John Sayles - The Anarchist's Convention and Other Stories

"He sure is big." Brian threw a little extra enthusiasm into it. "I didn't realize they were this big."

Sprague spat on the ground, sighing, then looked up to see what was left in the bucket. "Pretty sorry attraction, that's what you mean, isn't it?"

"Well, I wouldn't say — "

"I mean isn't it? If he don't eat he don't move." Cody shook his head. "The kids, well, they pick up on it right away. Least they used to before that Interstate swept them all off. What kind of ride is it where the animal stops and chows down for five minutes at a time? Got so bad he'd commence to drool every time he seen a human under twelve years of age. Feed, that's all they understand. Won't mind kindness and he won't mind cruelty but you talk straight to his belly and oh Lord will he listen. That's how they got extincted in the first place, they seen their colleagues droppin all around them but they were too involved with feeding their faces to put two and two together. They'd rather be shot and scalped than miss the next mouthful. Plain stupid is all." He gave Ishmael a thump in the side. "You'd just as soon name a rock or a lump of clay as give a title to this old pile of gristle." He squatted slightly to look the buffalo in the face. "A damn sorry attraction, aren't you? A damn sorry fleabag of an attraction."

He straightened and hefted the meal. "Might as well be stuffed, I figure. Put him on wheels. The few people I get anymore all want to snip a tuft of wool offen him for a souvenir. I had to put a stop to it, wouldn't of been a thing left. Cody Sprague's Bald Buckin' Bison."

Ishmael lifted his head and flapped his tongue in the air a couple of times.

"Got to fill the other bucket now. He expects it. Took me the longest time to figure the right distance, long enough so it's two bits' worth of ride but not so long that the thoroughbred here thinks it's not worth the hike. The kids can tell though. I never been able to fool them. They feel left out of it, feel gypped. Um, if you don't mind, would you stay on him for the rest of the ride?" Cody was hustling across the corral toward another hanging bucket, with Ishmael swinging a liquid eye after him. "He needs the exercise."

Brian sat out the slow plod across the corral and slid off when it reached the bucket. He brushed his pants and got a stick to scrape his sneakers clean of the buffalo stool he'd stepped in. The rich brown smell was losing its charm.

"You'll be going now, I suppose," said Sprague coming up behind him.

"Uh, yeah. Guess so." It was a little creepy, the multicolored corral in the middle of all that open range. "Thanks for the ride, though."

"Nothing to keep you here, Lord knows." He was forcing a smile. "S'almost nine now, business should pick up. Ought to build a fire, case anybody stops for a hot dog." He gave a weak cackle. "I could use it for part of my pitch — frankfurters cowboy style. Call em prairie dogs."

"Yuh."

"You'll be wantin that Interstate I suppose, get you out of here. Five miles or so north on the road and you'll smack right into it."

"Thanks." Brian shouldered his duffel bag. "Hope the trade improves for you."

"Oh, no worry, no worry. I'll make out. Oh, and here, take one of these." He fished an aluminum star from his pocket and presented it to Brian. "Souvenir for you and good advertising for me."

Deputy Sheriff, said the badge, Issued at Cody Sprague's Wild West Buckin' Bison Ride. There was a picture of a cowboy tossed high off the back of an angrily kicking buffalo. Brian pinned it on his shirt and Cody brightened a bit.

"Who knows," he said, "maybe today's the day. Maybe we'll get discovered by the tourist office today and be written up. You get your attraction in one of those guidebooks and you got a gold mine. Wall-to-wall customers, turn em away at the gate. I could save up an maybe afford an opposite number for Ishmael. Don't know if or what buffalo feel but I suppose everything gets lonely for its own kind, don't you?"

"I suppose."

"Say, I wasn't kidding about that fire. If you're hungry I could whip us up a late breakfast in no time. There's stock I got to use before it goes bad so it'd be on the house."

"I really got to get going. Sorry."

"Well, maybe you brought me luck. Yessir, maybe today will be the day."

Brian left him waving from the middle of the corral, buckskin fringes blowing in the quickening breeze. When he was out of sight around the bend he unpinned the aluminum star and tossed it away, it dug into his chest too much. Then the signs appeared, the backs of them first, then the messages as he passed by and looked behind. Every thousand yards there was another, starting with WHOA! HERE IT Isl and progressing to more distant warnings. When Brian got to FOR THE RIDE OF YOUR LIFE, STOP AT CODY SPRAGUE'S he couldn't hold out anymore, he dropped his bag and trotted back to where he'd chucked the star. He found it without too much trouble and put it in his back pocket.

He went through the land of blue-green sage clumps, leaning into the wind whipping over low hills, walking alone. There weren't any cars or people. More sage, more hills, more wind, but no human trace but the road beneath him like a main street of some vanished civilization. Open range, there were no fences or water tanks. He looked at his Road Atlas and guessed that he was a little ways up into South Dakota, a little below the Bear in the Lodge River with the Rosebud Indian Reservation to the east and the Pine Ridge to the north. He tried to remember who it was he'd seen in the same situation. Randolph Scott? Audie Murphy? Brian checked the sun's position to reassure himself that he was heading in the right direction. There was nothing else to tell by. A patch of hill suddenly broke free into a butternut cluster of high-rumped antelope, springing away from him. He was in The West.

He had been walking on the road for over an hour when an old Ford pickup clattered to a halt next to him. A swarthy, smooth-faced man wearing a green John Deere cap stuck his head out.

"Who you workin for?" he called.

"Huh?"

"Who you workin for? Whose place you headed?"

"I'm not working for anybody," said Brian. "I'm trying to hitch west."

"Oh. I thought you were a hand. S'gonna give you a ride over to whatever outfit you're headed for."

Brian tried not to look too pleased. Thought he was a hand. "No, I'm just hitching. I was walking up to the Interstate."

"You got a hell of a walk. That's twenty miles up."

"But the guy said it was only five."

"What guy?"

"The old guy back there. He's got a buffalo."

"Sprague? You can't listen to him, son. A nice fella, but he's a little bit touched. Got a sign up on go, says it's only five miles to his place. Figured nobody's gonna bother, they know the real story, and he's right. Guess he's started to believe his own publicity." -

"Oh."

"But you hop in anyway. I'm goin up that area in a while." Brian tossed his duffel bag in the back and got in with the man. "J.C. Shangreau," he said, offering his hand. "I'll get you north surer than most anything else you're likely to catch on this road. If you don't mind a few side trips."

Brian had to kick a shotgun wrapped in burlap under the seat to make room for his legs. "Don't mind at all."

"Got to pick up some hands to help me work my horses." Shangreau had quite a few gold teeth in his mouth and very bloodshot eyes. "Got me a couple sections up there, I run seventy-five head. Gonna have ourselves a cuttin bee if I can roust out enough of these boys."

They turned off left on one of the access roads and began to pass clusters of small trailer houses propped on cinder block. Shangreau stopped at one, went to the door and talked a bit, then came back alone.

"Hasn't recovered from last night yet. Can't say as I have either. There was nothin to celebrate, cept it being another Friday, but I did a job of it. You know when your teeth feel rubbery in the morning?"