Читать книгу The Lonesome Quarter - Richard Wormser - Страница 6

OUT IN THE ARENA, they were calf-roping, and some of the boys were making good time. But Lon Verdoux had not come there to watch them calf-rope, though of all the rodeo events, it was about the only one that had anything to do with his present way of making a living. Until the bronc-riding started, he had no business there.

He stole a glance at the kids. He didn’t want them to think he was spying on them, but he was their father, and he ought to see that they were doing all right. Well, they were. Mike was watching the calf-roping and trying to keep time with the three-buck watch Lon had given him on his birthday. June was kneeling backward on the seat, and he knew she’d lost interest in the rodeo and was looking over the ladies’ clothes.

Just like Joan used to do.

It was a nice day. Over here on the coast side of the mountains, the sun was just warm enough. Some pretty good boys were singing “No Letter Today” over the loudspeaker system, and one of them had some new chords on the guitar that Lon had never heard before. On the track four quarter horses were lining up to run a heat, and the calf-roping was moving right along, not being bothered at all by the red-nosed roundup clown and his burro, who seemed to get in the way, but really didn’t.

Lon was having a good time. He knew he shouldn’t, but he was. It made him feel bad, but just being there with his kids, the sun on him, and the horses in the arena and on the track so pretty, well—it would take a smarter man than him to keep from feeling good.

Lon looked at the kids again, and just on the other side of June, a gal smiled at him. Lon caught himself smiling back, and then reached out and straightened the ribbon bow on one of June’s braids, so the gal would know him for what he was, an attached man.

But she continued to grin at him. And then a fat man, on the other side of her, reached across and poked June in the ribs. Strangers were always fussing at June. You couldn’t hardly blame them; there probably wasn’t any prettier little girl any place. And the good little thing never minded; she was always polite. Lon sure hoped the fat man would leave Mike alone; you couldn’t always count on his manners.

Fat Man said, “You gonna rope calves when you grow up, pahdneh?” He had on an embroidered shirt and frontier pants, with low shoes; his hat was brand-new. A rich dude. Maybe a banker or a lawyer, or anyway a big-business man. Lon hoped Mike would be wrapped up in one of his daydreams; the kid was still at an age when being strong and good-looking and all meant everything to him; he didn’t understand how fat dudes were important people, and used to being treated accordingly.

June said, “Girls can’t rope calves that way. They don’t get strong enough to pick the calf up, even when they grow up.”

The fat man thought this was very funny. He guffawed. He patted the gal with him on the leg so she wouldn’t miss what June had said. It didn’t sound as funny as all that to Lon, and maybe it didn’t to the dude; Lon thought idly that he’d probably just picked the gal up, and any excuse to pat her just now was a good one. Rodeo gal.

The quarter horse racing went into its final, the last man roped his calf and made his time, and the clown brought out a little Arab stallion and made him do some tricks while they got the bucking stock ready. The quartet finished singing, and the announcer said somebody named Red Martin was coming out on Steamboat in Chute One.

Whatever the kids were feeling, Lon’s stomach felt cold and stiff as he watched Chute One. They were having trouble there. The rider was still up on the rails, and the horse was coming up to him, maybe six times a minute. Martin had better get into the saddle and start riding, or he’d have a dopey horse that left his fight in the chute. Maybe so it was safer that way, but there wasn’t any money in it.

A hell of a way to make a living.

Now the chute opened, and Martin came out. There is always a Steamboat in every bucking string, and he is usually a roan, and this one was; a big hammerhead but even if he had had a smart head, a no-good horse, thick-legged and clumsy. There wasn’t any spring in those legs ever, and now Steamboat was mad and stiff-legging it, and Martin was having himself a time. His hat flew off, showing red hair, and long before time was called Martin took a roll off the right side of Steamboat and kept on rolling.

The roan was hurt enough by the roweling he’d gotten and by the bucking strap not to come after him. The pickup men hazed him toward the exit chute, and they started getting a horse ready in Chute Four, and Lon looked at the kids.

They were just watching, and Mike was playing with his shiny watch again. June was more interested in this than she’d been in the calf-roping, but not too much. They weren’t pale and they weren’t sick, and it was going to be all right.

Lon wanted to tell somebody all that, but nobody here knew him, which was why he’d driven this long ride—and one spark plug not too good—because it would not look right, him going to a rodeo just now . . .

Fat Man poked June again. He sure liked poking girls, any age; he’d rested his right hand on that gal’s frontier pants now. Lon was beginning to dislike the fellow. Fat Man said, “That the way they ride broncs on yore range, buckaroo?” speaking like a comedian on the radio making fun of Western programs.

June never got a chance to answer. Mike put his watch away, and let his breath out, just as Lon had heard himself do a lot of times when there was something mean to be done. Mike said, “Of course not, Mister. We ride horses to gentle ’em, not to amuse fat dudes. An’ quit pokin’ my sister.”

Lon said, “Mike, you watch those manners,” as sharp as he could, because he wanted to laugh. Fat Man got red and then he got white again, and he looked at Lon and maybe he decided Lon’d make something of it if he talked back to Mike. But Lon wouldn’t have; ten-year-old boys shouldn’t get fresh to grownups, no matter what.

Then Lon saw that the girl was having a hard time of it. She looked like she was going to bust pretty soon.

A black-haired Indian-looking turtle was coming out of Chute Four on a gray they called Dynamite—there was always a Dynamite, too,—and June had lost all interest in the bucking again, and was wriggling around, restlessly.

Mike said, “Look, Pop, that rider’s hooked his spurs,” and he was right, the fellow riding had given up and was hanging on with his hooks in a cinch. The pickup men were closing in.

Lon could go home now. Or, at least, to the hotel room he’d rented. It wasn’t good for kids to do too much in a day, and they’d driven since six that morning to get to this roundup. He—

Something would have to be done about June’s wriggling. He swallowed, and said, “Honey—”

The gal on the other side of June stood up. “How’s about you and me powdering our noses, sister?”

It was sure nice of her. Lon guessed she hadn’t had to be a mind reader to know what June needed, or what a fix it always put him in. Fat Man, on the gal’s other side, looked kind of sore about it, but that was the gal’s own problem. She looked able to handle it.

June stood up as good as she always was and took the gal’s hand. Lon said, “You mind the lady, now,” but that was to encourage the gal; June didn’t need it. They went by Mike and then Lon, and the gal’s tight saddle pants brushed his knee . . .

Manners insisted that he talk to Fat Man while the dude’s gal was taking care of June. He said: “Anything you want to know about the rodeo, Mister, just ask. I used to work rodeo myself, before I settled down.”

Fat Man was trying to be agreeable, too. “Local boy?”

“No,” Lon said. “East sider—from back on the edge of the desert.” He laughed. “Land in here costs just about as much an acre as my whole ranch is worth.”

Fat Man offered cigarettes. Lon took one, and struck a match on his thumbnail for the two of them. “Nice of the lady to help out with my little girl.”

The dude said, “Sure,” uncertainly. Then he added quickly. “Hold my seat for me, will you, buckaroo? I’m going to get a beer.”

It was some trouble to let the fat body out, but they managed it. When he was gone, Mike said reflectively, “When you were travelin’ around, Pop, what’d you used to enter in?”

Lon said, “Depends. When a rider brought home money, he’d just go in for one, two things the next day. Maybe calf-roping and bronc-riding. After a dry spell, you’d put your name down for everything you could afford. One time I borrowed on my saddle from the fella that was promotin’ the show, and ran my name right down the list—includin’ the wild horse race and the cow-milking, bull-riding and—if I remember right—I tried to ride the clown’s trick mule for five dollars, too.”

Mike said, “Should think you’da been sore.”

His father told him, “I don’t remember. Don’t remember the last half of the day at all. Woke up in a stall on some hay, with sixty dollars in prize money, over what I’d borrowed. But only way I know how I got there is hearsay.”

Mike laughed. There was no danger of him ever doing any damn-fool thing like that. He was all rancher. All the time climbing up the canyons, looking for springs, trying to figure out some way to irrigate the ranch. He was the solemnest ten-year-old that Lon had ever known, which was funny, because it didn’t seem to come from either side of the family.

Mike said, “Here comes June and that lady. Pop—”

Lon said, “Yeah?” with some caution. He was shy of questions; they made him wish he’d gone to school more.

“Pop, I don’t like that fat man.”

Lon sighed. This was easy. “You don’t have to, Mike. Maybe so, though, he’d be all right if you saw him in what Tommy calls his natural habitat.”

“Well, I’m glad I don’t have to like him,” Mike said. “The lady’s pretty, though. His wife.”

Lon swallowed. An honest father would probably explain that the lady wasn’t Fat Man’s wife. And if it was done right, it might not start a lot of other questions that Lon wouldn’t be able to answer. But June was wriggling back in, followed by the gal, and there wasn’t any use saving the speech till later; just let it die.

June was bubbling, her eyes bright and her cheeks pink. They had had bottles of pop, and they had weighed themselves, and the lady’s name was Vera Mae and—smell, Pop—Vera Mae had put perfume behind June’s ears—

Lon smiled and laughed. He said to the gal, “You combed her hair, too. I thank you.”

“Kindly,” Vera Mae added. “June has lovely hair. Where did my ch—friend go?”

“Get himself a beer,” Lon said.

Vera Mae said, “Move over, Mike,” and sat down between the kids.

Mike said, “June told you my name.”

“Right the first time.” She nodded toward the arena. “Bull-riding just start?” Out there a gray-haired cowboy had himself straddled on a yellow Brahma. He gave it a pretty good ride, and jumped clear without the pickup men. “Duke Holloway,” the girl said. “About as good a rider as follows the rodeos.”

“I’ll bet he’s not as good as Pop was when he traveled around,” June said.

“I’ll bet he is,” Lon said. Something in the way he said it made the girl laugh. He asked her, “You ride?”

“Not buckers,” she said. “I’m a roper. When they have mixed-team roping, Duke and I work together. And I do some trick riding.”

“You must be pretty good.”

“I’d never get first money at Pendleton,” Vera Mae said. “Or any kind of money at Madison Square. But I can catch a head about four out of five and a heel, one out of three.”

“That’s not bad,” Lon said. “You got no call to run yourself down.”

“I wasn’t,” she said. “Hello, big boy.”

Fat Man didn’t look pleased about finding her sitting between Mike and June. He stood there a second, having trouble balancing in the squeezed space, and then Vera Mae switched, fast, and ended up on the other side of June. Fat Man sat down again, holding his beer, and put his hand back on her knee. This put him in a good humor, and he asked Mike, “Them the kind of cows youuns run?”

Mike looked at the Brahma bulls out in the arena. A fellow was riding a gray one, and the three already ridden were still larruping around the field, refusing to use the runout gate. “Naw,” Mike said.

“But you’ve got a ranch,” Vera Mae said. “June told me. Over by the desert.”

“Just a quarter-section,” Lon said.

Fat Boy perked up. “Hundred and sixty acres,” he said. “That could be worth a lot of money. Land, in this state, is going for forty dollars an acre, and up.”

Lon laughed. “Up where I live it ain’t. Ten bucks an acre’d be a big price. Country runs about one cow to thirty acres. But I got a Forest Service right to run sixteen head, and with luck, I make out.”

The dude was really interested now. It was like Lon must remember to tell the kids; just because a man was fat and had bad manners, you oughtn’t to throw off on him. Fat Man probably made as much in a month as Lon made all year, working hard, and it was probable, if you could get him to put his mind to it, he could tell a brush-whicker like Lon how to do better with what he had.

“My name’s Dutcher,” the Fat Man said. “I’m in the hardware business.” Out in the arena, steer-stopping was going on, and nobody was much interested. Some fellows were trying to line up some hot-bloods with flat saddles on the track, but they were having trouble. “I sell logging equipment,” Dutcher said, “and so on. What’s this about the Forest Service?”

“The national forest around my place is all logged over and thinned out,” Lon told him. “But there’s pretty good grazing. So they give me an allotment. I can run sixteen head on the forest and my land throwed together. And—”

The gal was stirring. “There’s nothing more on the program I want to see, big boy,” she said. “Let’s go have a drink.”

Mr. Dutcher’s eyes got kind of glassy. He squeezed the leg he had been resting his hand on, and said, “Good idea. Maybe we’ll see you, cowboy.” He looked at the kids, and his voice got on that silly radio kind of manner again. “Don’t go ridin’ no outlaws, now, young-uns.”

When they were gone, June stared at nothing for a long time. Then she made a pronouncement. “I like Vera Mae,” she said.

Lon laughed. What she meant was just the same as Mike when he said he didn’t like Mr. Dutcher. “You kids had enough rodeo?” he said.

They thought. “I want to go back to the hotel and take a bath,” June said.

Mike promptly agreed. Lon said, “Well, all right. Two baths in a day never hurt. If you’re good you can have another one tomorrow morning.”

Behind the stands they ran ahead of him, looking for the car, discussing what they were going to do in the tub. Mike was going to put a matchstick on a cake of soap and sail it for a boat, and June was going to put her head under water and blow bubbles.

Lon felt like singing. It had come off all right. He had found out what he wanted to know; they weren’t afraid of horses, buckers meant no more to them now than—before. He could stay on the homestead, and stick to what he knew best. And besides—nobody from home had seen him at the rodeo; he’d gotten away with it. Everything was just fine, for the first time in a long time.