“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 was given.
“I should have the ten thousand dollars, not this shit!” And that may have been Bob’s problem in a nutshell—not to poke fun at Bob’s anomalous anatomy. When you’ve been the best at something, nothing less ever seems good enough.
The 450-mile trip home was a hellish drive in a howling spring snowstorm. It took him thirteen and a half hours to get back to Vanadium. Buster was outside when he saw Bob’s truck pull up, still covered in ice and snow. Buster had the presence of mind to make himself scarce when he saw what Bob’s glazed eyes looked like. The house was a mess. The kids had runny noses, and everyone was screaming. His autistic son, Bob Jr., was singing the hook to a pop song in a black lady’s falsetto—over and over again. Bob started counting to ten. His mouth was dry, and his breath was putrid from the white crosses and the bile of his own bad temperament. He went to the refrigerator and grabbed a beer. Mary was in the kitchen—noisily grinding walnuts for an order of banana cake, which had to be ready by six. Bob tried to stand there nonchalantly like the loose-jointed, laconic cowboy he used to be. At this very moment, he was of two minds. He was either going to call upon all of his strength to act normal, tell his wife he had won a little bit of money, or he was going to take the Hamilton blender and bash her head with it.
Buster was standing on the back of Bob’s pickup throwing a lasso at his surrogate roping steer. Over and over again he flung it, tied it off on one of the aluminum cleats on the perimeter of the truck bed, jumped down and wrestled it to the ground and tied its wooden legs. That’s when he heard the screams from inside the house. He left his rope tied to the steer and ran inside. The kids were all crying. Mary, a deep purple gash above her right eyebrow, was being dragged from room to room. Buster didn’t know what to do. He had never confronted a full-grown man before. He stood there and watched as Bob punched her and kicked her. Suddenly, he found himself flying across the living room in slow motion and into the back of Bob Boyle’s legs. Buster threw him down, took a stretch of rope from his belt and quickly cinched it around Bob’s ankles. Mary woozily got up and went to the kitchen where she retrieved two ten-inch Calphalon fry pans and clanged Bob’s head on both sides until his blood rolled off the catalogue-promised non-stick surface. She was able to get in three more cymbal crashes before Bob worked the ropes off his feet, broke her nose and ran howling like a banshee out of the house.
He started up his truck and hit the gas sending a rooster tail of loose gravel up against the building. His ears were ringing as he tore down Possum heading for Piñon. Bob had no idea that he was dragging the practice steer—still tied to the truck. Up ahead, the Red Hat Produce man was backing up the street to make a delivery. Bob put his foot down on the brake, but his boot went right to the floor. He smacked into the tailgate of the produce truck going fifty miles an hour. He survived the actual collision, but then, the momentum of the surrogate steer sent it flying through the back window of the cab. The bull’s sharp horns, which Bob had attached with baling wire, smashed through the glass. One of them pierced the back of his neck, passed through his brain stem and out of his astonished mouth.
Sheriff Dudival arrived on the scene, and, together with Mary and Buster’s testimony, worked out the cause of death. Bob was not able to stop the truck because his brake line had been cut.
“Mary says you put up a pretty good fight with Bob. Is that true?”
“Ah don’t rightly rem’ber much ’bout it.”
“Do you know how the brakes on a vehicle work, son?”
“Yesssir. Ya put yer foot down on the petal and that’s what stops ’er.”
“Do you have a pocket knife?”
“Yes, sir.”
“May I see it please?”
Buster dug around in his jeans and came up with a rusty old pocketknife.
“You didn’t cut those brake lines with this pocket knife, did you son?”
“No sir. Ah did not.”
The