In the crowd of men

Warren’s father missed breakfast that day. He often went in early, got home late. When Warren’s mother complained, he’d say “Running a school is more than a job.”
By mid-morning, Warren knew something was wrong. As the principal’s son, he’d been invisible. He’d wrapped his head and hands in bandages for two weeks in Grade 10, and no one said anything. Now he felt eyes on him.
“So, is it true?”
Andrew had once given him a ride home on his old motorcycle, Warren’s feet dragging because he couldn’t find the footpegs, certain he would fall. Andrew, fat, dirty, often stoned by noon, was indiscriminate in his friendship.
“What do you mean?”
“Did your dad take off with Janet Ferguson?”
“I don’t know.”
Except, he did, just then.
“That’s what everyone says, and she’s not here. Jesus, Janet Ferguson - who would pick her?”
Janet was skinny, curly brown hair, nor wildly pretty or popular, editor of the school newspaper. She was one year ahead of Warren - he was in Grade 11, she was in Grade 12 - two years older because he’d skipped Grade 5. And now his father had run away with her, moved to Calgary, 90 miles away, and started selling cars.
No one ever really told him that. His mother, eyes red and Kleenex crushed in each hand, told him and his sister Jenn their father was sick and had gone away for a while, sitting them on the beige chesterfield where they had to stare into his empty study, smell his cigarettes in the air.
That was April. They stayed in the house. His mother worked as a legal secretary. He helped on his grandparents’ farm for the summer, sun burning his neck, a thin boy trying to lift heavy things.
Janet Ferguson was back in school in September. His father stayed in Calgary. Once every few months he sent a greeting card to Warren’s mother with money in it - usually $100 or $150, once almost $3,000. Warren remembered one card - “I can’t understand why people get so upset about broken promises” on the front. Inside it said “Why‘d they believe me in the first place?”
That card had $300 in it. His mother used it to hire a lawyer, a man named Fraser McTeague who lost his licence to practise law and killed himself before the support case got far. He shot himself, twice.
That was a bad year for his mother. She wrecked their car in December. When the police got there she was hanging upside down in her seatbelt, smoking, as the gas pooled in the ditch.
And her sister Terri got arrested in Vancouver at Christmas, flying from Germany with hash oil in the bottom of her suitcase. She made bail - $120,000 - then vanished. His mother had mortgaged the house for the money. They rented a trailer.
“At least it‘s a double-wide,” he told his sister.
There was no yard - no where to go except their own three bedrooms, each so small things seemed about to crash on to the bed, walls so thin he could hear his mother and sister breathing.
His sister was 13.
“I can smell him,” Jenn complained, even though they’d shampooed the carpets, scrubbed the walls with ammonia until they gagged, left windows and doors open. The place had come available when a retired teacher had died of throat cancer. She said she could smell dying.
His mother finally got angry, really angry, and screamed at her, face red and dark hair tangled. His sister yelled back, then ran to her room. That night Warren smelled ammonia again. When he looked out, his mother was scrubbing the wall, pressing until her hands were red and raw. She stopped, chewed at a broken fingernail until blood seeped from the edge, then looked in the kitchen mirror as she spread the blood like lipstick.
Warren had his father’s Calgary phone number, kept it in code, never called. Until almost a year, a Wednesday night, the date marked on his calendar with a tiny cross.

He called from outside the 7-11, got the answering machine, heard his father’s voice, then the beep. He waited while a truck pulled out, engine racing.
“I’ll be riding at the Bucking Horse Sale Saturday. Thought you might come.” He hung up.
He left early the trailer early Saturday, didn’t say where he was going. It was hot by 10, the way the Prairies can be in April, straight from winter to summer, the snow gone one day and sun burning your skin the next.
Warren picked his way across the rodeo grounds, tried not to look at anyone as he signed up, got his number, scribbled his name four places on some legal form, waited.
“Listen up.” The sale was run by the Caldwell family, and Walter, a one-armed rodeo stock provider, was in charge of the chutes, He waited for quiet, picked at something on his forehead with his one thumbnail.
“Here’s the rules. Ten bucks a ride, fifty for the best of the day. Your job is to stay on, don’t get hurt and make this stock look good. Get drunk, and you’re gone. Miss your turn, you wait till it comes round again. Everybody gets the same chances to ride. Cash at the end of the day. Right?”
The other riders were mostly older, though not much. They were farm boys, ready to go down the road, with cowboy hats and battered boots and most with one glove stuck in their belts, dark with resin and sweat. They leaned against the rails of the fence, bent and stretched, watched the horses milling, bumping.
“And hey, remember, you’re the last chance - these horses look good, they get bought for rodeo stock. Or they’re dog food.”
Warren edged close to the chute to see how the riders did this. His right hand shook when he pulled on his new glove, sweat gathered in the small of his back. He’d ridden twice, both trail rides, tired horses all in a row.
About 200 people crowded the edges of the ring, buyers in their own special stand, kids getting chased from the fences. The pick-up men - two Caldwell boys - were sitting straight and posing for the town girls and were slow to help the first cowboy, who stretched his eight seconds into four times that before he slumped off the bronc, arms around the pick-up man’s waist, hips bumping against the horse.
Caldwell called Warren’s number. He climbed the fence awkwardly, scraped his hand on a raw board, struggled to find a place in the crowd of men leaning into the narrow chute, poking and kicking the horse to keep it straight. It was a thick, dark brown mare, heavy marks across its shoulders from some sort of harness. The horse’s eyes wide, bouncing sideways in the chute, grinding its teeth, spray flying when it shook its head.
“Get on her.”
And he did, balanced, a leg on each side, felt the weight of the mare push his leg into the fence, grabbed the leather grip with his right hand, pounded it closed with his left just like he’d seen, tucked his chin tight to his chest and nodded, sharp and quick.
The ringman pulled the eight-foot gate open, and his horse stood there, legs locked, until a chute hand stuck her with a cattle prod and she reared once, spun sideways and took off flat running.
Warren remembered to spur out, feet high, felt big muscles move underneath him, then was falling back, his hand ripping from the grip just as the horse kicked, his quarters smashing into Warren’s back. He landed on his head and shoulder in the brown dust. He heard hooves nearby, tried to get up, couldn’t breathe.
A skinny man in a blazer, cigarette still in one hand, was over the fence and running across the dirt awkwardly. He leaned in close, careful not to touch.
“Son, you all right?”
Warren felt his muscles start to release, took his first breath since he got on the horse.
“Yeah.” He coughed, spit out some dirt, smelled the horse on his hands when he touched his face, looked up at his father. “Yeah, I’m all right.”
He rolled over and got up, limped a little, walked away without looking back.
He rode five more horses, stayed on one, wrecked four more times. His left shoulder stiffened and turned the colour of dusk as he drank beers with the other cowboys at the Innisfail hotel. He made $60. Two of his horses got bought for rodeo stock, three for dog food and the first one because it looked like it might make a decent saddle horse.
“About what you’d expect,” a cowboy told him.