“Don’t fuck with me, boy.”
“Ah’m jes out here workin’. ”
The cowboy took a bag of tobacco out of his pocket and some rolling papers.
“Ah serpose yor one of them Messican shit shovelers.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Don’t be so fuckin’ proud ’bout it! You jes’ wanna throw in the sponge and shovel shit all yer lahf?”
“Uh, uh, uh…” Buster stammered.
“Well, shoot, Luke or give up the gun!”
“No sir. Ah ain’t gonna shovel shit all mah lahf!”
“That raht? Then what’re you fixin’ to do?”
“Ah’m a fixin’ to, uh…” Buster’s voice trailed off, realizing that he really didn’t know. The other Dominguez children, with the exception of Cookie, would quickly say that they were considering law and medicine. Buster had no such aspirations—only that he wanted no job that required staying indoors. His foster mother told him not to worry—that one day his calling would come to him. Here, standing cocky and bowlegged before him, armored in sage-lashed leather chaps, a rope, and a sweat-stained four-ply beaver hat, with a powerful, loyal beast saddled at his side impatiently pawing the ground wanting to get going—anywhere—was what he suddenly decided was all he ever wanted.
“Ah’m fixin’ to be lahk you…a cowboy.”
“That’s very interestin’. Very interestin’, indeed. Pay ain’t ver’ good ’n yood be kickin’ ’round in the comp’ny of scum mostly.”
“Heck, ah’d be havin’ my own place here.”
“And jes’ how do you plan pullin’ that off?”
“Sheriff says anythin’s posserble if a feller puts a mind to it.”
“Oh, he said that, did he? Anythin’s posserbull. You jes…” The cowboy snapped his fingers. “And ya got yorself a ranch!” The cowboy laughed and laughed then bent over coughing until he expectorated a wad of yellow phlegm on the ground that was variegated with blood like the yolk of a quail’s egg.
Buster almost gagged. “Well, ah’m sure it aint gonna be that easy…”
“No, pard,” the cowboy said, wiping his mouth. “It ain’t goner be easy. Some folks out here kilt for their land. But anythin’s fuckin’ posserble! ’Fact jes last year, ah seen a heifer born with two heads!” The cowboy pulled at his crotch making an adjustment. “Quirley?”
“Uh, sure.” Buster said, not knowing that he was agreeing to a hand-rolled cigarette.
He looked on with horror as the cowboy tapped the tobacco into the rolling paper, licked the gummed end, then put the whole thing in his mouth to wet it. Buster didn’t want it anymore, but didn’t want to incite him. He could see the notched grip of a Colt peeking out from a shoulder rig under his coat.
“There you go, cowboy.” He lit it for him and lit another one for himself. ”You lahk it out here?”
“Yes, sir, ah do.”
“It ain’t fer ever’body,” he said, casting his squint around the mesa. “Takes a lot of seein’ to.” The real meaning of that understatement would not become clear to Buster for another ten years.
Buster went over and rubbed his horse’s nose.
“What’s his name?” Buster said puffing his first cigarette.
“Name’s Nicker,” the cowboy said disingenuously, not quite pronouncing it that way.
“That ain’t a very nice name,” Buster said.
The cowboy’s eyes flashed and he snatched the butt from Buster’s hand, pitched the ember and stuck it back behind his own ear.
“Nicker’s the sound a horse makes, for yor goddamn infermashun! Do you know who the hell yor speakin’ to?”
“No sir, ah don’t.”
“Ah’m Jimmy Bayles Morgan!” he said angrily. “Don’t you go to the school?”
“Yes, sir!”
“Don’t they teach ya who the goddamn founders of this town was?”
“Ah thought the people who found it were the Indians.”
“No! The folks who kep’ it.”
“Kep’ it from what?”
“From the socialists with the labor unions and what not, you nitwit!”
“Ah don’t know nothin’ ’bout all that.”
“Are you a cretin or a moron?”
Buster only knew what a moron was.
“Ah’m a cretin, sir.”
“Bro-ther, you take the fuckin’ cake!” The cowboy laughed, shaking his head. “All right, jes tell me one fuckin’ thing you do know with all the damn taxes ah pay in this damn county to ed-u-cate you.”
“January fifteenth is Martin Luther King Day.”
That caused another spell of coughing from the cowboy.
“Are you fuckin’ with me? That’s what they teach you in school…about a goddamn womanizin’ communist? What grade you in…fourth?”
“Seventh.”
“Christ Almighty, seventh grade!” The cowboy turned and looked down into the valley, seeming to focus on the Vanadium Elementary School. “Ah got a good mind to ride down there Monday mornin’ and pay that school a visit!”
“Please don’t do that!” Buster blurted.
The cowboy narrowed his eyes and slowly approached Buster until they were nose to nose and he could see the dark brown nicotine stains on the cowboy’s teeth and the smell of his consumptive breath.
“Why the hell shoont ah?”
Buster had no idea who Jimmy Bayles Morgan was, but one thing was certain, he would say anything right then to keep this character from embarrassing him at school.
“Because we’re fixin’ to learn ’bout the town founders in the eighth grade.”
“About how my granddaddy, Sheriff Morgan, saved this damn town from damn Swedes and wop anarchists?”
“Yessir. We’re gonna be gettin’ that.”
Jimmy Bayles Morgan studied his face for a moment longer and spit. “You ain’t really, are ya?” Buster’s eyes started to fill with tears. “You just didn’t want ol’ Jimmy ridin’ down there raisin’ sand. Ain’t that the truth of it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Lemme tell you somethin’, bub,” he said, jabbing Buster in the chest with a crooked, rheumatoid finger. “Ah don’t abide with a lahr.” Fortunately, the pair was interrupted by the sound of Dominguez’s dump truck. The cowboy turned and regarded its broad form breaking the horizon.
“That the big bug?”
“That’d be Mr. Dominguez, my foster daddy.”
“Uh huh… What’s that greezy frijole like?”
“He’s all right, ah guess.”
“Nothin’…funny ’bout him?”
“He ain’t funny at all.”
“Is that raht?”
Jimmy Bayles Morgan hocked up another goober and spit. Buster’s heart