Never-before-seen short story

Circa 2005, after a visit to The Cowgirl Museum and Gift Shop in Cheyenne, Wyoming where the cashier wore an eye patch and walked with a limp.

ANOTHER COWGIRL GETS THE BLUES

As a former rodeo queen, I’ve had two significant concussions, six broken ribs, and three broken arms. Due to a run-in with a bull in my last rodeo, my ankle was broken in four places causing me to walk with a slight limp, like a pirate with a peg leg in an old black and white movie. The same bull caused me to lose sight in my right eye. As a result, I wear a black eye patch so as not to frighten small children.

Five years ago, after being a champion horsewoman for twenty-five years, I retired my spurs and now run The Cowgirl Museum and Gift Shop, a small storefront in downtown Cheyenne, Wyoming. Having traded my lasso for a feather duster, I now spend vast amounts of time dusting the trophies of the women who came before me—all champions. Framed photographs of award-winning cowgirls on their mounts adorn the walls, demonstrating expert trick-riding, racing, and roping. Nearby, ample display cases are filled with ribbons awarded for excellence. Ribbons won for growing up in the West and mastering skills usually reserved for men. 

A yawn follows a sneeze as I dust my way to the next aisle that features a collection of western saddles and tack, clothing, artifacts, and antiques from pioneer homesteads to the present day.

So this is what life has come to? I ask myself. Me dusting off mementos of my glory days?

My father taught me everything I know about horses and how to manage them. He taught me nothing about how to handle men. I gave fellas up for Lent a few years ago and never resurrected my desire. I’ve been married twice to cowboys more affectionate to their horses than me, though I don’t carry any ill will toward them. We’re all still friends, and they stop into the Cowgirl Museum now and again to say “hey.” 

Living in Cheyenne has its challenges. The winters are bold and rough, and the winds are unceasing here on the edge of the plains. Growing up on a ranch within spitting distance of the Rockies teaches you just how insignificant humans can be when compared to the weather and the land. Blizzards, tornados, wildfires and drought, I know how to handle. But boredom? Now that’s a wilderness I’ve never been able to tame. 

Except for tourist season, I see only one or two people a day and sometimes fantasize about what I’d do if I ever had the money or the courage to leave Cheyenne, where I’ve lived my entire life. The bell jingles above the door and my mood lightens. A breeze of hope sweeps in with every customer. Before leaving the stockroom, I straighten my eye patch and give my braided hair a quick touch up. My outfit on any given weekday consists of boots, blue jeans and a red gingham blouse—long sleeves in winter, short sleeves in summer.

“Hi Mildred,” I say, seeing my only frequent customer, Mildred Banks. 

In her floor-length brown coat, Mildred’s waif-like eighty-year-old frame could pass for a tumbleweed that has rolled off the prairie and into the Cowgirl Museum by accident. Her strawberry blond wig, purchased sometime in the mid-sixties, is always slightly askew from the strong winds here in Cheyenne. 

As soon as the door closes, Mildred loses her grip on her mesh shopping bag causing two oranges and a large canister of prunes to splay into the center of the museum. Due to my challenges with depth perception after the loss of my right eye, I focus my left eye sympathetically as Mildred scurries after the fruit. I corral the oranges with my boots until Mildred’s wrinkled hands manage to grasp them. This takes a while, but time seems plentiful these days.

Mildred’s only visible wound is the loss of both pinky fingers due to frostbite when her car got snowed in on I-25 during the great Christmas blizzard of 2006. Cheyenne has its fair share of people who have lost something due to an accident or extreme weather, be it appendages, spouses, or, at the very least, innocence.

“How are you this morning, Honey Honeycutt?” Mildred asks. 

“I’m doing fine, Miss Mildred, and you?”

At this, Mildred Banks updates me about the arthritis in both her knees, her constipation since the Kennedy administration, and the dreaded influx of Mexican-Americans into Cheyenne from the border South of us. As far as I’m concerned, anybody of any nationality who is willing to take on Wyoming should be welcomed with open arms and a certificate for a year’s worth of free antifreeze from Ace Hardware. In the last year I’ve entertained the thought of trying someplace new myself, although I have no idea where that might be. 

Mildred rounds out her complaints with her usual comments about Dick Cheney, former senator from Wyoming, who has led this country to hell in a handbasket, as Mildred likes to say. A phrase that presents an interesting image to ponder in my downtimes here at the Cowgirl Museum. 

Despite her complaints, Mildred has a good heart. She gives spare change to the homeless and delivers Meals on Wheels to people often younger than she is. But I do get tired of her litany sometimes and on days that I feel particularly bored or testy, I fantasize saying in reply: Well, Miss Mildred, if I had two good legs to stand on and eyesight in BOTH eyes, corrected to 20-20, and if I hadn’t had a hot flash since the early 80s, I’d sure have nothing to whine about.

Of course I wouldn’t dream of saying this to my most frequent and sometimes only patron. Nor do I see any need to hurt Mildred’s feelings. 

Mildred strolls among the gift shop part of the museum that is full of all things Cowgirl, many of which are made in China. A wide variety of coffee mugs, gift cards, stationary, t-shirts, postcards, salt and pepper shakers, and other knick-knacks capable of sporting the image of a cowgirl fill the shelves. As well as our prize-winning Cowgirls of the West Cookbook—check out my cheesy cornbread with chilies recipe—and every book ever written about cowgirls in the West, of which there are six total. My photograph is in two of them. 

Miss Mildred takes her usual look around the shop as if she hasn’t seen the same things a thousand times and chooses a vintage postcard off the rack of two women riding on horseback, their smiles aimed straight at the camera.  

“I think I’ll send this one to my niece in Charleston,” Mildred says, taking the exact payment from her change purse. 

Dropping the coins into the cash register, I pull a stamp from the back drawer and stick it on the postcard for Mildred. Most days, I address it, too, since Mildred’s handwriting looks like someone with Parkinson’s is experiencing severe heroin withdrawal. As predicted, Mildred pulls out a worn leather address book the size of a petrified pop tart and opens it to her niece’s name. 

“So how are you, Honey?” Mildred asks again, as I write the Charleston address, focusing in with my one good eye. 

Mildred studies me, like she often does, as if I’m a character in one of her favorite Agatha Christie novels and she’s trying to determine if I’m the one who committed the murder.

“No complaints,” I say, hoping Mildred will take the hint, but Mildred has never been good at taking advice. 

“Are you coming to the church social Thursday night?” she asks. 

Mildred and I are the only two single women in our church. The other two members of the Cheyenne Social Club are men. Dale Douglas has never married and drives to Boulder, Colorado, every weekend, wearing his rainbow t-shirt, and thinks nobody has ever figured out why. Then there's Seymour Adkins, who has been married four times and drinks two cases of Bud light a night. The size of his gut is that of a pregnant moose. Mildred, widowed three times, who you'd think had had enough men for a lifetime—sometimes looks at Seymour like he is a viable possibility.. 

"I don't think I'm up for socializing this week, Mildred, but give everyone my best."

She pauses like she's calculating how much marshmallow fruit salad she'll need for only three people. Then Mildred clears her throat and dictates what I am to write on the postcard:

Greetings from Cheyenne's one and only Cowgirl Museum and Gift Shop.

Honey Honeycutt, proprietor.

Hope you will visit soon.

Love, Aunt Mildred.

"Could you mail that for me?" Mildred asks, after adding a large, shaky XOXO, at the bottom of the card.

I nod and add the postcard to a small stack of outgoing mail, the postman being the only other person guaranteed to come in today. 

"You'd like my niece," Mildred says. "She's a very independent woman, just like you are. She's been single forever and has only had an occasional roommate over the years. She's my only living relative, you know." 

"Well, maybe I'll meet her someday," I say, all the while thinking that no one in their right mind would leave an elegant place like Charleston to visit Cheyenne, Wyoming.  

"I'd like that," Mildred says, with what could pass for a twinkle in her eye but might also be irritation from Wyoming's endless dust. 

Mildred and I have the same conversation daily, having had nothing new to converse about since the late 1990s. But this doesn't stop me from appreciating Mildred and her willingness to settle into a pattern I can count on. I'm not sure what I'll do when she finally dies. I anticipate a certain level of grief, like when the corner drugstore you always went to as a child is torn down and turned into an Auto Parts place. 

The following Tuesday, my suspicion of grief comes true. I dust trophies and wait for the bells on the door to jingle, but Mildred never comes. Knowing Mildred would never intentionally skip our daily visit, I call Hank, my most recent ex-husband, and asked him to drive to her house to check up on her. About ten minutes later, the phone rings, and it's Hank. Sure enough, he finds dear Miss Mildred keeled over at the kitchen table in a small puddle of drool. Having just finished a large bowl of prunes, Mildred had arranged the pits into a small fleshy pyramid to the left of one of her missing pinkies. Mildred aspired to regularity as some people aspire to wealth. 

"She has a smile on her face, Honey, like she was ready and willing to go to that Great Cowgirl Museum in the sky," Hank says, his voice cracking.

Though Hank was never one to use many words, the ones he does say are often poetic.

 

Three days later, at the funeral home, I take a long look at Mildred in her open casket, and the sight of her strawberry blond wig, forever straightened, unleashes a stream of unexpected tears. People in Wyoming don't cry in private, much less in public, no matter how menopausal they are. The only time tears are socially acceptable is when your horse dies. Colorado is the land of "cowboy up," which means you get your ass back in the saddle no matter how hard life hits you. 

However, Mildred's death has thrown me off my horse and into life's great big mud hole. Not only do I mourn her loss, but also the loss of my rodeo days, my parents who died years ago, every horse I've had since infancy, and any unborn children I might have had if I hadn't invested so much time in the saddle. 

An attractive middle-aged woman dressed too lightly for Cheyenne’s winter greets mourners from the other side of the room. The stranger glances in my direction as if wondering if she should bring me a box of tissues. In the meantime, it is one of the largest turnouts I've ever seen at the funeral home in Cheyenne. Every shop owner and employee from miles around is here. It seems we've all been on Mildred's daily route. 

The next day the Cowgirl Museum and Gift Shop feel about as dead as Miss Mildred. I study the accomplishments in front of me like a live nativity scene of my past. A photograph of me the first year I was crowned rodeo queen grabs my attention and brings tears to my eyes. 

Sweetheart, you need to get a new life, I tell myself. These words feel more authentic than any I've ever spoken, but I don't know how to make them happen. 

After dusting everything in the museum twice, I unbraid and then braid my hair again, and make my afternoon cup of Earl Grey. As I toss the tea bag into the trash, the door jingles, and the stranger from the funeral home enters the museum. She smiles as I size her up with my good eye. She wears blue jeans, a tailored white shirt, and a light jacket. We are about the same age, but the years have been much kinder to her. Her pale flawless skin makes mine look like a worn pair of saddlebags. She's still dressed too spring-like for April in Cheyenne—we've had blizzards in May and June—and I have the unexpected desire to run home and get her one of my warm coats. 

"I'm Trudy, Mildred's niece." Her announcement sounds like a question.

"You're from Charleston," I say, with too much cheer for such a somber day. "I'm the one who addressed all those postcards to you." 

Something about her smile makes my good knee wobble. 

"I'm Honey Honeycutt," I say, realizing what a wild sight I must be for someone from Charleston. Me with my eye patch, gimpy leg, and broken places all patched together. All hidden but the eye patch.

"Aunt Mildred talked so much about you," Trudy says. "You’re that famous Cowgirl who won all those awards. The best to ever come out of Cheyenne,” she continues. “Aunt Mildred said you were even interviewed on 60 Minutes.”

I blush, and it sets off a hot flash. Then I lift the bottom of my eye patch to release the heat radiating from my face. 

“Can I see some of your awards?” Trudy asks as if to rescue me from my awkwardness.

I hobble toward the display case in the museum side of the store with the surprising and daring hope that Trudy might find my pirate imitation endearing. 

“Here are some of my bigger trophies,” I say. “I have a basement full of smaller ones.”

Trudy approaches the trophy case. She reads every engraving and studies every ribbon. Then she turns to the framed photographs of me on Titanium, my gray steed, known as Tie, who died last year. I touch the locket around my neck that contains a photo of Tie, him being the closest I’ve ever come to having a soul mate. 

“He’s a beautiful horse,” she says and looks straight into my good eye with so much sincerity I decide she must have been a steed in another life. I bite my bottom lip to shut off the waterworks that threaten to come again.

Trudy runs a delicate finger across the saddle with my name and Tie’s emblazoned on the side. The saddle I used after being crowned Queen of the Rodeo for nine years straight. 

“I've never met a cowgirl before,” she says. “I'm honored.” 

I blush again, my best knee wobbles, and I give her a sideways glance with the working eye while resisting saying something ridiculous like: ah shucks, ma’am, it’s nothin’. 

“I’m so sorry about your Aunt Mildred,” I say. “I’ll miss her.” 

“I wish I’d visited her years ago,” Trudy says. “It’s just so far from Charleston, you know? I did save all her postcards, though. She was my mother’s older sister and quite the character. Did you know she danced on Broadway? That’s where she met her first husband.”

“I had no idea,” I say, thinking of all the times Mildred and I had nothing new to talk about when she had a lifetime of adventures stored away in her memories. “You just never know the stories people carry around with them,” I add.

She raises an eyebrow and gives a slight nod like she’s carrying a few stories herself. 

“What will you do with the money?” she asks.

“What money?” I say.

She can’t be talking about what’s in the register, that’s all the petty cash I have, and it’s not much.

“The money Aunt Mildred left you,” she says.

My lousy eye blinks under the patch. “I’m sorry, but I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I say.

“You and me. We are Aunt Mildred’s only heirs,” Trudy says, as if she’s finally catching on that I’m clueless. 

I imagine Mildred’s bank account with a couple of hundred dollars in it and wonder why Trudy even mentions it, although I’m honored Mildred considered me kin.

“I had no idea she left me anything,” I say, which is the Cowgirl’s truth.  

“She told me you were like a daughter to her,” Trudy says.

I blush for the third time, or perhaps it’s another hot flash. “I’m very touched,” I say, lowing my eyes. 

“She was worth millions, you know,” Trudy says. 

“Millions?” 

The news throws me like a bronco in my cowgirl days. My lousy ankle gives way, and I land on the floor, pulling down a stream of red ribbons in my wake. While I’m prone on the floor, Trudy leans over and asks if I’m all right. 

“Mildred is worth millions?” I ask, lifting my head and looking into eyes as blue as the western sky. “But she could pinch a nickel until it bled.” 

“That was Aunt Mildred, all right, but her third husband was some kind of an oil tycoon and friends with Dick Cheney and the Bushes.”

“I never knew,” I say as she helps me stand again.

I lean on my old saddle to get my bearings, and it strikes me how life can change in an instant. A horse can throw you. A bull can come at you with a vengeance. Or the universe can provide what you need at the perfect time, right out of the blue.  

“There's a place with great burgers around the corner, next to the old train depot,” I say. “Would you like to join me for lunch?” 

“I'd love to,” she says. 

“Just let me grab my coat in the back,” I say.

I put on my coat and take one of my thick sweaters off the hook in the storeroom to give to Trudy. 

“How long are you staying?” I ask, handing her the sweater at the door.

“I'll be here a week or two,” she says. “Or as long as it takes to get Aunt Mildred's affairs in order.” She thanks me for the sweater. “I hope we can get to know each other better while I'm here,” she adds. 

“I'd like that,” I say, with a wink from my good eye that seems to surprise both of us. 

I put the Closed sign on the door, anticipating a For Sale sign will go up next. The bell jingles as we leave and reminds me of that old movie. It's a Wonderful Life.

“Every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings,” Trudy says as if reminded of the same movie. 

We share a short laugh, and it occurs to me that Miss Mildred deserves every feather in her angel wings for all those postcards she sent to Charleston

The End.