Chapter 2

It was late winter, which was like early spring everywhere else in the country, and that meant that it was rodeo season locally. My father already had a signed contract for hosting the local county rodeo in April, for a full week at $600 per day. As usual, he had under-bid the local country stadium, who had quoted near $800 per day. Naturally, we kept all local parking and concession rights, plus a flat 20% take of all revenues from the independent carnie rides and sideshow exhibitors.

I wanted to carve that upon my father’s tombstone – ‘He always got his Royal Fifth!’, but I thought strangers reading it would think that my father had a drinking problem, which he never did. Like ‘Mack the Knife’ he always took his slice.

Rodeo season meant that the local boys and girls were in a training frenzy for the upcoming junior events less than two months away. The football field was just bare dirt now, fenced in all around the animal shunts with steel railings all covered with sheets of plywood, and already mostly all sold for a modest fee to local advertisers. As a final golden bonus, even the piles of manure would get sold to local farmers afterwards. Nothing around here ever went to waste.

Monday and Tuesday nights were for boys events training. Wednesday and Thursdays were for the girls’ events, and usually with twice the competitors that the boys fielded. Friday and Saturday nights were for adults, and Sunday, all afternoon, we hosted something like a ‘dress rehearsal’ rodeo for the youth competitors, complete with a paying audience.

Our racetrack and horse steeplechase courses were getting extra usage now too, since the horse racing season also began in April. Our season of motorcycle racing would start at the first of May also, and on weekends the cyclists were now starting to arrive and clash with the horsemen and women ... especially the women. Even the smaller go-cart track was starting to get heavy use on weekends.

We had rules in place to help keep all of the very different sets of riders apart from each other. We did have a separate motocross course away from the speedway racetrack, complete with lots of dirt hills to climb and jump, but the dressage and show jumping courses were right next to it. Many competition horses are fairly high strung and don’t like the loud sound of motorcycles at all, anywhere near them. If he had it all to do over again, he admitted to me once, he’d have built the two tracks on opposite corners of the property, as far apart as physically possible.

My father tried to solve this problem by alternating days of use, the cyclists getting Monday and Wednesday, and the equestrians Tuesday and Thursday. Everyone though wanted both Saturday and Sunday. Like Solomon, my father had split the baby, telling both groups that they needed to share the prime weekend hours, juniors getting the morning hours and the adults got the afternoons, but both groups were near equally unhappy about this.

Even I could tell, during my first weekend back at the Speedway running things, that there was trouble brewing. Oddly, it wasn’t the adult motorcycle racers or teenaged motocross teams that were causing the majority of the trouble. We didn’t have a lot of local hardcore bikers or even gangs, the tension was always with the youth cycle or horse riders, or more likely, originating from the parent groups. As any youths sports coach will tell you, the real trouble is always certain to come from the parents.

With the rodeo training now at its busiest peak, there was enough ambient frustration to more than go around to everyone. I’d barely been back home for three weeks and now I needed to somehow break up a massive brawl, and at just barely after eleven o’clock in the morning too!

Overtly, the immediate cause of the fight seemed to originate with the motorcyclists, who were admittedly loudly revving up their cycles en-mass in their pit area, right as the girls were practicing barrel racing in the main arena, and also doing Western Jumping on the steeplechase course. The bikers wouldn’t have the right of the field for almost another hour, so it was obvious that they were just trying to be intentionally annoying, and succeeding. Just another tiny bit of escalation between the rival groups.

Then, after an especially noisy burst of loud motor sounds, one of the startled horses refused to take a jump and halted suddenly, tossing its young teenaged rider off into the dirt. She hit the ground head and shoulder first, and while her riding helmet had protected her skull, the gal was obviously concussed and possibly now had a broken shoulder. Her mother, and a gaggle of other equestrian moms, knew exactly who to blame!

The groups of antagonized rival mothers charged into each other and loud yelling and screaming led to pushing and shoving, and finally became a complete donnybrook, or as my father would have marketed it (and sold tickets), the Biggest Catfight in Loving County history! With the gals on both sides wearing boots, the battle was vicious, and the scoring probably about even. Reluctantly, since I was the owner and theoretically liable for all injuries, I stepped in and tried to break it up fast, with very mixed results.

Eventually, I got the two sides separated, but not happily.

“You saw what her brat did! Causing my daughter Leanne to fall and get hurt!” A rather familiar woman howled at me, as I pulled her off one of the cyclist moms who must have out-weighed her by perhaps a hundred pounds. Undersized or not, the angry horsewoman was way ahead on points and probably just about to win via a TKO.

“And it’s not going to happen again ... is it?” I shouted, glaring at the well-fed specimen of womanhood that had come out a poor second in the brawl, despite her advantage of both height and weight. “Cyclists start an hour later from now on, from one o’clock until five now, and I don’t even want to hear a motor starting up in the pit until then ... are we clear?” Nobody actually said ‘no’, so I took that as an affirmative.

My father, as usual, was dead right ... in hindsight it had been a rather poor idea to build the two tracks right next to each. Short of bulldozing half of the site and rebuilding, and being closed for at least six months, there was no simple or easy fix.

Most of the cycle moms were wearing club jackets showing them to be from Killeen, about an hour’s drive from here. Mostly Army wives and dependents from the local base up there. They had their own local practice course there, but frankly they preferred ours for training, as this one was a bit larger and more of a technical challenge, more comparable to tracks on the competitive circuit. Fortunately, the military moms also tended to understand what ‘orders’ were and seemed somewhat inclined to obey them. I wasn’t so sure about the mostly local equestrian and rodeo moms.

Leanne’s mother especially looked like a hard-case ... and she was looking more and more familiar by the moment, as I drug her kicking and screaming away from the rival cyclist moms. Already I could hear the local ambulance was on its way here. Leanne herself had mostly walked off all of the pain and it seemed like her shoulder might be only dislocated or sprained, instead of broken. She was taking the ordeal a lot more calmly than her mother, who was now struggling less and looking at me now with curious intent!

“Gareth Jones ... you bastard!” Emily exclaimed, “Just when did you return back home ... and just when were you going to even call me?”

“And why should I call you, anyway? I’d hadn’t left home for a week before you started to go out steady with Sid Barnwell. My sister just couldn’t wait to gleefully send me a photo she took of the two of you doing it in the back of his pickup, the first Saturday night after I’d moved to Dallas! Besides, I heard that you married him later a few months later.”

“Well, we’ve been divorced for over ten years, and I would have thought after all of the old times we’d had together, you’d at least have called.”

“And called you just what, anyway?” I laughed, “Certain names do come right to mind ... a lying cheater is just one of the kinder things I could think of. Or should I mention that I’d also seen you visiting the back of Sid’s truck, legs also spread, the Friday night before I left. I did break up with you after high school for a reason you know.”

“A reason, perhaps ... but not a really good one. You had already told me that you were going to leave the county, and didn’t want me to go with you.”

“Because I didn’t yet have a job and couldn’t support you, or even myself.” I quietly said.

“And so you were just going to leave me then, so I needed to find other options, and I did ... and just as well because you never did come back for me!”

“You looked quite happy enough, legs up in the air in the back of Sid’s crew-cab, so it looked like you were already in good enough hands. Now, if you can promise to behave, I’ll release you from out of my hands, again ... the EMS unit is here.”

I let her go and she glared at me for a long moment, but then the needs of her injured daughter reclaimed her full attention. I was happy to then skedaddle; back to dad’s office to make 100% sure that Emily had signed the usual competition waiver form for her daughter this morning. It was a standard disclaimer releasing the speedway from any and all liabilities as the result of anyone’s practice exercises or activities here and everyone whose ass wasn’t nailed to a bleecher seat had to sign one ... every day. Shit happens sometimes and dad had never lost a lawsuit yet, and I didn’t want to start an unhealthy precedent.

Emily Tyler had always been the prettiest girl in school; unfortunately she knew it, even by middle school. Dad was only paying me minimum wage during my high school years and Emily knew ways to spend every penny of it before Saturday night was done. I’d always suspected that she had a guy or two quietly waiting in the shadows for my leftovers, for times that I wasn’t paying her quite enough attention. At least she had been discrete about it, until the minute that I told her that I was ready to leave town, probably for good.

My old girlfriend was also admittedly very responsive in bed, or in a hay pile in someone’s local barn. She liked sex at least as much as I did and didn’t use it (much) as a weapon or tool to get what she wanted from me. She had enough other minor faults. Still, even in those younger days I never completely trusted her. I had thought briefly about marrying her, and taking her with me to Dallas ... but something inside of me balked, and for years afterwards I was glad that I had had second thoughts.

They took Leanne to the county hospital for x-rays, but her shoulder was just bruised and mildly dislocated. With a few weeks of rest in a sling, she’d be fine to compete in the forthcoming rodeo. I didn’t see Emily for another two full weeks and no one sued me, and I was grateful for both occurrences!

“I heard a tale through the grapevine that you and Emily are an item again, just like back in high school.” Louise, the senior waitress at ‘Sweetie Cakes’, the town’s most popular restaurant, said to me two weeks later on a Friday morning.

“An item on the ‘Never again – Not a chance in Seven Hells’ list maybe.” I laughed. “I’ve already got one ex-wife and she’s got an ex-husband of her own, so let’s keep it simple and even. She was a blatant gold-digger even back in high school. Dead spoilt and looking for a sugar daddy so that she could keep her finger nails clean. No thanks ... I passed then and I’ll double-pass now!”

“Clean fingernails?” Louise laughed with a loud nasal snort, “Have you even looked at her lately? Darling, she runs the single largest horse stable in the county and manages perhaps the single most prestigious girls’ equestrian club in the state, the Loving Cowgirls! She has a waiting list ten pages long of filthy rich millionaires in Austin, Houston and Dallas, begging her to take and train their daughters for competition, both English and Western Saddle events! Your daddy might have done pretty well for himself over at the old speedway, but she could buy ten of you right now and still keep the horses in hay. So if she wants you ... and I couldn’t say just why, it ain’t for your daddy’s pile! She still shovels out her own shit in her own stable and probably has more real dirt under those nails than you do!”

Now ... that was really something of a surprise! When I’d known her, Emily had never done a real day’s work in her life. Sometimes, mostly under protest, she had worked at her parent’s old Five & Dime store, which was still apparently in business. I’d gone in to pay a visit just the other day, but her parents hadn’t recognized or remembered me. Fine, if remembered right they hadn’t thought much of me or my father either. ‘Carney scum’ I think I’d heard her dad call us once. Fortunately, I wasn’t the kind of guy to keep grudges ... except about Emily.

I saw her as usual on the next Saturday morning, supervising about two dozen girls going through their paces, but I stayed well out of the way and she didn’t attempt to corner me, even after their noontime practice was over. Oddly though, most of the equestrian mothers didn’t leave after the girls training sessions were over. Most of them were just hanging out, watching the boys take their turns in the main arena. I’d never known calf roping to be so exciting to them. Actually, the way most of those teenaged girls were filling out their tight cowgirl jeans and shirts, I was pretty sure the local lads were doing more than a bit of evening roping, tying and branding there too.

I could feel something in the air though. Something was clearly about to happen ... and I didn’t have to wait for long.

Just before 1 p.m., loud howls started to be heard from the mechanical pits as it seemed that quite a few of their motorcycles apparently wouldn’t start. A few that did get rolling, crashed on some part of the course as their riders realized belatedly that they didn’t have any brakes. The brake cables had been cut on half a dozen bikes ... not an accident or coincidence.

So... that was what Emily and her fellow horse-mothers had been waiting for! They didn’t even bother hiding their guilt grins very much either. If their first fight had been a donnybrook, this second nastier brawl was something close to a war ... and it soon enveloped everyone, as the guys started to charge in too from all directions to protect their ladies on each side, and a few unhappier folks in the fracas drew weapons, fortunately (or not) only pocket knives, no guns.

Seven people, men and women both, were stabbed or had knife cuts that required stitches in the county hospital, and one unfortunate lady from Killeen was hit by a crowbar that busted her ribs and badly punctured her lung. The blow was an errant accidental one, swung by one of her fellow biker moms that missed its intended target, striking her mortally by mistake. She died in route to the hospital.

This could have meant serious war, between the cyclists and the equestrians, but surprisingly, both sides saw some sober reason after the tragic accident. I made the rounds that long afternoon and called anyone who would listen ‘an idiot’ and I warned both parties that both of their scheduled practice days and hours would be reduced, permanently separating each group for good. Then, I went to the hospital to visit the wounded, and I gave them a kinder and gentler version of the new facts.