Free Crybaby Ranch by Tina Welling Page B

and rose drifting in an airy float across the eastern sky.
    Sculpture. It takes me a second to put it together, I’m so stuck on picturing the fiery equipment and the face mask and heavy gloves. “Oh, you’re a sculptor.”
    â€œNo,” he says, teasing me, “I’m not a sculptor. I just like to sculpt.”
    I laugh.
    A gallery in town represents him, he tells me when I press for more information. They’ve given him two shows; one last winter, another scheduled for the fall. Recently a piece of his was purchased by a local hotel and is exhibited in the lobby.
    But what kind of cowboy doesn’t own cows? All this time I pictured a huge cattle herd grazing somewhere, soon to be trailed up Togwotee Pass for the summer. Beck and I used to be thrilled when traffic was stopped for cattle drives during our vacations here. “So you sold your cows.”
    â€œTo help pay off a bank loan on the ranch. That sale and my hay last summer almost set me free.”
    â€œSelling the cabin fits in here, I bet.”
    â€œThat, too. I’m going to give this a shot.”
    Dramatic life changes once furnished the main theme for my fantasies. Now the enthusiasm I feel for Bo’s plans helps assure me I’ve done the right thing in making a big change in my own life.
    We fall silent as the sundown flares on the stone headdress feathers of Sleeping Indian Mountain and the peaks of the Gros Ventre Range behind it. I picture the dozen or two galleries that line the boardwalks near the town square. Jackson Hole is becoming a major center for Western art…. Oh, Western art. God, he’s probably one of those artists who sculpt little Sacajaweas and Sitting Bulls. Maybe bronc riders or mountain men.
    â€œWelding exactly what?” I ask, trying to imagine his work.
    â€œFound objects, lately. Parts from old ranching machines…plows, spring harrows, hay rakes.”
    This sounds promising, yet there’s still a possibility of elk with massive antler racks—made, in this case, of hay-rake prongs. An outdoor man’s delight. “Western realism dominates the market in Jackson,” I say in order to get him pinned down better.
    â€œThat’s true. My work leans more toward the abstract and contemporary, so I have to look farther for an audience. My roots are here though.” Bo opens his palms, exposing the rumpled sage sprig. “I love those old machines abandoned in the sagebrush. And I like it that when I’ve begged some tightfisted rancher into letting me cart them off, that rancher can appreciate what’s become of them. He sees my roots, and the people from the coasts who buy most of the sculptures see—”
    â€œYour blossoms,” I finish for him.
    Both of us are loaded down with treasures I’ve found by the time we’ve returned to the cabin. Bo carries one fistful of tall dried weeds, beige blossoms down turned like little bells, seeds rattling inside them. In the other fist, slender, curvy pieces of wood, weathered smooth and twisted like driftwood, which I’ll set by my door and use for walking sticks. I’ve filled the pockets of both our jackets with rocks I like the shapes or colors of. Sitting in Bo’s upturned cowboy hat, crooked under one arm, is his barn cat, Tolly, who began stalking us on our way back. Bo has suggested I borrow her for that mouse I heard in the mudroom.

nine
    I don’t really like cats too much. They remind me of New Yorkers: They only acknowledge your presence if you can do something to specifically elevate their position in life. Two days with Tolly haven’t altered that opinion. This afternoon, I’m fooling around with my beads at the kitchen table, and Bo stops by. I complain to him that Tolly is drinking out of my toilet, leaving tiny, muddy paw prints on the seat. And, worse, she used my bathroom sink as her toilet last night.
    â€œHow would you like to bend down to brush your