“My God, I can’t believe this has happened to me.”
“Ah’m sorry, Mommy.”
Buster was going to be a problem. There was no way she could take him to the most famous nudist colony in the world. Buster would be an embarrassment to her. Time and time again, she tried to explain to Buster that looking at someone naked and sexual stimulation were two different things. But despite her patient pedagogy, Buster stubbornly insisted on parading around the house with an erection. If this was her chance to finally get out of Vanadium, she wasn’t going to miss it because of him.“I’ll send somebody up for his clothes,” said the sheriff.
“They’re in the car,” Mrs. Svendergard said.
Sheriff Dudival looked around at the people at the funeral heading for the parking lot. There was the quiet Mary Boyle from the Buttered Roll. Mary was a good person in her early thirties married to Bob Boyle, a one-time star on the rodeo circuit. The sheriff put in an emergency call to the Vanadium Women’s League.
CHAPTER FOUR
Learning the Ropes at the Boyles’
Mary Boyle was in the back of the Buttered Roll stuffing tarragon tuna fish into beefsteak tomatoes when the little bell rang on the door. It was Sheriff Dudival acting as emissary for the Women’s League of Vanadium.
“Hello, Mary, may I speak with you for a moment?”
She wiped her hands on her apron and came out, a look of dread on her face.
“Certainly, Sheriff. Anything wrong?”
“No, no. I just wanted to know how things were going for you at home.”
“You mean, since Bob…?” She didn’t complete the sentence, which would have been: “…beat the living crap out of me and I dialed nine-one-one convinced that he was really going to kill me this time but then I begged you to not arrest him because it would’ve only made life more difficult for me than it was worth and you didn’t?”
“Yes, since then.”
“Things are great,” she said. “Thanks for asking.”
Yes, the sheriff had not arrested Bob, even though the law said it was mandatory. This was but another of the laws that Sheriff Dudival felt better left to his discretion. Mary refused to go to a women’s shelter and she had three young children that she would have had to take care of herself—no daycare being available in Vanadium in those days.
“Happy to help,” he said. “But, uh…” He tilted his hat back to scratch his head. “I was wondering if you might do a little something for me.”
The Boyles lived behind the Buttered Roll, the restaurant Mrs. Boyle had bought before she married Bob, a rodeo star who’d been a regular customer. Like most newlyweds, they’d had big dreams. Theirs was to buy the defunct Victorian Vanadium Hotel on Main Street. It had been built in the forties to house the mining executives who then frequented the town, but when the mine closed, the place had gone to seed. The asking price was $140,000. Mary thought that they could refurbish the place to its former glory. With pencil and paper, Mary and Bob sat down every night and worked out a financial plan. They would support themselves on the Buttered Roll income and bank Bob’s rodeo winnings.
The Boyles’ savings plan went into effect and was working well—even after they had their first child. Mary was still able to run the restaurant and manage the baby. It became a little more difficult after the second child, one year later. At that point, she had to close the restaurant for dinner and serve breakfast and lunch only. Her third child was born autistic. The Vanadium school wouldn’t let him stay in kindergarten. They said he disrupted the class. So, Mary had no other choice but to home school. The Buttered Roll was now only open for breakfast.
In the meantime, Bob’s career had taken an unfortunate turn. A Brahma bull, by the name of Insult to Injury, threw him fifty feet in the air—after 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