Someone in the know did the calculation and pronounced the temperature at the Rockyford Rodeo 92 degrees F, but it was a dry heat. Ellemeno made sure we were properly hydrated. Made the harrowing trip with us, to a place the road atlas said was at the dead end of an unnamed road. Wrong, there are road all over that place, in a grid, but not all straight.
Our gang arrived late, Paul and Meryl had been there a long time with the FBB gang, Fabienne wearing the red hat, the crown of Lureen, the Barrell Princess, Lureen of the Mating call, and they were barrel racing when we arrived. Women on horses, some of them confused by those barrels.
As I understand it, it was the first time the hat had been back to Rockyford, where it fell from the head of a speeding stand in and was dusted off by Jake: "Ma'am". I was by then, lethargic. Empty and ready to be filled by something new. That I was in the place where Jack rode Sleepy was not as important to me as I was there in this little authentic town on the prairie with my friends. We occupied a section of the bleachers, almost in the shade.
The things I seen them do at that rodeo some of them I have never seen before. Wild ponies on lead lines with three kids holding on, each with a job, the closest to get on the pony and ride. There was the family of trick riders, young girls in body stockings who hung their head dangerously close to ground from the back of a galloping horse.
In the stands, the attraction was a young shirtless man who either had too much to drink, or judging by the scars some sort of trauma. His tirade with his peeps caught my attention a time or two, but he was generally well behaved, and my attention to go to other things: The ring cowboys in pink shirts, the sign for a company called Laycock, The shirtless wonder at his camper door.
Lynne, sitting in front of me, I decided needed to get the sun off her head and I gave her my Jack Nasty cap to wear. Juan, curious to see what his straw hat looked like on me, coronated me as I protested my head was too big, and like an old glove, it encased my skull like it was made for it. This was the start, a casting away of old, and taking up of new.
Filing out into the town of dirt streets and concrete sidewalks, we came up on the bank, aka the Childless Dance Hall. The bench ready and waiting for me and Kirk, in a production of our own, for no one else, "You ever notice a woman, will powder her nose before she goes to a party...." we fell into it just like that. Across the street the Riverton Post Office, the spot on the street where Ennis gets the news occupied by large muscle trucks. Across from it, the "Bar".
Lynne had done arrived, she had done made friends with the barkeep and a woman who had cooked our desert at the hotel down the street, Bonny, spelt with a "y", the Scottish way she told us. By the time I arrived she was holding court, telling of those days in 2004 when the actors would show up in their limos and do their bit and leave. Of her daughter who was an extra in the stands for that movie rodeo, you can't see her she told us, but she did, by accident, turn too fast once, and ran straight into Jake Gyllenhaal and knocked him on his ass, from which she promptly ran away. This is what I was hoping for, the stories, the legend that were growing up about this movie. These people who knew the before and after of their little town, settling with a gang of foreigners and Roland telling us all about it.
We had to say goodbye to Mouk there, before supper she had to go with Judy who would deliver her to her next adventure, and pick up Gail from the airport. I wonder still how she made out. Dear, fragile looking bird who is really a locust post, ready to stand up to anything. The pealing away had begun.
One more trip to the bar, and there, come to ask her Mama for something, was she. Alexandra, the Extra, She of great force, she who fell the Gyllenhaal. Ellemeno provided me the pen, and a microbrewery the coaster and I tried to approach her as normal as I could, but I was plumb giddy when I asked her for her autograph.
It was so hot at supper I had to go out and get some air. Just wander, no place in particular. My heart warmed when I turned to find Juan coming to join me.
A nice evening stroll to help the digestion. Two gay men from different parts of the globe strolling the streets of a small town in Canada, where people inhabited front porches, people who didn;t seem to know what the word fag was, a golden sun, down along with western horizon now, out past St. Rita's church where the priest gives his car a shower with the downspout on rainy days. Two friends, where a week earlier, there had been none. Fill my empty vessel, fill it with the nearly full moon, bulging on the eastern rim of the earth, fill it with the song of the Dixie Chicks, go to sleep, little man, sweet dreams, little man, the little angels will keep you safe.
Kirk accompanied me back to Straffmore, I am afraid I was not much company. We were not sure which way to go, but the moon lit the whole prairie and if we went south, surely we would hit highway 1. I thought the landscape that evening was the most spectacular thing I had ever seen. We spoke of getting in the pool later but it was already closed.
I slept that night like a rock, nearly 7 hours, the only really good sleep I had the whole trip. I dreamed that night a three fold dream:
1. My partner broke his leg climbing down an embankment.
2. A woman I attended college with was a cleaning lady where we were staying, and,
3. A former agent from my office who passed away earlier this year returned to visit with me.
When I woke the next morning I called my partner, he had not broke his leg, but his god sons mother had broke her foot.
Topic: Shakesthegrounds Rumblings (Read 2595104 times)