Bull Rider Read online

  “Okay,” I said. “Just watch me, I will.”

  I turned the pinto colt loose in the corral, without bothering to try to saddle him, and slammed the metal gate behind him. When I came back in the barn Ben was quiet. I pushed him to his room. He sat staring at the blank TV. “I’m holding you to it, you know,” I said, and I closed the door.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  I’d hardly talked to Mike since January, when he got mad with me for leaving his house to ride a bull. But now he was the only one I wanted to talk to. I took my bike and my skateboard, fixing to go down to see him. On the way through town I saw Darrell’s truck outside the feed store. I pulled in. “Hey, Darrell, you got time to come by and see Ben again?” I asked.

  “How’s he holding up?” Darrell asked.

  “He could use some company,” I said.

  “You know, I’m working full-time now and putting in hours training to ride Ugly. I’ll come up if I can, but it might be a while.”

  “He’s not always so nasty,” I said, but I wasn’t so sure anymore.

  “Can’t blame him, really.” Darrell threw a fifty-pound bag of dog food into his truck. “But I don’t have a lot of time. You say hi for me.”

  I wondered, with the way Ben was, who else would get too busy to see him. I bought a cookie from the pile at the front counter and rode up to Mike’s. The dogs barked at me as I turned into the driveway. Mike must have heard it, ’cause he came out on the front porch. Favi was right behind him.

  “Hey, Mike,” I said. I jumped off my bike and let it fall to the ground.

  “So?” he muttered.

  I held up my skateboard. “I thought we could board.”

  “Why now?” he asked without moving.

  “Come on, get over it. We’re boarders,” I said. I took my board around the driveway once and said, “Can you do this?” I ollied onto the rail. It’s a game we played to mess with other kids at the skate parks. “Try this,” we’d say, and jump into a 360, kicking the board around full circle and landing it. Most of the time, the guys would laugh and peel off down into the pool or up a ramp. Sometimes we’d get a taker. “No, do this,” the kid would say, and he’d hit a ramp, ollie with his board right under him, land, and pivot grind off the other way. Then we had a game.

  Now I started with Mike. “Come on, man, let’s see you do it.” I landed a 360 and then I missed an easy kickflip.

  “What’s up with that?” Mike asked. “Lali could do better.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Come on. Let’s skate.”

  “You didn’t come around before,” Mike said, folding his arms tight across his chest.

  I coasted up to the porch and kicked my foot down to stop. “It’s hard. I need you, man. Ben’s driving me nuts.”

  “And I care?” he asked.

  “Of course you care,” Favi answered him. “You two are acting like two-year-olds. Cam’s apologizing.” She looked at me and raised her eyebrows. “Right?”

  I sat on my board and grabbed the ends with my hands. My knees poked up by my chin. “Yeah, maybe,” I said.

  Mike parked himself on the top step and leaned back on his elbows. “So, what’s with Ben? He’s home. That’s good, right?”

  “No, it’s weird. It’s like we thought it would fix everything and instead it’s worse. He’s given up.”

  “You can see why,” Mike said. “That’s one ugly hit he took.”

  “Well, ugly or not, he’s got to walk and remember stuff and get back to himself. He just sits.”

  “But your grandpa doesn’t put up with that, does he?” Favi said.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “This is worse than before. All the teasing and messing around doesn’t get through. Ben says he’s useless.”

  I moved up on the porch and sat a step below Mike and Favi. A couple of little purple flowers had popped through the dirt, but mostly, everything was still bare against the mouse-colored ground. “So what are you going to do?” Favi asked.

  “He says it’s impossible to get better. He says it’s about as likely as me riding Ugly.”

  “Well, that isn’t about to happen,” Mike said.

  “I have to make it happen,” I said. “I made Ben a bet—I’ll ride Ugly. That will prove anything is possible.”

  “You bet him you’d ride Ugly?” Favi covered her face with her hands. Then she spread her fingers open and peered at me. “What were you thinking, Cam?”

  “I got nothing to lose,” I said.

  “Except your brains. What about when that bull smashes you into little pieces?”

  She was right, of course. That bull could kill me. Mom and Dad could disown me. I could fall off the dang bull and embarrass myself and prove Ben right all at the same moment. But there wasn’t any choice, as I saw it. “Somebody’s got to do something for Ben. I figure it’s gonna be me. I can’t stand watching him. I want my brother back.”

  “If you rode Ugly, you could use all that prize money to pay your family’s bills,” Mike said. “Or get Ben started with an AI breeding business like Amy Jones’s.”

  “That’s an idea,” I said. Maybe Ben really could do that. He knew all the bulls—who they were and what their stats were. He could totally play that market, buy the best straws, put ’em away till the bull was real important, then sell those little vials for more money still—sell the right to the bull’s offspring. Ben could so do that. And he always wanted to raise bucking bulls.

  “Well, you better think a minute before you go planning how to spend all that prize money,” Favi said. “You need a plan B. You know you’re too young to enter to ride Ugly, don’t you?”

  “That didn’t stop me in Elko,” I said.

  “Elko didn’t have a fifteen thousand dollar purse,” she said. “They’ll check stuff like that at this Ugly Challenge. It’s not some small-town bull practice where they let you ride because they know your grandpa.”

  “How old do you suppose I have to be?” I asked.

  “Eighteen,” Favi said. “That’s when you can sign your own life away. Or maybe if you were already sixteen, your mom or dad could do it for you. They make you sign legal papers when you ride in big competitions.”

  I said, “I’ll ride him in Redding. There’s a challenge there. I looked it up on the Internet. No one will know me or how old I am.”

  “Like you look eighteen,” Mike said.

  “I’m big. They always take me for a senior down in Winnemucca. And that’s why I’m going to California. You’ll see. I’m going to ride in Redding.”

  “They check ID in California, too.” Mike shook his head. “They’re gonna ask for your driver’s license or birth certificate or something.”

  I crushed a clod of dirt under my heel. “Then I’ll get a fake one. A false ID.”

  “Oh, please. That’s illegal. Forget it.” Favi rolled her eyes. “Your folks will take care of Ben.”

  “Right,” I said. The problem with working your thoughts out on a skateboard, or the back of a bull, or pitching oranges is that you never just plain say what’s on your mind. Now, these guys didn’t get me, and I wasn’t fixing to explain. “I’m getting an ID,” I said. “You know anybody can help me out?”

  Mike thought a minute. “I guess I know of a guy.”

  “I knew it,” I said. “I knew you could fix me up.”

  “Don’t thank me yet for any favors,” Mike said.

  “Cam, don’t get yourself in trouble,” Favi said.

  I smiled at her. “It’ll be okay. Just picture me riding Ugly. I’ll make it happen. You’ll see.”

  “Yeah, right,” Mike moaned. “You’re nuts, O’Mara. No way this is turning out good.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  That night, the three of us made the plan. I asked Mom if I could go into Reno on Saturday with Mike to see the monster trucks. I hated ’em really, but Mike liked the show and there really was one going on over there. Mom said yes, and I had my excuse to go into Reno. I emptied out my s
tash of birthday money and the pay I got last summer for mowing lawns, and had $150 in my pocket. I hoped that would buy Mike and me the monster truck tickets—we had to see the show or we’d get caught for sure—and leave enough to pay off the guy Mike knew who was going to take my picture and make my ID.

  We left early in the morning. Mr. Gianni drove us to Reno. Mike practiced making rude sounds with air under his armpits, and I kept yawning and finally I tried to sleep. Mike’s dad planned to do errands while we watched the truck show. What he didn’t know was that Mike had his guy lined up to meet us on the backside of the Livestock Events Center after we bought our tickets and went in.

  We got to Reno by ten o’clock. My family didn’t go to Reno too often except to Christmas shop or sometimes to take Grandpa Roy to get some medical tests. It’s sure bigger than Winnemucca, and downtown has some places my mom didn’t like me or Lali to see. You can spot ’em easy enough. They’re painted pink or purple and the windows are painted over. In between are tattoo parlors and pawn shops. I pictured exactly where this ID guy had to live and figured I’d be staring down some bald-headed guy with dragons tattooed on his arms. Or maybe the “guy” would be a dried-up woman with red hair and a stale cigarette waiting to ask in a raspy voice if anyone had followed me. Honestly, I kind of liked the idea. My adrenaline was pumping.

  Mike’s dad dropped us off, and we promised to call his cell phone as soon as we were done. We bought the tickets, making sure we got our hands stamped so we could get back in later to meet Mike’s dad. We pushed through the crowds, right out the back door, and past the row of blue outdoor toilets to the Dumpsters.

  “Nice meeting place,” I said.

  Pretty soon, a clean-cut guy pulled up in a Toyota with a fresh wax job. He had on a University of Nevada sweatshirt and khaki pants. He rolled down the window and gave Mike a high five. “What’s up?” he said, and pointing to me, “Is this the guy?” He laughed. “I can see why you need an ID. No introductions necessary. Let’s see the cash. Two hundred dollars will get you a first-class license. Adult.”

  “I only need to be eighteen, so that’s cheaper, right?”

  He laughed. “Wrong. How much do you have?”

  “Ninety bucks.” Now he laughed louder. He motioned for me to come closer. I leaned in and he took my baseball cap off my head.

  “Gianni, this kid isn’t any older than you. He gets caught, I get caught. Come back when you’re sixteen.”

  “I am sixteen,” I said.

  “Sure,” he said. He turned on the motor and backed away from us. “Come see me in a couple years.”

  He drove away and we were left standing between the Dumpsters at the event center. “Great,” I said. “That’s your guy? Now what?”

  Mike shrugged. “Want to see the monster trucks?”

  Lali met me at the door when I got home. “How were the trucks? Did they jump over cars like they do on TV? Did you bring me anything?”

  I handed her a stick of gum and tried to duck into my room, but Grandma Jean stopped me. “Good, Cam, you’re home. Did you have fun?” and before I could answer her, she said, “Your mom needs help tilling the garden. I told her to wait for you, but she’s already started. She’s set on getting the onion starts in today. There’s still a little daylight to work.”

  I didn’t care about onion starts but Mom did. The ground was ready and today was the day she was planting ’em. “Let me change my clothes,” I said. I took over with the rototiller and turned the dark, soft earth while Mom buried the little onions thumb deep. All the while I was thinking about my next idea for getting an ID. We worked until it got dark.

  Finally, there was time to call Favi. “Did you get it?” she asked.

  “No, the guy flaked. He said I was too young.”

  “You’ll think of something to cheer up Ben,” she said. “You don’t have to ride Ugly.”

  “It’s not just cheering him up. It’s more. I’m going to ride that bull. Listen, I’m coming down to your house. Get out your art stuff.”

  I rummaged around in my bottom dresser drawer through all my crazy stuff I keep ’cause I like it. I found my rock from Lone Mountain with the fossils in it and the old comic books I’d gotten from Ben when I was ten. I moved the little straw duck decoy Grandma Jean made for me and finally found a plastic bag full of photos. I dumped them on my bed and pushed them around looking for the right one. Of course, it was under everything else. But I still had it. It was one of those strings of photos you get in the booth at the fair or in a cheesy store. Mike, Favi, and I had squeezed in together last spring and there were six pictures of us making faces. Mike did the lizard face and Favi could always look silly. When the machine had spit out the photos, we’d joked around about how one shot of me looked like a mug shot—or something that belonged on a driver’s license. Now I cut it off and stuck it in my pocket. I went into Mom’s office. It had taken some doing, but I’d got Mike to loan me his new driver’s license—just till tomorrow. I put some photo paper in the computer and scanned the license. I hit print and waited for the copy.

  I walked over to Favi’s, knocked once, and went in.

  “So, what are you thinking?” Favi asked.

  I looked around. It was just us. “Look, I brought a copy of Mike’s license and this photo.” I laid them on the table. “We can paste something up and maybe we can use contact paper or go to the copy store and get it laminated,” I said.

  Favi looked at me like I was crazy. “That says ‘Michael Enzo Gianni.’ You can’t use that.”

  “Enzo? Is that his middle name?”

  “Cam, think, will you? It’s got the wrong name on it.”

  “So we can paste something over it that says ‘Cameron O’Mara.’” I put my picture on top of Mike’s.

  “Oh, please,” Favi said. “You couldn’t fool anyone with that.”

  “I could try.”

  She burst out laughing.

  “Don’t,” I said. I clenched my fists and dug my nails into my palms. But then I took another look at me staring like a zombie from the copy of Mike’s license. I couldn’t stop myself from laughing too.

  “Maybe you can get your mom to sign for you. Maybe then they’ll let you ride,” Favi said.

  “Who are you kidding? She doesn’t know I’m riding at all.”

  “Your dad, then?”

  I thought about that, but no, Dad wouldn’t go against my mother. “Maybe I can sign up online, and they won’t need anything yet. Then I can think of something later.”

  Favi searched “Ugly Challenge” and we found the announcement, and sure enough, there was a registration form. “I’ll type it in,” Favi said. “Name?”

  “Cam O’Mara.”

  “Address?”

  “Route 7, Salt Lick, Nevada.”

  “Age?”

  “What do I say?” I asked.

  “Eighteen,” she typed in. Then she stopped. “Cam, what if they put this in a database or something. What if next time you go to do something, they think you really are eighteen?”

  “So?” I said. And then I picked up Mike’s license and looked it over. “I guess I might want to try the bull riding circuit for real when I am eighteen….”

  “It’s a fake age,” she said. “Think of a fake name.”

  I didn’t need to think, it just came out of my mouth. “Adam Carl. Start over and put in my cousin’s name, Adam Carl.”

  That’s when I became my cousin, Adam, who’d be nineteen now, just two months older than Ben. That is, if he hadn’t drowned in Walker Lake on his birthday. Grandma Jean called him our guardian angel, and right now I could actually use him. It felt pretty good to bring him back to life. I knew his birthday, too, June 3, and so we were set.

  Favi typed, “Adam Carl, PO Box 123, Hawthorne, Nevada. Age nineteen.”

  The day I rode Ugly, it wouldn’t be me, it would be Adam, who grew up tall and strong but so baby-faced he could pass for fourteen. Or that’s what I’d say if they asked abou
t my age.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  They set the Ugly Challenge in Redding for mid-April. You wouldn’t think it would make a whoop of difference when it was, but April is the middle of our spring calving, and that meant spending every weekend on the ranch. We brought the cows in close and watched out for when they dropped their little ones. Every day, there was a new bunch—from one part of the ranch or another—to round up, bring to the corrals, tag, doctor, and brand. It took one guy to flip and tie ’em, one to handle the vaccines and ear tags, and one with the Circle M O’Mara brand. If we found cows from another ranch, someone cut them out and penned ’em in a separate corral. And if Joneses or Echevarrias or Wallaces found O’Mara cattle, somebody’d ride over to bring ’em back. Nothing was as fun all year, and nothing took more time. If we had enough calves, Grandpa even put a crew together for Sunday. I had to figure some special plan to get me out of a day of calving and on the road to Redding.

  First problem—I didn’t have a driver’s license or a car, so I figured I’d use the money I’d saved by not buying the ID and get a bus from Winnemucca to Redding. Now I just needed the reason to take all day Saturday and all of Saturday night to be gone. Easy, right?

  Maybe not. I signed up for the first challenge on the Internet, and I was praying they didn’t want me to show ’em my ID when I got there. Maybe if I cut the timing close they wouldn’t bother to ask questions. But the bull riding started at six o’clock. I didn’t know how many crazy cowboys would show or what the draw for order would be, so I had to be at the bull ring by five thirty, latest. “The bus might be late,” Favi said. That meant taking the early one—so, I needed to be on the road at nine o’clock in the morning.

  I complained over lunch in the cafeteria, “Grandpa Roy will never let me out of calving that early.”

  “Pretend you’re sick,” Mike said.