 |
| Via Sheila Addleman Photography |
Maggie
Jackdaw isn’t
going to make it. I can tell by the way the first jump unseats him. The big
white bull lands and then tucks and gathers underneath. Jackdaw curls forward
and whips the air with his left hand, but his butt slides off-center. Thirty
yards away on the metal bleachers, I involuntarily scoot sideways—as if it
would do any good. The bull springs out from under Jackdaw and then arches its
back, flipping its hind end.
Jackdaw is tossed wide off the bull’s back. In the air he is all
red-satin arms and shaggy-chapped legs but then somehow he grabs his black felt
hat. He lands squarely on both feet, knees bent to catch his weight. Then he
straightens with a grand sweep of his hat. Even from here you can see his smile
burst out. There’s something about the way he opens his body to the crowd, like
a dog rolling over to show its belly, that makes me feel sorry for him but
drawn to him too. With him standing there, holding himself halfway between a
relaxed slouch and head-high pride, I can see why my brother Tibs admires him.
I haven’t actually met Jackdaw before, but he and Tibs hang out together
a lot, and they have some English classes together. I haven’t run across him on
campus.
The crowd on the bleachers goes wild. It doesn’t matter that Jackdaw
didn’t stay on the full eight seconds. They holler and wolf-whistle and shake
their programs. Their metallic stomping vibrates my body and brings up dust and
the smell of old manure.
With Jackdaw off its back, the bull leaps into the air. It gyrates its
hips and flips its head, a long ribbon of snot curling off its nostril and
arcing over its back. Then it stops and turns and looks at Jackdaw. It hangs
its head low. It shifts its weight onto its front hooves, butt in the air, and
pauses. The clown with the black face paint and the big white circles around
his eyes runs in front of the bull to distract it, but it shakes its head like
it’s saying no to dessert.
The crowd hushes.
Then, I can’t believe it, Jackdaw takes a step toward the bull. The crowd
yells, but not like a crowd, like a bunch of kids on a playground. Some holler
encouragement. Others laugh. Some try to warn him. Some egg him on. My heart
beats wild in my chest like when my sister CJ and I watch those slasher movies
and Freddy’s coming after the guy and you know because he’s the best friend
that he’s going to get killed and you want to warn him. “Bastard deserved it,”
CJ always says, “for being stupid.”
It’s like Jackdaw doesn’t know the bull’s right there. He starts walking,
not directly to the fence but at a slant toward the loudest of the cheers,
which takes him right past the bull.
I turn to Tibs. “What’s he doing?”
“He knows his stuff,” Tibs says, his voice lower than normal. The look on
his face makes me want to give him a hug, but we’re not a hugging family, so I
nod, even though Tibs isn’t looking at me.
Tibs is leaning forward, his eyes focused on Jackdaw, his elbows on his
knees, and his shoulders hunched. Tibs is tall and thin, and he always looks a
little fragile, a couple of sticks propped together. His face is our dad’s, big
eyes and not much of a chin, sort of like an alien or an overgrown boy. He has
the habit of playing with his fingers, which he’s doing now. It’s like he wants
to reach out and grab something but he can’t quite bring himself to. It’s the
same when he talks—he’ll cover his mouth with his hand like he’s holding back
his words.
Tibs is the tallest of us three kids—CJ, he, and I. CJ’s the oldest. I’m
the youngest and the shortest. Grandma Rose, Dad’s mom, always said I got left
with the leftovers. Growing up, it seemed like CJ and Tibs got things and were
told things that I was too young to have or to know. It was good though, too,
because when Dad and Mom got killed when I was sixteen, I didn’t know enough to
worry much about money or things. They had saved up some so we could get by.
But poor CJ. She in particular had to be the parent, but she was used to
babysitting us and she was older anyway—twenty-two, I think.
Like that time when we were kids when CJ was babysitting and I got so
sick. Turned out to be pneumonia. I don’t know where our parents were. Most
likely, they were away on business, but it could have been something else.
Grandma Rose had cracked her hip—I remember that—so she couldn’t take care of
us, but it was only for a couple of days and CJ was thirteen at the time. In
general, CJ had started ignoring us, claiming she was a teenager now and didn’t
want to play with babies any more, like kids do, which really got Tibs, though
he didn’t do much besides sulk about it. But that day she was playing with us
like she was a little kid too.
We had been playing in an irrigation ditch making a dam. I pretended to
be a beaver, and Tibs pretended to be an engineer on the Hoover Dam. I don’t
remember CJ pretending to be anything, just helping us arrange sticks and slop
mud and then flopping in the water to cool down. I started feeling pretty bad.
Over the course of the day, I had a cough that got worse and then I got really
hot and then really cold and my body ached. My lungs started wheezing when I
breathed. I remember thinking someone had punched a hole in me, like a balloon,
and all my air was leaking out. CJ felt my head and then felt it again and then
grabbed my arm and dragged me to the house, Tibs trailing behind. All I wanted
to do was lie down, but she bundled me in a blanket and put me in a wagon, and
between them she and Tibs pulled me down the driveway and out onto the highway.
We lived twelve miles from town, in the house where I live now. I don’t know
why CJ didn’t just call 911. But here we were, rattling down the middle of the
highway. A woman in a truck stopped and gave us a ride to the hospital here in
Loveland. Can you imagine it? A skinny muddy thirteen-year-old girl in her
brown bikini and her skinny nine-year-old brother, taller than her but no
bigger around than a stick and wearing red, white, and blue swim trunks,
hauling their six-year-old sister through the sliding doors of the emergency
room in a little red wagon. What those nurses must’ve thought.
On the bleachers, I glance from Tibs back out to Jackdaw. The bull
doesn’t know what’s going on either. It shakes its lowered head and snorts,
blowing up dust from the ground. Jackdaw bows his head and slips on his hat.
Then the bull decides and launches itself at Jackdaw. Just as the bull charges
down on Jackdaw, the white-eyed clown runs between him and the bull and slaps
the bull’s nose. Jackdaw turns toward them just as the bull plants its front
feet, turns, and charges after the running clown.
Pure foolishness and bravery. My hands are shaking. I want to go down and
take Jackdaw’s hand and lead him out of the arena. A thought like a little
alarm bell—who’d want to care about somebody who’d walk a nose-length from an
angry bull? But something about the awkward hang of his arms and the flip of
his chaps and the way his hat sets cockeyed on his head makes me want to be
with him.
The clown runs toward a padded barrel in the center of the arena, his
white-stockinged calves flipping the split legs of his suspendered oversized
jeans. He jumps into the barrel feet-first and ducks his head below the rim.
The crowd gasps and murmurs as the charging bull hooks the barrel over onto its
side and bats it this way and that for twenty yards. The bull stops and turns
and faces the crowd, head high, tail cocked and twitching. He tips his snout up
once, twice, and snorts.
While the bull chases the clown, Jackdaw walks to the fence and climbs
the boards.
The clown pops his head out of the sideways barrel where he can see the
bull from the rear. He pushes himself out and then scrambles crabwise around
behind. He turns to face the bull, his hands braced on the barrel. The bull’s
anger still bubbling, it turns back toward the clown and charges. As the bull
hooks at the barrel and butts it forward, the clown scoots backwards, keeping
the barrel between him and the bull, something I’m sure he’s done many times.
He keeps scooting as the bull bats at the barrel. But then something
happens—the clown trips and falls over backwards. The barrel rolls half over
him as he turns sideways and tries to push himself up. The bull stops for a
split second, as if to gloat, and then stomps on the clown’s franticly
scrambling body and hooks the horns on its tilted head into the clown’s side,
flipping the clown over onto his back.
Why do rodeo clowns do it? Put their lives on the line for other people?
I don’t understand it.
The pickup men on the horses are there, but a second too late. They
charge the bull, their horses shouldering into it. They yell and whip with
quirts and kick with stirrupped boots. Tail still cocked, the reluctant bull is
hazed away and into the gathering pen at the end of the arena. The metal gate
clangs shut behind it.
Head thrown back and arms splayed, the clown isn’t moving. Men jump off
the rails and run toward him, and the huge doors at the end of the arena open
and an ambulance comes in. It stops beside the clown. The EMTs jump out, pull
out a gurney, and then huddle around the prone body. One goes back to the
vehicle and brings some equipment. There’s frantic activity, and with the help
of the other men, they place him on the gurney and slide him into the
ambulance. It pulls out the doors and disappears, and the siren wails and
recedes.
Tibs stands up, looks at me, and jerks his head, saying come on, let’s go. I stand and follow
him.
Here's what's up next. Tomorrow I’ll talk about how it was written, and Friday I’ll give you a teaser about what’s coming down the pike in the future.
No comments:
Post a Comment