Chapter 10 #2
Iggy led him down the length of the bar to a door on the far wall that Malcolm had gone through a handful of times, to access the utility rooms on the farthest side of the stage.
This part of the building was like a rabbit warren, full of equipment, narrow passages, and miscellaneous wiring.
He’d noticed the red door with the word Lounge painted in black, but he’d never been inside before.
Iggy turned on an overhead florescent light, and Malcolm blinked against the intrusive glare.
The break/green room was maybe ten by twenty-five feet, with two makeup stations on one wall, a plush couch along another, and two sets of restaurant banquets.
Plus, a small table with a coffeepot, an electric kettle, and a variety of drink condiments.
The room even had a full-sized fridge next to a utility sink, which Iggy used to fill the coffee carafe with water.
“Why do I keep waiting for a burglar alarm to go off?” Malcolm asked.
“Because you’ve seen too many movies.” Iggy dug into a wooden cabinet by the table for the coffee and filters.
“I’ve told Howie to invest in at least basic door alarms, but he insists that living behind the place scares off burglars.
It’s not like anyone could make a fast getaway, anyhow, unless they jumped into a canoe and paddled downstream. ”
“Good point.” Chance had its share of petty crimes and domestic disputes, like any small town, but folks tended to respect the businesses and business owners, and to look after their neighbors. Mostly.
Malcolm drifted to a wall near one of the mirrored makeup stations.
It had once been painted white but was now covered in writing of all colors.
Signatures and sayings and small sketches, many with dates that probably coincided with performances or line-dance calling gigs.
History written all over the wall by thousands of hands, dating even further back than when Howie bought the place.
“Kinda too bad no one famous ever got their start here,” Malcolm said. “Would’ve been a cool selling point on social media.”
Iggy snorted. “One of these days, some idiot influencer is going to break their neck attempting the mechanical bull challenge for views.”
“Break their neck for views?”
“No, try the challenge for views.” He came up behind Malcolm and pinched his hip. “Dork. Thank God everyone signs a liability waiver before the settings go that high.”
“Yeah. After being rolled by a horse on accident, I can’t imagine wanting to be bucked off a bull on purpose, fake or not.”
“Hard same. I hate that thing.”
Malcolm turned to face Iggy, who had two foam cups in one hand, and the other hand planted firmly on one hip. “The mechanical bull? Why?”
“I’m honestly not sure. It’s a stupid, irrational fear.
From the day I came here to live with Uncle Howie, the minute I saw that thing over in the corner, this hunk of metal and cowhide that looked like a rotting bull carcass…
it freaked me out. Then my first day here cleaning tables before open? The fucking thing came to life.”
“It what?” Malcolm pulled Iggy over to the couch and sat them down. This was his first time hearing this story, and it deserved his full attention. “How did it come to life?”
Iggy leaned back into the saggy cushion and heaved a dramatic sigh. “You remember that scene in Home Alone when Kevin goes down into the basement, but he’s afraid of the furnace, and he imagines it coming to life and tormenting him?”
“Sure.” He’d just re-watched Home Alone this past Christmas with Melissa and the kids, because it was Nelo’s favorite movie.
“Well, I’m minding my own business, putting down chairs and scrubbing a table, when the fucking bull just roars to life, starts bucking all on its own.
I swear, when I looked at it, its eyes were blazing red, and smoke was coming out of its nose area.
I started screaming, threw my bottle of sanitizer at it, and ran straight to Howie’s office, a gibbering mess. ”
“What did you do, snort too much cleaner?”
Iggy rolled his eyes. “No, there was a mechanical short that made the bull start on its own. I already thought it was creepy as hell, and being alone in that big empty space…my imagination did the rest.”
“So, you’ve been afraid of that bull since you were sixteen?”
“Yep.”
Malcolm spotted an opportunity to do something fun and character building. For both of them. “Then let’s go ride it right now. You and me. Together.”
Iggy stared at Malcolm, brain a touch fuzzy from lack of caffeine, unsure how they’d navigated this brief journey from collecting bottles to Iggy mounting Thor. He latched onto the only word that his stunned mouth could form. “Huh?”
“Verbose, as always. Come on, let’s go ride it together. Neither one of us ever has. I need to get back on the horse, and you need to face your fear of that hunk of wires and cowhide.”
“A dangerous hunk of wires and cowhide.”
“We will use the lowest setting. A toddler can ride on that.”
Iggy squared his shoulders, irritated they were having this conversation while blessed coffee was brewing behind him.
How dare Malcolm ask him to make a decision like this when he was still half-asleep?
But behind Malcolm’s enthusiastic smile was a hint of trepidation.
Malcolm was putting something out there too; he wasn’t only asking Iggy to do this scary thing. Malcolm was joining him.
He held Malcolm’s gaze, drawing on the strength he saw there, pulling it deeply into himself. And made the choice. “I’m not putting one of our costume cowboy hats on my head.”
“Not a requirement.”
The hats were kept on-hand for photo ops. Laurel mentioned that their small collection of props had grown a bit since social media interest in the saloon grew. “Okay, fine. I want coffee first.”
“Are you sure you wanna fill your stomach with hot coffee before facing this fear? I do not wanna have to clean up your vomit later.”
Iggy scowled then pivoted neatly on his boot heel—it still amused him that he, the perfect fussy city boy, wore boots, while Malcolm trotted around in some sort of all-terrain sneakers; probably something to do with his ankle surgery—and marched out of the green room.
He strode past the stage, through what might have been considered the mosh pit had they been that sort of venue, to the roped off front corner of the building.
Laurel called it Thor. Uncle Howie called it a cash cow, since you had to purchase tokens to operate it.
Iggy called it the devil. And maybe Iggy wasn’t down in Georgia with his fiddle, soul ripe for the taking, but the song still began running through his head as he stared down his mechanical nemesis.
“Run, boy, run,” he muttered to himself.
They needed a token. Iggy went to the register and pulled open the popped cash drawer.
The cash tray was locked up in the office safe, but they kept the tokens in the empty space beneath the tray, in the drawer.
Iggy didn’t have any cash on him. Malcolm reached around him and dropped a dollar bill into the drawer, then plucked out a gold token.
They were generic tokens. Uncle Howie had briefly flirted with getting custom ones made, but he hated the idea of folks stealing them as souvenirs he’d have to constantly replace.
“Does it have its own power switch somewhere?” Malcolm asked.
Iggy followed him to the faux-velvet rope that held gawkers back from the bull and stared into the shadowy alcove.
His nemesis existed there like a lump, cast in shadows.
Up close for the first time in seventeen years, the mechanical bull…
didn’t look like much. Like Kevin realizing it was just a furnace, Iggy saw the silent, still piece of machinery for exactly what it was: something used for entertainment.
Not something to fear.
“Yeah, it’s got its own power supply.” Laurel had shown Iggy where it was his first night, in case there was an incident and he needed to intervene. He unhooked the rope and clipped it to a brass post, then slowly approached the bull. Stared at it a beat. Nothing to be afraid of.
The control panel stood sentry between the potential rider and padded pen holding the bull, so the employees could verify waivers and tokens before anyone rode the thing.
Iggy squatted and turned on the power supply, and the board lit up.
It had controls to buck, to spin, to combine the two, plus speed levels, and an emergency stop.
The challenge had a specific combination of speed, bucks, spins, and time to stay mounted.
Iggy genuinely wasn’t sure it could be mastered.
Uncle Howie once said he’d spoken to several champion bull riders and gotten their input, and they said it was potentially winnable.
Every rider couldn’t ride every bull; it took raw talent, skill and luck to win those gold buckles.
The Saddle Up Saloon was offering a gorgeous custom saddle from Colorado Saddlery, not a gold buckle, and it sat up on a pedestal, behind a plexi-glass wall to protect it from dust.
Malcolm found the switch that ignited the spotlight above the bullpen. Iggy swore the bull winked its fake eye at him.
“How are we going to do this?” Iggy asked. “We can’t both ride it if one of us has to turn the thing on.”
“At its lowest setting? I can hop up behind you after I start it.”
Iggy squinted at his blatant bravado. “Have you ever jumped onto a moving object behind another person? An object shaped like a mammal that exists solely to gore you with its horns, or to decorate your dinner plate?”
Malcolm tilted his head to the side, eyebrows going up. “Nooo, I don’t think I have. I’m not as nimble as I used to be, but I’ll give it a shot for you.”
“And possibly dislocate a hip?”
“Hey.” He swiped out, and Iggy ducked the playful gesture. “Don’t go making geriatric jokes, Donohue, you’re older than I am.”
“By three months,” Iggy retorted with an extra touch of sass.
“Eighty-seven days.”