Biggie and the Devil Diet - By Nancy Bell Page 0,49

his bunk at night while they played some card game he couldn't make head nor tail of thinking of his sweetie back home. She wasn't much to look at, a little-bitty thing with a face like a raisin. And sometimes she'd talk to that feller like he had a tail, but boy could she cook." Rosebud laughed without making a sound and slapped his knees. "She could put together a fine gumbo that would make you stand up and slap your grandpa. And sweet tater pies? Umm-umm. Still and all, there was something else about her, something more important than her cooking, something he couldn't rightly put his finger on. He thought it might be the way she didn't seem to care what anybody thought about her, the way she'd say and do whatever she took a notion to, exactly like as if she had a sprig of mistletoe hanging from her coattails, if you take my meaning. It was like that she knew a secret that nobody else in the whole world knew. It made this gal awfully attractive in a way that this feller never really understood.

"Anyway, one weekend he went into town and wandered into a honky-tonk on the back street. You can't imagine how pleased he was when he discovered a musician playing blues music on an old piano. Well, he thought he was back home again. He ordered himself a beer and pulled his mouth organ out of his pocket, and when that piano player launched into 'Saint James Infirmary,' he commenced playing along. When the song was over, everybody in the place whooped and yelled and bought him beers. The pretty little gal behind the bar gave him a big kiss on the mouth."

"What's a mouth organ?"

"A harmonica. After that, every chance he got, he'd go in that bar where they liked him and spoke his language. He'd play his mouth organ until closing time, and everybody, especially the gal behind the bar, treated him like he was somebody special. Pretty soon he began to believe it. He forgot why he'd come to the ranch in the first place."

"Why was that?"

"Pay attention, son. He was supposed to be saving up his money so he could marry his little sweetie back home."

"Oh. So what happened?"

"He took to waiting until the gal, Rosa, got off from the bar at night so he could walk her home. Some nights he wouldn't get back to the bunkhouse until the sky was turning gray in the east. Needless to say, he didn't get much sleep on account of they had to get up at the crack of dawn to do their work. Well, one day they was ropin' calves—"

"Do they really do that? Outside of rodeos, I mean."

"Shoot yeah, they do. They had to get 'um in the pen to vaccinate them. Well, this feller, he was so groggy from not getting any sleep that he somehow got both arms tangled up in his lasso and, before he could stop it, he'd done broke both his wrists. Well, naturally, they fired him."

"That's cold."

"It ain't cold. A wrangler with two broke wrists ain't no more good than tits on a boar hog. Besides, it was his own fault he done it. But the feller didn't see it that way. He just felt sorry for himself. So soon's the doctor put splints on his wrists, he headed into town to get a little sympathy from Rosa."

"I feel kinda sorry for him."

"So did he. Well, he walked into the bar and first thing, everybody started clapping and calling for him to get out his mouth organ. He didn't do nothin' but put on a pitiful face and hold up his bandaged wrists. He sat down at the bar and ordered a beer with a straw and waited for somebody to ask what happened to him."

"And did they?"

"Nope. Not even Rosa. She spent the whole night talking to a feed salesman from Corpus. Well, he went back to the bunkhouse and got his gear and headed down to the bus station to take the next bus back to Natchitoches."

"So he married his sweetie back home?"

"Yeah, he married her— but it taken him ten long years to do it."

"How come?"

"On account of he'd done messed with her; and a gal like that, she don't take kindly to bein' messed with. But he always said, she was worth the wait."

"And I guess the sweetie is Monica and Rosa's Misty and I'm your friend."

"I never said