Page 94 - Leather Blues

82 Jack Fritscher

through a window; he ran off into the night on his silver-toed
boots. The middle-size one had a terminal glass jaw: a swift
uppercut thrown by the cowboy who’d sat with his heavy
arm around Arrow’s shoulders cold-cocked him good. Later
he revived fast when the barkeep dragged him across the
floor to the john and shoved his face into the cold pisswater
toilet.
The third rider was one tough little man, a hard-muscled
cockfighter, good, very good, in a bare-knuckle scrap. It took
four or five of the local cowpunchers to make short work of
him. The boys wrestled him like a steer to the wood floor.
Arrow’s dad dragged the little maverick by the scruff of his
neck out the door. The feedlot posse crowded in behind
them, deviling the downed man, kicking and spitting on
him, spurring him on toward the dark back of the feedlot. A
roper dropped a lasso tight around his neck. They dragged
him through a small corral. “Eat dirt, asshole!” They pushed
his mouth into the dust. His stash came up caked with mud.
A boot on the back of his neck shoved his face into a fresh
steaming horse-pie. Arrow had never seen anything like that;
he had never heard laughter like that.
They pulled the shit-covered outsider to a railroad X-sign.
Arrow watched them lift the drunken cowboy in his filthy
satin shirt and torn jeans up against the railroad cross. They
spreadeagled him to the four heavy-beamed wooden arms.
He was roped tight and secure. The men passed around a
bottle of whiskey. Arrow’s dad handed the bottle to his son.
Arrow raised the bottle to his lips and pulled a long burning
swig.
He could never forget that moment: looking at his father
who had led these men, tasting his first whiskey, feeling
the pressure of his hardon in his jeans, seeing the crucified
cowboy hanging on the railroad cross, helpless and drunk
and howling at the full Wyoming moon low on the horizon
behind him.

©Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights Reserved
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