She looked at the VCR tapes next to the books. “VCR?”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing.” She picked through them. “Nothing but cowboy movies.”
“There are some good war movies in there.”
“What’s the difference? Don’t you have anything like Sweet Home Alabama, Notting Hill, New in Town, or The Proposal? Maybe Steel Magnolias or The Notebook?
“Afraid I’m not familiar with those.”
Over the next seven hours, as the rain continued to fall, she made me watch every tear-jerker she could find on TV. Each time the credits rolled, I asked her, “Why do you like that?”
Tears rolling down her face. Nose snotty. Wadded tissue in her hand. “ ’Cause, they love each other.”
Sometime after dinner, I found Hope sitting on the porch, writing in her book. When I walked out, she shut it real fast. Like I’d caught her with her hand in the cookie jar. “Can I sit with you?”
She nodded. When I sat on her left, she placed the book, closed, on her right side. “How’re you doing?”
“Good.”
“How’s school going?”
“It’s okay. I’m not too good at math. Sometimes all those numbers don’t make much sense, but my English teacher says I write real good and I’m getting better all the time. She says when she reads it she thinks I’m a lot older. That only people who done some living write the way I do. I’m not all that sure, but I think that’s a compliment.”
“You making friends?”
“Yes… sir. A couple. I have the same lunch as Brodie and he sometimes sits with me. Well, every day that is except two ’cause I had some girls sitting there.”
“He told me that.”
She rubbed her hands between her knees. “Brodie has lots of friends. Everybody likes him. They look up to him. Mostly.”
“He’s a good kid.” Turbo lay on her lap. Eyes closed. Unmoving. “How’s Turbo?”
“He’s not doing too good.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s just not getting around as much and he’s sleeping a lot. Sometimes he eats and sometimes he doesn’t. Momma says he may just be real old.” She stroked his tummy. “He may have a tumor ’cause his stomach is different. I think he’ll be okay though ’cause when he’s awake he still likes to sit on my shoulder.”
I changed the subject. “How you feeling? I mean, the itching on your arms and all. I don’t think I’ve heard you cough since we drove into Texas.”
She nodded. “I’m good. Itching’s gone. Not coughing any.”
“And…” I was way out of my league here but I wanted her to know that I was concerned. “Everything else?” I searched for comforting words. “Your mom says you’re doing great and you’ll be fine.”
She nodded. Recoiling a bit. “It don’t hurt to pee anymore.”
Maybe I shouldn’t have said that.
She stared at the porch.
“You know,” I tried to recover. “I… or, we, almost had a girl.”
She looked up at me.
“Yep. My wife, Andie, she was pregnant once. Before Brodie was born. But she was only pregnant for about two months and then lost the baby. The doctors said that happens to a lot of women the first time they get pregnant. Me and her, we always thought for some reason that she was a girl. ’Course, we didn’t never know. It’s just a guess.”
She thought about this. “How old would she be now?”
I counted. “Twelve or so.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. It was a long time ago.” I glanced at her journal. “What you writing?”
“Just stuff.”
I listened to the rain. It had lessened. Pattered the roof. “I’ve never been very good at that. Could never figure a way to get the words out. Sort of like my mouth ain’t connected to my hand.”
She stared down at the floor. “Sometimes I think my mouth’s not connected to the part of me that makes words. So, they come out my pencil.” I nodded and we swung. The spring squeaked. Her feet didn’t reach the floor so I pushed us slightly. We sat in the quiet. She tapped her pencil against the cover of her notebook.
While I was trying to figure out some way to carry the conversation, Sam and Brodie walked out carrying either end of the card table upon which sat the Monopoly game now in its fifth night. They set it down in front of the swing, and dragged over a couple of old wooden rockers.
We decided to start a new game. At first we were all against each other, but when Brodie took me to the cleaners and left me with ten dollars, Hope had mercy on me, and made me a loan. When I got back on my feet, I repaid my loan, and she suggested we go into business together. Sort of a two-are-stronger-than-one kind of deal. That worked out pretty well for us, and soon, our pile of cash started growing while Sam and Brodie’s individual piles started shrinking, which prompted them to circle the wagons and team up. I don’t know if that’s legal in the bylaws of Monopoly but in Rock Basin, Texas, we really don’t care.
Soon, they had a bit of a cash edge over Hope and me but we owned more property and were buying hotels every chance we got. If either of them landed on Boardwalk or anything remotely near Tennessee, we could take them to the cleaners, foreclosing on everything they owned, down to the little silver train piece they were using to navigate the board.
You might say the competition was starting to heat up a bit.
Brodie started talking smack and feeling right proud of himself until he rolled a seven and landed on Pennsylvania where we had two hotels. Sam handed him the money and told him she was thinking about dissolving their partnership. Brodie then handed the money to Hope who counted it slowly, licking her thumb like a teller, displaying the dollars in the shape of a fan across one corner of the board. Three more turns, and Brodie and Sam were teetering on the edge of bankruptcy until I landed on Ventnor, then Hope landed on Illinois, and finally, I rolled a double deuce, which landed me on Chance. Ordinarily, that’s not a big deal but we have this rule that if you roll a double anything and that roll lands you on Chance, then whatever happens to you must be increased by adding a zero onto the end. Depending on the card, it can be really good or really bad. So, I rolled a double deuce, picked up my card, and it said, “Give each player $500.” Hope and I argued, to no avail, that because we were now working in teams that I should only have to give $5,000 to the team of Sam and Brodie, but Sam and Brodie, using the card as evidence and emphasizing the words “each player,” said, “No way, José” and “fork it over.” So, we shelled out $10,000, which totally cleaned out our cash leaving us with four lousy one-hundred-dollar bills. I looked at Sam and Brodie and told them I felt like they’d been taking classes from some of the local bankers I knew.
Once Brodie had counted our money, Sam recounted it “just to be sure.” They each counted slowly, mimicking Hope by licking their thumbs like a teller, and then using both corners of the board to display their own money fans. I didn’t think it was all that funny. They thought it riotous.
The game continued like this for another hour. And while fortunes changed hands several times and Hope and I fluctuated between flush and abject poverty, the one thing that didn’t disappear was the laughter spilling off the porch. It was a good feeling and our house needed it. Like the boards themselves needed reminding. It’d been a while. I sat there listening, breathing it in. Flashes of a thunderclap in the distance. Cool air blowing off the warm. The slow easy sway of the swing. A perfect Texas night.
I was the first to see Dumps walk around the house. His face was somber, ashen. He held his hat in his hand but he was crushing it more than he was turning it.
“Ty,” he said quietly.
The laughter stopped.
“You better come look at this.”
All five of us walked around the house to the barn where the light was on. I heard a sound in the pasture beyond that I didn’t like. Dumps turned, shook his head, looking a long second at Brodie, then stared at me.
His eyes were red. “Just you.”
Sam wrapped her arms around both Hope and Brodie inside the barn with Cinch and May while Dumps and I walked out into the pasture. A few hundred yards and the noise told me most everything I needed to know. So did the large dark figure on the ground that was trying to stand but could not.
I knelt next to Mr. B, whose foreleg was broken. Compound fracture. The bones were sticking through the skin. He’d half stand, put weight on a leg that wasn’t there, then fall forward, his legs shooting out from beneath him, like a horse walking on ice. I grabbed his reins, laid him on the ground, and whispered, “Easy, boy. Easy.” I turned to Dumps. “Bring me Brodie. But just Brodie. Take the girls inside.”
I lay there, cradling Mr. B’s head. He was afraid, nostrils flared, and he was in a lot of pain. The only thing holding his leg on was a dirty piece of hide. The air smelled of blood, dirt, and manure.
Brodie walked around the barn, then started running. By the time he got to me, he was screaming, “No! No! Mr. B!”
He landed on the ground next to me. He tried to hold Mr. B’s leg but he wouldn’t let him touch it. Mr. B was kicking it around. The sharp bones were gliding through the air like razors. I tried to speak softly. “Brodie?”
He didn’t look at me. He was trying to figure out how to fix the leg.
“Brodie?”
Tears were streaming down his face. He turned, looked, and said nothing. The pain was too great. The rain started again.
I tried to speak but couldn’t. The two of us sat holding Mr. B’s head. His horse was finished and behind the sobs, I heard a part of my son dying.
Finally, Brodie turned to me. He wiped his nose and nodded. “Daddy, this time of night, Dr. Vale is an hour to two hours away.”
I nodded. An hour was a long time for Mr. B to be in pain. Five minutes was too long.
“We got anything in the barn?”
Most cowboys play vet with their horses to a limited extent. We were no exception. But we didn’t have what Brodie knew we needed. I shook my head.
He sat up on his knees in front of Mr. B. Wiped his palms on his jeans. Mr. B. was making a noise that rose the hair on the back of my neck. Brodie held out his hand. “I’ll do it.”
I shook my head. “No, son. You go on—”
He looked straight at me. “Dad, he’s mine. I’ll do it.” He extended his hand again. I knelt behind him. Unholstered. Placed my 1911 in Brodie’s hand. The webbing of his palm sank deep into the back strap, his finger went straight and he grasped it firmly with two hands. Mr. B had grown tired and lay his head on the ground. The mud around his nose moved every time he breathed out. Brodie placed the muzzle against the hide, just above his brain. He clicked off the safety with his right thumb and took a deep breath. For a long moment, he held the pistol pressed against Mr. B’s head. He was crying, tears rolling off his chin and falling onto Mr. B’s muzzle. He was talking to him softly. “You remember when we crossed the river the first time? And when we rode all the way to town to get bubble gum? And when you told me not to go by that rock cause you could smell the snake I couldn’t see? And—” He kept talking but I couldn’t hear the words. Brodie had walked inside himself.
Finally, his mouth quit moving, he placed his finger on the trigger, and began applying pressure. A second later, his finger went straight, he thumbed up the safety and he raised the pistol, allowing me to take it. He shook his head and closed his eyes.
“You want me to?”
He nodded.
“Brodie?”
“Sir?”
“Turn your head away.”
He did, closing his eyes, trembling. The rain came in sheets. I laid my hand on Mr. B, kissed his face, and said, “Thanks, Mr. B. You’re… Well, I never—” I pressed the muzzle to his forehead, thumbed off the safety and pressed the trigger.
Mr. B. was dead before the bullet exited the other side.
Brodie jerked, turned, and saw Mr. B lying lifeless and still. The picture hit him pretty hard. He stroked his mane, whispering gently. Crumbling. We sat there several minutes.
I found myself growing angry. Angry that I couldn’t protect my son from the stuff that threatened to crack his soul in half. I shook my head and wrapped my arm around him. He melted. Crying. Sobbing deep, loud sobs. He hugged me tighter than he’d hugged me in a long time and cried for minutes on end. If the last three years had created a Hoover Dam inside Brodie, the hole in Mr. B’s head broke it loose.
After a while, I said, “Run, crank the tractor. Let’s bury him over there next to Daddy.”
He looked up at me. “Dad?”
I ran my fingers through his hair. “Yeah, big guy.”
“I’d like a few minutes with—”
I stood and walked toward the barn.
We dug a hole not too far from my dad. He’d like that. Cowboys can be odd creatures but we put great stock in a good horse. Dad was no different. With the hole dug, I eased up behind Mr. B and we slid his body into the bucket. I lifted him slightly, Brodie tucked his legs under him so they didn’t dangle and we drove slowly to the hole. Brodie walked alongside, holding his tail. When we got to the hole, Brodie stood back and I slowly lowered Mr. B into the ground. Brodie dropped down into the hole and folded his legs and straightened his tail. I stood over watching him. A boy shedding his shell. A man in bloom.
I said, “His tail—he’d want you to have it.”
He wiped his eyes with his forearm and looked up at me. I nodded. He dropped to a knee, opened his knife and cut Mr. B’s tail. Then he reached up and I pulled him out. The lights of the tractor shone across the hole, and Dad’s iron marker, casting an odd shadow along the grass on the other side. Sam, Hope, and Dumps stood in the shadows beneath the barn, watching from a distance. Brodie turned to me, “Can I fill it?”
I nodded.
Brodie climbed up on the tractor and slowly filled the hole, packing it down with the bucket. With a fresh mound above where Mr. B’s body lay, Brodie cut the engine and climbed down. He stood several minutes staring at the dirt. He looked up at me. “Dad?”
I put my arm around him.
“Does that—” The air smelled of dirt, spent diesel, and blood. “Am I a coward?”
“Does what?”
“The fact that I couldn’t—”
I wrapped my arms around him. Tight. Us both staring out across a wet Texas night. My cheek pressed to his. “No son. It makes you a man. One helluva man.”
I stood in the rain, shaking. A steady downfall. Easy. Gentle. Large egg-sized drops. I wanted to throw up. The death would hit Brodie hard. The earth mounded swollen before us. More than Mr. B lay beneath it. “This time next year… he’ll be covered in bluebonnets.”
Brodie’s stoic shell cracked and he broke. A limp rag doll. I caught him, hit my knees, and held him.
But it didn’t do any good.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Dear God,
Something horrible happened tonight. We were all on the porch playing Monopoly when Mr. Dumps came to get us. I could tell in his face that whatever he had to say wasn’t good. And, it wasn’t. We all walked to the barn, then he and Cowboy walked off into the pasture and he gave real clear instructions for Brodie not to follow. We heard a real weird sound coming from the darkness out beyond where we could see. It was Mr. B. He had broke his leg and he was trying to get up but he couldn’t so he just kept spinning and falling out there in the mud. Cowboy got to him, wrestled him to the ground, and called Brodie. When Brodie got to him, he made a sound that I ain’t never heard come out of a boy before. And it lasted a long time. Then they was quiet a while. And then we heard a gunshot that about jumped me out of my skin. And Mr. B quit moving. We were scared until Cowboy came to the barn but he had a look on his face like I ain’t never seen. He told us what happened and then got the tractor. He went back and then he and Brodie dug a hole and laid Mr. B in it. We walked out there in the rain as they were starting to cover him up. Brodie was real torn up
about it. Brodie said he tried to do the shooting but couldn’t so his dad did it. I don’t think that makes Cowboy a bad person though. I think he did it ’cause Brodie couldn’t and he knew Mr. B. was in pain and somebody had to do it.
We had a funeral in the rain. I spoke some words over Mr. B and thanked him for being such a good horse and that I would sure miss him. And I will. Mr. Dumps said a few words, Momma was real quiet, and Cowboy just stood there staring at Brodie.
Cowboy and Brodie stood in the rain a long time. Cowboy just holding Brodie. After they’d been there a while, Brodie started clawing at the ground, trying to dig up Mr. B. He was screaming words I couldn’t understand and Cowboy was trying to hold him back. Finally, Brodie quit and the two just sat out there in the dirt crying. Rocking. Shaking. Every now and then, Brodie would scream, “Nooooo!” and shake his head. Cowboy couldn’t even talk. He just held him out there in the mud. Momma and me and Mr. Dumps stood in the barn watching cause we didn’t know what else to do. Momma asked Mr. Dumps, “Is there anything we can—?” And he shook his head and said, “Pain is a lot like a volcano.” He nodded. “I seen it afore. If you crack the mantle, best you can do is let it all out. And that boy there, he’s known his share. More than most.” I think Mr. Dumps was right ’cause after an hour, he quieted down and he and Cowboy walked back to the barn. Brodie’s eyes were real red and his face was smeared with blood and dirt. We got him to the house, he got showered, then he went to bed and he was out pretty quick. I know, I checked.
Momma asked if we could stay here tonight and do anything to help. Cowboy nodded, said, “I’d be grateful,” and walked out on the porch. Me and Momma laid in bed a long time, listening to Cowboy swing on the porch. The rusted springs made a lazy sound.
After a long while, the sound stopped, but I didn’t hear the screen door open. Momma was asleep, so I snuck out, but Cowboy wasn’t on the porch no more. He was walking out into the pasture. The rain had quit. Stars were shining. I guess you saw him. I followed him a little, but didn’t get so close that he’d see me.