to Joe’s family, his tenderness toward Sheridan, his protection of Marybeth. How much he’d miss Nate if he never saw him again.
10
AT THE SAME TIME , fifteen miles upriver and four and a half miles to the east, Pam Kelly slammed down the telephone receiver and cursed out loud: “Fuck you, too, Bernard!”
Bernard was her insurance agent. He didn’t have any good news.
She spun around in her kitchen on the dirty floor—she’d quit scrubbing it years before when she realized Paul and Stumpy would never learn to take off their muddy boots outside—and jabbed her finger at two yellowed and curling photographs held by magnets to her refrigerator door, Paul squatting next to a dead elk with its tongue lolling, and Stumpy holding the severed head of a pronghorn antelope just above his shoulder, and shouted, “Fuck you, Paul. And fuck you, too, Stumpy! How could you do this to me?”
SHE’D MET Paul Kelly thirty-two years before at a rodeo in Kaycee, Wyoming. She was chasing a bareback rider across the mountain west named Jim “Deke” Waldrop who had charmed her and deflowered her behind the chutes at her hometown rodeo in North Platte, Nebraska, and she was convinced he’d marry her if she could onlyget him to slow down long enough. So she’d borrowed her father’s farm pickup and stolen her mother’s egg money and hit the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association circuit that July, trying to locate Deke and nail him down. She’d missed him in Greeley, caught a glimpse of him getting bucked off in Cody but couldn’t find him afterward, and had a flat tire just outside of Nampa, where she could hear the roar of the crowd in the distant arena as he rode to a 92, and Deke Waldrop, flush with cash, went off to celebrate with his buddies.
With less than ten dollars, Pam had rolled into Kaycee on fumes and a mismatched left rear tire, feeling sick to her stomach—she suspected she was pregnant with Deke’s child—to find not only Deke but Mrs. Waldrop and two towheaded Waldrop boys waiting to watch their dad ride.
She was devastated and furious, and as she returned to the parking lot, she saw a handsome, laconic cowboy climbing out of his ranch pickup that he’d just parked so closely to hers she couldn’t wedge in between them and open her door. It was the last straw. She set upon the stranger, pummeling his chest and shoulders with closed fists, but the man didn’t strike back. Instead, he smiled and said, “Whoa, little lady,” and leaned back so she couldn’t connect a punch to his jaw. She wore out quickly, and he gently clasped her wrists in his hands to still them and he asked if there was anything he could do to help her out, because she was obviously upset.
She’d looked around him through tear-filled eyes and saw the rifle in his gun rack across the back window of his truck. “You can give me that rifle so I can shoot Deke Waldrop,” she’d said. Then a whiff of fried meat from the concession area wafted over them and the smell turned her stomach and she got sick on the hard-packed ground.
He said, “You’re a pistol, all right,” and untied the silk bandannafrom his neck and handed it to her to dry her face and wipe off her mouth. “Name’s Paul Kelly,” he said.
FOR THE NEXT thirty-two years, she’d remind him that was the first and last act of kindness he’d shown her.
But at the time, it worked. He bought her some ice cream and sat with her on the top row of the bleachers as she cried. Then he took her to his weathered old line shack in the Bighorn Mountains and offered her his bed and didn’t try to jump her. He was working for a local rancher, he told her, fixing fence and rounding up cows to earn enough money to go to college to become a mechanical engineer. He was, she told her mother over the telephone, “almost dashing.”
They married, and Pam convinced her father to cosign on a loan for an ancient log cabin on twenty acres in the foothills of the mountains. It was
10
AT THE SAME TIME , fifteen miles upriver and four and a half miles to the east, Pam Kelly slammed down the telephone receiver and cursed out loud: “Fuck you, too, Bernard!”
Bernard was her insurance agent. He didn’t have any good news.
She spun around in her kitchen on the dirty floor—she’d quit scrubbing it years before when she realized Paul and Stumpy would never learn to take off their muddy boots outside—and jabbed her finger at two yellowed and curling photographs held by magnets to her refrigerator door, Paul squatting next to a dead elk with its tongue lolling, and Stumpy holding the severed head of a pronghorn antelope just above his shoulder, and shouted, “Fuck you, Paul. And fuck you, too, Stumpy! How could you do this to me?”
SHE’D MET Paul Kelly thirty-two years before at a rodeo in Kaycee, Wyoming. She was chasing a bareback rider across the mountain west named Jim “Deke” Waldrop who had charmed her and deflowered her behind the chutes at her hometown rodeo in North Platte, Nebraska, and she was convinced he’d marry her if she could onlyget him to slow down long enough. So she’d borrowed her father’s farm pickup and stolen her mother’s egg money and hit the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association circuit that July, trying to locate Deke and nail him down. She’d missed him in Greeley, caught a glimpse of him getting bucked off in Cody but couldn’t find him afterward, and had a flat tire just outside of Nampa, where she could hear the roar of the crowd in the distant arena as he rode to a 92, and Deke Waldrop, flush with cash, went off to celebrate with his buddies.
With less than ten dollars, Pam had rolled into Kaycee on fumes and a mismatched left rear tire, feeling sick to her stomach—she suspected she was pregnant with Deke’s child—to find not only Deke but Mrs. Waldrop and two towheaded Waldrop boys waiting to watch their dad ride.
She was devastated and furious, and as she returned to the parking lot, she saw a handsome, laconic cowboy climbing out of his ranch pickup that he’d just parked so closely to hers she couldn’t wedge in between them and open her door. It was the last straw. She set upon the stranger, pummeling his chest and shoulders with closed fists, but the man didn’t strike back. Instead, he smiled and said, “Whoa, little lady,” and leaned back so she couldn’t connect a punch to his jaw. She wore out quickly, and he gently clasped her wrists in his hands to still them and he asked if there was anything he could do to help her out, because she was obviously upset.
She’d looked around him through tear-filled eyes and saw the rifle in his gun rack across the back window of his truck. “You can give me that rifle so I can shoot Deke Waldrop,” she’d said. Then a whiff of fried meat from the concession area wafted over them and the smell turned her stomach and she got sick on the hard-packed ground.
He said, “You’re a pistol, all right,” and untied the silk bandannafrom his neck and handed it to her to dry her face and wipe off her mouth. “Name’s Paul Kelly,” he said.
FOR THE NEXT thirty-two years, she’d remind him that was the first and last act of kindness he’d shown her.
But at the time, it worked. He bought her some ice cream and sat with her on the top row of the bleachers as she cried. Then he took her to his weathered old line shack in the Bighorn Mountains and offered her his bed and didn’t try to jump her. He was working for a local rancher, he told her, fixing fence and rounding up cows to earn enough money to go to college to become a mechanical engineer. He was, she told her mother over the telephone, “almost dashing.”
They married, and Pam convinced her father to cosign on a loan for an ancient log cabin on twenty acres in the foothills of the mountains. It was
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