The Paperback Cowboy
It is a Friday night, 1982. Southern long-hairs huddle around a fire built of debris stolen from a nearby construction site. Toy Caldwell’s guitar sings through someone’s
boombox into the frigid night air, mixing pleasantly with the smokey odors of burning pinewood and second hand marijuana. There are bursts of laughter, bouts of quiet boredom, and a long night ahead. What to do?
Trouble looms. Testosterone hangs thick as the Marlboro smoke. The talk becomes, “what to steal, where to vandalize, who’s ass to kick?” The youngest voice reveals it's youthful naievite, “I’m cool staying right here.” A pretty girl flashes him a friendly smile from across the bon-fire's twirling flames.
“Who the fuck are you?” The voice belongs to an older neighborhood tough. His features are sharp in the flickering light, his eyes and cheeks hollow.
The youngster stands. He is slender, athletic. “I ain’t nobody.”
“That’s right. You ain’t nobody, so shut up.”
The kid shrugs. “These guys do what you say because they’re scared of you. I ain’t scared, and I won’t shut up.”
The bigger kid grins sadistically. “Well, I guess I’m gonna kick "Nobody’s" ass!”
“Come on then.” The kid is younger, but ready. “But when I take away your tough-guy reputation, what will you have left?” It is a semi-bluff. The youngster had read those exact words earlier in the day, straight out of the cowboy paperback that was tucked down in his Levi’s pocket.
The older kid hesitates, thinking that through. He is confident, but what if he did lose? These kids watching the drama were his only friends. He laughs. “Fuck it, kid. You’re alright.”
The bluff wins. Steve sits down, as do I. As tensions cool the smiling girl crosses over to sit beside me. My night would not be so boring after all.
~
My parents seperated when I was eight. I was already a rebellious adolescent at twelve, but during a summer visit to my father's new house he introduced me to “The Daybreakers” by Louis L’Amour. Knowingly or unknowingly, my father had chosen for me a worthy, supplemental mentor. Through Louis’ novellas I learned life lessons that have carried me to this day. I learned that there is courage to be found in doing right. I learned how to work; how to show up every day, and to give it all I had. Louis taught me that it is not age that makes you a man, nor facial hair, but rather your willingness to accept responsibility. Louis’ characters taught me to appreciate literature, poetry, history, and to respect others, and their ways.
Louis died when I was twenty-two. I cried at the news, just as I would have had it been my father. I wondered what I would do with no new stories, but I needn’t have worried. My lessons were learned, the life habits established. Other, and more challenging writers awaited.
The writer of simple cowboy stories had created his final character... a man he would never meet, but one who tried to live a life that Louis L’Amour would have been proud to write about.