Lupe arrived at the rodeo grounds at noon with a long white envelope and a face like a closed gate. Lupe is sixty, my yard foreman, a short, solid man in a straw hat who has not smiled in public since 1998. He walked straight through the families spreading blankets by the arena fence, past the funnel cake stand and the face painting booth, to the grandstand trailer that stood at the end of the arena, where a new banner over the top read Burnett Rodeo Systems. He looked at it, and looked at me, and said, “Waylon. Line 22. That is the unit I loaded in May for the buyer.”
Clay Burnett, my brother in law, was walking toward us in a clean white shirt and a belt buckle the size of a saucer. He is sixty eight, a big, loud, confident man who has called me fence builder across a dinner table for thirty years, always with a wink, and he was in the middle of a sentence when he saw my face. “Waylon,” he said, “Dusty said you donated that trailer. Said you had gone soft on the business and given him the pick of the yard.” “I sold the business,” I said. “Cribbs Arena Systems. Seven million, eight hundred thousand dollars. That trailer is listed at a hundred ninety five thousand and it belongs to the buyer.”
The sound around us seemed to thin, as sound does before a storm. Sherry, my wife, came across the grass in a straw hat and jeans, with a paper cup of lemonade in each hand. She is sixty four, tall and calm, with a long gray braid. She gave me one of the cups, quite deliberately, and then turned to her brother. “Clay,” she said, “I told Waylon not to do this. I said, they will show you who they are. And you did. Twenty dollars to rake the arena. At your own family rodeo.” Her voice did not shake. “You called my husband a fence builder in front of my grandchildren.”
A grandstand trailer stood at the end of a family rodeo arena and gave one arena builder the afternoon to bring his nephew back to the bolts.
My nephew had come up on the other side, a bit out of breath, with a clipboard of tickets in his hand and a new embroidered shirt. Dusty is thirty one, a good looking, restless boy with a cowlick he has never tamed, and he looked from his father to me to the foreman. “Uncle Waylon, I can explain. I had the rodeo contract. A real one. For three weekends. I could not rent a grandstand, and yours was sitting, and I thought, I will pay him after the gate.” He swallowed. “I did not think you would mind. I thought you would be glad.”
“Dusty,” I said, “how many tickets have you sold?” He blinked. “Eleven hundred.” “Eleven hundred people are going to climb into that stand today,” I said. “Have you checked the bolts?” He said nothing. “Lupe, check them.” Lupe was already walking, with a wrench from his belt. Twenty minutes later he came back with his hat in his hand. “Two bolts on the third tier are stripped,” he said. “Somebody put it up in a hurry.”
I stood still for a long time. I have built grandstands for forty years, and not once has one come down. “Dusty, the rodeo goes on,” I said. “I will not take it from the families. But it goes on with my hands on every bolt, and Lupe. And you will refund the tickets for the third tier, and send those people to the free seats on the rail.” I looked at him. “This is what the work is. It is not the banner. It is the bolts.”
We worked for three hours, Lupe and I and Dusty and eleven cousins, with wrenches and a borrowed impact driver, and the stand was sound by two in the afternoon. The families filled it. The first bronc came out of the chute at three, and a boy of nineteen from Laramie rode it for the whole eight seconds, and the crowd stood up, and Clay Burnett, standing at the rail with his hat in his hand, said something I could not hear. I did not need to hear it. I saw his face.
After the grand entry, he came and stood beside me, and we watched the calf roping for a while without a word. At last he said, “Waylon, fence builder is what my father called your father.” I stared at him. “He said it with contempt. I thought it was a joke, to say it with a laugh. It was not a joke. It was just contempt in a better coat.” He turned to me. His eyes were wet. “You built the stand that is holding up my family today. I am so sorry.”
I told him the name had never bothered me. I told him I had rather be a fence builder than most things. But I said one thing more. “Clay, it is not the name. It is whether the person who says it would drive out in a storm to help me set a post.” He nodded, slowly, and from that day he drove out in every storm. The next spring, he was at my yard at six in the morning in work gloves, to help me build the new fence line at the back pasture, and he did not say a word about it. He just set posts.
Dusty took a job with the buyer in June, as a rigger, at rigger wages, and Lupe taught him every bolt in every stand. He is good with his hands. He stays late. Last fall, at the finals in Cheyenne, he looked up at a new grandstand he had helped to raise, packed to the top, and I saw him lay his palm flat on the leg of the frame as one would pat a horse. “Uncle Waylon,” he said, “she is solid.” I said she was. We stood there together, the old fence builder and the new, while the flags snapped overhead in the wind.
