Read Online Dream Wheels by Richard Wagamese - Free Book Online Page B

who never even had a chance to speak with him, to know him other than as the being aboard the beast a few hundred feet away. He wondered how it felt to them, to have a hero fall, to see the idol bent and broken and busted up before their eyes and whether they’d give anythought at all to him once the shock of the thing crested and broke. He doubted it. People were fickle. By the time the next go-round came they’d find another hero and Joe Willie Wolfchild would become another used-to-be, another name to be tossed into the air at the tailgate parties when the great names of rodeo were burped and belched for comparison.
Invalid
. The word galloped in like a runaway steer and he turned his head to the window so they couldn’t see the rage on his face. Invalid. In-valid. Not valid any longer, not real, empty, useless. One of the slack-jawed, vacant-eyed hangers-on at the chutes and back lots soaking up with their eyes what they could no longer feel with their bodies. He’d seen them. He’d heard them talked about in tones of pity and sorrow steeped in gratitude that it hadn’t happened to those doing the talking. Joe Willie choked back a curse. He’d believed he’d never live to see the day when “what a gol-darned shame” and “Joe Willie Wolfchild” would occur in the same sentence. In-valid. No longer acceptable, strong, suitable, appropriate, valuable, whole. No longer whole. No longer a man. He groaned against his gritted teeth.
    “Joe Willie? Son?” his father asked. “Do you need more?”
    He nodded and watched his father dole out a few pumps of painkiller. It’d have to be a wonder drug to take away the feeling he had in his belly and at the sides of his head, but right now he’d settle for the darkness again. He looked at the flowers and cards adorning the small table in his room. Like a memorial, he thought. Here lies Joe Willie Wolfchild, champion cowboy, baddest bull buster and bronc rider in the business, consigned to the ground, never to ride again. A pity, they would say. Pity. He needed that as much as he needed tears. Pity couldn’t grow muscle, and tears could never wash away the taste of loss because there was always going to be a mirrornow, everywhere, to show him as he was. Invalid. Beaten. Defeated. A one-armed cowboy who couldn’t ride. He closed his eyes on the image and waited for the drug to take him out, out of the room, out of the world, out of the vision.
    The crack made him forget. For the time it lasted he could slip a shroud over his anger and let the drug take him higher, upward beyond the things that roiled within him on the ground. They’d walk then. They’d walk through neighbourhoods and not worry about the gangs and the threat of violence that came from being a pair of unaffiliated kids. The crack let them forget. The gun, or at least the knowledge of having the gun, let them disregard it. The crack let them laugh. They’d laugh in the face of everything and as they walked they felt as though they radiated, the energy of the high pushing everything back a yard or so, making it visible, clearer, as if they were seeing it for the first time. They’d drift into the youth centre and play ping-pong or shoot hoops at the far end of the court away from the rest of the kids. As the night fell downward, deeper, they made their way through the streets of their own neighbourhood preparing themselves to walk into the vacuums that were their homes. It was then that the crack lost its effect. It was then that Aiden knew that drugs weren’t the answer for him. Being high meant you had to come down, and if all you had to come down to was the same place you left, there didn’t seem to be a lot of point to it. Instead, he became more determined to see his own course through. He’d change the landscape.
    They came to the doorstep of the building where Cort lived. Around them there were the usual sounds of the city night. People called to each other from their doorways, laughing between