The Other Side of Bad (The Tucker Novels) by Barton R.O

Author:Barton, R.O. [Barton, R.O.]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: R.O. Barton
Published: 2013-03-10T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 33

Almost to Mexico

About 35 miles south of Zapata, we drove into a little dust bowl of a town called Lopeno. We passed a gas station that was open. In the washed out yellow light from the station, I saw a cowboy wearing dusty chaps, pumping gas into an old faded red pickup truck. Standing nonchalantly in the back of the pickup was a fully saddled buckskin quarter horse, with a lariat hanging from the saddle horn. His head was a full three feet above the cab of the truck, his ears standing straight up as he watched his partner gas up. There were no sides or anything to keep the horse from tumbling out sideways, only his steady balance.

I smiled as I thought, ‘a real working team, those two’.

“Allen told me you used to Rodeo.”

“Uh-huh.”

“What’d ya do?”

“Calf roping and bull riding.”

“No shit?”

“No shit.”

“Were you any good?”

“Not at calf roping, had a great horse and bad ankles.”

“When did you stop?”

“About a year ago.”

“Why, get hurt?”

“No, a good friend did, got stepped on by a bull, in the chest, almost died.”

He looked over at me and said, “Scare you?”

“Yeah, but not as much as my wife telling me she wouldn’t give me anymore if I kept riding,” I said.

With a small laugh, he said, “Yeah, I’ve seen your wife. That’d do it for me, too. No offense, Tucker, I meant it as a compliment.”

I sat there, remembering Margie, standing in the candlelight wearing a shear negligee, holding a glass of champagne, when she gave me that ultimatum. I hadn’t seen her in three weeks and had spent the last week of that sitting in a Fort Worth hospital with my rodeo partner, Jimmy Green. Waiting to see if he was going to live or not.

Her exact words were, ‘Like what you see?’

I could only nod.

Then she said, ‘If you ever get on another bull, you’ll never get on this again.’

I never got on another bull. It wasn’t that hard of a decision, because, something else was.

A few miles south of Lopeno, Teemo’s right blinker came on. We turned west on a small dirt road.

“You gonna throw some out now?” Phil asked.

“Not yet.”

“Whatcha waitin’ for?”

“It’s just the first turn off the highway, don’t get nervous, we don’t know how many turns we’re going to make and how many of these we’re going to have to use. I’d hate to run out somewhere in the real boonies.”

“Yeah, you’re right.”

“But, I’ll write this turn down, so we don’t get confused as to when I started making notes,” I said as I wrote down, ‘1- t-R’.

Phil said, “Good idea.”

About half a mile later, the road started to veer back south, paralleling 83. A mile or so further, Teemo slowed and turned right again.

I rolled down my window and said, “Lag back a bit, let him get a little ahead before you turn. I’d hate for him to look in his mirror and see these flying out our window.”

For some reason, this tickled Phil and he laughed.

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