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his eyes. “What happened? Something hit me in the head. I …? Do you …? I can’t remember.”
    Later, Nightingale would remember too well. “That was a new bull. Never seen it before. I looked at the guy across from me [Q-Tip] and I heard, ‘Here—’ and then I got hit. I never had a chance to even brace. I never been hit by a bull that hard. I went flying into the other guy, Leonard. Hit him really hard with my elbow. It musta knocked me eight to ten feet. I started to panic ’cause I couldn’t breathe. That’s a little scary.”
    OK, so maybe back to the chute
isn’t
the best seat.
    In the midst of all that, the other two men sat in their chairs. Didn’t move. Men being launched right in front of their eyes and they hardly flinched.
    Rocky mumbled: “It’s just me and you, Tip.” Q-Tip didn’t say a word. Maybe he was thinking about his bed. The bull circled back around, stopped about fifty feet away, and just stared at the two men, holding their cards. Rocky’s back was mostly to the bull and Q-Tip’s front was mostly to it. The bull must’ve thought what we all thought, which was: “Those idiots are
still
sitting there?”
    The bull dug up the dirt a few times, lowered his head, and came straight for Rocky, who wouldn’t budge. “I began to prepare for the hit,” Rocky said, “’cause I figured I was right in his line.” And it seemed like the bull was going to knock Rocky clear to Biloxi, but at the last second, it veered, missed Rocky by not more than three inches, and smashed right into Q-Tip—and through Q-Tip—pitching him chair over hat five or six feet.
    It was just a second before Rocky finally sprung from his chair, the victor. Maybe he couldn’t believe it as much as the crowd couldn’t believe it. He’d been spared for no rhyme or reason. He won simply because he hadn’t chickened out, as any right-thinking man would have. He
knew
he was going to be walloped by a 2,000-pound bull running full speed and yet he didn’t run. It’d be like sitting on the Dan Ryan Expressway and waiting to be hit by a Toyota Tundra.
    He sprinted to the prisoners’ pen, waving to the crowd, acknowledging the raucous roars of approval, like a gladiator leaving behind a floor of dead lions.
    â€œI never thought about running, not once,” Rocky said triumphantly. “You gotta push it to the edge. No limits. You sacrifice and take the lick to win. It hurts a little while, but not for long.”
    All of which begged this question: Rocky Stewart was in Angola in the first place for shooting a twenty-one-year-old girl named Wendi Long in the back of the head, twice, after she slapped his face after what he called “rough sex.” So getting smashed by a bull only “hurts a little while,” but getting slapped by a 120-pound girl hurts enough to fire two bullets into her skull?
    It was all befuddling to Wendi Long’s dad, Luke. He was amazed to hear of Rocky’s heroics, amazed to hear about the silver belt buckle, amazed to hear about the money he won.
    â€œHe raped and murdered Wendi, lied about it, and dumped her body on the side of the road,” Luke Long said from his home in Coushatta, La. “We were months looking for her. When we foundher, she was just a skeleton. There was no DNA evidence to prove the rape, so we couldn’t go for a death penalty. He [the district attorney] said he’d do hard labor. I pictured him out there in chains, busting rocks. I didn’t know that someone who raped and murdered an innocent person would get to ride in a rodeo. That don’t sound like hard labor to me.”
    Guess who’s not coming to the banquet?

4
The Three-Mile Golf Hole

    I f I told you that you could take a 19 on a single golf hole and it would take you five hours to finish that golf hole and at the end of it, you would be so happy