Houston - Cowboys Are My Weakness: Stories

COWBOYS

ARE MY

WEAKNESS

COWBOYS

ARE MY

WEAKNESS

Stories

PAM HOUSTON

W. W. NORTON & COMPANY

Independent Publishers Since 1923

NEW YORK LONDON

This is for Michael

With thanks, also,

to my mother and father,

and to Carol Houck Smith

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The stories in this collection appeared in the following publications:

Cimarron Review, For Bo

The Gettysburg Review, Highwater

Lodestar, A Blizzard Under Blue Sky

Mademoiselle, Selway (as Call of the Wild Man), In My Next Life (as A Woman of Spirit)

Mirabella, Jackson Is Only One of My Dogs, Sometimes You Talk About Idaho

Quarterly West, How to Talk to a Hunter

How to Talk to a Hunter also appeared in Best American Short Stories 1990 (Richard Ford, guest editor)

W hen he says Skins or blankets? it will take you a moment to realize that hes asking which you want to sleep under. And in your hesitation hell decide that he wants to see your skin wrapped in the big black moose hide. He carried it, hell say, soaking wet and heavier than a dead man, across the tundra for twowas it hours or days or weeks? But the payoff, now, will be to see it fall across one of your white breasts. Its December, and your skin is never really warm, so you will pull the bulk of it around you and pose for him, pose for his camera, without having to narrate this mooses death.

You will spend every night in this mans bed without asking yourself why he listens to top-forty country. Why he donated money to the Republican Party. Why he wont play back his messages while you are in the room. You are there so often the messages pile up. Once you noticed the bright green counter reading as high as fifteen.

He will have lured you here out of a careful independence that you spent months cultivating; though it will finally be winter, the dwindling daylight and the threat of Christmas, that makes you give in. Spending nights with this man means suffering the long face of your sheepdog, who likes to sleep on your bed, who worries when you dont come home. But the hunters house is so much warmer than yours, and hell give you a key, and just like a woman, youll think that means something. It will snow hard for thirteen straight days. Then it will really get cold. When it is sixty below there will be no wind and no clouds, just still air and cold sunshine. The sun on the windows will lure you out of bed, but hell pull you back under. The next two hours hell devote to your body. With his hands, with his tongue, hell express what will seem to you like the most eternal of loves. Like the house key, this is just another kind of lie. Even in bed; especially in bed, you and he cannot speak the same language. The machine will answer the incoming calls. From under an ocean of passion and hide and hair youll hear a womans muffled voice between the beeps.

Your best female friend will say, So what did you think? That a man who sleeps under a dead moose is capable of commitment?

This is what you learned in college: A man desires the satisfaction of his desire; a woman desires the condition of desiring.

The hunter will talk about spring in Hawaii, summer in Alaska. The man who says he was always better at math will form the sentences so carefully it will be impossible to tell if you are included in these plans. When he asks you if you would like to open a small guest ranch way out in the country, understand that this is a rhetorical question. Label these conversations future perfect, but dont expect the present to catch up with them. Spring is an inconceivable distance from the December days that just keep getting shorter and gray.

Hell ask you if youve ever shot anything, if youd like to, if you ever thought about teaching your dog to retrieve. Your dog will like him too much, will drop the stick at his feet every time, will roll over and let the hunter scratch his belly.

One day hell leave you sleeping to go split wood or get the mail and his phone will ring again. Youll sit very still while a woman who calls herself something like Janie Coyote leaves a message on his machine: Shes leaving work, shell say, and the last thing she wanted to hear was the sound of his beautiful voice. Maybe shell talk only in rhyme. Maybe the counter will change to sixteen. Youll look a question at the mule deer on the wall, and the dark spots on either side of his mouth will tell you he shares more with this hunter than you ever will. One night, drunk, the hunter told you he was sorry for taking that deer, that every now and then theres an animal that isnt meant to be taken, and he should have known that deer was one.

Your best male friend will say, No one who needs to call herself Janie Coyote can hold a candle to you, but why not let him sleep alone a few nights, just to make sure?

The hunter will fill your freezer with elk burger, venison sausage, organic potatoes, fresh pecans. Hell tell you to wear your seat belt, to dress warmly, to drive safely. Hell say you are always on his mind, that youre the best thing thats ever happened to him, that you make him glad that hes a man.

Tell him it dont come easy, tell him freedoms just another word for nothing left to lose.

These are the things youll know without asking: The coyote woman wears her hair in braids. She uses words like howdy. Shes man enough to shoot a deer.

A week before Christmas youll rent Its a Wonderful Life and watch it together, curled on your couch, faces touching. Then youll bring up the word monogamy. Hell tell you how badly he was hurt by your predecessor. Hell tell you he couldnt be happier spending every night with you. Hell say theres just a few questions he doesnt have the answers for. Hell say hes just scared and confused. Of course this isnt exactly what he means. Tell him you understand. Tell him you are scared too. Tell him to take all the time he needs. Know that you could never shoot an animal; and be glad of it.

Your best female friend will say, You didnt tell him you loved him, did you? Dont even tell her the truth. If you do youll have to tell her that he said this: I feel exactly the same way.