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Hey Clouder!!!
bigdaddyjunior
Member Posts: 11,233
Bes' stop that postin' and get your on'ry hide back to work. I'm a needin' my cowboy fix. Got my specs all polished up an' no whar to go.
Big Daddy my heros have always been cowboys,they still are it seems
Big Daddy my heros have always been cowboys,they still are it seems
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Cowboys are all dead. Here's the first few paragraphs of #5, called "Morgan's Pasture"
CHAPTER 1
He's big and strong. His grimy fingers dig into my skinny arms and I know I'm lost. Tears well up, and I fight them furiously, almost as hard as I fight him. To be seen crying would be worse than drowning. Maybe. He picks me up, and I almost pee when my feet leave the ground. The gray-green water is all I can see then, and I wonder how cold it's going to be.
"He can't swim," I hear someone scream. "He can't swim!"
The flight through the air lasts a long time. I'm quite a ways above the water. My arm hurts where he grabbed me and I know I'm going to have a bad bruise. Is the canal water of our swimming hole different from river water? How deep am I going to sink? I lose sight of the surface as I turn lazily in the air. Looks like I'm going to land on my back.
Cold. I inhale with a huge gulp. Mistake. My lungs rebel as a mouthful of water goes down, then explodes it back out. I haven't sunk much at all, and pounding the water furiously with my hands, manage get right side up. I go under again, and breathe some more water. It's in my nose, only this time it doesn't come out. Still under. So, this is what it feels like? The current pushes against me, and I look for the light. There, barely above my head. Can't reach it. I try, hard, grasping desperately, but I'm now deeper, I know I am.
I'm suddenly very tired, and stop flailing my arms-it feels good to rest. The light up there is not as bright as it was. Heh-heh, I know what's happening, I'm dying. It's my fourteenth birthday, and I'm already dead.
The ease with which I'd faced death still haunts and intrigues me, along with a lot of other things that happened that summer. I can't see the swimming hole as I drive into town. A large building, new since I was last home in 1967, blocks my view. "Rocky Mountain Building Supply," is emblazoned on the side, the "U" elongated and scrunched between the "O" and the "N." I suppose up close it would have been easy to misspell the word when they painted it but I'll bet Charlie had a couple of hemorrhages over that, one for the mistake and one deciding the cost effectiveness of repainting the whole sign. I'd read where he was the head accountant for the firm, his first good job since taking his own business into bankruptcy in `79.
The new building is not the only change. The two-lane highway opens up to five about where the stockyards used to be. Five lanes for a town that might see thirty cars drive from end to end in any given hour on a busy day. Some more of Charlie's good work, I'd read; a development grant, federal matching funds, and a nice kickback, no doubt. Not much else has changed. Main Street, which also doubles as US 91/191-Alternate US 20 and 26, has lost three of its older buildings. It presents a brave, civic-minded, though gap-toothed smile to any one inclined to look. It's my bet that no one notices any more. I do because one of the holes used to be filled by Joe's Highway Market. I glance at the dash clock of the new '85 Oldsmobile. Mom expects me at about five o'clock. "Supper's at five. That's five, Will, are you listening?" she'd said on the phone. I click on my left turn signal and hope "U" turns are still allowed, not that it matters, there's not a moving car in sight.
I backtrack through town and turn right across the tracks, toward the foothills. It's like entering a time warp. Same houses in the same colors, same lilac hedges, same buckled sidewalks, and Murdock's barn in the middleof the 200 block; a defiant red, it still stands, grandfathered for eternity. And I'll be damned, there's Bowman's old '34 Chevrolet flatbed truck, the homemade crane bolted to the back. How many stricken cars had been hoisted up with that manual winch and hauled to the garage? I get to the railroad siding on the east side of town and slow down. I'm not surprised that the dirt road is still there, a grassy hump with two tires tracks either side. I ease the rental off the pavement and wince as the bottom drags. A scant two minutes later, I park the car in the stand of bedraggled cottonwoods and get out. Thirty years melt away like an early April snow-shower and I'm there again.
Clouder..
Big Daddy my heros have always been cowboys,they still are it seems
Clouder..