Rodeo Snow Read online

  Rodeo Snow

  Pat Rhoades

  North Star Press of St. Cloud, Inc.

  St. Cloud, Minnesota

  Copyright © 2014 Pat Rhoades

  All rights reserved.

  Print ISBN: 978-0-87839-731-0

  eBook ISBN: 978-0-87839-965-9

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  First Edition: June 2014

  Cover design: Brad Kaspari

  Kaspari Design Services, Inc.

  www.kasparidesign.com

  Printed in the United States of America

  Published by

  North Star Press of St. Cloud, Inc.

  P.O. Box 451

  St. Cloud, MN 56302

  northstarpress.com

  For

  my parents, Ron and Jeanette Rhoades

  and for

  my children, James and Rachel Kaspari

  Acknowledgements

  I am grateful to Joan Drury and Norcroft for giving me the time and space to begin and to the community of writers at the Loft for sustaining me. Much thanks to the good people at North Star Press for their dedication to bringing this and other beautiful books into the world.

  This book would not exist without the deep attention and unwavering support of my writing group: Jeanne Farrar, Duke Klassen, Tyone LaDouceur, Kathy Lewis, Jane Lund, Kathy Ogle, and Danielle Sosin. It was helped along the way by these readers: Siana Goodwin, Christian Lauer, Sam Orfield and Jeanne Stuart. Thank you to my writing friend Jenny Hill, who sat across from me in coffee shops each week silently writing, and to Christine Murphey, for our enduring long-distance writing friendship.

  My appreciation to Pam Costain for her thoughtful feedback about the Wellstone campaign. Any error in fact or tone is solely mine. I am indebted to Mary Logue for her insights into improving the book’s structure. And thanks to Andy Snow for the use of his totally cool nickname.

  Enormous gratitude to my writing teacher, Pat Francisco. Truly, this book could not have been written without you. Thank you for opening the door to the writing life and ushering me in.

  Much love and thanks to my family: Rachel Kaspari, insightful first reader, my Lily; James Kaspari for lending me the details of his teenage life and generously giving me help and feedback when they became Gene’s. Thank you, Jamie, for showing me the beauty, the athleticism, the total coolness of street skating and answering my endless questions. And finally, thanks to Brad Kaspari for his patience, his never-ending support and his ability to make supper magically appear on the table. Thank you, my best friend—for everything.

  Pat Rhoades is a clinical social worker and writer who lives with her husband in Minneapolis next to the mighty Mississippi. Rodeo Snow is her first novel. You can visit Pat at patrhoades.com.

  Contents

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1: Road Rage

  Chapter 2: Concrete Heaven

  Chapter 3: Poop in a Blender

  Chapter 4: Bum Busters

  Chapter 5: The Scene of the Crime

  Chapter 6: Barefoot in a Bad Situation

  Chapter 7: Lost Causes

  Chapter 8: Getting a Life

  Chapter 9: Wiener

  Chapter 10: Give Peace a Chance

  Chapter 11: Angels and Martyrs

  Chapter 12: Memorial

  Chapter 13: Midnight Madness

  Chapter 14: Poop in a Blender Revisited

  Chapter 15: H-E-Double Hockey Sticks

  Chapter 16: Wild Man

  Chapter 17: Beautiful Beast

  Chapter 18: Practice

  Chapter 19: Eugene

  Chapter 20: Best Friends

  Chapter 21: Rodeo Snow

  Chapter 22: Oops!

  Chapter 23: Airman

  Chapter 1: Road Rage

  You’re merging onto the freeway for the second time in your life. Only this time instead of just your dad riding shotgun, the whole family’s there: mom, sister, Yellow, the dumb dog who worships you. The whole family’s buckled their fate into yours, depending on you not to blow it. So you do all the stuff they bored you with in driver’s ed: signal, look in the rearview mirror, double check over your shoulder, try to get up the guts to floor it when suddenly there’s this big pig SUV from nowhere on your butt honking, then pulling up alongside you, the guy giving you the finger and edging closer trying to run you off the road. What do you do?

  A. Give him the finger back and yell, “Screw you, mister!” For once your mother will have to make an exception to her rule against bad language.

  B. Ask your dad to get the gun (which, by the way, doesn’t exist) from the glove compartment.

  C. Pull off the road, vowing to limit all future driving to pulling the car into the garage.

  D. Keep on the road the best you can, telling yourself this asshole, like all bad things, will pass.

  Since no gun was available, I thought C was the best option, but my dad said, “Hold it steady, son. It’ll be okay,” and the guy blasted past us.

  “Can I pull over?” I asked. “I can’t do this.”

  Dad said, “You did great, Gene. If you stop driving just because of all the jerks on the road, you’ll have to skate everywhere.”

  But that’s exactly what I wanted to do. I was a skater. Aggressive inline, as in rollerblades. A street skater. I was no skateboarding wood pusher. When I was wearing my skates I could get away from anyone.

  “You almost got us killed!”

  “Shut up, Lily.” I glared at my sister in the rearview mirror.

  “Shhh!” Mom said. “Gene’s a good driver. He isn’t the one trying to run people off the road.”

  I stayed in the slow lane the rest of the way and finally pulled into the parking lot. “I don’t think I can drive home.”

  “Of course you can,” Mom insisted. It probably took a lot of effort for her to encourage me. But encouragement was Mom’s deal. She was a kindergarten teacher whose classroom motto was from that ancient little kid’s book: The Little Engine Who Could. You know, you do what seems impossible because you tell yourself, “I think I can, I think I can.”

  It was our monthly trip to the Cud, that’s what our family called the Ruminator Bookstore. The store’s symbol was a wood cut of a cow chewing its cud or, as they say in Honors English, ruminating. It used to be called The Hungry Mind, but they sold their name to someone on the Internet. Dad said that’s what you had to do to survive in the year 2002: pretend you’d sold your soul so the buyer thought what they got was worth something.

  I wished I could sell my name. Hell, I wouldn’t have charged much. But who would’ve bought it? I mean how many kids do you know named Eugene? Most of the time when I told kids my name they looked confused and said “Jean?” like my parents got mixed up and thought I was a girl or “U-Gene?” like I was some kind of biological experiment.

  When I told them I was named after Eugene McCarthy, the peacenik politician, they said something ignorant like, “Isn’t he the guy who hated Communists?” That guy’s name was Joe, a name I wouldn’t have minded at all. In fact that’s what I looked like: brown hair, generically okay face, almost medium height. An ordinary Joe. But I could guarantee my parents would’ve never named me after a Republican.

  Dad told me once if it had been up to him, he would’ve named me after his favorite musician.

  “Captain Beefheart?” I wondered.

  He shook his head.

  “Frank?” I still would’ve been stuck with a geezer name.

  “Zappa.” He grinned.

  “Zappa.” I found myself smiling every time I thought of it. Frank Zappa was this totally weird rock dude with this album called Weasels Rip My Flesh. He named his kids, I kid you not, Moon Unit and Dweezil.

  So I was obsessed with names. When we got our dog, Yellow, a couple of winters before, Lily watched him pee in the yard. “Eeeww, yellow snow!” she said and I’m sorry to say that since he was a yellow lab, I went for it. After all, Snow is our last name. Of course he was such a dumb, trusting mutt he came the first time I called him.

  We started going to the Ruminator each month to buy books with the money my parents saved by canceling cable. I didn’t mind—I just went over to my friend Andy’s house to watch Adult Swim and, if I didn’t leave it to my mom, I usually got something decent to read out of the arrangement. That day I was looking for a skate magazine. I was doing everything I could to get ready for the street skate competition that fall: studying videos, poring over skate mags. Oh, and of course, skating. I spent the summer in my skates.

  I figured that if I could win the fall comp, win some bucks from the communal pot, and establish myself, I could go on to win the big company-sponsored comp in the spring. Winning a company competition got you hooked up with free skates and skate clothes, a chance to do demos, maybe even get some tricks on an amateur mixed tape. It was the only way to get treated seriously as a skater.

  “I found a book for you.” Mom walked over just as I located a mag with this crazy cover shot: Chris Edwards, the first and best street skater of all time, suspended over a never-ending staircase. No wo
nder they called him the Airman. Mom waved her book in front of me, bringing me back to earth. I groaned as I realized it was another one of her attempts to indoctrinate me: The Conscience of a Liberal by Paul Wellstone.

  “Mom, it’s the end of summer vacation. Have pity on me.”

  “It’s not a punishment, Gene,” she said.

  “Mom, I’ll probably read it in school anyway.”

  “Do you think so?” I could see she was distracted by her fantasy of the whole high school studying her favorite politician, our senator who was running for his third term in office. If we all read this book, we teenagers could save the world.

  I turned back to my mag. There was an article on Louie Zamora. The dude was like a human superball bouncing off any surface in sight. He was one crazy skater.

  “Gene,” Mom continued, but I didn’t look at her. I just walked to the cash register where Lily and Dad were standing. Dad, the self-employed artist had his usual coffee table art book. Lily, typical eight-year-old, held the latest Harry Potter. Even though she’d read my copy, she had to have her own in hardcover.

  “Gene.” Mom followed me.

  “It’s not fair,” I told her. “Last time you got me the PSAT study guide.” Mom was all worried about my studying for the PSAT even though it was just a practice test for the SAT. You’d think she would’ve realized I didn’t need to practice my test taking skills. That’s all we did in school.

  “You didn’t come with us last time,” she reminded me.

  “I’m here now,” I reminded her.

  She still had the Paul Wellstone book when we checked out. “It’s a gift,” she explained, handing it to me.

  I took it just to get her to leave me alone. Like she really thought I’d read it. It looked like the most boring book on the planet. Paul Wellstone smiled from the back cover like he expected something from me. I hid him under my skate mag. Chris Edwards wasn’t smiling. He was flying.

  I drove home at what felt like a hundred miles per hour (okay, actually sixty-five) and I was still getting passed by assholes. At least I finally made it, so I could call Andy on my cell and have him meet me at the Stairs to practice. I put on my Shima 3’s, the inline skates I saved up for and finally bought at the beginning of the summer. The figure skating white had already faded to an urban gray, except for the sides where I’d lettered the word soul, with blue and black paint markers, graffiti style. Soul: as in soul grind, soul slide, blindside halfcab soul, oversoul—if you skate you gotta have soul. And I was out the door, the wheels pushing me up to my desired height, like bionic feet helping me move faster and more freely than any car, jock or wild animal.

  The Stairs were the front entrance to St. Joan’s Parish House, a convent where a bunch of ancient nuns lived, a couple of blocks from my house. It was Andy’s and my usual meeting place and the gathering place for all the skaters in the neighborhood.

  I couldn’t imagine living in some suburban cul de sac with no sidewalks where all the kids wore helmets and kneepads and got their parents to dish out the bucks for them to go to indoor skate parks whenever they wanted. When I was skating down the sidewalk to the Stairs, I was who I was born to be: a Minneapolis street skater.

  I put on speed once I approached the Stairs, skated up the ramp, then ground the concrete ledge alongside it. Grinding is when you jump onto an edge or rail and slide sideways down it on your skates. Pretty basic but the variations are endless. No Andy yet and the Stairs were deserted, so I royaled the steps, another grind. I slid down the ledge on the side of one foot, dragging the other behind for emphasis. Kind of an inline underline.

  Then I started messing with what would have been a blindside halfcab soul if I could’ve done it right. What you do is skate backwards at the rail or ledge you’re going to grind, then do a 180 to soul, the lengthwise outer edge of your skates, spinning so you lose sight of the rail. The backwards part was no big deal, but most of the time when I turned away from the edge I missed it. As a result, I had some pretty intense bruises.

  Of course it hurt to get good at an extreme sport like skating. My legs looked like a bad painting of a sunset. It was great how freaked out girls got when they saw me in shorts. It made my mom semi-hysterical.

  I wiped out as usual, and as I got up I thought I heard Andy. “You’re late, asshole,” I started to complain but then I saw it wasn’t him. It was a girl on skates. Cute, but maybe she should have stayed on the sidewalk with the baby strollers. She paused at the Stairs. I skated backwards casually a ways so I could watch. Of course, instead of doing some dumb move badly she nailed a blindside half cab soul. Damn, she must have been watching—and laughing at me.

  “Wow,” Andy skated up on his board just in time to witness my humiliation. “Who are you?” he asked and I could see he was smitten.

  “Core-in,” she said, emphasizing the “in.” “C-o-r-i-n-n-e,” she spelled when we looked confused. She was good looking in a tough way: heavy on the eye makeup, baggy cargo pants and tight little top that didn’t cover much. I caught the glint of a nose ring as she turned her head and pulled her dark gold hair back into a ponytail.

  “Nice skates.” She glanced at me. I wondered if she was implying that my skates were too good for me because it wasn’t like she said nice skating.

  Possible insults and tough girl answers didn’t stop Andy though. Nothing stopped Andy. He kind of reminded me of Yellow that way: my two obnoxiously eager best friends. Andy was tall and skinny and sort of loped around, bouncing his head up and down like he was both sheepish and happy to be there. His hair, which was golden-retriever brown and shaggy, hung in his face, goofy and dog-like.

  But as Mom always said, looks can be deceiving: Andrew Carter Carlson, Junior, had the most diabolically intelligent creative mind of anyone I knew. He got straight A’s and invented these amazingly bizarre devices—the electronic younger sibling zapper guaranteed to deter your little brother or sister from snooping in your room (although if your mother got zapped, you were in deep crap), the ultra-sanitary garbage catapult, which sent a bag of garbage sailing over your garage into the alley where you could easily pop it into the bin with a minimum of stinky garbage bag contact.

  The guy was a good-natured evil genius. He grinned and skated up to Corinne, introducing himself, “I’m Andy and this is—” he turned to me.

  “Gene,” I finished. Don’t ask, I thought, bracing myself for the usual what the hell kind of name is that question. But she just nodded and shrugged simultan­eously, like acknowledging our existence bored her.

  We took turns on the Stairs. I decided not to do anything too ambitious, instead I stayed simple and successful. Andy, who was a skate boarder, was out of the competition and did what he wanted. Corinne did all these crazy jumps and twists. The way she skated reminded me of someone, but I wasn’t sure who.

  “Anywhere good to skate around here?”

  I felt a bit defensive about the question like the Stairs weren’t good enough, which I realized was true but they were good enough if you needed something close by. “There’s Nollie Ollie at the U,” I said, “but it’s kind of far.”

  “Nollie Ollie? U?” She was finally interested enough to have an extended conversation. She stopped and looked at me. Smiled. It was a smile in need of orthodontia but in a crookedly attractive way.

  Andy nosed in like a puppy dog. “It’s a concrete plaza at the University of Minnesota.” He did an ollie, popping his board up under one foot. Then he did a nollie popping it up under the other. She really smiled at that. “It’s a pretty random name,” he admitted, looking pleased with himself. “Next time we go, we’ll take you there.”

  “Do you guys have a car?”

  “Well, no,” Andy admitted.

  “License?” She sounded hopeful.

  “Permit,” I said.

  “I can take my test at the end of the school year,” Andy said.

  She looked at me like I should come up with some­thing better, like I was turning sixteen the next week.