Dream Wheels (35 page)

He struggled for something to say to that and when he couldn’t find it he settled for poking at the fire and sending tiny comets of spark up into the night. She watched him until he set the stick down beside him.

“Thank you,” she said quietly.

“For what?”

“For helping my boy.”

“Don’t really figure I helped any yet. In fact, he’s probably cussing me pretty good right now after that hike up the hill.”

“He loved it. He won’t say so but I know.”

“Powerful peculiar way of having fun.”

She laughed. The glint of flame highlighted the laugh lines around her mouth and eyes, giving her a softness that flickered out with the turn of her head. “He passed out right after his shower. I haven’t seen him sleep like that for years. You wore him out.”

“Sorry.”

“No. Don’t be. I meant it in a good way.”

“Oh.”

They sat looking into the flames together.

“I’m really sorry if he offended you. What he said about two legs.”

He picked up the stick again and stood it on its end beside his knee, then laid it across his thighs and rolled it slowly back and forth with his palms. “It’s all right,” he said. “I pushed, he pushed back.”

“I don’t think anyone’s ever pushed him before. Or asked him to push himself.”

“No pap?” he asked.

She shook her head slowly. “His father left while I was pregnant. There’ve been men after, of course, but they never really cared about him except in how they could use him to get to me. He raised himself, mostly.”

“Gramps?”

“No. My mother never even told me his name. I don’t know anything about him except what I’ve made up in my mind, and that’s not a whole lot, really. I don’t think my mother was very proud of her life, except for maybe me. She never spoke of it, never offered much but a handful of colourful stories. She was a junkie. She died of it before Aiden was born. It’s always just been Aiden and me.”

“Tough go,” he said.

“Yes. I never knew how tough until he went to jail.”

He stared into the fire again. “I grew up here. Lucky. Never knew how it was not to have family around.”

“They’re incredible,” she said.

He poked at the fire with the stick, then stood to place another log on it. He settled and looked up at the stars. “Yeah, they are. I haven’t exactly been a joy to behold the last while. They’re always there, though. No matter what.”

“They believe in you.”

She could see the fire reflected in his eyes. They glimmered crazily, and against the angles of his face he looked mystical, like an old shaman by his fire.

“Why would you say that?”

She smiled and looked into the fire. She sat there for a long spell until Joe Willie thought she must have missed his question and he shifted restlessly on the log.

“The way they look at you when you don’t see. When you’re busy with your own thoughts or moving toward something you need tending to, they look at you. And it’s like there’s a story in their eyes, you know? The story of you. Like they can see all of you in that moment. Where you’ve been, what you’ve done, all your dreams, your wishes, everything. That look is so strong it’s like they push you with their eyes, push you toward whatever it is you want, push you toward whatever you might choose, or toward what they might choose for you, wish for you, dream for you. I’ve never been on the receiving end of a look like that. I can only hope that it’s in mine when I look at my boy.” She looked at him and smiled.

“You talk like Gram. Or my mother,” he said.

“Now that is a compliment.”

“Truth,” he said.

They looked at each other across the fire. The night had deepened and the flames spread an orange halo across everything they touched. The only sound was the crackle of flame and the solid snap of knots in the wood surrendering sparks into the night.

“Can I ask you something?”

He stared down at the fire. “I guess,” he said.

“Does it hurt?”

There was a sudden yip of coyotes across the draw. They both raised their heads to listen, craning their necks like animals themselves as though that primordial action could sharpen their senses. When they looked down again he met her gaze.

“It hurts,” he said. “But not like you’d think. There’s no ache in the bones anymore like there was and I move better now, easier, stronger, can do more things. But when that bull busted my body he didn’t break my heart. Now, today, I can’t
do the things I lived to do but I still got the heart for it … and that’s what hurts.”

“Thank you,” she said quietly.

The coyotes began a chorus, and they looked up to see the moon hovering over the mountains to the east, full and fat and silver, pockmarked with ancient collisions, the spray of them like wrinkles on an old man’s face. The wild was in the air. A horse nickered in the corral and they could hear the basso thud of bulls stamping restless hooves in their pens. There was a breeze suddenly and the flames flickered higher so that when they looked across at each other it was like their faces were in motion, flowing between age and youth, mask and reality, upward into the breeze and across the draw to join the coyote chorus sailing to the moon.

“You’re welcome,” he said.

When he bent down under the chassis of the old truck Aiden could feel the muscles in the back of his legs cramp and tighten. He’d never known that the muscles there ran all the way up to the curve of his butt. It felt more like they stretched all the way to his armpits. Every move was agony. He didn’t want to show it, though. He’d wheel-barrowed manure all morning and helped the wranglers pull fencing in the early afternoon and he’d never even grimaced. Now it was mid-afternoon and he’d agreed to meet Joe Willie in the equipment shed. The cowboy was his usual taciturn self, merely nodding to him as he entered and fiddling with the old carburetor. Aiden walked as strongly as he could to the workbench to watch the work Joe Willie was doing, and then strode over to the truck to examine it more closely than he had on his previous visit. As he hunched over the rear wheel well, the muscles in his thighs felt like they would rip right down their length.
He pressed a hand to them, squeezed them a few times, then arched his back and stood up slowly. Joe Willie was watching him and grinning.

“Sore?”

“No,” Aiden said. “You ready for work?”

“Always,” Joe Willie said.

“Good, because it’s payback time.”

“How do you figure?”

Aiden leaned against the truck. “You got me forking horseshit, stomping all over hell’s half acre with Goober and Gomer, painting posts and pulling wire and then walking up mountains. Now it’s time for the other half of our deal to kick in.”

“And that would be what?”

“That would be you doing the work I show you on this old pig.”

“Old pig?”

“Yeah. I never saw anything in this sorry kind of shape.”

“You don’t know where she’s been.”

“Looks like she’s been down a few too many country roads. What did you do? Haul cows and shit in her?”

“Something like that,” Joe Willie said. “She was part of the life.”

“What life?” Aiden asked, fishing in his pocket for a smoke.

“Rodeo. My family’s life.”

“Yeah? So?”

“So she’s more than just a truck.”

“Looks like a truck to me. What is she, then, if she’s more than that?”

“Tradition,” Joe Willie said.

“Tradition?”

“Yeah. You don’t know what tradition is?”

“Sure. Like Christmas, I guess.” Aiden shifted his weight against the side of the truck. He flicked a look at Joe Willie and then stared at the ground.

Joe Willie walked over to the truck and trailed his hand along the side of it. He walked right around it and when he got back to where Aiden stood he pulled his cigarettes from his jacket pocket and took his time lighting up before passing the lighter to Aiden. They stood there smoking in silence for a moment. “It’s a record of where you been,” he said finally. “Keeping it alive is what makes it important. People do it with ceremonies sometimes, like Christmas like you said, but lots of times it’s stuff like this old girl here. You got any traditions?”

Aiden took a long draw on the cigarette. “Never bothered.”

“Never bothered?”

“No,” he said sharply, “I never bothered, all right? Can we do this now?”

“Do what?”

“Do the damn work here.”

“What work?”

“Jesus. Changing the truck.”

“Whoa, no one said anything about changing.”

“Are you kidding me?” Aiden asked. “Look at the way she sits all low and awkward. She’s begging for a new suspension.”

“I been under her. I tightened everything.”

“Tightened? There’s a lot more to this than just tightening a few bolts. If you want her to move anywhere out of this shed she’s gonna need a whole overhaul. We’re gonna have to change a lot.”

“Bull crap. We get her back to the way she was. That’s the deal.”

“The way she was won’t work,” Aiden said. “A lot of the parts we’re going to need they don’t even make anymore. The more work we do, the more you’re going to see how much we have to change. Like tossing that old carburetor, for one thing. The engine we drop in will need a four-barrel, anyway.”

“You ain’t changing her.”

“No, I ain’t. You are. I’m showing you what needs to be done. You’re doing the work.”

The two of them lapsed into silence, staring at each other. Joe Willie scowled. Aiden tilted his head and gave him a baleful look in return. They both crossed their arms and rocked lightly on the balls of their feet.

“Damned if I am,” Joe Willie said.

“Why? Because tradition can’t change?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s tradition.”

“Then there’s no deal,” Aiden replied.

“You won’t be a bull rider.”

“That’s okay. I wasn’t when I got here and I did all right.”

“Being a convict’s all right?”

“Yeah,” Aiden said, pulling himself straighter. “It is. Because it’s over.”

“You think?”

“Yeah.”

“Then why carry the attitude?”

“What attitude?”

“The one where you figure you don’t need anybody. The one where you figure you’re tough enough to handle everything yourself.”

“Bullshit.”

“Think I don’t know that look, kid? I practically invented it.”

“Don’t call me kid.”

“Then quit acting like it.”

They stared at each other. Beyond the door they could hear the faint sounds of the ranch.

“You don’t know me,” Aiden said finally. “You don’t know where I’ve been. You don’t know anything about me.”

“Same,” Joe Willie said.

“I know enough,” Aiden said.

“Like?”

“Like you always had this place. Always had your family. Always had a place to come back to no matter how long you’d been gone. You never lost anything. You never lost your freedom. You don’t know how that feels.”

Joe Willie smoked. He put one foot up on the running board and smoked deliberately. When he finished he pinched out the butt against the button of his jacket and stashed it in the pocket before turning to look at Aiden. “They never put me away anywhere, kid. They never locked me up. But when I lost my arm and my leg got crushed, well, they might just about as well have. When I rode? That was my freedom. So you figure I don’t know how it feels to have that plucked away? Bullshit. I know it harder than you.”

“That’s supposed to make me feel bad?”

Joe Willie pushed his hat back on his head. “It’s not supposed to make you feel anything.”

“Good. Because I don’t.”

“Sure you do.”

“Sure I don’t.”

“You feel pissed, kid. I know that. Hell, I been out here in this shed boiling over just like you for a year and a half. Only thing is I let myself be pissed. You hold on to it like rigging. Like you’re scared it’ll throw you and you don’t know where you’ll land.”

“Right.”

“Damn straight, right,” Joe Willie said. “You gotta learn to go halfway before you can go all the way, kid.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“Ask your mother. She knows.”

“Leave my mother out of this.”

“Sure,” Joe Willie said slowly. “Might as well. You do.”

Aiden stepped up to Joe Willie, put his face a few inches away. Joe Willie lowered his hat on his head and put his hands in the back pockets of his jeans and held the look. Aiden put everything he had into the force of the look and balled his hands into fists, flexing them a few times while Joe Willie arched his eyebrows and looked back at him, waiting.

“Go on,” he said.

“You’re a loser,” Aiden said, breaking the look and stepping back. “You couldn’t teach me anything anyhow. Except maybe how to lose.”

Joe Willie grinned at him. “Well, you know what they say.”

“Who’s they?”

“The wise ones. Those who been there in life.”

“And what do they say?”

“It’s better to rig up and get thrown than to not have the guts to try.”

“Try and fix your truck, then.”

“I will. I have.”

“Don’t look like it.”

“Does to me.”

“Screw you. I don’t need this. I can walk right away from here. I’m a free man now.”

“Sure you are, kid. Sure you are.”

Aiden gritted his teeth and flexed his hands a few more times. He shopped for something to offer back and when he
came up empty he just looked around the shed and at the old truck. He rubbed the fender skirt with one hand and looked sullenly at Joe Willie again before walking out of the shed and out into the pasture toward the house. Joe Willie put a hand to the truck’s cool metal himself, then he went back to the workbench and fiddled with the old carburetor again.

“Spirit Dogs,” Johanna said.

“Pardon me?” Claire said from the other side of the stall. She was wrestling with latching a rein to a cross tie so they could wash a small mare.

“Spirit Dogs. It’s the name my people have for horses. Well, the old Sioux way of referring to horse anyway.”

“I love that. It’s so romantic and mysterious and all.”

Johanna stepped under the horse’s head and into the corridor, where she retrieved a bucket with sponges and fly repellant. Then she watched as Claire adjusted the flow of water from the hose and gauged the temperature with her palm before spraying the horse’s flank. The horse whinnied, made a couple of light steps, swished its tail and settled under Claire’s gentle rubbing of its nose.