Dream Wheels
My new novel, Dream Wheels, was just released in August 2006. It’s about rodeo, bull riding to be specific but it’s also about the importance of tradition, family and forgiveness. It’s about the challenges that life presents to us and how we all need each other in order to confront them and emerge victorious. Joe Willie Wofchild is on the verge of becoming the Wordl Champion All Round Cowboy at the National Finals Rodeo in Lass Vegas when an unridable bull cripples him. At the same, Claire Hartley and her son Aiden, undergo hard changes in their lives. She is severely beaten and he gets sent to prison. The story of how they come together and help each other to heal with the help of the Wolfchild fanily and their staunch reliance on native tradition is powerful and enlightening.
Excerpt
The Old Ones say that fate has a smell, a feel, a presence, a tactile
heft in the air. Animals know it. It’s what brings hunter and prey
together. They recognize the ancient call and there’s a quickening in
the blood that drives the senses into edginess, readiness: the wild
spawned in the scent. It’s why a wolf pack will halt their dash across
a white tumble of snow to look at a man. Stand there in the sudden
timeless quiet and gaze at him, solemn amber eyes dilating, the threat
leaned forward before whirling as one dark body to disappear into the
trees. They do that to return him to the wild, to make all things even
once again: to restore proper knowledge. The Old Ones say animals bless
a man with those moments by returning him to the senses he surrendered
when he claimed language, knowledge and invention as power.
The
great bull sensed it and it shivered. The loose skin draped across its
bulk belied the tough muscle and sinew that gave locomotive strength to
its movement in the chute. The smell was in the air. The ancient smell.
It gave a new and different air to the harsh light and dust of the
arena. This was old, this scent, causing something to stir in its
Indian and Spanish blood that it had never encountered before. Not
death, not threat, not challenge because the bull had faced those many
times. No, this was more than that. This was more a bidding than an
urge, a call forward, an invitation to spectacle, a beckoning to an
edge the bull had never approached before. The bull shifted its
eighteen hundred pounds and there wasn’t much room to spare on either
side of its ribs. It didn’t like the feel of the wood, the closeness,
the thin prick of rough-sawn board along its sides. The rage of others
was dribbled into the board against its nose, and the bull shivered
again and stamped its heavy cloven feet into the dirt of the arena
floor. The noise of the crowd beyond the chutes rose and fell awkwardly
against the babble of the cowboys tugging and rubbing and plying
leather in preparation amidst the jingle of metal, the snap and rub and
crinkle of hard rope and the clomp of booted feet and the whinny and
nicker of horses unsettled by the turn of the air, the high, sharp
slice of the ancient order that called to them now too. A moment was
coming, a confrontation. The bull bellowed once and banged the sides of
the chute.
Man feet scraped on the boards at its side, the side
facing away from the open ocean of the infield: the man side. Out
there, in the packed brown dirt rectangle pressed together by high
wooden fencing, was his world, the one the bull controlled, the one
they entered with the smell of fear high in the air. The men talked,
their voices strained, tight in their throats, and the bull felt the
abrasive itch of rope start around its shoulders. Just as the dull
clank of cowbell rang beside him the bull caught the flare of action
between the boards of the chute as another bull and rider exploded into
the arena. The noise of the crowd swelled incredibly and there came the
bashing and buckling sounds of leather, rope, bell, skin and bone
crashing against each other amplified by roiling clouds of dirt that
held it, gave it the shape and tone and snap of electrified energy. It
didn’t last long. A long, drawn-out sigh accompanied the rider suddenly
slammed into the dirt, the sound rising again as bright-costumed men
raced about attracting the bull’s anger, diverting it away from the
rider who scrambled to his feet, eyes ablaze with a strange mix of
indignation and fear, and leaped for the security of the fencing. The
great bull bellowed to its cousin in the infield and shook the sides of
the chute in celebration of another display of power. The men around it
spoke bravely to each other but the bull felt the anxiety creeping just
beneath their words. It enjoyed that and it bellowed again.
The
movement around the chute increased. Men in front of it were pulling
rope against the gate that would soon fling open and send the bull
careening into the light and heat and dirt of the battle. The men over
top of its back moved silently, deliberately now, and the bull stamped
and rolled back and forth, side to side, front to back in the chute
forcing them to agitation, their words harsher to each other. The rope
about its shoulders was secured and the clank belt set in place. The
heavy clink and rattle of the bell angered the bull. It dangled beneath
it heavy as another testicle but irksome, foreign, and as its weight
settled the bull smelled the ancient smell again and rolled its eyes in
their sockets to look upward at the men, rolling its head while it did
so and giving the topmost boards a solid thwack and shiver.
It
watched the young man climb the fence. Saw the set of his face,
determined, calm and strong beneath the fear and felt the firm slap of
his gloved hand on its neck as he leaned over, feet straddled on each
side of the chute. The man bore the smell too. The bull shifted in the
chute, made a small bit of room to accommodate the legs of this man who
smelled so richly of that ancient call. It felt the dull rounded rowel
of spur against its flank as the man slid into place and it shivered,
the loose skin unsettling the man, feeling him grip with his thighs
searching for hold, finding it and relaxing again. The bull snorted and
half rose on its hind feet, twisting its head side to side and
trumpeting the acceptance of this challenge and hearing the buzz of the
crowd rise in time with its huge head over the top of the chute. The
men spoke quicker, shorter words snapped at each other, and the bull
felt the waxed rope being pulled tighter and tighter about its girth.
