rider who was clearly stuck fast to the binding on the bull’s rigging and was getting tossed about like a rag doll. It looked rough. It looked dangerous. It looked … and it was at that point, Anne fainted.
When she woke, Anne found herself on a St John Ambulance stretcher bed, with the doors of the cab wide open, revealing the leafy canopy of the shady trees. Above her was a red-faced man and a pimply young woman.
‘Where’s your hat, young lady?’ said the man.
‘What?’
‘Heatstroke.’
‘But…’
‘Don’t worry, love. Someone’s gone to find Randy. They said he was a friend of yours.’
‘Randy?’ Anne said, sitting up and feeling woozy, knowing that it was more than just heatstroke that had caused her to faint. After another fight with Simon she’d partied pretty hard this week. Memories of her drug-fuelled rave came back to haunt her. She was still toxed. She knew it.
At that moment, at the back of the vehicle, the rodeo clown she saw earlier appeared. He wore runners, bright red skins that showed off perfectly formed legs, big oversized denim shorts held up with yellow braces and a pink shirt with large stars of various colours splashed over it. Rags of green, yellow and red hung from his belt and beneath his dusty cowboy hat was a riotous red curling wig. His face was painted, smeared with white, a big red clown mouth turned upwards and he had the signature black smudges above and below the white circles of his clown eyes.
‘Randy, hi!’ said the pimply girl in the tone of an airhead, Anne thought.
‘Why hello, Darlene,’ he said in a slow southern American accent.
‘Thanks for visiting my brother in hospital last week,’ the spotty St John volunteer said, her eyes illuminated with an obvious display of girlie crush.
‘My pleasure. He’s a cute kid. I hope he’s feelin’ better.’ Randy turned to look at Anne. ‘So, they tell me you’re the lass from the uni, come to grill me?’
‘I…?’ Anne began, embarrassed to be found in an ambulance by her interviewee. She swung her legs over the side of the bed, just as the St John man stepped forward with a rehydration drink for her.
‘Sit up slowly, young lady. We don’t want you cracking your scone if you faint again.’
Randy surveyed her from behind his clown make-up and shook his head. ‘No point you interviewing me in your present state. You’d better come back to my camp. Have a bit of a rest. Thank you, Darlene, thank you, Frank. I can take the little lady from here.’
A while later Anne found herself with a thumping headache at Randy’s ‘camp’, which was an extremely long horse trailer he called a Gooseneck. Inside were angled bays for the horses, where a big palomino stood munching on hay. Randy had sat her in a deck chair and showed her where he cooked, ate, slept and showered, which was basically in the back of the truck with the horses.
‘It’s charming,’ she said sarcastically. ‘And why isn’t this poor horse out in the yards with the others? Why is he shut in here?’ Anne turned to look at the strangely dressed man before her. It was hard to tell his age through the face paint. It was hard to tell his body shape. He had protective gear under his shirt and just looked boxy and square.
‘Mostly coz he likes it in here with me. We’re pretty good mates and because he’s a bull.’
‘A bull? But he’s a horse,’ Anne said.
Randy laughed. ‘I mean he’s a bull. He’s a stallion,’ he said. ‘You want to know about male aggression, little lady? He’ll kill another male that gets between him and his girls.’
Anne looked at the placid horse with the golden mane that looked as if it belonged in a Disney video. ‘Really?’
‘Ma’am, with all due respect, you don’t know much about animals and men, do ya?’
Anne felt herself stiffen. She was dux of her year last year at uni and had scored distinctions right the way through this semester. And she had a boyfriend.
She was about to answer when Randy, who was chewing on the end of a bit of hay, said, ‘Why do you think we castrate most of the male animals in our farming systems? It’s to keep order. That many males and all that testosterone would be too hard to handle. If you had seen them bulls out there today, you would’ve realised that running one thousand of those boys in one herd together would create all kinds of hell-raising. That’s kinda what’s happened to humans on planet Earth. There are a lot of males out there should never been bred, causing wars and pollution and a whole world of trouble. In farming, we leave the nuts in the best of them, the calm ones, the handsome ones, the most productive ones. You cut the nuts out of the rest, because that way you have order and a nice line of animals. I reckon there’d be plenty of women like to do the same to humanity. No use it being a “man’s world” when the men ain’t payin’ attention to what the women want.’
Anne tried to take in what he was saying. Her head was still thumping.
‘Way you come across in the world, ma’am, I reckon you’d like to castrate the aggressive, useless males and select the ones you women want and need for breeding.’
‘Excuse me? No! I…’ Anne said, her cheeks flaming red with offence.
‘Of course, I can say that confidently, about the castration, because I know the women would keep me as a bull. Not many women wouldn’t want babies outta me.’
Anne’s mouth dropped open and her eyes widened. The arrogance of the man! ‘Why … you…!’
She was about to stand up, but Randy had already ducked out of the Gooseneck. When he returned, he handed her a packet of painkillers and a pannikin of what smelled like rum.
‘Wash it down with that and it’ll all seem better, darlin’. And you do know, I’m teasin’ ya. You look like you could do with a bellyachin’ laugh.’
‘Don’t you darlin’ me,’ Anne said. ‘It’s patronising.’
‘Patronising? Or flatterising?’ he said with his clownish grin. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to take a shower. I’m stiff, I’m sore, I’m busted and I’m dusted. This make-up is annoying the hollerin’ hell outta me.’ And with that, the rodeo clown began to take off his runners and proceeded to undress right there in front of Anne.
‘I … You … Um, excuse me?’ she stammered.
He stopped unbuttoning his shirt and looked at her. Anne could see vibrant blue pupils ringed with grey.
‘Well, you are in my shower room. You never seen a man’s body before? You can sit outside, but the mozzies’ll eat you this time of evening. I suggest you stay right there with your headache and look away, young lady. Or you’re welcome to jump right in and join me. It’s river water pumped from just outside. Makes your hair nice and soft. Might wash away your headache and your sins.’
‘Sins?’ She rolled her eyes again. This man was frustrating! Arrogant, aggressive and frustrating!
But Anne found she couldn’t help sneaking glances as he dropped the denim clown shorts, pulled
