When the Women Come Out to Dance Page 14

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  TENKILLER.

  At Kim's funeral--people coming up to Ben with their solemn faces--he couldn't hel p thinking of what his granddad Carl had said t o him fifteen years ago, that he hoped Ben woul d have better luck with women.

  "We seem to have 'em around for a year or so," the old man said, "and they take off or di e on us."

  It was on Ben's mind today, along with a feeling of expectation he couldn't help. Here he was standing ten feet from the open casket, Kim i n there with her blond hair sprayed for maybe th e first time, her lips sealed, a girl he lived wit h and loved, and he was anxious to take off. Go home as a different person. Maybe look up a gir l named Denise he used to know, if she was stil l around. Get away from the movie business for a while.

  He could've taken 40, a clear shot across the entire Southwest from L. A . to Okmulgee, Oklahoma, fourteen hundred miles, but took 10 instead, drove four hundred miles out of his way to look in on the Professional Bull Rider s Bud Light World Challenge in Austin. Getting away was th e main thing; there was no hurry to get home.

  He thought he might see some of his old buddies hanging around the chutes, not a one Ben's age still riding. Get up i n your thirties and have any brains you were through wit h bulls. Ben entered the working end of the arena to the smel l of livestock, got as far as the pens shaking hands and wa s taken up to the broadcast booth. An old guy he remembere d as Owen still calling the rides.

  Owen said, "Folks," taking the mike from its stand as he got up, "we have a surprise visitor showed up, former worl d champion bull rider Ben Webster, out of Okmulgee, Oklahoma." He said, "Ben, I liked to not recognize you without your hat on. Man, all that hair--you gone Hollywood on us o r what?" Owen straight-faced, having fun with him.

  Ben slipped his sunglasses off saying yeah, well, he'd been working out there the past ten years, getting by.

  "Your name still comes up," Owen said. "I see a young rider shows some style, I wonder could he be another Be n Webster. I won't say you made it look easy, but you sure sat a bull, and didn't appear to get off till you felt like it. Listen, I w ant to hear what you been doing in Hollywood, but righ t now, folks, we got Stubby Dobbs, a hundred and thirty-fiv e pounds of cowboy astride a two-thousand-pound Brahm a name of Nitro." Owen turned to the TV monitor. "You se e Stubby wrapping his bull rope good and tight. Ben, you don't want your hand to slip out of there during a ride."

  "You're gone if it does," Ben said.

  He had taken Kim to a rodeo in Las Vegas, explained how you had to stay on the bull eight seconds holding on with on e hand, and you can't touch the bull with your other hand, an d she said, "Eight seconds, that's all? Hell." He told her sh e might last a second or two, being athletic. Kim said, "Bring i t on," waving both hands toward her body, "I'll ride him." He'd miss the way things he said to her could become fightin g words.

  "All right," Owen was saying, "I believe Stubby's ready, tugging his hat down . . . And here we go, folks, Stubb y Dobbs out of Polson, Montana, on Nitro. Ride him, Stubby."

  Ben watched the butternut bull come humping out of the gate like he had a cow's butt under him, humping and bucking, wanting this boy off his back in a hurry, the bull throwing his hindquarters in the air now with a hard twist, Nitro humping and twisting in a circle, Stubby's free hand reachin g out for balance, the bull humping and twisting his "caboose,"

  Owen called it, right up to the buzzer and Stubby let go to be flung in the air, whipped from the bull to land hard in th e arena dirt.

  "Well, you can hear the crowd liked that ride," Owen said, "it was a good'n. But it looks like Stubby's favoring hi s shoulder."

  Stubby holding one arm tight to his body and looking back as he scurried to safety, the rodeo clowns heading Nitr o for the exit gate, Ben thinking: Don't look back. You're a bull rider, boy, get some strut in your gait. Check the rodeo bunnies in the first row and tip your hat.

  "You can ride to the buzzer," Owen was telling the crowd, "and still get in trouble on your dis-mount. Ben, I imagin e you had your share of injuries."

  "The usual, separated shoulders, busted collarbone. That padded vest is good for sponsor decals but that's about all."

  "You think riders'll ever have to wear helmets?"

  Ben said, "Owen, the day they won't let you wear your cowboy hat, there won't be anybody riding bulls."

  "I know what you mean," Owen said. "Well, I thought Stubby rode that train to score a good ninety points or better.

  How did you see he did, Ben?"

  They were waiting for the number to show on the monitor.

  "I think the judges'll give Stubby his ride," Ben said, "but won't think as much of that bull. He hasn't learned all th e dirty tricks yet, kept humping in the same direction. I'd hav e to score it an eighty-five."

  And there it was on the monitor, eighty-five, Owen saying, "Well, Ben Webster still knows his bulls." Owen was looking toward the stalls now, saying that while the next ride r was getting ready they'd take a commercial break. Owe n turned off his mike and said to Ben, "Come on sit down. I w ant to hear some of the movies you were in."

  "I was in Dances with Wolves, my firs t picture."

  "What were you in it? I don't recall seeing you."

  "I was a Lakota Sioux. Got shot off my horse by a Yankee soldier. I was in Braveheart. Took an arrow in the chest an d went off the horse's rump. Die Hard with a Vengeance I wrecke d cars. I got shot in Air Force One, run through with a sword i n The Mask of Zorro. I got stepped on in Godzilla, in a car. Let's see, I was in Independence Day . . ."

  "Yeah . . . ?"

  "Last Action Hero, Rising Sun, Black Rain . . . Terminal Velocity. Others I can't think of offhand."

  "I missed some of them," Owen said. "I was wondering, all those movies, you have a big part in any of 'em?"

  "I'm a stuntman, Owen. They learn you rode bulls, you're hired."

  A kid from Brazil named Adriano rode a couple of bulls that hated him and were mature and had all th e moves--one of them called Dillinger, last year's bull of th e year--and the kid hung on to take the $75,000 purse.

  Seventy-five grand for sitting on bulls for sixteen seconds.

  Ben picked up three cases of Bud, a cold six-pack and a bag of ice for his cooler at the drive-thru Party Barn and aimed hi s black Mercedes SUV north toward Dallas, two hundred miles.

  He'd cross the Oklahoma line and head for McAlester, home of the state prison he used to visit with his granddad, Carl , and then on up to Okmulgee, the whole trip close to fourfifty--get home at three A . M. No, he'd better stop at a motel the other side of Dallas, take his time in the morning and ge t there about noon. Drive through town, see if it had change d any. The last time he was home, seven years ago, was for hi s granddad's funeral. Carl Webster, who'd raised him, dead at eighty.

  Ben was thinking, sixteen into seventy-five thousand was around . . . forty-five hundred a second, about what you go t for smashing up a car. He had earned $485,342 less expense s his last year of bull riding, way more than he ever made in a year doing stunt gags.

  The six-pack was in the cooler behind his seat, a cold Bud wedged between his thighs, Ben following his high beam s into the dark listening to country on the radio. The thre e cases of beer were in the far back with his stuff: travel bag s full of clothes, coats on hangers, four pair of boots--two o f them worn out but would break his heart to get rid of. He ha d boxes of photographs back there, movie videos, books . . .

  One of the books, written before Ben was born, was a volume of Oklahoma history called Hell Raisin' Days that covered a period from the 1870s to the Second World War. Ben's grandfather and great-grandfather were both in the book. He had told Kim about them.

  How Virgil Webster, his great-granddad, was born in Oklahoma when it was Indian Territory, his mother par t Northern Cheyenne. Virgil was a marine on the battleshi p Maine when she blew up in Havana Harbor, February 15, 1898. He survived to fight in the Spanish-American War, wa s wounded, married a gi
rl named Graciaplena in Cuba, an d came home to buy a section of land that had pecan trees on it.

  Inside of twenty years Virgil had almost twelve hundred acres planted in pecans and another section used to graze cattle h e bought, fed and sold. Finding oil under his land and leasing a piece of it to a drilling company made Virgil a pile of mone y and he built a big house on the property. He said they coul d pump all the oil they wanted, which they did, he'd still hav e his pe-cans.

  Ben's granddad Carl, Virgil's only son, shot a cattle thief riding off with some of their stock when he was fifteen year s old. Hit him with a Winchester at a good four hundred yards.

  He was christened Carlos Huntington Webster, named for his mother's dad in Cuba and a Colonel Robert Huntington, Virgil's commanding officer in the marines when they took Guantanamo, but came to use only part of the name.

  Once Carlos joined the Marshals Service in 1927 everybody began calling him Carl; he was stubborn about answering t o it but finally went along, seeing the name as short for Carlos.

  By the 1930s, he had become legendary as one of Oklahoma's most colorful lawmen. There were newspaper stories that described Carl Webster being on intimate terms with girlfriends of well-known desperadoes from Frank Miller to George "Machine Gun" Kelly.

  Ben showed Kim photos of his mother and dad, Cheryl and Robert, taken in California sunshine, his dad in uniform, bu t said he had no memory of them. Robert, a career marine, wa s killed in Vietnam in '68 during Tet, when Ben was three year s old. Cheryl gave him up to become a hippie, went to Sa n Francisco and died there of drugs and alcohol. It was ho w Carl, sixty-two at the time and retired from the Marshals , came to raise him. Kim would ask about Cheryl, wanting t o know how a mother could give up her little boy, but Be n didn't have the answer. He said Carl would tell him about hi s dad, how Robert was a tough kid, hardheaded and liked t o fight, joined the marines on account of Virgil telling hi m stories when he was a kid, and was a DI at Pendleton before going to Vietnam.

  "But he'd never say much about my mother other than she was sick all the time. I guess she took up serious drugs an d that was that."

  Actually, Ben said, Carl didn't talk much about any of the women in the family. "Not until I dropped out of Tulsa after a couple of years to get my rodeo ticket and we sat down with a fifth of Jim Beam."

  He told Kim some of what he remembered of the conversation. Carl, close to eighty at the time, saying the men in the family never had much luck with women. Even Virgil, cam e back from Cuba and never saw his mother again. She'd gon e off to live on the Northern Cheyenne reservation, out at Lam e Deer, Montana. Carl said he came out of his own mother , Ben's great-grandma Grace, bless her heart, and she was already dying from birthing him.

  Carl said that time, "Now your grandma Kitty--I can barely remember her face even though I'm still married to th e woman. If she died I doubt she's in Heaven. Boy, Kitty wa s hot stuff, wore those real skimpy dresses. She'd read about m e in the paper and pretend to shiver in a cute way.''

  It sounded to Ben like Carl's idea was to take Kitty out of the honky-tonks and show her a happy home life. Only Kitt y found herself living with a couple of guys who dipped Copenhagen, drank a lot, argued and took turns telling stories about fighting the dons in Cuba and chasing after outlaws in Oklahoma. "Kitty saw me as a geezer before my time," Carl said.

  "She had Robert, and took off and I never went looking for her."

  This was the occasion Carl said to Ben, "I hope you have better luck with women. We seem to have 'em around for a year or so and they take off or die on us."

  Kim said, "What's that supposed to mean, a curse?" She said, "Luck has nothing to do with it," starting t o show some temper. "You know what your granddad's proble m was? He saw himself as a ladies' man without knowing a goddamn thing about women. It was all guy stuff with Carl, and you ate it up. My Lord, raised by an old man with guns an d livestock out in the middle of nowhere. Having a jarhead dril l instructor for a dad wouldn't have helped either, even if yo u never met him. To tell you the truth," she said, "I'm surprise d you're considerate and know how to please a woman."

  They'd argue over dumb things like how to make chili and Kim would say, "I'm from where they invented it, for Chris t sake, hon. We do certain things my way or I'm out of here.

  Like Kitty, or whatever her name was, your grandma."

  This Kim Hunter, from Del Rio, Texas, down on the border, had come to Hollywood hoping to be a movie star and was told she'd have to change her name, as there already was a Ki m Hunter. This Kim Hunter said, "Have the other one chang e hers," like she'd never seen her in Streetcar playing Marlo n Brando's wife. She was a physical fitness nut and got into stun t work falling off horses, getting pushed out of moving cars , jumping off the Titanic, stepping in to get beat up in the sam e dress the star was wearing . . .

  He said, "You think you'll ever leave me?"

  She said, "I doubt it."

  Their arguments played like scenes they could turn on and off. Their home in Studio City was aluminum siding with a flagstone patio, a lot of old shrubbery in the backyard and bat s that would come in the house through the chimney.

  Three weeks ago they'd spent Sunday on the beach at Point Dume, where Charlton Heston kisses the real Kim Hunte r playing a monkey chick in Planet of the Apes, and she doesn't want to kiss him because being a human he's so ugly--righ t before he takes off and comes to the head of the Statue of Liberty sticking out of the sand.

  "You'd never catch me playing an ape," Kim said.

  That day they walked along the edge of the Pacific Ocean talking about getting married and spending the rest of thei r lives together.

  "You sure you want to?"

  Ben said, "Yeah, I'm sure."

  "If we're gonna have any children--"

  "I know, and I want kids. Really."

  They had fallen in love falling off a ladder in a movie, five takes, and were still in love almost two years later. She wa s slim and liked to wear hiking boots with print dresses.

  Crossing the rocks to the path up the cliff--that bed of volcanic rock at Point Dume--Kim twisted her ankle. The y got home, she put ice on it and an Ace wrap and said she wa s fine. They had talked about going to a movie that night , Harry Potter or Ocean's Eleven. Kim said no problem, she wa s up for it, and said, "You promised to fix the chimney today."

  Ben was in the kitchen adding mushrooms to the Paul Newman spaghetti sauce. He said, "In a minute."

  She limped out saying she'd take care of it, not sounding mad or upset; it was just that impulsive way she had. He called to her to wait. "Can't you wait one minute?" No answe r from outside. If she thought she could do it--she had don e enough climbing and falling gags, she knew how. He though t of the day they fell off the ladder together five times in th e LONG SHOT of the couple eloping . . . and now they were getting married. He told Kim and told himself he was all for it and believed he meant it.

  She had dragged the ladder out of the garage, laid it against the chimney to climb up and replace the screen ove r the opening so the bats would quit flying in. She must've go t right to the top. . . . He heard her scream and found her at th e foot of the ladder, on the flagstone.

  For the next three days and nights he sat close to the hospital bed taking her hand, touching her face, asking her to please open her eyes. He prayed, having once been a Baptist , see if it would do any good, but she died as he watched he r and had to be told by the nurse she was gone.

  They let him sit there while he tried to place the blame somewhere, going through ifs.

  If he had quit slicing the mushrooms right away.

  If Kim wasn't so--the way she was.

  If they hadn't gone to Point Dume she wouldn't have twisted her ankle. He was sure it was the ankle caused he r to fall.

  That evening at home he got out the Jim Beam and it reminded him of his granddad that last time they were together, Carl hoping Ben had better luck with women, having 'em around a year or so and "they take off or
die on us."

  He tried to find a way to blame Carl for telling him that, Ben now looking at four generations of bad luck with women. He was afraid it meant that if it wasn't Kim's time had com e it would've been some other girl's.

  The idea was in his head now, stuck there. He didn't see it as a curse; there was no such thing. Still, there it was and h e had to ask himself, You think you can handle it?

  They had talked about taking a trip one of these days to show each other where they came from, Ki m saying, "A bull rider, I imagine you'll show me a stock tan k on a feed lot, like you're proud of it."

  Turning off the highway into Okmulgee he was thinking this could be his part of the tour, Kim sitting next to him i n her denim jacket, Ben in a wool shirt hanging out of hi s Levi's. It was mid-November, the best time of the year t o show off his land. They'd be harvesting the pecans and Lydell , his caretaker-foreman, would have a crew out shaking th e trees and gathering up the nuts. First, though, a tour throug h town. And right away he was thinking of Denise again , Denise appearing in his mind ever since he left L. A .

  Okmulgee, population: 13,022.

  Show Kim some history, the Creek Nation Council House, and tell her about the "Trail of Tears" and how Cherokees an d Chickasaws and Creeks were forced to move here from Easter n states. He'd be serious about it and she wouldn't say anything.

  He was surprised to see a brand-new jail next to the county courthouse.

  Here was a chance to tell about Denise if he wanted to. Say to Kim, "See the courthouse? That whole top floor used to b e the jail. I spent a night there when a girl named Denise go t me in trouble." Kim would want to know about it. He'd tel l how he and Denise went skinny-dipping late one night in th e country club swimming pool and he got caught. Denise ran , leaving her clothes, but he wouldn't tell on her so they locke d him up they said to teach him a lesson.

  Kim would want to know more about Denise. He'd tell her that in high school--right up that street, see it? Okmulge e High, Home of the Bulldogs--she was known as Denise th e piece.