Rather, he might never be the same again.
Chapter Two
Cody’s sides hurt from running.
He dug his fingers into his waist and stared down the empty street. “Dad!” The picture filled his mind again. The cab slowing down, stopping for a minute, then making a gradual left turn. “Dad, come back.”
A breeze hit him in the face and he realized he was crying.
“Dad!” Cody gasped, grabbing at any air he could suck in. Why did he leave? Where did he go? Dad took trips all the time, but he always came home. Always. What had he said? He wasn’t coming back; was that it? His dad’s words rumbled around inside him, making his chest tight, filling his heart and soul and lungs with hurt. Every breath was a struggle.
His dad was gone.
He was gone and there was nothing Cody could do about it. Come back, Dad! The words stayed stuck in his throat this time, and he stared down. Stay, feet. Don’t move. He’ll come back; he will.
Cody lifted his eyes to the place where the cab had turned. Any second, right? He’d turn around, come back home, tell them all he was sorry for getting so mad, right? Cody waited and waited and waited. And then he remembered the thing his dad had said about Carl Joseph.
I can’t be a father to him…
Eight years was plenty old enough for Cody to understand the problem. Carl Joseph was different. He didn’t look right or talk right or walk right. He was happy and really good at loving everyone and he almost never got mad, but their dad maybe didn’t notice that. That’s why, this time, having his dad leave was more serious.
Because he didn’t want to be a daddy to Carl Joseph.
Cody stared down the street. Come back, Dad… turn around. He waited and watched for a long, long time.
Nothing.
No movement, no sounds of cars turning around and coming back. No yellow cabs. Just the quiet dance of twisty green leaves above him and the hot summer song of unseen crickets. Or something like crickets.
Later his mother would tell him that she cried for him, standing there all that time, waiting for his father to come back. But after a while, Cody wasn’t just standing there waiting; he was swept up in a feeling he’d never known until that day.
It started in his feet, almost as if it were oozing up through the cracked bumpy sidewalk. A burning that flooded his veins and pushed higher, past his knees and thighs, into his gut, where it swirled and mixed and grew until it filled his heart and mind, and finally his soul.
Not until it fully consumed him, not until it took up every spare bit of his young body, did he realize what had come over him, into him.
Cody knew what hate was because of Billy Bloom in his second-grade class. Billy was bigger than everyone else. Bigger and meaner. He tripped kindergartners, and stole the ball from the kickball game at recess, and laughed at Cody when he got a wrong answer in math. Cody hated Billy Bloom.
But what he was feeling now, this was something new, something so powerful it burned in his arms and legs and made him feel heavy and slow and trapped. All the other times Cody had used the word hate, he’d been wrong. Because this—what he felt for his father—was hatred.
CODY NEVER TOLD anyone, but that morning he felt his heart shrivel up and die, all except the piece that belonged to Carl Joseph. His little brother thought Cody was Superman and Christopher Robin all rolled into one. As the weeks passed, every morning was the same routine. Carl Joseph would scamper down the hall to Cody’s room, slip inside, and stand next to the bed.
“Brother…” He would pat Cody’s shoulder. “It’s a new morning.”
Cody would stir and blink his eyes and find Carl Joseph there. “Yep, buddy. A brand-new morning.”
“Is Daddy coming home today?”
Cody would grit his teeth and sit up some. “Not today, buddy. I don’t think so.”
For a minute worry would cast shadows on Carl Joseph’s face. But then a grin would fill his round cheeks and he’d make a funny chuckling sound. “That’s okay, ’cause know why, brother?”
“Why?”
“ ’Cause I have you, brother. I always have you.”
Cody would hug him around the neck. “That’s right, buddy. You always have me.”
The two of them were inseparable. Carl Joseph followed him around the house, waiting for him at the front window on school days. He didn’t talk as clear as other kids, and he had those puffy bunches of skin under his eyes. But he was the happiest little guy Cody ever saw. He loved with abandon, and after a few months he walked into Cody’s room one morning and didn’t ask about when Daddy would come home.
That day Carl Joseph worked his way into the deepest part of Cody’s heart. He still wasn’t sure exactly what was wrong with Carl Joseph, but whatever it was, Cody had a feeling there wouldn’t be many people in his little brother’s life. If their dad didn’t want Carl Joseph, maybe no one would.
No one but Cody. Whatever else happened, Cody would love Carl Joseph, and maybe that was all he’d ever love. He had no use for his mother; she was a grown-up, the only one with the power to keep Cody’s father home. Instead, she’d stood right there on the grass and told him to go. Told him to go and never come back.
The rest of that year, Cody would wait until Carl Joseph was asleep, then he’d creep up to his room without saying good night to his mother. He’d lie on the bed and stare at the wall. Sometimes tears would come, sometimes not. Always he would start at the beginning.
Hearing his dad talk to his mom about leaving, about not wanting to be with Carl Joseph. Then seeing his dad with a suitcase and following him out into the front yard and watching him head for the yellow cab.
“Good-bye, son. Good-bye.”
The story would run again and again in his head, playing out on the blank wall beside his bed. Almost always his mother would find him there. Most of the time she didn’t ask about why Cody went to bed early or why he was lying on his side staring at the wall or why he never told her good night or what he was feeling about his dad being gone.
But once in a while she would try.
Cody remembered one night the next spring when his mom came up to talk to him. She opened the door and took a loud breath. Then she moved a few steps toward him. “I hate that you hide up here, Cody. You’re not the only one hurting.”
“Yes, I am!” Cody turned over and sat up. His heart skittered around in his chest. “Carl Joseph doesn’t remember Daddy.”
“I miss him, too.” She sat on the edge of his bed. Her eyes were red and swollen, and her voice was tired. “I love him, Cody. It’s not my fault he left.”
“It is too your fault!” Cody closed his eyes and remembered his father leaving. When he opened them the anger inside him was bursting to get out. “You told him to go!”
“Cody.” His mom touched his foot. Her fingers were shaking. “I didn’t mean it.”
“Yes you did!” His voice got louder. “You told him to go and never come back.”
“Because I was mad. I didn’t really want him to go.”
But nothing she said that night or any other time was enough to convince Cody. She told his dad to leave, and not only that, she did nothing to make him stay. Maybe if she’d been nicer to him, helped him find another football job. Made him better dinners. Anything to make sure he didn’t walk out the door.
Even when it no longer made sense, long after his childhood days blended into middle school, Cody blamed her. Because it was easier to dole out blame than it was to unravel the knot of hatred and sort through the loose ends of a lifetime of bitterness.
By the time Cody was in seventh grade, the football coach approached him.
“You’re Mike Gunner’s boy, right? Atlanta Falcons back a few years ago?”
Cody bristled, his spine stiff. “Yes, sir.”
“Well.” The coach gave a few slow nods. “I’ve watched you out with the other boys.” The man hesitated. “You’re good, Cody. You play just like your dad. The varsity coach over at the high
school wants you to join ’em for practice a few times a week. How does that sound?”
Cody made a hurried attempt at trying to sort through his emotions. Just like my dad? He swallowed, not sure what to say.
The coach raised his brow, as if maybe he expected a different reaction. “What can I tell ’em, Gunner? You interested?”
“Yes, sir.” He coughed and his words got stuck in his throat. Was that why he loved the game, loved the way the ball felt in the crook of his arm, tucked against his ribs, the way his feet flew down the field? Because he was Mike Gunner’s boy? The anger that lived and breathed in that dark closet of his heart roared so loud it took his breath away.
If football was his father’s legacy, he wanted nothing to do with it.
The coach started walking away. “Okay, then. I’ll tell him you’ll be there.”
“Sir?” Cody’s face grew hot. He waited until the coach turned around. “What I mean is, no, sir. I won’t go; I’m not interested.”
The coach gave him a strange look. Then he laughed. “Of course you’re interested, Gunner.” He twisted his face. “Football’s in your blood.”
“No, sir.” Cody’s mind raced, desperate for an answer. “I’m… I’m going out for band.”
“Band?” The word clearly left a bad taste in the coach’s mouth. “You’re kidding, right?”
“No, sir.” Cody tried to look serious. “I… I love band.” He hesitated. He would no sooner go out for band than dye his hair pink. Cody felt himself relax; he stood a little taller. “Band’s what I live for.”
The coach studied him, a frown deepening the lines in his forehead. Then he shrugged and took a step back. “Suit yourself, Gunner. I’ll tell ’em you have other plans.”
As Cody watched the man leave, a certainty filled his soul. He would never pick up a football again as long as he lived. No matter his feelings for the game, if seeing him with a pigskin reminded people of his father, he wanted none of it.
Later that year he fell in with a group of 4-H kids, guys who needed help with their farming or livestock. Cody was a quick study, and after a few months he could handle a horse as well as the kids who’d been on them for years.
One night just before summer, he and the guys met at the fairgrounds to watch the high school rodeo team practice. They moved close to the fence and Cody breathed it in, the heavy smell of bull hides. Cody knew about bull riding, but that night was the first time he ever saw a cowboy ride. The guy was a junior, a scrawny kid Cody had seen around town. Slow and careful, the cowboy lowered himself onto a jet-black bull, and in a blur the gate flew open and the animal burst into the arena.
Wild and out of control, the bull bucked and jerked and reared his head back. It was all the cowboy could do to hold on, and after six seconds, he slid to one side of the animal’s back and fell hard in a heap to the ground.
“No good!” an older cowboy shouted. The man was in his late twenties, maybe. The rodeo coach, no doubt. “You need eight, Ronny. Eight seconds.”
The kid picked himself up, dusted off his loose-fitting jeans and pressed his cowboy hat onto his head. His voice held a type of respect Cody admired. “Yes, sir. Eight seconds.”
Five bulls stood together in a stock pen. The black one, two brown, one gray- and white-spotted, and one that was broad and yellow with a hump between its shoulders. One after another Ronny and a handful of high school cowboys took on the bulls while their instructor shouted out advice.
“Find the seat, Taylor, find it and keep it!… Move your legs, Ronny…. Kevin, bring your hand up higher over your head! Okay, good.”
Cody barely heard any of it.
He was too busy watching the bulls, studying them, hypnotized by their fury. Those eight seconds, while the cowboy was on the bull’s back, were the picture of a battle he knew intimately. The war he waged every day against the anger and rage within him. The way the rider struggled to stay on through the violent bucking, looking for the center of a ride that was never even close to controlled. It was the same way he fought to stay on top of the emotions that boiled inside him.
Before he could voice what he was feeling, without saying a word to his buddies, he followed the fence around the arena and walked up to the man still barking orders at the cowboys.
“That’s better, Ronny; can you feel it? Keep it centered!”
“Sir?” Cody squared his legs and crossed his arms.
The man gripped the crown of his hat and looked over his shoulder. “Whadya want, kid?”
Cody didn’t hesitate. “I want to ride.”
“Yeah?” The coach smiled and a sarcastic chuckle sounded deep in his throat. “What are you, eleven?”
“Thirteen.” The anger grew a few degrees hotter. He straightened himself. “I’ll stay on any bull you’ve got.”
The man leaned into the fence and sized him up. “What grade you in? Seventh?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Another year before you can ride for me.” He turned toward the action in the arena.
Cody stared at the man’s back and clenched his teeth. He didn’t need anyone’s permission to ride a bull. It was his own thing; between the bull and him. He continued around the arena to the chutes.
One of the cowboys shot him a look. “Hey, kid, get lost. This is for cowboys only.”
“I’m a cowboy.” He nodded the brim of his hat toward the coach. “He wants to see what I can do.”
The kid frowned, but then his expression eased. He raised one shoulder. “Okay. Take the next one.”
He should’ve been scared, at least. The bulls had no horns, but the animals were massive. One slip beneath those muscled legs, and there wouldn’t be any ride to remember. Cody worked the muscles in his jaw. As long as the coach didn’t see him in the chutes, he’d be all right.
When it was his turn, he glanced at the coach and felt himself relax. The guy was talking to three riders, his back to the chute. Cody held his breath. He wasn’t leaving the arena without getting on a bull.
“Take your ride, little man,” one of the bigger cowboys shouted at him. “We’re waiting.”
Cody bit down hard and steadied himself. Then he did what he’d seen the other cowboys do. He climbed into the chute, one foot on either side of the bull, and fumbled with the rope. His hand had to be wrapped to the bull somehow, right? He flipped the rope around, trying to make a loop.
“Oh, brother. Ain’t you ever done this?” The cowboy on the gate leaned over. “Which hand you ridin’ with?”
Which hand? Cody gulped and thrust his right hand out.
“That’ll do.” The cowboy set to work wrapping Cody’s hand, palm up, until it was tight against the bull’s back. “Slide forward.”
Cody did as he was told. That’s when he noticed the look in the bull’s eyes.
Lifeless, hard eyes, trying to catch a glimpse of whichever mortal had dared climb on his back. Cody stared at the beast. The anger in the animal’s expression was rivaled only by his own.
“Ya hear me, cowboy? You ready?”
Cody blinked. What was he doing, sitting on a bull? Was he crazy? Fear tried to say something, but anger kicked it in the shins. Come on, bull, give it all you got. Your fury’s nothing compared to mine. He nodded. “Ready.”
The chute was open.
Stay centered, wasn’t that what the coach had told the other riders? Keep your seat; stay centered. He focused on the animal’s back, and suddenly he wasn’t fighting to stay on a bucking bull. He was taking on his father, battling the loneliness and rejection and abandonment, focusing all his rage on the beast.
How many times had thoughts of his dad made him want to punch his hand through a wall or rip a door from its hinges? Running helped some, but nothing eased the rage in his heart.
Nothing until now.
The buzzer sounded. Cody pulled his hand free and swung his legs over the side of the bull. Something was making its way through his veins, but it took a few seconds to realize what it was. r />
Relief.
For the first time since his father walked out, his heart didn’t feel paralyzed with rage. The reason was obvious: he’d left every bit of emotion on the back of the bull.
Only then did he hear the coach bellowing in his direction. One of the cowboys herded the bull back into the chute, and a hush fell over the arena. Cody turned and stood frozen, facing the man. His buddies had moved closer. They were clustered outside the fence, eyes wide.
“Stay there, kid. Don’t move!” Even in the shadowy arena lights, the coach’s cheeks were bright red. He stormed up to Cody until their faces were inches apart. His voice fell to a dangerous hiss. “I told you to go home.”
“Sorry, sir.” Cody swallowed hard, but he didn’t break eye contact. “I… I had to ride tonight. I had to.”
The man twisted his face into a sneer aimed at Cody. Then, bit by bit, his face unwound and he took a step back. “Where’d you learn to ride like that?”
He couldn’t lie to the man now; not if he wanted to ride again. “That was my first ride, sir.”
“Your first…” The coach narrowed his eyes. “That was your first time on a bull?”
“Yes, sir.” Cody pulled himself a bit straighter. “I’m sorry, sir.”
The man hung his thumbs on his belt buckle. “What’s your name, boy?”
“Cody. Cody Gunner.”
“You going to Jefferson High, Gunner?”
“Yes, sir.” He looked at the ground for a moment. “When I’m old enough.”
“You wanna be a bull rider, is that it?”
A bull rider? Cody hadn’t considered the idea before. But he wanted to climb back on a bull more than he’d ever wanted anything. Cody exhaled, still catching his breath, his eyes on the coach again. The rush from the ride was wearing off. “Yes, sir. I want that.”
The coach hesitated. This was the part where he’d kick Cody out of the arena and tell him he’d never ride for Jefferson’s rodeo team. Not ever. Cody waited, unable to blink under the man’s stare.