Declan, Flo, and Annie were all waiting for me outside when I left the Avion Café, and the rodeo staff had begun swiftly cleaning up the mess Buffalo had left in his path of destruction. The Agri-Zone itself had been more or less shut down for the time being.
The sun was slowly descending behind the snowcapped mountains in the distance, its blood-orange light bleeding out across the lush, verdant Fraser Valley landscape. With a twenty-ounce plastic cup of beer in one hand, and a lit cigarette in the other, Declan was in the midst of retelling our showdown with the security guards to one woman who was old enough to be his grandmother and another who could have been his daughter.
Although I offered to assist, Sykes stated that he would not only deal efficiently with the security men when they regained consciousness, but also assured me that any news of our reptile rumble would remain confidential and avoid any law enforcement entanglements. I had witnessed firsthand enough of his seemingly endless connections, to not doubt for a second he was a man of his word. What had just gone down would never be made public. How he planned to pull that off was just one of the enduring mysteries about my enigmatic friend.
“Then I put the eejit in a triangle choke while the snakes were swimmin’ all over us!” Declan proudly boasted.
“Ewww!” said Flo, sipping on a raspberry-flavoured, White Claw Hard Seltzer.
“I’m with you, Flo,” said Annie, before making an “ick” face.
“I kind o’became mates with a python too. Scaly bastard fit right ‘round me neck like a St. Paddy’s Day scarf. No flute needed for that lad, he was grand.”
“Jed!” exclaimed Annie, upon noticing me. She jumped into my arms and we exchanged a warm embrace and even warmer smiles before she gave me soft kiss on the cheek.
“Howdy, Darlin’.”
“Look at you,” she chuckled. “Maybe there’s still a chance I can make a real cowboy out of you yet.”
“I was chasin’ the gobshite that ran off,” interjected my cousin, falsely and defensively.
I turned my attention to Declan, handing him his cowboy hat, sunglasses, and beloved near-empty beer backpack that he had left behind due to his frantic retreat after encountering the colourful fowl that so frightened him. “Did you catch him?” I asked, with a smirk.
“’Fraid not, Boyo.”
“You just gave up?”
“He’s a brisk bugger and I just stopped to wet me whistle is all.”
“I don’t know, D. Seems to me you’re peacocking a bit for the ladies.”
Declan’s face started to turn a crimson hue. He immediately chugged back the rest of his beer and tossed the cup aside.
“In all my born days, Declan! I should give you a lash with my bullwhip for being such a nasty litterbug.”
“Ah, them rodeo blokes’ll get to it. They’re already cleanin’ this place up from King Kong’s rampage. How is that huge bastard, anyway?”
“He’s inside with Sykes petting the cow.”
“Pettin’ the cow?”
“I told you it had value.”
“Deadly, cuz we gotta move tits sweet if we want to catch that ‘Hot Saw’ hooligan an’ get even with him givin’ yer noggin a crack. To the Bat-Scooters, Flo!”
Declan’s gal pal moved quickly for a woman her age and was pulling the keys out of her fanny pack when I held up a hand.
“I’m not going, D.”
“What do ya mean, yer not goin’?”
“I mean I’m done. Kelly Lewis was off his meds and he killed Jasper in a jealous rage. Now he’s dead too. I’ll probably have to come back out here and give a statement to the Mounties at some point, or maybe Pop can run interference, or mediate thanks to his pull with the boys in blue. All I know is it’s been one hell of a day and I’m toast. I’m going home.”
I noticed the disappointment on Annie’s face, but she said nothing. Declan whispered back and forth with Flo for a moment before responding.
“Fair enough, Mate. Ya don’t mind if I stick around here with Flo, do ya? We’ll see if we can dig up a lead on that lumberjack in the wind who beaned ya with the axe, but even if we don’t, I have a feelin’ I’ll be bunkin’ out this way tonight.”
“You bet your sweet ass you will,” declared Flo, before slapping my cousin on the butt.
“Settle down, ya frisky tart. Let’s go then, eh?”
Flo started trudging off toward the scooters. Declan turned and enveloped me in a big hug, before looking me in the eye.
“Ya okay, Jed?”
“Ya, D. I’m actually pretty good. Thanks.”
He patted me on the cheek and smiled. “I love ya, Deartháir.”
“I love you too, Brother.”
I watched as Declan trotted off after Flo, then took a knee. The spry octogenarian climbed onto his back and he gave her a piggyback ride the rest of the way to the ZooMe scooters. I turned to face Annie, who was smiling sweetly.
“Gosh darn it, Jed. I might need to get myself a handkerchief.”
“Oh, stop it.”
“You sure that’s your cousin? Because you know, if you guys have got some kind of Brokeback Mountain thing going on you can just tell me—”
I slipped a hand around Annie’s waist and pulled her toward me, removed her Stetson with the other, before silencing her with a kiss. And what a kiss it was. Soft and sweet, just like her. She kissed me back, and my entire body tingled with excitement. After five or ten seconds, we pulled apart. Annie’s cheeks were rosy red and flushed, and she took a moment to compose herself before speaking.
“Wowzers. I guess not.”
“I want to see you again soon, Annie,” I said, brushing back her strawberry-blonde hair.
“I suppose that could be arranged. But I have to admit, I’m still a bit miffed.”
“About what?”
“That dad and his kid who interrupted what should have been our first kiss earlier.”
“I thought we just rectified that.”
“Yes, but …”
“But what?”
“Well, they got a selfie with the famous ‘Hammerhead’ Jed Ounstead. I never did.”
“What happened to the Hemsworth brothers?”
“I’ll take a homegrown Canadian wrestler over an Aussie any day of the week, thank you very much. It was your poster I always wanted. I was just stringing a whizzer before. Didn’t want to come on too strong, I guess.”
“No time like the present.”
Annie twirled into my arms, until her back was pressed against my chest. She wrapped my hand tightly around her taut tummy and whipped out her phone.
“Dangnabbit, Jed, do you think you can duck down or something?” she said as the camera on her phone cut off my head and the top of my shoulders. “If I wanted a pic of me with muscular pectoral muscles, I could have just stayed at the stables with Rosco.”
“Rosco?”
“My bronc.”
“Right. How about this?” I said, before slouching down and popping her Stetson onto my head, which given that it was a few sizes too small, made me look like I was wearing the cowboy hat that came with a Western Ken Mattel doll.
Annie burst into giggles as she took a series of snaps. “You are such a dweeb!” she said, before turning and planting a big kiss on my cheek while taking the last pic. With our photoshoot finished, I handed Annie her hat as she spun back around into my arms, kissing me on the lips one more time.
Not long after, while driving away from the Colossal Cloverdale Rodeo and Country Fair toward the nearest Dairy Queen programmed into my phone’s GPS, I recognized the sensation that had my skin tingling from head-to-toe. I smiled when I realized that, in one frenetic day, I had managed to harness the very thing Kooty preached during his motivational speeches.
Happiness.