It was April 2nd when the Cowboy first ambled by the store that my great grandfather opened so many years ago. That much I know is true, since it was the first time I was tasked with signing off on the day’s receipts by myself – an unwanted bit of independence and the natural progression toward taking over that my parents had in mind for me. It was also the first hot day of spring that year, following a rare stretch of rain; Ma told me to watch for the ocotillo leaves – a remnant of childhood affection, something that depended less on the season and more on the weather, and the welcome arrival of rain. Ma always tied such things to God somehow, which led to my growing disenchantment with both mother and God. If some omnipotent figure such as God was in fact in control and power, and he or she was good and kind of heart, why not provide enough rain to keep the ocotillo green and pretty year round? Why is anyone suffering at all for that matter? Years ago I learned not to ask those things out loud, especially not at the dinner table with Ma and Pa after a long day at the store.
Years ago I also understood that my dream to become a cowboy would have to be kept a secret, much like my questions about God and morality. Now, at the age of twenty, it might be time to put that plan into motion. On this first warm day of the season, I’m feeling the restlessness of boyhood clashing with adulthood.
Working at the family store, where I’d worked since the age of thirteen, was what the trajectory of my life was expected to take. When a kid understands this, they usually embrace it and run toward it, or they rebel defiantly, running as fast they can in the opposite direction. Neither of these choices seemed prudent or desirable to me, so I made a long term plan: I would secretly stash and save money while at the same time surreptitiously learn the cowboy ways every season they’d come to town.
I knew from experience, even at this young age, that to show want or desire towards something was the surest way of being denied it, so I acted as aloof and distant as possible when it came to all talk of cowboys. Had I shown the least bit of interest, both of my parents would have ensured that I didn’t see or talk to a cowboy until I was teaching my own offspring how to care for the store. The vilest parts of human nature don’t skip certain people just because those people are your parents – we only think they do. We only want to believe that, and the rest of our adult life is spent figuring out how to reconcile all of it.
I should probably explain my love of the cowboy life, since it wasn’t only my parents who were against it. From the outside, it might appear that the cowboys our town briefly employed – because they never lasted beyond a spring or summer, and if they did it was only a year or two further, never more – were vagabonds and drifters and not good for much more than quick heavy spurts of manual labor to get the ranches on track or the animals in order, or take care of the heavier lifting that the spring and summer required. But I saw the cowboy life as a way out of the shittiest little town, where nothing ever happened and I was already doomed to follow in the stultifying footsteps of Ma and Pa.
More than that, I saw in the cowboys that I met a thread of peace and serenity. Yes, they could be wild, and they could be destructive, and they could do the best day’s worth of work only to disappear that night never to return, but there was something intrinsically serene and calm about them – they had this inner-sense of peace and surety, no matter how wicked or wayward they might act out. And I loved that no one else saw or sensed this. It made me believe that in my heart I might have been born a cowboy, and was simply misplaced or set on the wrong track.
It’s tough for a boy to feel so out of place, and that’s all I’m going to say on that. My plan to become a cowboy depended on a careful reserve – the secret and silent machinations that would see me safely out of Levi’s General Store and off into the world until I could make my own way and find my own inner peace. I already knew then that it would never be in my parents’ place. I would come to have other reasons as well, but at this point I couldn’t know that – I only understood that my cowboy experience had to be gained quickly and quietly, and under the nose of a town that seemed hellbent on defining who I was before I knew myself.
In those days, cowboys were notoriously cagey about some of their ways, and such secrecy was partly what drew me to them; I didn’t much like sharing my business with the world either. I think I’m happiest when alone, and I have yet to find anyone’s company preferable to my own. Ma never liked that kind of talk. According to her, God didn’t like it either. She was always trying to get me to socialize more with people in town, encouraging me to go out more and hang out with the other kids. She put my time at the store second to any social events or opportunities that came along, even when the cowboys were involved. She and Pa had a certain level of status in town thanks to the store, and as a boy I wondered if they cared more about that than about what their only child wanted to do with his life. That sounds more maudlin than I mean for it to be. It’s just my way of explaining how I got away with being out of the store so much, hanging with the cowboys, and the few friends I mustered.
When the Cowboy came into town and moved in at Mr. and Mrs. Beasley’s farm, Ma sized him up as trouble, but rather than keep me from him, she pushed me right into his path, reasoning in her mind that seeing such a problematic lifestyle would put me back onto the path she wanted me to take. Parents sometimes forget their own youth, their own dreams, their own hopes for something more, and they play it safe to keep their children safe, and I suppose there is love in that. When the Cowboy appeared at the store for the first time a few days after his arrival, Ma introduced herself, quietly judging his disarming smile and bushy beard, as well as the reddish-brown hair that hung just a little too low under his cowboy hat.
“Mr. Marnas gives a cheap but good haircut and shave out back on weekends here,” she said, accustomed to her words being taken as orders and executed as such. She told us later that the Cowboy only smiled and nodded without committing. “And someday soon we’ll have you for dinner – just me and Pa and my boy Leve, who can show you around town.” The Cowboy picked up his items – she said he only asked for soap and some leather oil – then left.
In bed that night I tried to picture him. I remembered the dust that was flecking his beard and hat, and his saunter, like he already knew where he was and where he was going, even if it was his first time here. He had the surety of a cowboy, that intrinsic bit of self-possession that some people called Zen and others condemned as flaky, and that very essence was precisely what I wanted myself.
~ The FALL of The COWBOY ~ Autumn 2026
