“What did you do, snort too much cleaner?”
Iggy rolled his eyes. “No, there was a mechanical short that made the bull start on its own. I already thought it was creepy as hell, and being alone in that big empty space…my imagination did the rest.”
“So, you’ve been afraid of that bull since you were sixteen?”
“Yep.”
Malcolm spotted an opportunity to do something fun and character building. For both of them. “Then let’s go ride it right now. You and me. Together.”
Iggy stared at Malcolm,brain a touch fuzzy from lack of caffeine, unsure how they’d navigated this brief journey from collecting bottles to Iggy mounting Thor. He latched onto the only word that his stunned mouth could form. “Huh?”
“Verbose, as always. Come on, let’s go ride it together. Neither one of us ever has. I need to get back on the horse, and you need to face your fear of that hunk of wires and cowhide.”
“A dangerous hunk of wires and cowhide.”
“We will use the lowest setting. A toddler can ride on that.”
Iggy squared his shoulders, irritated they were having this conversation while blessed coffee was brewing behind him. How dare Malcolm ask him to make a decision like this when he wasstill half-asleep? But behind Malcolm’s enthusiastic smile was a hint of trepidation. Malcolm was putting something out there too; he wasn’t only asking Iggy to do this scary thing. Malcolm was joining him.
He held Malcolm’s gaze, drawing on the strength he saw there, pulling it deeply into himself. And made the choice. “I’m not putting one of our costume cowboy hats on my head.”
“Not a requirement.”
The hats were kept on-hand for photo ops. Laurel mentioned that their small collection of props had grown a bit since social media interest in the saloon grew. “Okay, fine. I want coffee first.”
“Are you sure you wanna fill your stomach with hot coffee before facing this fear? I do not wanna have to clean up your vomit later.”
Iggy scowled then pivoted neatly on his boot heel—it still amused him that he, the perfect fussy city boy, wore boots, while Malcolm trotted around in some sort of all-terrain sneakers; probably something to do with his ankle surgery—and marched out of the green room. He strode past the stage, through what might have been considered the mosh pit had they been that sort of venue, to the roped off front corner of the building.
Laurel called it Thor. Uncle Howie called it a cash cow, since you had to purchase tokens to operate it. Iggy called it the devil. And maybe Iggy wasn’t down in Georgia with his fiddle, soul ripe for the taking, but the song still began running through his head as he stared down his mechanical nemesis.
“Run, boy, run,” he muttered to himself.
They needed a token. Iggy went to the register and pulled open the popped cash drawer. The cash tray was locked up in the office safe, but they kept the tokens in the empty space beneath the tray, in the drawer. Iggy didn’t have any cash on him. Malcolm reached around him and dropped a dollar bill intothe drawer, then plucked out a gold token. They were generic tokens. Uncle Howie had briefly flirted with getting custom ones made, but he hated the idea of folks stealing them as souvenirs he’d have to constantly replace.
“Does it have its own power switch somewhere?” Malcolm asked.
Iggy followed him to the faux-velvet rope that held gawkers back from the bull and stared into the shadowy alcove. His nemesis existed there like a lump, cast in shadows. Up close for the first time in seventeen years, the mechanical bull…didn’t look like much. Like Kevin realizing it was just a furnace, Iggy saw the silent, still piece of machinery for exactly what it was: something used for entertainment.
Not something to fear.
“Yeah, it’s got its own power supply.” Laurel had shown Iggy where it was his first night, in case there was an incident and he needed to intervene. He unhooked the rope and clipped it to a brass post, then slowly approached the bull. Stared at it a beat. Nothing to be afraid of.
The control panel stood sentry between the potential rider and padded pen holding the bull, so the employees could verify waivers and tokens before anyone rode the thing. Iggy squatted and turned on the power supply, and the board lit up. It had controls to buck, to spin, to combine the two, plus speed levels, and an emergency stop. The challenge had a specific combination of speed, bucks, spins, and time to stay mounted.
Iggy genuinely wasn’t sure it could be mastered. Uncle Howie once said he’d spoken to several champion bull riders and gotten their input, and they said it was potentially winnable. Every rider couldn’t ride every bull; it took raw talent, skill and luck to win those gold buckles. The Saddle Up Saloon was offering a gorgeous custom saddle from Colorado Saddlery, not a goldbuckle, and it sat up on a pedestal, behind a plexi-glass wall to protect it from dust.
Malcolm found the switch that ignited the spotlight above the bullpen. Iggy swore the bull winked its fake eye at him.
“How are we going to do this?” Iggy asked. “We can’t both ride it if one of us has to turn the thing on.”
“At its lowest setting? I can hop up behind you after I start it.”
Iggy squinted at his blatant bravado. “Have you ever jumped onto a moving object behind another person? An object shaped like a mammal that exists solely to gore you with its horns, or to decorate your dinner plate?”
Malcolm tilted his head to the side, eyebrows going up. “Nooo, I don’t think I have. I’m not as nimble as I used to be, but I’ll give it a shot for you.”
“And possibly dislocate a hip?”
