Should've Been a Cowboy
words: 4,234
I never wanted to be a schoolteacher, but math was the only thing I was ever any good at. If I’d had it my way, I’d have been in the rodeo, Daddy’s hat on my head, his old saddle on my very own horse. She would have been big and brown, with curly lashes and a mane darker than my own. We’d have made history and headlines all through Lubbock county, winning ribbon after ribbon. My sprawling ranch home would have had trophy cases in every room with framed newspapers on the walls. “Priscilla Richards Sets Another Record,” they might have read. But that wasn’t going to happen. If my mother had her way, I was going to spend my weekends marking up math tests instead of curling and clipping around that clover pattern. By the time I was in high school, I had never even been on a horse, but I could damn sure do arithmetic.
Daddy took my older sister, Noreen, and I to the rodeo in Lubbock proper for my fifth birthday, but I think he regretted it as soon as he saw my face. My eyes were glued to the riders, tracking their every move with more attention than I’d ever offered anything in my life. Noreen and I hooted and hollered our voices hoarse, but Daddy didn’t even clap. After we piled into the cab of his truck, I rambled on and on about everything I’d seen—the pretty horses, the shiny trophies, and an excitement I’d never seen before. Noreen moved on before we got back up the driveway, asking me what color dresses her paper dolls would like best. We agreed on pink, but I added that she should cut out a cowboy hat from our grocery sacks.
“Cilla,” Daddy said, helping me out of the car, “don’t you go gettin’ attached to the rodeo, you hear me?”
“Yessir,” I answered, not dwelling on it because I knew there was a cake with my name on it in the kitchen. He mussed my hair, swatted my shoulder, and sent me inside, where Mother had me do my homework at the dining room table. Even on my birthday, there was studying to be done, because, as Mother always said, “Education takes no breaks.” Noreen and I always did our work side by side, but by the time I was ten, I was helping her with her long division.
“Priscilla Mae,” Mother said one afternoon, nodding that way all mothers do when they’re suddenly seeing your life play out even though you don’t have any clue what’s going to happen, “you’re going to make an excellent teacher one of these days.”
I screwed up my face the way Noreen taught me and scoffed. “I don’t think so,” I said. “I want to be a cowboy, like Daddy.”
“Daddy’s a farmer, Prissy.” Noreen’s nickname for me was born from her two year old moth not being able to make the complicated sounds in my name, but it stuck well beyond then.
“Noreen Anne, Priscilla Mae, stop baiting each other and finish your homework,” Mother said, not looking up from her lesson plans. She was a teacher herself, training kindergarten monsters to start holding pencils and crayons instead of drooling on each other. Her patience had been worn like the soles of Daddy’s boots after a long summer season, so Noreen and I tried not to take her sternness too personal.
“Yes ma’am,” we replied in unison. I didn’t bring up my disdain for teaching until midway through high school, but still watched every rodeo I could sneak away to. I didn’t dare tell Mother and Daddy, not after I found out about Jack. But then I met Dean Montgomery and it became unavoidable.
Dean Montgomery was the best bareback bronc rider on the whole Caprock, or so his mama told anyone and everyone she met at the grocery store. Mother got caught between the canned goods and Mrs. Montgomery one morning and came home with the dirt on the Amarillo-born rodeo star instead of pinto beans. His claim to fame was a 94 point ride—a real feat when the average rider was lucky to break 80. Mrs. Montgomery glowed brighter than a bug zapper in June whenever she brought it up in conversation.
For his part, Dean wasn’t so boastful. “It’s stubbornness more than anything else,” I heard him say outside of the local Dairy Queen. “You just gotta want to stay on that horse more than it wants you in the dirt.” He certainly looked the part, though. I swear, two of the local boys could stand shoulder to shoulder behind him without being seen. His biceps strained against the cream button down pushed up to his elbows like the cover of one of those romances Mother wouldn’t allow in the house. My cheeks steamed in the cold night air when he waved at me, even as I tugged my sweater closer.
Noreen saw right through my insistence that I hadn’t even noticed him. She had to drag me back to the house, going on and on about how Daddy wasn’t going to like this, no, not at all.
“Please don’t tell,” I said. “I won’t go inside until you promise.” I was shaking in my saddle shoes, but this had to stay between us.
She rolled her eyes, then yanked me into the house by the back of my wool dress. “You’re ridiculous, you know that?”
“Thank you.”
I thought I was in the clear until Dean showed up on the farm the next week, cowboy hat casting a shadow across his face as he leaned up against the barn. I stopped dead in my tracks, calculus book slipping out of my fingers and hitting the earth with a deafening thud. Dean looked up, right at me, and nodded. “How you doin’, Priscilla?”
“Does my daddy know you’re here?” I asked, only dimly aware of the conversation we’d had at dinner a few nights ago. Mother and Daddy crunched numbers over casserole and decided they needed an extra set of hands now that their usual farmhand was at the Agricultural and Mechanical College, way out east.
“Why else would I be here?”
“I guess it isn’t rodeo season,” I said, knowing full well it started in the spring. Still, I couldn’t help twisting my fingers together in the front of my dress.
“Starts again in March, but 4-H won’t put gas in my truck,” Dean replied, pushing off the wall with his foot. He sauntered towards me like he’d been riding all day, but I’d paid enough attention to him to recognize that was just how he did everything.
“It was nice seeing you,” I said, turning on my heels for the house.
“Wait,” he drawled, sending my heart into my throat. When I turned back, he was kneeling in the dirt, holding my calculus book in his catcher’s mitt of a hand. “Wouldn’t want you missin’ out on all that math you like.”
I grabbed the book and said, without thinking, “Math won’t get me where I wanna go.”
“Where’s that?” he asked, brow quirked.
“In the papers.”
Even though I scooted back to the house fast as my legs could take me, I didn’t miss his distinct huh followed by a, “Who’d have thought?”
I saw Dean again the next afternoon, sitting on the back porch with one of Mother’s nice glasses beside him, filled to the brim with lemonade. She only brought out the good stuff for company. I sat in one of the twin rockers to his left and watched him wipe the sweat from his brow, blow out a long breath, then lean back on his elbows, never once touching the glass.
“Mind if I take that drink off of your hands?” I asked, willing my voice to sound as effortless as Noreen’s always did when she talked to boys. It came out more a squeak than the purr she’d perfected, and I immediately wanted to swallow the words back into my throat and leave them there to die. Maybe move to New Mexico, too.
“As long as you gimme some company,” Dean answered, patting the porch. He must have caught my eyes darting back and forth, because not thirty seconds later, he added, “Who else’d I be talkin’ to?”
So I sat next to him, eyes glued to the barn on the horizon. I focused on breathing, not letting myself think about Dean’s shoulder nearly touching mine, for fear of asphyxiation. Instead, I tapped my fingers and foot in conjunction, to the rhythm of that Buddy Holly song that had taken over the radio in the months since his death. Eventually, I grabbed the lemonade between us and took a careful sip, remembering Mother’s rules about drinking like a lady. I took another, and another, until half the glass was gone and I didn’t know what else to do.
“You ever rode a horse?” Dean asked after what must have been five minutes of nothing.
I took a gulp. “Sure have,” I said, not wanting him to know Daddy never let me.
“And you really wanna make headlines?”
“Of course,” I answered earnestly.
He paused for a second, then asked, “You feel up to a contest?”
I shook the ice left in the glass, watching it stick to itself over and over again. “What am I qualified to compete in?”
“Amateur rodeo. Three weeks from today, in Lamesa. I can teach you, if you’re willin’ to let me enter you.”
In an instant, I saw my future: the trophies on my coffee table, ribbons in volumes of scrapbooks, and newspaper clippings singing my praises. Mother and Daddy in the front row of stands, cheering loud as they were able to. My math books on a shelf somewhere, beside old high school yearbooks and encyclopedias. “You have yourself a deal, Mr. Montgomery.”
He laughed and stuck his hand out. As we shook, he said, “Just call me Dean.”
Two days later, I stood in the barn in Mother’s cowboy boots—stolen from the back of her closet, shoved behind her cedar chest—and the only pair of jeans I owned. I didn’t have a button down like I’d seen other riders wear, so the one blouse ratty enough to not make it into the church rotation had to do. Dean smiled when he saw me.
“You look good, Priscilla,” he said, looking me up and down like I’d already had a blue ribbon pinned to my shirt. “Like a real cowboy.”
“It’s in my DNA,” I replied, trying desperately to recall a relative who’d done anything related to the rodeo. A great uncle, I thought. Maybe.
Dean led me to the horse stall, where our newest mare stood tall and proud. Tilly, as Daddy took to calling her, shone like the night sky sponged clear of stars. Her salt-and-pepper mane, recently brushed, made her look wise beyond her four years. She was already saddled, head bent down in an elegant slope toward her trough full of oats and hay. I stepped close, easing one hand with outstretched fingers against the expanse of her neck.
A tremulous neigh punctuated her whole body as Tilly took a great step back, almost crushing my foot. I was frozen, watching this enormous animal have a panic attack because I was stupid enough to bother her during feed time. Dean yanked me backwards, nearly pulling my arm out the socket.
“Okay, step one would be movin’ out the way when she gets agitated,” he said, barely louder than the blood rushing in my ears.
“Of course,” I replied automatically. I nodded, mostly in effort to shake my heart out of my throat. “Noted.”
“You wanna get on?” Dean asked, raising an eyebrow as if to say I know you’ve never done this before, geek.
“Obviously.”
“Need help?” he asked, flippant.
Of course I needed help. At five foot four, I couldn’t even fathom hiking myself up on top of Tilly on my own. “No, of course I don’t.”
Dean scoffed. “Okay, Priscilla.” He stood back, arms crossed across his broad chest in a challenge.
I took a deep breath and set my sights on that saddle. In the back of my mind, I saw the hundreds of times Daddy’d mounted different horses. Left foot in the stirrup, hands on the reins, pull yourself up, swing your right leg around. Easy. Except the spooking that happened two minutes prior was stuck in my head, screwing with my sense of left and right. Foot in stirrup. Easy. Pulled myself up, swung a leg around. Easy. Forgot to grab the reins altogether.Wound up backwards, staring at Tilly’s tail.
“Dammit!” I cried, kicking my legs out. When they came back and hit Tilly in the sides, all hell broke loose.
“You need to calm her down,” Dean said, voice low and frantic. He took a step towards us, hands outstretched to grab the reins.
“I got it!”
But, goddamn, I did not have it. Instead of relaxing, Tilly started bucking, her back forcing itself into a gruesome u shape with each convulsion. I’d never seen Daddy deal with this before, so my heart fell into a sprint, looking for any way out of the danger I’d created. Preferably straight through my ribcage. The next time Tilly bucked, the reins slipped from my nervous hands. I was surfing, arms wobbling in a pathetic outreach for anything to steady myself. I could nearly reach Dean, but then—
“Jesus, I knew you were lyin’!”
When I opened my eyes, I was flat on my back, a sharp throb between my vertebrae. My vision was fuzzier than it’d ever been; I turned my head right and left looking for Dean or Tilly only to find my Mother sitting at what had to be the foot of my bed. I heard my name inside of a strangled sob, and before I could figure out what’d happened, she had my aching body wrapped in the tightest hug I’d ever received.
“Where’s Dean?” I asked, voice like a pack-a-day smoker.
“We were so worried,” Mother said, ignoring my question entirely. “Noreen ran in the house yelling about you falling off of Tilly, but you weren’t moving when we got to you.”
“Did he leave?”
“Your father’s talking to him,” she said, smoothing my hair where it had stuck to my damp forehead. “Chewing him out, more like. How he got you on that horse, I have no idea.” I tried propping myself up on my elbows, but the effort was more than my back could handle. Before I could get a word in, Mother was easing me back down. “You relax and I’ll be back when the doctor gets here.”
She walked away, pausing in the doorway to smile back at me. In a rush of guilt, I said, “It wasn’t his fault. We had a deal.”
In an instant, the warmth melted from her face, replaced by something between shock and hurt. “What?” I was a four year old again, trying to work myself between my sheets to hide. The shock and hurt were quickly adapting themselves into anger, plain and simple. “Priscilla Anne Richards, you did not disobey your father and I, did you?” Her question was a challenge hanging in the air, daring me to answer, to cement myself as a disappointment.
Temples starting to throb, I replied, “Yes, but it wasn’t a—”
“You know why we don’t allow you or Noreen on horseback. You know.”
“I just wanted—”
Mother slammed the flat of her palm again my doorframe with more force than I thought she possessed. “You just wanted your moment in the spotlight. Chrissakes, that’s all you’ve ever wanted. Teaching isn’t enough—you want something flashier, even if you get yourself killed in the process!”
Shame and indignation welled in my eyed. Mother opened her mouth like she wanted to deliver one final blow, then abruptly shut it and left without another word. I felt hot all over, wanting nothing more than to melt into my mattress and never have to look at either one of my parents ever again. They had their reasons, I knew. But I thought enough time had passed. It wasn’t like they talked about Jack regularly.
Noreen chose that moment to saunter in, looking madder than I thought she had a right to be. “Why is Mother crying in the kitchen?” she asked, glaring at me.
“I’m okay, by the way,” I said, trying to coax some sympathy from her unrelenting gaze.
She marched to my bedside without giving my attempt a second glance. “What the hell is your problem?”
My eyes went wide. “My problem? Daddy’s out there yelling at Dean because he and Mother can’t get over something that happened fifteen years ago!” I splayed my fingers open again my quilt as punctuation. “Dean was doing me a favor.”
Noreen scoffed. “He just wants the money!”
“What money?”
She started pacing, walking a methodical line from my bed to the window, staring at her path along the ground the whole time. “The minute I saw you fawning over him, I did some digging. Did he tell you about the prize?”
I shook my head. “I assumed it was a ribbon. Maybe a trophy.”
“Try a hundred and fifty dollars.”
Something hot and ugly worked its way under my collar. It crawled across my sternum, taking root in the hollow of my throat, where it stung, hard. “You’re lying,” I spat, feeling that ugly thing dig a little deeper. “You and Mother both just want to keep me here, turning me into a farmer’s wife with nothing of my own!”
She rolled her eyes, face going an angry shade of scarlet. “You don’t remember Jack, but I do. You don’t remember how his death affected Mother and Daddy, but I do.”
I shot up, ignoring the screaming in my back. “What is so wrong with wanting more than this life for myself? What’s wrong with wanting a little recognition?”
“Priscilla,” Noreen started, clenching and unclenching her fists, “you could easily get recognition, just not with horses or whatever else you’ve hitched your wagon to.” She sat her hands on her hips, looking an awful lot like Daddy about to discipline one of us. “You’re good—no, you’re great at math.
“But instead you want to throw all of that away for something dangerous, that you aren’t any good at, that you know Mother and Daddy hurt thinking about.”
I didn’t want to back down, even though, in the back of my mind, I knew I was pushing too hard. “Why can’t I just live my life without having to worry about some dead brother I don’t remember?”
Noreen’s mouth dropped open. She took a long, shaky breath, then stared me right in the eyes. “You’re upset and hurt and I get that, but did you know Daddy almost sold the farm after Jack died? Did you know Mother wouldn’t let you out of her sight until you started kindergarten?”
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t answer. I was two when Jack died, but Noreen was four and a half. Noreen had whispered enough to me when Mother and Daddy drove out to the cemetery each year for me to get a general idea: Jack’s seven year old strength wasn’t enough to stay on Chester, the salt-and-pepper mare that Daddy thought was broken enough.
“You think about that the next time you decide to stick your nose up at teaching in favor of the thing that stole our brother from us, Prissy.” Noreen left without another word, slamming my door shut behind her.
Dean came to visit a day later, hat in his hands, something unreadable in his eyes. It was a miracle Daddy let him in the house, but somehow he wound up sitting on the couch while I sat in Mother’s rocker. He opened his mouth a few times, not ever saying anything, before I decided to take the lead.
“Noreen told me about the prize money,” I said, deciding it best to get to the point.
“I was gonna share it with you,” he answered, looking past me out the window. I had a sneaking suspicion Mrs. Montgomery was the reason he was here, looking like he’d rather be anywhere else.
“Doesn’t matter now.”
He twiddled his thumbs and nodded, mostly to himself. When Daddy came back in the room and told him he’d better get going and let me rest, Dean looked relieved. Before he left the room, he offered a half hearted, “I’m sorry, Priscilla.”
“Like I said earlier,” I started, “it doesn’t matter.”
Watching him walk away, I decided it really didn’t. Dean Montgomery was not going to be my undoing—he was just a cute boy I thought I could weasel some notoriety out of. Daddy smiled at me as he led Dean outside and I almost let myself smile back.
Mother drove me to school the next Monday, after the doctor said if was safe for me to get back on my feet. We rode in near-silence, the only sounds in the cab of Daddy’s pickup being the engine huffing and a static-filled rendition of “Blue Suede Shoes.” I was used to not speaking at this point—Mother and I hadn’t said more than a few words to each other since our fight in my bedroom. I knew she was hurting,
We pulled up to the curb of Frenship High School and, instead of just dropping me off and driving away, Mother turned off the car. The key jangled in the empty air. I didn’t know what to say, or if I should say anything. After a long minute, I opened my mouth, maybe to apologize, but she beat me to the punch.
“Priscilla Mae, I’m sorry.”
All the air went out of my lungs in a confused whoosh. “You’re sorry?”
“You’ve always been different than your sister,” Mother said. “I should’ve known you wouldn’t want to teach.”
“Mother, I appreciate that, but I should really be the one—”
She cut me off with a sad smile. “Maybe if we’d talked to you about Jack more, if we’d given you options other than teaching, we could have avoided that nastiness last week.”
“Other options?” I asked, curiosity getting the best of me.
“You’re gifted, sweetheart. You could be a physicist, or an engineer, or anything you want, if teaching really isn’t for you.” She reached across the seat to squeeze my shoulder. “I want you to appreciate teaching, because God knows it’s been good to you, but if fame is what you’re after, you can chase it without putting your life at risk.”
Something wasn’t sitting right. “I don’t deserve this. I was cruel—you should still be furious. I haven’t even apologized, and you’re…letting me off the hook?”
“I’ve been speaking to Noreen. She knows you were hurt and embarrassed and—” she nodded, knowingly, “—a little infatuated with that Montgomery boy. Besides, I’m your mother. Forgiveness is what I do.”
I suddenly saw my mother in a different light. I saw her cradling her first born, willing the strength of her love to put the breath back into his lungs. I saw her standing rigid in a black dress, stark against the open Texas plain, clutching my father’s hand and having to make her peace with coming home to a fraction of her family. Then, having to live at the scene of the crime and watch her youngest daughter reenact it.
Tears sprung in my eyes, but I didn’t know how to apologize for sixteen years of unintentional heartbreak. Instead, I leaned across the seat and wrapped my arms around my mother, leaving a damp spot on her sweater where I rested my forehead against her shoulder. She sighed into my hair and stroked small circles on my back. “It’s alright, sweetheart,” she said, emotion clawing its way through her calm facade.
I heard the bell ring from inside, officially making me late. Sniffling like a lost calf, I pulled away and rubbed the sorrow from my eyes. Mother smiled, hope and apology bleeding out of the corners. “What’s that for?” I asked, still not seeing a light at the end of our collective tunnel.
“I want you to know that your father and I have been saving. It’s not much, but if you wanted to stay in Lubbock and go to college, we can make that happen.” She nodded, not quite meeting my eyes. “I hear they have a great Mathematics program.”
Just like that, missing homeroom was the farthest thing from my mind. “You mean Texas Technical College?”
“If you’re interested,” she answered. “I know it’s still two years off, but it doesn’t hurt to think about it.”
I’d always seen Noreen and I going to college together, probably at Texas Women’s all the way in Denton. Though our fight had been intense, we were getting better. Each morning at breakfast, it seemed like another inch of lost ground had been recovered. The plan was safe. I’d never considered staying in Lubbock. “They don’t have an education major,” I said, thinking about my sister.
“That’s just fine,” Mother said. “You’re not going to be a schoolteacher.”