Floyd Cox’s place was a dust bowl churned by trucks and trailers maneuvering for space.
About thirty-five teams were entered. First place jackpot winners could take home a little more than one thousand dollars each. But the toughs were there. The eighteen-year-olds with faster-than-the-eye-can-see hands swinging ropes they keep next to their beds at night. In the mornings, one hand aims the urine, the other fondles the rope. It was gonna be a tough roping. Five steers. You could be fastest on four, miss one and you’d go home empty.
Billy Diggs’ brown and white head horse was like the heavy equipment he drove. Hugely muscled and athletic, standing quiet till asked to go to the task. Then he could drag a rhino to Albuquerque at the end of a rope. And he could run some, too.
Jesse’s red roan, normally a quiet, soft-eyed, gelding when not at a roping was now a coiled steel spring in a sweat-shine from his eartips to his tail. He stepped as if on hot coals as Jesse eased him toward the heeler’s box, on the steer’s right side. This was their last steer. They’d caught four. They needed this one and they’d have to be quick. They still had a shot.
Billy’s placid paint walked into the header’s box on the steer’s left and mechanically turned front with his eye on the captive steer and waited. Nice horns, thought Billy as he visualized his perfect loop snaring and coming tight. He looked across the steer to the other side at Jesse trying to settle the impatient roan into the corner for a good start. Jesse shook his loop, caught Billy’s eye, and nodded. Billy nodded to the chute man who tapped a trigger and the brindle steer shot out of the chute with Billy and Jesse in hot pursuit. Billy swung once and delivered the loop to the horns, jerked the slack and in a blur dallied the rope around his saddle horn and turned left, taking with him the flying steer. Jesse rounded the corner with his loop whirling and his eyes locked on the hopping hind feet of the steer. In perfect time he placed the loop where the feet were headed and roped them out of the air. As the roan stuck his tail in the ground, Jesse jerked his slack and dallied. The arena judge dropped his flag. The bullhorn squawked, “Eight flat. Diggs and Burrell.” Not fast enough for first, but they’d get their entry money back and then some. They’d had a good day.
Floyd Cox was a youthful half-century old, with silver-white hair and a white mustache traveling down each side of his mouth terminating at his jaw. The chew behind his lower lip looked like he harbored a golf ball. The brightest blue eyes twinkled above shining red cheeks. When afoot, he traveled on bandy legs under a trophy buckle obscured by his belly as if he were fleeing a fire. No stroller he.
He could tell a story and loved to laugh. Jesse and Billy were just finishing untacking their horses when he rolled up with a Coors in his hand and spat.
“Goddamn, you boys roped good today.” Then he launched right into it, rapid-fire. “So this ol’ boy decides he wants to git hisself a guard dog. So he goes out and gits a goddamn Rottweiler with a neck on him like a tree trunk and takes him home. That night that son of a bitch terrorizes the entire family. The wife locks herself in the bedroom, and the kids just make it to their rooms with this son of a bitch a-chewing at the doorknob. He catches the family cat, kills it, and eats the damn thing. The ol’ boy jumps on the phone to the vet and says, ‘Doc, this is one rank son of a bitch. I don’t know what the hell to do with him.’ Vet says, ‘Bring him round here tomorrow and we’ll castrate him. See if that quiets him down.’ Next morning the ol’ boy snaps a stout chain on to the collar and sets out. This Rottweiler is a-pullin’ and a-haulin’ and a-jerkin’ this ol’ boy down the street. He finally gets him stopped at a crosswalk. There’s a pedestrian walking on the other side of the street. That dog makes a lunge at the chain, breaks the snap, and takes off like a rocket after the pedestrian. This guy is a-runnin’ for his life, his knees to his chest. That dog is snappin’ at his heels. He makes a leap through the air, tackles the guy to the ground, and jumps on his chest. He is just about to tear the guy’s throat out when up comes a-runnin’, pantin’ out of breath, the owner. He reaches down, grabs the collar, and jerks the dog back just in time. He looks down at the terrified guy on the ground and says, ‘Jesus man I’m sorry, I apologize. I was just now taking this son of a bitch to the vet to have him castrated.’ The guy looks up and says, ‘Castrate him hell. You need to take that son of a bitch to a dentist. I could tell from a block away he wasn’t gonna fuck me!’”
Jesse and Billy roared while Floyd giggled with delight as if he hadn’t heard it before.
Seemed like Floyd had told the story on one breath, words flying like bullets. When he’d finished he spat brown juice and took a swig of Coors. Seemed he had a compartmentalized oral cavity that allowed him to do both at the same time.
On the drive back home, Billy extended an invite from his wife Kathy Sue. Her cousin Marlene from Oklahoma City was coming to visit for a few days and Kathy Sue would like for Jesse to come to supper. Billy said, “She works for the newspaper. I met her once. She’s about halfway ornamental. She might be too needle-witted for a feller like you though.” Jesse said he’d come. He was thinking more about the food and a couple of hours with Billy’s boys than meeting a new woman. A small sadness moved in his heart, and he turned away from Billy to look out the window.