Roped (Gail McCarthy Mysteries) (20 page)

"Oh, yeah. I just haven't forgiven myself." Lonny grinned sheepishly, and I had the sudden impulse to put my arms around him and kiss him long and hard, right in front of everybody.

He must have guessed something of my thought, because his smile widened and he reached for my hand. "You can cheer me up later," he said.

Lisa shook her head at the two of us. "I'm going to get something to eat."

We had steak for dinner. Steak and chili beans and potato salad and macaroni salad and green salad and strawberries and garlic bread. With brownies and chocolate chip cookies and homemade vanilla ice cream for dessert. By the time everybody was done eating, the sun was resting just above the bay, filling the air with the mellow golden light of evening. There was a slow, steady drift of people out to the pickup trucks and down to the arena.

Lisa loped by and his smile broke free. For a second he looked like the Glen Bennett of my youth. "Boy, she can really rope, can't she?" he said.

I stood by the fence and watched the ropers file out to stand behind the chutes. The sun was down below the hills, and the peculiar deep stillness of evening hovered just behind the noise and bustle of the roping arena. The sky to the west was blue-green, peacock blue, aquamarine. Let's rope, I thought. The call to the faithful.

Glen turned toward me. For a minute I expected him to say something, answer the question I hadn't asked. He was as much of a past as I had. I'd admired that stoic, strong presence ever since I could remember. Say something, Glen, I thought. Is it enough, what you are? Would you change if you could? And why does someone hate you?

Our eyes met. I thought he must have heard me, the questions were so loud in my own mind. But the square, strong face was as quiet and sure as ever, the eyes steady, the voice even. "I guess I better go turn the lights on so you guys can see to rope," he said.

I watched him turn and limp away.

In a minute the lights came on, adding their electric daylight to what was left of the real thing. Al was bellowing at the top of his lungs, yelling out the order. The teams would go in reverse; Tim and Billy Walsh, as high team, would be the last to go. Lisa and I were third to last.

The first team came flashing out under the lights and charged down the arena, throwing dirt clods in the air. They were chasing a brindle steer who could really run. The header never caught up and just pitched his rope at the steer in a no-hope shot somewhere near the end of the arena.

I smiled. This was part of it, this endless discussion of horses, this shared assumption that the equine species was infinitely interesting. We watched the next couple of teams go.

It was getting darker. I scanned the crowd, looking for anything that wasn't right. I could see the white protest signs waving gently about halfway down the arena. Susan and friend were still here, it appeared. They certainly hadn't been invited to the barbecue.

Lisa rode up next to me. Her eyes met mine-a quick, involuntary glance. Immediately we both looked for Glen. I was relieved to see him located prominently by the chutes, helping Al load the cattle and turn them out.

"So what do you think?" I asked Lisa.

Her face was tense; she glanced at Lonny, then flashed me a brief smile that reminded me for a split second of her father. "I think we're going to win this roping," she said.

The sky grew steadily darker. Above the glare of the electric lights it appeared almost black, with a dark blue band glowing over the western hills. Al was calling out the last ten teams. I trotted Gunner around to loosen him up. Al yelled, "Gail and Lisa, get ready."

Lisa smiled at me. "Here goes," she said.

The roping wasn't shaping up to be too tough. There was only one good time posted among the teams that had already gone. Lisa and I had twelve seconds to go to the lead. After that it depended on what Mark Brown and Travis Gunhart, who were the second high team, and Tim and Billy Walsh could do with their steers.

Lisa rode off toward the box, Chester walking relaxed, his head down, his hindquarters shambling from side to side in a loose, rocking gait. His eye was quiet and docile. That was how some of the really good ones were. They'd plod into the box like plow horses and then turn around and outrun anything in the arena.

I rode Gunner into the header's box, feeling my heart pound. This was it. Backing Gunner into the corner, I gathered him up and felt him come to instant readiness, muscles bunched, body half-crouched. For a second everything stood still, the horses frozen in the moment of waiting, tense and ready. Then I nodded for the steer and the still moment dissolved itself into speed and motion.

We drew a pup, a little white-faced steer who didn't run much, and I roped him neatly around the horns, turned him off, and took him away perfectly. I could hardly believe I'd done it.

Lisa came in hard after the steer, rope whirling, and threw. It was a good loop, and the steer's back feet went into it. She pulled the rope tight, dallied around her saddle horn, and I swung Gunner around to face. The flagman dropped the flag. My whole body relaxed. The timers called out an eight-second time and announced that Lisa and I were winning the roping.

Tim grinned at us as Lisa and I rode back up the arena together. "How 'bout that?" he called to his sister and me. He was tightening the cinch on Roany, getting ready for his run.

"It's all up to you now," Lisa teased him.

I got off Gunner and loosened his cinch, then tied him to the fence. Lonny walked up and put an arm around my shoulders. "You did great," he told me. "Your horse worked perfectly."

I patted Gunner's neck, still too stunned to speak. Glen limped toward us. "Good job," he said impartially to Lisa and me.

The words were still in his mouth when there was a sudden ominous electric crackle. The big arena lights flickered and then went out. It was like a curtain coming down. Only a couple of smaller lights still glowed by the chutes. We all looked at each other in the semidarkness.

"God damn it," Glen said. "The girls in the timer's shack must have turned on the heater. They should know better than that. Any time we turn that heater on when the arena lights are on it overloads the whole system. Hell."

I started after him anyway, propelled more by a desire to keep an eye on him than anything else. I saw his flashlight go bobbing into the timer's shack, and I could hear his voice raised inside, half-teasing, half-annoyed: "Now just what do you girls think you're doing, running that heater when I've got the arena lights on? You all know that overloads the system."

Lots of giggles and disclaimers. I peered in the door. Glen was flicking switches by flashlight. Janey Borba, Pat Domini, a woman I didn't know, and Joyce stood there watching him. The stranger woman was laughing and denying that any of them had turned the heater on.

Glen stepped back out and hopped down the arena on his crutches. Most of the crowd were sitting quietly on their horses in the half-dark, waiting for things to get started again. I followed Glen. He moved at a surprisingly rapid pace for a man on crutches. I kept my antennae out for trouble, but no one else seemed to be trailing Glen-only me.

Glen stopped by a power pole; I could see the fuse box partway up it. Glen cursed softly; he appeared to be fumbling in the box by flashlight. He seemed to find what he wanted, and I heard a click.

There was a brief yellow glow from the lights, but in the same instant an electric crackle and an arcing green-white flash lit the fuse box, illuminating the black silhouette of Glen's stiffened body for the split second before everything went dark again.

Then Glen's body was falling and I was running to him and he was lying on the ground, ominously still. Somebody was with me and we rolled Glen on his back and I saw that the somebody was Lisa. Her face was desperate. I took one close look at Glen and said, "Quick, you work on his heart. I'll breathe into him."

I pinched Glen's nose and opened his mouth, tilted his chin back. Took a deep breath. Pressed my mouth over his and blew my breath into him. When I lifted my head, I could see Lisa pumping his chest.
One one thousand, two one thousand.
. . I said a quick, silent prayer of thanks for the CPR lessons that Lisa and I had taken while we were in high school.

I could hear people yelling around me with part of my mind, but most of me was quiet and focused. There was only Glen's face and the stubble of rough whiskers on his jaw. Come on, Glen, I thought. Come on.

I couldn't tell how long we worked on Glen. It seemed like hours. Eventually there was a red light flashing and Lisa and I were pulled away as others took over. Glen was still alive, they said. They loaded him in an ambulance on a stretcher, and Joyce got in with him. Tim and Lisa got in Tim's truck and followed the ambulance. Lonny had his arm around my shoulders as we watched the sad little entourage pull out.

After they were gone, people huddled together. The roping was over; Al was turning the cattle out. No one seemed very concerned that the fate of the saddles was undecided. The real drama of Glen's near-death was the only topic of discussion. The ropers wanted to talk, to speculate, to reassure each other.

"Jesus, Gail, what happened?" Lonny had shepherded me away from the group and was plying me with coffee.

"I don't know." I said it between sips and shudders; the night had grown chilly, and my hands were shaking. Shock, not cold. "I shouldn't have waited," I said numbly.

"What do you mean?" Lonny was clearly puzzled. "You saved his life. What more could you do?"

"I don't know," I said again. "But I should have done something." I turned to Lonny. "Could you do me a favor?"

I walked over to the fuse box. I wasn't exactly sure what I was looking for, but what I found puzzled me more than ever. There were no fuses anywhere. There was no fuse in the spot where a fuse was supposed to be, only an empty bracket. There were no spare fuses on the small shelf at the bottom of the fuse box. I looked carefully, using the flashlight that had fallen when Glen dropped. No fuses on the ground below or beside the box, either.

Then I walked back to the timer's shack. It was quiet and empty; everybody was outside talking. I looked at the main breaker switch, the switch I assumed Glen had flipped off when he was in there earlier. I stared at it a long time. It was in the off position. There was no way, with the switch in that position, that Glen could have electrocuted himself. The thing was physically impossible.

I walked out of the timer's shack slowly, not paying any attention to what was going on around me, and almost ran into Janey Borba, who was walking in. She spooked like a startled horse. It only took her a half-second to lose the startled look and resume her usual unfriendly expression.

"What are you doing in here?" she demanded. She didn't acknowledge by word or tone that she had any idea who I was, though I assumed she knew.

"I'm not sure," I told her truthfully.

I could feel her looking after me as I walked away.

TWENTY

I spent another hour at the barn, helping Lonny unsaddle and feed the Bennetts' horses, avoiding people who wanted to pat me on the back as gracefully as I could. By the time we were done, almost everybody had gone home.

"Could you take me up to Lisa's?" I asked Lonny. "I'm going to wait there until she gets home. If ..." I didn't want to put it into words. "She might need a friend," I finished.

"That's okay." I spotted Glen's pickup sitting by the barn."I can drive Glen's truck up to Lisa's. I'll call you if I need you."

Lonny looked like he wanted to argue, but after a glance at my face he gave in. "Whatever you say. Call me if anything seems wrong."