Gee Whiz Read Free

hay for the night, and Danny said he would come over with Jerry the next day and introduce him to the geldings. Then Mom came out and invited the two of them for supper, and by the fact that we were having fried chicken and mashed potatoes and gravy, it was clear that she had known about this all along.
    Over supper, Danny and Jerry talked about our local rodeo in the summer. Danny had taken his horse, Happy, in a few roping classes, and Jerry, who had been standing by the railing, had admired her. He said, “She almost had you off that one time, remember that? She just spun and you were lucky to hang on.”
    Danny laughed. “Well, she’s quick and she never saw a calf she didn’t want to boss around.” Jerry took Beebop to the rest of his appointments on the rodeo circuit, and Danny went back to work shoeing, and it was only when Jerry came overto Marble Ranch looking for a place for the winter that they had recognized each other. Mom asked Jerry where he was from, what his folks did, all that stuff that moms do, and Jerry said he was from San Francisco, his dad and his uncles were all butchers, he had grown up in Little Italy up there.…
    Dad said, “You didn’t grow up on a ranch?”
    “Right downtown,” said Jerry. “Four houses from the corner of Mason and Union.”
    I don’t think I’d ever seen such a surprised look on my dad’s face. Both Mom and Danny laughed.
    He said, “And you’ve ridden bulls?”
    “Not well,” said Jerry. “But it was something I wanted to do all my life, from the first time I saw rodeos on the TV.”
    He had been on the rodeo circuit since May, but now he was going back to college, San Jose State. He was a sophomore—sort of. He said, “Since I skipped the first quarter, I’m kind of a slow sophomore. But I wanted to try it. I thought by the end of the season I would have made up my mind, but I haven’t.”
    Dad said, “About what?”
    “About school. Sophomores are supposed to choose their majors, but I haven’t made up my mind about that, either.”
    I saw Mom glance at Danny, but Danny was focused on his chicken leg. Mom was always hoping that one of Danny’s friends who went to college, like Leah Marx, for example, who had been maybe in some way and by some stretch of the imagination his girlfriend and who had gone up to Berkeley in August, would serve as a good example and lead Danny out of horseshoeing and cattle roping and into a nice safe career as an accountant.
    Dad knew we were now on shaky ground and didn’t say anything.
    The pictures were very impressive. In fact, the pictures were a little scary. There were six of them, each one from a different rodeo, five in California and one in Nevada. Beebop was in the arena with a rider sort of on his back. He had no saddle, just the rigging that they strap where the front of a saddle would be, with a handle for the rider to hold on to, and behind that, just in front of his back legs, the other strap, which was called the flank strap. He wore a snug halter made of wide strips of leather, and he was curled in the air. Or he was stretched so that his hind hooves were pointed at the sky and his nose was nearly on the ground. His mouth was open, his ears were back, and he looked very serious and very wild.
    After he laid the six photos on the kitchen table, Jerry pointed to the last one. In that one, Beebop’s body was twisted and his head was down. The cowboy was flying forward, his shoulders hunched and his arms in the air. He said, “Beebop loves that move. He makes believe he’s going to go forward and toss the guy, but then in the wink of an eye, he slides back and to one side and puts him over the front.”
    Mom glanced at the pictures and went back to washing the dishes, but Dad said, “My brother Luke liked that sort of thing. He did it for a few years when we were young. Tried bulls, too.”
    “I wouldn’t do bulls again,” said Jerry, “though I tried it for a while. And I’m not much good at