The Old Blog in the Desert

Nevada is a generous state. It will give you sky enough for ten countries, wind enough to sand a cathedral flat, and silence enough to hear your own bad ideas forming.

It will also give you a spectacle now and again, if you are patient and stand where the dust can find you. It was my privilege one afternoon to stand in such dust beside a gentleman newly arrived from Europe, an earnest fellow with a valise too small for the desert and a hat too large for his head.

He had come, he said, to study America. “Ah-mer-ee-kah,” he pronounced carefully, as though it might explode.

He had begun in New York, where the buildings offended him by refusing to fall over. He had passed through Chicago, which he believed to be an argument conducted in brick and cement, and now he had arrived in Nevada, which he suspected was unfinished.

He spoke English the way a man handles dynamite: respectfully, but without full confidence in the results. He possessed a dictionary, a notebook, and the hopeful belief that he could understand anything if he stared at it long enough.

We were standing near a long ribbon of open range, where the sagebrush grows with the determination of unpaid bills. The sun had engaged in its daily occupation of punishing everything equally.

The air shimmered. Even the lizards had the good sense to remain theoretical.

It was then that we heard it, a sound like a quarrel between thunder and furniture. Over the rise came a horse, but not the sort that carries children in parades or pulls a respectable buggy.

This one had the look of a creature that had read the terms of domestication and declined them. It was all angles and protest.

Its mane flew like a warning flag. The eyes suggested litigation, and upon its back was a cowboy.

Now, the cowboy in question was not ornamental. He was lean as a fence post and twice as steady.

His hat was pinned to his head by experience alone. One hand held the reins. The other seemed to be holding a conversation with heaven.

The horse objected to everything: the reins, the saddle, gravity, and perhaps the general idea of civilization. He leapt, and he twisted.

He launched his hindquarters toward the sky in a manner that implied deep personal grievance. The cowboy rose and fell in the saddle as if reconsidering each life decision in midair.

Dust boiled around them. The sun struck the scene like a spotlight. It was, in short, a fine example of Western negotiation.

Our European companion froze. His notebook dangled from his hand, and his mouth opened slightly, as though to admit the desert for inspection.

“What is this?” he asked.

“That,” I said, “is a Mustang.”

He blinked. “Mus-tang.”

“Yes.”

“And the man?”

“A cowboy.”

“Cow…boy.” He wrote it down carefully, dividing it into syllables like a surgeon separating conjoined twins.

The horse bucked again, high enough to consult briefly with the Almighty. The cowboy’s hat lifted, hovered, and resettled with admirable loyalty.

The foreigner’s eyes widened. “This is sport?”

“Sometimes,” I said. “Sometimes it’s employment. Occasionally it’s regret.”

The Mustang executed a maneuver that appeared to be designed by a committee of earthquakes. The cowboy bent but did not break.

There is a particular dignity in a man who refuses to dismount involuntarily.

Our companion stepped back as the pair thundered past us, the earth shaking in modest alarm. He watched until they dwindled into the bright distance, still disputing terms.

He turned to me slowly.

“In my country,” he began, choosing each word with care, “we have animals from long ago. Very big. With tails. Terrible lizards.” He searched his memory, flipping through invisible pages.

“Dinosaurs?” I offered.

“Yes! Yes. Dine-oh-sore.” He nodded vigorously. “They are in museums. They are bones.”

“Mostly,” I agreed.

He gestured toward the horizon where the cowboy had vanished. “But this, this I see, it is same. Very big animal. Man on top. The beast jumps, wishing to kill. The man stays. It is ancient.”

“It’s fairly current,” I said. “Happens every afternoon.”

He frowned, dissatisfied. “No, no. This is pree-his-tor-ee. The tail. The violence. The poor man.” He winced sympathetically. “His spine, it will write letters of complaint.”

“That’s the idea,” I said.

He began pacing in small circles, muttering. “Dine-oh-sore… cow-boy… mus-tang…” He waved his hands as though conducting an orchestra that refused to follow him.

A pickup truck rattled by on the distant road, unimpressed.

At last, he stopped. His face brightened with discovery, the expression of a man who has finally cornered a troublesome verb.

“I have it,” he declared.

“You do?”

“Yes.” He stood very straight, pleased as a schoolboy who has trapped a butterfly of understanding. “In Nevada, I see today—” He paused for emphasis, savoring the triumph of language conquered, “I see a man riding a bronta-sore-ass.”