Chapter 10 #2
But I had to. Ty was in the cabin with us. I could picture him perfectly, and he was shaking his head with disapproval. If he could’ve come back from the dead, he would’ve thunked me over the head for passing up this second chance with Lizzie.
“No. I only had one brother. Ty. He’s gone, but he’s still here. You know? I… talk to him sometimes. I miss him.”
“Van, you won’t lose him if you leave here. You know that, right? He’ll always be with you.”
“Will he? I thought that before he died, when I was out on the circuit, but we grew apart, and I missed all the signs that somethin’ was wrong. If I’d never left back then, hadn’t gone off to chase stupid dreams, maybe he’d…” Looking down at my boots, I shook my head.
“Oh, baby.” Lizzie wrapped her arms around my waist and hugged me tight, and I watched as the smiling vision of Ty standing across the room began to disappear.
“Will you tell me what happened?” As she reached for another ornament, I knew she was giving me space.
She could probably feel how frozen I felt.
“Why’d you really leave the rodeo?” she asked quietly, and she hooked a wire hanger through the slot at the top of her ornament.
“I know it had something to do with Ty.”
I already knew her well enough to know she wouldn’t stop asking about it unless I gave her a good enough explanation, so I tried to without telling her the severity of everything that had gone down back then.
Thank God she couldn’t google me up here.
The video of Ty aiming a gun at an arena full of kids would’ve been the first thing to pop up in her search.
I knew she’d find out eventually, but for now, I wanted to keep this perfect Christmas perfect.
“It’s really not a big deal. I stalled out. It was just my time to walk.”
She was quiet for a beat, so I picked up another ornament and stuck it on the tree. She smiled when she saw it dangle and reflect the lights, but then she turned fully to face me. “Bullshit,” she said.
My eyebrows must’ve hit the sky, and I took a step backward. “Bullshit?”
“Yeah, I call bull. There’s a lot more to this story, Evan Moran, and I want to know.”
I sighed and shook my head, but then walked to the couch and sat. “Don’t like talkin’ about it.”
She sat next to me and held my hand. She really was perfect. She didn’t say another word, didn’t push any harder. She just waited for me to be ready.
“You know my brother died before we met at Manny’s,” I said, and she nodded. “Well, right before that, he… Tyler pulled somethin’ at my last event. Caused a lot of problems for himself, and for me. I wasn’t welcome there anymore, and I don’t think anything has changed since then.”
“What’d he do?” she asked in a whisper, holding on tighter and threading her fingers through mine.
Memories knocked around the inside of my head hard and fast; I thought they’d poke holes to get out. I’d never told the story to anyone, but Lizzie was the only person on this earth I wanted to tell. And it was time…
“Will Evan Moran make history yet again today?” the announcer’s voice boomed over the loudspeaker, and fans from every corner of the arena hooted and hollered.
Doc Pepper preened and stomped his hooves as I threw my loop and roped my calf. He knew he’d done good, and he was a master at keeping the tension on the rope steady while I flanked the calf. I had the calf down, and he lay still as I jumped up and away so the judges could start the countdown.
Camera lights popped and flashed all around me, but I glanced at the clock. When it flickered above me, the fans cheered louder than anything I’d ever heard.
This was it. This was the big leagues.
As I ran back for Pep, I thought, as long as that calf stays down for six more seconds. But I knew he would because my technique was flawless. I’d beat my own best score by a full second, and my best score was a second better than anyone before me.
Pride and satisfaction rushed through my body like a raging river. I felt seven feet tall. The number-one roper in the nation, and I’d just doubled down on that distinction. More sponsorships would come. Everyone on the circuit would know my name, if they didn’t already.
A kind of hollow feeling registered in my chest because my family wasn’t there to see it happen, but I pushed that loneliness and disappointment away.
I was already planning what I’d do with the money: a big house, more horses.
A new truck. Maybe I’d get a logo made and have it painted on the truck.
People would see me coming from miles aw—
As I reached up to grip my saddle’s horn and remount Pep, someone fell over the barrier in front of the stands next to the calf chutes. I froze, the crowd gasped, and silence fell around the arena. Probably just a drunk spectator, but when the man stood, shame washed through me.
It was Ty. But he wasn’t hurt—he was high, swaying and lurching as he got to his feet.
When I’d spoken to my dad on the phone recently, he said it had been happening more and more often lately.
Shame bit at me again. I’d been so busy with training and traveling for my events, I hadn’t checked in on them enough.
Other cowboys rushed toward Ty, but he was already stumbling his way over to me in the middle of the ring.
“Evan!” he called, waving his arms in the air. “You did it, bro! You’re a fuckin’ legend!”
Whoever was working the arena cams focused them all on my brother, and images of him slurring and weaving forward popped up on every screen in the place.
All the world could see just how messed up my brother was, how his eyes were red and his pupils had become pinpricks.
Even I could see it, and he was still twenty feet away from me.
And that’s when he pulled a gun from the waistband of his jeans. He saw security coming for him, and he turned on them.
The screams of terror from the stands faded into the background as my roped calf grasped for sand. It had been a lot longer than six seconds. He pulled himself up and untangled his legs from my pigging string, and he leapt away, dragging my future with him… and then Ty spun and aimed at the calf.
“Ty! Put that away!” I screamed at him.
What the fuck was he doing?
He laughed and twirled, pointing the gun toward the crowd. “I’m just protectin’ my little bro. What’s wrong with that?” To the crowd he yelled as loud as he could, “This is my brother!”
He waved the gun back toward me, and I flinched and cowered lower, but when he turned back to all the rodeo fans, who were cowering, too, trying to escape or to shield their kids from getting shot, I launched up and sprinted toward Ty just as security got to him.
They disarmed him easily. The gun fell into the sand, and as they turned him to cuff him, I tackled him.
Everybody fell. Me, Ty, a handful of my competitors, and four armed security guys.
“So damn proud of you, Ev,” he said with a stupid smile on his face. His eyes were unfocused and glassy, and he smelled awful. Probably hadn’t showered in a week.
“What have you done?” I screamed at him while the whole world watched. “You ruined everything!”
Police rushed us. They pushed me off my brother, and I fell back on my ass as they patted him down for more weapons and found needles in his front pockets. Little baggies of bullshit dropped to the ground.
The cameras were still filming, and people in the stands stopped trying to flee. Now they just watched as my career took a fucking nosedive.
Ty had just tanked me. You couldn’t escape publicity like this. Sponsors wouldn’t want anything to do with the brother of a heroin junkie. Or was it meth? I had no fucking clue. And I didn’t want to know. I didn’t care.
He was dead to me. My brother was dead in my mind…
“I had no idea you’d gone through that,” Lizzie said, bringing me back to the present.
“I didn’t know that would be the last time I saw my brother.
As pissed as I was at him, I still stupidly hoped he’d get better.
But one week after he made bail, he and a couple of his stupid friends robbed a jewelry store in Jackson, and of course the place had an alarm.
He’d somehow gotten ahold of another goddamn gun and was shot tryin’ to flee.
When the sheriff drove up the mountain two days before Christmas six years ago to tell me and my dad that he was gone, he told us Ty had fired at him.
Thank God he missed, but the sheriff showed me a picture of what Ty had tried to steal.
“It was a golden buckle. Just like the one I’d won but never claimed. And I never earned another one. That part of my life is over.”
“Oh, Van,” Lizzie said softly, still holding my hand. “I’m so sorry.”
“Anyway, after all that, they asked me to leave the circuit. A couple of the heavy hitters demanded it. I never tried to go back. I was too ashamed of what Ty had done. All those families, scared for their lives when all they’d wanted to do was enjoy a little ropin’ and cowboyin’.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“No.” I shook my head. “Sure wasn’t. But after that, sponsorships dried up. Calls stopped comin’ in. You know how it is. Image is everything. Who the hell wants the brother of a known druggie on their box of Cheerios?”
“That’s not fair. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Lizzie, you know damn well fair don’t mean a thing. It is what it is,” I said. I turned toward her. “Look, don’t you go feelin’ sorry for me. It happened. It’s history. And I’ve made a good livin’ with my photography. I love it.”
“I do not feel sorry for you, and I know you love your art. It’s plain to see when I look at your pictures.
” She glanced at the one hanging over the fireplace.
“But I remember how sad you were that night. It was the most complicated kind of sad I’ve ever witnessed, and I’m betting a big piece of that was about the rodeo. ”
“Yeah. You’re right. It was.” I sighed and melted back against the couch, and Lizzie snuggled against my side.
“I had the world in the palm of my hand. Or I thought I did. I’d worked so damn hard to make my dreams come true, and then it all dried up right in front of my eyes in a matter of a few seconds.
God, I was so pissed at Ty. And then he died, and it didn’t feel right bein’ mad at him then.
Over what? Money? Fame?” I scoffed. “He was my brother.”
“I’m sure losing the money and the notoriety sucked, but that wasn’t why you were so upset with him, was it?”
“No. Maybe.” Dragging my hand through my hair, I sighed. “Fuck. I dunno.”
“Ty betrayed you. Maybe he didn’t mean to, maybe he was messed up, struggling somehow and that’s why he took those drugs, but the fact of the matter is that for whatever reason, he hurt you that night at the rodeo.
What he did had a direct and negative effect on your hopes and dreams. And when he died, you were left not knowing how to deal with that.
How to love him and hold his memory close while you were still so angry with him. Am I right?”
Pulling her closer, I hid my shame in her shiny hair. “You’re more right than I care to admit.”
She nodded against my neck. “It was the same with my mama. She had heart disease and she knew it, but she didn’t take care of herself.
She didn’t do all the things the doctors and my father were always telling her to do.
She skipped doses of her medications because she said she didn’t like the way they made her feel.
That’s why she had a heart attack the day she died, why she drove her car into an oncoming semi.
I’m still so damn mad at her for that. But I love her just as much as I always have, and sometimes that feels confusing. ”
When she leaned back to look in my eyes, she wiped away the tear that had streaked down my face with the pad of her thumb, and I pulled her onto my lap. She straddled me and kissed my cheeks and my lips softly.
I breathed her in, let her goodness and understanding fill my lungs until I thought they’d burst.
And then I knew what I had to do.
“I gotta go.”