Lying low in Black-Hearted Pete's hideaway, you feel the tedium of daily life grate more with each passing day. It's almost as if you were back on Pa's ranch. You didn't come out west for this kind of bullshit.
Eight months of this pussyfooting about Silver Hills- this isn't really your style. These rules of Pete's-his blasted rules, manners, blah blah bullshit- this is definitely not you. There's no need to be so nervous. Kidd's just hot air in a white suit. Nobody shoots from the hip in //real// life.
It's time to plan a little something, have a little fun… a little heist. But one big enough that your name, Glowering Geoff, will be whispered admiringly across the sunbeaten plains by rough-jawed men for years to come, like Alice's whispers of //look at the Stevens' garden// on your nightly walks around the neighborhood, but with an undercurrent of fear, like when the guys used to tell the stories of fellows who won Wheel of Fortune but fell prey to identity theft...
You think you hear something. You don't know what. You stand up, slipping your Peacemaker from its holster and fingering your ammo pouch. The others have gone out, you should be alone in this dusty shack.
Should you check out the noise or wait here? Some rascal's out there trying to get the jump on you and you don't like it one-
[[“Keep up old man!” |1]]
"I was only resting my eyes!" You shout, secretly proud you hadn't startled and fallen off your horse. Nobody noticed a thing.
Wide cloudless sky, sun shining bright, everything exactly the way the old pictures painted Texas hill country. This is how life is supposed to be. Hooves on packed ground, “Camptown Races” playing faintly from speakers disguised as rocks, these are the sounds that thrill your soul.
Even Andy's-oops, Lightning Brown's-taunting can't ruin the afternoon for you. Absolutely nothing can ruin this.
This morning you were worried about whether this was really the right kind of thing to pick up at your age, worries echoed by your aching thighs, your sweat-soaked shirt, and the borrowed silver-buckled belt straining about your middle (whoever was Glowering Geoff before you was a smaller man, that much you know), but now- Right now, you're Glowering Geoff, meanest gun in the West, riding forever on your trusty pony… your trusty pony… you pull out the cheat sheet from your breast pocket.
In Alice's tiny shaky handwriting, the words say:
<center> <small>
Have fun Norman! You'll be a lovely Geoff. Remember,
Horse - Caramel
Francesca - Sheriff Kidd
Hugh - Black-Hearted Pete
Andy - Lightning Brown
… </small></center>
Your trusty pony, //Caramel//. Alice is definitely your better half. You smile and plan to bring home some wildflowers. Francesca would not appreciate you picking apart her landscaper's hard work, but you doubt she'd miss a few flowers, as long as you don't pick the big ones framing the //Welcome to Silver Hills// sign.
You inadvertently think of Francesca's flinty eyes and permanent scowl but you're not scared of her!
It is certainly a beautiful day, riding along on your trusty pony //Caramel//. Yessir, Geoff on his pony Caramel, meanest outlaw of Hugh's bandit friends, riding along under the hot Texas sun. You spot a bunch of blue flowers alongside the trail. Your bandit co-workers continue riding past them.
[[Stop and pick the wildflowers. |2]]
[[Keep riding. |3]]
You separate from the crowd of riders as your pony slows and you get ready to dismount.
“Keep up, old man!” Lightning Brown shouts again from ahead. The slim leather-clad figure of Andy waves at you to hurry up, and he's not going anywhere without you. You sigh. You'll just stop by the store on your way home. Better not make the others more cross at you than they already are.
[[You kick your pony to rejoin the riders. |3]]
You bounce along on the pony, feeling hints of old muscle memory reassert themselves. Until a few weeks ago, it had been decades since you were last on one of these things-but once a Western Riding Youth Champion, always a champion. Maybe if you stayed on long enough at Silver Hills, you could even become the Texas Jack, the Jesse James-
Texas Jack? Jesse James? Where did that thought come from, Norman? Glowering Geoff isn't even a speaking character. They've got you on a dumpy pony for crissakes. You're too old for this kind of thinking, you old fool.
Another wash of the breeze brings the scent of green and of horse. You breathe in deeply.
But wait. Hold on a minute. You aren't the same five year old who made cardboard pistols and tied your sister to the couch with twine. But nothing says you can't enjoy this foolishness. You can't deny that when Alice explained your old buddy Alejandro's predicament to you, you felt excited for the first time since the two of you retired to Texas. Be an extra on Alejandro's ranch? Not a problem!
You got on the Interwebs that very night to find the hat currently on your head- a black Stetson with a curving brim just like the Virginian's! It may not be beaver fur, but it is still a great hat. And a great hat deserves to be worn by a great cowboy.
You pass the stunted tree where Francesca usually gives the signal- The riders in front of you have stopped!
[[Pull hard on the reins. |4]]
You scramble to rein in your pony as the group stops but your pony has other ideas. Andy-dammit- Lightning Brown is probably rolling his eyes at you, but you can only assume since all of your bandit coworkers are staring towards the West. You hurriedly turn towards that direction too. A lone figure on horseback materializes over the crest of the low hill in front of your motley band: Hugh and Andy in front, then Bob, Tom, Louis, and you a few feet behind them.
The world goes quiet, but the twin pistols pointed at you all are loud enough. The sun traces a halo onto a hat as white as the plaster cattle bones littered about the grounds.
“Wild Kidd.” Hugh, rather, Black-Hearted Pete shouts from his position at the head of the bandits. The tension in his thick shoulders is apparent even from a distance. Boy, what a great actor.
The figure's voice reverberates from the hidden speakers. “It's Sheriff Kidd now, Pete, and it's time for you to give it up. All of you's throw down your guns! Nobody needs to get hurt.”
“If you think you're bringing us in, you're kidding yourself!” Tumbleweed rolls by, right on cue. A snake's rattle hisses from the speakers in the grass. Hugh's gloved hand inches toward his gun.
You feel movement along the hairs at the back of your neck, a tickling that feels different from the usual sensation of sweat rolling down your fleshy face.
[[Deal with it. |5]]
[[Ignore it. |6]]
[[Challenge Sheriff Kidd to a duel. |7]]
You kill the mosquito with a loud clap like a gunshot. Everyone jumps.
“Dammit, Norman!” Francesca throws her giant white Sheriff's hat at you. It makes a half-hearted attempt to float towards you but doesn't gain much mileage before flopping to the dusty ground. Your fellow co-workers sigh. “This isn't a comedy, Norman! Geoff is not supposed to be a clown!”
“Sorry. There was a mosquito.” Francesca gestures to the heavens. You wave the hand with the smashed body but nobody is particularly interested. You wipe it on your shirt.
“Don't talk back to her.” There is motion from the front of the crowd. Hugh is riding up to you, all two hundred solid pounds of him. “If there is a fly,” Hugh hisses from under his bandana as black as Pete's heart, “if there is a fucking wasp, if there is anything during the run, You. Stay. Put. Got it? We're doing this run through to help //you//.” He looks like he wants to shoot somebody for real.
[[“Screw you, Hugh.” |8]]
[[“Sorry Hugh.” |9]]
The mosquito bites you. It turns out to be a horsefly. “Ow!” You flinch at the unexpected sting and reflexively kill it with a clap like a gunshot. Everyone jumps.
“Dammit Norman! ” Francesca throws her giant white Sheriff's hat at you. It makes a half-hearted attempt to float towards you, but does not gain much mileage before flopping to the ground. “This isn't a comedy, and Geoff is not supposed to be a clown!”
“I'm sorry. There was a fly.” Francesca gestures to the heavens. Your coworkers sigh. You wave the hand with the smashed body but nobody is particularly interested. You wipe it on your chaps.
“Don't talk back to her.” There is motion from the front of the crowd. Hugh is riding up to you, all two hundred solid pounds of him. “If there is a fly,” Hugh hisses from under his bandana as black as Pete's heart, “if there is a fucking wasp, if there is anything during the run, You. Stay. Put. Got it? We're doing this run through to help //you//.” He looks like he wants to shoot somebody for real.
[[“Screw you, Hugh.” |8]]
[[“Sorry Hugh.” |9]]
[[“This whole thing is dumb.” |10]]
“Fight me, you yellow-bellied teat-sucker!” You're not quite sure where that phrase even came from.
“Shut it, Geoff!” Black-Hearted Pete hisses without turning around.
//Glowering Geoff!// You almost add, but you know better than to push your luck.
Sheriff Kidd, Francesca, glares at you, probably pretty mad that you just went off script, but doesn't deign to respond to your challenge. Their mics are too far to pick up your voice anyway. During the real thing, everyone will be focused on the two speaking characters after all.
The mosquito on your neck is bothering you.
[[Kill it. |5]]
[[Ignore it. |6]]
“Screw you Hugh,” you think, but you don't say it out loud, not because of his large threatening stature, or the force of his stare, but because you're not sure if you want to go home and get nagged by Alice about being fired by Alejandro's kid for talking to her not-boyfriend like that. It hasn't even been a week yet.
“We're looking for someone to help out at the ranch,” Alejandro had said, and Alice had brightened up and asked about it. Meanwhile, you tuned out because you recognized that look on Alice's face. She was going to repeat the whole thing to you later anyway. Which she did.
It might have been good to listen and realize that you would be working with your old buddy's anal retentive daughter and her lovesick boy, instead of your old buddy himself, but there was nothing you could do about it now except wish you had put //Jeopardy// on mute.
[[Apologize. |9]]
[[Sit in silence. |12]]“Sorry, I'm not sure what came over me.”
Hugh grunts.
[[Grunt back. |12]]
[[Good talk. |12]]
"This whole thing is dumb!" You shout at Francesca. “Look, kid, I know you want to make it perfect, but the people are here to ride the horses and hike the trails, not to watch us play dress up.” Your voice doesn't come out as loud as you'd like.
“Don't call her kid,” Hugh says. “Her name is Francesca.” The rest of your co-workers glance between you and Francesca and Hugh. Andy discreetly urges his horse forward to get a better view.
Francesca takes a breath. The kid's got a scary face, though she's trying like hell to look calm. “Perfection is what we want. We don't want to be a bunch of random guys in cowboy hats; we want to be the real deal. Silver Hills is an ranch rich with history, and we want to make this as authentic an experience as possible. You won't get a heart attack or anything from trying a little harder, will you? You get me?”
She turns to Hugh. “And you don't gotta speak for me.”
[[You feel bad. Better apologize. |9]]
[[Alejandro's kid can't talk to you like that! Quit. |11]]Francesca dismounts and snatches up her hat. “If you can't stay put now, how can we to count on you to coordinate with us during the actual show?” She brushes it off and crowns herself. “Places, starting from Mo's death!”
The group canters back to the empty cabin that serves as the crime scene of the //Welcome to Silver Hills! Please Enjoy Our Authentic Historical Traditional Old West Ranch!// orientation hour, which has stretched to four hours today. Mo, the dead bank teller of Silver Hills, waves from his lawn chair in the shade of the squat bank building and goes back to perusing his iPhone, swiping away while ignoring the approaching sweaty cowhands. After a dramatic death accompanied by the wailing of fiddles, Mo was free to do whatever until orientation ended. Lucky man.
You, on the other hand, are not having it quite so easy. Early retirement is fun, they said. Pursue your long lost dreams, they said. Every step the pony takes causes a chain reaction up your body that ends with a trembling of your jowl and a wobble of your hat. The leather chaps you inherited from the last Glowering Geoff are a touch too tight-you feel your legs roasting- and your sweaty shirt hasn't gotten any less sweaty. And your thighs, your knees, your back, your stomach…
It is another terrible day at the ranch. You sigh noisily.
Hugh calls for a ten-minute break. You carefully get off the pony, trying very hard not to lose your balance.
“Thanks,” you say when you've got both feet securely on the ground.
“Can't have you keeling over, old man,” Hugh says. You hope your grimace passes for a smile. “We open for the season soon. Take this seriously or Francesca's going to make your life as miserable as the last guy's. Though he did deserve it.” He walks toward the cabin that houses the restrooms.
Of course you are taking this seriously. You are taking this as seriously as anyone could take a bunch of adults playing cowboys. You are taking this as seriously as anyone could take speakers in plastic rocks that trumpet when Francesca rides by, and pipe ominously whenever Hugh lifts his head. You would have loved this job when you were in elementary school, not when you are closer to seventy than seven. All you can really hope for right now is that the guests won't laugh when you ooze off your pony tomorrow.
No one else is complaining, though you catch a look or two exchanged between Louis and Tom. Watching them swing from their saddles, you remember a childhood of your dad's oversized hat and your mother's broom, Will Rogers in black and white and John Wayne in color. Then you drag your sleeve across your face and the afternoon returns.
There's still a little time left in the ten-minute break.
[[Go take a piss. |13]]
[[Go drink some water. |14]]
[[Stay. If you leave now you'll probably be late coming back. |15]]
"I quit."
"Go on," Francesca says. Nobody stops you as you head towards the parking lot, the rest of your years of retirement, and Alice. They watch you ride away.
You do get an awkward call from Alejandro later, though when you invite him over for a beer and some football everything seems to be alright. Driving on the highway a few months later, you notice that the billboard advertising Silver Hills is now blank. You turn onto the deserted ranch. After a bit of poking around, you find out that Alejandro and his family have moved to a relative's place in Arizona.
The cowboy hat hangs in your closet, a souvenir.
[[Restart |Start]] What isn't fair, you think to yourself, as you use the state of the art facilities complete with automatic faucets and Airblade hand dryers, is that these folks do not understand how heavily the years press on the body. They think you're lazy. When you're dragging around a lifetime of burgers and steaks, there is less glory in pretending to shoot a man than in bending your knees at respectable angles. Your reflection pats his belly. You're already doing better than most men your age-you've still got some muscle still, somewhere.
“You ready, old man?” Hugh is walking out.
“Yeah, coming.”
He holds the door for you, and quickly glances around. The men and the horses are still a ways away and Francesca is nowhere to be seen. “Norman, you have really got to take this seriously. For Alejandro's sake, alright? They're… they need you. All of us.”
“You mean for Francesca's, right? And I've known them for longer than you have. What are you trying to say, young man?” What's he trying to imply?
“Look, I'm not saying anything I'm not supposed to say right now, but. Just listen more to what's not being said, okay?”
“How do you expect me to hear things that aren't said?”
Hugh shrugs his huge shoulders. You looked like that once.
“Forget it.” He lengthens his stride.
[[Return to the scene of the crime. |16]]
You walk to the main building in search of the water cooler. When you signed on last week, they guided you left at the main door, right down the first hall, right down the smaller hall…
You don't know why Alejandro wanted to drape hand-woven blankets and tack up animal heads everywhere. Nobody in their right mind would like this crap. You would never have guessed he would outfit his ranch like this, especially when he and Roberta lived in such a spare apartment in Chicago. You walk by a large painting with cowboys charging into a frontier hotel on horseback, guns drawn, playing cards fluttering about. Alejandro used to have a smaller one hanging in his bathroom. Maybe this is where he'd gotten his whole nutty dream about opening a ranch after retirement.
You pass a stuffed prairie dog. What a waste. This has been taking longer than you expected. You might be lost.
“Dad, why…” Francesca's voice comes from somewhere close by. You duck into the nearest doorway. She walks by, and you catch a few more phrases. “… not helping… The debtors and … no! It's not 'going to be fine.' You've worked hard for this- You are not taking this… listen to…” she moves out of range. What's the matter with Alejandro?
This doesn't seem to be the right time to call out to ask for directions to the office, and by extension the water cooler. It also doesn't seem like a good time to ask what she's talking about. As a result, you follow her at a distance until you escape the main building, never finding the water cooler and never learning more about what she and Alejandro are discussing.
[[Return to the scene of the crime. |16]]You wait with the horses as people disperse to relieve themselves or drink some water. The porch offers a bit of shade. You sit on the edge, grateful for a seat that isn't constantly bouncing.
Andy sits beside you. “Don't think too hard about it,” Andy says, checking to see if he's accidentally sat on any of the leather dangling off his arms. Lightning Brown's costume has a fringe jacket that must be awful to wear, though Andy never looks bothered by it.
“About what?”
“They say you ain't taking this seriously enough. It's alright, most of us came in like that. Like, what's with this crazy chick and her father's ranch? And then we got used to it.”
“That so?”
Andy shrugs. “It gets to be… fun, I guess. Be whoever you want to be… well, whoever Francesca wants you to be. Or, yeah, whoever you want to be.”
You snort. “I'm me.”
“Sure you are, but don't you ever want to be someone else?” It's your turn to shrug. You're just Norman: husband, American, retired. Andy continues, “Alejandro used to give me advice about it, back when I first started and he was the one playing Sheriff Kidd. He said things like, think of the backstory, be like whoever you see in your head, think like them, live like them, bring them to life…” Andy notices that he's rapidly losing you. “Anyway, don't take it too hard, old man.” He gets up as everybody returns.
[[You brace yourself on your knees and get up more slowly. |16]]
Francesca vaults into her saddle. “Alright! No time to waste!” Her six-pointed badge glints on the breast of her immaculate sheriff's outfit. “Start!”
You follow everyone through another rehearsal, and yet another, until Alejandro's daughter is finally satisfied. The sun is almost completely gone by the time you and your coworkers hurry to the stables. After taking care of your pony whatsitsname, you're in the parking lot when Francesca steps out from the shadow of a tree, still in that blazing white suit.
“Cigarette?” She asks.
You shake your head. “Quit years ago, right after y'all moved down here.” She shrugs and pulls out a lighter. Her face and her brown curls are thrown into relief by the momentary flare. She takes a drag. You shift in your boots.
“Good job on the glower,” Francesca says. “Sorry about before, but we really need everything to be perfect. Everything, even you,” she motions with her cigarette, “has to be on point constantly, constantly. No slacking, alright? It's important, no matter what you're thinking.”
“Francesca, it's just playacting, no matter how seriously you take it.”
“It's not 'just' playacting.” She encompasses the dusky sky, the tall grasses, the lights of the big house, and the ranch in its entirety with a sweep of her arms. “This here is a life. Yours and mine. We're going to be living this for the next few months, and this is as real as going to the grocery store, or paying your taxes.” She steps a bit closer so her aggressive eye contact makes it impossible for you to look away. “People come to watch a good show, sure, but for there to be a good show you shouldn't think of it as one. I want it to be real natural. I don't want to hear none of your whining anymore.” There should be more respect from a young lady to an old man such as yourself, but then you remember Alice and the bulbs and the fact that you're replaceable. Heck, you are the replacement and nothing says the replacement can't get a replacement.
“Alright missy. I'll try to keep my big mouth shut.” Really, kids these days. You remember when she was shy, gap-toothed, and called you “Uncle Norman.”
“Good.” She nods. “As long as you're going to try harder. Drive safe.”
[[Next]]
You've come to the end of this excerpt! Thanks for reading, and please let me know if you have any feedback.
<iframe src="http://giphy.com/embed/DAkTj5U6okQY8" width="480" height="270" frameBorder="0" class="giphy-embed" allowFullScreen></iframe><p><a href="http://giphy.com/gifs/bicycle-raccoon-riding-DAkTj5U6okQY8">via GIPHY</a></p>
Check back soon!