Bull Rider Read Free Page B

and here. The whole time he’d been in Iraq I’d tried to tune out the news. I didn’t want to know the stuff that could happen. Favi sent letters to the soldiers over there and kept track of the bombings and such. But not me. I turned off the TV or changed the station on the radio when they brought it up. It was easier not to know.
    But now my mind went crazy. I wondered where he got shot and how. Did the blood splatter all over? If the wound was nasty enough, did your brain keep it from hurting? Did he scream? “No,” I said out loud. I shook my head to stop my thoughts and fixed on the barbed wire. I unrolled it slowly so it didn’t go snaking around on its own. Grandpa wrenched it tight against the fence posts. He braced himself, leaning into the wire tool, while I hammered in the staples. We did it over and over. I tried to forget about Ben and everythingbut the fence wire and the wind. Lali whinnied and galloped like a horse until she ran herself out, curled up in the truck, and fell asleep.
    When we got back to the house, the whole scene got bigger and stranger, the way it does when everyone you know gets involved in something. Mom and Dad called from Denver while they waited for another plane to Washington, DC. They talked to Grandpa but not to me or Lali. That was weird. Mom always made sure she talked to everybody, even if Dad complained about the phone bill.
    Then Amy Jones called. She’s our neighbor, and when she’s not thinking about cosmic energy and people’s astrological charts, she pulls her hair into a ponytail and does ranch work like everybody else. She and her husband, Neil, have the biggest place around. They run a lot of cattle, but it’s Amy’s side of the business that brings in the money. She sells little frozen vials called straws that ranchers use for AI—artificial insemination. They use the stuff to get their cows pregnant from prize bulls without having to haul the animals across the country. Sometimes Amy called Grandpa about business. But today, I figured Amy wasn’t calling about cattle breeding.
    “Amy’s got a prayer meeting going at the church tonight,” Grandpa said when he hung up the phone. “It’s a potluck.”
    “Are they praying for Ben?” I asked.
    “We all are.”
    Lali, she just kept going, the way a six-year-old does. “Oh, let’s take green Jell-O. Please , can we?” she asked.
    “Green Jell-O it is,” Grandpa answered. “Clean up your boots and change those jeans,” he said to me. “Your motherwouldn’t have you going out like that. And comb down your hair.” I took my time.
    Grandpa Roy drove slowly to the Baptist hall. The parking lot was full, and the lights were on. I balanced the Jell-O, pushing backwards through the double doors and into the long hall, past the Ladies’ and Men’s rooms, past a framed cowboy prayer and a picture of the Paradise High School Roping Team. Past the junior high mural of “Broncs in Heaven.” There was a photo of Pastor Fellows leading cowboy church before a rodeo and six portraits of Salt Lick’s rodeo queens starting in 1943. And there was Grandpa Roy, young and spunky and grinning, his champion belt buckle catching the camera flash and shining with a starburst at his waist. Only his blue eyes were brighter.
    Grandpa Roy was a legend. There wasn’t a bull he couldn’t ride, not even the one that hooked him and stomped his hip. I knew the story by heart since I was little—how Grandpa lowered himself onto the bull in the chute. How the bull was so still in that bucking chute it gave Grandpa the shivers. How that Brahma burst out like he exploded when the gate opened—a nightmare twisting underneath Grandpa. It threw up both back legs at once, then turned to the right, then threw his head back till Grandpa could see the white around his eyes. But Grandpa held the rope around that bull’s middle, balancing himself, almost floating above its whirling muscles. He finished his eight seconds and beat that