When I turn around, new hat in hand, I almost choke. She’s wearing my old hat. It’s so big it’s barely above her eyes, but I can’t help the way my cock stiffens just slightly at the sight of it. That’s the only explanation I have for my next sentence. “You know what they say? Wear the hat, ride the cowboy.” I wink at her. She stares dumbly back at me. Just like when we bought the nuts, the tip of her nose turns pink. I need that little spot of color like an addict needs their next hit. It’s the only thing telling me there might be something more than fake dating friendship going on between us. It’s all I have to hang on to.
We stand close as she fixes the band of my new hat. Ourbreath mingling between us. I love how easy it is to look her in the eyes. My high school sweetheart was average height for a woman, and it was a pain having to get to her level all the time. I never have that problem with Nash. She’s the perfect size for me. I bet she’d fit me like a glove in bed, too.
The moment between us seems to last forever. For all I know, we could have already missed the rodeo and concert while we stood here.
“Sir?” We both jump ten feet in the air. “Your receipt?”
I turn to take it from him, using the split second to hide the blush coloring my cheeks before turning back to Nash. “You good?” For a second, I can see she thinks I’m talking about the cowboy cliché I was spewing, but she quickly realizes I meant to catch up with Colin and Chrissy.
“I’m good.”
“Lead the way.”
She nods, and we head toward the main stadium.
To get to your seats, there’s a six-story concrete ramp on the side of the building. If you were in the nosebleeds you’d have to walk around and around and around. Luckily, we don’t have to go all the way up. When we walk through the opening from the concessions area to our seats, my jaw drops. I have never seen the field like this. Gone is the green AstroTurf. The entire thing is covered in dirt. Tons and tons of it. Not the kind of dirt you find in the garden, either; instead, it’s finely ground stuff that’s almost dust. The whole arena is buzzing, the energy palpable. This is a different kind of action than football, and the feeling in the air reflects that.
“The HLSR has eight rodeo events,” Nash informs me as we scoot down the aisle to take our seats. This rodeo has way more stuff than the ones I attended in little towns aroundWisconsin. “My favorite is barrel racing, but I think bull riding is the most well-known.”
“And the most dangerous,” supplies Chrissy.
We watch round after round of rodeo events. When a bull rider gets bucked off after just a second, we laugh when the big screen shows the score: bull riders - 0, bulls - 1. Dudes being stupid on bulls is cool and all, but nothing gets my blood pumping like barrel racing. I can see why it’s Nash’s favorite. The women look ethereal on the back of their steeds. The horses dance at the gates as they wait for their signal to go, and then with all the power of a wild beast, they bolt out of the tunnel and toward the first barrel. I can’t imagine how the women keep their seat as they guide their horse around the second barrel and the third, their legs kicking out wide as the horse picks its speed back up for the dead sprint back to the tunnel. Watching a cowgirl with her hair flowing behind her as she encourages her horse to go faster and faster is something anyone can appreciate.
We scream for the Exxon wagon as they race against three other sponsored chuck wagons around the arena. The carts careening to one side as the four horses take them zipping around the curve. Next a big group of teenagers comes out to stand in the dirt in jeans and matching t-shirts. Volunteers adorned with fancy rodeo vests make a tunnel from the entrance to where the kids wait, ropes in hand.
The announcer comes over the loudspeaker. “Are you ready?!” The crowd screams, and a torrent of calves, spry and quick, run out into the arena. After a short count, the kids are let go to start their chase.
“Why do they want a cow?” Jaden asks.
“If they catch a calf and get it back into the starting box,they get to keep it and raise it for their FFA animal that year instead of having to pay for one themselves,” I answer.
Jaden bumps me on the shoulder with his elbow. “I wish we could have just caught a college scholarship.”
Nash barks a laugh. “It’s not as easy as you think.” She points to where one kid is hunched over, hands on knees, already puking up whatever they had for lunch. Jaden’s nose scrunches in disgust at the sight of vomit. We watch as a rodeo volunteer comes and escorts the kid off to the side.
It takes about fifteen minutes for the kids who are trying to catch a calf to get a hold of one. “You have to get a harness on the animal and drag it back into the square outlined in white chalk that they started in. If they don’t cross the line, it doesn’t count.” Some of the kids grab one quick, get it harnessed, start running it back in, and are done in less than ten minutes. Others take fifteen minutes just to grab onto the tail of the cow and are dragged behind it for yards until they can right themselves. By now most of the kids and their caught calves are back in the square where volunteers come and immediately help control the animal while the kid signs paperwork. There are a few left trying to get their cow moving, and there are lots more kids with no cow at all.
“Look,” Chrissy shouts, pointing to the northeast corner of the arena. We all follow her line of sight and see a young woman, one hand on the harness, the other on the calf’s tail, pulling with all her might trying to get the beast to move. The announcer has seen her, too. “On the count of three, let’s give Kelly a little encouragement! One, two, three!” The crowd goes wild. People are screaming, whistling, and clapping as Kelly digs her heels in and tries to get the animal to move. She’s probably thirty feet from the safety of the white chalk, but that’s a long way to go when you’re pitting your strengthagainst an animal’s, even one so small. A few of the young men who have given up on catching a calf come toward the young woman fighting for her life. The crowd cheers again as the boys get on the other side of the calf and start pushing. Between her and them, there’s no way the calf can stay still. It trips over its wobbly legs and starts moving. With a little momentum and encouragement from the kids, and from the crowd, they’re running. The smile on the girl’s face is a mile wide, even though her hair is dirty from getting dragged. We cheer again as she crosses the white line and people swarm her, taking the rope and the calf so she can catch her breath. She hugs the two boys who came to her aid and signs her name on the paper claiming her calf.
That is definitely something the little rodeos up north don’t have.
We also don’t have mutton busting. While the staff works on bringing out the huge mobile stage for the concert, everyone’s attention is directed to a small pen in one corner of the arena where rodeo volunteers put little kids on the back of sheep and let them go. They’re all so cute with their little helmets and chest protectors on. Adults plop them on the sheep and then help them back up when they fall off.
The crowd noise rises up and up as one little boy rides his sheep the full twenty feet to the end of the pen without slipping off.
I lean toward Nash in delight, the biggest smile on my face. “This is awesome!”
“I thought this wasn’t your first rodeo.” She winks at me.
“It’s not, but this is way bigger than any I’ve ever been to.”
She cheers for the next kid, a little girl with pigtails waving awkwardly at the camera in her face after her ride on the fuzzy sheep. “And the concert hasn’t even started!”
We watch as an interviewer walks up to the winning girl, dark hair a mess from the helmet, and asks, “How did you hold on so long?”
“I practiced a lot,” she says with the lisp of a kid who’s missing their front teeth.
“How did you practice? Do you have sheep?”