The Girl Who Rode the Sheep

They ran the kids in number order. The announcer was a man from the radio station in the next county over, with a voice like a feed store loudspeaker, and he said every child’s name and age and weight, which made the bleachers laugh every single time.

The first six kids went. Two of them came off in the chute before the gate ever opened.

One little boy in a straw hat rode almost five seconds, and the whole crowd hollered for him.

Then the announcer said, “Number seven, Bentley, six years old, forty-eight pounds,” and Ashlyn grabbed onto Dane’s arm with both hands.

Bentley climbed up into the little chute with Rollin’s help. I could see him from where Emmy and I stood at the fence.

He looked down at that sheep, and something in his face changed. Six-year-old boys are brave right up until the minute they are not.

“Face in the wool, son,” Rollin told him, low and steady. “Hug her. You hug her like she’s your mama.”

The gate swung open. The sheep jumped out sideways, and Bentley came off in the first stride, before she ever got clear of the chute.

He landed in the dirt on his seat, and his new black hat landed in the dirt beside him.

He was not hurt. Anybody could see that. But he looked over at the fence, at his mama, and his little chin started to go, and I felt it in my own chest, because I am a mother and that is what happens.

Rollin got to him in about two steps. He picked up the hat and brushed it off on his jeans and set it back on Bentley’s head, and then he lifted him up onto his feet with one hand like he weighed nothing.

“That’s a ride, cowboy,” Rollin said, loud enough for the bleachers. “You got on. You got on, and that’s more than most people in those stands ever did in their lives.”

The crowd clapped for him the way small-town crowds do, the way they would have clapped for anybody’s boy.

Bentley walked back to the fence with his lip out and his hat crooked, and Ashlyn knelt down in the dirt and hugged him tight.

I watched her face over his shoulder. She was not looking at Bentley. She was looking straight down the fence line at my daughter, who was standing there in a pink shirt and a bicycle helmet, waiting her turn.

Eleven more kids went between Bentley and Emmy. It was the longest stretch of my life that did not take place in a hospital waiting room.

Number eleven rode almost six seconds. She was a little redheaded girl from a ranch south of the reservoir, and she set the mark.

Nobody else came close to it. The crowd was really into it by then, stomping on the bleachers every time a kid got clear of the chute.

Bentley came over and stood on her other side. He had stopped crying. He had dirt down the whole back of his pearl snap shirt and dirt on one cheek where he had wiped his face with his sleeve.

“She jumped sideways,” he told Emmy, very serious. “You have to hold on more than you think. Way more.”

“Face in the wool,” Emmy said, without taking her eyes off the arena.

“Yeah,” Bentley said, and kicked the dirt. “I forgot that part. I sat up. I was going to wave at my mom.”