Most of the days that change your life begin the same way that any other day would begin: absent of any knowledge that the day will change your life. On this one I woke to the cry of a hawk, screeching right above our house in the earliest light. It had no business being that loud this early, and on the Lord’s day no less. Now I’m sounding like Ma, who would have been upset at the noise. It woke me right before she would have done the same if she hadn’t heard me moving about the room. I hated the noise of it, the boards that creaked and groaned differently depending on sky, weather, season and, seemingly, mood. As it was, Ma merely yelled up the stairs to get moving for mass.
My bed, which I’d outgrown more than a few years ago, was a lumpy pile of rusty springs, pushed into the corner of the room, which had dirty white walls, and a pale wooden floor that was once a white-washed nightmare to keep as pristine as Ma insisted. When I turned eighteen, I told her I would no longer keep it that way, and she didn’t bother to argue. It felt like I grew up that day, because when I said it, it wasn’t defiant or argumentative – it simply… was. A declarative and gentle statement, its gentleness the source of its power. What I would not argue or challenge in any way was Sunday mass and Sunday dinner. Both were implacably non-negotiable. She’d have thrown me out, and while that was not always not tempting, I had a bigger plan that relied on my lasting at home until it was too late to do anything else.
When we returned home after mass, the sun was already high, the day was hot, and the store was warming too quickly to be comfortable much longer. We were closed on Sundays, and that was not just for the public. Ma took ‘day of rest’ strangely seriously, refusing to let us do much of anything other than read, which was the only joy I didn’t feel the need to hide, as it was a rare instance of my taste dovetailing with Ma’s earnest belief in furthering my education. She enjoyed reading, and I understood that her plain, rough way of talking wasn’t due to lack of vocabulary, but a calculating maneuver to sound less intelligent and more like everyone else. That everyone included Pa. His estimation of her was high enough that he wouldn’t have minded, but maybe that was because he had never been actually faced with it. They danced the way most parents dance – as both example and warning for their children – and in awkwardly treacherous imbalance. For them it worked, though they didn’t outwardly display it. My parents spoke in silent accord, their language neither very physical nor verbal, but like their faith, somehow unwavering. They were sure of each other, and so I was sure of them.
That didn’t mean I wasn’t leaving. A twenty-year old guy either needs to settle down and find a wife to help run his life, or ride out as a cowboy and find himself. Ma and Pa had only one path laid out for me, and now that I’d graduated to cashier I was halfway there. I knew it was time. If it didn’t happen this year, it wouldn’t happen. I’d already learned enough from the cowboys, and still had one more spring and summer to learn from another – the last cowboy who would teach me something before I became one myself.
The dining room doubled as our library, two of the longer walls were lined with bookshelves that a friend of Grandpa’s had helped build before Pa was ever born. There was dust and wax and the grime of three generations on some of the books there, and Ma was always adding to the collection, quicker than I could read them, even on Sunday, when there was nothing else to do. She tried selling some in the store, but realized soon that there still wasn’t a market for it – one book would suffice to be passed around the small town, so she basically started a bit of a library and I got to reap the rewards of a well-read youth, whatever they were. Ma seemed to hold more promise in that than me – I only understood that I loved reading, loved words, loved how they opened up a place in my head that hinted at something more, at worlds only I could create. When I discovered poetry, I knew – well, I dared to hope – that one day I would be a cowboy poet. The first part in getting there was the cowboy part – the poetry I would work on later; I figured I’d need a few years of cowboying to get enough life experience to write a proper poem.
Ma was padding quietly but actively about the kitchen, pots and pans making an occasional din of dull bells, the only kind of music she’d allow in the house on Sundays. I sat down at the dining room table – a favorite place to read, especially on winter days, when an oddly-placed fireplace lit up the corner, blackening the surrounding walls and lending a cavernous aspect to the room. Along with the candles that Ma always had burning on the table, the fireplace and its scent of ashes, fainter in the spring and summer, gave the space a cozy aspect missing from the starkness of the rest of the house. The bookshelves closed us in further, and I would always find delight when humans cloistered themselves into smaller spaces as if to make sense of the world on a smaller scale. Interspersed with the books were various objects that Ma had collected over the years – gifts from customers and friends, hand-made vases and pots, dried bundles of herbs and strawflowers, baskets woven by one of Ma’s closest friends (who was also my favorite for how she doted on me) and other pieces of insignificant wreckage – the collection of a woman well-liked, well-respected, and somehow not very well-known. I mean that not in the sense of being known generally by the community – everyone knew Ma and Pa – but in the aspect that few knew her well. Even Pa and me felt like we fell into that sometimes, like we didn’t know her, could never know her, and neither of us understood how or what to ask to change it.
She came out of the kitchen in a silent rush, placing a fresh loaf of bread atop a wooden tray and covering it with a wrinkled piece of linen.
“The Beasley Boy is coming to dinner tonight,” she said in a hushed tone that I took as reverence. “But it will be late – Mrs. B said he works until sunset, and the ride here will get him in around 8. I’ve a big lunch for you and Pa to hold you over. Sounds like a pain for the Beasleys – cowboys shouldn’t eat that late. But she said he was a good one. Didn’t want to get in the way.” Ma looked in my direction as she spoke and it felt like she was waiting for me to say something.
“Do I have to wait and have dinner with everyone?” I ventured, sure it was not what she wanted to hear. A tilt of her head was the answer, and I pulled the bread in my direction to start filling up. She pulled it back.
“Lunch is almost ready, then I want you to sweep up the floors. The afternoon is yours.” I learned how to end a conversation from Ma, who never let anything dangle unsaid or unclear. When our lunch was done, she and Pa disappeared into the kitchen and backyard, while I took advantage of the free afternoon and headed out the front door once my sweeping was done. The edge of the desert was where I spent most of my time, and April was one of the best months to be there – the ocotillo was leafing out, the cacti were in bloom, and other wildflowers danced and dropped their heads depending on rainfall and relief. The world was awakening again, and a new cowboy was in town – the happy sign of summer just ahead, even if that meant heat and dust and discomfort. It was quiet here, just outside of town, the sun beating down and quelling any living thing that might attempt a ruckus, including people, and I stayed to soak it in because this was as bearable as it was going to be until fall. When the ocotillo lost its latest coat of leaves, it would be time to stay in the shade. I listened to a bird pecking at a cactus, my ears on alert for any warning rattles; snakes didn’t scare me, but I didn’t want to step on one. Pa told a story of someone he knew who died from a bite, and it was one of the most terrifying tales I’d ever heard, mostly because Pa rarely told stories, and for him to do that meant it scared some part of himself that he never did reveal; my father told more in silence that he ever could in words.
When I got back to the house, Ma asked if I would help Pa out in the casita. We didn’t use it for living quarters, as it was just the three of us, but I’d considered asking to move into it a couple of years ago. After sensing Ma’s reluctance, and in service of my own plans, I didn’t press it, so it remained a space for extra storage, and there was always something that needed rearranging or fixing. Pa was outside the front, banging on a wooden box and splintering its cover just as I approached.
“Leve, grab that end and just drag it. Another shipment of Ma’s books. Heavier than flour and even sugar,” he said with a snort, which was his way of laughing. “No room for them in the house or store even. Not until spring is done.” Pa spoke in clipped phrases. We filled in the rest. It made him sound brusque to any stranger; I envied how he won people over in spite of that, though when I look back that was how most people in my hometown talked. “You met the new cowboy yet? The Beasley Boy?” Pa asked.
“Not officially,” I said. “He passed by the store last week I think but didn’t stop. Only one this year?”
“Sounds like it.” Pa paused in the doorway, the late afternoon sun showing the first signs of age near his mouth, lines etched by laughter, because Pa laughed more than either me or Ma when others were around, though that wasn’t much; we let him do our laughing for us sometimes in public, and were no less happy for it. At home, he was more stern, often telling me it was his job as my father to toughen me up. His mouth was strangely drawn now, taut like he had something more to say. “You’ve been handling the store,” he said. “On your own. The register. The day’s receipts. Reconciling. Ma said it’s been good.” He looked away from my gaze and into the last of the day’s sun. “Learned quicker than me,” and he laughed, the way I knew him to be with others. “You’re pretty much there. You are.” It was more than he’d said in the entire previous week; I sensed he wanted to say something else, but he didn’t – only lumbered back into the house after a quick furtive look in my direction, one that I caught, and one that he saw I caught, leaving me quizzically wondering at his words, the economy of them deceptively stark. It didn’t change the fact that I was leaving.
Back in the house, the last of the day’s sunlight came in through the second story windows. As Ma and Pa bustled about the kitchen, barely whispering to keep things moving, I bounded upstairs, took my shirt off and bounced a little too loudly onto the bed, instantly cringing at a scream that used to come, but wouldn’t tonight. Settling back on a thin and worn pillow, I allowed my eyes to close, the metallic clicking of a pot lid over boiling water and the squeaking of the oven door drifted upstairs and filled the house with a drone that inspired sleeping. I was on the verge of falling when the clicking of a horse and Pa’s welcoming call to tie him up back pulled me awake. My eyes adjusted to the darkness around me, and the sliver of the hallway light peeping through the uneven bottom of the unlocked door.
Sunday silence suddenly broken in startling form by the booming “Hello!” of a man I’d never met. The voices of my parents carried as well, in the very best manner of their store demeanor, higher in pitch, more interested, maybe more interesting, until you realized it was all a show. This season’s Cowboy stood in the entry way, asking if he should take off his boots. He passed the first test, and Ma said he didn’t need to bother. (She only wanted them to ask.) When I heard them shuffle into the dining room, I started my descent downstairs before anyone had to yell.
Only the Cowboy looked at me as I stood in the doorway.
Looked at me, and smiled.
~ The FALL of The COWBOY ~ Autumn 2026
