Briggs looked at this handsome well-cared-for man. “It will be hard to give up,” Briggs said.
“But you will, won’t you?”
“I suppose. It was so intense, the last time, in my car, the air bags deployed. But, yes, you have my word.”
The groom reached out his hand and Briggs took it. The hand was so clammy that Briggs had an instant of sympathy. In the groom’s face nothing changed. “Have we got a deal?” the groom asked, and Briggs pretended to agonize over the decision. He let the conflicts play themselves out on his face, then heaved a great sigh.
“We’ve got a deal,” he said, his voice resigned.
As they strolled back to the party together, Briggs decided that spicing things up in this way was absolutely the last favor he would do for Olivia. He watched the groom go to her and whisper in her ear. Olivia looked over at Briggs, smiled at him sadly, he thought, and waved. Hello? Goodbye? He wasn’t sure.
The rain had stopped, and something caused the wedding party to gravitate to the stately elm shading the lawn, its leaves just starting to change color. Briggs followed until he was part of the half circle of celebrants facing Olivia, who stood on a small dais, placed there, he supposed, for this purpose. “I’d like to propose a toast!” she called out, in a voice that carried remarkably. He barely heard her words but stared, spellbound, at her wide, confident smile, the steady movement of her head as she took in all the guests, and the hand gestures that would have been clear from the nearby mountains. Her voice rang out expressively, each syllable occupying its own time and space. At the end of her toast, she clasped her hands to her chest and bowed modestly to the admiring applause and, without looking, reached out a regal hand to her new husband.
Cowboy
The old feller made me go into the big house in my stocking feet. The old lady’s in a big chair next to the window. In fact, the whole room’s full of big chairs, but she’s only in one of them, though as big as she is she could of filled up several. The old man said, “I found this one in the loose-horse pen at the sale yard.”
She says, “What’s he supposed to be?”
He says, “Supposed to be a cowboy.”
“What’s he doin in the loose horses?”
I says, “I was lookin for one that would ride.”
“You was in the wrong pen, son,” says the old man. “Them’s canners. They’re goin to France in cardboard boxes.”
“Once they get a steel bolt in the head.” The big old gal in the chair laughed.
Now I’m sore. “There’s five in there broke to death. I rode em with nothin but binder twine.”
“It don’t make a shit,” says the old man. “Ever one of them is goin to France.”
The old lady didn’t believe me. “How’d you get near them loose horses to ride?”
“I went in there at night.”
The old lady says, “You one crazy cowboy go in there in the dark. Them broncs kick your teeth down your throat. I suppose you tried bareback.”
“Naw, I drug the saddle I usually ride at the Rose Bowl Parade.”
“You got a horse for that?”
“I got Trigger. We unstuffed him.”
She turns to the old man. “He’s got a mouth on him. This much we know.”
“Maybe he can tell us what good he is.”
I says, “I’m a cowboy.”
“You’re a outta work cowboy.”
“It’s a dyin way of life.”
“She’s about like me. She’s wondering if this ranch supposed to be some welfare agency for cowboys.”
I’ve had enough. “You’re the dumb honyocker drove me out here.”
I thought that was the end, but the old lady said, “Don’t get huffy. You got the job. You against conversation or somethin?”
We get outside and the old sumbitch says, “You drawed lucky there, son. That last deal could of pissed her off.”
“It didn’t make me no never mind if it did or didn’t.”
“Anymore, she hasn’t been well. Used to she was sweet as pudding.”
“I’m sorry for that. We don’t have health, we don’t have nothin.”
She must of been afflicted something terrible, because she was ugly mornin, noon, and night for as long as she lasted, pick a fight over nothin, and the old sumbitch bound to got the worst of it. I felt sorry for him, little slack as he ever cut me.
Had a hundred seventy-five sweet-tempered horned Herefords and fifteen sleepy bulls. Shipped the calves all over for hybrid vigor, mostly to the south. Had some go clear to Florida. A Hereford still had its horns was a walkin miracle and the old sumbitch had him a smart little deal goin. I soon learned to give him credit for such things, and the old lady barking commands off the sofa weren’t no slouch neither. Anybody else seen their books might say they could be winterin in Phoenix.
They didn’t have no bunkhouse, just a LeisureLife mobile home that had lost its wheels about thirty years ago, and they had it positioned by the door of the barn so it’d be convenient for the hired man to stagger out at all hours and fight breech birth and scours and any other disorder sent down by the cow gods. We had some doozies. One heifer had got pregnant and her calf was near as big as she was. Had to reach in and take it out in pieces. When we threw the head out on the ground she turned to it and lowed like it was her baby. Everything a cow does is to make itself into meat as fast as it can so somebody can eat it. It’s a terrible life, and a cowboy is its little helper.
The old sumbitch and I got along good. We got through calvin and got to see them pairs and bulls run out onto the new grass. Nothin like seeing all that meat feel a little temporary joy. Then we bladed out the corrals and watched em dry under the spring sun at long last. Only mishap was the manure spreader threw a rock and knocked me senseless and I drove the rig into an irrigation ditch. The old sumbitch never said a word but chained up and pulled us out with his Ford.
We led his cavvy out of the hills afoot with two buckets of sweet feed. Had a little of everything, including a blue roan I fancied, but he said it was a Hancock and bucked like the National Finals in Las Vegas, kicking out behind and squalling, and was just a man-killer. “Stick to the bays,” he said. “The West was won on a bay horse.”
He picked out three bays, had a keg of shoes, all ones and aughts, and I shod them best I could, three geldings with nice manners, stood good to shoe. About all you could say about the others was they had four legs each; a couple, all white-marked from saddle galls and years of hard work, looked like maybe no more summers after this. They’d been rode many a long mile. We chased em back into the hills and the three that was shod whinnied and fretted. “Back to work,” the old sumbitch tells em.
We shod three cause one was going to pack a ton of fencing supplies — barb wire, smooth wire, steel T-posts and staples, old wore-out Sunflower fence stretchers that could barely grab on to the wire — and we was at it a good little while where the elk had knocked miles of it down or the cedar finally give out and had to be replaced by steel. But that was how I found out the old sumbitch’s last good time was in Korea, where the officers would yell, “Come on up here and die!” Said they was comin in waves. Tells me all this while the stretcher pulls that wire squealin though the staples. He was a tough old bastard.
“They killed a pile of us and we killed a pile of them.” Squeak!
We hauled the mineral horseback too, in panniers, white salt and iodine salt. He didn’t have no use for blocks, so we hauled it in sacks and poured it into the troughs he had on all these bald hilltops where the wind would blow away the flies. Most of his so-called troughs was truck tires nailed onto anything flat— plywood, old doors, and suchlike — but they worked alright. A cow can put her tongue anywhere in a tire and get what she needs, and you can drag one of them flat things with your horse if you need to move em. Most places we salted had old buffalo wallers where them buffalo wallered. They done wallered their last, had to get out of the way for the cow and the man on the bay horse.