After his stupid dad died, we got reconnected. Trevor always says, You saved me — you saved me from drowning. I don’t know if I saved him or not. All I did was go into the water and bring him back to shore with me.

NINE

THE RODEO STUNT

Old Cal Cantor’s legs were bowed like he had a horse under him. When he came to the track I’d go to Dairy Queen with his wife and daughter. Cantor worked with rodeo stock, some of the best. His eldest son Donnie was a champion bull rider, third in the world. Connie Cantor, his younger one, was a bulldogger. Connie got gored by a bull, got his eye knocked out and his face was — I don’t know how many reconstructions they did.

Cal Cantor said, Sonia, I’ve seen you with the horses, I want to hire you. I was getting tired of the track, so I went and worked on his ranch in South Dakota. It was next to a reservation, flat land all around. I could see why their boys were rodeo stars — those horses were like mustangs. You had to hobble them just to trim their feet. They’d never been touched, yet Cantor expected me to break them. He had me working construction, things I never knew nothing about. He had me sandblasting a metal starting gate in a lightning storm.

I worked with an Indian, Roger. He had a busted back but Cantor worked the hell out of him, this hardworking Indian. Cantor raised cattle and wheat, and he’d put Roger on his bumpy tractor and work him all day long. Roger lived on the reservation. On payday his relatives would come and try to collect his paycheck because he was one of the only people on the reservation with a job.

I worked with Harry Trulock, too. He was a quarter-horse jockey from Oklahoma. Cantor had miles and miles of land — corrals out in the middle of nowhere. One of Harry’s jobs was to drive the cattle from corral to corral.

Harry liked to drink, so one day when he didn’t come back from the range, everyone figured he’d gone on a bender.

While I was pulling fence the next day, I looked up and thought, What’s this, a deer?

Here comes Harry Trulock, parched, lips cracked, skin burnt bright red. He’d gotten lost. All them acres, everything flat and crazy — all you see is power lines. Harry could hardly slide off his horse. We had to carry him inside. I don’t know how he made it back.

HUNTERS AND JUMPERS