The Bronc Tamer

Ten words uttered Fatso, having helped the Old Gent pack a quieter Phil into the carriage: “Thanks God he’s come back safe and sound. Might haven’t.” That was the pardon of Bronco Henry. Phil can’t have known. He studies with a frenzy, only switching over to weight lifting and scoring points in polo — whatever could take his mind off the broken record. If exile is his punishment, then Henry, as an accomplice, would simply be thrown out. Or not: hands like that don’t grow on trees. But why should this vagabond soul stick to the same given ranch, when his only friend is away?.. “A man is made by patience in the odds against him”, Bronco said. A single impatient whim has already cost them too much. So Phil bites the bullet. In their latest letter, the Old Folks urge him to come home for the summer, to prep George for the entrance exam that was introduced, too unfortunately for Fatso, by the College Board this very year. Reserved phrasing, fine handwriting, an offer of truce ringing through. Still, Phil won’t deny himself the dark pleasures of going upstairs without greeting, of ignoring the enticing bath, and descends to dinner only after Georgie-boy’s persistent coaxing. “Then again, back to your cowhand academy? Same grade, second year?” the Old Gent scowls at Phil’s unworldly dress. It’s true, Phil has fully mastered the annual curriculum of ranch skills. He can tell the age of cattle by the horns and teeth, brand calves, castrate bulls. He knows handling a herd, — roundup and separation, — in teamwork with other fellows and his own horse. Bronc taming goes without saying. Of spring jobs, he’s only missed cleaning out water holes (not too creative an activity) and extricating old or weakened animals from lowland bogs, where they’ve been bluntly knocked down by their healthier brethren. Could be fun, that: to pitch a loop over the horns, to make your horse haul the poor thing out on its back, sparing the legs from injury, and help it to its feet afterwards. One rider pulls the cow up by the horns, another by the tail, and while the tail man holds it tight, the front one gets away to a safe distance. Now the second horseman has to scarper at full throttle, ‘cause the thankless beast, once freed, would try to assault its rescuers. But without Bronco Henry, there’s no sense in any adventure. Information, nothing more. “I’ll be the judge of that,” Phil snaps. “Your younger brother needs your backing,” the Old Gent continues. “We all know how tenacious your memory is, especially for numbers,” he turns to Fatso. “But as for abstract reasoning — I’m sorry, Georgie. With the languages, I was assured, there’d be no problem, so Phil, please help him at least with higher mathematics and essay writing.” “Translation: Fatso’s dumb like an arithmometer, but money talks.” “Phil!” the Old Lady resents. “I’m going, going, wouldn’t bore you with my presence any longer.” Phil keeps up the habit of dressing like a cowboy, but no longer hangs out with the hands. He eats silently, no antics, fast like a hay cutter, then clams up in the kids’ room. He succeeds in explaining and ingraining complex formulae into his brother’s vaunted memory, and an essay of his authorship, sparkling with subtle self-irony on behalf of a veneered George Burbank, makes even the Old Folks laugh. Except for a few lone retreats to the lake, Phil spends his off hours in banjo exercises, terrorizing Fatso’s ears. The ancestors take refuge in the living room. On a day in late July, when the grass in the foothills got gunpowder dry, and only sagebrush, with that pungent scent of bitterness, retained its dusty green, a disaster came uninvited. “Fire! Fire!” a young greenhorn yelled, galloping to the ranch at breakneck speed. He didn’t even have to point towards the dog mountain and the nasty smoke expanding from below it. Whoever was in the house and around, geared up. Grey Harry hitched the water wagon. Black Bill handed out burlap sacks. Mrs. Lewis and the maid rushed to bake corn cakes, which, together with beer and spring water, the Old Folks would supply to men, working hard to fight the fire, on a black-backed, black-legged, like a scorched match, Mexican pony. The young Burbanks on horseback joined the team. From the messenger’s rapid rambling it was known that several Indians had pitched camp under the mountain. Range riders gave them a fright, firing in the air from their colts, but one unstable squaw, for want of weaponry, snatched a flaming firebrand from the campfire, an ember fell into the thirsty grass, and so the fire was off and running. The Indians were instantly forgotten, and took their chance to flee like chicken, using the fact that the wind was blowing at the palefaces. “Backfiring, then,” Black Bill commanded. “But the critters?” Fatso stopped in tracks. “Rabbits, quails, badgers. Burrowing owls. Barking squirrels…” “Fuck them squirrels,” Bill barked. “They’ave pitted everythin’ wid there dirty dogholes, my Peggy almost broke her leg in one.” “They turn the soil, for herbage…” George muttered and withered, as no one was listening. A pair of pheasants flapped their wings above the heads. Non-flying prairie dwellers had yet to figure out that they needed to high-tail it sidewards between two walls of fire. Black Bill torched one sack and rode parallel to the smoggy mountain range, dragging the smoldering edge through the grass behind him. Other hands soaked burlap or saddle blankets in water and, competing with the speed of newborn fire, whipped the blaze out. A strip of burned-over soil, thirty, forty feet wide, began to split the goldish cheek of the plain, as if drawn with a gigantic dab of tar. The brothers bat the cloths on par with the rest. Next they can but watch the inexorable approach of orange-black, dazzling and smothering inferno’s fence, heating the sky with bloody stains of sundown. At this background, it’s hard to make out two sooted mounted shadow figures, one of which Phil, with a palpitating heart, reflects as Bronco Henry. The horses cross the barrier strip in three bounds of gallop; one, beneath another greenhorn, keeps running, and Bronco’s bay, dark-tailed and dark-maned like Bronco himself, makes a sharp U-turn, hooves digging up the turf. The wildfire of a man’s height and a half, well-fed by acres of lush hay, is storming at the borderline. Now and then, grass embers and burning shreds of dry cow chips fly over. One spark hits Phil’s back. Fatso puts it out with his hat. Wet sacks and blankets swoop down on more and more new ignitions, but they won’t last long this way. “Yer one,” Bill’s cruddy index finger points at the bay. His other hand is holding an axe, several rolls of rope hanging down from the forearm. When the fire is too fierce, a cow or horse is killed, decapitated, chopped in half lengthwise, fastened by the legs, and two pairs of horsemen haul the gory remnants of a life over the flames on each side of the fire. “Why?!” Phil shouts. His eyes dart back and forth, to finally spot the Old Gents’ foraging cart. “Why not kill the old pony! He’s a goner anyway.” “Too dry,” Black Bill tsks in fake regret. “Twas Bronco who blew it wid’em Injuns, an’e’s got’im four more horseys.” “Me — blew it?” Bronco Henry is almost calm, only his fists are clenching, the belladonna eyes ablaze with mirrored fire. “Now tell me it’s me who brought the camp here.” “Yer shift, ya in charge,” Bill shrugs. “As a purvilege, can snuff’im yerself.” The flame is roaring, hot like hell. Phil’s facial skin is about to chap. Bronco lifts his gun. Phil turns away. “Take the palomino,” he tells Bronco Henry, when it’s all over. “I’ll go with my bro and the Old Folks.” The fire extinguished, none of the hands is surprised at Fancy Pants’ return to business and to the common table. The duty before Fatso is fulfilled — take that, Ladies and Gentlemen. Now that Bronco is a top hand, he has got two schooled helpmates and a bit more free time. He solemnly lets the fellows work in pair, ‘cause ever since he has Phil. Everything seems back into place; the only difference is that, instead of the bay stallion, Bronco rides a reddish brown mare with a white star marking on her forehead. According to Indian beliefs — a sacred one, making the horseman invulnerable. Phil teaches Henry to carve tiny furniture out of random pegs, and cuts himself all the time. Chortling, he uses his blood as wood stain. Henry teaches Phil smithwork. He always wears a nifty leather bracelet, never parts with it, even for swimming. Two thin cords are strung through a couple of nines (or sixes?) wrought from Argentine horseshoe nails. As a first feat of his own, Phil bends a more pronouncedly faceted American four-sided nail into a near-even circle and puts it, still warm and just slightly unbent, on Bronco’s ring finger. It fits. As if it’s always been there. Henry gives no sound, shaking his head incredulously; stares at the ring, but doesn’t move it. He removes his bracelet. It’s a trifle wide, and before Phil recovers his breath, the clasp is adjusted to his measure. Even two bracelets wrap around his wrist: one made of nails and leather, another — Henry’s mighty fingers. Phil’s palm is pressed against Bronco’s heart, Phil’s mouth to Bronco’s mouth. The kiss lasts an eternity. Time after time, Phil laps up Henry’s lower lip with velvet nibbles, eager and demanding like a baby horse. This is the only way he can invent, a question and a statement that can not, must not be left unanswered. And Bronco opens his mouth in perfect mutuality of wet, inhale-soft taking: lip-tongue-tongue-lip. Then he holds Phil’s chin and pulls away. “Look at me. Why mess with me?” Phil loses contact with the ground. How can he explain, why be with the man who became his world? “I need you,” he says simply. “Do you ever know my age?” — distrust, derision, pain. “Well, twenty… five, well… thirty?” — whatever lies beyond the coveted landmark of 21, is an unchartered territory to Phil. “I’m old enough to be your father.” “Liar.” Bronco steps towards his bag, only to excavate… the notorious magazines. “Bronco Henry” is neatly written on each cover. Phil’s glance goes lower — to the dates of issue. Impossible! Henry in the photos looks the same as now! Ah, nope. The outer corners of his eyes are a little higher, face a little smoother. The real Henry, with his weathered skin, with records of many laughs incised into his cheeks, like with a knife, attracts Phil so much more than the retouch of innocence and silliness that floods his younger features, not yet crystallized, with fluffy light. “Are you just lugging them around? And in the barrack, do you sleep hugging your bag? Have you any idea what happens if someone makes up his mind to pry into it?” “Is that all you want to tell me?” Bronco Henry squints. “No, not all. I know a place where you can keep them untouched.” The hideout by the lake is masked with dead wood. One won’t find it without knowing. Strictly speaking, it’s not a lake per se, but a bayou, far off from the shoals where cowhands fool around. In springtime it merges with the main stream, in the summer it is sourced from underground springs. After a crawl through a tunnel of windbreak, there’s a hut facing the water. A deliberate chaos of logs and bark is supported by light woodwork; a reed thatching protects it from the rain. “There,” Phil opens the lid of a chest improvised from a shoebox. It’s a home to marbles, pieces of minerals for a future collection, and to a treasure map of Phil’s design. Boys’ holy relics, to be replaced by adult ones. Some day Phil would give those pictures a more thorough look. Not when Bronco Henry is in front of him, in the flesh, glossy with tan like a mustang. Probably, under his clothing, too. “Wanna swim?” Phil suggests, tongue parched. With their eyes fixed on each other, they undress. The scarf, of delicate cream colored silk, stays around Bronco’s neck. When its turn comes, Bronco unties the knot and, with a crazy smile, waves a tremulous fountain of silken flame above his head. “Some more powwow of yours?” Phil laughs. “Almost. This is from zamba, a dance. The kerchief is your soul. It can seduce or shy away, rejoice and pine. That was a gesture of triumph. This is a kiss,” — Henry lifts the scarf, folded conveniently, with both hands and rolls it in the air into a twist in Phil’s direction. “This is receiving a kiss,” — the twist unfurls and rolls backwards. “Only it takes a different cloth, smaller and square. A couple shall dance at a distance, conversing only with their kerchiefs. And lastly, the coronation. That means they have chosen each other.” With the backs of his fingers, still holding the scarf, Bronco Henry delivers an almost insensible touch to Phil’s temple. Silk flows down Phil’s cheek, to his bare collarbone, and chest, and abdomen. Glides up again, catching at a nipple erect. Trickles down between his neck and shoulder. Phil pursues it with a contoured cheekbone, gapes and picks at Henry’s silk-wrapped knuckles with his lips. And right when Henry wants to take it back, Phil’s hand seizes the scarf. The tissue’s slowly slipping through the ring of palm and fingers. In a rush of modesty, both scurry to the lake, hiding each his own sizzling arousal. Henry keeps his neckcloth looped across his throat, ends dangling down his chest. The water resiliently gives way to brawny legs, till the two men submerge navel deep before turning towards each other. Eventually it’s clear what Henry needed that scarf for. Ripping it off in one swing, Bronco captures Phil around the waist and pulls him in, belly to belly, crotch to crotch. Almost equal in proud, bouncy muscle, they are at the same time opposite like day and night. Phil — as slick-skinned as a redhead can be, hued in warm sandy sunburn, scattered with a host of gentle freckles. Bronco — stone rough, olive swarthy, only shoulders speckled like a quail’s egg. Phil had his thick bronze hair cut in the fall, so it has grown, soft curls on the crown, shorter waves on the back of his head, long enough to grab and slowly squeeze during a kiss. Bronco’s mane, shoulder length, is crow-black locks and sun-faded brassy strands, as coarse as his skin. Phil’s body is hairless, except sine-qua-non. Bronco’s pectorals are forested, a narrow tongue of hair creeps up his stomach, and black wool streaks the outsides of his forearms, but everything is unexpectedly silky. The scarf, wet and supple like waterplant, slides over the small of Phil’s back, around his side, forwards and down, past the sensitive crest of his hipbone, to enlace the swollen flesh. Phil moans quietly, leaning into a strong arm that holds him below the shoulderblades. The first strokes of Henry’s palm are pure careful, inquisitive, anguishing promise. Phil rises on tiptoe and, at the edge of strain, hustles into the hand: have it, own it! The rhythm of pumps and tugs through silk becomes relentless, ruthless, wild. Phil blindly gropes under the water, to find and respond. Bronco admires his grin: naïvely large incisors, sharp and elegantly tilted-in canines. “You rare animal,” Henry murmurs. Phil can’t understand a word. He comes apart. An instant later, his hand skin senses a small hot geyser. The lake covers it all.