So, we went to the West Bottoms, back where the city had first begun to grow more than a century earlier when the Hannibal Bridge across the Missouri River opened an Eastern market to beef that was driven up the trails from Texas. I drove down the long 12th Street Viaduct which linked the Missouri river bluffs to the bottoms below, and out Gennessee Street past rows of old brick warehouses and the venerable Livestock Exchange Building until I found a parking place next to the Golden Ox Restaurant. Behind it, the stockyards stretched north, back the way we had come, all the way to 12th Street. The rest of the city might still be waking up, but the day was well under way in the Bottoms, since long before sunup. People there were just pausing to eat breakfast and get a second wind.

The place never changed. We walked past the Back Door Grill, in the rear of the Golden Ox, where most of the cattle people ate breakfast. Across the yards to the west stood the swine packinghouse with its gigantic wooden ramp that took the hogs up to their final destination. The space beneath the incline was filled with an enormous pile of hay bales used in the cattle pens. The entire yard was paved with thousands upon thousands of bricks, and we walked north along the main road where the cattle trucks pulled in to unload their cargo. Ahead was the huge auction barn. At any time of the day or night, the place was alive with action, trucks pulling in and out, men milling around, cattle being bought and sold. Many times, the cattle were sold before they ever reached the auction floor, bought with the nod of a head by agents who wrote a check on the spot. The farmers and ranchers were able to walk away with cash in hand from the bank within the Livestock Exchange Building.

Behind the auction barn, seemingly endless cattle pens stretched away to the north and west. We threaded our way through them. I told Dee Dee to get a good look at the cowboys we passed, especially the ones on horseback. They worked for the stockyards, riding around, opening gates and moving cattle from holding pens to company pens as the cattle were bought and sold. The rest of the men and boys were just looking at the livestock or taking in the excitement of the place. They paid me little mind, eyes flitting beneath their hat brims. The way I dressed, I fit right in, passing for one of the cattlemen, but Dee Dee was one of the few women I saw. The men watched her as she passed.

We walked clear across the yards with no luck, and I could tell she was disappointed. We paused in front of some sheds to figure out our next move.

“Well, next thing, we can start asking some of these guys if they know your man,” I offered. “What’s his name, anyway?”

“Bobby,” she answered vaguely.

She must have been listening to something, because she heard it before I did, a clear baritone coming from one of the sheds, the lyrics of a sad country song rising above the stockyard sounds

“Now, blue ain’t the word for the way that I feel. A storm is brewin’ in this heart of mine.”

“That’s him!” she exclaimed. “That’s Bobby!”

She ran around the end of the nearest building and in the door. I was right behind her. Inside was a tack room with saddles and bridles and other stuff, smelling of leather and hay, lit by a couple of windows set high in the walls and a single light bulb dangling from its cord. A young man stood with his back to us brushing a dapple-gray horse. He stopped his song in mid-line and turned to see who had come in the door.

“Gawd, Dee Dee!” was all he could say.

Then, she was in his arms, pressing her face against his neck and sobbing. He held her close, kissing her forehead and eyes.

I turned my back to give them some privacy, and stepped outside the door, although I could still hear their voices. There was silence for a while. Holding each other must have been better than words. Then, I could hear his baritone.

“Don’t cry, baby. It tears me up when you do that. I had to leave the way I did. I couldn’t tell you good-bye.”

“You could have called or written a letter.”

“I ain’t good at letters.”

There was a short pause.

“Didn’t you care about the baby?” she asked

“Of course I did! You know I did! I planned to come back for you after I got some money and a place to stay. But the rodeo grind ain’t no place for a baby.”

Another pause.

“After a while, maybe you could settle down some place,” she continued.

“Yeh, probably,” he replied. “I mean, I think I could. You can’t ride the rodeo forever.”

Further pause.

“Was it a girl or a boy?” asked Bobby.

“I lost the baby!” she burst out. “I couldn’t help it!”

Then, she cried again, broken sobs that started up that ache in me. I lit a cigarette and drew the smoke deep into my lungs before letting it out with a long sigh, unable to keep my thoughts from drifting back to my own rodeo days and those four wild kids who used to ride the winds across Oklahoma. Until the rainy night when a pick-up truck crossed the white line. I could still hear the crash of the metal, see the overturned vehicles in the ditch, the broken bodies scattered in the rain and the mud, and feel the soft head that I held in my lap as she took a last breath, my hand resting on her belly as I had done so many nights before, feeling the baby inside. 

“I know how much that baby meant to you, a baby and a family.”

He said it so softly I could barely hear.

“It’ll happen again, Dee Dee, I know it will. You got your whole life ahead of you.”

They were silent for what seemed like a long time.

“So, what will you do, now?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I just been biding my time here through the winter until the rodeo tour starts up again. In a few more weeks, I’m gonna head down towards Amarillo. They’ve got a big show there in the spring. Amarillo and Tucumcari. I did real good in some of my events last summer. I had some good rides. They even say my name over the loud speaker every once in a while, now. People are starting to know who I am.”

“That’s good,” she said. “I’m proud of you.”

“How about you?” he asked. “What will you do? You gonna hang around here a while?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I haven’t thought that far ahead. I’d need a place to stay.”

“Let me talk to an old boy today. I think he knows a place.”

She didn’t say anything, but I could hear their kisses again.

“Can I see you tonight when I get off work?” he asked.

“Maybe.”

“Please, Dee Dee,” he insisted. “Come right here at about four o’clock, and I’ll meet you. Okay?”

She said nothing.

“You could go out on the road with me, go to Amarillo. Will you think about it?”

“I might,” she answered. “Where would I stay? Where would I sleep?”

“I don’t know,” he said, sounding kind of absent, like he was thinking out loud. “I could get a truck cheap, and maybe a little trailer. We wouldn’t need much.”

“What if I got pregnant again?”

“We’d figure it out, baby!” he insisted. “People make it work. We could, too!”

A long silence followed, and I was beginning to wonder if I should stick around. Finally, I heard her again.

“Listen, I’d better go.”

“So, I’ll see you later?” he asked.

I didn’t hear her answer, but she came out right after that, wiping tears from her cheeks.

“Can you give me a ride somewhere?” she asked me.

Bobby had followed her to the door. He looked me up and down as he found a tooth pick in his shirt pocket and stuck it in the corner of his mouth. We nodded at each other.

“How you doing’?” he said in a monotone.

He was nearly as tall as me, dressed in a faded, western-cut chambray shirt and jeans with a large silver belt buckle. Lean and angular, with blonde hair that needed to be cut, he was square-jawed with a crooked smile that never left his lips. His blue eyes watched intently, taking everything in. He had that look of a raw kid turning into a man. I couldn’t help but like him.

Dee Dee never looked back, and I had to hurry a few steps to catch up. She was silent during the long walk back, so I was too. It was her business. She didn’t speak until we were both in the car.

“He’ll never change,” she said, looking out the window at the traffic. “That rodeo’s the most important thing in his life. I knew that. I just wanted to see him.”

She sniffed and wiped her eyes. I hated to see her cry, but there was nothing I could say. I didn’t even ask where she wanted to go. All I had to do for the day was get my pictures developed and call Mrs. Nash, so I started the engine, and we drove for a while, out of the Bottoms and back up the viaduct.

“I don’t know what I expected to find. I shouldn’t have come all the way out here, I guess. Maybe I thought he was going to grow up and be different, but that’s not fair either. He’s just who he is. We’re so far apart.”

She was looking out the window, holding the silver and turquoise cross between her thumb and forefinger, and talking to herself more than anything else.

“When we were in Frisco, he told me I was the best time he’d ever had.”

She paused and looked at me.

“I’d never been anybody’s best time.”

Saying that sent fresh tears down her face. We had already cruised through Quality Hill on downtown’s west edge, an old neighborhood that was now a contradiction in itself since the once stately homes had long ago become apartments or flop houses. On the other side of the City Market, I stopped at a gas station. It was a little truck at the south end of the A.S.B. Bridge.

“It’s best just to let it be,” she said, sniffing again.

“Don’t beat yourself up too much,” I told her. “If you hadn’t hunted him down, you’d always wonder about it. Now, at least you know.”

That almost made her smile, but no matter how you sifted through the pieces, there was no happy ending. The two of them fit together until they got to the part called the rest of their lives. Then, it was like a light passing through a prism, turning into yellows and blues.

“Can I get you anything here?” I asked, but she shook her head.

I went inside to get a pack of cigarettes and pay for the gas, but when I came out, she wasn’t in the car. I looked around just in time to see her waving at me from the passenger window of a tractor-trailer truck that was pulling out of the lot, headed for the bridge. I started to call to her, but decided against it, and raised my hand in farewell. I watched the truck until it turned the corner a few blocks away, crawling through the low gears on its way across the river.

I sat in the Goat with the door open and lit a cigarette, feeling disconnected, and strangely alone. I didn’t feel like going back to the office. I didn’t feel like doing anything, to tell the truth. I just smoked and watched the cars on the bridge.

I didn’t notice it right away, but she had left a present dangling from the radio knob. I smiled. It was her turquoise cross, and I slipped it around my neck.

I figured she was the “someone special” in my fortune at the bus station, someone special enough to force a short breather in a grubby business. Anyway, I couldn’t get her face out of my mind, dark brown eyes through the truck window saying good-bye better than any words. I knew what they were saying because I’d been there. I’d felt the same kind of ache that was in those eyes ever since that rainy night beside the Oklahoma highway. Different people handled it in different ways. Maybe hers was the best, hitching a ride on a truck going to Anywhere, U.S.A.