Blue Rodeo Read online

  He checked his watch—nine minutes, forty-three seconds. The dogs were still at it. The woman was sitting down in the dirt, arms folded over her knees, head resting there, all done yelling, watching. RedBow sighed beneath Owen. Owen sighed too. Come on, wrap it up, Hope, we got sheep to tend.

  He’d drunk himself into memory loss for six months after the fight, solving nothing when it started to take more and more liquor to keep things comfortably hazy. When he poured his last bottle down a motel sink, half his problems disappeared, but remembering the fight clearly had taken a year. After his last job ended, as close as it was to the Colorado border, he said okay to the town of Blue Dog and caretaking this farm. Tybolt and Phyllis Starr, the elderly couple who owned it, didn’t care if he raised hot pink llamas, they were so happy not to see the land lying idle. They set him up in the bunkhouse. Owen liked small-town life. People weren’t overly friendly. They’d leave you alone if that was what you wanted, but if one of your animals was in trouble, they were there to offer help.

  He’d made a few friends among the Navajo who’d moved to town from the reservation. Good people, they worked harder than half the white men he knew. He felt a kind of ease alongside them. They had a different way of looking at transgressions. They saw punishment as naayéé’, the gods delivering justice in their own way, with a wisdom often as humorous as it was fair. For example, a yeibechai dancer might pop right up in the pasture one day and shake his turtle rattle in Owen’s face, rendering him impotent, or just as casually change him into a stalk of tall blond yucca. The People believed in the old stories. To them it wasn’t so much a matter of faith as it was listening to and thinking about what you heard, then relating the story to your own life. Back in Colorado such talk had been called “spinning windies,” and elsewhere, lying. But here, if a story felt right, there was no reason why you couldn’t accept it as true.

  His friend, Joe, a fellow recovering alcoholic, had once told him, Take that scar on your face, Owen. No knife did that. Eagle talon, maybe. Fork of lightning. Whatever it was, it’s all part of hozho, the natural cycle.

  Owen had listened and smiled, wishing it were that simple. Joe’s army pension didn’t quite make up for him losing six feet of intestine, or cover the surgeries to fit back what shrapnel had rearranged, but the money allowed him to live simply and time to indulge his theories. Every morning, shaving, the finger-thick scar beneath his own left eye reminded Owen that the truth was he had taken a life. He’d never gone to get the wound properly stitched. He’d gritted his teeth and washed the two halves of the cut with a small bar of motel Camay and tap water, then doused it with equine bloodstop powder from his tack box. When the bleeding slowed to a manageable trickle, he taped it shut with small strips of adhesive. Initially a raised rope of purple scar tissue, over time it had receded into a flesh-colored line that gave his eye a permanent tendency to wink. He marked the passage of time by that scar, tallying up his losses. In seven years: Sheila, Sara Kay’s respect, a house to call home, money in the bank. On the credit side: RedBow, his dog, Hope, the bunkhouse on this farm, and a few ragged sheep who might turn a profit to keep him going another season.

  So what if sheep were maggots at the bottom of the manure pile to cowboys—animals Indians and fools tended and neither made a dime off? Owen no longer cared what cowboys said about him. He liked having animals around, and cattle took more time, space, and money than he had available. He ran two dozen sheep on three acres of grazing land, though sometimes as few as five or six, if he’d gotten a good price and people were in the market for rams. Presently he had ten, a handful so small most would call it a hobby flock.

  Forage in northwestern New Mexico was fit for little else, and by selling young rams for breeding, a few Suffolk for mutton, and the Merino crosses he kept just for wool to trade to the weavers, he stayed flush. Of course, with the environmentalists yapping about desertification, overgrazing, and the loss of different species of native grasses and the government imposing all kinds of stipulations, who knew how long it would last? The feud between cattlemen and shepherds was still alive, too, breathing shallowly, a centuries-old conflict that wouldn’t die, at least not in Owen’s lifetime.

  Fifteen minutes now—the dog was being downright greedy.

  He legged Red to a trot and headed toward the farmhouse. He’d heard from Big Lulu Mantooth at the trading post that the Starrs were looking to rent the big house. If this woman had signed a lease, the farmhouse, at the farthest end of the property, was now officially occupied. Some nights Owen had let himself dream what it might be like to move in, to climb the stairs to the second floor, to soak in the old clawfoot tub, cook his meals in a real oven, not just over a hotplate burner, to have a dryer to dry his clothes in so they came out warm and fluffy, people in the rooms to talk to besides himself. The Starrs used to come up for summers, but they were getting frail with old folks’ complaints, and they liked staying in Albuquerque, where the weather was easier on old bones. Whether his neighbor lasted the winter or turned tail for Santa Fe opera season next July was a question not to be answered for some time yet, but whatever happened, Owen Garrett knew he had a front-row seat.

  “Excuse me, ma’am.” He tipped his hat. “I don’t mean to intrude on your morning.”

  She looked up from studying the panting dogs. “Where did you come from?”

  He could see she’d been crying. Her eyes were puffy, the piercing clean-sky kind of blue that shows up best when you wash it over with tears. The dogs were in the awkward part of things now, trying to disengage, falling over each other, all legs and confusion. “Over there, by the river. I can see you’re none too pleased with what’s happened here.”

  “Did you expect me to start in writing birth announcements?” She pulled the now-buttoned shirt down and sat there like it was normal to be outdoors without your britches. The red panties that had first caught his eye were concealed beneath the long shirttails. “I tried throwing water on them.”

  He smiled gently. “But they weren’t thirsty.”

  She got to her feet and swatted at the dirt that had collected on her bottom and thighs. With each swat, the shirt lifted and revealed flesh. She abandoned the dirt chase and folded her arms across her chest. “Listen, I don’t know whose dog that is, but he shouldn’t be running around loose if he isn’t neutered.”

  “He’s my dog, ma’am. He break a window and kidnap your bitch?”

  “Of course not. I…she….” She let her words trail off and frowned. “Look. I pay rent. This is private property. It’s fenced.”

  “Can’t argue with you there.”

  “Then this dog—and you—have no business here.”

  The plains cottonwoods shifted their heart-shaped leaves in the warm breeze, and Owen could hear the lowing of neighboring cattle across the Animas River. She was as handsome up close as she had been from a distance, but guarded, wary.

  He pointed across the acreage to his bunkhouse, eighteen by twenty-four feet of lapped logs and newly patched roof. “That’s my place,” he said. “I’m your neighbor. I’ve lived here a little over two years, and those white dots in the far pasture are my sheep.”

  “Sheep?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Suffolk and a few Merinos. Brought them down off the mountain last week. They wouldn’t win any honors at the state fair, but I’m working toward a decent strain, even if it takes until I’m toes-up.” He reached down into his saddlebag, retrieved his stainless-steel thermos of coffee, and held it out to her. “Go on, take it. Hot coffee won’t bite you. Have a little.”

  “Mrs. Mantooth didn’t say anything about sheep.” She unscrewed the thermos, poured coffee into the cup lid, and took a drink.

  “Sheep won’t bother you. I move them in and out so fast you’ll hardly know they’re here.”

  “This is good coffee.”

  “I worked a stint or two as Cookie on a couple of ranches. You learn to make coffee or you move along.”

  She eyed him, drank some m
ore, and set the cup down in the dirt. “There’s no electricity in the house yet, and I was going to drive to town for some convenience store coffee.” She shuddered. “That’s what kept me driving from California all the way here. Those sixty-nine-cent coffees in the Styrofoam cups.”

  “No electric?”

  She shook her head. “It was supposed to be turned on before I got here.”

  “Got your phone hooked up?”

  She sighed, and he watched the rise and fall of her broad shoulders. “I don’t really care about the phone.”

  A woman without a phone? Well, now, that was a new one. The nervous breakdown theory was looking more and more like a sure bet. Possibly she’d had her fill of telephone salesmen. He let the comment pass. “Likely they’ll be by today to get you hooked up on the electric. Maybe they confused the days, or some emergency came up. Meanwhile, you’re welcome to keep that thermos and the coffee in it.”

  “Thanks.” She tried to smile, but apparently her face muscles had made some kind of pact not to engage in such activity. The dogs were separated now. The bitch had her tail between her legs and was looking up guiltily at the woman.

  She made a face at the skinny dog. “Stop trying to look penitent, you little hussy.”

  Owen chuckled. “Now don’t insult her. Your dog’s just following the natural order. Her first heat?”

  “I don’t know. Do they get them every month?”

  He smiled. “No. She looks young, so maybe she won’t catch. But if she does, you just let me know, and I’ll assume responsibility for the litter.”

  “She’s my son’s dog.”

  “You have a boy?”

  “Fifteen. But he doesn’t live with me.”

  Owen dismounted and held Red’s reins in his left hand. “Well, that can be hard on a dog, not to mention a mother.”

  She put out a hand toward the dog, who nosed in her direction, then turned and fled toward Owen. He knelt to meet the dog at her own level. She sniffed him all over, then gave him a lick on the cheek. He took her into his lap and scratched her behind the ears.

  The woman’s face softened. “Do all dogs come to you like that?”

  “Some of them, anyway.” He set the dog down. “Owen Garrett, ma’am. Your neighbor. Give a holler if you get into trouble. I’ll come by, see what I can do.”

  “Thanks for the offer, but I’m sure I’ll be fine as soon as I get power.”

  Power—so many women seemed to be after that. “Well, then.” Owen put one foot in the stirrup, and the three-legged heeler hopped to his side. “Come along, Hope.”

  “How did your dog lose the leg?”

  “A fondness for chasing cars. Cured him but quick.” He slung himself the rest of the way up, turned his horse and started out for the south pasture the long way, just to have a moment to collect his thoughts. Behind him he heard the slamming of the screen door at the Starr farmhouse. His own momma had taught him to be polite. You get to your feet when a lady enters the room. You don’t wear your hat into a restaurant. When someone introduces herself, you shake hands and you say your name back.

  He saw her take off for town about ten o’clock that morning, down the gravel road that ran parallel to the pasture. She drove an older Toyota Land Cruiser, nice car, well cared for, a faded blue-gray color with white trim. It bore a California license plate. Be for the best if she got that taken care of right away, the way some people could get around here. New Mexicans didn’t care much for the Texans, and it wasn’t the Texans alone who had it in for Californians—they were fair game for all. The sight of those white license plates struck terror into most hearts. The Californians seemed to be trying to buy up all the land to build themselves getaway places. Not her, though. She was renting. I pay rent. This is private property. Seemed like out there in California they grew up believing every square inch of land could be bought, and they took the idea with them out of state, didn’t they, locking doors and fencing up what was once pretty, uncluttered country. She drove around the curve of road way too fast, like all Californians, spraying gravel that would nick her nice car in places that would be sure to rust come winter, and then she was gone, out of his sight.

  Below him, his sheep grazed, giving out that funny huff of breath that was part of their dining process. They looked silly, half-grown out from the last shearing, but when the autumn nights started lowering the temperatures, they would wool out quickly.

  Sheep were simple enough to tend that Owen could work afternoons three days a week in Rabbott’s Hardware and Lumber. He put on his green vest with the dual waist pockets and checked stock against the yellow packing slips. Next he replaced fast-moving items on the floor—screws, ballcocks for toilets, keychains that lighted up when you squeezed them around the middle. They stocked housewares as well—Libby glasses with orange slices painted on the sides, oil lamps, and kitchen gadgets like shiny aluminum garlic presses and even a stainless-steel melon baller. They had steady customers, and lumber sales kept them flush, but a week might go by without a significant sale in hardware, since here in Blue Dog most folks didn’t have the necessary cash to get things fixed right away. Dave Rabbott carried a few accounts; he was in no danger of dying a wealthy man. He sat in his office and licked the tip of his pencil, tallying up long columns of figures, answering the telephone, and sometimes calling Owen over to check for a certain part for a customer.

  There was a good deal of shoplifting in the store, which vexed Dave something terrible. All kinds of people thought it was okay to steal a seventy-four-cent screw, but the most blatant cases by far were the young Indian children, who couldn’t seem to keep their hands off the shiny copper piping and the cut glass salt-and-pepper shakers.

  Goddamn hunter-gatherers, Rabbott called them, as if there were some shoplifting encoding built into their DNA. True enough, the Navajo were descended from hunter-gatherers who once made their way across the land surviving on what the earth offered up as bounty. No crime there. New things glittered on the shelves—it was as natural for little kids to pick up a gadget and want it for their own as it was for the tourists to finger their silver jewelry. Owen came up with the idea of setting out baskets of penny toys at small-hands level. At first Dave shook his head at what he saw as a waste of twenty-five dollars a month, supplying Indian children with whistles and plastic race cars. The shoplifting dropped by 50, then 75 percent. Dave gave Owen a twenty-five-cent raise. “Just don’t go after making me manager,” Owen said. “I’m busy building my herd.”

  His neighbor came into the store around three-thirty that afternoon. She loaded up her cart. An expensive drip coffeemaker, pack of a hundred filters for it, corkscrew, clothespins, a small flashlight, and a six-pack of some of those copper-top batteries. Then she wandered every aisle, standing by the art supplies for the longest time, studying the pastel chalk assortment, the paints, and the sketch pads. Sometimes tourists bought markers for their kids, but mostly the stuff sat there, yellowing. She put two cheap pads into her basket, took them out again, and set them back on the shelf. She turned to wheel her cart away, then returned and picked up the pads again. Once more she set them down. Dave Rabbott came in from his coffee break and stood with Owen, watching her.

  “Seems to be having a little trouble making up her mind,” Owen observed.

  “Want to bet on whether she buys them or not?”

  Dave was a gambler the same way Owen was an alcoholic, testing himself on a daily basis, but Owen wasn’t buying into today’s review. “Not a fair bet, Dave. She’ll buy them, if not today, then another day.”

  “You think she’s one of those obsessive-compulsives like Enid was telling me about on the Oprah Winfrey show?”

  “I kind of doubt that.”

  “I’m telling you, Owen, you never can tell what regular-looking people are up to behind their own curtains.” Dave lit a cigar and walked up the stairs to his office.

  Owen took his Sharpie marker out and marked $4.59 on some brass couplings before he set them in
to the wire bin. That was a lot of money for so small a piece of metal. Every now and then he looked up from his work to see his neighbor going through this agonizing routine of yes to the sketch pads, no to the sketch pads. His heart went out to her. Eventually she loaded up her basket with two of the cheapest pads, recycled newsprint. She turned once and caught him looking at her; then, recognizing him, she turned quickly away. But it had been long enough for him to glimpse the depth of her fear of those art supplies. She bought the big box of colored pencils, the small pastel set, an old, marked-down tube assortment of watercolors and three sable brushes, one of which Owen knew for a fact cost eleven dollars. Minnie Youngcloud checked her out, leaving her register to take the check to Dave for approval. After she’d left the store, Owen went to Minnie.

  “How’s your old momma doing?” he asked.

  Minnie rolled her eyes behind the thick lenses of her glasses. Tucked into the arms of the frames were tan hearing aids that made sense on an older woman, not a girl still in her twenties. “Driving me crazy. She finished another Storm Pattern last night, a beautiful rug, Owen, all reds and grays with just a little white in it. The best wools. Now she’ll take it to the trading post and get maybe a third of what it’ll eventually sell for, so of course then I got the big lecture on carrying on the weaver’s tradition, how if I don’t learn to weave then the craft will die, like the whole Navajo race depends on whether or not Minnie Youngcloud makes rugs to sell to tourists whose dogs probably puke all over them. Mama says that someday I’ll get snapping-turtle lips if I don’t show respect. Other than that, she’s fine.” She gave his shoulder a little swat. “You should go see her. She asks about you every night.”

  “Maybe I’ll try to get over there this weekend. She going to have something in the Blue Dog auction?”

  “A Burntwater, I think.”

  “Well, I’ll be sure and buy me a raffle ticket then. Listen, can you give me change for a dollar so I can get a Dr Pepper?”