Country Boys by Richard Labonte

Author:Richard Labonte
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cleis Press
Published: 2010-08-16T00:00:00+00:00

BAREBACK RIDER

Michael Bracken

Every time the rodeo came to town, the local bars were crowded with hard-muscled men clad in tight-fitting Wranglers, snap-button shirts, low-heeled ropers, sweat-stained Stetsons, and belt buckles the size of dinner plates. Following the rodeo circuit were the wannabes and the used-to-bes, the groupies and the clingers-on, and they crowded into the bars along with the cowboys and the rodeo employees. Included in every crowd in every bar were the locals, the men and women who brushed against masculine greatness for one long weekend and lived on the adrenaline rush for the following twelve months.

Justin Longacre, a bareback rider who frequently finished in the money, rolled into town in his extended cab dually the day before the rodeo’s first event, booked himself a room at the Motel 6 just down the road from the coliseum, and began to prowl the local bars. Justin had the sinewy build of a man who had been stretched tight and held together by sheer determination. Unlike other bareback riders, the abuse he had endured seemed negligible: he’d smashed his face against the skull of a particularly spirited bronc, leaving his nose with a flat spot just above his nostrils, and a bad dismount had broken his left leg, giving him a barely perceptible limp.

In each of the bars Justin visited, men bought his drinks and women sidled up to him, offering themselves as if they were breeder cows. He always politely tasted the drinks and thanked the women for their attention before moving on, riding the local alcohol circuit the way he rode the southwest rodeo circuit.

In one bar near the Interstate, a well-lit place that catered to upscale out-of-towners, he had to explain to a buxom young coed what a bareback rider did.

“It’s just me and the horse,” he said. “No saddle, no stirrups, no reins, just a leather rigging that looks like a suitcase handle on a strap.”

He explained to the attentive coed that cowboys grab the handle with one hand and throw their free hand in the air to keep from touching themselves or the horse during the ride. The cowboy must mark out when the horse leaves the chute, making sure that both spurs touch the bronc’s shoulders. Then the cowboy spurs the horse from shoulder to rigging, doing his best to score points based on his strength, control, and spurring action during the eight-second ride.

“That sounds crazy,” the coed said.

Justin had heard another rider describe it once and he’d repeated the description ever since. “It’s the hardest eight-second ride on earth,” Justin said, “like riding a jackhammer one-handed.”

The coed lost interest when Justin failed to produce a room key or a desire to pay her bar tab and she wandered away in search of a softer touch. Justin resumed his cruise through the central Texas town’s ample supply of watering holes until he found himself straddling a red leatherette stool and leaning against the worn wood of a bar in a dark hole downtown, about as far away from rodeo people as he could get in distance and ideology.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.