One Step Over the Border (19 page)

Animals to feed.

Arena to groom.

Litter to bag up.

Cowboys to pay.

Laramie and Hap ambled to the rodeo secretary’s office under the empty wooden bleachers and scooted to the back of a short
line.

A hulking, 280-pound steer wrestler loafed in front of them. The word
Wrangler
was silkscreened on one sleeve of his western-cut, long-sleeved, bright yellow shirt. He grinned and stuck out his huge,
calloused hand. “I’m Brick Trotter, boys. Nice ropin’ tonight. You the ones from Wyoming?”

“Yep,” Laramie replied. “Up north of Casper. And you?”

A crisp, white straw cowboy hat framed his round head. “From Checotah, Oklahoma, originally. But I’ve been livin’ with a friend
in Stephenville, Texas, of late. That is, when I’m home. I ain’t seen you two around before.”

“We mainly rodeo up in our Mountain States Circuit, but we don’t even do that much anymore. This was a last-minute decision,
based on perceived financial need,” Hap explained. “We weren’t even sure they had team ropin’ down here.”

“I’ve been bulldoggin’ all over the country. I’m sittin’ twenty-one in the world, which ain’t too bad. But I’ve got to win
some big rodeos if I’m goin’ to crack the top fifteen, come Finals. I’ve been winnin’ the little rodeos and messin’ up in
the big ones, you know what I mean?”

“We never entered too many big rodeos, except for Cody… and Frontier Days in Cheyenne,” Laramie said.

“You ever win big up in Cheyenne?”

“We don’t want to talk about it,” Hap said.

Laramie studied the rope burn on his left thumb. “We won second place one year, but it isn’t a good memory.”

Brick shuffled closer to the pay window. “Be thankful you got memories. I won first place in Pendleton, Oregon, one time.
I woke up broke in my motel room the next mornin’ without any recall of the night before. My pals said I won and spent the
twelve-hundred-dollar check on drinks for the house. That’s when I gave up drinkin’ durin’ the rodeo season.”

Brick’s attention drifted to a young girl with a turned-up nose and red hair who left the pay window. “Am I just gettin’ old,
or are them barrel racers gettin’ younger and younger? Say, you boys want to go out to supper? There’s a couple girls from
Stephenville who I’m sure can find another friend and we’ll have some laughs.”

Shouts and crashes from the pen of bulls behind them turned their heads.

“Thanks, Brick, but we’re not looking for girls tonight,” Laramie said. “Well, Hap’s looking, but that’s a different story.”

He pulled off his hat and rumpled his hair. “You got one picked out?”

Hap nodded at several departing barrel racers who waved at him. “Not here.”

Laramie followed the line forward. “My partner only likes girls named Juanita.”

“No foolin’?” Brick flashed a wide, dimpled grin. “I got this deal about only datin’ blondes. Then I up and swore off ’em
for a whole year. I thought I was cured. But this little gal named Inga, with a Swedish accent, cornered me at the Holiday
Inn in Tucson. So I rationalized, ‘Just a little one won’t be bad… I can quit any time I want.’”

“You got hooked again?” Hap asked.

“A horrible habit. Some days I can fight it better than others.”

Two girls in bright-colored halters, shorts, and flip-flops sauntered by. Each wore a diamond stud pierced in her nose. “Hi,
Brick,” the yellow-haired one called out. “You were awesome tonight.”

He pulled off his straw cowboy hat. “Thank you, darlin’, you come back and see me in about five years, okay?”

“Okay!” She giggled as they trailed off in the direction of the parking lot.

He flashed a lopsided grin. “This ain’t one of the good days. You got your Juanitas and I got my blondes. Maybe goin’ cold
turkey isn’t the right way to do it. Maybe I should just limit my blondes to one name. Only blondes named… Tiffany… and Kimmie…
and Heather… and Brooke… hmmm. Did you say Juanita? Dadgum it, boys… one of my friends from Stephenville is a Juanita. Now
I know you got to come to supper with me.”

Hap smoothed down his thick mustache. “We do have to eat supper someplace. What’s this Juanita like?” He prepared for the
reply with a mixture of curiosity and dread.

“She’s Mexican, or Puerto Rican, or something Latin. Real purdy… with big, dark brown eyes and black hair. If I wasn’t hung
up on blondes, I just might dance with her myself. Shoot, maybe you know her. I think she used to be up in Colorado… or South
Dakota. I just met her a couple of weeks ago in Arizona. Her name is Juanita Guzman.”

Hap’s neck tensed. One time when he was ten, he had lifted a hoof of a big gray stallion that belonged to his grandfather.
The horse kicked him in the middle of the stomach and flung him against the corral fence. He felt like that now. Kicked in
the gut. Fighting to breathe.

“She won slack on Thursday night and is up again tomorrow,” Brick was saying. “I seen her around earlier tonight.”

“I thought she was in Arizona.” Hap spun on his heels. His head swelled with pain inside his hat. “I’m goin’ to the truck
to look after the horses. Pick up my check for me,” he called back to Laramie. When he got through the gate, and away from
the lights, he bent over at the waist.

It was a dry heave.

Thirty minutes later, Laramie yanked open the pickup door. Hap sat slumped behind the steering wheel. Sara greeted him with
the wag of her stub tail and a woof.

“Hi, sweetie, is your daddy still in a grumpy mood?” Laramie slipped into the passenger’s seat and handed Hap an envelope,
then scratched the dog’s head. “They let me cash your check: $289.45 each. Not bad for the third rodeo we’ve entered all year.
Counting what we made in slack, we’ve hauled in over five hundred dollars each and still have the short go.”

Hap mashed his temple hoping the pressure would alleviate the pain behind his left eye. “We’re goin’ to turn out of the short
go.”

“Why are we going to do that?” Laramie rolled his window down and drooped his arm outside. “We haven’t made a short go in
over a year.”

Hap chewed his tongue and forced himself to speak slowly. “You know dang well why. I don’t want to see that woman again, ever.”

“Six years is a long time to not forgive.”

“She ain’t ever asked forgiveness. Let’s drive to Presidio.”

Headlights from a departing truck beamed across them like spotlights at a prison.

“Two reasons we can’t do that. First, we got a chance to make another four to twelve hundred each if we draw a decent steer
on Sunday.”

Hap’s left hand tapped frustration on the steering wheel, but his right petted Sara as she nuzzled against his knee. “Money
ain’t ever’thin’.”

Laramie folded his share of the winnings and shoved them in his shirt pocket. “I thought money was the reason you are mad
at Juanita Guzman.”

“It ain’t just the money, Laramie. She lied to me and deceived me in a way that tore me in two.” His teeth locked tight. His
mouth felt parched.

“I was there, remember?” Laramie tugged a water bottle from the cup holder in the console. “That $6,120 she took off with
was half mine.”

“It was the way she done it.” Hap started the truck. “I’m goin’ to Presidio. How about you?”

Laramie took a swig, then handed him the bottle. “I’m going to the dance at the sale barn. Brick said they serve free barbecued
pork, and I’m hungry.” He got out of the truck, swung the door shut, then leaned back into the rig. “There’s a second reason
we can’t leave now. It involves another girl.”

“What girl?”

“Sara.”

Hap peered down at the dog, who now rested her head on his leg. “What about her?”

“Annamarie said she’d come to Del Rio and pick up Sara in a couple of weeks at the most. It’s two weeks tomorrow. She’ll want
her dog back. And I aim to be here when she returns.” He turned and ambled toward the lights of the arena.

Hap turned off the diesel truck. He collapsed against the headrest, then shoved his winnings into his jeans pocket. One time,
when Hap was in grade school, a teenage bully had chased him down the hall. He hid under Mr. Patterson’s desk for three hours.
It was the last time he had backed away from a fight, but right now, he wished he had another desk.

He scooted way down in the seat to make his presence less pronounced. “Sara, I don’t reckon I told you about this Juanita,
did I? It was six years ago this month. Hap and I were at ‘The Daddy of Them All’ rodeo in Cheyenne. Frontier Days is the
last full week in July. It thundered and showered ever’ afternoon. Not a cold rain, nope. It steamed hot and humid. Anyway,
there was this barrel racer named Juanita Guzman.”

Hap peered out into the hayfield turned parking lot. Trucks, horse trailers, and campers scattered like disorganized, giant
tombstones, a silent witness to what used to be life. Seeing no human activity, he closed his eyes again.

“I’d seen this Juanita around for a couple of years. She wasn’t my Juanita, but she ran close. She’s the kind of gal you dream
about when you’re sixteen. I don’t know how to translate that to dog years. She’s the kind of gal, if you walk into a crowded
room with her hangin’ on your arm, ever’ man in the place is thinkin’,
There’s one lucky cowboy
, and ever’ married woman is clutchin’ her husband’s arm.”

Hap sat up, turned the key, then lowered both windows a couple of inches, letting in the aroma of French fries and old manure.

“Anyway, she cottoned up to me that summer and we had some fun times. She’d laugh and say there wasn’t a better Juanita on
the face of the earth. And who knows, maybe she was right. I liked the way her hand felt. I liked the way her lips felt. Shoot,
little darlin’… I liked the way her ever’thin’ felt. That’s the closest I’ve got to givin’ up this quest.”

Voices in the parking lot stopped him. In the shadows, a man held a little boy by the hand and packed a sleeping girl on his
shoulder. Hap watched as the man tucked the children into car seats. He wondered if the guy knew how rich a man he was.

Sara rolled on her back. Hap scratched her stomach. It felt soft like a rabbit pelt that’s been blow-dried.

“It was so serious with this Juanita that we said if neither of us were married by the age of twenty-eight, we’d get hitched.
At the time, I berated myself for making that promise. But there were other nights I couldn’t wait five days, let alone five
years.”

When the drift of wind shifted, he could hear the distant beat of the bass guitar at the dance.

“Well, we was gettin’ chummier by the week that summer when me and Laramie brought in the big bucks at Frontier Days. Finishin’
second to Speed and Rich was a big deal back then. About three in the mornin’, she came beatin’ on the side of our rig. Laramie
had that old Ford of his and a camper he’d borrowed from Vin Dollarhide. Juanita was cryin’ hard when I went out to talk to
her.”

Sara rolled to her side and sighed.

He continued to massage her.

A white Dodge pickup’s engine started, and it pulled out of the parking lot. Diesel fumes lingered in the air.

“She begged me to buy her truck, her trailer, and her two barrel horses. She said she needed cash in a hurry and would take
the bus home. She was hysterical. I couldn’t get her to stop sobbin’.”

A tall cowboy sauntered next to the truck and peered in. “Are you talkin’ to your dog?”

Hap looked up, startled. “It helps her go to sleep.”

“I know what you mean. My second wife was the same way.”

Hap watched the stranger lope away. “Where was I? Oh, yeah… sittin’ on the front bumper, in the dark, me wearin’ nothin’ but
Wranglers, she told me the story.

“She said she got a phone call from her sister in Jackson. Her mom was in the emergency ward. She said their dad beat their
mom up real bad. Juanita told me the reason she and her sister left home early was because he would come home drunk and…”

Hap opened his eyes to make sure no one was around.

“Anyway, she said she and her sister left home when her mom denied what they told her. The mom stuck it out, but he got worse
after the daughters moved out. He’d go off on a rage and beat on the mother.

“This time it was so bad they figured they had to move her and rent her a place of her own where he couldn’t find her. They
were desperate for money.

“Sara, a woman that upset… that troubled… well, I didn’t want her to sell her outfit. It was her life, her livelihood. When
I got her calmed down, I told her she could take the Cheyenne winnin’s and go get her mamma settled. We’d figure out the details
later. I told her to go right home and take care of things and we’d meet up at the Caldwell, Idaho, Night Rodeo…”

Hap didn’t know how long he stared out into the night, but he didn’t start talking again until he heard a girl laugh, somewhere
toward the bleachers.

“She didn’t show up in Caldwell… or Ellensburg… or Pendleton… in fact, I never saw her after that night. Oh, but I heard plenty.”

Hap noticed Sara’s eyes were closed.

“Are you asleep? Maybe I’m borin’ you.”

A loud bang on the side of a rig and a shout caused Hap to scan the parking lot. He surveyed the shadows but didn’t see any
movement. The slight breeze carried over the smell of thick arena dust, old hay, and fresh manure. He locked his fingers and
cracked his knuckles one at a time.