Dream Wheels (29 page)

The bucking machine sat in the middle of a veritable sea of thick blue padding. When Aiden put a foot to it and pushed, it offered little give, not at all like the feathery give of the hay and mattresses under the rope barrel. The machine itself was eerie. It was cut to look like the trunk of a bull. There was even a rubber head and horns mounted to the front end. The rectangular riding block was covered in hide and the bull hair was coarse, wiry. It sat at a steep angle, the rear of it kicked up sharply. In his mind Aiden tried to imagine what the rest of the bull might have looked like in that pose, rear legs thrown back and high, the head cast to one side trying to hook the rider’s legs with the horns. He squeezed his fingers together and the crackle of the rosined leather exhilarated him. He walked around the machine, his feet sinking into the blue padding, and tried to imagine himself whirling around and up and down at the same time, reversing direction on the rise, the strain at the wrist eased some by the rapid kicking out of his legs and feet. There was a tornado coming, and he felt the electric tickle of its approach on his skin. He gave the machine a final firm slap.

“Anything else I should know?” he asked Birch.

Birch pointed to a hay bale set on its narrow side. “Ride that first,” he said.

“You’re kidding me,” Aiden said.

“No, I’m not. Get you a seat on that bale and I’m gonna show you how to use your arms.”

Birch showed him how to throw his legs out, how to keep the free arm up and away at the same time. It seemed silly
at first, like a child’s game, but when he sat on the bale and went through the motions Aiden got the first glimpse of how hard this would be. The legs and the arm had to work together. When they did he could feel the weight of his body centre on one small area of his butt, one remarkably tiny area that was keyed to fit the same fragment of the bull’s body, the pocket right behind the shoulders. The flinging outward of the legs coupled with the raised arm centred him in the pocket, and as he went through the spurring motion he saw in his head the images of Joe Willie’s rides and tried to mimic them.

“Ready?” Lionel asked Aiden.

Aiden looked at the machine. It sat idle but seemed filled with ominous intent, like a bad-mannered dog. “No,” he said. “Let them go first.”

The Hairstons cackled.

“Chicken, huh?” Jess said.

Aiden just looked at him passively and moved to sit beside Mundell, who drank slowly from a coffee mug.

“Nervous?” Mundell asked.

“Some,” Aiden said. “I want to watch it first.”

“Good thinking. See what you’re in for.”

“Yeah. Something like that.”

Jess got up onto the machine and settled himself into the grip Birch showed him. When he nodded, the wrangler at the controls flipped the switch and the machine began rising and falling, turning slow circles at the same time. Aiden watched carefully. Hairston managed to make his way awkwardly through a minute of the action before Lionel held up a hand and the wrangler stopped the machine. Jess leaped off the machine and sprawled into the padding. His face was red when he stood up and high-fived his brother, who mounted up for his ride. Lanny fared as well as his brother, and when his ride
was over the Hairstons celebrated, whooped wildly. Aiden never once took his eyes off the machine.

“Ready now?” Birch asked.

Still staring at the bucking machine, he walked to it wordlessly and tightened the glove as he approached. He leaped up onto the machine, he watched as Birch instructed him on the rigging. He felt the elevation from the floor. He felt the rough texture of the rigging and flexed his grip a couple of times before he looked at Birch expressionlessly.

“Give ’er,” he said. He locked eyes with the wrangler at the controls, unblinking and aware of every muscle in his body. Slowly he raised his free arm up and away, setting his jaw firmly and forcing himself to concentrate. Then he nodded.

It was like being pushed upward and forward by an invisible hand directly under his hips. When he felt the force he raised his arm a little higher and pushed his legs outward. He immediately felt the pressure in a rectangle of space at his tailbone. He concentrated on that. As the bucking machine whirled around and tilted he willed himself to copy the moves he’d watched Joe Willie make and he felt elastic, strong and in sync with the machine. Then the dips and pushes came quicker. They were giving him more. He set his jaw tighter and focussed. The circles seemed tighter, but he held his seat. He felt more power surge through the machine and he was aware of a sudden loss of contact with horizontal and vertical. The only thing that existed was the cyclone. His only focal point became the pocket, and he spurred outward and raised his free arm to maintain it. When even more power came he felt the hard junction of his wrist and rope. He held it. There was a high whine in his ears as the machine worked harder, accompanied by creaks of leather and the throaty sound of voices raised in excitement. He was juiced. The
adrenaline forced his mouth open and he closed it again, gritted his teeth and spurred and pressed outward with his free arm, feeling the thrum of the motor against the inside of his thighs and the air cool and moist against the sweat of his face. He felt a power in him that was electrifying and freeing and primitive, and when the machine began to slow he gathered all of it, all the joyous, rapturous, hair-raising thrill of it and kicked away from the machine with one leg, twisting his torso hard the same way and felt the separation and the sweet empty of the air before he landed on his feet in the thick blue padding.

“How high did you turn it?” he asked, dry throated.

Birch raised five fingers.

“Again?” he asked, swallowing hard.

“You bet your ass, again,” Birch said.

Damn. There was no way past it. He was going to need help. While the beam across the roof of the equipment shed was strong enough to bear the weight of pulling the engine block up and out of the truck, there was no way Joe Willie was going to be able to haul it himself. He tried, but the weight and the motion required two strong arms, maybe more. For a while he toyed with the notion of buying a hoist and frame from town, but there was something about the feel of the old girl that told him that she’d prefer old-fashioned sweat and gumption. Besides, there was a small thrill in being able to say that he’d done the work up to this point with his own power, and he was determined to see it through with the pure strength of hands and arms. Arms. Funny. He had a burgeoning faith in the left to lift and twist when he needed it. Sure, there were things he couldn’t do with it, normal things, everyday things that pissed him off to think about, but it had come a fair way with his
effort. He still hated to look at it. He still sought to hide it when anyone was around and though he much preferred solitude over visibility the damn thing was stronger, less prone to tremble, moved more easily in the destroyed shoulder socket. But it was still ugly. That wasn’t going to change. Ever. He rubbed it now as he considered asking for help. He could almost curl his thumb and fingers around it. Damn. The muscles had atrophied so badly that when he turned it over so the palm of his hand was upwards the boniness of it made his hand look like a small paddle, meatless, and flat.

He hated to ask for help. It meant he was incapable. Invalid. He rubbed the arm and sat in the cab of the truck. This was his arena. This was his challenge. It was how he’d learned to fight. Alone in a saddle or tied in the rigging, there was no need for anyone else. Ever. A man found his own way up there, relied on nothing but his own instinct and know-how, trusted only the power of his own body, the strength of his own mind and the grit of his own gumption. Help was something you accepted from the pickup riders and the bull fighters once the fight was finished. This fight was far from finished, but clearly there was no way past it. He smoked.

“Damn,” he said.

They were standing around the main corral watching the wranglers load bulls in the chutes. He walked up purposefully. Lionel caught his approach out of the corner of his eye and nudged Birch.

“Need some help,” he said.

“That a fact?” Lionel said.

Joe Willie rubbed the stubble on his chin and toed the dirt with his boot. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s a fact.”

“What kind of help, son?” Birch asked.

“The old girl,” he said. “I gotta haul the engine out of her.”

The wranglers edged closer to catch the conversation. The Hairston brothers were owl-eyed and slack-jawed in that awed way of rodeo fans, and it irritated Joe Willie. The convict kid just leaned one elbow on the fence and looked at him with an unruffled air. That irritated him even more.

“How you figure on doing that?” Lionel asked.

“Rope,” he said.

“Chain’d be a mite safer,” Lionel said.

“Rope,” Joe Willie said shortly. “I got a rope.”

“Okay. We’ll do it with a rope then. Pulley?”

“What?”

“Figure maybe drive a pulley into the main beam and haul her out that way. Easier,” Lionel said. “A few more hands and we can guide her to wherever you wanna put her.”

Joe Willie nodded. He hadn’t considered that. “All right,” he said.

Birch explained what needed doing, and the Hairstons and Mundell agreed heartily. Aiden held his position on the fence looking calmly at Joe Willie and his father. Finally, he nodded and moved to join the others.

“Mr. Wolfchild,” Jess said to Joe Willie, “we ain’t had a chance to talk to you since we been here. My brother and me been fans an awful long time. Maybe you could watch us ride this afternoon and give us a few pointers.”

Joe Willie turned and started walking toward the equipment shed. The others began to follow.

“Fuckin’ prima donna,” Jess whispered to his brother.

Aiden smiled and kept walking.

Johanna moved around horses as though she was one of them. There was a regal quality to the way she threaded herself between them, leaned into a flank, used her body weight to
edge a horse a step or two to the side or look it square on while she approached with a halter. As she watched her bring horses in from the corral, Claire was envious. She wanted that for herself, that sense of kinship, that ethereal connection to wild. The horses related to Johanna. She could see that. They were unafraid and compliant, and when Johanna moved to control one there were no signs of resistance, only a casual acceptance of things as they stood, a will given over to will, a knowing that was shared between animal and human. Leading them into the barn and on over to the round pen, Johanna spoke to them, a conversation rather than a trite bubbling of syllables, and the horses pricked their ears attentively, seeming to enjoy, even hear and comprehend, the words and phrases.

“Why do you do that?” Claire asked, walking beside Johanna on the side away from the horse. “Talk to them like that.”

“Like how?”

“Like they’re human.”

Johanna gave her an easy grin. “I guess because I never really saw a difference. I guess because they’ve always been friends to me and I took the time to get to know them as friends, not animals, not stock, not anything. Just friends.”

“It makes them happy,” Claire said.

“Yes, it does. They want to be recognized. Just like us.”

“Affirmed, you mean?”

“Yes. Good word. When I was a girl I was taught very carefully about horses. About all creatures, really, but horses mostly.”

“By your people?”

Johanna laughed lightly. “Yes. By my people. The Sioux are horse people. You might even say that the whole flow of our culture stemmed from our relationship with horses. It certainly was how we rode into the history books.”

“A tradition.”

“Yes.”

“I can’t identify a tradition in my life. Mama wasn’t big on ceremony and we never observed a ritual of any kind. We kind of floated around waiting for someone or something to explain us, define us, give us shape. Men mostly.”

“Sounds familiar,” Johanna said, leading the horse into the pen and grabbing a long lead that was slung over the rails. Claire climbed up on the top rail to watch Johanna work the horse. Johanna led the mare into the very centre of the pen and talked to her calmly, stroking her, easing her into the idea of work while she connected the lead. When she was ready she backed away in long, measured steps until she was at the end of the lead. She continued talking to the horse and began a series of hand signals that the horse picked up on and stepped backwards and forward on command. The lead hung slack between them, and only as the horse stepped closer did Johanna pay any attention to it at all, gathering it in as the distance between them narrowed. They worked that way for a while until Johanna was satisfied. She motioned to Claire.

“You do it,” she said.

“Me? I don’t know how.”

“Sure you do. You’ve watched me do it all morning. I’ll stand right here. Give her the signals and then trot her a bit.”

Claire took the long lead and turned to face the mare, and began talking in the low, soothing tones Johanna used. The horse focussed on her attentively. She gave the hand signal to approach and the horse stepped forward. There was a small thrill in her spleen, and when the horse backed up on the hand command Claire was elated. She gave a light flick on the lead and guided the mare into a circular walk around the end of the lead before easing it up to a trot. She spoke to it all the
while and the mare responded beautifully. Johanna touched her on the shoulder and Claire brought the mare back in.

“Wonderful,” Johanna said. “Simple, wasn’t it?”

“Exhilarating,” Claire said.

“Can you do it again the same way?”

“I believe I can.”

“Good. That’s how you build a tradition.” Johanna smiled.

Even with a large pulley attached to the main beam it took six of them to ease the engine out of the chassis. The frame creaked as the weight was lifted and the truck rose some on its springs when the engine was finally airborne. They’d cleared a heavy wooden table of the assortment of crap and clutter that filled it. They’d had to use a second rope to guide the engine over, and as it settled on the old wood it offered up a tired creak.