Jameson Parker - An Accidental Cowboy

An Accidental Cowboy

By Jameson Parker

Copyright 2012

For Darleen

I never took you to Rome or Paris,

but we chased pheasants on Sitting Bulls trail

and saw the lions with their kill at Kapama.

I never bought you a diamond ring,

but I bought you a fine strong horse.

I never even gave you a proper honeymoon,

but I give you now this book.

You know the difference between a fairy story and a cowboy story? Fairy story begins, Once upon a time. Cowboy story begins, You all aint gonna believe this shit.

Roger Ott, horse trainer

These things, details, stories, whatever, are like the skin shed by snakes, who leave theirs for anyone to see. What does he care where it is, who sees it, this snake, and his skin? He leaves it where it molts. Hours, days or months later, we come across a snakes long-shed skin and we know something of the snake, we know that its of this approximate girth and that approximate length, but we know very little else. Do we know where the snake is now? What the snake is thinking now? No. By now the snake could be wearing fur; the snake could be selling pencils in Hanoi. The skin is no longer his, he wore it because it grew from him, but then it dried and slipped off and he and everyone could look at it.

Dave Eggers, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

I

In a furnished apartment in Seattle, my wife and I are having a luxuriously late breakfast surrounded by the white noisewhite dinof the city: cars, buses, people, and the intermittent counterpoint of seaplanes coming in from the San Juan Islands. We are on location, making a movie, the first time we have worked together in years, but this is our day off and we are basking in the indolence of freedomfreedom from wake-up calls, pick-up calls, makeup calls, wardrobe calls, camera calls. I am still in my pajamas, drinking coffee rich and dark as molasses as we watch the news, our morning ritual.

Darleen comes to the table carrying bowls of wild blackberries and yogurt, and as she sits down the newscaster starts to talk about a robbery turned homicide caught on surveillance video. The screen goes from color to black and white. We watch a young man walk up to the counter in a store with a revolver in his hand. I note, automatically, unconsciously, that it appears to be a six-inch, blued, Smith & Wesson .38. The clerk behind the counter and a stocky middle-aged customer both look at the gun, as expressionless as if they are looking at some completely neutral objecta candlestick, say, or a book. The young man is talking. He holds the gun casually, easily, no wild waving or gesturing with it.

Suddenly the middle-aged customer lunges for the revolver. The young man pulls his gun hand away, out of reach, turning his body as he does so. Instead of grappling with him, the middle-aged customer continues, absurdly, to follow the gun. The young man continues to turn and they make a complete 360-degree circle. Then the young man steps back and shoots.

There is no sound in this grainy footage. The only way I know for certain a shot has been fired is because the gun jumps slightly in the young mans hand. The middle-aged customer stiffens, his whole body stiffens, and he seems to rise up slightly, almost as if he were standing on tiptoe. His hands come up, not to clutch at his chest, but in the air just in front of the wound. For a brief moment he stands like that. Then he pitches forward and lies absolutely, finally, still. The screen goes back to the pretty newscasters face in color.

I watch all this and I am fine. I talk normally to Darleen about other things. I finish my berries and my coffee. I am fine. I even sit and watch the weather report, for Darleen and I have planned a day of hiking in the country. I am fine.

But then as I start to dress, the air in this light and sunny apartment turns suddenly thick and dark as my coffee. The walls start to move in on me at crazy angles. And all at once, I can no longer breathe. No matter how hard I struggle, I simply cannot get enough air into my lungs, or out of them. I know what is happening, but I cant help myself. I have to get outside.

Darleen, still in her nightgown, rushes to change, to go with me, but I cant wait. Shirttails out, pants unbuttoned, I hurry past the elevatoreven the thought of waiting for an elevator is unbearable to medown the stairs, buckling my belt as I pass through the lobby, out into the street. I start to walk, fast, very fast, then to run, faster, harder, farther, farther.

I will never be able to run fast enough or far enough, yet I will run to a world I have never dreamed of, a life I have never imagined. I will run all the way to a ranch in the Sierras.

II

The bull and I are alone in the pen. He is nineteen hundred pounds of bad-tempered unpredictability, which is why he and I have come to this place. All four-year-old bulls are culled to prevent them from breeding their own daughters. Those that are relatively tractable go to McDonalds, while the more aggressive, like this one, go to enlivenand sometimes shortenthe careers of ambitious young men on the rodeo circuit. He watches me without fear, without malice, without curiosity, as dispassionate and impersonal as an earthquake. I have just finished helping repair a five-strand barbwire fence destroyed when one bull, like this one, picked up another, like this one, and threw him onto the fence. This particular bull has earned his right to the rodeo life by throwing Dal, two hundred and ninety pounds, and his horse, fourteen hundred pounds, into a stock tank, not in anger, but simply because he wished to move from point A to point C and Dal was sitting his horse at point B. Dal is a far better horseman than I, better mounted, more knowledgeable about cattle, and he wears spurs. My horse has already proven herself relatively sluggish and insensitive to the leg. I wish I were wearing spurs. I wish this pen were bigger. I wish I knew exactly what I am doing here.

The pen the bull and I share has a gate which leads to a smaller pen, maybe fifteen by fifteen feet, which in turn leads to a chute which leads to the waiting stock trailer. A ranch hand has been struggling from the top of the fence for some minutes with the latch and finally, in frustration, he jumps down into the smaller pen, kicks the latch back and opens the gate.

Drive him on in, he yells.

Dont you want to get out of there first? I ask.

Gotta close the damn gate. Drive him in.

I begin to walk my horse slowly in a semi-circle around the bull. I think of Hemingway, talking about the fighting bulls of Spain and how the pacifying effect of the herd instinct made them safe in numbers and dangerous only when alone. I remember a lecture from college on the critical distance of psychopaths, the distance they require between themselves and all other beings so they dont feel threatened. I dont know if bulls and psychopaths have the same requirements, but the results of their being threatened are very likely to be unpleasantly similar and I make my semi-circle as big as I can. The bull turns with me, watching. When at last I have him between me and the gate I walk my horse toward him. For the first few deliberate steps nothing happens; then, at about twenty feetthe bulls critical distancehe takes a single quick step back and drops his head. I am feeling very focused, aware of all kinds of external stimulithe heat of the sun on my back, the rustling of the sycamore leaves in the breeze, the smell of my horse and of cow shit, the creaking of my saddle, the distant monotonous cawing of a ravenall of these things at once as my horse steps carefully forward, once, twice. Then the bull turns easily and trots with massive dignity into the smaller pen and the cowboy slams the gate and throws the latch.

Suddenly, things happen very fast. One instant the bulls tail is toward the cowboy. The next instant, quicker than thought, he has switched ends and his head, lowered and infinitely threatening, is three feet from the cowboys pelvis. This man is middle-aged and no sylph. His waistline shows plainly the effects of too much steak and too many beers. But adrenaline is wonderfully invigorating and he is every bit as quick as the bull. From the ground to the top rail of the pen is six feet, but he jumps it effortlessly, perching there like some stout laughing bird.