their truck tailgates and pretended not to notice.
She took her time strolling to the entrance gate, dawdling over the jewelry tables. A young girl dressed in a tourist-pleasing buckskin dress smiled at her over a display of fetish necklaces and squash-blossom pendants. Sarah fingered a cheap silver necklace that was obviously made for the tourist trade. A tiny running horse dangled from the chain, frozen in motion, its silver mane streaming from its neck.
The child behind the table dimpled, smiling so hard her eyes almost disappeared behind her plump cheeks. “Only five dollars.” She gave Sarah a sly sideways look, her eyes gleaming mischief.
“Three,” Sarah said, catching on to the game.
“Okay.”
Dang. The kid was sharp. Sarah hadn’t really intended to buy anything, but she handed over a few crumpled dollars from her wallet and strung the necklace around her neck. Silly, cheap thing. And a horse, too. She shoved the charm inside her shirt and hurried over to the ticket line.
The voice of the rodeo clown crackled from a tinny speaker mounted high on a light pole, bantering with the announcer about goats and what great girlfriends they made. She could picture him in his baggy pants and wide suspenders, boogying on a barrel in the middle of the arena while he kept up a constant patter between rides. Shifting from one foot to the other, she breathed in the familiar odor of popcorn, beer, and nachos and flashed her companion pass at the sleepy cowboy slouching against the gate.
“Got yourself a cowboy? Better get in there,” he said. “Buckin’s ’bout to start.”
She nodded her thanks and walked inside, pausing at the rail that edged the grandstand as rock music blared. The clown jumped off the barrel and crawled inside, his painted face scrunched up in exaggerated terror as a gate across the arena swung open. A bull stormed out, leaping like a cat on a hotplate, hitting the ground so hard with his front hooves that the cowboy on his back almost fell onto his neck. Sarah clutched the top rail with both hands, her lips moving in a silent prayer. Rodeo always stirred her emotions. Much as she wanted to be the bored city girl, she could feel the excitement as the rider struggled for balance with the bull’s every buck.
Tilting sideways as the bull humped up his forequarters and leapt into a clockwise spin, the rider righted himself with a mighty heave of his muscled arm. He seemed totally in control now, his free hand held high, his outside leg spurring while the bull whirled in a frenzied blur. His hat shaded his face, but the size of him made her pretty sure it was Lane.
The announcer yammered with excitement and the crowd cheered as the bull stopped dead, snorted once, and spun the other way. The cowboy slid down into the spin, his arm muscles bulging as he strained to haul himself back up on the bull’s back, but it was no use. Centrifugal force pulled him into the well like a leaf sucked into a whirlpool, and he hit the dirt shoulder first.
His hat flew off as he struck the ground and Sarah saw that it was Lane, scrambling to get his feet under him and run for the fence. Two bullfighters in baggy plaid shorts and red T-shirts rushed the bull, waving their arms in a frantic dance of distraction, but the animal dipped one blunt horn under Lane’s ribs and tossed him into the air with a quick twitch of his head.
Sarah clapped her hand over her mouth to stifle a scream as his body rose into the air. There was a flurry of activity and when the dust cleared, Lane lay motionless on the ground. His hat lay in the dirt just inches from his outstretched hand, a massive hoof print crushing the crown.
Sarah stared down at the hat. The image of it lying there in the dust echoed an image from her past and opened her mind like a key sliding into a matching lock. Memories flooded into her mind. Another accident. Another man.
Another hat lying in the dust.
***
That day, Sarah had been a typical high schooler leading a typical high school life. As usual, she’d rushed through the hallways at school and daydreamed through her classes, anxious to get home.
Being eager to get home was a new thing for her. Before her mother met and married Roy Price, it had just been her mother, her sister, and herself, three women