First Part:
He awakened with a feeling of parts of his head being pummeled by a baseball bat. Heavy, painful breaths with an antiseptic scent. One eye was blurred with a gauze-like view, white, stringy, porous. He saw the ceiling tiles in their straight-edge white, heard a slight beeping beside him and couldn't turn his head to see what it was. In fact, he couldn't really move any part of his body except his eyelid. Everything else hurt too much.
As he slowly emerged from his narcotic state, he inadvertently jerked, sending rivulets of pain throughout his head and especially his eyes. It wasn't some muscle spasm or some traumatic tremor...rather, it was the clarity curse of something he had recently seen, something he had recently remembered and in remembering he had attempted to do what he hadn't done the first time: move.
It was the pale flat skull of an American Bucking Bull, a purebred stud named Alibi, with its brown and white fur in short stubby sprouts neatly between two light white horns that was rising up to meet him as he was hurtling forward with one hand caught in the bull rope and his other trying to catch something to stop his momentum. It caught only air and then he collided face first, shattering his face at his right eyebrow, exploding like an under-ripe grape that gets smashed and then he remembered smelling the scent of the bull and then he stopped smelling altogether. Stopped everything else as well.
Second Part:
The rodeo is a visceral playground. It is a combination of sights and smells, noises and cacophony, the air stirred with the scents of animals and candy, barbecue and mesquite smoke, haze and dust rising in equal parts. Voice overs from announcers hurtle downward, the sound of airhorns signalling the beginning or ending of a ride. Applause is sporadic, more often the collective inhalation of a crowd when something happens. Maybe something dangerous. Maybe not.
Strolling the lots and the lanes are the riders, rodeo clowns, ranchers and spectators. Chaps and leathers, boots and hats. A few brave ladies wear calico or check, some even wear hats...but most wear the attitude of knowing men who bravely ride wild untamed animals.
The animals themselves are kept separate, off in holding paddocks or trailers depending on horse or bull and they are led with long thick ropes until it is their time.
It smells of manure.
It is hot, with the slightest of breezes in Gainesville, north of McKinney, at the Southern Extreme Bull Riding Association (SEBRA) event where you can ride a genuine live bull with a $50 entry fee and a pencil. The money is for the growing demand in this particular sport; the pencil is for the waiver that is required by each rider.
Third Part:
I think I saw him move.
He heard the voice, so distant from all the other noises in the room. The hospital is like a robot of mechanical elements, devices electronically connected, and in the center, in pink and white bone, is a scattering of humans...bandaged, sutured, breathing and hoping for anything human to invade this mechanical hell. Which is why he started upon hearing her.
Yep, he's definitely moving.
As his vision become more of a corona and then changed to an eclipse, he sensed more than felt the presence in the room.
A terrifying moment when his vision coalesced and he clearly saw an elderly woman in starch whites, black thick glasses, black thick hair pulled tight up around her face. The chief nurse, he thought to himself...she ought to wear a sign before waking anybody up.
Then he shifted his gaze and the familiar visage of her was outlined against the window. He knew it was her, knew her shape. Although it looked like her hair was a tad shorter. He congratulated himself for noticing a detail.
Hey. Stupid.
Her first words were like a bit of morphine drip...comforting, acidic, just the right amount of attitude.
Hey. His voice caught like fur on barbed wire. A bit of a croak. Instantly the head nurse came over with a cup of ice chips.
Here you go honey. Sip these.
His right eye was still blurry so he missed with his outreach but she quickly handed him the cup. Which he promptly dropped.
shit he croaked again. The two women clamored on the floor and he laid back. Another perfect moment.
Just like the bull ride.
Soon he had it in his hand again and sucked on some of the ice.
Thanks he whispered.
He turned slightly towards her frame.
And thanks for the compliment. I'm pretty sure I deserve it.
She moved ghost-like forward, her face still in shadow and she stopped by the bed.
I'm not going to have a conversation with you. I just wanted to stop by.
Stay. It was all he could muster and it was like the moment when he was falling forward in the bull/face collision. He wasn't quite sure what was next but he felt confident it would be painful.
I can't. Bam. Collision. Broken bones, broken skin. Blood and bits of bone and fur in a colorful collision. But this one was human. And not his head.
His heart.
Yes...I thought so. But thanks for coming.
A slight pause.
I will be back in the morning though. I just needed to make sure you were okay.
The rustling of jeans, the heels of boots on linoleum. The starch white following. His head was in bloom. His right eye felt like a candle. He felt like a bruise. And yet in all the Lysol scent afflicting the room he thought that he could detect a whiff...like the colors dogs see when stumbling upon a trail they can follow left by a person...and in that slight moment a small molecule of her was detected and it warmed him in a way the blankets just couldn't equal.
He watched the shadows in the room move left to right in the evening and he hoped the pain meds would soon kick in.
Fourth Part:
She came in the morning. She came in fresh and scrubbed and her scent was full in the room. They talked in small pieces, between sips and ice chips. There was no chief nurse, rather somebody who commanded most of him.
A brief argument on the brightness of his short-term career in bull riding. A sport, she contended, not for him. A retort, he stated, that was his own to make...to decide.
It's not riding some bar-room mechanical.
Exactly.
But why would you do it?
Because it is one of the very few sports when you are up against something much bigger than you and you don't have to kill it to win. You just need to stay with it. Stay on it.
Well...how was it?
Honestly?
Of course.
Like wrestling a fat chick.
She laughed.
No...he started again.
It's bigger than that. It's strapping onto a rocket ship. It's riding a whale. It's pulling the leather straps and cinching yourself in...but no cockpit, no seatbelts. The most amazing part is in the chute, while your heart is thumping...you feel his as well. You feel this force between your legs, the most vulnerable part of you. And this...this thing, this massive heart is beneath you and you feel its breathing, you feel like this pulsating. It's alive, and warm, and exhaling. It's a living volcano.
He stopped to take a drink. He realized he was rambling.
I'm rambling.
No...this is good.
It's just different. Than anything I've known. And I guess I just wanted to see if I could hold on tightly.
A few seconds went by...they both were recreating their own moments and trying to remember.
Did it hurt?
No.
That's good.
Hurt was 5 exits ago. It was a new word. I haven't quite found it yet.
Oh.
Fifth Part:
She had brought her iPad. For some reason as they let the quiet descend upon them, the shadows of the entering evening making the room go from yellow to orange to rust, she played some music. And as he let the bruising settle in and find comfort in his skin he absorbed the poignant moment when the Grace Potter song came in..."Apologies".
Yesterday he said my eyes
Were fading fast away
I said well what do you expect
You asked me not to stay and if it had all been for the best
I wouldn't feel this way
And he said
Oh he said it's crazy
How love stays with me
You know it hurts me
Cause I don't wanna fight this war
It's amazing to see me reading through this scene
Of love and fear and apologies
My love is like a blanket
That gets a little bit too warm sometimes
I wanna wrap somebody in it
Who can hold me in his arms
Cause when it got a little too hot in there
He was always stepping out for air and he froze
Oh he froze
He said it's crazy
How love stays with me
You know it hurts me
Cause I don't wanna fight this war
It's amazing to see me reading through this scene
Of love and fear and apologies
Yesterday he looked at me
With a tear in his eye and said
I'll always tell you you're my friend
I hope i don't have to lie
Cause it's clear you love another man
I said you're damn right
And he said
He said it's crazy
How love stays with me
You know it hurts me
Cause I don't wanna fight this war
It's amazing to see me reading through this scene
Of love and fear and apologies
He said it's crazy
How love stays with me
You know it hurts me
That i didn't figure it out before
And now it's too late for a soliloquy
It's way too late for dignity
It's time for apologies
He pretended he fell asleep and once again he heard the slip of heels disappear.
Sixth Part:
The purples were still there, but the bones felt fixed. It was like he had been in a bad bar fight, and definitely had come upon the losing end.
He had signed the discharge papers and he had noticed they signed with ink...not the pencil for the bull-riding waiver. Must be serious.
He stepped out into a Texas evening that had a few trace clouds...it smelled dusty and a few low stars let him know that the evening would be crystal. He knew he was ugly on the outside. He just hoped he didn't let that stop him from being ugly on the inside.
