Handful of Sky (22 page)

“Oh, I don’t know,” Shallie answered, smiling warmly, “I’ve noticed some pretty attractive ‘temptations’ walking around the streets right here in”—Shallie glanced quickly at the station’s logo on the camera—“Houston.”

The interviewer laughed with calculated warmth.

“But I do know what you mean,” Shallie continued.
“And you’re right about business. When I’m producing a rodeo there’s not a second to spare for appreciating the ‘scenery.’ ”

Another laugh and the show was over. The station’s limousine dropped Shallie back at Houston’s seventy-thousand-seat Reliant Stadium, where the turf was being rolled up and replaced by truckloads of dirt and sand in preparation for the beginning of the two-week run of the largest rodeo in the world. At the rodeo office, Shallie learned that 360 contestants had entered and would be vying for over two million dollars in prize money in front of more than a million total fans.

“Hey, Shallie, what dink of a horse did I draw?” Shallie turned to see Emile Boulier standing behind her. His easygoing, boyish manner was always a welcome relief. She enjoyed his good-natured kidding and suspected that he had a bit of a crush on her.

“You’re up on Zeus tonight and Laredo in the second go-round.”

“I can’t believe it!” Boulier whooped. “Two good broncs. For once I stand half a chance of scratching a decent score. Unless McIver’s here, I might even be good for the all-around money.”

Shallie felt the Arctic Zone at the pit of her stomach freeze over again at the mention of Hunt’s name. The red-haired cowboy edged past her to scrutinize the list himself.

“Well, bye-bye all-around money,” Boulier grumbled. “McIver’s entered. That’s real unusual. He hasn’t come near a rodeo you’ve contracted since Albuquerque. I figured he was afraid of drawing Pegasus.”

Hunt is here.
The three words shrieked in her ears. She checked the list. There he was, scheduled to ride the last two days of the rodeo’s two-week run.

“At least I won’t be the only one losing out on that first-prize money. No one is going to beat McIver. He’s been riding like a maniac since Albuquerque. And I mean that for a fact. The man rides like he’s about half a bubble off plumb. He just goes wild on a bronc. The funny thing about it is, though, the rest of the time he’s so quiet it scares you. He always seems like he’s stalking something. Like his mind is on something that’s just in back of you or right around the corner. It’s spooky.”

Stories about Hunt had drifted back to Shallie over the past months. Some said it was an old score he was settling with his grandfather that had put the iron in his spine. Some said Hunt just needed the money badly enough to ride that well. The ones who really knew rodeo, though, and what makes rodeo’s heart beat, said he was obsessed. Hunt McIver was determined to put the best ride on a bronc that man had ever made on animal.

“There’s just no way to beat McIver. He’s on a hot streak that’s got us all iced,” Boulier lamented. “Even
though he missed the first part of the season, he’s still won enough to buy himself a ticket to the Finals.”

Shallie nodded. Her throat was drawn up tight. She couldn’t trust herself to speak. Her mind whirled.
Maybe he’s hurting as much as I am.
The thought surfaced from the maelstrom churning through her brain, like a bit of flotsam thrown ashore after a storm. That slender hope grew over the next few days, nurtured by Shallie’s wild yearnings.
I must have meant something to him,
she dared to theorize.

*  *  *

By the twelfth day of the Houston show, she believed it. She dressed with extra care, slipping on the blouse she’d searched Houston for. It was a deep emerald green. Hunt was riding that night.

As she was heading for the chutes, her uncle intercepted her. “Jake’s here tonight. He’d like us to join him.”

Shallie was about to protest, then realized that she would stand a better chance of talking with Hunt in his grandfather’s box than she would down by the chutes. Besides, if her hopes had any substance to them at all, he would search her out wherever she was.

The parking lot they crossed was thick with Cadillacs, Mercedes, and the scent of money. Shallie followed her uncle to the stadium’s most exclusive club, where Jake McIver sat surrounded by rodeo officials and wealthy hangers-on. A drink was in every hand and the
rodeo was flashing in front of them across a closed-circuit television screen.

“Shalimar Larkin, come sit down here next to me and let’s watch that grandson of mine whip a few cowboys.” His cronies joined in Jake’s laughter. He shooed a kewpie doll of a blonde off his lap and waved Shallie over. “You’ve been doing a hell of a job,” he said as she sat down beside him. “Got nothing but good reports.” His attention turned to the screen. “Isn’t that your horse Pegasus?”

As Shallie looked up, it seemed the roan was about to burst through the screen and lunge right into their faces. He was in his usual unridable form.

“Damn, but you skinned me on that deal, girl.” A grudging admiration lurked in Jake’s statement.

The door swung open and Shallie froze, hoping and fearing that it might be Hunt, even though logic told her that he had to be down at the chutes preparing for his ride. She turned. It was Miriam Prescott. Her uncle jumped out of his chair to meet her at the door and escort her to the table. It brought Shallie a rare moment of pleasure to see her uncle so obviously in love and having his love returned so completely. Since the Albuquerque show, Walter had finally given in and bought a cell phone so that he could call Miriam from whichever rodeo they were working that week. A couple of times she’d flown out to meet him. It made Shallie both happy and even more lonesome than ever to see the one person closest to
her caught in the throes of a mutual romantic entanglement. He was glowing now as Miriam demurely sat beside him and responded to his proud introductions with her usual grace and poise.

When Shallie turned back to the screen, Hunt’s face dominated it. He lunged out of the gate with his spurs tucked well above the point of his bronc’s shoulders. He was rock steady, his hand glued so solidly to the rigging on the bronc’s twisting back that he made it appear as if the riders who had gone before had been kidding when they’d been bucked off. Hunt made bronc riding look like no more than an exercise of will.

“I was hot,” Jake McIver intoned. “And his father was hot. But that boy puts us both in the shade.”

The eight-second buzzer sounded. Hunt, still in perfect time with the horse’s movements, rocketed into the air, landing on his feet. He walked away from the crowd’s ovation like a man eager to leave the office at the end of a hard day.

“Will Hunt be joining you?” Shallie heard a tiny crack in her voice and hoped no one else noticed.

“Oh, I doubt it,” Jake sighed.

His melancholic tone triggered an onslaught of memories. Shallie saw herself hurling the accusation at Hunt that he was just like his grandfather. Saw his face whiten and remembered the conflict she had perceived earlier when they’d discussed Jake McIver. Human relationships
were rarely simple. She’d known that. Why had she ever believed that such a basic rule didn’t apply to Hunt and his grandfather?

A second later she was on her feet heading for the chutes. By the time she wound her way through the concrete maze of the vast stadium, past the booths selling bumper stickers reading “Only Cowgirls are Tough Enough to Love Cowboys,” and the cotton candy concessions, and the man hawking $860 aardvark-skin boots, the calf roping was half over and the saddle bronc riders had taken over the warm-up area recently vacated by the bareback riders.

Petey was loading saddle broncs into the chutes. She tapped him on the shoulder. He turned and his eyes went to her hands. During the long miles they’d spent together hauling livestock across the country, Petey had taught her the rudiments of sign language.

“Where’s Hunt?” she asked with a few flicks of her hand.

“Gone,” Petey answered in even fewer.

“Where?”

Petey answered with a shrug and uplifted palms, saying either that he didn’t know or didn’t care. She glanced around. Two old veterans were crouched down on the ground, their feet in the stirrups of their saddles, stretching the leather loose.

“Yeah,” she overheard one of the pair drawl to his
buddy, “that’s the way it is with him. He rides a different bronc and a different woman in every town.”

His friend laughed, pulling lips back over gums flecked with blackish-brown specks of chewing tobacco.

Who were they talking about? Shallie tried to dismiss her own question. What did it matter
who
they were discussing? It could be most of the cowboys on the circuit. The irony amused her. She’d been so upset about Trish Stephans’s and Jake McIver’s influence, when all along it was rodeo and the different women in every town she should have been blaming. She’d known that from the start. Let Hunt McIver prove it to her if he was any different.

The next morning’s paper showed Shallie just how close she’d come to utterly humiliating herself. The
Houston Chronicle
had a big double-page spread on the rodeo. It included an interview with her, but was dominated by a picture of Hunt with Trish at his side, beaming lovingly into his face. The caption read: “The crown prince and princess of rodeo step out for an evening on the town after last night’s performance, highlighted by McIver’s showstopping ride.”

On the next, the last, day of the rodeo’s run, Shallie studiously avoided the bucking chutes. She watched Hunt’s second showstopping ride on closed-circuit television. From her seclusion high up in the stadium club she saw him accept both the buckle for winning the bareback
riding and Trish’s congratulatory kiss. She watched and tried to hate him. She tried, but all Shallie succeeded in doing was conjuring up a whole new platoon of ghosts, each one with a memory to devil her.

Shallie was alone in the club. The usual crew had all left for the invitation-only award ceremony. Walter had agreed to collect their award for producing a smooth, money-making rodeo. She flicked off the set and gathered up her gear. There was a rodeo to put on in El Paso. She left a message for Walter to meet her there. She wanted to be on the road by the time the ceremony was over.

Driving away from Reliant Stadium, Shallie vowed that she wouldn’t waste another minute of her life moping over a man she could never have. But even her determination could not keep the black dog of depression from hounding her. The ache that had opened up in that parking lot in Albuquerque throbbed now with a pain that wasn’t assuaged by even the tiniest flicker of hope. It was torn open every time she passed a billboard and Hunt peered down at her, or she picked up a newspaper or magazine and saw more pictures of the “crown prince and princess of rodeo.”

At El Paso, she discovered she could keep depression at bay in groups. As usual, Walter disappeared at the end of the first show, running off to call Miriam and spend an hour telling her about the rodeo. Since Albuquerque, that had been Shallie’s signal to troop back to
her motel room. But after Houston she was determined to extinguish all memories of and longings for Hunt. So, when Emile Boulier asked in his endearingly eager, forthright way if she might possibly want to stop by the party later, she agreed.

It was after midnight by the time Shallie had finished with the stock. Emile was waiting to escort her to the rented hall where a famous boot manufacturer was hosting the festivities. The strains of a country waltz floated out to greet them. It was an old Cajun classic, “Jolie Blonde Waltz.” Emile brightened as the French words reached his ears.

“May I have this dance, mam’selle?” he joked.

Shallie fought down the stab of sadness piercing her as she remembered that Hunt had made the same joke. But she laughed and fell into the waltz’s swaying rhythm. It was a brittle, forced laugh. She hoped Emile wouldn’t detect its falseness. The feel of his broad chest against hers was so like Hunt’s. If she just shut her eyes, she could believe that Hunt was holding her, that it was Hunt guiding her through the enchanting patterns woven by the music. It was comforting to feel strong arms around her again. She snuggled into them like a bird sheltering against a storm. Arms wrapped more tightly about her and the heart beating above her own picked up its tempo.

“Shallie, I—” The sound of Emile’s voice rudely
broke the momentary spell Shallie had allowed herself to fall under. She jerked away from the startled cowboy, stammering apologies.

“I’m sorry, I’ve been tired lately. I . . .” Her words dribbled off. How could she apologize to one man for using him as a stand-in for another she loved? She drew away from Emile and headed toward the pool of light spilling out of the open door of the hall. An overflow of cowboys, many with their contestant numbers still pinned to their backs, most with a buckle bunny hung on one arm, stood in the pool of light.

“Shallie Larkin,” a voice from the crowd called out as she approached the crowded hall. “Never thought I’d catch you mingling with the common folk.” It was Jesse Southerland weaving toward her. He stuck a glass in her hand and filled it from the bottle he was carrying, sloshing the amber-colored liquid on her hand as well.

“Goodness,” Jesse said in mock alarm, “let me wipe that off for you, Miss Stock Contractor.” He gallantly pulled Shallie’s hand into his own, then proceeded to lick the spilled whiskey off with his tongue. Shallie pulled her hand away and felt Emile tense beside her. Jesse laughed, both at his prank and Shallie’s outrage. Emile stepped forward. Shallie joined in Jesse’s laughter, knowing it was the only way to forestall the fight that the two rivals would have welcomed.

“Who did you draw this evening?” she asked Jesse,
already knowing the answer but hoping to defuse the tension.

“Got a dink.” Jesse’s mind was already miles away from thoughts of fighting as he described the horse’s performance. A few more rough stock riders joined them, and they gossiped about bulls and broncs as if they were absent friends. With each drink, Shallie found that the conversation grew more animated, more witty. She enjoyed the attention the cowboys rained on her, leaving the buckle bunnies ignored. Jesse and Emile vied to amuse her. Though she knew that the source of Jesse’s interest in her was jealousy, settling a score with Hunt McIver for snatching Trish from him, she didn’t care. After a couple of stiff drinks, Shallie no longer cared about anything. It was a wonderful, floaty feeling after all the months of heaviness.