Mary Sullivan - Rodeo Baby

Good memories.

She smiled. “That was awesome. You convinced them to let me sit on some hay and hold one for, like, an hour.”

Sam squeezed her hand. “It was only fifteen minutes, but you were small and that was a long time for you. I think I took twenty photographs. You were so cute.”

“It was the best , but it’s even better to see them out frolicking in their natural habitat, isn’t it?”

“It sure is.” He slowed down. “Do you want to watch for a while?”

“Can we?” She sounded so hopeful he couldn’t disappoint her.

He sat on the shoulder for fifteen minutes listening to Chelsea laugh, the sound a sweet balm for his ravaged psyche. For the past year and a half, he’d missed his ex-wife’s presence in his life, but even more, he’d missed his daughter’s laughter. He wanted to make her happy again.

“I guess we should go,” he said reluctantly.

Sounding contented, she said, “Yeah. I want to see Gramps.”

A couple of miles later, Sam pulled onto the shoulder of the small highway with a squeal of brakes and spraying gravel.

“Dad, what are you doing?”

“Look.”

He pointed across the road.

“What’s that?” Chelsea asked.

“That, my dear child, is your heritage.”

“That’s Gramps’s amusement park?”

He heard the doubt in her voice. It echoed in his chest.

Gramps might have raved about his fairgrounds during his visits, but it looked bad. Most of the rides were rusty. A few were in the process of being updated and fixed. One was being dismantled by a couple of old men with a pair of tractors.

Far off to the right and back from the road a fair distance was Gramps’s house but Gramps was no longer there.

Sam had never seen the house but he recognized it from his grandfather’s descriptions and old photographs. Some of those had been black-and-white, shot in the days when the fairgrounds were brand-new more than a century ago, and built by Gramps’s father.

A tidal wave of emotion swept through him, longing, need and anger culminating in one word: mine .

He owned a beautiful apartment in the city overlooking Central Park and a huge home in upstate New York. So why should a plain two-story brick home with tilting front steps affect him so? With its modest proportions, two windows on the first floor and three above, the ordinary house didn’t compare well to the showstopper he owned with ten spacious bedrooms. This one had, what? Three? Four, maybe?

Yet he wanted it.

That house, these fairgrounds, leased now to a bunch of locals intent on making a profit from his grandfather’s belongings, were out of Sam’s reach.

An old saying or song lyric, Sam couldn’t remember which, thrummed through him. You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. Wasn’t that the truth?

Throughout the busy years, thoughts of Rodeo had been stored in a far corner of his mind, taken out only at Christmas when Gramps came to visit. In all of those years, he had thought the town, and the fairgrounds, would be here waiting for him.

Then his life had changed. Drastically.

Last year, it had taken a crazy turn. Now he was about to start a new business in New York.

Success is the best revenge .

The idea consumed him. Even so, a part of him yearned for the house, toward knowing and understanding his rural heritage.

But, for the short time he would be here, he wouldn’t be able to get to know it.

At least for the next year, those women had control of Sam’s heritage. Worse, Gramps couldn’t remember how long he’d agreed to make the lease. What if it was two, three, five years before Sam got it back?

“Dad, isn’t it beautiful?” Chelsea’s voice whispered out on a breathy sigh. “It’s awesome.”

The fairgrounds? Maybe after a massive amount of work. But now? Awesome? No.

She pointed to something and his eyes adjusted focus from the distant house to the foreground, to a ride right in front of him—a carousel that had been rejuvenated with colorful paint.

Chelsea was right. Awesome was a good word for it, all fresh and spit shined. Did the machine work? Were the women planning to give rides on it?

If so, it looked like Chelsea might be first in line.

Hope and potential all rolled into one, it stood in the weak March sunlight proudly declaring “If I can be saved, so can the rest of this old place.”

A powerful sentiment.

“It’s got really weird animals,” Chelsea said, but he detected no disdain.

“You’re right. Is that a bull?”

“Yeah, and a couple of sheep.”

“Bighorn sheep, I’m pretty sure.”

“There’s a bison! And a cow.” She giggled, the sound sweet on the cool breeze. “What are those?”

“An elk and two white-tailed deer.”

“Their saddles are so beautiful. So ornate. I want to ride all of them.” She peered up at him. “Will we still be here when the fair is on?”

Apparently, they planned to launch in August and it was only March. Sam’s next business venture started in one month. He had only thirty days to get this problem sorted out so he could hightail it home.

No way was he losing out on the opportunity to make serious money with his new investment firm, Carmichael, Jones and Raven. Between the three partners, their experience totaled fifty years. Sam planned to take the industry by storm.

If, along the way, he showed up his ex-wife and father-in-law and the company they’d wrestled away from him during the divorce, all the better. Answering Chelsea’s question about attending the fair, he said, “It isn’t likely, possum.”

His nickname for his daughter slipped out before thought or caution. For some reason, as a little girl, Chelsea had taken a liking to Dame Edna and had giggled every time possum was used as an endearment.

Sam had called her possum once and she’d rolled on the floor laughing. The name had stuck.

Sometimes at night, he could hear her accessing YouTube on her laptop and watching old shows she must know by heart.

Entranced by the carousel, she didn’t call him to task for the nickname she, these days, called stupid.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen here.”

“If you have your way, there won’t even be a fair.” How could one young girl hold so much bitterness? Had the divorce harmed her beyond repair?

He hoped not, with a fierceness that shocked him.

“You know what? This place looks bad now, but I can see the potential. I can see what Gramps and his father built.”

Chelsea nodded. “Yeah, it must have been really cool years ago.”

“I agree.” Dad must have spent a fair bit of time every summer working here. Then he’d walked away from it all and never looked back.

Sam couldn’t get enough of the place. He could stand here for hours checking it out. Even better, he’d like to walk the land. It might be derelict now, but it must have been magical in its day.

“I should ask Gramps if I can get in to look around.”

“Can I come, too?”

“Of course.”

Sighing, he straightened away from the fence.

“Let’s go visit Gramps and then find this ranch I’m supposed to be working on.”

Chelsea snorted. He ignored it. It had been a long trip. He’d had plenty of practice ignoring her.

On second thought...

He pulled out the change purse, opened it and held it out to her. “Snorting.”

“It’s not really snorting, Dad,” she said in her best disdainful teenage voice. “Nobody really snorts.”

Sam imitated a pig by letting out a huge snort. Chelsea tried not to giggle.

“I don’t walk around sounding like a pig. It’s more like humphing.”

“I know, but it has the same effect. Lack of respect. Pay up.”