“He’s been here for two years.”
“Well,” Dallas said, “that just shows you how much I’ve been around, I guess.”
Dallas suddenly got serious, and said, “How’s April doing, Mr. Pickett?”
Joe realized Brenda was standing in the door right behind him. Dallas had glanced over to her before he asked the question. Joe wondered if Brenda had silently prompted it.
“She’s in bad shape,” Joe said. “She’s in a coma in a hospital in Billings.”
“Man,” Dallas said, “that’s bad news.” Then: “Is she going to make it?”
“We’re optimistic,” Joe lied.
Dallas nodded. And kept nodding. Then another quick glance to Brenda behind Joe’s shoulder.
“Has she been able to communicate?” Dallas asked.
“No.”
“Man, that’s rough. Will she ever be able to talk?”
“We hope so.”
Yet another glance. Joe considered whipping his head around so he could catch Brenda coaching her son, but he didn’t.
“Well, if she recovers, I hope you’ll tell her how sorry I am this happened to her,” Dallas said. “I mean, we had our problems and all, especially at the end. But she means a lot to me. I can’t stand to think of her stuck in some hospital room like that. So tell her I’m thinkin’ about her, will you?”
Joe nodded.
“Maybe I’ll be up and around soon,” Dallas said. “Billings ain’t that far.”
He paused, then said, “If that’s okay with you and Marybeth, I mean.”
Joe didn’t want to say, There’s nothing to see. And he didn’t like Dallas using his wife’s name so casually. He said, “I’ll let you know when she’s better. Maybe we can work something out.”
“That’d be great, Mr. Pickett.”
He seemed almost sincere, almost eager. Joe thought perhaps he had always judged Dallas too harshly. He’d been put off by his mannerisms, his history, his too-eager-to-please persona.
But maybe, Joe conceded, it had as much to do with the fact that April had left with him while Joe and Marybeth were away. That it had been Dallas’s fault as much as April’s why she had left.
Joe asked, “How long have you been back, Dallas?”
“Since March tenth,” he answered quickly.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Brenda said from behind Joe.
“Not the thirteenth?” Joe pressed.
“Hell no,” Dallas said, letting some heat show through, although the grin was still frozen on his face. “I see what you’re doin’ here.”
“Just had to check,” Joe said. “I’m sorry.”
“You ought to be,” Brenda said.
Joe looked back at her. She wasn’t as angry as he’d expected. Oddly, she looked relieved.
“Well,” Joe said to Dallas, “I hope you’re up and around soon.”
Dallas’s grin turned into a bigger box. “The only good thing about it is, I couldn’t have gotten busted up at a better time. I lost my entry fees on the Rodeo All-Star gig in Dallas, of course, but the big fun doesn’t really start until June. By then, it’ll be a rodeo a day, and sometimes two, through the rest of the summer. That’ll be one paycheck after another. I plan to turn this setback right around and light up the PRCA all the way to the national finals. I ain’t the first cowboy to get hurt, you know.”
Joe agreed.
“You and Marybeth ought to come see me at the Daddy, last week of July,” Dallas said, meaning Cheyenne. “I can get you some passes for the east-side stands.”
“Maybe,” Joe said.
“And you let me know how April’s doin’, okay?”
“Yup,” Joe said.
—
“SO,” BRENDA SAID as they went down the hall toward the living room, “are you finally satisfied?”
Joe said, “I have to say I am.”
There was no way Dallas could have administered such a serious beating to April in his condition. The broken ribs alone would have prevented it, Joe knew. He remembered the searing pain he had experienced simply lacing up his boots. And how Dallas had managed to drive from Houston to Saddlestring in his condition was both foolish and heroic, Joe thought.
Brenda shook her head and said, “You’re a hardheaded man.”
“I just needed to be sure,” Joe said. “I guess it still stings that April ran off.”
Brenda reached out and grasped his elbow before he entered the front room, and he turned.
She nodded at the Cheyenne photo of Dallas flinging his hat and said, “You know, this community don’t appreciate what we’ve got here.”
Joe was momentarily puzzled.
“Dallas,” she said. “He’s a champion. He’s our world-class athlete, and he comes from right here in Twelve Sleep County. There should be signs outside the town telling everyone they’re entering the home of Dallas Cates. There should be parades every summer. We ought to name the high school after him, or at least the rodeo arena.”
Her eyes were blazing.
“I talked to your wife about it a while back. I was trying to get her on board because I think she’d have some influence, bein’ the head of the library and all. Maybe you can talk to her. Maybe you can let her know what a big deal that boy is back there. Sometimes I think people around here don’t appreciate what they’ve got. They see Eldon pumping out their septic tanks and they don’t think, ‘That man—he’s the father of a champion.’ They just think, ‘That man is pumping out my shit.’”
Her grip on his arm was surprisingly strong.
She leaned into him and said, “What do we have to do to get it through all the thick skulls around here that they’ve got a rodeo champion right here? Who grew up right here? What’s wrong with them?”
“Brenda,” Joe said, “I don’t know that I’m the right guy to ask.”
“That boy back there is special,” she said. “He’s one-in-a-million. Do you know how many people have asked me about how he’s doing? Less than ten, I’ll tell you that. The newspaper should have been out here. The mayor should have been out here.”
“I hear you,” Joe said. He meant that literally, not that he actually agreed. He thought, Too many locals know about Dallas’s role in the sexual assault when he was in high school. Too many locals had been beaten up or terrorized by Timber before he was sent to prison. Too many local hunters have been burned by Eldon or Bull while they’re out trying to get meat for the winter. Too many locals have been harangued by Brenda about building monuments to her son.
He said, “Have you thought about letting it be their idea instead of yours?”
Her face turned to stone. After a beat, she said, “It would never happen. They all look down on us. We know if we don’t take care of ourselves, no one else will.”
“That isn’t my experience,” Joe said. “People around here are pretty decent. Maybe you ought to give ’em a chance.”
She looked at him with contempt.
“Thanks for letting me see him,” he said, twisting away from her grip.
He clamped on his hat and reached for the doorknob. Behind him, Brenda Cates said, “Don’t forget what we talked about here, Joe Pickett.”
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I won’t.”
He couldn’t get out of the Cates home fast enough.
—
JOE FROWNED against the sound of the air compressor until he was back in his pickup. Daisy was happy to see him, but she threw nervous looks toward the house as if expecting the pack of dogs to come out at any second. As Joe backed up and pointed the nose of his pickup toward the gate, he noted that Brenda was watching him out the kitchen window and that Bull had cocked back the curtains in the living room.
As he squared the pickup to leave, he saw Dallas’s late-model four-wheel-drive pickup parked on the side of an equipment shed filled with a flatbed trailer with two snowmobiles on it. The pickup was a gleaming red Ford F-250 with a chrome cowcatcher and Texas plates. PRCA, PBR, and NFR stickers were on the windows. Anyone in the know would recognize the acronyms for the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association, Professional Bull Riders, and National Finals Rodeo.