Zigzag (14 page)

It was almost six o'clock
before Dory pulled the car off the main road and onto a dirt one. Iris and Marsh had been complaining of hunger for fifty miles. I just wanted to get out of the backseat and move my legs.

“Where are we
going
?” Iris said. “We're in the middle of nowhere and I'm starving!”

Dory was driving slowly and consulting a hand-drawn map. “This is the right way. We're almost there.”

“Do they even
have
any restaurants out here?” Marshall said, leaning over the seat.

“We won't need a restaurant. We'll be just in time for the barbecue,” Dory told him.

“What barbecue?”

“There!” Dory pointed to a big wooden archway over a road that went off to the right. “The Lazy River Ranch! That's the place!”

The name was burned into the wood of the arch. Dory turned into the road and stopped in front of a big wire gate. “Hop out and open it, please, Iris.”

“Why's there a gate, anyway?” Iris could never just obey a command.

“So the cows don't get out onto the road.”

“What cows?”

I opened my door. “I'll do it. I have to straighten my legs before they break off.” I limped over to the wood and wire gate and unhitched a fancy latch, walked the gate to the side so Dory could drive in, then latched it up again. Before I climbed back in the car I noticed a string of horses coming across a field up ahead, their riders looking a little droopy in the afternoon sun.

“Dory, is this a dude ranch?” I asked.

“That's what it is!” She was grinning widely.

“A
dude
ranch,” Marshall said. “A ranch for dudes? I don't get it.”

Iris groaned. “It's a vacation place for wusses who want to pretend they're living on a real ranch, except they aren't. This is our big surprise?”

“It
is
a real ranch,” Dory said. “A working ranch. They have five
hundred head of beef cattle besides the tourist business. We can go on trail rides, and learn how to rope cows, or we can go fishing or hiking or swimming or whatever we want. There's lots to do here.”

“Cool!” Marsh was hanging out the window now. “How long are we staying?”

“Three nights,” Dory said. “Long enough to take it all in and relax a little.”

“This might even be
better
than Yellowstone!”

I was glad for Dory's sake that Marshall was enthusiastic about the place. Even from the road, the views were amazing; you could see all the way to the Rocky Mountains.

Dory pulled up in front of the office and turned to Iris. “I thought you'd be pleased. You love horses.”

Iris was nibbling on a cuticle. “I
love
them, but I can't ride them,” she said quietly. “Don't you remember?”

Dory put a hand on Iris's arm and Iris shook it off like it hurt her. “You'll be able to ride these horses. They ride western saddle out here. That silly place you took riding lessons—I don't think they knew what they were doing.”

“Neither did Iris,” Marshall put in. “She fell off and broke her wrist!” He laughed loudly, looking to me for appreciation, but when I frowned, he settled down again. Seemed like he wasn't so angry with me now that I liked his drawings.

“You dipwad! You better not tell anybody!” Iris looked more upset than angry.

“I never really learned to ride either,” I said, hoping to keep them from beating on each other again.

“You didn't?” Dory said. “Living out in the country your whole life?”

“We didn't have horses like you and Mom did growing up. None of my friends did either. I rode a few times, but I never really got how to do it without bouncing up and down.”

“You probably never fell off, though,” Marsh said, quietly.

“We'll all take some refresher lessons in the corral before we hit the trail.” Dory bustled into the office with more energy than she'd had for days.

Our “bunkhouse” was number 12—two bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a sitting area in between with a small refrigerator stocked with soft drinks. I had a feeling real bunkhouses never looked like this. The walls were knotty pine and the single beds all had pretty quilts on them. The floors were covered with rag rugs and cactus plants decorated the bureau tops. From the windows you could see across to the stables and behind them the snow-capped mountains. I could get used to this place.

This cowboy guy, Mel, who ran the office, told us to hurry over to the “grub barn” where the barbecue was getting started. You could smell the meat and something like corn bread all the way across the courtyard. There were long tables set up both inside and outside, and a huge grill ran the length of the barn just outside the open door with about three cows already sizzling on it. There were pots of baked beans on a side table and buckets of corn and baked potatoes, and, sure enough, corn bread. Suddenly I was starving, too.

We all heaped our plates with more than we could really eat—it seemed like the right thing to do on a ranch—and found seats at one of the long indoor tables next to a family with two young boys who looked like twins.

“Hello,” Dory said cheerfully as Iris rolled her eyes.

“Hi,” the woman answered. “You just get here?”

Dory introduced herself and all of us and the other woman did the same. Her husband was too busy chowing down on steak to do more than nod, but the little boys, Howie and Bobby, were interested in us. At least, in Marshall.

“We're eight,” Howie announced. “How old are you?”

“Ten,” Marshall said proudly. “I'll be eleven soon.”

“You don't look that old,” Bobby said.

Fortunately, before Marshall could get mad, Howie interrupted. “There's a lot of dogs and cats here. Do you like dogs and cats? We could go play with some after dinner.”

Marshall considered this. “I like dogs okay, as long as they don't bite. I used to like cats, but some of them are mean.”

“These ones aren't,” Howie assured him. “They're little ones. I'll show you!”

“
I'll
show him!” Bobby said.

Their mother made them finish their dinners first and then wait for Marshall to finish his, and then they pulled Marsh off the bench and led him away, giggling happily. I hoped the kittens really would be sweet and the dogs not biters
or
barkers—you never knew what might throw Marshall into a panic.

Dory had gotten into a conversation with the twins' mother, so I dumped my trash and decided to take a look around. I was surprised that Iris followed me, and even more surprised when I saw her plate, which had almost as much food left on it as she'd originally taken.

“I thought you were starving,” I said.

She chucked her plate of perfectly good food into the garbage and said, “I'm a vegetarian.”

This was the first I'd heard of it, besides which, if she was a vegetarian, why did she take a big hunk of steak to begin with? “You could have eaten the beans and potatoes and bread, couldn't you?”

She shrugged. “None of it looked good to me.”

This I was not buying. I waited until we'd gotten clear of the barn and were heading toward the stables.

“Iris, are you trying to lose weight or something?”

She glared at me. “Are you saying I'm fat? You're the one who could stand to lose a few pounds.”

“I'm not
saying
you're fat. You've lost weight since . . . your dad's funeral, and I'm kind of worried about the way you're eating. Some days you pig out and some days you hardly eat anything.”

“You're not my baby-sitter, you know.”

“I know that. It's just . . . well . . . you aren't anorexic or bulimic or anything, are you?”

Her face turned red. “I'm not
anything,
Robin. Why don't you mind your own business?”

“Look, Iris, I don't really care, to tell you the truth. I just feel bad for your mother—she's got enough problems right now without you doing something dumb, like starving yourself to death.”

The smack came so fast I didn't even see it. She'd slapped me in the face! For a second I just stared at her and then I grabbed her by both of her skinny wrists as hard as I could.

“Don't hit me, Iris! You can't just hit people!”

Her eyes got big and dark. “I wish you'd go back to stupid Iowa! We don't need you following us around!”

She twisted out of my grip, turned abruptly, and stopped following
me
around. It certainly was going to be fun getting to know my relatives a little better, especially the insane one with the eating disorder.

D
ory had booked us for an afternoon trail ride, so we spent the morning trying to learn how
not
to fall off a horse. Iris was nervous at breakfast and Marshall was anxious to get going, but once we got to the corral, they switched moods. When the horses were trotted out, Iris was paired with a pretty white-speckled horse, and she took the reins lovingly, whispering into the animal's nostrils and playing with his mane. I'd never seen her look so good-natured.

Joe, the cowboy in charge, told Iris, “This here's Silverfoot. She's an Appaloosa pony.”

“I love Appaloosas—they're beautiful!” She was gazing at Silverfoot rapturously.

Dory seemed surprised, but pleased.

Joe pointed to Marshall. “And for you, little wrangler, I think Oklahoma here is the perfect mount.” He led a pretty dark brown horse up to the fence where Marsh was perched. Oklahoma wasn't as big as some of the other horses, but I guess she still looked pretty large to a ten-year-old. He leaned back from her inquiring nose.

Joe slipped Marsh an apple. “Put this in your hand and hold it
out real straight—she'll tickle ya' gettin' it.” Marsh took the apple, but you could tell he was worried about losing a finger to Oklahoma's teeth.

“Go ahead, honey,” Dory urged. “He won't hurt you.”

Marsh's face clouded up. “How do
you
know?”

I climbed up onto the fence so I was sitting next to him and reached out to scratch under Oklahoma's chin. Even though I'm not much of a rider, horses don't scare me. I like all kinds of animals—they're more predictable than human beings.

“Nothin' Okie likes better than a good chin scratch,” the cowboy said. “Except maybe that apple.”

Okie stuck his nose under my armpit, the better to have me pet him. This horse was a sweetheart—Marsh would be perfectly safe, if only he'd get on the thing. I pulled the roll out of my pocket I'd brought from the breakfast buffet to make friends with
my
horse and laid it on my open palm. Oklahoma sniffed it gently and nibbled at it a little, but he'd seen that apple; bread must have seemed like a poor substitute. “He wants what you've got,” I whispered to Marsh.

There was fear in his eyes when he looked at me, but he nodded and carefully placed the apple on his outstretched hand. Okie waited until the hand was held out and the apple offered, then he curled back his big lips and snuffled the thing up in two seconds.

Marsh pulled back his empty hand. “It
did
tickle. Can I give him another one?”

Joe laughed. “Let's wait until the lesson's over. The poor guy'll be so full he won't be able to waddle around the corral.”

After that Marsh let Joe help him mount Okie. I could tell he was still nervous being so high off the ground, but he kept up a running conversation with old Oklahoma so that, by the time the rest of us got seated on our horses, I think they were pals. Dory had
a bay mare named Elsie and I had an enormous palomino called Charlie.

Our lesson consisted of trotting around the corral one after the other. Joe gave us instructions on how to turn the horses left or right, how to get them to stop, how to change their gaits—that stuff I kind of knew, anyway. Then he told us “the secret of how to keep your rear ends from slapping up and down in the saddle,” a secret that is safe with me. It had something to do with getting into the same rhythm as the horse, but I guess Charlie and I weren't listening to the same music. Marshall was banging up and down, too, but after the first few circles of the corral, he didn't seem to care—he was obviously having a great time.

Dory knew how to ride, even though she pretended she'd forgotten. I guess it's like riding a bicycle—I'm a lot better at that fortunately. The big surprise, though, was Iris. At first she was as clumsy as Marsh and me, but she listened to Joe like he was handing down the tablets from the mountaintop, and before long she'd gotten it. She was sailing around the corral without a bit of air space between her and that saddle. How in the heck was she doing that?

When the lesson was over, Joe praised us all—it's his job, after all. But he saved the major flattery for Iris.