Bull Rider Read online

  “Not if we get Jones down here with the cattle truck. We’ll have him back it up to the ramp and just load ’em in the trailer. And when we’ve got a few, we’ll drive ’em back to the holding pen.”

  “The truck could bog down in the mud,” Grandpa said.

  “Then I’ll bring up a load of gravel. Let’s work on the gates.”

  Dad took to running the auger and Grandpa and I mixed cement. The rails were temporary, but there couldn’t be anything half-baked about the posts. Not with bulls behind them. When Dad had a hole cut, we shoveled in some gravel from the road, set a metal pipe for a post, and I got the chore of shoveling in the concrete. It don’t cure right in the cold, so after the posts were set, we piled on half bales of hay to keep the concrete from freezing. Then Grandpa wrapped it all in fence wire so the cows couldn’t eat all our insulation.

  We set posts for two gates—one to use for a bucking chute behind the corral gate and a second one behind that for good measure. The guys would strip the bull ropes off the bulls on the loading ramp before they shooed ’em into Jones’s cattle truck.

  “We’ll hang the gates on Saturday and lay the bonfire,” Dad said. “Ben’ll love it.”

  Grandpa and I nodded. He surely would.

  It was one fine party. The gates were ready, and Neil Jones hauled in the bulls. They came off the truck mooing, their flesh swaying under shaggy winter coats. Dad parked the truck and set Ben’s wheelchair up right in the pickup bed. Ben had a front-row seat. Now that he had his skull repaired, he pulled on his cowboy hat and it fit just fine. Mom refused to watch the riding—it upset her too much. But she said she’d bring Lali, later, to the barbecue. Grandpa and Dad would be moving the bulls, and Andy Echevarria was bullfighting. Darrell and all the regular cowboys showed up to put on a show for Ben. The only one without a job or a bull rope was me. I was supposed to take care of Ben.

  “It’s a lousy break for you that you’re not riding,” Ben said.

  “Uh-humh.”

  “So why don’t you get out there and ride? I know you’ve been doing it.”

  “Well, Mom had a cow after I rode in Elko. I don’t think she’ll let me do it now,” I said.

  “I wouldn’t count on that. Dad’s the one out here, remember.”

  “Do you think?”

  “Let’s try something. Hey, Darrell,” Ben yelled, “go see if Grandpa will put my bro’ here on the lineup, will you?”

  Darrell winked at me. “For you, Ben, sure.” And before I could stop him, he jogged over to Grandpa and was talking and pointing my way. Then Grandpa talked to Dad, and they were all staring over at me. I figured to play dumb and nodded my head at them, business-like. Darrell came back looking like he’d eaten a canary. “You’re in, squirt. Number seven. Lucky, right? Use my rope.”

  “No, he’s using mine,” Ben said. “Look in the truck, Cam.”

  So that’s how I came to ride Hot Cakes on a freezing Sunday in February. He was a solid animal with two white spots on his rump, giving him his name. I’d practiced a piece since Grandpa’d seen me ride, and Dad, he’d never been around to see me on a bull at all. I was nervous. I pulled on Ben’s glove and rubbed in some extra pine tar in case my shaking caused me to lose my grip. Hot Cakes looked as spooked as I felt. But with Dad and Ben and Grandpa waiting on me, I made myself get on him. He cocked his head back, like to ram me. I pulled the bull rope tight, pinched my hand closed, and signaled to let Hot Cakes fly.

  His first landing jarred me hard and he spun like crazy. It made me mad, and I spurred him. He let loose with his rear end, kicking, mule-style, up and out. That should have done me in, but I stuck for a couple more spins. Then I pitched off the side. The ground was rock hard—froze, I guess. It knocked the wind out of me. Hot Cakes took off in the other direction, and I made it over the fence. My dad shooed the bull right into the loading ramp, and I heard him clatter into the cattle truck.

  The riders did three rounds apiece, and I had a good ride on a black mixed breed they called Sixty. That’s for the number on his ear tag, which read sixty, I’m guessing. When we finished, they loaded all the cattle into the truck and started up the bonfire. Everybody was bragging on how good they rode and saying we’d have to come back to ride here again. Grandpa Roy was grinning like an old cat. More families started coming and set up barbecues for steaks and hot dogs and beans. The sun set and the winter chill came on fast. Grandpa Roy and Earl Wallace added wood to the fire.

  We took Ben down off the truck, and I pushed him closer to the fire.

  “Nice work today, bro’.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Do you ever wish it was you up there?”

  “Well, yeah,” Ben said.

  I looked away, sorry that I’d asked.

  Dad brought me a cup of coffee. “You can ride, son. It’s good to see.” Grandpa Roy nodded my way. I was dying to ask them. “So does Mom know?”

  “Let’s keep your mother from worrying about you,” Grandpa Roy said. “Just don’t go doing nothing stupid, and by the time she has time to think about you and bull riding, she’ll be over it again.”

  “That’s not what Grandma Jean says,” I said.

  “And that hasn’t stopped you, I see,” Dad said. I wasn’t sure if he was mad about that or not. I’m guessing it was a draw, him being pleased with my riding and peeved that I’d gone against Mom.

  Mom drove up with Lali and Favi. They helped themselves to the food and settled down with our family. The fire crackled and spit sparks. The old guys got to talking about back when this snowstorm almost did ’em in or when that BLM agent tried to overcharge them on their range fees. Then they started up talking about the salt lick.

  “I gave salt to my horse and he learned to dance,” Tom Lehi said.

  “Yeah, I seen you waltzing with him,” my dad said.

  “Well, I put the salt in dinner the other night and my wife ain’t slept since. We got the cleanest house in Humboldt County,” Earl Wallace said.

  “I tell you, that salt’s magic,” Grandpa Roy said. “Didn’t you feel it when you rode tonight?” He leaned over to me and whispered so Mom wouldn’t hear. “Seriously, Cam, it would behoove you to take some back home for your next bull ride.” He winked at me. I couldn’t tell if he was kidding.

  Later, as folks began to pack up and start home, Ben said, “I wish it wasn’t done.”

  “There’s still plenty of food. And they’ll be telling stories for a while,” I said.

  “My visit, I mean,” Ben said. “I like it here.”

  “You’ll be back home in Salt Lick before you know it.” I leaned back on my elbows and looked into the fire. I squinted my eyes and the sparks blurred into bright streaks. “Just keep nailing it down there in rehab.”

  “When I’m done in rehab, I’m not fixing to come back here. I’m still a Marine,” Ben said. “I’m hoping to be reassigned.”

  I sat right up. “You’re what?” I knew he wanted to stay in the Marines. But didn’t he know how scary that was? I wanted him to be happy—but didn’t he care about Mom? Or Lali? Or me?

  “Like I said, Cam, after I get new orders, I won’t be home for a while.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Ben’s brain was a mystery. He’d remember his locker combination from seventh grade but he couldn’t add a column of figures. He named off all the men in his unit and pointed out streets on a map of where he’d been on patrol in Baghdad, but he got lost when the rehab folks took him on an outing to the grocery store. It was the little things he forgot—keys and numbers and whole clumps of words. But certain things were there, front and center, like he’d never been wounded at all. After seeing his nightmares, Mom spent more and more time with him in Palo Alto.

  “Ben remembers the bulls,” she said one night.

  “What do you mean?” Dad asked.

  “He can name every bull he ever made a time on. Look, they gave me a list.” Mom handed a long list of bulls to my Dad. He mouthed the names to himself as he
read them. “Amazing,” he said. “Go figure that.”

  “He wouldn’t forget,” I said. “He wants to raise bulls. He knows the good ones.”

  “It’s selective memory,” Mom said. “They’re trying to use it to help him remember other things. They say he might do better at home—because of the bulls and the ranch and all.”

  “Is Ben coming home? Tomorrow?” Lali asked.

  “Not tomorrow, honey, but it could be soon.” She turned to Dad. “They’re evaluating his outpatient needs. If we can get him into Winnemucca for physical therapy and maybe down to Reno for some occupational training, then, yes, he could come home.” She broke into a wide smile.

  “Gotta fix a downstairs shower,” Grandpa Roy said. “I can get the materials in the morning.”

  “There’s no room in there, Dad,” my dad said. “We’ll have to bump out a wall.”

  “Gianni will help out,” Grandpa said, and suddenly we went from feeling helpless and low with Ben in the hospital in California to a full-scale deal, building him a downstairs bedroom with a bathroom—sit-down shower, handrails, and all. “We’ll lose some space in the living room, of course,” Dad said, “but we can open up to the kitchen.”

  It was early March and the snow was still on the ground in the high country and spring calves were a month away, so when Grandpa said, “Gianni will help,” it was a little short of the truth. When word got out that Dad and Grandpa and I were taking sledgehammers to our downstairs, two or three guys showed up every day to help out. Every one of them had an excuse. “Gotta get in shape and thought this was better than the gym, ha-ha.” “Can’t stand another day cooped up in my house.” “I was driving by and thought you’d have the coffee on, and while I’m here, let me help you set that toilet.” Friends came to help—like Darrell and Neil Jones—and so did folks you wouldn’t expect to see, like Pastor Fellows. It was as if they were all just waiting for something, anything to do for Ben. Some days Mom just wept from the joy of it.

  We had Ben’s rooms set up by the end of the month, and the bill—well, nobody’d take any pay and the lumber and fixtures just showed up. Lali drew a sign for his door—Ben O’Mara, Super Hero—and she backed it with a multicolored page from one of her comic books. And best, when Ben was ready, Grandma Jean promised she’d come back too.

  At the end of March, Ben came home for good. This time, when Dad called on the cell phone from the end of the ranch road, Grandpa, Lali, and I rode out on the ATVs to meet them. It was like all the fretting and anger from the last few months was gone. Ben was home. No more military forms spread out on the dining room table for Mom and Dad to fill in. No more Mom being gone for ten days at a time. No more wondering what Ben was up to and what I could do for him when he was so far away in the hospital. Ben was home. And now, I knew it, he’d only get better.

  He had his new hand and some money the Marines gave him to pay for therapists since the VA hospital in Reno was too far to get to each week. He had his new room and Lali to bounce on his bed. He had Grandpa Roy to tease him, Dad to treat him like a man, and Mom to treat him like a kid.

  I called Grandma Jean. “Ben’s home. So when are you coming to see us?”

  Grandma laughed. “Keep your shirt on. You know I’ll get there soon as I can.”

  Lali leaned over my shoulder and called, “You promised,” into the phone.

  “And I’ll be there. Let me talk to your mom about it. How’s this weekend?”

  But by the end of the first week, there was something wrong. And it was bad. The nightmares didn’t come every night, but when they did, they were loud.

  Darrell came by to visit after work. He brought Mom some tulips and a video of the Reno Rodeo to show Ben. “Take a look at this, Ben. This was right after you left.” Darrell stopped. “Well, right before…” His face colored up. “You know…”

  “Oh, stop,” Ben snapped. “We all know what happened. I don’t want to see that video anyway.”

  “Why?” Darrell asked.

  “That was my life before. Before I was like this.” Ben turned away.

  Darrell couldn’t get him to say anything else.

  I tried to help out. “Ben, Darrell came up to see you. Talk to him, man.”

  Ben just turned his head farther toward the wall.

  Darrell tossed the video on the table. “Call me when he’s feeling better.” And he left.

  Darrell wasn’t the only visitor, and Ben was rude to most all of them. And when it was time to go to Winnemucca for therapy, he actually yelled at Mom.

  “It’s like the real Ben’s not here,” I told Mom. “It’s like we got a different one—a mean one.”

  “Don’t bother him,” she said. “He’s readjusting.”

  “I thought being home at the ranch was supposed to help.”

  “He needs more time.”

  “So is he just going to sit around and stew while his brain heals?” I asked.

  “Cam, don’t talk that way.”

  “We owe him,” I said. “He’s miserable.”

  “I think I know what we owe your brother, and he’ll be fine. Don’t bother him about it.”

  That’s the deal. O’Maras don’t talk about uncomfortable stuff, but I sure did feel I owed him something. I was the one who could walk and bull ride. I was the one who’d fouled up Dad’s selling the fall calves—that could have taken care of some of the bills. I figured I owed everybody. Ben wasn’t right. And, you know, I was sick of feeling helpless. And I was tired of being quiet.

  I started the next day with Ben. After school I ran in from the bus and grabbed a pop. Then I stuck my head in his room and said, “Ben, you up? Let’s go out to the barn. Grandpa thinks that new pinto is ready to try a saddle. I’m going to set one on him and see how he takes to it.”

  “Not now, I’m tired,” Ben said. He sat in his wheelchair, staring out the window.

  “You know you love seeing a horse broke to his first saddle. You can hold his head while I ease it on.”

  “Not now.” Ben sounded grumpy.

  But instead of backing off, I went in, took hold of his wheelchair, and threw a blanket over him. If Grandpa Roy could do it, I could too. “We’re going to the barn,” I said.

  “Leave me alone, will you?” He threw the blanket off, but I pushed right over it.

  It was bright outside and the sun warmed you just enough to feel like winter might go on back to where it came from. I bumped his wheelchair across the dirt and out to the barn. I pushed him inside the barn door and called to the pinto in the corral. He was friendly and came right over for some oats. It would be fun to saddle him. “You sure are nasty lately,” I said to Ben. “And I don’t know why. You can stand up. You’ll be walking pretty soon, I know it.”

  “Maybe,” he said.

  I scratched the horse’s nose. “So what’s wrong?”

  “What’s wrong? Let me tell you. Start with this.” He slammed his good hand hard on his wheelchair.

  “No, what’s really getting at you?” I insisted. “You aren’t like you used to be. You were better when you couldn’t even talk good—at least you were fighting then.”

  “Thanks for the info.”

  “Well, I’m tired of it. I want my real brother back.” I knew I was being mean. “I’m tired of pretending you’re doing so great and all. You’re nasty half the time, and the other half you just stare. I’m sick of it.”

  “Forget you!” he yelled, grabbing at the wheel of his chair.

  “No, you. Forget YOU.” I stopped him from pushing himself toward the door. “Just tell me. What is it with you?”

  That’s when he started. He cussed and waved his plastic arm at me. “What is it with me? You want to know? I can’t do anything. You want me to hold that colt while you saddle him. How? What if he takes off? I can’t walk, I can’t ride. I can’t remember half of what anybody says. For all I know, you told me this same garbage yesterday.” He banged around like he wanted to get up and chase after me. “Look at m
e, Cam. Look good. You sit around like me and see how it feels. You’re the man now, Cam. Right? You can go out skating and bull riding. Nothing happened to you.”

  I glared at him. “Mom won’t let me bull ride.”

  “But you do. I see you going off to practice with Darrell. We were going to—”

  “Yeah, I sneak around—and that’s because of you. If you weren’t shot up and pitiful, Mom would lay off of me.”

  “Shut up, Cam.” He stared at me. “They put me out, you know. I could have gone back to my unit, to a desk at least, but I can’t remember nothing. Nothing normal, anyway. I’m a Marine—and a bull rider—till they kicked me out. And now what am I? A babysitter for Lali? Tell me, Cam. What am I?” Then he put his head against the stall, sniffed a couple of times, and let go and bawled.

  “Oh man, listen, I didn’t mean it, Ben,” I said. “I didn’t mean any of it.” I reached toward him but my feet didn’t move. He kept crying. It was the stupid TBI. I kicked the wall. “You gotta stop that. I didn’t mean it. I just want you to fight the way you did before. I thought when you came home, things would get better.”

  “Well, you were wrong,” he said, sniffling.

  “I was wrong to say that stuff. Geez, this is bad. Ben, I’m so sorry. But I have to do something for you. What am I supposed to do?”

  He didn’t answer me, didn’t even look up, really.

  “You gotta fight, Ben,” I was begging. “Things will work out. You can do anything if you try. You just have to believe it.”

  “You believe it. I don’t believe in anything anymore.”

  My skin went cold and I could feel the blood draining out of my head. “You don’t mean that. You can get better.”

  “Yeah, I can get better like you can ride that bull Ugly they’re all talking about. It’s just as likely.”

  “Well, I’d fight to ride Ugly at least. You’re just a quitter.”

  Ben’s face got red and now he really did try to get out of his chair. “Shut up. You go ahead and ride Ugly. Then I’ll believe your garbage about doing anything. Then I’ll do whatever stupid therapy they dream up.”