Her dad was a cowboy, or at least that’s what she thought. He listened to country music, dug fence posts and ran the wire himself. He wore western shirts, Lee jeans, and cowboy boots – work ones and show ones. The show ones were kangaroo and ostrich, and on Sunday mornings, she would apply some elbow grease to them and make them shine. He could dance the two-step, drove a pick-up truck, drank whiskey, and sprinkled salt in his beer.
On Saturday’s, she might get to go to the dump with him. Then her and her dad might take the twenty-two and shoot bottles, or stop at Red Dog Dan’s Saloon on the way home. Red Dog Dan’s was a topless bar. But the topless part was behind a curtain he’d sometimes disappear behind, while she stayed perched on a bar stool drinking coke, eating popcorn, admiring the velveteen paintings on the wall, and listening to the country hits on the jukebox. It may not seem like something a responsible father would do, but it was Albuquerque, New Mexico, and he was a cowboy, and she was his little renegade Indian.
In the eighth grade her dad moved out. The same year Glen Campbell’s Southern Nights was released. She was in her last year at the little parochial school she’d attended her whole life. His leaving meant it’d be public school with half the parental guidance. One day while at school, the nurse came to tell her that her father was on the phone. He’d called to wish her a happy birthday and ask what she wanted. The new Bad Company Album—Run With the Pack. She’d been transfixed by it when she saw it in the music section at Sears. The cover was embossed silver, and she ran her fingers over it like a blind person. Over the silver wolf pack—a father protecting the mother and the cubs she nursed. One of the cubs was a human, a naked child.
Her dad bought it, and when he gave it to her, he rolled his eyes. This was something he would continue to do. Roll his eyes when she told her Nebraska corn-fed beef father that she was a vegetarian now. Not only did he roll his eyes but proceeded to send her Omaha Steaks for her birthday and Christmas that year. It was a way of dismissing her. A sign that he’d forgotten he raised her for a while. Forgotten that she was his little renegade half-breed.
But she remembers. She remembers he was a cowboy who married an Indian and the trails they rode.
Sometimes she’ll put on Glen’s “Galveston,” or Coyote 102.5 might play that B-side song from Run With the Pack, and she’s right there with her dad, riding shotgun on the way to the dump. He’s got an open can of beer between his legs, and a Pall Mall burns in the ashtray of the pick-up truck. Her hair blows as dust swirls around her through the open windows, and the sky is silver, blue, and gold, and love isn’t difficult at all.
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