The Bull Rider
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Helen DePrima
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18.4K
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Chapter One
MADISON SQUARE GARDEN had gone cowboy crazy this Sunday in January, with wall-to-wall boots and jeans, denim jackets and wide-brimmed hats. Joanna Dace reflected with wry amusement that her black turtleneck, leggings and ankle boots marked her as a newcomer to the sport of professional bull riding.
A plump blonde wriggled into the third-row seat next to Jo’s and smoothed the fringes on her red satin shirt. “Aren’t these great seats? My husband says get the best you can buy—that’s your Christmas present.” She patted the knee of the burly man seated next to her.
“Whatever makes you happy, babe,” he said with a grin.
“So who’s your favorite rider?” she asked Jo.
“Well, I...”
“Me too—I love ’em all. I hope you don’t mind if I jump around and yell—I wait all year for this. Just kick me if I get too noisy.”
A raucous horn sounded while Warning flashed on the advertising banner boards.
Her new friend tapped her arm. “You’d better cover your ears now if you don’t like it loud.”
Jo obeyed as the lights went down. Men with fuel cans traced a pattern in front of the bucking chutes and then darted away. Jets of fire shot up accompanied by ear-splitting explosions as flames spelled out letters in the dirt. More pyrotechnics and then the announcer’s shout: “Hello, New York City! This is the one and only PBR!”
* * *
“HEY, TOM—A GAL grabbed me up on the concourse. She wants to meet you.” Deke Harkens fished in his shirt pocket. “She gave me her card.”
Tom Cameron buckled on his plain blue chaps without looking at the card. Women often sent bull riders phone numbers and hotel keys, sometimes underwear. He wasn’t interested—not now, not like that, never again.
“Wrong Cameron,” he said. “Luke’s the bunny wrangler.”
“Nope, she said Tom Cameron. And this one’s no buckle bunny—at least she’s not dressed like one.”
“She say what she wants?”
Deke shook his head. “Just she’d like to meet you. You want to grab a look? Brown hair, late twenties, I guess—third row, right next to the chutes.”
Not the cheap seats. Tom adjusted his belt and stuck the card in his pocket. “Maybe after the event.” Bad luck to plan beyond his next ride.
A claxon sounded in the arena. He settled a black Stetson over his brows. “Showtime.”
He followed the other cowboys through the echoing corridors under the Garden and mounted metal stairs in darkness to the center pedestal above the bucking chutes. When the spotlight blinded him, he raised his hat to the sold-out arena as the announcer intoned, “Ladies and gentlemen, the current number-one bull rider in the world—Tom Cameron!”
He stood in place during the introduction of the bullfighters, including his brother, Luke; the invocation imploring protection for the riders and the bulls; and then the national anthem sung by an army sergeant with a powerful baritone. When the lights came up, he climbed down and headed toward the locker room, stopping when a woman’s voice called his name.
“You’re leading in the event, Tom.” The color commentator thrust a microphone in his face. “Will you pick Gunslinger again in the championship round?”
“I guess I’ll decide when the time comes,” he said. Lisa was a good sort, but he wasn’t big on being interviewed—he’d rather let his riding speak for him. She understood he wasn’t much of a talker and let him go with good wishes for his next ride.
He continued to the locker room while the first bulls were run into the chutes; shed his hat and chaps; and switched from boots to sneakers before making his way to a deserted space behind the bulls’ pens. He closed his eyes for a moment and then began to stretch and strike almost in slow motion, the movements becoming faster and stronger until sweat soaked his collar. He finished the kata and dropped back to cool-down mode until his pulse steadied. At every venue, he managed to find a hidden corner like this, not because he minded the ribbing from the other riders but because it interfered with his concentration. The exercises improved his balance during the ride, and he was able to land on his feet more often than not.
As they always did, the exercises left him feeling loose and peaceful. He’d keep moving until it was his turn to ride, wandering through the maze of pens and chutes holding the bulls for the afternoon’s competition. They were undemanding company, some moving restlessly in their pens, others relaxing in the sawdust bedding. A massive cream-colored Brahman sidled over to the fence and poked his wet muzzle between the metal rails.
Tom scratched behind one floppy ear. “Gunslinger, you’re a phony,” he said. “Some tough guy.” The fence creaked as the bull leaned into the caress. Tom had straddled this bull three times already, always coming up short. No shame in that—no one had made the eight seconds on Gunslinger.
“How about it, buddy?” He tugged on the bull’s ear. “You want to dance again today?”
Tom returned to the locker room and was pulling on his boots when Arlie Johnson’s bull rope with its bell attached crashed against the metal lockers. The tall blond Arkansas cowboy followed and kicked the trashcan twice before dropping to a bench with his head in his hands.
“Son-of-a-gun blew up when he was supposed to spin,” he said. “That’s the last time I ask an owner how his bull bucks.”
Tom listened with halfhearted sympathy. Arlie was new to the big time. He’d learn a lot of hard lessons before he got much further, like not trying to second-guess more than half a ton of muscle and meanness.
“You’ve got two good scores for the weekend,” he said. “That’ll probably get you into the championship round.”
“Yeah, and get stuck with a bull nobody else wants, like Gunslinger.” Arlie’s glower smoothed out. “Say, these New York gals sure like cowboys. I was swatting them off like flies in Times Square last night.”
“You just keep swatting ’em, sonny,” Nick Ducharme said; his soft drawl bespoke Cajun country. He’d made the eight seconds on his bull. “Or you’ll go home with a souvenir you can’t show your mama. Besides, the girls you were hanging with in Times Square are a bunch of tourists just like you.”
Tom tightened the thong around the wrist of his riding glove and shrugged into his safety vest. “Don’t worry about picking Gunslinger,” he said. “He’s mine.”
* * *
BY THE TIME she heard Tom Cameron’s name announced, Jo Dace was half-deafened by the racket in the Garden and stupefied by the raw violence of the sport.
Her new friend elbowed her. “Don’t you just love Tom Cameron? He makes riding bulls look so easy. And you watch his brother during the ride—he hovers like a mother hen.”
Jo could see only Cameron’s back as he climbed down into the bucking chute, but the giant overhead screen showed him wrapping the rope over and around his hand and then sliding forward to a seat directly over his fist. A shiver of apprehension trickled down her spine. One cowboy had already been carried from the arena on a stretcher. What if—
The gate flew open and the big brindled bull shot forward, covering at least a dozen feet in one jump and snapping Cameron’s head back so that his hat brim almost touched the animal’s rump. Next a vertical leap followed by a feint to the left slung his rider far to the outside of the spin. Jo closed her eyes so she wouldn’t have to watch Cameron slammed to the dirt. The buzzer sounded, almost drowned out by cheers, and she opened her eyes in time to see Cameron sail through the air to land on his feet. The bullfighters wove between the rider and the bull that scampered through the exit gate with a final flourish of its heels.
The announcer’s voice boomed. “How about that ride, folks? Tom Cameron’s gonna be pretty happy with his score—89 points! That should give him first pick for the championship round.”
Cameron raised his hat to the crowd. As he passed her seat, she saw a thin scar running from his right cheekbone to the point of his chin.
The next three riders bucked off; two more made the buzzer but with scores lower than Cameron’s, ending the round.
“What’s happening now?” Jo asked Cindy—by now Jo and Satin Shirt were on a first-name basis—as men set up ramps to the circular steel structure in the middle of the arena. The shark cage, Cindy had called it earlier.
“The fifteen riders with the most points for the weekend get to pick their bulls for the championship round. Now you’ll see some real bucking.”
Tom Cameron climbed the ramp first. He said “Gunslinger” into the microphone, and the crowd roared with approval. The next thirteen riders chose from the diminishing list, leaving a bull named Booger-Butt for the luckless fifteenth.
When the action resumed, Jo understood what Cindy meant by real bucking. These bulls appeared to have studied at some elite school for mayhem—some kicked so high their backs went almost vertical, others spun so fast her own head swam. Most put their riders in the dirt in only a few seconds. Finally one cowboy hung on for eight seconds, but the announcer commented, “That won’t be much of a score, folks—Whirligig had an off day.”
And finally it was Tom Cameron’s turn. Again he eased down into one of the chutes near Jo’s seat, this time facing her. She could see his expression of intense concentration as he wrapped the rope around his hand and settled his mouthpiece. The bull stood still as a statue except for its mule-like ears waving like antennae.
“I knew he’d pick Gunslinger,” Cindy said, leaning forward. She cupped her hands around her mouth and yelled, “Ride him, Tom!” Her husband chuckled.
A slight nod from Cameron and the gate swung wide. Gunslinger erupted into the arena with all four feet off the ground, changing direction in midair. Cameron still clung to the bull’s back, but off center so that the next spin shot him off like a rock out of a slingshot. He struck the metal panel directly below Jo’s section with a crash and lay still. The eight-second buzzer sounded.
Madison Square Garden went dead quiet. Someone’s cell phone brayed, harsh in the silence. Two men from the Sports Medicine team and one of the bullfighters ran to the spot where Cameron lay. Jo heard someone say, “Hey, Tom—can you hear me?” An indistinct response. “You want to walk out?” A grunt of assent and Cameron climbed to his feet. The crowd cheered as he left the arena supported by two of the medics.
The announcer said, “Folks, Tom’s gonna be just fine. Doc Barnett will check him out, but you can see he’s up and walking. That makes the score 4–0 in Gunslinger’s favor.” Jo sank back in her seat. She’d gotten more than her money’s worth for today’s ticket, and she’d seen enough to believe that bull riding was indeed the Toughest Sport on Earth. Other rodeo competitions like riding broncos and roping made sense—they were cowboy skills carried to a professional level, but this... What use was riding a bull? Still, the magnificent foolishness fascinated her. Too bad Tom Cameron had been injured. She would have to revise her plan.
She was exchanging social media information with her new friend (“Maybe we’ll see you at another event—there’s one in Allentown this fall”) when she heard someone call her name. The cowboy to whom she’d given her card hailed her from the arena floor.
“Miss Dace? Joanna Dace? Tom said he’ll be out in a few minutes if you want to wait.”
He had to be joking. “Won’t he be going to the emergency room?” she asked. “He could barely walk.”
The cowboy hooted. “Naw, he’s okay. If you’ll follow me...” He showed her where to climb down at the end of the aisle and led her through the clanging confusion of the pens and chutes being dismantled. The last bulls were disappearing toward the stock trucks waiting outside the Garden when her guide stopped outside the locker room.
“I’ll tell him you’re here,” he said before he disappeared inside.
She backed against the wall to make way for men dragging heavy electrical cables and pushing massive sound equipment crates. Several other women waited nearby, some with small children who ran forward yelling “Daddy!” as their fathers emerged. The hallway gradually emptied and she waited alone, shivering in an icy draft from some unseen door left open.
A slight man in khakis and a distressed leather bomber jacket hesitated at the locker room door. The light caught his face and she recognized Tom Cameron from the scar on his cheek. He saw her at the same moment and said “Miss Dace?” just as she spoke his name. They both laughed.
“I have to ask,” he said. “Are you Joe Dace’s daughter?”
The pain and anger brought on by hearing her father’s name hadn’t died over the years, but it rarely ambushed her as it did now. “Yes,” she said. “I’m named for him. You must be an auto racing fan.”
“Not so much now, but I got to meet him when I was eleven or so—the biggest thrill of my young life. My brother and I sneaked under the fence at the speedway when my mom took us to visit her grandmother in Talladega. He autographed my cap—I still have it. I wonder if I saw you there.”
“You might have—Mom and I traveled with him whenever I wasn’t in school.”
“When I heard about the crash, I felt like I’d lost kin. Kids take things like that hard.” He flushed. “Stupid thing to say, like you wouldn’t know.”
“It’s okay—ancient history,” she said, keeping the anger out of voice. “Should you be standing around like this? You took an awful hit.”
“Not so bad—just knocked the wind out of me and scattered my chickens some. My dad will have me out hauling feed and riding the fence line when I get home tomorrow. Which reminds me.” He took his phone from his pocket. “Excuse me—I need to do this right away.” He tapped in a quick text and stuck the phone back in his jacket. “Sorry—today’s event won’t be broadcast until this evening so I always let my folks know Luke and I are okay.” He grinned. “But I don’t give him the results.”
“Where did you finish in the event?”
“Second in the event, but I’m still leading in the overall standings. I haven’t got Gunslinger’s number yet—maybe next time.” He looked at his watch. “I have to be at the airport in a couple hours, but I always treat myself to a piece of real New York cheesecake after the last go-round. Want to join me?”
She agreed, and he led her out a back exit just as the last cattle truck pulled away. A few fans had lingered; one teenage girl squealed and pointed. “Tom! Can we get a picture?”
He shrugged an apology to Jo and put his arms around the shoulders of the two girls while a third took their photo.
Jo tapped her arm. “Want to be in the picture?” She captured a shot of Cameron with all three and handed the phone back as a young couple with two boys asked for a photo, as well.
Ten minutes later Cameron waved goodbye to the fans and rejoined Jo. “Sorry,” he said, “but I can’t just walk on by when folks wait out in the cold.”
A few minutes later he ushered her into a booth at the Tick Tock Diner two blocks from the Garden. “Okay,” he said after they had ordered cheesecake and coffee. “What can I do for you?”
Now that she had Tom Cameron seated across from her, she hesitated. He seemed so self-contained that her usual pitch to vanity seemed superficial. Because her father linked them in even a small way, she honored him with the truth, or most of the truth.
“I’m a freelance journalist,” she said. “I grew up on the stock-car racing circuit, and I’m still trying to figure out what motivates competitors like my dad. He saw friends get killed—he knew it could happen to him. I’ve interviewed athletes in other high-risk sports and followed them around and written about what I learned. I’d been planning to do a profile on a mountaineer who climbs ice cliffs, but he broke his leg...” She grinned in spite of herself. “He fell off a ladder stringing Christmas lights on the roof.”
“Ain’t that just the way,” he said. He touched the scar on his cheek. “Nothing to do with bull riding. I was mending fence a year back when a rock turned under my boot and the barbwire whipped me across the face.”
He laid down his fork. “So your mountain climber got shot out from under you and now you want to dissect a bull rider instead.”
She winced at his turn of phrase. “To explore bull riding from one cowboy’s perspective. A guided tour, so to speak. After watching today, there’s no question in my mind it’s the most dangerous competitive sport going. This was my first event, but if today was typical—”
He laughed. “Actually, today was pretty tame. Cory Brennan—he’s the rider who got carried out—he’ll be good to ride next weekend. But why did you pick me?”
“Two reasons.” She ticked off points on her fingers. “You’re leading in the current season after coming in second for the championship twice before—I figure that makes you hungry. Plus your brother’s being one of the bullfighters is a great angle. I saw him up close when you got bucked off. Are you twins?”
“We get asked that a lot,” he said. “Luke’s just eleven months older than me.” He scraped up the last fragments of cheesecake. “Okay, send me a list of questions—”
She shook her head. “I do in-depth research, more than just asking questions.” She took a manila envelope from her purse. “I’ve printed a couple of my features to give you an idea of how I work.” She leaned forward and gave him her best smile. “I promise I’m not planning a hatchet job on bull riding.”
He frowned. “This doesn’t really sound like my kind of thing—”
“Just think about it, okay?” She took a fresh card from her wallet and wrote on the back. “Here’s my personal email address and phone number. Please read what I’ve given you and then decide.”
