Foe
03-24-2013, 12:48 AM
I'm writing something in which I want to show the reader a man recalling his first memory of his grandfather. It's based on a composite of my own memories, so I naturally have a vivid mental image of the event I want to describe. My question: Does the image come through for the reader? Here 'tis, and your frank analysis is deeply appreciated:
My first image of the cowboy was the worn hip pocket of his Levi jeans and the work-blackened leather gloves stuffed into it. He’d come to take me with him while he drove a pickup to Denver to exchange it for a newer one. He looked down at me, a grin of pride and wonder splitting his creased face, and asked, “You ready to go, whistlebritches?” My mother told me later that I nodded solemnly, my dimestore cowboy hat slipping sideways on my head. He laughed, a rumbling basso profundo guffaw, then turned and strode to his truck. “C’mon, then, yer wastin’ my time.” I ran to catch up with his hip pocket, and with the gloves.
He was a master of the art of storytelling. The decades he spent herding cattle and roping and branding and buying and selling them were all mixed together and distilled into a single danger-filled cattle drive from which he spun tale after tale. He must have nearly died a dozen times on that mythical cattle drive, and in the repeated tellings he inched ever closer to Death’s door. My brothers and I would sit spellbound around his easy chair listening to yarns about the wildest horses, the biggest cattle herds, the hardest drovers, the hottest summers and the coldest winters. Over time, I think he actually came to remember the stories as the events themselves, and some of them have passed into family legend and become truth, if not fact.
My most prized memory of him is the first time I sat astride a horse with him. It was just after my fifth Christmas, and he’d saddled a damned handsome, fifteen-hand palomino named Togo. My father handed me up to the cowboy, who sat me on the saddle shoulders and held me tight against his hard belly with his left arm. He guided Togo out of the corral and into the pasture, and goaded the horse into a canter, then a gallop. The icy air stung my face and whistled past my stocking-capped ears. The horse’s hooves made soft, thudding sounds in the snow, and a fine mist of the stuff swirled around us. He urged Togo into a full run, “C’mon, c’mon, boy!” and as we flew over a white world I felt the horse working like a great machine under us. The tack jingled rhythmically in the crisp, still air, and the cowboy’s gloved hand floated in front of me, the reins draped gracefully through his fingers. His touch controlled the half-ton of muscle and sinew that flowed and shifted beneath us.
We ran for more than two miles, Togo, the cowboy, and me, and then we turned and cut crisscrosses through our tracks all the way back. When the ride was over, I sat on a bale of straw in the barn and soaked up the warm stink of the horse while he curried and fed the great champagne-colored beast.
Later, when I ran into our kitchen to report the wonderful ride to my mother, she took one whiff of me and turned up her nose. “You need a bath,” she said.
“Aww, Dorie, he just smells a little like horse, that’s all,” the cowboy said. “And a helluva good horse at that!” I had to take a bath anyway.
My first image of the cowboy was the worn hip pocket of his Levi jeans and the work-blackened leather gloves stuffed into it. He’d come to take me with him while he drove a pickup to Denver to exchange it for a newer one. He looked down at me, a grin of pride and wonder splitting his creased face, and asked, “You ready to go, whistlebritches?” My mother told me later that I nodded solemnly, my dimestore cowboy hat slipping sideways on my head. He laughed, a rumbling basso profundo guffaw, then turned and strode to his truck. “C’mon, then, yer wastin’ my time.” I ran to catch up with his hip pocket, and with the gloves.
He was a master of the art of storytelling. The decades he spent herding cattle and roping and branding and buying and selling them were all mixed together and distilled into a single danger-filled cattle drive from which he spun tale after tale. He must have nearly died a dozen times on that mythical cattle drive, and in the repeated tellings he inched ever closer to Death’s door. My brothers and I would sit spellbound around his easy chair listening to yarns about the wildest horses, the biggest cattle herds, the hardest drovers, the hottest summers and the coldest winters. Over time, I think he actually came to remember the stories as the events themselves, and some of them have passed into family legend and become truth, if not fact.
My most prized memory of him is the first time I sat astride a horse with him. It was just after my fifth Christmas, and he’d saddled a damned handsome, fifteen-hand palomino named Togo. My father handed me up to the cowboy, who sat me on the saddle shoulders and held me tight against his hard belly with his left arm. He guided Togo out of the corral and into the pasture, and goaded the horse into a canter, then a gallop. The icy air stung my face and whistled past my stocking-capped ears. The horse’s hooves made soft, thudding sounds in the snow, and a fine mist of the stuff swirled around us. He urged Togo into a full run, “C’mon, c’mon, boy!” and as we flew over a white world I felt the horse working like a great machine under us. The tack jingled rhythmically in the crisp, still air, and the cowboy’s gloved hand floated in front of me, the reins draped gracefully through his fingers. His touch controlled the half-ton of muscle and sinew that flowed and shifted beneath us.
We ran for more than two miles, Togo, the cowboy, and me, and then we turned and cut crisscrosses through our tracks all the way back. When the ride was over, I sat on a bale of straw in the barn and soaked up the warm stink of the horse while he curried and fed the great champagne-colored beast.
Later, when I ran into our kitchen to report the wonderful ride to my mother, she took one whiff of me and turned up her nose. “You need a bath,” she said.
“Aww, Dorie, he just smells a little like horse, that’s all,” the cowboy said. “And a helluva good horse at that!” I had to take a bath anyway.