Bull Rider by Suzanne Morgan Williams Read Free Book Online

someone who’s been shot up. There’s a good piece of discomfort and awkwardness when there’s someone in the house, someone you love, who can’t do for himself. Ben needed help getting dressed on account of his arm, and getting in and out of bed on account of the paralysis in his right leg. Mom flexed his feet and legs every so often, so the muscles wouldn’t just fade away. We had to help him move so he didn’t sit too long in any one position—his skin could get sore and break. And there was the wheelchair.
    But the worst was the bathroom. He didn’t want any help in there, but, like I said, he was pretty messed up. And we didn’t have a shower downstairs, so he had to wash up in the sink. Ben would disappear into the bathroom and stay until you could just about feel his exhaustion. Then Mom would knock on the door to go in to help, but it embarrassed him. And her too, I think. They’d both come out quiet. Momwould move Ben’s wheelchair by the window, and he’d stare out while she got real busy in the rest of the house. We tried not to notice, but you really couldn’t help it, especially if you were waiting for the bathroom and had to go pee outside. Still, no one talked about it. And then, one day, Grandpa Roy, went to the bathroom door instead of Mom. You could hear him talking to Ben in there, and then they were both laughing. When Grandpa Roy wheeled Ben out, he set him on the porch and pulled up a chair next to him.
    “The calves put on good weight over the summer. The grass was good. This fall bunch should be healthy too,” he said.
    “How many calves?” Ben asked.
    And just like that, Grandpa Roy took over as Ben’s caretaker. We all relaxed a notch. Grandpa Roy, he was more like Ben’s brother than I was, I guess. And he wasn’t a woman, which helped some too.
    And there were other things. The house always smelled of medicine. Lali stopped playing catch with me outside and started sitting next to Ben. Since his brain had been scrambled up, he had to relearn how to read. So she read him comic books and her favorite picture books and he followed along. Some days he couldn’t string three words together, and other days he talked pretty good. And you never knew what he could remember. Mom got out the photo albums and left them around so we could point out stuff to Ben that we’d done.
    “Remember going to Sea World?” she asked.
    Ben looked at her blankly.
    “We all went. Except Lali. She wasn’t born yet. Remember, you loved the killer whale show?”
    Ben nodded, but you could tell that he didn’t remember it. I turned on the TV so he didn’t have to embarrass himself any more.
    That’s how it went. Mom worked long hours starting up a bookkeeping business, since the bank wouldn’t hold her job anymore, and with Grandpa Roy helping Ben, Dad always had extra work around the ranch. There wasn’t money to hire another hand, although Ruiz had offered to take a cut in his pay. Dad said no to that, so I had more chores too.
     
    One Saturday, in mid-October, Grandma Jean was bored. “Roy, it’s blasted quiet around here,” she said. “We should take these kids on an outing.”
    “You want to go fishing? They’re getting good walleye at Rye Patch.”
    “You’d scare the fish away with your old face,” she said. “Let’s go into Winnemucca and get some ice cream and see a movie.”
    I didn’t want to see a movie with my little sister and my grandparents. “I can stay here,” I said.
    “I’d rather fish,” Grandpa Roy said. “You take Lali and go. You can see a kids’ movie.”
    Lali clapped her hands. Grandma Jean got her rose-covered handbag, and they went off to the movies. Mom was gone over at Mike’s, doing the accounts for Gianni’s Irrigation and Plumbing. Dad, Oscar Ruiz, and a couple of ranch hands were clearing debris with the front loader. That left me, Ben, and Grandpa Roy in the house.
    “We should get out too,” Grandpa said.
    “Then why didn’t you go to the