Only moments passed since the announcer hollered, “This kid is tough. Determination, sheer will!” Moments later, the announcer panicked, “Folks, Tad can’t get his body working right. Sure is a testament to how tough these guys are that he’s face down in the dust, and took the daddy of them all tumbles and is STILL rising up on one arm. Looks like they got a first responder right there ready to get him up and back on soon.”
Tad’s face rested an inch from Carmen’s and his alert eyes darted at Carmen as he struggled to understand why he couldn’t ratchet his body forward like he’d done hundreds of times before. He’d made it almost the full eight seconds. He wondered what all the other cowboys thought of him lying there like a wasted piece of bacon.
His father’s coming down on him all those years sank into his jaw and he bit down hard to suppress a yell, only because Carmen was inches from his face. Carmen could see him withhold that type of yell you figured riders released up on the bull that escaped the ears of the crowd, drowned out by the roar of the crowd.
“Carmen how’s he,” asked Andy Hess, the chute boss, as the crew carried him back behind the chute out of the ring. “Nothing has ever notch that kid down so hard.”
“He’s disoriented of course and he can’t move his neck or back. The hooves of the bull landed around his shoulders. Hopefully the swelling is what’s causing the lack of movement.”
***
Before the rodeo…
Tad rode steers since he was twelve. By the time he was 22, he’d wanted to win a major rodeo. His parents raised him true to the western heritage all of his life. He loved the ritual of getting his bag out and rope ready. The feeling of slipping into his pants, riding boots and spurs was his favorite part of the day.
Early on, he rode on a bull named Showcasing. The bull had a head of steam; he was always wound up and ready to buck. Tad learned right away to spur and dig into the thick of his hide and hang on. Tad learned quickly he needed to get good with his legs so he could go on the offensive with any of the 2,000-pound mass of bucking beef. He didn’t want to just hang on for mercy; he wanted to ride one.
Tad lived in Gainesville about 30 miles from Mountain Top Rodeo. Sixty rodeos a year banged up his body pretty well, but he knew the risk he was taking. That’s why he taped his ankles before he ever entered the arena. He loved making this kind of a living. He learned a long time ago that roping was like football practice. You get beat up but you still need to make the touchdown, there is no room for crying.
***
Laying on the stretcher, Tad played the hour before he came out the chute over and over again in his mind. Every time, there was some familiarity to the feeling. However, something about that hour set his whole body on fire.
He cleaned the old rosin off his rope with a wire brush to remove the dirt, because it kept the rosin from getting sticky. Then, he broke up fresh rosin powder and burned it on the rope with his thick wedge bullriding glove on his rope. When it got hot, it got sticky to the consistency he liked and needed to make sure he felt that rope was going to stick in his hand. He knew he would have a good grip on the bull strap.
He held the rope around the girth of the animal like he’d done many times before. He squeezed it tight and wrapped the rope around one hand. He breathed in and heard the snorting sound of the bull. The clatter of metal clang all around filled his mind. A cowbell blew. Someone dropped some tools.
Most of the time he got so focused, he could block all of the sound out of his head as if nothing was going on around him except for him and the bull. He knew he had the right rosin stickiness on the rope. He collected pine forest resin in the forest when he was a kid, but after several go-arounds, and cooking the soap together in a pot, he started to buy premium glycerine in bar form or pounds of black rosin and carried it in his bag.
He punched the bull strap hard to make sure it stuck in his palm. Even though Nickeled and Dimed didn’t give off like he was restless, Tad felt this animal’s restlessness in every aching joint of his body. The flank strap already annoyed Nickeled and Dimed. It would certainly get Nickeled and Dimed bucking high, especially since he’d been bare for at least a year and would try to get this rope off as quickly as the chute would let him. A simple head nod. He was ready.
Two men that answered to Andy Hess opened the gate and the bull burst into the ring ready to buck that flank strap off. Streams of bull snot flew in every direction covering Tad’s square-toed boots. Then he was off on the snot-snorting bull. He didn’t feel ripped off until he found himself flying in the air, bouncing on his neck and spine wishing it was a soft mattress a few seconds later. The bull had locked on him and it had taken two wranglers to steer Nickeled and Dimed back toward a chute and away from Tad as Carmen approached. A bull can powerfully use his neck muscles to lift four refrigerators.
***
Present…
Carmen’s snakeskin boots had streaks of orange and yellow on the goat leather length of the boot rubbing against her calves and beige and brown python skin around her feet. She noticed that they were dusty, then she looked up just as Nickeled and Dimed threw Tad into the air.
As he landed, the announcers anxiously said, “Oh my Lord. That is a bad hit!” Carmen jumped up. Tad fell to the ground. The look on his face showed excruciating pain. “Ladies and gentlemen Tad Micks!” His hat hung off his neck. Rodeo riding was Tad’s drug and he dreamed about it ever since he was a little kid. Carmen saw it in his eyes. Although he was hurt, it was the kind of hurt that made him feel most alive. She held onto his shoulder.
Carmen and the sports medics quickly evaluated his injuries, they were bad enough to have to take him to the nearby hospital. Tad joked, “Guess it’s gonna be something outside of the trailer. I guess I’ll need a little more than tape.”
Carmen knew that Tad would say something funny at a time like this. In all her life, she’d never been without the rodeo, except for summer camp, but that’s about it. Otherwise, since a very early age she’d seen a number of rodeo falls.
Tad looked a lot like her brother Fernando. Of course, not in features or skin color, but the look in his eyes, and the expression he held onto spoke volumes about how badly he couldn’t wait for the next turn on the back of a bull. Carmen wanted to cry as they took Tad to the hospital. Fernando never made it to the hospital. Carmen told the other medics she needed to go get a brief snack and walk around a bit. The thought of Fernando crawled into her mind and would not let go.
She learned what had happened when she was eighteen. It was too late before anyone could help him out. Bull riding rode through his blood like a crow attacking a nest, persistently, undeterred and ruthlessly. No holding back, Fernando took to bull riding at a very young age while Carmen was more of a bookworm. She usually tried desperately to keep up with her competitors in classes. She graduated early from high school at the age of 16.
Two years later, her brother was dead. He died at the age of 22, the same age as Tad. Fernando’s bull was named Moody off the Chain. Throughout his career, Fernando won several titles and practiced all of the time. He’d left a few younger kids so in awe of his riding that they’d line up asking him how’d he do it. He was proud of his reputation and his skills. He wasn’t interested in hanging out with his friends. He preferred to try to improve all of the time, single-mindedly. He grabbed Moody off the Chain that day in the chute. When they opened it, Carmen heard from the chute boss Fred Gaunder that there wasn’t a single thing that Fernando could have done differently that morning.
In fact, Fred still sometimes reminded Carmen that earlier that morning he’d had a wonderful personal moment with him looking at the hills and talking about their future. Fernando even said that there was something so special about calling Georgia home. Every morning, he couldn’t wait to get outside and see it unfold in all its beauty. Not a day went by that Fernando didn’t want to be on a bull though.
Carmen was always a bit more of the intellectual. She tried to always e
xtricate herself from taking Fernando to the rodeo, because she juggled a schedule that included MENSA meetings and study sessions. She was fast-tracking her success in high school. She’d gotten her high school diploma at the age of sixteen and then went straight to college and finished medical school at twenty-four. Once she got to college, Fernando sent her photos of himself at various rodeos. Then, the letters and the photos stopped.
Fernando never recuperated from his injuries when he fell off Moody off the Chain. He rode at a time when the rodeos didn’t have a full time sports medicine team on site. He could have avoided his death had there been a qualified doctor present. He fractured his neck and spine after Moody off the Chain trampled him under his hooves. He lay there motionless, like a discarded doll.
Carmen ordered a pretzel and a root beer. She sat down and tore at the pretzel remembering how many times she had shared a pretzel with her brother. Before the fractures in his neck and spine killed him, he’d always called her a little moody. Carmen could be moody at times, but she loved hearing it from her brother, only because it was ironic coming from him since he could flare up or taper off at any time himself. He’d never felt completely at ease in his own body and his emotions always got the best of him, except for when he was preparing for rodeo. Then, he looked calm.
He made his own rosin. He spent hours looking for the perfect braided rope. He’d gaze at bulls at rodeos studying their every move to see how he might try to anticipate the bucking motions and every one of their reactions to the flank strap. He’d close his eyes and enjoy the vision of containing the rage of the bull. On the contrary, Carmen would sooner hurl herself down a track head-first on a bobsled than test how she might destroy the wildness of a bull.
However the day her brother Fernando died set her on a course to make sure that no other rodeo rider with a passion for the sport would die just because there were no qualified doctors around. She wondered at times about whether it was a thrill to tempt the animal to test human capability or if there was a real spiritual enjoyment for a rodeo rider. Riding collected all the random thoughts of the day and forced you to deal with life and death on an animal’s terms using all your skills and senses.
It took the focus of a rock climber, which Carmen could relate to since she had tried rock climbing and realized how quickly it emptied your mind. You were always planning, trying a new move, balancing, and using everything you had to cling to the rock.
She looked down at her pretzel. It looked so unappetizing. She wanted desperately to share it with Fernando again. She broke off a piece and set it to the side then took a quick bite. Tears filled her brown eyes. She hoped that he was riding all the best bulls that had reached their eventual end up in the sky.
An hour away from the rodeo ringside felt more like a lifetime. She grabbed her root beer. Fernando would have loved the flavor and the label. He would have slowly pealed it off and asked her if she wondered if there was an ounce of happiness in every drop like they said in the commercials. She would have told him, like she did when they were growing up, that there were very few ways that anyone could bottle up happiness. If only he wouldn’t have found his happiness for the last time.
She approached the chute boss Andy Hess. He told her that as they put Tad into the ambulance, he’d said, “I’d guess then that somebody better cancel my entry in the rodeo tomorrow.”
Chapter Two
The tractor rolled through the field next door and kicked up loads of dust. Carmen blinked a few times to see clearly. She opened the door to her cherry red Ford F-150 and got in. She checked to see if there was anywhere in the car that wasn’t dusty. Looked like her dash and seats escaped the mess, but she’d tracked some in already onto the rubber mat in the driver’s seats. Her cell phone rang.
“Hello,” she asked, since she couldn’t identify the number. She wouldn’t have answered it normally, but she wanted to make sure that it didn’t have anything to do with Tad.
“Hey Carmen, got a second?” She heard.
“Yeah sure,” she recognized Andy Hess’ voice. “How’s it going Andy? Everything alright?”
Andy responded, “Yes, no problems we can’t handle. How’s Tad?”
Carmen said, “He’s recuperating. Tough you know at this stage. He’s got a great supportive network of people though that I’ve met a few times. I’m heading over there right now.”
She headed to visit Tad at the hospital in Gainesville for the third time this week. The drive from her hometown of Dahlonega to Gainesville took about half an hour. Just like Fernando, Tad sustained a series of fractures in his neck and spine after the bull had his way with his body. Carmen grabbed only a few things to take with her for the visit, but she forgot to comb her hair as she looked in the mirror. Her hair poked out everywhere.
Andy hurried, “Then, I don’t want to keep you. I just wanted to let you know that in a few weeks we’re going to give you a little breathing room and have another doctor sub in here at the rodeo. That way you can really help out with Tad and his family and the rehab process. They’re counting on you and then we’ll get you back over here at the rodeo. In the meantime, see you tomorrow this side of the chute.”
“Sounds good to me. See you tomorrow,” Carmen agreed.
Carmen slept heavily the night before. She blamed the emotions surrounding Tad on the death of her brother Fernando. Her plans to keep her emotions out of it didn’t turn out.
Desperate to figure out how she was going to look at Tad and see Tad, not Fernando; therefore she tried to get to know his family. During one of the first visits to the hospital, she introduced herself to his parents Greg and Sally. They seemed nice enough. Greg sported a white wide-brimmed cowboy hat with a black sash. His grey hair was short on the top and long on the sides with a clean part a few inches above his left ear. His smile lines stretched on his face and his eyebrows crested like bird formations over a pair of knowing eyes.
He towered over Sally by at least a foot. Sally was a few inches shorter than Carmen, and wore a white long sleeve shirt and a fuzzy black vest. Her eyebrows were long and thin and she wore the slightest amount of make-up around her eyes. Carmen spotted a hint of blush in her apple shaped cheeks
Sally looked so proud. She managed to appear composed despite Carmen’s skeptical expression that she barely hid. She tried to act professionally. She was a doctor. She’d seen many falls. However, Sally had no idea that what started Carmen’s career in the first place was the death of her own brother with the exact same injuries that Tad suffered.
Carmen didn’t want to reveal that side of herself, she didn’t want to take away from their own way of handling Tad’s condition. She always hated when someone jumped in with their own story, when she was doing everything she could to not breaking down. Sometimes, it was just alright to nod and let the silence itself make up for biting your tongue.
Greg placed his arm around Sally’s shoulder and greeted Carmen, “You must be the doctor Tad mentioned helped him at the rodeo.”
Carmen replied, “Yes, he’s a very good rider.”
Greg and Sally smiled. Greg boasted, “Wait till you see all the trophies!” Greg closed his eyes, but only briefly, then regained his look at Carmen. “You’ve probably met some of the greatest in this sport. I know the sports doctors play a big role in helping these guys stare danger in the eye time and time again despite the prospect of punishment and injury. I tell you that bull Tad was taming, well; we’re a bit taken back, but not surprised since he enjoys a physical challenge. He’s been drawn to the sport since other kids were grabbing their bicycles.”
Sally added, “He even trained high school kids at their rodeos.”
Carmen said, “He’s been mostly injury free. Wild, scary rides suit many of the cowboys. How’s he doing?”
Greg went on, “Tad always said it’s all adrenaline. There’s no time to think.”
Carmen said, “Every bull rider knows it’s coming. They are just asking themselves when and ho
w bad.”
“I think he wants his muscle memory back. He can’t believe he can’t squeeze his legs. His legs.” Sally tapered off.
As the visits progressed, Carmen noticed that she got along great with the family. Tad didn’t know anything else besides bulls and lassoing calves. He’d tried other jobs, really odds jobs; he’d always quit to go to the next rodeo. Carmen spent hours a week helping after Tad was stabilized and out of the ICU. He had surgery a little less than two weeks after to fuse some of the fractured vertebrae in his neck and spine. He was able to move his arms successfully again. That inspired him.
She helped with the impatient rehabilitation program to help him regain as much independent function of his body as possible to get him ready to return home. Every day he worked his butt off to put all of his effort into getting better. For tad it became about effort, attitude and resilience, which replaced determination and sheer will.
Carmen told all of them a few weeks after the surgeons had placed pins in Tad’s spine that Tad would have to rely on hardware and an external brace, but that the broken vertebrae in his back should heal in about six months. That might mean he could compete again in the arena in roughly a year.
Tad smiled, he would have jumped up right then and there if he was allowed too. Tad’s girlfriend Sheila walked in. She was the spitting image of a motor chick.
Sheila introduced herself to Carmen, “Hi I’m Sheila. You must be the doctor Tad told me all about.”
Carmen said, “Pleasure to meet you. You must be Tad’s right-hand man.”
Sheila smiled and said, “Something like that.” From the looks of it, Sheila couldn’t decide if she was grateful that Carmen was there or jealous that she took such an interest in Tad’s recovery.
Carmen could see that there was something rubbed Sheila the wrong way, because she left the room right away and only looked at Tad briefly.