She had the ring picked out before the man. She imagined it from the start, the first start. If she couldn’t be a cowboy then she would marry one and she twirled where cowboys gathered. At the time it seemed a reasonable plan.
The ring would be a simple 10mm band, 18k rose gold with his their brand embossed equidistant in five places. Husband, wife, two children and one more after they were married, just to seal the deal. Five equals, no more, no less, forever.
It couldn’t be a complicated brand or the sentiment might be lost in the heat of it. Nothing that would form a hot spot to scar when they punched it to the shoulder of a 3-month old calf. Something with a mill iron would be fine.
It should have been a Running W, but she was slack in his rodeo now. Still damn good fun at a ropin, or in the empty calving shed way up in the bluffs with no one but the eagle as witness. Fun is not for marrying. A fence crawler with two small children is worse than a breachy second calf heifer. No matter they were his calves she weaned, or what good hooks and pins she had. But the way she swung her rope…he would remember, and calls her still when he’s drinking.
Her brand would tuck inside the band, engraved, marked, scratched, branded, scarred, forever, this time.
She found him, a Lazy J mill iron. No hot spots there, none. Finding a herd sire isn’t difficult when all you’re looking for is a simple brand, and it only took the honeymoon for her to understand she had a two-hundred pound pizzle rot Lazy J mill iron bull-ringed through her Achilles tendon. The brand made it hard to swing her rope, so she just quit tryin.
CC, This is truly intriguing. I don't understand many of the references but it doesn't matter, because she does. Her voice is so certain of her own identity, of her own criteria, of her pragmatism. She feels like a horse to me, instinctual and born to her life. Undoubting of the inevitable consequences of following a course set when she was too young to make adult determinations. I can feel her waste, when she just quit tryin. And I can feel her regret when fun is not for marrying and he still calls when he's drinking. For me this ring is about a circular existence: inevitable and sad.
She never had a ring. Or, she never had a traditional ring or a ring that cost three months salary or a ring that fit. It went well with her anniversary, which was celebrated twice, she occasionally recalled, in thirty years. She was always up for a game of pool and a pitcher and a double order of deep fried gizzards with sour cream and hot sauce, and that is how she and Tan had once celebrated what they both considered to be a temporal granfalloon, or foma, that is, the utterly unimportant annual coincidence in their beautiful duprass. Clearly they were both born Bokononists, following each other’s strange travel suggestions happily from the moment they noticed the other; adhering to the dancing lessons from God, well before they had shared the Vonnegut. Nobody thought they were supposed to make it together: two black sheep from two long-suffering families of pristine snow-white obedient lambs. Tsk-tsk-tsk-ers, one and all, her sister and mother had cried for her, pictured her dead by the road, cried more; his mother had wearied of the tension between he and his step-father, waited until his seventeenth birthday to sign him into the U. S. Army, on the vague promise of the recruiter to “straighten him out.” They wandered into each other in their late twenties, in Oregon: the land where hippies never died. Six months in, she promised to say yes, if he would only ask. “Just ask me to marry you, you don’t need to be on your knees or anything, just ask and I promise to say yes, okay?” “What about a ring?” “How about a cigar ring? You can call me Muriel.” “You’ll say no.” “No I won’t. I promise not to say no. I don’t care about a ring. Do you?” “Okay.” “Okay, what? “Okay, lets have a pitcher and maybe I’ll ask.” “Yes.” “Yes what?” “Whatever you want. I’m just practicing.” “No ring.” “No, no ring. No ice-9. No ring.” “Well?” “Well? Are you asking me?” “I’m asking.” “Let me think about it.” “Busy, busy, busy.” “Yes, yes, yes.”
She had the ring picked out before the man. She imagined it from the start, the first start. If she couldn’t be a cowboy then she would marry one and she twirled where cowboys gathered. At the time it seemed a reasonable plan.
ReplyDeleteThe ring would be a simple 10mm band, 18k rose gold with his their brand embossed equidistant in five places. Husband, wife, two children and one more after they were married, just to seal the deal. Five equals, no more, no less, forever.
It couldn’t be a complicated brand or the sentiment might be lost in the heat of it. Nothing that would form a hot spot to scar when they punched it to the shoulder of a 3-month old calf. Something with a mill iron would be fine.
It should have been a Running W, but she was slack in his rodeo now. Still damn good fun at a ropin, or in the empty calving shed way up in the bluffs with no one but the eagle as witness. Fun is not for marrying. A fence crawler with two small children is worse than a breachy second calf heifer. No matter they were his calves she weaned, or what good hooks and pins she had. But the way she swung her rope…he would remember, and calls her still when he’s drinking.
Her brand would tuck inside the band, engraved, marked, scratched, branded, scarred, forever, this time.
She found him, a Lazy J mill iron. No hot spots there, none. Finding a herd sire isn’t difficult when all you’re looking for is a simple brand, and it only took the honeymoon for her to understand she had a two-hundred pound pizzle rot Lazy J mill iron bull-ringed through her Achilles tendon. The brand made it hard to swing her rope, so she just quit tryin.
CC, This is truly intriguing. I don't understand many of the references but it doesn't matter, because she does. Her voice is so certain of her own identity, of her own criteria, of her pragmatism. She feels like a horse to me, instinctual and born to her life. Undoubting of the inevitable consequences of following a course set when she was too young to make adult determinations. I can feel her waste, when she just quit tryin. And I can feel her regret when fun is not for marrying and he still calls when he's drinking. For me this ring is about a circular existence: inevitable and sad.
ReplyDeleteRing
ReplyDeleteShe never had a ring. Or, she never had a traditional ring or a ring that cost three months salary or a ring that fit. It went well with her anniversary, which was celebrated twice, she occasionally recalled, in thirty years. She was always up for a game of pool and a pitcher and a double order of deep fried gizzards with sour cream and hot sauce, and that is how she and Tan had once celebrated what they both considered to be a temporal granfalloon, or foma, that is, the utterly unimportant annual coincidence in their beautiful duprass.
Clearly they were both born Bokononists, following each other’s strange travel suggestions happily from the moment they noticed the other; adhering to the dancing lessons from God, well before they had shared the Vonnegut.
Nobody thought they were supposed to make it together: two black sheep from two long-suffering families of pristine snow-white obedient lambs. Tsk-tsk-tsk-ers, one and all, her sister and mother had cried for her, pictured her dead by the road, cried more; his mother had wearied of the tension between he and his step-father, waited until his seventeenth birthday to sign him into the U. S. Army, on the vague promise of the recruiter to “straighten him out.”
They wandered into each other in their late twenties, in Oregon: the land where hippies never died. Six months in, she promised to say yes, if he would only ask.
“Just ask me to marry you, you don’t need to be on your knees or anything, just ask and I promise to say yes, okay?”
“What about a ring?”
“How about a cigar ring? You can call me Muriel.”
“You’ll say no.”
“No I won’t. I promise not to say no. I don’t care about a ring. Do you?”
“Okay.”
“Okay, what?
“Okay, lets have a pitcher and maybe I’ll ask.”
“Yes.”
“Yes what?”
“Whatever you want. I’m just practicing.”
“No ring.”
“No, no ring. No ice-9. No ring.”
“Well?”
“Well? Are you asking me?”
“I’m asking.”
“Let me think about it.”
“Busy, busy, busy.”
“Yes, yes, yes.”