July 2006, Minnesota

By Sara Woster

We arrive at the rodeo as the smells of grilled pork and tangy barbeque sauce are still winning over the smell of the port-a-potties. Going to the rodeo is the type of thing my husband and I do now that we are living in northern Minnesota. My husband is from Minnesota. I am originally from South Dakota and as a South Dakotan I am naturally drawn to things like Country Western concerts, rattlesnake belts, and rodeo.

This rodeo is being held in a pit off the highway outside of the resort town of Park Rapids. It is the same type of pit that you see scattered throughout the Midwest, used for demolition derbies, outdoor concerts, horse sales, or church revivals. Tonight it holds the same smells as the State Fair and several thousand rodeo fans.

Rodeos used to be rural events, with most of the audience looking identical to the cowboys in the ring. But now, despite the sponsor of the event being the U.S. Smokeless Tobacco Company, the tobacco-chewing cowboy is gone. The crowd looks like they could be here for a Shriner’s Circus or a Promisekeepers meeting. The place is lousy with kids; all of the merchandise that is for sale, like leather chaps and hot pink cowboy hats, is available in pint-sizes.

The crowd is a mix. There are the true rodeo aficionados in their 10-gallon hats, tight jeans and belt buckles that look like the grills on a semi truck. There are the perpetual spectators from town who are just as likely to show up here as at a parade, a fish fry, or a pow-wow. And I suspect many just came for the party. There is something about an outdoor event that makes people unashamed to start drinking huge amounts of weak, domestic beer at 4 p.m.

They have come to see the most macho of rodeos. Today’s event is exclusively bull riding. The bull rider’s job is to stay on the sweaty, heaving back while one hand keeps a tight grip on the braided rope. The other hand has to remain in the air for the entire eight seconds that must pass to get a score.

Tonight it is a sold out show. Since all of the seats in the bleachers are accounted for, we join the mass of people that sit on the hill. At eight months pregnant no pride remains to stop me from sitting down among the cigarette butts and corn dog sticks that litter the ground.

The cowboys strut out to be announced pelvis first, shoulders back. Their bright Western shirts are pressed. Their rodeo outfits cover the short and compact frames of high school wrestlers. This is the kind of place where a girl would want to hook up if she weren’t with her husband, shaped like a beluga whale and sporting a thinning cervix.

The announcer introduces the riders one by one. When their name is called, they step forward and wave their hats.

My dad loves rodeo. He was born in a dusty, western South Dakota town called Reliance. My dad claims that the cowboys are brave and immune to pain from all their years getting kicked around during their ranch work. My mom says they’re not brave or immune to pain, just dumb with brain damage. But I think it is something else entirely.

I think they are testing their faith by stepping out there.

Rodeos are part sporting event, part vaudeville show. Between the many beautiful and harrowing rides, it takes a while to set up the riders and get the animals ready to go. So rodeos have an excess of time that they fill with rodeo clowns or trick riders or patriotic zeal. And along the way somebody came up with Cowboy Poker.

Here is the premise of Cowboy Poker. A card table and four chairs are set up in the middle of the rodeo ring. Four people take their seats as if they are playing a game of poker. A gigantic bull is released into the ring. The players stay seated as a two-ton bull charges the table. The winner is the last person sitting in their folding chair.

After the first round of riders, the announcer makes the call: “Anyone interested in Cowboy Poker must now approach the judge’s stand.”

The words are not even out of the announcer’s mouth before a man races by us. He cannot weigh more than 110 pounds. And those pounds are spread over a 6′ frame. His ribs protrude through his checkered, cowboy shirt. He wears no cowboy hat to hide his long mullet. While I don’t know what kind of cowboy poker player he is, I can tell he cares about his hair. It is untangled and hits him just above the tight waistband of his dark blue jeans. His anemic-looking mustache is what we referred to as a dirt lip in high school. In the back pocket of his tight-fitting jeans is a plastic comb, the kind that was last spotted poking over a Gloria Vanderbilt logo in 1983.

As the mullet man passes by us on his race towards the announcer’s booth, I realize that I have seen him before. He works at the Trading Post. The Trading Post is a junk shop that specializes in reselling the debris that builds up around the lake culture of Northern Minnesota: old boat docks, old boats and old ice fishing cabins. Inside the long prefab office a haze of cigarette smoke covers the old pans, crocked pots and poorly executed waterfowl taxidermy.

It was during a trip to the Trading Post while looking for cheap windows that I first noticed the man with the mullet. He was perched on a metal stool, tinkering with a radio. He attached wires here and there, skills I thought that he had probably picked up in prison. There was some trace of a former drug habit in the way his skin clung to that tiny frame. He made me nervous. I hugged my purse closer to me.

The man with the mullet smiled and asked me when the baby was due.

“August 9.” I gave him one of my most patronizing smiles.

“That’s pretty soon,” he smiled. His mouth was a mess, most teeth were missing and the ones that remained were not doing too well. But it was one of the kindest smiles I have ever received.

“Not soon enough,” I smiled back at him.

“I bet.” His attention returned to his radio.

There was another radio on the table where he worked. That one worked and was broadcasting a Christian radio station. An announcer encouraged their listeners to attend an upcoming tent revival. A religious song came on the radio, the man with the mullet sang along.

That explains the face, I thought. I always feel jealous about that beatific look of the born again. The anxiety that is always present in me leaves no room for a face like that.

And now here he is racing to sign up for Cowboy Poker.

I poke my husband and point at the man as he jumps over lawn chairs and hurdles over children. A look of jubilation is on his face.

“It’s that guy from the Trading Post,” I point out.

A motley crew of three other average citizens joins him at the announcer’s table. In the midst of the thick frames and beer bellies of the other competitors, the mullet man seems even more petite and fragile.

After the next round of bull rides they announce the start of the cowboy poker game. The four men are led onto the ring by two rodeo clowns. Two of the participants wear flak jackets. But two of them, included the mullet man, wear no protection at all.

The crowd has not been so interested in anything all night. The lines to buy beer dwindle, the Port-a-potties clear out.

The announcer heralds the release of the bull. The bull enters the ring. He glares at the table. He huffs. He backs up, hoof over hoof, lowers his horns and scratches at the earth.

Three of the men look terrified. They hover over their folding chairs; their hands grip the white plastic table. Only the mullet man stays seated.

He stares at the bull.

The bull charges, the rodeo clowns flee the vicinity of the table, and the bull heads right for the guy in the helmet and butts him in the stomach. That guy wears a flak jacket so when he flies half way across the ring he doesn’t die. The rodeo clowns upright the table and the bull charges once again. This time he chases off the other man who dares no protection. The mullet man and his more muscular opponent, who wears a flak jacket, remain.

The bull approaches the table. He is not charging, he is walking. Two feet from the table he stops, his head swivels between the two competitors. Snot rolls down from its nose.

The mullet man stares at the bull, his hands rest on the table and his face is calm. The other man is halfway off his chair. Even from our nosebleed position the heaving of his flak jacket is visible. He looks like he might be in the grip of a pretty serious panic attack.

Still the bull does not move. Neither does the mullet man.

One of the rodeo clowns grabs handfuls of dirt from the rodeo floor and throws them at the bull. The bull backs up and scratches the dirt, his horns point at the table. The rodeo clown jumps off the table.

The bull charges.

The larger competitor in the flak jacket jumps up and runs toward the fence. The mullet man stays seated until the instant that the bull’s horn sends the table flying across the room.

The crowd goes nuts. The man is awarded his cash prize of $50.

“It’s Superfaith,” I tell Rob. “That guy is a super Christian. He thinks God is in charge of that bull.”

Two days later we stop by The Trading Post again.

“There he is,” I squeal.

The mullet man sits with his co-workers at a banged-up patio table. He smokes a cigarette while turning an old electrical waffle iron upside down, examining its rusty underbelly.

“Excuse me. I think I saw you win cowboy poker the other night,” I approach the table. The other men smile.

“Yeah,” he nods.

“That was cool,” I say. “They must make you sign a pretty big waiver, hunh?”

“Yeah,” he laughs. “Pretty big.”

I keep standing there, wanting something profound from this man who holds the key to Superfaith.

“Did you really only get $50?” I ask.

“Yeah. I won it last year and I got $200. Now it’s $50.” He nods back down at his project. His cowboy boot never stops its nervous tapping on the frame of the table.

“It went down?”

“Yeah. I guess they figured some of us would do it for free.”

“What are you going to do with the money?” I ask.

“It’s already gone. I have a demolition car. I put it into that.” He keeps his eyes on the waffle maker. “I’m driving in the demolition derby on Sunday. I’m in a brown Pontiac Le Sabre. Number 69.”

“Well,” I say on our way out. “Congratulations.”

“It went well,” he says without looking up.

It went well. He says that with the certainty that it is never not going to go well. He knows nothing will happen to him unless it is his time to go. For mullet man, God was in the bull that night. That is Superfaith.

Sara Woster is a writer and artist who spends the winter paying too much rent in Brooklyn and summers spending too much money on insect repellent in Northern Minnesota.

Posted by Elizabeth Armstrong Moore on Monday, March 12th, 2007 | Email This Post

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