"What?"
"Don't lecture my daughter about ink at the breakfast table."
"I'm not lecturing. I'm philosophizing."
"That's worse."
Marlena, Grace, and I all laugh.
This is exactly what I needed—my family, but there’s just one person missing.
Still, I focus on the cicadas through the open back window. The bacon hissing on the stove. Pops's paper. Holt's smart mouth.
My family, doing what my family does on a Saturday morning, the way they always have, even with a stalker out there in the state of Texas with my name in his mouth.
I eat half the plate before I can taste anything, then I eat the rest.
Around ten, Pops stands up and stretches. "I'm putting the qualifier on."
"What qualifier?" I ask.
"Sweetwater. Bull and bronc. Started yesterday, finals are today."
"You don't watch bronc riding, Pops."
"I watch when there's nothing else good on."
He's lying. He's putting the TV on because the property is on lockdown and the brothers are restless and he wants something on the screen that's not the morning news with its weather and politics.
Bronc riding is family-safe noise.
He goes into the living room and turns on the big TV mounted above the stone fireplace.
The PRCA broadcast comes up—wide shot of the arena at Sweetwater, the announcer's voice over the crowd, a cowboy in chaps walking back to the chutes after a ride.
Holt brings his coffee into the living room and takes the leather armchair to the right of the couch.
Pops takes the recliner. Marlena sits at the kitchen table with Grace, finishing her own coffee. Cal in the playpen.
Waylon climbs onto Holt's lap with a piece of bacon in each hand and Holt lets him.
Spur and I take the couch. He pulls me into his side. My head goes against his shoulder. His arm comes around me.
We watch the bronc riding the way you watch something on TV when you're not really watching—half-attention, the announcer's voice as background, the room half-full of family and food smells.
A cowboy named Hayes Beaumont rides eighty-six on a horse called Black Diamond. Pops grunts approval.
Another rider gets bucked off in the chute before his ride starts.
Holt makes a comment about young men who don't know how to seat their horses. Waylon laughs because his uncle laughed.
Spur is quiet beside me. I feel his chest rise and fall under my cheek.
Then the camera cuts to the back of the chutes between rides—a wide shot of the chute crew working a fresh horse into position.
Stock contractors moving around the gate. The chute boss leaning over the rail signaling the announcer.
A man in a faded tan cowboy hat lighting a cigarette in the corner of the frame.
