Chapter 10. NEVER HORSE AROUND WHEN YOU CAN SIT IN A CHAIR
A couple days later, I convinced Barker to take me horseback riding. Seemed like a good idea at the time. Rhino didn’t like to ride. I couldn’t imagine there’d be a horse big enough to carry him.
Mom came along, hoping to talk Barker into swing dancing with her afterwards. He’d made the mistake of admitting he knew how. Rhino definitely didn’t like to dance, unless the music was very slow and he was very drunk. That’s not dancing, that’s swaying, Mom told him. But Rhino decided he wanted to come, too. He was still in an exceedingly pleasant mood. Chipper almost, since Barker had arrived to help out.
We left The Black Gang in charge of the farm. Diva, Andy and Mongo had long since agreed he was top dog, and Gang had assigned them each responsibilities of their own. Diva made sure no squirrels trespassed across the yard without permission, Andy got plenty of sleep in case he was needed to accompany one of us on a walk in the woods, while Mongo worked to perfect his hole digging and bone burying.
A few winding miles over the hill from Donkey Thyme Farm was a 650-acre rustic resort called Rolling Acres Dude Ranch. A family of buffalo milled around near the front gate, providing a sense of authenticity.
“Don’t they look scrawny?”
“Their gene pool ain’t what it used to be.”
Things looked different here. Mostly stuffed. The log walls of the lodge are gaily festooned with the hides, horns and heads of a vast variety of game. Bison, bear, bobcat, beaver, boar and a bunch of other animals (whose names begin with other letters) gave their lives to make a decorative statement. Axes and horseshoes serve as door handles to the Bucks’ and Does’ facilities. Hanging in the lounge, suspended by cables, a six-ton log serves as the bar.
Out back a stream burbles by. On the front porch a sleeping, aged mottled-grey border collie waited outside the kitchen door. Across the parking lot is the landing strip, nothing more than a dirt path down the middle of a 2200-foot-long meadow.
A small plane cruised into view, headed straight at us. Descending, landing gear not down, the engine loudly putt-putting, as if a gas line was clogged.
This is my lucky day, I fantasized. Haven’t been here ten minutes and already I am eyewitness to aviation disaster.
“I don’t suppose you thought to stick a video camera in your purse,” Barker said, as he noticed Mother’s gaze rise to the coughing Cessna. “This could be our big break with that new cable news network.”
Mom seemed to ignore him, she probably couldn’t hear, and the plane, wheels down, landed safely. “There’s still a God,” Mom said, “and She watches over all of us.”
“Hallowed be Her Name,” Barker quipped.
I was a little disappointed, having expected a fiery crash.
Separated from the air field – at last the term makes sense – by the main road were the horses.
“I’ve never been much of a horseman,” Rhino admitted with classic understatement. “Always had trouble with the basic concept. People actually climb up onto the perfectly empty back of a total stranger from another species and goose said total stranger from another species, goose them right in the flanks. Creatures weighing hundreds and hundreds of pounds with four, count’em four, hard hooves.”
“Capable of mincing your meat in a Montana minute,” Barker added helpfully.
“Oh, come riding with us,” Mother implored. She grabbed Rhino by the arm and tried to tug him toward the corral.
“I’d rather go dancing,” he said facetiously.
“Please.”
“No, really, thanks, but no.” His boots were firmly planted.
“It’ll be fun.”
“My final word on the subject,” Rhino intoned. “If we were meant to ride horses, the French would not have invented the automobile.”
The man had a point. I had been riding, more like sitting, before. Child abuse took a different form in my family. An event heretofore referred to as The Last Horse Ride came to mind. Some thoughtful grown-up, probably a sadistic second cousin, had put me in the saddle when I was about two years old. Too young. I can still remember, it seemed like such a long way to the ground. Took one look down and started to cry.
At Rolling Acres Ranch, I was determined to shed not a tear. I was a lot bigger now. And I was holding up fairly well, too, until I read the personal injury and liability waiver. Two waivers, actually.
The Horseback Ride Waiver basically specified nobody at the Ranch was financially liable for any crippling disaster that might befall the customer. Except perhaps the guilty steed, for whom counsel would be provided.
The Hardhat Waiver was enough to make The Lone Ranger climb down off of Silver.
“I, the undersigned, recognize the dangers inherent with horseback riding. I am assuming the hazard of this risk upon myself since I wish to ride horses. I realize I am subject to injury from this activity and that no form of preplanning can remove all of the danger that I am exposing myself to. I have been offered a protective helmet, which could have prevented permanent brain damage in the event of an accident. Against the advice of the stable operator, the wrangler guide, and the insurance company, I am refusing this critical safety precaution.”
I am not making this up.
“Your lips are moving,” Barker joked.
Call me dumfounded. I could not recall a single cowboy who had worn a ten-gallon helmet.
Barker signed. “What about flight insurance?”
“Don’t know about you,” Mother said, “but that kinda makes me want to mount right up.”
“Did Billy The Kid need parental permission?” She signed for both of us, and I can’t tell you how happy I was she didn’t make me wear a helmet. I already had my new black baseball cap on.
While Barker made the arrangements, I tried to imagine what the next hour would be like.
Mother would climb on some sleepy sway-backed nag and beam a look mixed of adventure and joy.
“What’s this pretty pony’s name?, Wrangler Richard,” she’d ask.
“Buttercup, ma’am,” the slim-hipped stablehand would reply as he gave her, or so it seemed to me, a particularly robust boost. Must be the spraypainted denim jeans glued to her buns. She’d almost land on the saddle horn and knowing her, she’d be not a little disappointed. Good thing Rhino wasn’t around.
“And, please, ma’am, call me Cowboy Dick.”
Watch this out of the corner of his eye, Barker would. Maybe there’d be a gunfight. No, that’s no good, ’cause Cowboy Dick has the only gun. I might miss my ride on some savage Cayuse.
I would stare up at my steed, a stallion with a grudge and a bad attitude shipped to the Rolling Acres Ranch on work release from a prison rodeo. Trigger on steroids.
He’d flare his nostrils. I’d flare my nostrils back at him.
Glazed eyes. Rapid breath. Lips curled.
The horse wouldn’t look so good either.
“And what’s this big fella’s name?,” I’d inquire hopefully. Determined to be brave.
“Cyclone.”
Right.
And, of course, I wouldn’t be able to convince Mom to switch mounts.
Here’s what really happened.
Richard, the wrangler, took one look at my mother’s jeans, which she probably had to lie down on her back to zip up, and her cowboy boots and he put her on “Thunder.”
He took one look at me, okay, so I’m little for my size, and Cowboy Richard put me on “Bob.”
“Bob? That’s it? Bob?,” I was admittedly disappointed. “You sure it’s not Big Bob, or even Bad Bob.”
“How about Dysfunctional Bob?,” Barker suggested. “There’s a good name for a horse.”
“Nope,” the laconic horseman said. “Just ‘Bob.'”
Darn.
“How’s that going to look on your death certificate?,” Barker joshed. “Decedent, still in the full flower of his youth, passed up the chance to wear a protective helmet, and met his untimely demise from severe cranial and spinal injuries, not to mention a number of unsightly contusions, when thrown into a reptile-filled, rocky crevasse by a horse, one ‘Bob’.”
Aghast, I suddenly somehow found myself in a condition I soon came to think of as “aBob.”
It was fun at first, being aBob. I have to admit that. For starters, the ground was a lot closer than my one previous ride many years earlier.
Then the cowboy, that Dick, untied the animal. That Bob. For all practical purposes, Big Bad Dysfunctional Bob was on the loose.
“HiYo, Bob!,” I yelled as my steed and I pulled up slowly to the rear of line. Richard rode point, Thunder followed single-file. Barker, who looked born to the saddle, rode “Sundown,” so-called because he always managed to return to the barn before dark. An admirable trait. I noticed Barker seemed to focus on the back of Mom’s jeans, her buttocks bouncing rhythmically up and down as she rode, abob, bob, bobbing along.
Bob? You ask about Bob?
Chest pains. I was squeezing so hard with my legs, Bob could barely draw breath. Probably still wondering why he gets all the twelve-year-old greenhorns.
This must be just the same sensation Evil Knievel felt when he prepared to rocket his bike across the Snake River Canyon, I thought.
Snake!?
Then we left the corral.
I kept waiting for the snake to show up. Normally, afraid of snakes I’m not. Normally, however, I’m not riding atop a massive mammal with a mind of his own. A slinky serpent bares his fangs, rattles his rattles, and Bob would likely bolt, flinging me to the boulders below, where my head would smash open like last year’s Halloween pumpkin.
No such luck. I sat aboard Bob for an entire hour. Bouncing. Could have been all day. I didn’t dare release my deathgrip of the reins to check my wristwatch, which I probably couldn’t have read anyway, what with all that bouncing.
“Good, Bob. Watch your step, Bob. Not so fast, Bob. Careful, Bob. Look out for that branch, Bob. Thanks, Bob. You’re a credit to your race, Bob.”
I wasn’t riding, I was being carried. Bob knew who was in charge and it wasn’t the kid in the saddle.
“So, Bob, have you been in the tourism industry for long? How’s your safety record, Bob?”
I looked up to see Wrangler Richard stop, turn in his saddle, and wait as Mom and Thunder navigated a rock-strewn path across the aforementioned burbling stream.
Which now loomed like some raging river of no return.
I watched as Thunder stumbled and Mom managed to maintain control of the huge beast. As though she was a combination of Annie Oakley and Billy Shoemaker.
All I could think of was the scene in Lonesome Dove where the lovable Irish guy with the great singing voice gets attacked by a nest of water moccasins, otherwise known as cottonmouths, gruesome vipers. He’s pulled under the flood waters, screaming. The last thing you see is a waving hand, like the lovable Irish guy with the great singing voice is signaling goodbye. Then he disappears under the surface, a poisonous snake hanging onto his thumb with one long fang.
I, for just the slightest moment, didn’t know whether to hurl lunch or wet my pants.
“Whoa. Oh, Bob, gosh. Well, it’s obvious we’ve come to the end of the trail. Yessir. No reason at all to go any further, none that I can see, that’s for certain. No need. No farther. Further, farther, you know what I mean. Last of the road. The hock stops here.”
“Nothing to worry about,” Barker assured me. “Let the horse have his head.” As if I had a choice.
Bob, without any signal whatsoever, stepped off the stream bank and into the abyss. Walked across the trinkling dribble with all the ease of a man crossing his own bedroom in the middle of the night, still asleep.
The rest of the ride is a blank. I blocked the entire matter out of my mind. Bouncing. My first trip on a moving horse was reduced to images of Barker’s back bobbing, the deep forest primeval, veritable verdant sylvan majesty, green everywhere. More bouncing.
Holding on very tight to Bob.
And wouldn’t you know it, just when I began to sense a bond forming between boy and beast, just when I knew for sure, maybe, I could make it back alive, we found ourselves, me and Bob, Bob and I, whatever, safely at the corral.
“You know, if we had died out there,” I told the horse, when I was at long last still in the saddle, when my head finally stopped bobbing, “they would have probably put your head on the wall.”
I jumped off. There was a gigantic sigh of relief.
It was Bob.
“Wasn’t that special!” Mom squealed in delight, her cheeks flushed with hues of crimson.
“If I ever go riding at Rolling Acres Ranch again,” I said, thinking myself better suited for bicycles, “I’ll certainly know who to ask for.”
“I couldn’t help noticing I shared some basic personality traits with old Sundown,” Barker noted. “That horse has never seen a patch of grass he didn’t want to eat, or a watering hole he didn’t want to visit, or a good looking mare he didn’t want to… ah, whinny at.”
“Gives me a finer appreciation for our forefathers.” My rearend felt like I’d just pleaded guilty to vandalizing government limousines in Hong Kong with spray paint and graffiti. I could barely walk, my skinny thighs cramped tighter than elevator cables.
“Now, can we go dancing?,” Mom asked.
“I am as ready for the twelve-step as I’ll ever be,” Barker said with a bit of a shrug.
“That’s two-step,” I corrected, feeling seriously bowlegged myself.