Close Range: Brokeback Mountain and other stories

Late August and hot as billy hell, getting on out of Miles City Pake’s head of maps failed and they ended on rim-rock south of the Wyo line, tremendous roll of rough country in front of them, a hundred-mile sightline with bands of antelope and cattle like tiny ink flecks that flew from hard-worked nib pens on old promissory notes. They backtracked and sidetracked and a few miles outside Greybull Diamond pointed at the trucks drawn up in front of a slouched ranch house that had been converted into a bar, the squared logs weathered almost black.

“On the end, that’s Sweets Musgrove’s horse trailer, right? And Nachtigal’s rig. Goddamn calf ropers, talk about their horses like they’re women. You hear Nachtigal last night? ‘She’s honest, she’s good, she never cheated on me.’ Talking about his horse.”

“How I feel about my horse.”

“Pull in. I am going to drink a beer without taking a breath.”

“Lucky if we git out alive goin where them guys are. Nachtigal’s crazy. Rest of em don’t talk about nothin but their trailers.”

“I don’t give a shit, Pake. You have your coffee, but I need a couple beers.”

Above the door a slab of pine hung, the name of the place, Saddle Rack, scorched deep. Diamond pushed open the plank door, pocked with bullet holes in a range of calibers. It was one of the good places, dark, the log walls burned with hundreds of cattle brands, dim photographs of long-dead bronc busters high in the clouds and roundup crews in sweaters and woolly chaps. At the back of the room stood the oldest jukebox in the world, a crusty, dented machine with the neon gone dead and a flashlight on a string for patrons fussy enough to want to make a choice. The high gliding 1935 voice of Milton Brown was drifting, “oh bree-yee-yee-yeeze” over the zinc bar and four tables.

The bartender was a hardheaded old baldy with a beak and a cleft chin. Bottles, spigots, and a dirty mirror—the bartender’s territory was not complex. He looked at them and Pake said ginger ale after gauging the tarry liquid on the hot plate. Diamond recognized he was going to get seriously drunk here. Sweets Musgrove and Nachtigal, Ike Soot, Jim Jack Jett, hats off, receding hairlines in full view, sat at one of the tables, Jim Jack drinking red beer, the others whiskey and they were sliding deep down, cigars in honor of Nachtigal’s daughter’s first barrel race win, the cigars half-puffed and dead in the ashtray.

“What the hell you doin here?”

“Shit, you don’t go past Saddle Rack without you stop and git irrigated.”

“Looks like it.”

Nachtigal gestured at the jukebox, “Ain’t you got no Clint Black? No Dwight Yoakam?”

“Shut up and like what you get,” said the bartender. “You’re hearin early pedal steel. You’re hearin priceless stuff. You rodeo boys don’t know nothin about country music.”

“Horseshit.” Ike Soot took a pair of dice from his pocket.

“Roll the bones, see who’s goin a pay.”

“You buyin, Nachtigal,” said Jim Jack. “I’m cleaned out. What little I won, lost it to that Indan sumbitch, Black Vest, works for one a the stock contractors. All or nothin, not a little bit but the whole damn everthing. One throw. He got a pair a bone dice, only one spot between the two, shakes em, throws em down. It’s quick.”

“I played that with him. Want some advice?”

“No.”

It was come and go with the drinks and in a while Jim Jack said something about babies and wives and the pleasures of home which started Pake off on one of his family-hearth lectures, and with the next round Ike Soot cried a little and said the happiest day of his life was when he put that gold buckle in his daddy’s hand and said, I done it for you. Musgrove topped them all by confessing that he had split the $8,200 he picked up at the Finals between his grandmother and a home for blind orphans. With five whiskeys and four beers sloshing, Diamond took a turn, addressing them all, even the two dusty, sweat-runneled ranch hands who’d come in off the baler to press their faces against the cold pitcher of beer Ranny stood between them.

“You all make a big noise about family, what I hear, wife and kids, ma and pa, sis and bub, but none of you spend much time at home and you never wanted to or you wouldn’t be in rodeo. Rodeo’s the family. Ones back at the ranch don’t count for shit.”

One of the hands at the bar slapped his palm down and Nachtigal marked him with his eye.

Diamond held up the whiskey glass.

“Here’s to it. Nobody sends you out to do chores, treats you like a fool. Take your picture, you’re on t.v., ask your wild-hair opinion, get your autograph. You’re somebody, right? Here’s to it. Rodeo. They say we’re dumb but they don’t say we’re cowards. Here’s to big money for short rides, here’s to busted spines and pulled groins, empty pockets, damn all-night driving, chance to buck out—if you got good medicine, happens to somebody else. Know what I think? I think—” But he didn’t know what he thought except that Ike Soot was swinging at him, but it was only a motion to catch him before he smashed into the cigar butts. That was the night he lost his star-spangled bandanna and went into the slump.

“Last time I seen that wipe somebody was moppin puke off the floor with it,” said Bitts. “And it weren’t me.”

In the sixth second the bull stopped dead, then shifted everything the other way and immediately back again and he was lost, flying to the left into his hand and over the animal’s shoulder, his eye catching the wet glare of the bull, but his hand turned upside down and jammed. He was hung up and good. Stay on your feet, he said aloud, jump, amen. The bull was crazy to get rid of him and the clanging bell. Diamond was jerked high off the ground with every lunge, snapped like a towel. The rope was in a half-twist, binding his folded fingers against the bull’s back and he could not turn his hand over and open the fingers. Everything in him strained to touch the ground with his feet but the bull was too big and he was too small. The animal spun so rapidly its shape seemed to the watchers like mottled streaks of paint, the rider a paint rag. The bullfighters darted like terriers. The bull whipped him from the Arctic Circle to the Mexico border with every plunge. There was bull hair in his mouth. His arm was being pulled from its socket. It went on and on. This time he was going to die in front of shouting strangers. The bull’s drop lifted him high and the bullfighter, waiting for the chance, thrust his hand up under Diamond’s arm, rammed the tail of the rope through and jerked. The fingers of his glove opened and he fell cartwheeling away from hooves. The next moment the bull was on him, hooking. He curled, got his good arm over his head.

“Oh man, get up, this’s a mean one,” someone far away called and he was running on all fours, rump in the air, to the metal rails, a clown there, the bull already gone. The audience suddenly laughed and out of the corner of his eye he saw the other clown mocking his stagger. He pressed against the rails, back to the audience, dazed, unable to move. They were waiting for him to get out of the arena. Beyond the beating rain sirens sounded faint and sad.

A hand patted him twice on the right shoulder, someone said, “Can you walk?” Trembling, he tried to nod his head and could not. His left arm hung limp. He profoundly believed death had marked him out, then had ridden him almost to the buzzer, but had somehow wrecked. The man got in under his right arm, someone else grasped him around the waist, half-carried him to a room where a local sawbones sat swinging one foot and smoking a cigarette. No sports medicine team here. He thought dully that he did not want to be looked at by a doctor who smoked. From the arena the announcer’s voice echoed as though in a culvert, “What a ride, folks, far as it went, but all for nothin, a zero for Diamond Felts, but you got a be proud a what this young man stands for, don’t let him go away without a big hand, he’s goin a be all right, and now here’s Dunny Scotus from Whipup, Texas—”

He could smell the doctor’s clouded breath, his own rank stench. He was slippery with sweat and the roaring pain.

“Can you move your arm? Are your fingers numb? Can you feel this? O.k., let’s get this shirt off.” He set the jaws of his scissors at the cuff and began to cut up the sleeve.

“This’s a fifty-dollar shirt,” whispered Diamond. It was a new one with a design of red feathers and black arrows across the sleeves and breast.

“Believe me, you wouldn’t appreciate it if I tried to pull your arm out of the sleeve.” The scissors worked across the front yoke and the ruined shirt fell away. The air felt cold on his wet skin. He shook and shook. It was a bad luck shirt now anyway.

“There you go,” said the doctor. “Dislocated shoulder. Humerus displaced forward from the shoulder socket. All right, I’m going to try to reposition the humerus.” The doctor’s chin was against the back of his shoulder, his hands taking the useless arm, powerful smell of tobacco. “This will hurt for a minute. I’m going to manipulate this—”

“Jesus CHRIST!” The pain was excruciating and violent. The tears rolled down his hot face and he couldn’t help it.

“Cowboy up,” said the doctor sardonically.

Pake Bitts walked in, looked at him with interest.

“Got hung up, hah? I didn’t see it but they said you got hung up pretty good. Twenty-eight seconds. They’ll put you on the videos. Thunderstorm out there.” He was damp from the shower, last week’s scab still riding his upper lip and a fresh raw scrape on the side of his jaw. He spoke to the doctor. “Thow his shoulder out? Can he drive? It’s his turn a drive. We got a be in south Texas two o’clock tomorrow afternoon.”

The doctor finished wrapping the cast, lit another cigarette. “I wouldn’t want to do it—right hand’s all he’s got. Dislocated shoulder, it’s not just a question of pop it back in and away you go. He could need surgery. There’s injured ligaments, internal bleeding, swelling, pain, could be some nerve or blood vessel damage. He’s hurting. He’s going to be eating aspirin by the handful. He’s going to be in the cast for a month. If he’s going to drive, one-handed or with his teeth, I can’t give him codeine and you’d better not let him take any either. Call your insurance company, make sure you’re covered for injury-impaired driving.”

“What insurance?” said Pake, then, “You ought a quit off smokin,” and to Diamond, “Well, the Good Lord spared you. When can we get out a here? Hey, you see how they spelled my name? Good Lord.” He yawned hugely, had driven all the last night coming down from Idaho.

“Give me ten. Let me get in the shower, steady up. You get my rope and war bag. I’ll be o.k. to drive. I just need ten.”

The doctor said, “On your way, pal.”

Someone else was coming in, a deep cut over his left eyebrow, finger pressed below the cut to keep the blood out of his rapidly swelling eyes and he was saying, just tape it up, tape the fuckin eyes open, I’m gettin on one.

He undressed one-handed in the grimy concrete shower room having trouble with the four-buckle chaps and his bootstraps. The pain came in long ocean rollers. He couldn’t get on the other side of it. There was someone in one of the shower stalls, leaning his forehead against the concrete, hands flat against the wall and taking hot water on the back of his neck.

Diamond saw himself in the spotted mirror, two black eyes, bloody nostrils, his abraded right cheek, his hair dark with sweat, bull hairs stuck to his dirty, tear-streaked face, a bruise from armpit to buttocks. He was dizzy with the pain and a huge weariness overtook him. The euphoric charge had never kicked in this time. If he were dead this might be hell—smoking doctors and rank bulls, eight hundred miles of night road ahead, hurting all the way.

The cascade of water stopped and Tee Dove came out of the shower, hair plastered flat. He was ancient, Diamond knew, thirty-six, an old man for bullriding but still doing it. His sallow-cheeked face was a map of surgical repair and he carried enough body scars to open a store. A few months earlier Diamond had seen him, broken nose draining dark blood, take two yellow pencils and push one into each nostril, maneuvering them until the smashed cartilage and nasal bones were forced back into position.

Dove rubbed his scarred torso with his ragged but lucky towel, showed his fox teeth to Diamond, said, “Ain’t it a bone game, bro.”

Outside the rain had stopped, the truck gleamed wet, gutters flooded with runoff. Pake Bitts was in the passenger seat, already asleep and snoring gently. He woke when Diamond, bare-chested, barefooted, pulled the seat forward, threw in the cut shirt, fumbled one-handed in his duffel bag for an oversize sweatshirt he could get over the cast, jammed into his old athletic shoes, got in and started the engine.

“You o.k. to drive? You hold out two, three hours while I get some sleep, I’ll take it the rest a the way. You drive the whole road is not a necessity by no means.”

“It’s o.k. How did they spell your name?”

“C-A-K-E. Cake Bitts. Nance’ll laugh her head off over that one. Bum a rag, brother, we’re runnin late.” And he was asleep again, calloused hand resting on his thigh palm up and a little open as though to receive something in it.