I dig my thumbnail into my finger again.
The arena is filling up. Friday night in Amarillo means cowboys in pressed shirts and women in turquoise jewelry, families with sticky-faced kids waving at the rodeo clowns warming up the crowd.
The announcer's voice booms off the metal rafters, rattling through the standings and the evening's lineup with the practiced enthusiasm of a man who's done this ten thousand times.
I scan the program. Barrel racing, team roping, saddle bronc, and the headliner: bull riding.
Colt Holloway's name is listed third in the bull riding rotation.
I've done my research on Holloway. Everyone on the Southwest Circuit has an opinion about him. He's the current points leader with a reputation for never turning down a dangerous draw, riding the rankest bulls on the roster with the kind of reckless fury that makes you wonder if he's trying to win or trying to die.
Grant talked about him. Not often, but with the quiet respect my brother reserved for people he considered the real deal and a true friend.
Grant said Colt was the best bull rider he'd ever seen and the worst human being he'd ever liked.
I write Holloway's name in my notebook and underline it twice.
The first two bull riders go out. One makes the buzzer, barely. The other gets bucked off in four seconds flat and scrambles over the fence while the bullfighters redirect a ton of pissed-off Brahma cross.
The crowd loves it. The energy in the arena is electric, primal, the kind of collective adrenaline that turns strangers into a single organism.
Then the announcer's voice drops into that register reserved for the headliner.
"Ladies and gentlemen, our next rider needs no introduction. Current Southwest Circuit points leader, two-time circuit champion, the man they call the last cowboy standing. Riding Tombstone's Revenge, the rankest bull on the Southwest Circuit, please welcome Colt Holloway."
The arena erupts.
My blood goes cold.
Tombstone's Revenge. I know that name. It's in the Las Cruces incident report, in every article that called my brother's death an accident. That's the bull that killed Grant.
And Colt is climbing onto its back.
I lean forward.
Behind the chute, I can barely make him out. He's tall, broad-shouldered in a dark shirt, settling onto the bull with the focused economy of a man who's done this a thousand times.
He wraps his hand into the bull rope while two cowboys on either side of the chute keep the animal pinned.
Tombstone's Revenge is slamming against the metal panels, and the sound carries all the way to the press box, a deep booming that rattles the press box railing under my hands.
The chute opens.
Tombstone's Revenge explodes into the arena like a detonation. The bull spins left, drops its head, kicks so high its back hooves clear the top of the chute panels.
Holloway rides with his free hand high and his body low, absorbing every violent pivot with his hips and core. His spurs find the bull's hide on every jump, marking time with a rhythm that turns raw survival into something deliberate. Controlled. The kind of spurring that makes judges reach for the high numbers.
His face is half-shadow above the chute rail. The set of his jaw. The way he leans into the spin instead of fighting it.
There's no self-preservation in the way he rides. The technique is muscle memory, trained into his body over years, but the man behind it is riding like he's got nothing left to lose. He looks like a man who made peace with getting killed a long time ago and now treats every eight seconds as a personal insult that death keeps standing him up.
The buzzer sounds.
The crowd is on its feet. Tombstone's Revenge bucks Holloway off the back end, and he hits the dirt hard, rolls, and comes up in a crouch.
The bull wheels on him. Eighteen hundred pounds of muscle and horn swinging back around with its head low, targeting.
The bullfighters move in, and Holloway doesn't run.
