Chapter 2
WADE
I'm at the pens before the sun clears the mesa, not because I'm eager but because the motel bed felt like sleeping on a cattle guard.
Lying still with my back locked up is worse than moving through it.
The ibuprofen I took hours ago has shaved the edge off my shoulders, brought the volume down from a scream to a steady, grinding complaint.
I can work around it if I don't think about it too hard.
So I don't think about it. I stretch against the pen rails instead, pressing my spine into the metal the way a physical therapist taught me years ago, back when I still saw a physical therapist, back when I still pretended the damage could be managed instead of accumulated with interest.
The fairground smells like it always does. Hay. Diesel. Livestock. That cocktail of dust and animal heat that I've been breathing since I was small enough to sit on my father's shoulders at rodeo events.
Some mornings it smells like home. This morning it smells like another town I'll leave in two days and won't remember by next week.
There's a rhythm to competition mornings that I could execute in a coma.
Tape the hands. Check the rigging. Walk the competitor area because walking keeps my back from seizing.
Drink coffee that tastes like burnt motor oil from whatever vendor sets up first. Avoid conversations that go deeper than draw sheets and weather.
Smile when someone recognizes me. Smile when someone congratulates me on a ride that happened three events ago in a town I've already forgotten.
The smile is load-bearing at this point. Remove it and the whole structure comes down.
I check my draw sheet. The horse is called Sidewinder, a tall sorrel mare with a blaze that runs crooked down her face and a reputation for explosive first jumps and hard lateral kicks.
Good draw. The kind of horse that rewards commitment and punishes hesitation, which means she'll either make my day or end it.
I've ridden worse on less sleep and more bourbon, so the odds are in my favor.
That's the kind of optimism only a professional athlete running on fumes and anti-inflammatories could produce with a straight face.
Other riders filter in with their coffee and their gear bags and the familiar blend of nerves and swagger that event mornings produce.
A couple of the younger guys nod at me. I nod back. One of them asks about my rein measurement, and I show him. I've been showing younger riders how to measure their rein since before this kid was old enough to drive.
Colt Holloway called again last night. I didn't answer again. The voicemail sits on my phone like a small piece of furniture I keep walking around. I already know what it says without playing it. A few words, direct, casual sounding but not casual.
Colt doesn't do casual when he's worried, and he's worried about me the way he worries about everything he cares about: relentlessly, with zero regard for whether the subject appreciates the attention.
He saw what I looked like at the Vegas Finals.
He saw the speed of the shift when that competitor bumped my elbow at the bar, and the look on my face when I uncurled my fist.
I'll call him back. Eventually. When I've got something to say that isn't a lie and isn't the truth.
By afternoon, the arena is full and the saddle bronc event is third on the card. I roll my shoulders behind the chutes, feel the grind, ignore it. Sidewinder loads clean, which is a good sign. Some broncs fight the chute and burn energy before the gate opens.
She stands alert, ears forward, coiled but patient. A professional, like me. We're both about to do our jobs, and neither of us has any illusions about who's performing for whom.
I lower myself onto her back. The crowd noise compresses into white static. My rein is right. My seat is right. The chute boss looks at me.
"Ready?"
I nod.
The gate swings open and Sidewinder comes out hard, a vertical launch that I absorb through my hips and knees while my rein arm takes the jolt and my free arm finds the counterbalance.
She kicks left on the second jump, bucks high on the third, and I match her rhythm the way you match a dance partner who's trying to throw you through a wall.
My spur stroke is tight. My timing holds.
The eight seconds compress into something that exists outside of clocks. The pain in my shoulders, the empty motel room I'll go back to tonight, none of it survives in here. Nothing exists except the animal beneath me and the physics of not falling off.
The horn sounds. The pickup men flank Sidewinder and I step off on my feet, hat still on. The score comes up before I've finished walking back to the chutes. Ninety-one points. Best ride of the day so far, and from the quality of the field behind me, it'll probably hold.
A year ago that score would've meant something.
Prize money, standings points, a reason to believe the body could hold together for one more season.
Tonight it's just a number attached to a pain I'll be managing for the next three days and a performance that a few thousand strangers will forget before they reach the parking lot.
The congratulations come fast. A sponsor rep whose name I can never remember claps me on the shoulder.
The left one. The bad one. My hand is around his wrist before the pain finishes traveling from the joint to my brain, and for one ugly second I'm squeezing hard enough to feel the bones shift under his skin. His face goes white.
I let go, clap him on the arm like I was returning the gesture, and grin. "Appreciate it, brother." He laughs. Moves on. Doesn't look back, but he's walking faster than when he arrived. His right hand cradles his left wrist against his belt buckle.
Two young riders stop me near the competitor gate, asking about my mark-out and spur angle. I answer their questions with patience I manufacture from the same place I manufacture the smile.
The kid on the left is looking at me with the expression I used to see in the mirror when I was his age, watching riders I wanted to become. I wonder what he'd do with that admiration if he knew the man he's studying is one bad night away from hurting somebody who doesn't deserve it.
A kid in a cowboy hat two sizes too big ducks under the rail and holds out a program for me to sign. I sign it. His mother mouths thank you from behind the fence. I nod at her.
The kid runs off waving the program like a flag, and I watch him go and try to remember a time when any of this felt as simple as a signature on a piece of paper.
I find an empty spot behind the stock pens when the crowd thins. Ibuprofen from my gear, washed down dry.
My spine has seized into a single rigid column from the ride. The only thing I want is the flask in my rigging bag, but I make myself wait.
The circuit vet is working the pens. I notice her peripherally at first, automatically, part of the constant scan of a man who's spent two decades reading the landscape behind the chutes.
She's at the far end of the livestock row, hands on a bay gelding that looks like it needs a stone pulled. She hasn't looked up since I sat down, and on an event afternoon that's unusual enough to register. Most people watch the arena during events. She's watching the horse.
Her hands move before her mouth. She touches the animal's neck, runs a palm along the shoulder, checks the hoof.
Then she talks to the owner, a steer wrestler I recognize from the Lubbock event. The owner is gesturing, explaining something. She listens without interrupting, nods once, and goes back to the hoof. She heard everything he said. She doesn't need to hear it twice.
I've spent a long time reading body language.
Horses teach you that. A horse can't tell you where it hurts, so you learn to watch the ears, the eyes, how weight shifts between legs.
Eventually you start applying the same instincts to people.
Posture, eye contact, how someone moves through space.
You get good at reading whether someone feels secure or whether they're performing calm while keeping their exits mapped.
The vet isn't secure. She's good at hiding it. Her movements are calm, measured, efficient. She handles the horse with the practiced ease of someone who's done this a thousand times.
But between the clinical tasks, in the moments when she's not actively focused on the animal, her eyes move.
Scanning the lot, the access road, the people walking behind her.
Her body stays angled so she's never fully facing away from the open ground.
She keeps herself between the horse and the nearest exit, automatic, unconscious, positioning that's been drilled so deep it's part of how she's wired.
I've seen animals move like that. Prey animals. The ones who've learned that looking relaxed isn't the same as being relaxed, and that the price of safety is the constant, exhausting work of appearing unbothered while cataloging every threat within a hundred yards.
I run through the possibilities without meaning to. Debt. Warrant. Bad divorce from a man who didn't take the papers gracefully. Maybe something worse.
Whatever it is, she's been carrying it long enough that the vigilance has become part of her operating system. This isn't a woman who recently got scared. This is a woman who's been scared so long she's built an entire life around the architecture of staying ready.
She finishes with the gelding. Pats the horse on the neck. Picks up her kit, slings it over her shoulder and walks to the next pen without making eye contact with anyone she passes.
Hair pulled back in a braid that catches the late-afternoon light. She rolls her sleeves to the elbow as she walks.