Finders Keepers

The fire department had determined the fire had started thanks to a faulty space heater. My guess was that the main “faulty” part of the fire had been Clay, but I guess even the fire department was worried about me losing it if they told me the whole truth. Oh well. How it had happened didn’t change that it had happened.

By the calendar’s measure, it had been three months since the fire. By my measure, it felt like a couple centuries. Clay was a distant memory, along with so many pieces of my life. Working at Willow Springs and bull riding were the only pieces of my former life that hadn’t changed. I’d cut off contact with most of the people in my life, at least the ones who knew the real me, not the person I wanted people to see when they looked at me.

Well, I’d tried cutting them off. Josie showed up at Willow Springs every now and then, trying to get me to ‘snap out of it,’ but she’d been about as successful as Jesse had. I wasn’t ‘snapping out’ of anything. I was happily snapped in. If they didn’t like it, that wasn’t my problem.

“Black. You’re up.”

I lifted my chin and slid into my leather gloves. Since the fire, I’d stepped up my training. I’d linked up with a few other guys who trained every Thursday night with Will Jones, who was basically bull riding royalty. Will was an old timer, probably in his seventies from what I knew of his career, but he still moved and held himself like one of us “young and dumb” types. Will had an indoor arena, a few practice bulls, and a mountain of champion belt buckles. The opportunity to train with one of the best didn’t come free. Or even cheap. I was shelling out hard-earned cash in my pursuit of eight seconds of glory, and the longest I’d managed to stay on a bull since the fire was five.

Five pathetic seconds of no glory was all I had to show for weeks of hard training and a boatload of cash. That was about to change.

Climbing the gate, I held in my groan when I saw which bull I’d drawn. Bluebell. A sweet name for an anything-but-sweet creature. I was convinced Bluebell had been Attila the Hun in a former life because the bull was merciless and out for blood. In the few months I’d been riding him, Bluebell had drawn plenty of mine.

“All right, Black, try to stay on just a few seconds longer than you stayed on top of your date last night.” Jason, whose right eye was still black from when he’d run his mouth last Thursday, smirked. My fist was twitching, just dying to make contact with his other eye, when Will hollered at us from the stands.

“You boys going to sweet talk each other all night, or are you going to ride?”

“I don’t know about Jason here, he seems the sweet talking type”—I flashed him a tight smile—“but I’m riding.”

Jason laughed. “Is that what you call it? I thought what you did was eat dirt.”

If I wasn’t already getting into position on Bluebell, my fist would have cracked into Jason right then. Oh, well. I’d just have to give the ride of my life and shut him up that way. Double-checking my grip on the bull strap, I lifted my other arm and gave the nod.

The gate flew open, and Bluebell burst out of it like a devil out of hell who was down on his quota for the month. The one benefit to having ridden Bluebell so many times was that I knew the bull’s patterns, how high he jumped, and which way he liked to spin out of the gate. Most of bull riding was sheer determination, training, and luck, but some of it was probability and statistics. I knew Bluebell spun to the right. Not every spin, but always the first spin out of the gate. I felt the bull tighten beneath me, ready to break into a spin after lunging out of the gate. I braced myself, and one millisecond too late, I realized my mistake. For probably the first time in the creature’s life, its opening spin was to the left and I was, yet again, eating dirt.

Probability and statistics my ass.

I didn’t bother to jump up and flee for the gates. The damn bull knew it could do nothing worse to me than throw me before the eight-second mark. I swear it gave the bull equivalent of a smirk before heading to the holding gate at the other end of the arena. The day Will decided Bluebell was ready to retire, I was buying that damn bull and turning his hide into a pair of boots just so I could have the satisfaction of returning the dirt-eating favor with every step I took. Cursing under my breath, I hoisted myself up and tried not to hobble across the arena. Jason and the rest of the guys were applauding my performance with wide grins. Bastards.

“Impressive performance out there, Black. I think you managed to stay on a whole two seconds that time, which was a whole second longer than your date last night had the pleasure of.”

If I wasn’t already covered in bruises from our training session, I would have thrown off my gloves and charged Jason. What stopped me wasn’t the fear of losing a fight to Jason Simmons. When I did have a go at him, I wanted to be at my best because I wanted him to remember every hit I got on him. If I wanted to just kick his ass, it would have been game on, but I wanted to kick his ass and teach him a lesson. With the way I was already beat to shit, teaching him a lesson would have to wait.

I had to spit out a mouthful of dirt before replying. “At least I know how to pleasure my date. Unlike your sorry excuse for a dick. And the staying-on-my-date jokes were old five hundred ago. Get some fresh material and get back to me.”

“A cowboy who stays on a bull for eight seconds doesn’t have to know how to pleasure his date. He’s got a whole line of dates just waiting to pleasure him.”

For a cowboy who’d ridden a whopping five rodeos, he sure had a big head. “The only line I see around you is a blank-faced, nose-picking male bunch.” I waved toward the other guys we trained with on Thursdays. I didn’t know their names because I didn’t care to know their names. They only rode bulls for the p**sy that came along with it. A real competitor didn’t disgrace the sport by riding for p**sy. They rode because they were f**king cowboys with dicks, and that’s what real cowboys with legitimate dicks did. Fucking posers.

“Okay, boys. I’m calling it a night before someone kills themselves or someone else,” Will yelled. Part of his job was training us, and part of it was keeping us from strangling each other. I don’t know if he would have taken us on if he’d read that in the fine print. “Pack it up. I’ll see to the bulls.”

“If you need any tips, Black, give me a call. I know a thing or two when it comes to eight seconds.” Jason slid out of his protective vest, chomping his gum and grinning at me. “Oh, hold up. You don’t have a phone, right? The cell got cut off due to insufficient funds, and the landline . . . well, the landline was burnt to a crisp like your has-been daddy.”

Rage monster, here I come. I’d just torn off my gloves and started marching toward Jason—after what he’d just said, he was going to get his ass beat and learn a lesson—when a firm pair of hands grabbed my shoulders and stopped me.

“Bad idea, Garth.”

I tried pulling free of Will’s hold, but the old timer was either hooked up to a steroid drip every night or was a descendent of Superman. I might as well have been struggling against a pair of steel vices.

“Save your battles for the arena. Beating him by earning a higher score will shut him up a hundred times faster than any ass-kicking. It’ll keep you out of jail too because I don’t know about you, but Jason seems like the type who would press charges for battery or some shit.” When I stopped struggling, Will let me go. “He’s the kind of man—I use that term loosely—who doesn’t understand you don’t call the cops to work out a situation when a pair of fists does a better job of it.”

I’d always liked old Will Jones, but my opinion of him had just jumped a few hundred levels from moderate to severe hero worship. “I’d love to shut him up by giving the f**king ride of my life, but I can’t even manage a mediocre ride that hits the eight-second mark.”

“When was the last time you stayed on a full eight?” Will asked when I turned to him, after waving both of my middle fingers at Jason and his jackass apostles as they left the arena.

“A little over three months ago.”

Will grunted, nodding. I’d never talked about it with him, but it was a small town. Will knew what had happened to Clay, how it’d happened, and when. That he’d never felt the need to bring it up or ask if I wanted to “talk about it” put him that much higher in my esteem.

“I went through a dry spell once myself, too. My issue was a woman. A crazy, vivacious one I couldn’t get out of my head. I was so consumed with her that I’d already be out the chute before I realized I was on the back of a pissed off bull that wouldn’t think twice about stomping me to death.” Will’s eyes went somewhere else. “That woman . . .” When he came back, he shook his head and studied the ground.

“Well? How did you beat it? How did you get her out of your head and end your dry spell?” That was the point of the whole segue, right?

Will smiled. “I all but hog-tied her, drug her to the closest church, and married her.”

I hadn’t seen the marry-the-crazy-distracting-woman one coming. “And marrying her helped your riding?”

“I earned my highest score my first ride after saying I do.”

“How in the hell did that work?” If a woman was my problem, marrying her would be the worst possible solution.

“Because I’d fallen so completely in love, my mind and body and every other part of me wouldn’t rest until I’d made her mine forever, for God and everyone else to know. I couldn’t be some other man to her when I wanted to be the man for her.”

The conversation was getting a little too touchy-feely for me. I stepped back in case Will was close to breaking out in tears and needing a hug. I wasn’t the person to hug when someone was in the midst of a meltdown. I was the person who shook the hell out of someone and ordered them to get their shit together. “Well, that’s a Precious Moments story, but it does me a whole lot of no good because my problem ain’t no woman.”

“Your daddy?” At least if he was going to bring it up, he didn’t beat around the bush and he looked me in the eye.

“Daddy, ashes to ashes, dust to dust—literally—dearest.”

Will didn’t blink. I suppose when a person had lived as many years as he had, there was little left to be seen or heard that could surprise them. “And what makes you think your daddy dying is causing you to lose your head when you’re up there on a bull?”

“Because he’s probably some poltergeist following me around, giving me a ghosty shove when I’m up there, and getting a good laugh in his hereafter watching me eat dirt.” Will raised an eyebrow. “Because, okay? I know.” He lifted his other brow, waiting. “You’re a stubborn one, aren’t you?”

“Only about as stubborn as you are. But I’ve had fifty extra years of experience, so don’t you think for a moment your stubbornness can outdo mine. Older men than you have tried and failed.”