Rider’s Block

6. Chapter Six

Chapter six

"XX’s and OO’s, (An American Girl)" Trisha Yearwood

T hree stores in and I quickly reaffirm that the biggest flaw in my book is my vast over-generalization of an entire demographic of people. I don’t find rodeo-appropriate clothing until the third store. I did, however, find a lovely lavender sundress (which I bought, because it was too gorgeous not to) a new half-moon leather purse (which I also bought because it matched the dress…naturally), and several pairs of earrings I have nowhere to wear in the near future.

When I finally locate the “western store” I find myself inexplicably drawn to the wall of cowboy boots. I’ve never needed a pair before, but now’s the time. I’ve always appreciated them, but it felt a little silly to have a pair in Southern California.

It takes me a while to figure out the sorting method, but once I locate my size, I’m immediately drawn to a dusty red pair that would almost be plain if it weren’t for the color. The pairs surrounding them are all a standard black or brown, or brown with lots of floral design, but I can’t seem to look away from the red pair.

Screw it. I try on the boots, and they just feel right.

An attendant walks up behind me and I almost jump when she speaks. I didn’t hear her come around the corner, and until this point I’d seemingly had the store to myself. “Oh, you have to get them,” she says genuinely. I can sniff out a sales pitch in seconds, but her comment is from appreciation, not the pursuit of commission.

“You think?” I ask, turning side to side to inspect them from all angles.

“Absolutely. Not many people go for the red, but they suit you.”

“I think so too.” Then turning to her, I decide she seems trustworthy enough. “Can I ask you… would I look ridiculous wearing these to a rodeo?”

“Oh no, you’d be surprised what people show up wearing, these wouldn’t be weird at all.”

“Okay, can I ask you another question?” She nods emphatically with a slight smile. “What exactly do you wear to a rodeo?”

I’m at the store for the next hour while she walks me around, showing me different aspects of “cowboy apparel” and what’s for show, what’s for use, what’s for style, and what—and I quote— “yahoos” wear. I’m to stay away from snakeskin boots, belt buckles that aren’t attached to winning an event… but ultimately the parameters of what I can wear are pretty open-ended. I’m loaded with the stiffest pair of jeans I’ve ever worn—which she assures me means it’s the right kind of denim and that they will break in over time—and she tells me any shirt will do. I eye the sparkly belts for a few seconds, but she gives me a slight shake of her head, letting me subtly know that would make me stick out for all the wrong reasons.

“It’s not the belt itself, a lot of people wear them… but those are more for the Sweethearts, girls showing horses, or the Rodeo Queen contestants.”

“Rodeo Queen?”

“They’re a big deal and a lot, a lot of work. I don’t envy them.”

“Noted. What about hats? Should I get one?”

“That depends…” She trails off, seemingly deciding whether to tell me something or not. “There are two schools of thought when it comes to the hat,” she says, clearly deciding to spill the details. “If you’re looking to leave the rodeo with a companion for the evening—” she wiggles her eyebrows here rather suggestively “—don’t wear a hat. You’ll want to leave yourself open to wear his hat because, you know, wear the hat, ride the cowboy and all that. But if you don’t want to worry about that, then you can wear your own. Want to try some on?” She motions to a wall of hats that are too perfectly spaced for me not to take a quick picture, but not before I can clarify the one comment that quickly snagged my attention.

“You mean the wear-the-hat-ride-the-cowboy thing is real? I thought that was a movie thing.”

“Depends on who you talk to, I guess.”

“Noted. Yeah, let’s try a few hats on then…”

We walk over to the wall, and I try on five hats until we’ve found one that she assures me won’t make me look like the dreaded “yahoo.” We spend the next twenty minutes at the steamer getting it fitted and bent just right to fit my head, and she goes into great detail to tell me how to wear the hat to look like I know what I’m doing. Never tilted too far back, never dipped below my eyes, and always level to the ground. I practice putting it in place three times before she deems me ready.

I’m at the register dropping a pretty penny for this cowgirl starter pack when I realize I don’t know her name.

“Penny,” she says, holding out her hand to shake after I ask her. Through this shopping process we’ve become pretty fast friends, and she’s another one I can add to my list of trusting implicitly even though I’ve known her for all of an hour. She’s got the whole girl-next-door vibe working for her, and between her freckles and her curly dusty-brown hair, I bet she has the boys of this town eating out of the palm of her hand. “If you need any more info, give me a call,” she adds. “I’m here most weekdays because my parents own the shop. I work the front most days.”

“I’ll do that, I’m sure I’m going to have a million questions. Thank you for all your help.”

“Sure thing, I’ll probably see you around, Amelia!”

I walk out to the street with my new haul in hand. Penny was a landmine of information, and we only talked about clothes. I was an idiot to think I could write about a place I’d never actually been to. You can only google so much, you have to talk to people. I know this, but I ignored it in pursuit of a shortcut.

I’m chastising myself the whole walk back to pick up my car. Sean is a man of his word, and everything is ready and good to go. He caught a rock stuck in my axle as well, and assured me that had he not, I’d have heard it within the next twenty miles and the sound would have given me a heart attack. I pay him, pack up, and hop in my car ready to drive back to my little cottage.

This time on the drive I can actually plug in my phone to listen to music, and that almost…sort of…makes up for the fact that I hate driving this car. It’s so low to the ground. It’s too small. Every car around me seems ginormous. And the trucks? I might as well be a roly-poly on the road driving next to them.

I’ve got a white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel as I pull down the now somewhat familiar dirt road that leads to my cottage. Driving slowly, I make sure to let off the brake at even the barest hint of a whip on the backside of the car. It’s a bumpy ride, but I make it.

Unpacking my shopping haul and setting up my Wi-Fi, I hunker in to start peeling apart my book.

***

Hours passed and I didn’t even realize it. When I’m writing I lose track of everything else. It’s easy for me to go days without leaving my cottage back home, and I’ve sometimes gone a whole twenty-four hours without eating a real meal because I like to keep a bag of cashews, almonds, or macadamia nuts on my desk at all times so I don’t have to get up.

A rough knock at the door shocks me back into reality. It’s not a nice knock either, it’s suspiciously like the knock that woke me up bright and early this morning to take my car in. And considering I’m out in the middle of nowhere with only a handful of other people, I have a pretty good idea of who the knock belongs to.

I shuffle to the door in the house slippers I made sure to bring with me and open the door to see the two infamous Randall brothers greeting me with their respective scowl and smile combo. A formidable pair, these two.

“Hey, darlin’, ready for dinner?” Dean asks. “Mom said to make sure you came by again tonight. I’ve got to warn you, unless you’ve got a severe emergency, this is going to likely be a nightly thing.”

“So I’ve been told.” Even though it seems a little ridiculous, I kind of love it. “Can’t tell Nancy no, can you?”

“’Fraid not.”

“Alright, I’ll head there in a bit, dinner’s at six?”

“You can just ride with us. That car of yours is not made to be tussled around too much and if you’re going to be here for a while I’d recommend you use it as little as possible.” Dean looks all too pleased with himself, offering up a ride. He makes me miss my brother. They share a similar propensity to put their nose where they shouldn’t, but they’re both so endearing about it you can’t even be mad.

“I’ll probably need to change…” I say, looking down at my slippers. I hear a huff of what sounds suspiciously like laughter coming from Eric, but I think hell would have to freeze over before he’d actually laugh at something I had to say. But he surprises me by speaking up next.

“What you have on now is fine, minus the shoes. We’ll wait for you in the truck.”

I run back into my room to throw on a pair of sneakers, but in the process, I pass a mirror and cringe at what I see. My hair is spilling out of a braid in directions I didn’t even know were possible, and my shirt is so wrinkled you’d think I’d been sleeping all afternoon. I make quick work of my hair, using the waves from the braid to my advantage, and throw on a simple striped shirt and spritz a small amount of my perfume before heading to the truck. I’m not trying hard, I’m not here to impress anyone…really. But I should at least try.

When I hop in the back seat of the cab, I see Eric stiffen behind the wheel momentarily before shifting the truck into drive and hitting the road.

The main house is a place I could sincerely spend a lot of time in, but I don’t want to intrude more than I already am. Just coming over for dinner alone is more than I’d normally do, but it’s not like I have other pressing plans anyways.

And besides, I learned so much last night I can’t even imagine the culture cues I’ll pick up on after a month of this.

I walk in behind the towering brothers and am immediately pulled into a Nancy hug. I’m quick to offer work, and she’s equally as quick to assign me a task. Tonight, I’m on salad duty. The menu for the evening is lasagna, and in her words, “You need to get some green in these men or they’d eat only carbs and meat forever. It’s about balance.”

Making fast work of chopping the lettuce, I happily fall into the background as the rest of the crew from last night files in. I’m good at this background role, and it’s one I choose to take on often —diving into a task that prevents me from awkwardly standing to the side. Nancy seems like an intuitive person, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s why she lets me help out. It’s always so much easier to enter unknown social situations with a task.

Listening in on the conversations around the dinner table, I learn that the biggest item on the task list for the week is repairing the fencing. When I think about cattle roaming about open land, I don’t think about the fencing being manually taken care of. I see the fence just fine as I drive around, but the idea that human hands placed the fence and now meticulously mend the fence blows my mind a little. There’s just so much of it, it can’t be easy to keep mended properly.

I also learn tonight that this Saturday everyone is heading out to a rodeo. It’s one of the qualifiers I’ve read about, so the stakes are high. I also learn that Trevor and Dean have a good feeling about this year’s Team Roping event, and Dean has a lucky rope he’s a little reliant on. But the thing I notice the most is the tension that builds when George starts asking Eric about the Saddle Bronc event. My ears perk up at the mention of the event I found most intriguing during my research today, but I can’t help but notice the temperature in the room seems to drop, and conversation seems to zero in on the two as they talk about it.

Nancy, who is normally easygoing, has her shoulders practically up to her ears and her fork white-knuckle-gripped in her hand. I feel a tension headache coming just from looking at her. But George and Eric don’t seem to notice and keep talking about the various pieces of equipment he needs to get ready for the weekend.

Christine, who’s sitting next to me again tonight, must notice the confusion on my face. She leans in close enough that I can hear but not so close that it looks like we’re whispering. “Eric was in an accident. He’s the best Saddle Bronc rider in the PRCA, but since it happened it’s been…tense…around here anytime he gets back on the horse.”

“How bad was the accident?” I can’t help but ask. It’s likely the same accident Dean mentioned earlier.

“It was real bad. Nancy was a wreck. She wanted him to stop, but Eric does his own thing.”

I nod and continue to listen in on the conversation. Eric is as focused as I’ve ever seen him, his jaw set in determination. George has a look of concern on his face, too, but it’s buried beneath a get-it-done tone of voice. I don’t mean to stare, and I don’t even realize I am until Eric looks up and makes eye contact with me. His face is set in granite. I can’t imagine anyone on this planet could get him to change his mind with the way he looks right now. He holds my gaze for a few seconds longer than is comfortable before turning back to talk to George.

Dean pipes in from across the table, “Y’all down to rope again tonight?”

There’s a chorus of affirming grunts from around the table, and even Eric seems to brighten up at the idea. I look around at the women at the table to gauge their participation. I’d love to watch, but I don’t want to insert myself incorrectly into a situation. But it’s not nearly as divided as I thought. Looks like everyone is inclined to participate in the after-dinner activity as well, and Christine leans over to me once again. “You up for it, California?”

“Count me in.”