreciation, Buster tapped out a pie plate portrait of Bob depicting him astride a rip-snorting bucking bull. Bob regarded his tribute gimlet-eyed.
“Who the hell is that supposed to be?”
“Why heck, Pop…it’s you.”
“I meant, the bull.”
“The bull?”
Bob, in his post-traumatic state, believed the bull to be Insult to Injury and further, that Buster had rendered him aboard his old nemesis to have a laugh at his expense. He grabbed Buster by the hair and pulled him down, sideways to his height.
“Friend, you done woke up the wrong passenger!”
“Ow, Pop! The bull don’t have a name. He’s jes’ ‘Bull!’”
Bob’s eyelids fluttered a few times as if a hypnotist had just snapped his fingers and told him he could stop being a chicken. He took a deep breath and let go of Buster’s hair.
“Sorry, kid. One of these days, I oughta go git my head examined.”
“Ah’ll git rid of this plate direkly, so yool never have to think about it, Pop.”
Buster started to walk to the trashcan, but Bob stopped him.
“The hell, you say! What you done there is special… It’s like I’m on my own damn coin!” He looked at it again, this time admiringly. “I’ll tell you somethin’ I’ll never tell her. I wish you were my son—instead a that re-tard, Bob Jr,.” he said, gesturing back to the house.
“Aw, he’s all right, Pop. He’s jes a lil techy.”
“Crime of it is, I was hopin’ to pass down everthang I knew about cowboyin’, but there you damn have it!”
Buster swallowed hard and dared to speak.
“Uh…ya think you could teach me?”
Bob may not have known how to send an email or chip a golf ball with a fifty-six degree wedge to make it hop twice then stop dead six inches from the flag, but before he lost his confidence, he could throw a rope around the engine of a moving train and rope a steer and tie its legs together in nine seconds flat.
“Why the hell not?”
They started off with a thirty-foot extra-soft rope. Bob taught him how to lay it out, to coil it, make a spoke and swing it. Bob taught him how to throw a Figure Eight that could catch the head of a steer and his front legs. He taught him the Roll Over to catch all four legs. He taught him how to throw a loop standing, and he taught him how to throw one on a moving horse. And when Bob was sure Buster had the fundamentals, he taught him the surefire stuff to impress the girls. In a few weeks time, Buster was able to do the Slow-motion Roll across his back, the Tiny Loop Scoot along the ground like he was walking a dog, and the crowd pleasing Texas Skip with two ropes—alternating jumps between each one without taking off his hat.
As for riding, Buster had already proven in the Vanadium Labor Day Rodeo that he could stay on a horse. Bob had actually been in the crowd that day—marveling along with everyone else. But as Bob now pointed out, staying on a horse was not exactly the same as riding a horse.
By way of illustration, Bob led his bay mare into the corral. He grabbed her mane while holding the reins and then, in one smooth motion, swung himself up in the saddle. His posture was upright; his knees lightly making contact with the rib cage of the horse, but from the knees down his legs flared out, his boots in stirrups—the weight on the balls of his feet, heels down. He let the reins drop. The bay waited for the light to change. Then, Bob gently touched her left underflank with the back of his spur and she moved her hips to the right. He tapped under her right side and she sashayed to the left. Now, Bob leaned slightly forward in the saddle and the horse began to trot. He put pressure on her with both legs and she began a slow, graceful lope in a circle. Bob’s ass never left the saddle; his pelvis rocking back and forward with her movement—all the while with an odd look of bliss on his face that Buster had never seen when Bob was inside the house.
Teaching Buster, in the weeks and months ahead, produced in Bob unexpected vigor. He began to love cowboying again as Buster’s unalloyed enthusiasm recorded over his own fear. So when he saw the ad for the Copenhagen Rompin’ Stompin’ Show in Ranch World magazine, he threw caution to the wind and mailed in his entrance fee.
Before Bob left for the arena in Cheyenne, Wyoming, he gave Buster, as a gesture of gratitude, a lariat—which he had braided himself some twenty years ago—when cowboys still used Plymouth Yacht Linen. He jury-rigged a surrogate roping critter with real bull’s horns so Buster could practice throwing the lariat while he was away. All of this may have been small potatoes to recommend Bob as a member of the human race, but it was something. In fact, the minister even mentioned it at Bob’s funeral.
Bob arrived in Cheyenne in the early evening and checked into the Cock Robin Motel. He ate the sandwich that Mary had made for him, did some push-ups and sit ups, then went to bed. That night, he had a dream that he was going to be killed by a bull. The next morning, he tried to brush it off, but when he went to the arena to sign in and get his number, his delicate mental state came under attack.
The more successful cowboys had flown in on their own Cessnas. That was the first thing that irritated Bob; that he had to drive all the way there in a twelve year-old truck with a bad front end. Then there were the obligatory jokes about his crushed testicles. To make matters worse, he didn’t draw a very good bull. But he made it to the buzzer and he didn’t get hurt, so that smoothed his hackles somewhat. He placed fourth and won $1,500. A rodeo clown, who he used to go drinking with, felt sorry for the ribbing the other cowboys had given him and counted out six white crosses for Bob’s ride home. However, Bob didn’t take the present in the spirit in which it
