Cowboy

“Can I sit here,” the man asked.

“Oh, sure,” I replied. I had the window seat and looked to spend the bus trip into Los Angeles observing the scenery.

“Thanks,” he said and sat down. He was an older gentleman. He had a white cowboy hat with a black band, a blue jean jacket with a shearling liner, some worn black jeans, and brown boots. He had a duffel bag that he put into the overhead compartment and saw that the seat next to me was open. Because of his hat, I mentally referred to him as Cowboy.

“No problem.”

The bus pulled out of Valley Heights and took the onramp off of Santa Fe Drive onto Interstate 10. It went past the gentle curve right past the Corona Hills neighborhood, then through an open stretch of light brown desert in the western part of the city, and then out into Vinton and Anthony before we crossed the state line into New Mexico. That was when the man next to me started to talk.

“So where you headed?”

“L.A.,” I replied. “I’m going to visit my brother out there.”

“That’s nice. What city does he live in?”

“Rosemead. I’m getting off in El Monte. You?”

“Indio,” Cowboy said. “Going to see my daughter.”

“Cool.”

The weather turned cloudy just past Las Cruces. The rain played a light percussive rhythm on the front window and the roof of the bus. Cowboy looked ahead, but would turn to face me whenever he spoke.

“I hope it’s not raining over in California.”

“I don’t think it is,” I replied. “My brother said it would be good weather. Maybe some overcast skies in the mornings. I think they call it June gloom.”

“June gloom, yeah,” Cowboy nodded.

The rain’s intensity wavered through the state, between Las Cruces and into Deming. There was a decent downpour and the bus driver turned on the headlights. Through the passing of the windshield wipers we noticed a state trooper vehicle on the side of the road, the lights flashing in the grey skies. In front of the vehicle was the blue Honda Civic it pulled over.

Cowboy scoffed.

“There’s one of those damned law dogs,” he said. “Ain’t given me nothing but trouble. I hate ‘em. To me, a good law dog is a dead law dog.”

That brought to mind an incident when I was younger. 

“Over on Thorn Street back home, my mom and I would walk to the overpass that spanned across the freeway,” I began. “I used to love pumping my hand up and down to get the truck drivers to sound their horns. Most of them complied. One afternoon I was bored, so I took some stray pebbles from the sidewalk and placed them on top of the concrete barrier and just under the fencing for the overpass. I flicked the pebbles down into the direction of the oncoming traffic. I aimed mostly for the big rigs, since I could hear the pebbles hit the trailers and reverberate with a soft metallic thump.

“Then a police officer pulled up behind my mom and I. He got out and asked me if I had seen anyone flicking pebbles off the overpass wall.

“’No, sir,’ I said as I saw my reflection in his aviator glasses. He stood over me, arms on his hips. He either chose to believe my words or the slightly rapid breathing I had. He knew it was me and had me scared, so he let my mom and I off.

“‘Well, if you see them doing it again, call the police. We got the call from one of the truckers. The pebbles hit his windshield,’ the officer said, then pulled away on his motorcycle.”

“‘Okay,’ I remember saying sheepishly.”

“See? Damned law dogs,” Cowboy said. “All they want to do is throw their weight around, especially if you didn’t do anything wrong. I think they just gave me trouble because my wife was Native American.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Navajo.” Cowboy cleared his throat as the bus lurched around the Civic and the state trooper vehicle.

***

“Are you in school?” Cowboy asked. We had just left Tucson and some of the passengers on the bus got off.

“I am. College.”

“That’s great. Wish I had gone to college instead of going into the Army,” he replied. “One tour of Vietnam, no thanks to that damned draft. I was like that boxer, I didn’t have no problem with the Viet Cong. Still don’t know why we went there to start shit. It didn’t have to do with us. Anyway, what are you studying?”

“Creative writing,” I said. “And advertising.”

“Advertising? What do you plan to do?”

“I hope to work for an ad agency, creating ad campaigns, writing scripts for commercials, that sort of thing.”

“I see. How much longer do you have to go?”

“Another two years,” I said. Cowboy nodded.

“You’ll be okay,” he said. “You look smart. I’ll be rooting for you.”

“Thanks. Does your daughter go to school? Or did she go to school?”

“Just high school. She started working soon after at a burger place. It was there she met her husband. She’s pregnant now and due to deliver in the next few days. That’s why I’m going there, to see my grandchild enter the world.”

“Congratulations.”

Cowboy smirked.

“While I’m excited to have a grandchild, I just wish the father wasn’t such a piece of shit,” he said. “I don’t know what my daughter saw in him to be with him all this time. He can’t hold a job to save his life. He’s a drug dealer, I know that for sure. He’s been in and out of jail. But what does my daughter do? Wait for him whenever he’s released. In fact, he was released last year for a drug charge after serving three years. Got off on good behavior. Then he knocked my daughter up.”

“I see,” I said.

“Hopefully with this child coming into the world, that will set his ass straight,” Cowboy said.

***

The bus stopped for an hour in Phoenix. The passengers all got off to stretch their legs. Some had their final stop here, while the rest of us were to continue into California. I went to get a cup of coffee from the snack kiosk. As I walked over to get some sugar and a stirring stick, I noticed a misspelling for the cup lids: SMALL, MEDUIM, LARGE. As I saw the sugar flow from the packet into the waiting black coffee, I mentally filed away the word “meduim” as the name for a planet or race of beings for a science fiction story I would never get around to write.

I got back on the bus after the new driver got himself settled into the seat. There were some new faces and some familiar ones that originally boarded in Valley Heights. I didn’t see Cowboy’s face, nor his now-trademark white hat. I got back to my seat by the window. A couple of minutes later, Cowboy showed up and took his seat.

The bus lurched on its way back onto Interstate 10. The rain had stopped when we were at the bus station, but it started up again after we got out of the city limits.

“Are you married? Single?” Cowboy asked me.

“Single,” I said. Though I had someone in mind from college I want to ask out after this trip, I thought.

“Single? You? Why?”

“I don’t know. Just haven’t been lucky in that department,” I said.

“You know, sometimes there’ll be someone for you when you least expect it,” Cowboy replied, then took a drink from his cup of coffee. “Ooh, that’s nice. Anyway, take me, for example. I was out on a job over in Gallup. My supervisor invited me to visit his family over in the Navajo Nation, so I went. I met his family. I met one of the elders of the small village they lived in. He was very kind, such a gentle soul. This elder took one look at me and he said, ‘You. You’re looking for a wife?’ I said, ‘Not really, sir.’ ‘’Why not?’ ‘It hasn’t been my turn yet, I guess,’ I replied. The elder looked at me for a moment. ‘Well, have you looked behind you?’ the elder said. ‘What do you mean?’ I asked. ‘We always look for people to appear in front of us. But your wife will appear behind you,’ the elder said. ‘Remember to keep an eye behind you. True happiness will come as a result.’

“So after that my supervisor took me back to my hotel in Gallup. The next day I went to a restaurant downtown. I can’t really explain it, but I sensed a presence around me that morning. I finished my breakfast, I gave the waitress a good tip, I put my hat on and walked outside. I still felt that presence near me. I walked over to the plaza in front of the courthouse. Still, I continued to feel the presence near me. So I followed what the Navajo elder recommended, to look behind me. And so I did.

“It was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen in my life,” Cowboy continued after another sip of coffee. “She was Navajo. Hair blacker and shinier than any raven’s feathers, down to her waist. Her almond-shaped eyes full of warmth and love. She was simply amazing. And she waved at me. ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘Hello,’ I replied and walked up to her, introduced myself. ‘Pleasure to meet you,’ she said. ‘Do you live here in town?’ ‘I don’t,’ I said. ‘I’m down in Las Cruces.’ ‘Okay. I will go with you. I sensed that you needed a companion.’

“And I ended up marrying that woman,” Cowboy said as we entered Quartzsite and approached the California state line. “We had our daughter soon after we got married and moved to Las Cruces. Her folks lived in the reservation, the very same little village I had visited when I was working in Gallup. It was just like the elder said, ‘Remember to keep an eye behind you, and true happiness will come as a result.’ And I had that true happiness.”

I noticed the moisture welling up in Cowboy’s eyes.

“So where is your wife now?”

“With the creator,” Cowboy replied and he sniffled. The tears could not hold on and made their way down his weathered cheeks. “We had a ranch, we raised horses. She tried to get one of the younger males into the stable when it reared up and knocked her down. Stomped on her chest.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said and patted him on his shoulder. He nodded in return.

“Ever since then I’ve been by myself — well, my daughter and I,” Cowboy said after he took out a handkerchief to wipe his tears and his nose. “But I want to pass along the Navajo elder’s message to you, young man,” he continued. “Remember to look behind you. There will be a woman waiting for you. And you will know when that happens. My wife may be with the creator, but I cherish every second I had with her. And she looked exactly the same as the first time I saw her in Gallup. And I hope you’ll find someone like that.”

“Thank you,” I replied. I finished my coffee and looked out the window at the passing mountains in the distance.

***

Cowboy reached the end of his trip in Indio. It was early morning and already the sun was out and the desert heat had started to ratchet up.

“Well, here’s my stop,” Cowboy said. “Just gotta call my daughter to come get me. Her, or that worthless son of a bitch she’s so attached to.”

“Does she know you’ll be here?” I asked.

“Oh, yeah. I’ll be fine.”

“It was very nice to meet you, sir,” I said and shook his hand. I realized I never got his name, and when he told me the story of how he met his wife, I remembered he didn’t mention it. So he remained as Cowboy in my memories after I got to El Monte, and for the return trip to Valley Heights.

When I was back in school for my junior year, I wrote a poem about my experience on the bus with Cowboy. I titled it “Meduim”, which my poetry teacher felt was a typo. I explained why I gave it that title in the workshop session we had, and she was right - if I had to explain it and if it wasn’t mentioned in the poem, then it needed to have a different title. I renamed it “The Cowboy.”

Years later, I applied for and got admitted into graduate school in California. And one afternoon before I went into my literary criticism class I felt a presence around me. I felt like I was being followed, so I walked over to the student union to buy a bottle of juice. The presence had a stronger feeling after I bought the juice. So I followed what Cowboy had told me the Navajo elder recommended, and I looked back. I saw one of my classmates, Sonia Garcia, who I would give a friendly nod to whenever we entered the seminar classroom on campus, and who before then I just recognized by sight but never knew her name. She smiled and waved. So I went and introduced myself.