Rusty, Bill and I were in the attic playing a game of Nine Ball when we heard the group returning from the mall. They made Cody sound like a mute.
“HA, ha! That was so funny! You’d think they never saw a rope before! That was so fun! Are we really going back tomorrow?” Patrick said, his voice carrying all the way upstairs and bouncing off the rafters.
“It depends on how bad you want to earn the money. I’d say go for it!” Sandy said. “It looks like an easy buck to me.”
“Do I hafta autograph pictures again?”
Rusty and I exchanged glances then both turned and looked at Bill.
“I think I better go see what happened. You can finish the game without me,” I said.
Sandy was still laughing when I appeared downstairs. “Cassidy! You should have warned us!” she cackled.
“Warned you about what?”
“What a flirt this guy is! It was hilarious!”
“Patrick! What did you do this time?” I asked. I didn’t want to get angry unless I had a good reason, so I was withholding judgment, but my question must have still sounded stern.
“I didn’t do anything! I promise!”
“You should have been there!” Sandy guffawed.
I’d never seen my sister-in-law laugh hysterically before. Sandy was very proper and professional with a history of always wearing matching pantsuits with high heel shoes and diamond jewelry. And now she was rolling on the couch in hysterical laughter which was only making me worry more.
“We went to the photography studio in the mall and they had the aspen backdrop and the saddle just like I remembered. They had to adjust the cameras so we were waiting for them to be ready and Patrick picks up the rope lying on the saddle. He starts twirling the rope around his head like a real cowboy! And, and the photographer starts to say, ‘Don’t touch that!’ but when he saw what Patrick was doing he puts him in the picture and starts shooting pictures of him twirling the rope. They usually take six shots at this place and then you have to choose two that you want reprints of. This guy must have taken at least fifty pictures and he brings them up on a computer and prints out his favorite ones. Then he asks Patrick if he can do some more tricks.”
“He called it a trick!” Patrick said, sounding offended. “Dad says I can’t be a real cowboy until I can handle a rope so I have to work with the rope every day. I open the loop and close the loop and turn it different ways and I lasso fence posts. But this guy at the mall said it was a trick and it wasn’t. I just got bored so I was practicing. They really need to break in their rope. It was real stiff and hard to twirl but I got it to work a little bit.”
“A little bit!” Sandy exclaimed. “You made that rope dance!”
“Then they asked me if I would do it out in the mall and I thought they were nuts. Why would I want to practice with a rope in a mall? But I said I would do it because everybody was so interested. So I went out in the mall and I twirled it up and then I figured out how to twirl it down. At home with a real rope the practice gets boring so I try jumping into the loop and then out of it. And when I did that the crowd went wild. The people would watch for a while and then wander around and look in the shops and then come back. So the shop people offered me money to stay there and twirl the rope! And then the photography place taped my picture up on their window. Lots of kids stopped to have their pictures taken and now the photographer wants me to do it again tomorrow. This lady said she was from Georgia and asked if I was a movie star. Another person asked if I had any autographed pictures. They all thought I was famous or something. Heck, I was just doing stuff I do every day at home and I’m not even a real cowboy yet, but they thought it was great. You’d think they’d never seen a person twirl a rope before!”
“Did you give that person an autographed picture?” I asked.
“The photographer printed out a bunch of pictures on plain paper and I just signed my first name and he handed them out to anybody who wanted one. He stapled a business card to each one. It was kind of fun but I didn’t understand what the big deal was. Now they want me to come back and do it again tomorrow. They said if I filled out a form they would pay me to do it.”
“Can I go too? I can twirl a rope,” I asked.
“I think they were just amazed because Patrick is so little and cute,” Bev said.
I looked at Pat in his white pinstriped shirt, pressed jeans, shiny boots, string tie, big black snakeskin trimmed cowboy hat and laughed to myself. This was normal where he came from, but it was a show in San Diego. My father, Big Wayne Gordon, kept the old west alive on the ranch. If it weren’t for him, it would be just like any other ranch in California. But it wasn’t; it was a cowboy ranch, and all the kids grew up like cowboys.
“They gave us a big batch of pictures almost for free, and even when we were walking around the mall people kept asking me for my autograph. I signed notebooks, shopping bags, jeans and hats. Hats are hard to write on though. Those people are going to be mad when they find out there’s no famous kid named Patrick.”
“They won’t be mad at you,” I told him, “because they asked you to do it. It’s not like you did something bad. At least you didn’t see any purse snatchers and end up in the office again.”
“Yeah,” he said, taking my words into consideration, “I don’t know what was worse, thinking we were going to jail or having to do a rope twirling act at the mall. I think I’ll stay away from malls.”
I could sympathize with the kid. It came with having the trouble gene. Some trouble was definitely bad news, but then sometimes it was just interesting, like what happened to Pat at the mall. At least he hadn’t had a boring time.
“Mr. Michaels? Do you have a real rope I could use?”
“We’ll go look,” Rusty said.
A little later, I heard cursing coming from the front yard. Looking out of the window, I saw Cody and Patrick standing side by side with Cody tangled in the rope.
“You have to do it smooth and regular like. You’re not doing it smoothly. Every time you jerk your hand you have to fix the wobble. If you’re spending your time fixing wobbles, you’ll never learn anything else.”
“I am not wobbling. I’m a smooth dude,” Cody insisted.
“You might be a smooth dude, but you aren’t a smooth roper. Aunt Cassidy can lasso a calf from a running horse, flank him and tie him in ten seconds.”
“Well, in ten seconds she doesn’t have time to wobble,” Cody complained.
“Aw, shit, you’ll never learn if you won’t listen to me!” Patrick complained. “I think it’s time for you to teach me to ride your bike.”
“Okay, but no wobbling. Wobbling hurts worse on a bike than it does with a rope. And we aren’t going down the hill yet, we’re starting out at Cabrillo Court.”
Cody’s bike was a little too big for Patrick, but it was way too small for Cody. He looked silly riding it, but it seemed to suit his personality and he could sling it over his shoulder and carry it if he got a flat tire. Cody and his red bike were almost inseparable. He rode it to work, up and down the boardwalk during breaks, and then later would ride it back home. I tried to remember if I’d ever seen him drive a car.
Cody jogged into the house and then up the steps to his room, which always blared music even when he wasn’t in it. He came out carrying the bike and then jogged back down the stairs somehow managing not to bump into the stairway or walls. He turned the corner and was out the front door before you could say Jack Robinson.
“You better go take some pictures or Jesse’s going to be mad,” Rusty suggested to me.
“She’ll probably be mad that Pat learned how to ride a bike without her anyway,” I replied. “At least she will like having some pictures of Cody, too.”
I was half convinced that if Jesse wasn’t already married to James she might have packed up and relocated to San Diego to put the moves on Rusty’s little brother. Fortunately, she was very settled into her ranch life with a good husband and two wonderful kids. I doubt she’d budge for a suntanned cruise line poster boy. But I was sure she wouldn’t mind having a few pictures of him with her son either.
By the time I caught up with them Cody was pushing Patrick around the circle. Cabrillo Court was a cul de sac just three houses long and looked like a good place to practice.
“No training wheels. Training wheels are for sissies, besides there haven’t been training wheels at our house for twenty years. Learning to balance is the key. And it’s easier to balance the faster you go.”
“It hurts more to crash the faster you go!” Patrick wailed.
“That’s why you learn to balance faster!” Cody said. “Plus, the bike will take wobbles easier the faster you go so pedal, come on pedal!”
“I am pedaling but pedaling causes wobbling!”
“Pedal smoothly, if you spend your time fixing wobbles you’ll never learn to ride a bike.”
Turn a rope, pedal a bike, all you’ve got to do is get the wobbles out.
That first night getting Patrick to bed was easier than back home. After a day of traveling, visiting, going to the mall, and bike riding, all the activity had added up. I let him take the western book to bed with him, knowing he’d get bored with it and fall asleep. I was wrong.
“Aunt Cassidy…” I heard from his room.
“What is it, Patrick?” I called back.
“How long is a sidewinder?”
Sigh, okay, more questions. I got up and went to his bedroom.
“Baby ones are little, adult ones are three or four feet. I bet some of them get longer. Why?”
He looked at me in disbelief. “I was just wondering,” he said. “I read the word in this book and I didn’t know.”
“Well, read the sentence to me and we’ll figure it out.”
He read aloud, “He was mean, slick and sneaky as an old coyote and I bet his dick was as long as a sidewinder. Maybe that’s why…”
“Patrick! I think you need to stick to kids books. Where did you get this?”
“Upstairs,” he said innocently.
I took the book, let it fall open, and started reading. Oh my gosh! This book was not intended for kids.
“I’ll go up and get you one that your mom won’t be mad about,” I said and went to the attic. I looked through the books and found a Louis L’Amour book that I thought I had read as a kid, and brought it down to him. “Here, I think this one is safe.”
“Is the other one dangerous?”
“You need to be older to read that one. Your mom will probably let you read it when you get to be, oh, twenty-one, or married, whichever comes first.”
“Aw, that’s no fair.”
“It is too. Every kid has to wait for some books. It’s rule number eighteen.”
“Yeah, right.”
“It’s time for you to try and get some sleep. Goodnight, Patrick.”
“I think we need to censor the books upstairs,” I said to the adults downstairs. “Did you hear what his question was about?”
“No, but I think it’s wonderful when children ask questions. It makes it so much easier to talk about difficult subjects,” Bev said.
“Oh yeah?” I asked. “He wanted to know how long a sidewinder is.”
“Did you tell him?”
“Yeah, he wanted to know because of this sentence in a book that he read.” I handed her the book and pointed to the sentence.
“Oh, dear,” she said. “He’s doing very well if he knew how to read the words coyote and sidewinder.” I smiled at her, my mother-in-law, always the eternal optimist.
The book got passed around and the grins passed along with it. I noticed, though, that nobody claimed to have already read the book.
“Do you mind sleeping in the attic? I thought if Patrick stayed up here there would be too many temptations to play.”
“No, I don’t mind. It’s more comfortable than that stuffy bedroom and we don’t have to worry about the bed frame creaking. Plus we’re adults, and we can play all night if we want to. It’s one of the advantages of growing up,” Rusty said as he smiled at me.
“Would you play all night with me?” I asked.
I slipped out of my clothes and into the “cute little number” from Victoria’s Secret. He took me in his arms.
“Mmm, I think I might be persuaded.”
“How much persuasion do you need?”
“How much can I get?”