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  BULL RIDER

  Margaret K. McElderry Books

  An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020 This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2009 by Suzanne Morgan Williams

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Williams, Suzanne, 1949–

  Bull rider / Suzanne Williams.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: When his older brother, a bull-riding champion, returns from Iraq partially paralyzed, fourteen-year-old Cam puts away his skateboard to enter a $15,000 bull-riding challenge to earn money to help his depressed and rehabilitating brother pull his life back together.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4391-5668-1

  ISBN-10: 1-4391-5668-9

  [1. Bull riding—Fiction. 2. Brothers—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.W66824Bu 2009

  [Fic]—dc22

  2007052518

  Visit us on the World Wide Web:

  http://www.SimonSays.com

  To my husband, Reed, for his constant and

  sustaining support, and to the troops who served

  in Iraq and Afghanistan and their families.

  BULL RIDER

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  AUTHOR'S NOTE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  Folks in Salt Lick say I couldn’t shake bull riding if I tried. It’s in my blood, my family. Around here, any guy named Cam O’Mara should be a bull rider. But if you’ve ever looked a sixteen-hundred-pound bucking bull named Ugly in the eye and thought about holding on to his back with a stiff rawhide handle, some pine tar, and a prayer, well, you’d know why I favored skateboarding. My grandpa Roy, my dad, my brother, Ben, they could all go as crazy as they liked, sticking eight seconds on a bull for the adrenaline rush and maybe a silver buckle. But me, I’d take my falls on the asphalt. I’d master something that I could roll under my bed when I was done with it. Or so I thought.

  It was June and my big brother, Ben, was home on leave from the Marines. He started in on me about the skateboarding. “Cam, I’m gonna break that thing and then you’ll have time for something really extreme.” Ben’s five years older than me, which is enough difference to mean he didn’t beat on me the way some older brothers do, but he wouldn’t leave me alone, either. “When are you gonna stop being some wannabe skater punk and do rodeo?”

  “About when your head pops off and rolls down the street like a soccer ball.” I jumped toward him like I was going to knock his head across our room with my knee. He faked right and punched me in the stomach. I smashed into him with my shoulder, and we both fell on the floor to wrestle. It took Ben about four seconds to pin me and press my face into the rug. I spit wool hairs out of my mouth.

  “Give? Give? Skater wimp?”

  I never give, and he knew it, so he held me down until he was tired of it, and then he slapped me on the back and let go.

  “You coming in early with me to the rodeo?” he asked.

  “Sure,” I said, getting up and trying not to favor the shoulder he’d had a lock on. It was weird to have Ben home again. I’m not saying it was bad, it was good. It’s just his hair was buzzed from being in the Marines, and without his cowboy hat, he seemed stiff and different. Maybe the year overseas had changed him. But when he pulled the hat on, well, there he was, my brother, Ben, again.

  See, Ben’s a cowboy and so am I, I guess. I mean, I help out on the ranch with the cows. But Ben’s a cowboy. That’s his thing. He was Nevada State High School Bull Riding Champion and all. And I really was glad he was home. The timing couldn’t have been better. School was out, and the rodeo at the Humboldt County Fair was on. Grandpa Roy’d put in the money for an entry—it was enough for a new skateboard for me, but that wasn’t in his plan. “I know Ben doesn’t have much time at home, but what else would he want to do but get in the bull ring? He’s an O’Mara, and we’ll give him the best we can while he’s here.”

  So, Ben was bull riding again—like he’d never been to Iraq at all. Even my six-year-old sister, Lali, knew that was big. She’d been bouncing around all day, asking when we were going. It was almost time, and now that Ben was done squashing me, he rummaged in his drawer for his lucky socks. He’d worn them the first time he won at bull riding, and now he wore them every time there was a prize on the line.

  “You don’t need those socks, you know,” I said.

  “You’re sounding like Mom. And what makes you the expert? Did something change when you turned fourteen?”

  “You can ride any bull, just like Grandpa. I’m just saying you don’t need luck.”

  “I can always use some luck.” He grinned at me.

  Now that was funny. I’d never known anyone as lucky as Ben. He got the good looks and the bull-riding gene—there has to be one in this family—and, geez, he was already grown-up. That counted for something. Me, come August, I had to face Mr. Killworth, “the knucklecruncher,” in ninth grade. That’s my luck.

  Ben found his socks and pulled them on. They looked regular enough—gray work socks—but he’d worn the fuzz down to a shine on the bottoms. That’s what happens when you wear lucky socks enough times. Next came the boots. Those took some serious tugging. Then he reached for his belt with the champion buckle.

  “Remember when you won that?” I asked.

  “Well, yeah.”

  “I carried your bull rope.”

  “And I wore my lucky socks,” he gloated.

  I threw a cushion at him.

  “Watch the hat,” he said.

  At the fair, Ben’s luck just kept flowing. Even the weather was good. The thunderstorms that had been predicted held off, and the stands were full. Dad bought pop and ice cream for us, and Lali about jumped out of her skin, waving at the girls in their satin shirts and bright new jeans who galloped in carrying the flags. I was wired up, counting the minutes till the bull riders and Ben’s go-round.

  His first bull was young and wanted to run around the ring instead of bucking. But he got a reride. The second time he drew Son of Ugly. Now, that’s a bull to score you some points. ’Course he wasn’t as mean and nasty as his sire—they say no one’s ever rode Ugly. But the offspring gave Ben a wicked ride, hopping and twisting and kicking up a dust storm. Ben made his eight-second time and sailed off.

  The high school girls covered their eyes and shrieked when Ben landed. The guys slapped him on the back, and
he disappeared behind the chutes, king of the bull ring. It was almost enough to tempt me onto a bull, but not quite. Ben was the champ. He was the one Dad and Grandpa bragged on to their friends, not me. He could have it. I wasn’t him, and I wasn’t going to try to be.

  I pushed my hair out of my eyes and spotted Mike Gianni, my skateboarding buddy, and Favi Ruiz in the stands. I jumped a rail to get over to them.

  “Man, Ben is great. You don’t ever want to go up on a bull and do that, do you?” Mike asked.

  “Naw.”

  “Cam’s smarter than that,” Favi said.

  “Bull riding’s not about being smart; it’s about being gutsy,” I said.

  “That’s my point.” She looked at me like she’d won something. Favi’s father was foreman on our ranch, and they lived next door to us in the Old House, where my Grandpa Roy was born. I’d known her all my life—like a sister, almost.

  “You don’t need bull riding. You’re better on a skateboard anyway,” Mike said.

  “Best around,” I said with a grin.

  “Except for me. How much longer is Ben in town?”

  I blew some air out of my mouth and shook my head. “A couple more days.”

  “Man that’s harsh,” he said.

  “Yeah, it is,” I agreed. At my house no one talked about when Ben was going back to Iraq. But now I’d said it. Two more days.

  On the way home, I rode with Ben. The windows were down and the air blew around us, warm and sweet smelling from the sagebrush.

  “You ought to start riding,” he said.

  “It’s not my thing.”

  “Well, it should be. You could be one terrific bull rider.”

  “Naw,” I said. “Not like you and Grandpa. You almost won and you haven’t been on a bull in a year. Second isn’t bad.”

  “It’s the socks.”

  I laughed and pinched my nose. “Yeah, it’s that lucky smell.”

  “Man, those socks smell lucky and sweet,” he said, and we laughed until I snorted. When we settled down, the night seemed extra quiet. The tires hummed on the pavement, and after a while a pack of coyotes got to yipping as we drove by.

  “So, why do you have to go back?” The question stretched out between us. O’Maras don’t talk about uncomfortable stuff. The coyotes wound themselves into a frenzy—howling and yelping till my skin bumped up.

  Ben ran his hands up and down on the steering wheel. “They extended everybody. You know that. I’ve got three more months.”

  “It’s not fair.”

  “Lil’ bro’, I might sign up for another year in Iraq after this. I’m thinking about it.”

  “Why?” I stared at him. “I thought you were coming home. You’re gonna win big money on the pro circuit and take it and raise bucking bulls. That’s what you’ve always said.” Ben had run on a hundred or so times about his plan to me and Dad and Grandpa. O’Mara Bucking Bulls—that was his dream. So, I hadn’t one clue as to why he’d want to forget all about it, about us, and be gone for more time over there.

  “There’s guys that need me. They’re short on replacements.”

  “Somebody else can do it. You’re a bull rider.”

  He looked at me like I was just a little slow. “I’m a Marine, and like I said, guys need me.”

  “Well, make them give you some extra armor or a desk job or something.”

  “Don’t need it. My guys got my back.” He put a stick of clove gum in his mouth and held the pack toward me. “So what’d you think of that Son of Ugly?”

  “He looked like a Sunday picnic kind of a bull to me.”

  Ben reached over to grab me, but this time I ducked. The truck swerved and Ben swung it back and forth a couple times across the empty road, and we laughed till it hurt.

  Two days later, Mom and Dad drove Ben in to Reno and he flew back to Iraq. Mom started marking the ninety days off on the kitchen calendar. Dad ran the video of Ben’s high school championship ride again. There was Ben hanging on out of the chute, hand up, bull spinning. You can’t exactly see his face on account of the hat, but I knew what it looked like. It looked just like it did when he whooped me at wrestling or when he beat me racing our horses and looked backwards over his shoulder and grinned a long, long time. I knew that look by heart, so I slipped outside with my dog, Red, and my skateboard.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Before I tell you more, you probably want to know why’d he go anyway? Didn’t he have it made, being Nevada State High School Bull Riding Champ and moving up to the pro circuit? Why’d a good-looking cowboy like my brother go be a jarhead? Well, if you lived in Salt Lick, you’d know. You almost have to look for Salt Lick. It has two churches, a bar, a Grange Hall, a feed store, and a gasoline/grocery that sells Mexican food on the side. It has a new post office and a boarded-up antique store that Mike’s mom, Ella Gianni, opened and closed in the same year.

  In Salt Lick, we know everybody, and half the town is related to each other somehow or other. Every family has somebody who came back from Vietnam with a Purple Heart or somebody who didn’t come back at all. The grandpas, they march in the Veteran’s Day Parade, and you can still get a good story about World War II on Friday night at the Grange Hall if you go early enough to catch the old geezers. Sure, some folks think different, one way or another about politics, but everyone has one thought about the United States. If it’s in trouble, we go.

  And that’s what Ben did. He passed up college and the pro bull-riding circuit, which everybody said he had in the bag, and joined up with the Marines. Everyone thought that was just fine. Except my mom. She held her tongue, but you could see in her eyes it broke her heart. Paco Ruiz signed up too, and Corey Henson. That’s half the senior-class boys, off to the service. We gave ’em a barbecue out at the salt lick.

  Salt Lick really has a salt lick, and it’s smack in the middle of our O’Mara Ranch. It’s a big white hill of salt. The cows love it. And it’s a good thing it’s on our ranch because the cattle come from all over, and then Dad and Grandpa Roy and me get the ATVs and run them back where they came from. But the O’Mara cattle, they just stay put and lick to their hearts’ content. Grandpa Roy says that salt makes ’em grow strong and fat. He figures it’s something like magic, O’Mara salt. I figure it’s salt.

  Summer time, the salt lick is the best place for a party. The salt sparkles in the sun and where the salt stops, the sage and rabbit brush struggle to grow along its edges. A little ways farther is a big swath of low pasture. It’s green out there and there’s a creek and cottonwood trees off to the side. Grandpa Roy says, “It’s God’s very paradise.” Cow or human, don’t matter, the salt lick is perfect. So after Ben graduated from high school and signed his four-year contract with the Marines, we sent those guys off with barbecued steaks and enough pie and watermelon to sink a ship.

  And, of course, while we were there, some of the old guys got to telling stories about how that salt was famous, all the way back to my great-great-grandfather, Sean O’Mara’s times. They told all sorts of stories about it—how if you put it in your whiskey, it would cure a bald head, or if you threw it over your shoulder when the moon was up, your girl couldn’t resist you. Each one tried to tell a bigger whopper. It was like the Salt Lick pastime.

  And stories or not, time passed. That’s the summer I learned how long six weeks can be when a guy’s in boot camp, with Mom perched by the phone waiting for Ben’s calls. She’d answer on the first ring when they came, talk fast, and then say, “He says it’s hot and he doesn’t have time to be homesick. He sends his love.”

  “Did he say anything else? Anything?” Grandpa would ask.

  “No, his time was up. But he sends his love.”

  See, in boot camp, you don’t get to call the outside world but every so often, and when Ben called, he only had two or three minutes. Mom would pretty much put to memory what he said, then call his friends and tell ’em over and over. It made her happy.

  After those calls, I missed Ben—a lot. So I
’d take my skateboard and go to Mike’s house. When you’re feeling down, skateboarding is the best. It’s all about speed and control. And if we weren’t boarding, we watched Mike’s DVDs of Tony Hawk showing ways to do nollies or checked out podcasts of new skate tricks on the computer. Some high school guys at McDermitt had set up an Internet server, so all the ranches were online. At least if Ben had to go away, I still had Mike around.

  When he was done with boot camp, they sent Ben to more training. He passed, of course. Ben came home on his first leave looking taller and stronger. That’s when I learned that a guy does what he’s dealt in the service. “It’s Iraq,” Ben said quietly. “Well, that’s what I signed up for, right?” And once he was over there, I thought about him less. A year is a long time.

  I got to do more stuff around the ranch with him gone. Some of that was cool, like handling the branding iron at the spring calving, and some of it was plain hard work, like digging out willow starts to make more room in Mom’s garden. And sometimes, at night—if there’d been a report on TV about another Nevada soldier who was killed in Iraq, or if they’d shown a twisted up marketplace that exploded in Baghdad—I heard Mom whispering to Dad in their room and crying.

  So having Ben back home on leave in June was great. It was like we were real brothers again. Seeing him bull ride was more awesome. I didn’t believe he’d sign on for more time over there in the war. I believed everything would go back to being the same once he got done with the three-month extension and missions outside of Baghdad and came home to Nevada, or even California—that was close enough. But I was wrong.