The Cowboy

Lisa Metzgar

"She ain't exactly gentle, now is she," the cowboy says. He is sitting on the fence, looking down at me, hiding a smirk in the shadow of his Stetson.

"She's not exactly wild, is she," I say, and run my fingers along Salsa's neck where the red mane comes together with her soft, chestnut coat. Salsa glares up at the cowboy with her right eye, the wild eye, which is always rolling, always showing a full ring of white around the iris, then she looks back at me with her left eye, the gentle eye, her nose nudging my pocket for carrots.

I rarely sleep with cowboys but in this case I make an exception. It's not that he seems particularly bright, particularly talented or particularly handsome, but only that he makes himself so obviously available that it would be like refusing a free lunch. We go to his trailer, but it's as hot as an oven and teeming with sharp and dangerous objects like old horseshoes and railroad spikes and a chain saw. We go out back and find a space between the barn and the haystack and spread a horse blanket over the prickly grass. "That horse of yours," he begins, shaking his head, smirking and struggling to pull his boots off while standing with his jeans around his knees. He is lean and hard, all muscles and skin and no more hair than what seems obligatory to adulthood.

Riding Salsa is like riding a tornado hitched to a warm, lazy Sunday at the beach. The beach half is as smooth as good chocolate, but constantly jolted by the tornado half so that the whole horse is as twitchy and full of catches as a Chihuahua. Only at a full, wild gallop does she begin to come together. Then, even her eyes look a little more alike, the left opening wider, the right closing a little. Salsa used to be a rodeo horse, but she was too unpredictable. Some days she bucked like she had a thousand bees under her saddle blanket. Other days, cinch tight, rider spurring like a man possessed, she trotted stiffly out of the chute and tried to rub the poor cowboys off onto the boards of the arena fence.

The second time I sleep with the cowboy, we don't bother leaving the barn. "I'm going up to the loft now," he says, speaking too loudly and looking at me for a long time until I nod. He starts to undo his belt as he turns around, before he even gets to the stairs. I pick his clothes up as I go, then toss everything but his boots down a feed chute into the appaloosa stallion's manger.

III

The cowboy sits on the fence on Salsa's right side, two feet above her back. He swings his legs, making her cock her wild eye back at him and twitch. "So," he says, "I know your name. I suppose I should introduce myself."

"If you feel the need," I say. I reach down to pick up Salsa's right back foot. She bears down.

"Look," says the cowboy, "you ain't doin' it right. He climbs down from the fence. He bends over to catch the hoof, leans into her; she leans back. I climb the fence.

His elbow flies up and catches Salsa in the stomach. She grunts, then picks up her foot for him. He cleans it, then drops it. "Want me to do the other side, too?" His eyes are bright. I shrug.

He moves around her butt. She watches him with her right eye. The first kick is mild, just enough to push him away. The second is fast, aimed. It catches him full in the middle of the chest and flings him into the manure pile eight feet away.

The third time I sleep with the cowboy there is a huge, blue-purple hoof print with yellow around the edges in the middle of his chest. I take him out to a friend's house where I am house sitting, a huge log mansion with a hot tub and a view of the snowcapped mountain peaks. When we are finished, I let him use the hot tub and tell him it is my house, tell him stories about shooting the moose whose head hangs on the wall. I point to the huge, polished pine rafters. "My first husband hung himself from the middle one," I say. He asks if he can ride Salsa. I laugh.

My friend with the utterly calm, black gelding comes out to the barn. She says, "Do you know a kinda stupid cowboy with a horrible bruise on his chest?" She says she found one naked in her hot tub Sunday afternoon when she came home. "Said he was looking for you," she says. "At least he left me some daisies and a bottle of decent whiskey."

The fourth time I sleep with the cowboy, I let him tie me up in his trailer with baling twine. When we're finished, he stands in front of me and says he won't untie me until I say he can ride Salsa. I put my foot on the huge purple spot on his chest and shove him backwards. He lands with a crash in a tangle pile of barbed wire and fencing tools. He groans. An hour later I agree. He cuts me free with a six-inch Bowie knife. When he turns around, his back is all pricked with barbed wire punctures. "You should get yourself a tetanus shot," I say.

The cowboy stays on Salsa through four huge, jolting, bone-crunching, snapping bucks. Salsa gives her all to the fifth, nearly tearing herself in half. At the top, the cowboy comes loose, turns around in the air, and flies into the top slat of the arena fence. It looks like a fly being swatted. At that moment, I love Salsa more than I have ever loved any man. “I think,” the cowboy says, “I’ve broken my wrist.”

The fifth time I sleep with the cowboy, I have to prop him up on a mild crate and several pillows in his trailer. When we are finished he says he is moving to the city. “When,” I say.

“Two months,” he says.

“No sooner?” I say.

“Look,” he says, “That horse of yours, she ain’t changin’. Get yourself a nice sweet horse, like that black one your friend’s got. I’ll even take her to the auction for you.” I hit him twice, once to catch him off balance, once square in the right eye, hard enough to make my knuckles bleed and my hand ache.

My friend watches the cowboy ease out of his truck and hobble across the parking lot and into the barn. “Good God,” she says, “What have you done to him?” She brushes her utterly calm, black gelding who is wisely parked to Salsa’s left. Salsa leans into me as I curry her, dust coming out of the chestnut coat like water out of a sponge.

In a few minutes, the cowboy comes out of the barn being led by the appaloosa stallion. They head straight for us. Halfway there, the stallion rethinks the situation. The cowboy jerks the nose chain and has a moment of looking heroically in charge before being dragged back into the barn. “He is cute,” my friend says. “What’s his name?”

“I have no idea,” I say.

The next time I sleep with the cowboy, we don’t make it back to his place. I have him half-undressed before he stops the truck. He rips my shirt open with his uncasted hand and his teeth, buttons pinging off the dashboard. He can’t get his boots off or his jeans over his boots, so he leaves the jeans at his knees. With the last shudder, we are thrown to the floor. He lands with his solar plexus on the gear shift. ”What the hell happened?” he says, gasping.

“The truck stopped,” I say.

“The truck wasn’t moving,” he says.

“I would guess that you probably forgot to set the parking brake,” I say. I untangle myself and leave him in a heap, hugging the gear shift.

The truck has rolled down a steep embankment and into a telephone pole. I look underneath. Something is dripping quickly into the soil. The cowboy is out of the cab now, trying to hitch his jeans up one-handed. “Thanks,” I say, “I think I’ll walk back to the barn."

VII

My friend and I watch the cowboy lead the appaloosa stallion out of the barn then ease himself up into the saddle. “ He looked much better before you got a hold of him,” she says.

“He’s leaving,” I say.

“So would I,” she says.

I’ve stayed on Salsa for a full hour and I’m feeling good. I’m thinking about getting off and taking her into the barn, but it is warm, sunny; we are enjoying ourselves. Salsa perks up her ears at the stallion, winnies, then is gone from underneath me like a rug pulled away. I am sitting in the dirt next to my friend’s black gelding. “I think she’s in heat,” says my friend.

Salsa and the stallion race down the road, away from the barn. We can see the cowboy yelling, doing drastic things with the reins. They disappear around the bend. My friend takes her black gelding, I take my car. She finds the horses, nuzzling each other, eyelids at half mast, napping underneath a cottonwood by the river. I find the cowboy entangled in a prickly pear in the ditch just around the bend. I take him to my place, face down in the back seat of my car.

The last time I sleep with the cowboy, I cut his jeans off him, and spend four hours pulling prickly pear spines from his backside. “I’m leaving for the city,” he says. “Tomorrow.” I take my clothes off, pull the last pines out, then lay down next to him. He crawls on top.

“You should see a doctor about those spines,” I say.

“I’m leaving tomorrow,” he says.

He stays all night. In the morning I give him a pair of sweats and he makes coffee. He hobbles to my car and we drive to the barn. His back left tire is flat. So is the spare. He gets into the cab. “Nice knowin’ you,” he says.

“I know,” I say.