15
Wyatt
The train was off the rails and somehow I was completely unconcerned by the impending catastrophe. I fucked Caroline for the first time, loud and ballsy in my childhood bedroom. Pistoning my cock inside her, time stopped. All there was in the world was her and me and nothing else mattered. Anyone could have come into the house. If I was completely honest with myself, I didn’t just fuck her. I took her. I mated her. I had sex with her like she was mine and she wanted me to. We’d completely lost sight of the rules and I couldn’t bring myself to freak out about it because I wanted her to want me. I wanted to have her. I knew it wasn’t what was best for her, but I was a starving dog with a morsel of food; I’d fight to the death to keep what was mine.
Since Carolina was born, we’d seen each other, but like two ships passing in the night, smiles across the room, a smattering of grab ass in the shadows, but really hardly at all. We were both utterly consumed by our respective responsibilities for the rodeo. Finally, it was the day before the event. I was managing incoming livestock and introducing physical therapists and medical specialists to the cowboys they’d be working with to make sure the kids had the best rodeo day possible. Caroline was meeting with vendors, performers, and staff, making sure everything would be ready to roll tomorrow.
We had planned to grab a sandwich together around three, but we both got sidetracked. So instead, we’d spent the day texting. Those same little dirty texts we’d been sending all along, only now they were somehow sweeter.
Caroline: Whatcha doing?
Me: Watching a guy have an argument with a horse.
Caroline: LOL, what?
Me: Ralph can’t get one of his quarter horses out of the trailer. I’ve been looking at her big old blond ass for twenty minutes.
Caroline: Don’t talk to me about another woman’s ass.
Me: I promise, your ass is the only one on my mind.
Caroline: If I close my eyes, I can still feel you inside me.
Me: I could take up permanent residence in that pussy of yours.
Caroline: Ohhh yeah, do it. Relocate to my vajayjay.
Me: LOL, packing my suitcase.
Caroline: Hey, hot stuff! Bev just confirmed that the cabin is available tomorrow night. Want post-rodeo rodeO with me?
Me: You’re becoming a rode-hoe.
Caroline: Takes one to know one.
Me: Hoe hoe hoe.
Somewhere around eight in the evening all the people helping us get ready for the following day seemed to bow out and the fairgrounds that were a bustle with tents going up and people preparing grew quiet. A consummate rancher, I took one last pass through the stables just to make sure that everything was copacetic. The empty stalls were clean and ready for the cowboys who’d be arriving in the morning with their own horses. Ralph had already moved his gentle horses in, and they were as calm as he claimed. He’d also spent the afternoon training a collection of handlers on the special needs saddles with the help of the PT guys. My father spent the afternoon setting up a Morgan Ranch exhibit. It was basically a blue ribbon display of a prized heifer. He brought out Gladys, a big brown doe-eyed Angus, who was happy to lie around and chew cud all day while kids ogled her.
Hanging on the metal fence penning Gladys in, I said to her, “You okay in there, girl?”
She was standing in the double-size stall, giving me the side-eye. There were two piles of cow shit on the floor, and I figured it best to clear them out now.
“You want me to clean that mess you’ve been making?” I asked.
Gladys didn’t talk so she didn’t answer, but I took it upon myself to assume she would rather have a clean pen than a dirty one. Grabbing a shovel and a bucket, I hopped the fence and went to work. In my pocket my phone buzzed. It was another text from Caroline.
Caroline: I’m fucking exhausted but I want to see your face.
Me: I’m incredibly sexy right now. Shoveling shit in the stables.
Caroline: Hawt.
Me: Totes.
Me: Let me just finish and I’ll come find you. Or if you want you can come here.
Not one hundred percent sure what she decided to do, I went back to the task at hand with a little pep in my step. I started humming to myself while I worked, and I was done in a few minutes. When I looked up, she was standing there, leaning on the post across from Gladys’ stall, happy.
She smiled at me, a knowing hungry smile, and said, “Even shoveling shit, you're some tasty eye candy, mister.”
I leaned the shovel against the bucket and quickly climbed out of the pen, jumping down so my feet landed with a thud in the dusty dirt. Thumbs in my belt loops, I posed like the Marlboro man. “Eat your heart out, girly.” After a beat I waggled my eyebrows at her and added, “You want a taste?”
Taking my invitation seriously, Caroline literally ran at me and jumped into my arms. She wrapped her legs around my waist and her lips found mine. Neither one of us thought to glance around to see if anyone was watching. I carried her forward until her back was pressed against the pole she’d just stopped leaning on and continued to kiss her silly.
When we finally came up for breath, she said, “I missed you. Is that wrong?”
It was a heady question, a probing, gentle push at the rules of our agreement. I closed my eyes and dropped my forehead to hers.
All I could say was, “God help me, I missed you too.”
The day of the Special Spurs Rodeo was like a dream, moving slowly and also somehow faster than you could comprehend. Events you’ve worked to make possible can be like that, like you are standing outside of yourself watching them go by, trying to stay in the moment and really live it. Although we initially thought we’d only use the indoor spaces for actual rodeo events, we ultimately decided to have a professional exhibit, where pro-cowboys, like my cousin Buck, could show off their skills and then the kids got to meet them and learn from them at the different stations that we set up in the indoor arena. In addition to that there was a petting zoo with varied farm and ranch animals, a clown makeup station, tons of fair food, hobby horse riding, real horse riding, a hand jostled mechanical bull, and stationary steer roping. Also, we had awards for all the children and straw cowboy hat souvenirs.
I was back and forth all day between the pro-space and the play-space, but honestly, I spent most of my time managing some very tame horseback riding. The horses were on lead lines, so a literal person might question the authenticity of the experience, but for most of the children it was a thrill. I felt like a million little faces looked up at me with glee, but one less than happy boy caught my attention.
I saw him standing by the fence early in the day, watching the other kids get led around the arena and he seemed unimpressed. He was maybe eight or nine, and he had a prosthetic leg. Truth was, he stood out. Most of the kids at the rodeo were not cowboys. There was a certain something to a cowboy. We carried ourselves differently. Maybe it was the way our hip muscles developed because we spent our young lives on horseback. Or maybe it was a certain outlook that comes with living on the land. I couldn’t be sure. But I knew that a cowboy knows another cowboy before a word had been exchanged, and that boy, hanging his chin on the fence rung, was a cowboy. He didn’t enter the arena to take a ride, but a line led journey wouldn’t give him much of a thrill.