Bull Rider Read Free Page A

please.”
    “Lali, not now,” I said.
    “It’s okay,” Grandpa said. “You can have one if it cleans up after itself.”
    “Oh, I know it would—if you told it to, Grandpa.”
    Grandpa burst out laughing. “Lali, you are special.”
    But then he stopped talking altogether, and Lali leaned back and hummed to herself. It was the longest drive, waiting to find out what he wasn’t telling us. It was long but it was fast. Grandpa was on a tear. We turned away from the ranch, past the Giannis’ house and the Baptist church. Grandpa hardly slowed down for town.
    Finally, he spoke. “Your mom and dad took off for Reno about a half hour ago, going to the airport. It’s Ben….”
    “What about Ben?” It took me a second to sort out. “Is he okay?” I asked. “He’s okay, isn’t he?”
    “Not hardly. No.” He chewed on his bottom lip and glanced at Lali, who was still singing. He lowered his voice. “They went and shot him.” Grandpa fixed his eyes straight ahead.
    Shot. The word echoed in my head. Shot. Shot. They couldn’t shoot my brother, even if he was in the Marines and in a war. He was too tough for that, and too good, and he was my brother. “Don’t tease me,” I said. “What really happened?”
    “I can’t hear you,” Lali said from the backseat.
    “It’s nothing, pumpkin,” Grandpa said.
    “But I want to hear.”
    I got what Grandpa was trying to do. “It’s just boring stuff,” I said. I looked over at Grandpa Roy.
    “Really, he’s been shot,” Grandpa whispered now. “They flew him to Germany early this morning, and they’ll bring him home to the States, probably to Bethesda NavalHospital, in a couple of days. Your folks are on their way east to meet him. Your mom wouldn’t wait for the military to send them tickets or anything. She says she’ll be there when Ben comes in, period. They should be settled in DC tomorrow, and they’ll call when they see him.”
    And there it was—the thing that changed everything.
    “Where are Mommy and Daddy going? Will they take me?” Lali asked.
    “No, pumpkin, you’re staying here with me.”
    “But where are they going ? Are they sleeping over? They might get lonely.”
    “Don’t worry. They’ll just be gone a little while,” Grandpa said.
    I knew Grandpa wanted to be on that plane back east with Mom and Dad, but instead he’d come and got us for company. Ben was his favorite. Ben and Grandpa Roy, they shared something tight and special—maybe it was the bull riding. They were both champs. Or the height, they could pass for brothers from behind. I take after my mom—stocky and dark, but tall like the O’Mara men. I was almost as tall as Ben already, and Ben’s just past six feet. But he’s blue-eyed and sandy-haired, just like Grandpa. And there’s no changing either of them once they make up their minds.
    The rest of the morning was a blur. Grandpa yanked the wheel and whipped the truck into the lot at the Feed and Ranch Supply store. “How a man can run out of fence staples, I can’t figure,” he told the clerk.
    “I think you used the last one,” Lali said seriously.
    “That’s telling him,” the clerk said. He handed her a peppermint.
    All that racing was for fence staples. “At least we didn’t have to go the hour away to Winnemucca,” Grandpa said. “Had what we need right here in Salt Lick.”
    Grandpa drove back through town and turned up the ranch road. Gravel pinged against the truck and a tail of dust rose up behind us. We stopped by the north fence. It figured. When Grandpa needs to chew his thoughts around in his head, he does something useful with his hands—he mends fences or digs out stumps or hammers on a roof. That’s what he did that day. Grandpa and I wrestled barbed wire all morning. Lali handed us the staples until she got bored and went off to pick wild sunflowers.
    Now, barbed wire can jab you, but I wouldn’t have felt it. My brother was lying bloody and broken somewhere between Iraq