The Ride: Part Three

 The Ride: Part Three

 We all stood real quiet, nobody wanting to go on this adventure, but no one wanting to dispute Furlow. We looked at our feet, then at one another. Nobody chose to look at Furlow. The silence didn’t dampen his resolve, though. He just looked at us shook his head. Across the wooden fence, the young bull calf looked at us, and I’ll swear he had a grin on his face.

“Here’s what we’ll do,” Furlow said. “We’ll herd him into that chute and then I’ll tie this rope around him like us cowboys do.” He made a motion describing the action in case we couldn’t understand words. “Then,” he said, “I’ll get on and ya’ll will let him out.” He smiled. “I’ll show him who’s boss.”

Before we could act, he climbed over the fence and was in the pen with the calf, who had quit smiling.

I don’t know who moved first, maybe it was T-Boy. He always stood up for his race. I saw him one time beat Teddy Ratliff over half the county for calling him a, well I won’t say what he called him but it got Teddy’s rear end kicked over half the county. I’m pretty sure he followed Furlow first so as to plant a flag for bravery. Anyway, first thing you know, we were all in the pen and closing in on the calf, who looked for one second like he was going to charge us and the next like he was going to break the fence down and run. He chose and just stood there waiting.

The chute Furlow mentioned ran near the side of the barn at the far end of the pen. Mister General Lee had fixed two wide boards at the far end so that if you ran a cow or calf down the chute and it stuck its head between the two boards you could pull the one that pivoted with an attached rope and catch the creature’s head so you could give it a worm pill or whatever. The outside of the chute at that point consisted of a gate that could be swung open and, after the cow’s head was released, you could let it out into the pen.

Are you beginning to get picture?

Good. It didn’t us long to herd the bull calf into the chute and down to its end. He didn’t resist much. In fact, he seemed to be enjoying it. Furlow had climbed up and had one foot on each side of the chute when the calf reached the end.

“Now pass that rope through,” he said to the  two on either side of the chute and direct them to handle the ends as he drew them up and drew them up so he could hold them in one hand like you’ve seen the cowboys do. He lowered himself down until he settled down on the calf’s back in a rider’s position and pulled the ends of the rope together and held them tight in his right hand. He relaxed, took a breath, and motioned, just like a real rodeo star, for Boogy to open the gate.

Some say he made two bounds. Some say three, but it sure wasn’t more than that before the calf’s butt went straight up the air and Furlow went horizontal over where the calf’s head had been a second before but which had led a sharp turn that allowed Furlow’s body to land in a vacant spot two feet away and bounce before it settled into a dusty heap. We all ran over.

We were happy to see Furlow lift himself up chest first and bounce to his feet. “Was that a full eight seconds? he asked. Nobody spoke. “I don’t think I quite made it, he said. He looked at the calf who was standing ten feet away with the biggest smirk on his face you ever saw.

We all looked at one another, glad for the adventure to be over and for Furlow still standing. “That was some ride,” someone said.

Run that sonofabitch back in there,” Furlow said. “And somebody get that other piece of  rope.”

Next week: Conclusion, or how much damage can one person on a crazy bull calf do.

Bad Choices

THE RIDE: PART TWO

It happened this way. Boys will be boys and these boys, led by Furlow Thompson were wandering the countryside, up to no good, when they noticed that Mr. General Lee Bohanon wasn’t home. Someone said that he went to Pine Bluff once a week and stayed all day, sometimes staying all night at the Wagon Yard. That stared it all.

Mr. Bohanon raised some cows, did come timbering, and raised cotton to get by. And he got by pretty well in this little part of the world. This was after his boy was killed in the war. His daughter, Mary Custis Bohanon was married by then and his wife had died some years later. It was quiet around the place so we decided to have a look.

We didn’t intend to steal or damage anything. Well, nobody did but Furlow and we realized that only after the damage was done. Everything went well until we came across a large cattle pen behind his barn. There, standing as proud as Caesar on the Rubicon, was the prettiest half-grown bull café you ever saw.

“Would you look at that,” Bobby Joe Hankins said.

“I’ll bet he’ll go a thousand pounds,” his brother Robert said.

“Spect he’ll keep him for breeding,” Booger Shannon said.

“Let’s ride him, “Furlow Thompson said.

That silenced the crowd. “No,” he said. “Let’s ride him. Mr. General Lee won’t care.”

The thing with Furlow was you never knew when to take him seriously. You didn’t want to argue with him. He knew to many secrets wasn’t about to be shy in using them.

We waited. Nobody wanted to share responsibility, but nobody dared move. Then Furlow swirled around and walked into General Lee Bohanon’s barn like he owned the place.

T-Boy Stewart spoke up. “Is he serious?” T-Boy was the only colored member of our little gang and he knew full well that, whatever happened next, he wouldn’t be held harmless. “I ain’t havin’ nothing to do with this,” he added. “My daddy works for Mr. Bohanon.”

Before anyone could answer, Furlow came out of the barn holding two lengths of rope, each one about six feet long, a “phantom each” as they say in the Navy. “Come on,” he said. He threw the lengths of rope over the fence, undid the gate, and ushered us all into the pen where the bull calf waited, looking at us with a mixture of suspicion and contempt.

I didn’t feel good about this but followed the rest in and didn’t say a word.

 

Next week: What happened when good sense left for the day.

Doc in Danger

 THE RIDE: Part One

We never could remember how he ended up tied to a bucking bull calf.

Or, some wonder, did he really? There is argument to this day. Some say yes. Some say no. Everybody agrees, though, that it sounded a lot like him.

His name was Furlough Thompson. He was born in November of 1943, so folks that were around back then understand how he got the name. Mama said old lady Thompson had five kids already, so she was running out of ideas by then and she never had been the imaginative sort in the first place.

When her husband left to go overseas, she told everybody that her prayers would keep him safe from the Nazis. When he didn’t come home after VE day, she took it in stride. “Them French women is she-devils,” was about all she would ever say about it. She didn’t like to talk much in the first place. In more sophisticated places, they would have called her “Taciturn Thompson."

After a period of real suffering, she married a man who worked at the Arsenal in Pine Bluff and she and the kids had it better from then on, although his—her new husband’s—skin turned yellow from the chemicals he worked with and he quit going to church on account of it. At least that’s what he said. It seemed that the prayers of Furlough’s mama never got completely answered. They weren't denied, just modified on their way back from Heaven. "His ways is different from ours," was the typical response to such things back then.

But I’m “branching.” Mama always said I did that. She was kin to the Tuckers who were famous story tellers, the bunch from down around Pansy. Pansy isn’t far from the Hogeye Bend community where Pappa was from. They met, he and Mama, at a play-party get together at General Lee Bohanon’s house before the first world war. That’s the one Mr. General Lee’s boy got killed in. His name was Stonewall Bohanon but we never knew him. We all just figured his name helped contribute to the heroism that got him killed.

            Anyway, Furlough being the youngest and spoiled, without a come-home daddy, he grew up wild, unmanaged, and untamed. By the early Fifties, he was a solid member of our little group that terrorized the good folks around the Snake Island community. We first just called him “M.D.,” some for “mighty dumb,” some for “most daring,” and a few, though never to his face, for “missing daddy.” Later, someone hit on the idea of just calling him “Doc,” and that’s what he went by the rest of his life. He was fearless to a fault, ignorant of pain, and totally unable to predict the consequences of his actions. He never volunteered for, but never declined the offer of, an adventure. He was, we all felt, the very picture of bold action.

That’s where the bull calf came in. Bravery, imagination, fearlessness, leading by example, you could have assigned a bunch of motivators.

I always just laid it off on pure boredom.

Continued next Fiction Friday