The Diamond Hitch - Frank O'Rourke

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my husband died in February of 2000 I was about 20 pages and a few research notes into a new novel, my fourth. But I was not the same writer I’d been before Ed’s death; grief and loss were now the lens through which I viewed the world. And although I had always avoided any conscious use of my own life in my fiction, I now found that I couldn’t go on writing without acknowledging my experience of Ed’s death. The story I had started, the story I had thought I wanted to write, was no longer one I was interested in. Whatever I wrote would have to have a place in it for Ed, and for the new reality of my life.

      I read and reread all the notes I’d kept over the years, wisps of ideas for possible novels, but for a long while I wrote nothing; I filled my time with what I now think of as “comfort reading”—seeking out and rereading novels I remembered loving when I was younger. I took Jane Austen for a good long spin, and I reread Black Beauty and The Black Stallion, all of Tolkien and The Once and Future King. I don’t remember what brought O’Rourke’s novel into my mind but I think it must have been a yearning for the simplicity of those cowboy westerns of my youth. I had only the barest memory of the story in The Diamond Hitch by then, but I remembered it as a western without gunplay, several notches above the two-gun novels of Max Brand. The library no longer kept a copy, so I hunted one up from an on-line used-book store and began a slow reread; and I was struck anew by the quiet telling, the honest plotting—a story about real men inhabiting real lives.

      The greater part of the novel deals with rodeo, and the roundup, but there’s a last section in which Dewey takes winter work “breaking broncs on a circle job” for several ranchers and farmers. When I came to that part of the story I remembered, among my notes for possible novels, one about a young woman horse-breaker in the 1910s. There had been no place for Ed in that girl bronco-buster’s story, I had thought. But reading—rereading—The Diamond Hitch I realized that if that young woman was breaking horses on a circle ride I’d have the beginnings of a novel not only about her but about all the people on her circle. There would be room for the dark complexity of real death. Room for Ed.

      Every writer begins to be a writer by first being a reader. In rereading The Diamond Hitch for this introduction, I am struck yet again by how Story ties everything together. How, as artists, everything we’ve experienced becomes an opportunity to meaningfully integrate our lives with our art. There are a great many reasons to celebrate the reissue of O’Rourke’s novel—to celebrate the quiet reshaping of western myth and the western hero. For me, there’s also this: I know unequivocally, The Hearts of Horses would not have been written if I hadn’t found my way back to The Diamond Hitch—found ways to talk about grief and love in a genre that once had shown me only simple adventure and unambiguous heroism.

      —MOLLY GLOSS

      CONTENTS

      THE DIAMOND HITCH

      PART TWO

      RODEO

      PART THREE

      THE RED DRESS

       to my friend

      DOUGHBELLY PRICE

       who lived this book

       PART ONE:

       THE DIAMOND HITCH

      CHAPTER ONE

      HE WAS NOT an old man but he had lived a good many hard years in his time. He got down from the morning passenger in the clear, sweet air speckled with engine soot and carried his gear through the depot waiting room into the street. He had sat up overnight on the smoking car, rolling Bull Durham, wondering if the job was still open.

      He was thin and gaunted out, his face was deeply wrinkled and those lines crossed his sharp jawbone corners into the corded muscles of his neck. Weather had burned itself into the saddle-brownness of his cheeks and down the reddened, open V of his pull-over wool shirt. His hands showed the callused, thick-healed burn scars that came from the rope and the reins, his fingers were bent and three, once broken, had set crookedly. He walked deliberately on worn boot heels and, from behind, he had the stoop of an old man; but his eyes were a happy gray flecked with hazel and had not yet turned as old as an old man’s treasured memories.

      He crossed the street to the Chink restaurant and dropped his gear beside the first stool. When a man was broke he was always hungry, even if he was sick he was still hungry. Dewey Jones ordered ham and eggs and ate slowly, thinking back over the reasons that brought him here.

      At the start of the Fort Worth Fat Stock Show he had gotten in a fight with a big army sergeant. After that, old John Henry led him around two days with his eyes full of hamburger meat. That ruined his chances for the money until the final night when he picked up twenty-five dollars riding Ross Jackson’s Seven G horse in the exhibition show, and grabbed another twenty-five bulldogging a steer. He bought a ticket to Trinidad, rode over the pass to Raton, and ran into Mike Cunico. Mike showed him a letter from the Flying A outfit in Arizona, wanting a cook and horse breaker right away. Dewey Jones bought his ticket to Holbrook and now, eating breakfast, owned a dollar and eighty cents to his name. Breakfast was taking a seventy-cent bite from that thin roll, and he wasn’t even certain of the job.

      He looked down on his gear, saddle and chaps and spurs, bedroll holding his quilt and two blankets wrapped in the paraffin-treated tarpaulin. He scratched a match on his worn Levis that betrayed the threadbareness of the young-old man who had sat too many broncs and had flown off before the final whistle.

      He smoked over black coffee, the man who had known too many jobs, ridden too many miles, and owned to his name the gear beside the counter stool and the clothes on his back. Dewey Jones paid the check and carried his gear back around the depot where he heard cattle bawling in the stock-pens. He walked on down toward the first chute and watched a crew loading on steers in the choky brown dust and rising day heat.

      Dewey Jones counted thirty-some pens facing the alleys, with gates spaced regular so a crew could cut out small bunches and fill up a car. He admired the way the crew worked their job on horseback, driving the cattle up the alley. He saw one man outside the alley fence, prodding stubborn cows with a stick, and awhile later that tall, gangling man peered at him through the dust and yelled a surprised greeting.

      “Dewey Jones—what you doin’ way out here?”

      Dewey Jones said, “Howdy, Raymond,” and watched the tall man prod a last cow and then come around from the alley fence.

      Raymond Holly was a comical cuss who was once kicked in the jaw by a horse. The jaw healed crooked and the teeth laid down so Raymond chewed on their sides. When Raymond talked he jabbed a finger into a man’s chest and slobbered all over him, talking through those flat teeth. Raymond shook hands and started jabbing and talking as if they had parted only yesterday. It was all of four years, Dewey Jones recalled, since he last saw Raymond at the Las Vegas show.

      “How far to Flying A headquarters?” Dewey Jones finally asked.

      “Twelve miles,” Raymond said. “These here are Flying A cattle, Dewey. That’s the general manager right over there.”

      Dewey Jones turned and saw a wiry man of about fifty coming down the chute platform from the last car. He said, “Reckon he still needs that cook and horse breaker?”

      “He sure does,” Raymond said. “His name’s Hank Cochrane. Go over and jump him.”

      Dewey Jones said, “Thanks, Raymond,” and went over to the chute and introduced himself, showed the letter Mike Cunico had received in Raton, and popped the big question; and right off, studying Cochrane, did not find any particular admiration for the man. Cochrane rubbed the letter between his thumb and forefinger before he said

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