The Jackson Hole Airport is in the middle of a wide valley, a flat scrubland underneath a dome of sky, ringed by sharp mountains. From a distance, the Blue Ridge Mountains around Asheville look like rising folds in a bedsheet; as you approach, they gather you in slowly until you realize all at once that you are among them. In Jackson Hole, the Tetons thrust themselves into view, giant rocks dropped from space by a Titan. As I stepped out of the plane and walked down a wheeled set of steps to the tarmac, I stared at the Teton Range jutting out of the scrublands. Although a couple of miles distant, they seemed within arm’s reach. It was a cloudless, sunny day in late May, and yet I was shivering in the breeze—I was well over a mile above sea level and freezing when I passed through shade. I had difficulty grasping that I was still on the same planet, let alone the same country.
I found a cheap hotel called the Lucky Dollar that seemed to have little familiarity with dollars and even less with luck, but it had a forlorn room with a king-sized bed waiting for me. I threw my suitcase onto the floor of the tiny closet and lay on top of a hideous saffron-colored bedspread that felt like it was made of oven mitts. I was exhausted but too keyed up to sleep, so I stared at the ceiling and waited for evening, when the rodeo would start.
THE RODEO WAS LOCATED in a fairgrounds lot backed up against Snow King Mountain, which rose steeply at the southern end of Jackson as if barring passage beyond. At half past six, I parked my rental car in the rodeo lot and crossed a dirt-and-gravel yard, my Achilles tendon stiff but not complaining yet. I passed several parked semis with transport rigs for horses and bulls and eventually stopped at a ticket booth, where I gained entrance through a swinging gate to the arena itself, a mud-churned space with stands on one side and chutes on the other. The stands were filling slowly with families, small groups of men in cowboy hats, grandmothers, and teenagers in denim and boots. I bought a cup of hot chocolate and cupped my hands around it, grateful for the warmth, and then found a seat near the front with a clear view.
Bright white floodlights shone down on the arena below. The parking lot was to the right beyond sheets of plywood hung over the fence. Off to the left, fenced-in pens extended from a large warehouse-like stable. Across from me stood the chutes, behind which milled several men in chaps and cowboy hats—I assumed they were the riders. I couldn’t see them well, but I knew that eventually they would come close enough for me to get a better view. Breath misted out of everyone’s mouth as the sun fell toward the western peaks and the sky began to shade toward a deeper blue.
A flat, metallic voice came out of the speakers, informing us that the rodeo was about to begin. A young woman with a sheet of shimmering brown hair and a white cowboy hat stepped up to a microphone at the far edge of the muddied field below, and everyone stood and removed his or her hat as the woman sang “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and we cheered politely. A crew of men in jeans and work gloves brought out a series of barrels that they placed around the arena before hurrying off into the shadows of the stable. The same flat voice as earlier announced the barrel-racing contestants, who rode one by one out of the stable, their tall, clean Stetsons and bright shirts contrasting sharply with their horses, who took dignified steps as they entered the arena, mud up to their fetlocks, heads carried high as if suffering their riders for only the moment. They raced around the barrels, the riders leaning into their mounts and coming within a hairbreadth of grazing the barrels with their knees as they rounded them tightly and then galloped for the finish line. After the adults competed, there was another race for children. A tiny girl on a huge brown horse, her hat almost as big as she was, won easily and waved a petite hand at the audience.
The men in work gloves ran out and removed the barrels, and the flat speaker voice announced the calf-roping competition. A young cowboy, barely out of his teens, rode down a bawling calf and flicked his lasso so it caught the calf’s rear legs and the animal crashed to its side. The cowboy dismounted, ran to the calf, and tied the rope around its hooves in less than five seconds to general applause. The second cowboy, older and gaunter, was even faster—one moment he was on his horse, lasso secured to a calf’s hind legs, and the next he was standing in the mud, the calf trussed up and helpless. A third cowboy made a great show of twirling his lasso overhead, but when he popped it at his calf, the animal spooked and dodged, the lasso missing it by several feet. The cowboy’s horse tossed its head as if in disgust, trotting off to the stable with the rider’s expression hard and set.
In the pause after the calf roping, I could see lots of activity by the chutes across the way. One or two gates shuddered as the bulls behind them vented their frustration at being penned in. Two men in bright red chaps, plaid shirts, and face paint came out onto the field to cheers. I squeezed my empty Styrofoam cup and leaned forward, peering through the white haze of the spotlights. One was balding with a bad comb-over, although I couldn’t tell if that was real or part of his makeup. The other was tall and lean, younger, but with more of a stoic face behind the white-and-black greasepaint. I followed him as he strode around the muddy arena, working the crowd, waving at kids in the stands, pretending to lasso them and then dropping his hat, bending over to pick up the hat and then standing up as his red chaps fell to the mud. I couldn’t tell if it was Fritz.
The two clowns met up at the gate to one of the middle chutes, the balding one grasping a rope. The announcer read off the name of the first bull rider in his flat voice. A bell rang and the balding clown threw open the gate, the bull within bursting forth, heaving and plunging, and the rider clutching the rope lashed around the bull’s chest. The rider’s free hand whipped about through the air like a pennant in the thick of battle. I had thought the horses were big, but the bull was the size of a small car. Still plunging up and down, the bull began to rotate in a circle. The rider slipped, his face banging against the back of the bull’s neck; then he fell off to the side and hit the mud, one of the stomping hooves landing on his arm. The two clowns rushed forward, the balding one waving in the bull’s face, the tall one grabbing the fallen rider and leading him away. The bull danced madly in the center of the arena until two riders with lassos approached, driving the animal back toward the pens.
The next rider had a bit more luck, his bull merely whirling around and around as if trying to bite its own tail. He lasted the full eight seconds, and then leapt off the bull, landing clumsily in the mud and falling to his knees, but he scampered to the wall and climbed over it before the bull could charge him. The tall clown had been shouting at the bull, and I strained to hear his voice, but unsuccessfully. I realized I had shredded the empty Styrofoam cup in my hands and let the pieces drop to my feet.
The third rider looked to be in trouble before his chute even opened. I caught a glimpse of his eyes, wide with fright. The gate rattled on its hinges as the bull, dark with a barrel-sized hump, struck it with its flank. I could see the wicked curve of a horn shine like an ivory tooth in the floodlight. Then the bell rang and the chute opened. Immediately the bull tore out of the chute, bucking and kicking out its hind legs, leaping and spinning in a circle, the rider’s hat blown through the air. The rider seemed to hunch over the bull, as if trying to hide from its rage by lying prone on its back, and then with a jerk he fell to one side. Even from the stands I could feel the impact of the bull’s hooves striking the ground, mud spraying as if from a mortar shell. The rider clutched at the rope, hanging on to the side of the heaving bull. His feet were dragged through the mud, and were then thrown up in the air as he was tossed like a proverbial rag doll. Just let go, I thought, and then I saw that his left hand was caught in the rope. The bull continued to carry him along as it plunged and spun. “Oh, mercy,” an older woman said behind me.
The two clowns ran up to the bull, the balding one again in the bull’s face while the taller one dashed to help untangle the rider. But the bull ignored the balding clown and, with almost casual violence, turned and lowered its head, hooking the tall clown around the back of the legs with its horns and tossing him aside in a backward somersault. Meanwhile, the rider flailed uselessly at his trapped hand. My breath caught as I watched the tall clown hit the mud facedown. He scrambled to his feet.
The two men on horseback approached, lassoes in hand, but they hesitated, clearly unwilling to do anything that could harm the rider, who looked like a man being slowly churned to death. The balding clown was waving a green hat at the bull, trying to distract the animal, but the tall one couldn’t get to the rider and was holding a hand to his ribs. Meanwhile the bull continued to spin around and around, tossing its head angrily, its horns stabbing the air.
Two men in jeans and flannel shirts ran into the arena, part of the work crew that had moved the barrels earlier. They still had their work gloves on. One, Hispanic with a brush of a mustache, went to the tall clown to see if he was all right. The second, with short blond hair, made straight for the bull, his arms wide as if rushing to embrace it. The bull stomped and began to run at the man, lowering its head, the rider being dragged helplessly along. At the last moment, the bull’s horns thrusting toward his navel, the blond brought his arms in, pivoted off his right foot, and spun once around, the bull charging through empty air. It was like watching a dancer pirouette around a rhino. The man ended up next to the bull’s shoulder, his hands on the rope binding the rider. Then the rider was free, leaning heavily on the blond man. The balding clown helped drag them to the wall as the men on horseback moved in, crying out at the bull, their lassoes whirling and moving the beast off to the side. After a stunned second or two, those in the audience clapped and cheered, some waving their hats.
I found myself on my feet with the rest of them, but I wasn’t clapping. I stared down into the arena at the blond man in work gloves, sweat running down his face. The hair was completely different, but I had seen that pivot and spin before, the same fast shuffle of feet, the angle of the shoulders as the man had turned into his tight spin. He had done that before in a game against Norfolk Academy on a lateral pass, where he had pivoted around the end of the line, dodged a cornerback, and run into the end zone. I stood in the chill night and watched Fritz Davenport climb up onto the fence and straddle it as the other cowboys led the bull away.
I FORCED MY WAY through the standing crowd, people still talking about that last bull and the man who had rescued the rider, and made my way toward the stairs that led down to the ground by the pens and the stable. But a church youth group, all its members in matching purple tee shirts underneath their coats, was clogging the aisle, a score or more of boys and girls apparently heading for the porta potties standing next to the pens. I turned and went back through the crowd the other way, toward the parking lot, ignoring a shout as I stepped on someone’s foot. My own foot was beginning to clamor for attention, the dull ache in my heel that I felt at the end of every day now upgraded to a burn, but I just craned my neck to see whether Fritz was still by the chutes. All the cowboys seemed to have exited the arena. Limping, I made my way down the stairs at the far end, hurried out the gate and past the ticket booth, the gravel crunching beneath my sneakers. There was a closed gate, against which leaned a fat, bearded man in a red plaid shirt and a dirty cowboy hat. Despite my sense of urgency, I hesitated. Just walking up and asking about Fritz didn’t seem like the right play. It might scare Fritz off, and I hadn’t come this far to lose him. He might not even be using his real name. Then a man farther down the fence, pulling bales of hay off a flatbed, called to the fat cowboy, who pushed himself off the gate and ambled over to help. As soon as he left, I quickly pushed the gate open and stepped through, letting it swing shut behind me. I didn’t look back.
Here stood a handful of trailers, all backlit by the bright lights of the arena and crossed in shadow. Knots of men stood around smoking and chatting. The flat voice of the announcer came out of the speakers again, talking about bronc riding. A medic in a blue uniform knelt down in front of the last bull rider, who was sitting in a folding chair, his shoulders trembling, head down in defeat. Beside him were the two clowns, their face paint now ludicrous, even bizarre. The balding one had a slightly affronted air about him, as if embarrassed by the rider’s behavior. The tall one was closer to me, and I caught his eye. “You know where I could find the guy who saved him?” I said, indicating the bull rider with a nod.
The clown looked at me, the sweat that was running through his greasepaint making his face seem half-melted. “Might be over there, getting a cup of coffee.” He pointed off to the right, toward the stable. “Why?”
I waved and moved off, not wanting to engage with anyone else until I found Fritz. Pausing to let a man carrying a pail of water cross my path, I glanced back and saw that the tall clown had left the bull rider and was dogging my steps. I hurried on, stepping around the end of a trailer and moving toward the stable as I tried not to let my limp slow me down. To my left, I could hear the crowd gasp; turning my head, I saw in the arena someone attempting to ride a bronco. The horse was kicking frantically, its rear hooves bucking into the night sky and its rider leaning back as if riding a barrel down a waterfall.
Ahead, by the pens, I saw a table with a stainless steel urn and stacks of coffee cups, and a group of men standing around and talking. “Hey,” someone said behind me. I ignored the voice and strode forward, trying to get a good look at the men around the coffee. A hand touched my shoulder. “What do you think you’re doing?” came the slow voice of the tall clown.
“I’m looking for somebody,” I said, turning around and tearing my arm out of his grasp as I glared at him. His face looked like an overheated wax impression of a panda, black circles smudged around his eyes.
“There’s nobody back here don’t work here, boss,” he said calmly. “You need to move on.”
“No, I just need to—I’m looking for a friend of mine—”
The men around the coffee looked up.
“You need to get out,” said the clown, “or you’ll be escorted out, your choice.”
I wanted to laugh aloud at the absurdity, the man in the melting clown face demanding that I leave while Fritz was back here somewhere. But the laugh died in my throat as the blond man who had rescued the bull rider looked around from the coffee and stepped slowly forward. His hair was short and thatched, his face tanned and roughened and slack with surprise, but I knew him.
“Pete?” the clown said, addressing the blond man. “You know this guy?”
I looked at the man the clown had called Pete. “Ho,” I said.
“Ho,” said Fritz.
WE STOOD IN A trailer that served as a changing room for the rodeo clowns—bullfighters, Fritz had called them. The trailer held a rack of various colored shirts and overalls. A heap of straw hats lay on a counter next to a small round mirror and a flat box containing what I guessed was greasepaint. A shabby green sofa sat propped against the wall at this end of the trailer. The room smelled of sweat and mildew and the sharp tang of dipping tobacco.
“Sorry about George,” Fritz said. He was referring to the tall clown. “He’s protective. Thought you might be trying to serve a warrant or something.”
“A warrant?”
“Happens sometimes. Last week a stable hand got served divorce papers.” Fritz leaned back against the counter with the hats. “We try to take care of one another.”
The pause after this stretched on, the tension taut in the air. I felt that if I spoke a moment too soon, something would irrecoverably break. All those years since that March day in the trees at Blackburne, all the choices I had made or avoided—it all seemed reduced to this moment in a trailer, standing across from Fritz. I found myself looking at a Far Side calendar on the wall, the picture of a cow standing at a microphone reading something. The calendar was too far away for me to read what the cow was saying.
“So, what’s with the ‘Pete’?” I said. Some distant part of me registered the anger in my voice but elected not to do anything about it. It was beyond unimaginable to find Fritz here, with blond hair and a new name and identity, with friends.
Fritz shrugged. “It’s simple. Easy to remember.”
“So, what, you’ve got a driver’s license, Social Security number? Whole new life?”
“How’d you find me?” he asked. He placed his hands down on the counter he was leaning against and looked at me. “Did my family send you?”
I stared back. “Your family had you declared dead,” I said. “Last year.”
I am not proud to admit that I took some small pleasure in seeing his reaction. His face drew into itself, and he dropped his head slightly. I noticed a smudge of dirt on his forehead, just above his left eye. He took in a breath. “Are they okay?” he asked, looking at his boots.
“Sure. Great,” I said, pacing in the narrow space. There wasn’t much room—I had to turn around after two steps. “Your sister quit Juilliard and can’t listen to classical music anymore, let alone play it. Your mom doesn’t want to stick her head in the oven anymore. Your dad lives at his goddamn company. Your uncle—well, shit, at least he’s got something going on in his life.”
“You’ve seen my uncle?” Fritz said, still looking down at the floor.
“Yeah. He’s pretty torn up about . . .” I waved a hand vaguely at the trailer, unable at the moment to conceive of an appropriate word.
Fritz stood up off the table and lifted his gaze. “Did he send you here? Does he know where I am?”
“No, he didn’t send me—”
“Please don’t lie to me, Matthias.” It was the first time he’d called me by my name.
I gave a sharp bark of laughter. “Lie to you,” I said. I wanted to shout, to rage. Anger and bitterness and sorrow flowed through me like separate dark rivers, a flood of emotion carrying me off to whatever happened next. “I’m not lying to you, Fritz,” I said. “Your family has no idea where you are. Honest to God. They think you’re dead, remember?”
Fritz picked up a straw hat and toyed with the brim, turning the hat slowly round and round in his hands. “I’m sorry I hurt you,” he said. “I know how upset you must be.”
I wanted to snatch his hat and throw it out of the trailer, watch it sail across the lot and fall into the mud. As if reading my mood, he laid the hat back down on the counter. “So how did you find me?” he asked.
It was startling to look at my friend after all these years, to see his old face, which had always been on the edge of a lopsided smile, half-hidden within the face in front of me now, which was weathered and keen and sad. The same, but different. I wondered how he saw me, if my face was as changed from what it had been, and for a piercing moment I had a glimpse of what it might be like to grow old. “It’s a long story,” I said. Suddenly, I was bone-tired. “Remember Kevin Kelly, from school?”
Fritz frowned, remembering. “That kid who called us Nazis?”
I nodded. “He saw you out here, last year. I figured, what the hell, it was worth a shot.”
“He told you? Are you guys friends?”
I laughed at that, an ugly sound. “He was selling drugs at school. At Blackburne. I’m teaching there—well, I was, anyway. I found out about it, the drugs, and heard he knew where you were, so I went to try to get him to tell me. Didn’t quite work out the way I had planned.”
Fritz considered this. “Is he here with you?”
“No. He’s dead. A cop shot him when he tried to stab me in his grow room. Ex-cop, actually.”
Fritz stared at me. “Oh-kay,” he said, and his guarded look of confusion actually made me smile.
“Needs some more explanation, I know,” I said.
Fritz spread his hands out. “I’m not exactly in a position to demand explanations,” he said. For the first time, a small, lopsided smile hovered on his face.
That look, that acknowledgment of debts unpaid, dislodged my anger enough to make me sit down and tell him, from start to finish, the story of the past year, from getting the job at Blackburne to confronting Kevin Kelly. I left out nothing, including what I’d learned from Trip and Diamond. He leaned against the counter, listening, his face intense and hard. Twice he raised his hand halfway to his neck and then put it down. The second time he did it, when I was explaining how Briggs had helped me realize what Kevin had meant by clown, I stopped talking and waited expectantly for him to look at me, and then I slowly drew out from my pocket the Saint Christopher medal on its chain.
“I thought you might want this,” I said.
Fritz stared at it, and for the first time since I’d begun my story, something shifted over his face, a look of longing. He reached for the medal, but I closed my hand around it.
“I’ve told you my story,” I said. “Now tell me why I should give this to you. You left it under my pillow, Fritz. Before you walked off the map. Tell me why.”
He looked at my closed hand, and then at me, but before he could speak, there were two short knocks on the trailer door, and it opened to reveal George, still wearing his greasepaint. “Show’s over, Pete,” he said, ignoring me. “You okay? Tommy’s asking for you.”
His eyes on me, Fritz said to George, “Tell Tommy I’ll be there in a minute.”
George hesitated, glancing at me. “Need me to cover for you?”
I’ll admit George and I had not gotten off on the right foot, but my patience was worn thin. I was on the verge of getting answers to a mystery that had shadowed my life, and George was acting like a jealous prom date. “Who’s Tommy?” I asked, interjecting myself into the conversation like a dog lifting a leg on a rival’s rosebush.
George’s sour look was replaced by alarm as a commotion broke out behind him. He turned toward the door. “You can’t —” he started, and then a small dark-haired boy, three or four years old, ran past him into the trailer. He was wearing jeans and a sweater. A frayed straw cowboy hat on a string around his neck bounced against his shoulders. He grinned and ran up to Fritz, ignoring both me and George.
“The show’s over,” the boy announced to Fritz.
“Yes, it is,” Fritz said. A slow smile spread across his face.
The boy turned to look at me like a curious bird. “What’s in your hand?” he asked.
I looked down at my closed hand, the Saint Christopher medal in it and a loop of the chain hanging from my fist. “Something that belongs to my friend,” I said.
The boy’s eyes widened. “Can I see it?” he asked.
Fritz stirred. “Can I see it, please,” he said. He nodded at George, who, with a final suspicious glance at me, withdrew and closed the door to the trailer behind him.
“Please,” the boy said.
I opened my hand, and the boy looked at the medal, his mouth slightly open. “Oh,” he said.
Fritz put his hand on top of the boy’s head. “This is an old friend of mine. His name’s Matthias.”
The boy tore his eyes from the medal and looked up at me, smiling. “That’s a funny name,” he said delightedly.
I smiled back. “It is.” I looked at Fritz.
“This is Tommy,” Fritz said. “My son.”