there was probably a place in the business for him after college, one of the other stores if he wanted to see the world. He thought it was his choice but when he told her he was going to bullriding school in California she blew up.
“No. You can’t. You’re going to college. What is this, some kid thing you kept to yourself all this time? I worked like a fool to bring you boys up in town, get you out of the mud, give you a chance to make something out of yourselves. You’re just going to throw everything away to be a rodeo bum? My god, whatever I try to do for you, you kick me right in the face.”
“Well, I’m going to rodeo,” he answered. “I’m going to ride bulls.”
“You little devil,” she said. “You’re doing this to spite me and I know it. You are just hateful. You’re not going to get any cheerleading from me on this one.”
“That’s all right,” he said. “I don’t need it.”
“Oh, you need it,” she said. “You need it, all right. Don’t you get it, rodeo’s for ranch boys who don’t have the good opportunities you do? The stupidest ones are the bullriders. We get them in the shop every week trying to sell us those pot-metal buckles or their dirty chaps.”
“Doing it,” he said. It could not be explained.
“I can’t stop a train,” she said. “You’re a royal pain, Shorty, and you always were. Grief from day one. You make this bed you’ll lie in it. I mean it. You’ve got the stubbornness in you,” she said, “like him. You’re just like him, and that’s no compliment.”
Shut the fuck up, he thought, but didn’t say it. He wanted to tell her she could give that set of lies a rest. He was nothing like him, and could not ever be.
“Don’t call me Shorty,” he said.
At the California bullriding school he rode forty animals in a week, invested in a case of sports tape, watched videos until he fell asleep sitting up. The instructor’s tireless nasal voice called, push on it, you can’t never think you’re goin a lose, don’t look into the well, find your balance point, once you’re tapped, get right back into the pocket, don’t never quit.
Back in Wyoming he found a room in Cheyenne, a junk job, bought his permit and started running the Mountain Circuit. He made his PRCA ticket in a month, thought he was in sweet clover. Somebody told him it was beginner’s luck. He ran into Leecil Bewd at almost every rodeo, got drunk with him twice, and, after a time of red-eye solo driving, always broke, too much month and not enough money, they hooked up and traveled together, riding the jumps, covering bulls from one little rodeo to another, eating road dust. He had chosen this rough, bruising life with its confused philosophies of striving to win and apologizing for it when he did, but when he got on there was the dark lightning in his gut, a feeling of blazing real existence.
Leecil drove a thirty-year-old Chevrolet pickup with a bent frame, scabbed and bondo’d, rewired, re-engined, remufflered, a vehicle with a strong head that pulled fiercely to the right. It broke down at mean and crucial times. Once, jamming for Colorado Springs, it quit forty miles short. They leaned under the hood.
“Shoot, I hate pawin around in these goddamn greasy guts, all of a whatness to me. How come you don’t know nothin about cars neither?”
“Just lucky.”
A truck pulled up behind them, calf roper Sweets Musgrove riding shotgun and his pigtailed wife Neve driving. Sweets got out. He was holding a baby in pink rompers.
“Trouble?”
“Can’t tell if it’s trouble. Both so ignorant it might be good news and we wouldn’t know it.”
“I do this for a paycheck,” said Musgrove getting under the hood with his baby and pulling at the truck’s intestinal wires. “Had to live on rodeo we couldn’t make the riffle, could we, baby?” Neve sauntered over, scratched a match on her boot sole and lit a cigarette, leaned on Musgrove.
“You want a knife?” said Leecil. “Cut the sumbuck?”
“You’re getting your baby dirty,” said Diamond, wishing Neve would take it.
“I rather have a greasy little girl than a lonesome baby, mhhmhhmhh?” he said into the baby’s fat neck. “Try startin it now.” It didn’t go and there wasn’t any time to waste fooling with it.
“You can’t both squeeze in with us and my mare don’t like sharin her trailer. But that don’t mean pig pee because there’s a bunch a guys comin on. Somebody’ll pick you up. You’ll get there.” He jammed a mouthguard—pink, orange and purple—over his teeth and grinned at his charmed baby.
Four bullriders with two buckle bunnies in a convertible gathered them up and one of the girls pressed against Diamond from shoulder to ankle the whole way. He got to the arena in a visible mood to ride but not bulls.
It worked pretty well for a year and then Leecil quit. It had been a scorching, dirty afternoon at a Colorado fairgrounds, the showers dead and dry. Leecil squirted water from a gas station hose over his head and neck, drove with the window cranked down, the dry wind sucking up the moisture immediately. The venomous blue sky threw heat.
“Two big jumps, wrecked in time to git stepped on. Man, he ate me. Out a the money again. I sure wasn’t packin enough in my shorts today to ride that trash. Say what, the juice ain’t worth the squeeze. Made up my mind while I was rollin in the dirt. I used a think I wanted a rodeo more than anything,” said Leecil, “but shoot, I got a say I hate it, the travelin, traffic and stinkin motels, the rest of it. Tired a bein sored up all the time. I don’t got that thing you got, the style, the fuck-it-all-I-love-it thing. I miss the ranch bad. The old man’s on my mind. He got some medical problem, can’t hardly make his water good, told my brother there’s blood in his bull stuff. They’re doin tests. And there’s Renata. What I’m tryin a say is, I’m cuttin out on you. Anyway, guess what, goin a get married.” The flaring shadow of the truck sped along a bank cut.
“What do you mean? You knock Renata up?” It was all going at speed.
“Aw, yeah. It’s o.k.”
“Well shit, Leecil. Won’t be much fun now.” He was surprised that it was true. He knew he had little talent for friendship or affection, stood armored against love, though when it did come down on him later it came like an axe and he was slaughtered by it. “I never had a girl stick with me more than two hours. I don’t know how you get past that two hours,” he said.
Leecil looked at him.
He mailed a postcard of a big yellow bull on the charging run, ropes of saliva slung out from his muzzle, to his younger brother Pearl, but did not telephone. After Leecil quit he moved to Texas where there was a rodeo every night for a fast driver red-eyed from staring at pin headlights miles distant alternately dark and burning as the road swelled and fell away.
The second year he was getting some notice and making money until a day or so before the big Fourth of July weekend. He came off a great ride and landed hard on his feet with his right knee sharply flexed, tore the ligaments and damaged cartilage. He was a fast healer but it put him out for the summer. When he was off the crutches, bored and limping around on a cane, he thought about Redsled. The doctor said the hot springs might be a good idea. He picked up a night ride with Tee Dove, a Texas bullrider, the big car slingshot at the black hump of range, dazzle of morning an hour behind the rim, not a dozen words exchanged.
