Live Like You Were Dying by Michael Morris Page A

that caused his shoulders to shake.
    Lesson learned, I sort of drug myself over to the side of the mat, legs clamped together. Ham went to reach for the blue blanket and then turned the switch off. “Crank it up again,” I yelled while trying to stand upright.
    That night as the moths hit against the light that dangled from a ceiling cord, and Shadow barked at the sound of the electric bull, I kept a grip on the challenge. With each jar of my teeth, I came crashing down against the bucking metal saddle, picturing the white spot being torn loose from its hold on my lung. The spot would get knocked higher and higher up my throat and out of my mouth. It would fly into the humid night air to suffocate and disintegrate into the gravel driveway at Rancho FuManChu. One way or the other, I made up my mind I was going to win. —
    The next morning I rose early while my father still slept in the back of the trailer. Thigh muscles that I didn’t know I had ached, and it was then that I knew the real reason cowboys were bowlegged. In the back of the camper the beige curtain that partitioned off my father’s sleeping quarters swayed to the beat of his snoring.
    Outside, the grass was wet with dew, and Shadow only glanced up from his spot underneath the deck of the house. All might have been quiet that morning, but FuManChu was like me, restless. He stopped eating from a bale of hay long enough to snort and look in my direction. When he pranced toward me, the ground shook from the weight of his moves. A trail of fluid ran out of his nose as he stomped against the wooden fence that separated us. We stood there against the purple haze of a new day, eye to eye, watching and waiting. I’ve come this far, bad boy, I thought. I’m not backing down now. Walking away, I heard him kick the fence once more before trotting away.
    Ham had wrapped my hands in tape and gripped the end of a rope, reminding me to keep my thumbs up. My heart beat faster with each swipe of tape that he put around my hand. But it was funny, when I signed the paper saying that he couldn’t be sued if FuManChu stomped the living tar right out of me, my heart slowed to a pace meant for an afternoon nap.
    My father ambled over with his hands tucked inside his pockets. He looked out into the tall, grassy field that ran out from Ham’s house to the edge of the highway. “You sure you want to do this?” His mumble sounded more like a statement than a question.
    â€œLet’s do it.” Walking to the chute, the word echoed in my head. “Let’s.” There was no let’s to it. It was me and me alone. But watching the way my father circled the area just beyond the chute and how he kept casting his eyes off toward the field, I realized that I’d used the right word after all. A piece of my father was right up on that bull with me. FuManChu’s muscled back quivered when I eased down on him. The gates of the chute rattled as he tried to twist around in the enclosed area. Pinned against his free will, he snorted and fought to raise his head in defiance to this latest man who was now on his back, trying to break his ego. “Ready?” Ham asked, holding the stopwatch.
    Holding one hand up in the air and gripping the rope with the other, the door of the chute flew open before I could finish nodding. We both came flying out of the chute, kicking. The bull’s hind legs flew up in the air, and he jerked his head with a torment that I’ve yet to see again. Twisting around, I gripped the rope tighter, feeling my neck contort with each strike against his flank. Digging my legs deeper into the side of the bull, I looked down and fought with every bit of spit and vinegar that I had left in me. And all of a sudden, it was not the jerking and twisting head of some bull that I saw: it was the face of Jay Beckett. As I squeezed my legs tighter, the bull snorted and kicked higher until he was almost standing on his front