While Laura and Tanya continued to bawl, Jeanette drew me aside. “Didn’t I tell you to look out for Pick?”
I did my best John Wayne, hoping to amuse myself out of trouble. “Well, pilgrim,” I said, “the Haxbys got the drop on me.”
Jeanette spotted Sam and his sons looking at us from the fence. They raised their beers. “It was a joke, Jeanette,” Sam called.
“Sam Haxby, I’ll take care of you later!” she yelled. She looked at me. “Sometimes, Mike, you disappoint me more than my heart can stand.”
So much for amusement. I rallied as best I could. “I didn’t know I was supposed to hold his hand all day.”
“That’s a lame excuse and you know it. I trusted you!”
I started to mention the hours of labor (most of it free and above and beyond the call of duty by any standard of humanity) that I’d put in since we’d come in to Jericho but I let it pass. Once again, I hadn’t done my boss’s bidding and I knew it. I just shrugged and let her glare at me until she got tired of it and stomped off. Laura and Tanya had already gone somewhere, which left me standing alone in the arena. “Mike,” the announcer said, “you want to clear out so we can get on with the show?”
I sought out the announcer, gave him a one finger salute and then strolled on out through the gate, taking my own sweet time and feeling the fool, which, of course, I was.
Figuring Ray would get a ride, I gathered up Laura and Tanya and took them into town in Bob, finding the ambulance sitting in the motel parking lot. Along the way, neither woman would spare a single word in my direction. I guess everybody was blaming me for Pick’s little adventure. The paramedics were coming out of one of the rooms. “He’s going to be fine,” one of them said. “No broken bones, no sign of concussion, just some contusions and hurt feelings.” Laura and Tanya leaped from Bob and ran inside the room.
I wandered on over. Pick was stretched out on a bed and his ladies were seeing to his comfort and health. When Laura looked up, I saw her face was streaked with tears. She said, “Why didn’t you take care of him? Jeanette said you would.” Tanya shot eye darts at me and I took that as my cue to leave, closing the door behind me.
I went to my room, stripped, took a long shower, and then stretched out on the bed until I thought to myself, “I should get drunk.” I dressed in some fresh duds and headed for the Hell Creek Bar to make my thought a reality, only to see that the crowd from the rodeo was now descending on the bar for the annual Fillmore County Independence Day Barbeque which always follow the annual Fillmore County Independence Day Rodeo. This, now that the schedule was coming back to me, would be followed by the annual Fillmore County Independence Day Dance held at the Hell Creek Marina on Fort Peck Lake, some twenty miles north of us. We were just warming up, folks.
I decided to spread my drunk out, although it was still my firm intention. I went inside and caught Joe’s eye and gave him the OK sign, which was my signal for a g&t and then two fingers, which meant I wanted it strong. Joe accomplished my request, putting my drink in a plastic go-cup, and I gulped down half of it, then wandered back outside where the steaks were a-cookin’. There were some good sides being served as well so I got in line with some other cowboys, most of whom I recognized but a few were either rodeo riders or Texans since they were wearing huge, ornate belt buckles. If you ask a Montana cowpoke, he’ll tell you we don’t sport those things because if you have to do that much advertising, you’re probably trying too hard to sell the product. Deep in my heart, though, I kind of wished I had one of those buckles.
I made small talk with a hired hand from down south. He worked on a Brescoe ranch, he said, and was from Kentucky by way of Iraq where he’d been deployed out of his reserve unit four times as a machine gunner on a Humvee, which I took as dangerous work. “I didn’t leave no forwarding address this time,” he told me. “I think I done my part.”
I agreed with him. Four times in a combat zone, the war gods just have to take notice and want to rub you out. Or maybe that was the gin that was talking, I don’t know. I finished it off.
I told the nice lady who was taking the money for the food I didn’t want a steak, just the sides and she looked at me like I was crazy. “What are you?” she asked. “A vegetarian?”
“Yes ma’am,” I said and her expression changed to one of shock.
She took my money, anyway, and sent me on my way. I got macaroni salad, cole slaw, green beans, mashed potatoes, and a couple of homemade whole wheat buns and sat at one of the picnic tables.