“Yeah, I don’t want to be the reason he gets more famous.”
“No shit on that.”
Balta held Joa steady when he climbed over the rail, helping him settle on the bull’s back. The energy of the bull always filled him when his knees touched down, and this one was full of rage, ready to buck Joa off.
“Easy,” he muttered. “Let’s do our jobs and make some money,sim?”
That was all he wanted. Eight seconds, a qualified ride, and a bit of the purse money.
Raul chuckled. “Bom. All you have to do is stay in the middle, Joa. Breathe.” One brown hand found the center of his chest, holding him from the front while Balta gripped his vest from the back.
“Sim. Sim. Pull the rope now, he’s giving us some air.”
Raul nodded and grabbed the bull rope, pulling it taut. He couldn’t focus on the way Raul looked, tugging and huffing and puffing. He had to concentrate on the bull, on the readiness of the heavy muscles beneath him. Two thousand pounds of bull just waited for him to lose focus at the wrong moment.
He wrapped the rope around his hand, pounding his fingers closed tight. The bull began to lean again, trying to squash his leg against the gate, so he grabbed one horn with his free hand, pulling hard. “Stop it,bife!”
Raul stepped off and he groaned as the pressure on his leg increased, then suddenly eased as the bull readied himself to take a jump. He nodded his head, the gate swinging open, the excited cries from the audience so loud for a half second before he forgot them altogether.
In his mind, Joa did what he was sure all bull riders did. He began to count. One-one-thousand, two-one-thousand… His body knew what to do, muscle memory taking over. Shift, arch. Spur.
Correct.
He felt the bull rope shift, felt the momentum start to pull him into the well and he arched, body twisting impossibly. For a moment Joa thought he would make it, and he heard Raul screaming, a wordless noise that sounded like Brazil to him. Then gravity took over and he began to slide down into the bull’s horns.
No.
No fucking way.
He needed this ride.
Joa gritted his teeth around the mouthpiece and held on. As long as his hand was still in the rope and no part of him touched the ground before the buzzer, he would get his points.
He made the eight, then started hunting for a get-off, but the damn bull reared up, going straight-up vertical. He let go, hisheart slamming in his chest, pounding furiously as he hit the dirt. He could hear Balta screaming, and the shadow of the bull was getting closer instead of farther away.
“No! Come on! Here! Here, Bruiser! Here! Look here!” Nate’s voice was like a hail of bullets, but that shadow kept getting bigger and Joa scrambled, trying to get out of Bruiser’s way.
Time had slowed to a crawl, but then it all went into double time, as if he was fast-forwarding a movie. Joa had almost cleared the bull’s space when Bruiser crashed to the ground. Right on Joa’s right leg.
The snap was loud and he screamed before he felt the pain, his entire world going white with a pure agony deeper than he’d ever felt.
“Coop! Goddamn it! Tag, help!” Nate sounded damn scared, and Joa stared up, watching as the bull’s hooves came down again, and again.
He gritted his teeth, trying his damnedest to protect his important bits, but every move made things in his thigh grind, the sounds like the opening of hell’s gates.
Strangely enough, it wasn’t until Nate found him and yanked that the good Lord decided to have pity on him and turn everything to quiet black.
Raul droveNate’s rental truck to the hospital. He and Balta both had to ride in the short go, and the hour and a half they waited before they could go to Joa and see him had felt like years. Agonizing.
The worst of it was Balta, actually. The man was gray. Old and tired. He never said a word, just sat in the passenger seat and waited for them to get where they were going.
“He’s fine,” Raul said, but they both knew that wasn’t true. They’d seen the bone, they’d seen the blood, but he had to say it.
“His leg is broken.” Balta’s voice sounded shredded, which made sense. He’d screamed it gone. “Not his head, though, right? Thanks to God for that much.”
“Yes. Not his head. Not his back or his neck. They have fixed broken legs since the beginning of medicine.”
“Sim.” Balta sighed. “Joa. Why Joa, Raul?”
