Finding Somewhere (14 page)

“We’re from Wyoming,” he said, and left it at that.

Delores grabbed me as soon as we made it inside. She
said something to Drew about going to the ladies’ room. She hooked her arm through my arm and whispered not to look back. We walked past snack bars and ice cream counters, and past two gift shops selling cowboy paraphernalia. One place had a large sign outside promising discounts on Stetson hats. As we walked, buzzers went off, and the crowd yelled at something happening down in the ring. It felt strange to be in such a lighted place when outside it had been dark for more than an hour.

“Was he holding your hand?” she asked me, her head still straight ahead.

“Yes.”

“OMG,” she said. “And Drew is a weirdo. Did you hear the music he played on the ride here?”

“What did you expect a guy who works for Bob’s Bucking Brahmas to listen to, Delores?”

She grabbed my hand and yanked me into the restroom. As soon as we made it inside, she turned and looked at me. A woman near the sinks yanked a paper towel out of the holder and wiped her face with the towel.

“Do you like him?” Delores asked.

“Punch?”

“Of course, Punch!” she yelped.

“Well, sure. He’s nice.”

“And unbelievably handsome.”

“He’s cute,” I said.

I stepped over to the mirror above a row of sinks and checked my reflection. Delores stood beside me. She took out some lip gloss and fingered it onto her lips. The woman with the paper towel crumpled it, tossed it into a trash barrel, and left. I looked at my bruises. I wondered why Punch hadn’t asked about them.

“Gorgeous is more like it,” Delores said. “Punch, I mean. Drew’s cute, but he knows it, and that’s a turnoff. Plus, he’s an opinionated little tumbleweed.”

“Tumbleweed?” I asked her. “Where are you coming up with all this cornball stuff? Are you having second thoughts?”

“I’m just here for the rodeo,” she said.

“You’re acting nutty, Delores.”

“I guess it feels strange having people between us after all we’ve been doing,” she said. “It just is.”

“I know what you mean,” I said, “but we might as well see the rodeo. It’s just one night. We’ll be gone tomorrow.”

“You promise?”

I looked at her, reflection to reflection.

“What’s going on, Delores?”

She shrugged. Our eyes stayed on each other’s for a little bit. And I knew some sort of spiral had started in her and that
she could feel it, too. Maybe Drew had set it off, or maybe seeing me holding hands with Punch had done it, but she had begun to sink, and she couldn’t tell me any way but this.

“I’m sorry,” she said, looking at me. “I get all crazy. I was thinking this was going to be so great, but now all I can think about is I’m out in Minnesota and I’m at a rodeo with some guy I don’t even know, and after this, later on, I don’t know where I’m going.”

“Do you want to say you got sick?” I asked. “We can make our excuses.”

She shook her head.

“I’m going to ask my dad if I can go live with him,” she said, her eyes filling. “Just for a while. Just to see something else.”

“That could be just the thing for you right now, Delores.”

“I know, but then he called and started giving me grief about the trailer and everything, so I don’t know. I guess I had talked myself into thinking that was how it would go. I mean, to go visit him. And maybe Drew tonight—well, I get so crazy with ideas, thinking things will happen a certain way, and then when they don’t, I’m let down. It takes the wind out of me, Hattie. I keep telling myself not to get too high or low, but you know, when I saw those cowboys, I thought, This is
my future, this is the man I’m going to marry. How pathetic is that?”

“Did you want Punch? Is that it?”

“No, he’s your age, anyway, and he’s all wrapped up in you. I’m not man crazy or anything. It just feels like I’m walking around with a key in my hand, and I keep trying it in different doors and the locks never tumble for me. It sounds ridiculous, I’m sure. I’m sorry. And you’re meeting this amazing-looking guy.”

Then she really cried. Two older women came in and looked at us, then passed by and went into stalls. I held Delores and let her cry it out. After a while she pushed off my shoulder and bent to the sink and washed her face. “Cowboy up,” she whispered, which is what the Red Sox said a few seasons back to get themselves rallied up. She dried her face and hands on paper towels. Delores loved the Red Sox.

“You sure you want to go through with this date?” I said. “We don’t owe them anything.”

“I’m just being a poop,” she said. “We’re in Blue Earth, for goodness’ sakes, where the western sky meets the eastern horizon.”

“That’s awkward,” I said.

She laughed.

“Drew’s cute, right?” she asked, straightening her clothes.

“Sure, he’s cute.”

“Expectation is the enemy of serenity,” she said.

“Where’d you get that?”

“Fortune cookie,” she said, yanking me toward the door. “Let’s grab some cowboy.”

Chapter 7

D
REW SHOVED A BIG CHEW OF TOBACCO INTO HIS MOUTH
, then lifted his lower lip like a camel and wrapped it over the wad. He made a sucking sound as he did it, as if his saliva had rushed out to meet an old friend. I watched Delores’s eyes go wide when she realized what he had done. She looked at me. Then she reached over and grabbed the tobacco out of Drew’s hand and squeezed out a pinch and jammed it into her mouth. We were in the grandstands sitting on wooden bleachers. Not many people sat near us. The boys sat on the outside. The seats we were supposed to get down at ground level had been promised to a VIP, it turned out.

“You’re a crazy girl,” Drew said, and stretched his legs out in front of him.

Punch shook his head. Punch held my hand.

I knew Delores was bored and a little manic. The rodeo didn’t end up being quite what we had expected. It had a sawdust ring and a lot of glaring light and constant music punctuating everything that happened. The announcer made a series of jokes we didn’t get, or didn’t find funny. I couldn’t keep my eyes off the gelding straps that made the horses buck, and when the riders bulldogged a bunch of calves, I thought they might break the animals’ necks. I didn’t like that, and neither did Delores, but we liked the clown who ran in and out at various times to amuse the audience. The clown’s name was Cecile, and he had a funny way, his pants droopy and his hat tilted on his head. He wore sneakers instead of big clown shoes. He needed the sneakers to run from bulls and to dodge in when a cowboy got in trouble. His real name, Drew told us, was Harry, but Cecile was his clown name. Clowns got gored, too, Drew said, and kicked and beat, but a good clown saved lives, and Cecile was a good one even if he had gotten a little older and hard of hearing.

Delores and I liked the barrel racing, where women riders worked their way around a cloverleaf course and made the horse maneuver in tight circles and bends. Punch and Drew
said barrel racing counted as the stupidest, most annoying event in any rodeo, and that it was put on for wives who used to be bored while their men participated in the rougher sports. When Delores and I heard that, we played up our enjoyment of the barrel riding because we liked being exotic to these boys and we liked seeing women doing something active. We were Easterners, not like the typical Western girls they dated, and we kept drawing the line, bright and wide, so they would see it.

Being exotic is probably what made Delores take a dip of tobacco.

“How is it?” I asked her.

“It doesn’t stay together,” she said, her voice working around her open mouth. “I thought it formed into a chunk or something. But it’s like chewing rubber bands.”

“You keep it in your lip,” Drew said, “but don’t swallow the juices or you’ll be as sick as Jupiter.”

“I want it out,” Delores said.

Drew handed her an empty soda cup. Delores yakked it up like a cat frowning out a hair ball. She used her index finger to get it all out. Then she grabbed a napkin from me and licked her tongue on it.

“ ‘Gross’ does not begin to cover it,” she said.

Drew smiled.

“You two just aren’t rodeo fans,” he said, taking up a theme we had already covered. “You got to stop thinking about it and just enjoy it.”

“What is it like to ride a bull?” I asked Punch.

“Isn’t much fun,” Punch said, his eyes on a Ford F-250 that a local dealership had driven into the ring as a way of advertising deals. The pickup was black and had a bed liner and glistening hubcaps. Someone had buffed it like crazy. A truck never looked better.

“Then why do you do it?” I asked.

“Boys do some stupid things,” he said. “That’s the definition of ‘boys.’ ”

“But what is it like?” I asked, my shoulder against his, my hand in his. I’d already decided I wanted to kiss him before the night was over.

“It’s a lot of yanking on your arm,” he said, lowering his voice so only I could hear. “When you tie in, you hook your arm in, and when the bull starts to go, it’s your shoulder that gets it worst at first. Then after a while the whole world shrinks to the space right above the bull’s head. If it has horns—blunted, you know—then you see everything as the bull sees it, and sometimes your mind goes away completely and you just ride by instinct. I don’t know. Bulls don’t treat you right.”

“Is it the danger you like?”

He pursed his lips.

“Never really thought of it that way,” he said. “Just a thing to ride, I guess. And a little prize money from time to time.”

His hand covered my hand as simply as a glove.

“You know,” Drew said, “we don’t have to stay. We could get out of here if you two want to. Can’t say Punch and I haven’t seen enough rodeos in our days.”

“To go where?” Delores asked, apparently okay with taking off.

“We could go get some food.”

“What do you say, Hattie?” Delores asked, turning to me.

“I’m ready,” I said.

“There’s a Chinese place in town that’s good,” Punch said. “Some of the older guys go there.”

A loud whoop marked the end of the advertisement for the Ford F-250. We stood. Punch held my hand and led me out. I liked seeing his profile under the cowboy hat.

“W
HAT
I
WANT TO KNOW
,” D
ELORES SAID, A BOWL OF
chicken lo mein in front of her, her fork dragging noodles upward, “is how come there is a Chinese restaurant in every town in the country. I mean, you can’t tell me some Chinese
family in some small village in China decides one day to open a restaurant in Blue Earth, Minnesota. That doesn’t make sense. Who tells them where to go? And how come they don’t end up having maybe five restaurants in the same little town?”

“They do sometimes,” Drew said, biting into a dumpling.

Delores shook her head.

“Someone has to be like the air traffic controller. Right? Someone has to say, ‘You open a restaurant in New Hampshire, and you other folks open one in Minnesota.’ I mean, does someone do a demographic check to see if the population is sufficient to support the restaurant? How does it all work?”

“So you think,” Drew said, putting down his dumpling and shaking soy sauce onto it, “that a Chinese guy sits somewhere, and he has a map of the United States and he puts pins into different towns when a restaurant goes in? Is that what you’re claiming?”

“I don’t know what I’m saying,” Delores said. “I’m just saying.”

“Someone said Ray Kroc used to fly around the country and look down and figure out places to put McDonald’s outlets,” Punch said.

“So maybe a Chinese guy flies around,” I said, trying to
push the conversation in a different direction. Delores and Drew could go round and round.

“The McDonald brothers are from New Hampshire,” Delores said. “McDonald’s is New Hampshire’s gift to the world. Isn’t that just perfect?”

Before Drew answered, the waitress came to fill our water glasses and check if we needed anything. She was a short middle-aged Chinese woman who took small steps. To start the meal, she had handed out radishes carved into swans and a wallet-sized menu with the name Han Se Chinese Restaurant on the front. Her name tag said
Uh
. I didn’t know if that was a misspelling or what.

Punch held his water glass up to be filled. He thanked her. He had ordered orange chicken. His hat hung on the back of his chair. His hair was long and wavy and the color of pine shavings. I liked the way his jaw muscles flexed when he ate. Delores declined water, and so did Drew. I asked Uh to fill up mine. The food tasted spicy and strong.

“So what are you all doing out here anyway?” Drew asked when the waitress had left. “What’s all this stuff about a horse?”

“We are taking a horse out west,” Delores said.

“Delivering it?” Punch asked, interested.

“In a manner of speaking,” I said. “We stole it.”

“You stole a horse?” Punch asked.

He took a sip of water.

“I stole it from a place I worked,” I said. “They planned to put him down.”

“So you took him?” Drew asked. “Just like that?”

I shrugged.

“Where are you going to take him?” Punch asked.