Raging Bull

Now, the story that I am about to tell you may seem hard to believe, but it’s true. Every last word. This all happened, I don’t know, maybe about fifty or so years ago. I couldn’t have been any older than you are now. That’s right, this was years before even your daddy was born. I lived in a small town in the west you see, and we didn’t have much. Huntin and fishin was all there was to do in this town. Used to go down to the lake with my old man on the weekends. I remember I caught myself a big old son of a bitch one day. A monster of a cat fish bigger than me and almost as big as my old man and he wasn’t a small man to begin with. Now don’t you go looking at me like that through those raised eyebrows. There wasn’t no cameras back then so you’re just going to have to take me on my word.

Now back in those days we didn’t have much for entertainment. The kids in the town, well we had to find ways to keep ourselves occupied most of which resulted in us always getting into trouble. My favorite thing to do was to take lizards that I found lying around and use them to chase the girls around. And since there weren’t no big universities around and no one in town had the money-or brains, to leave to one of them big giant college cities, most of us got regular old jobs that usually involved farming, cattle herding, and if you were really special, you worked in the rodeo.

Now you gotta understand, the folks that worked in that rodeo were what we called the celebrities of the town. I mean, these people raced horses, chased down and tied up cows and if you were really brave-or very stupid, you were a bull rider. The bull rider was really what got the attention of the townspeople. As far as we were concerned, if you were a rider, you were superman. Now the point of the rider was this: you get yourself a bull, you jump on that big bastard and while he’s jumping and kicking as hard as he can to get you off of him, you have to hold on tighter than hell for as long as you can before being thrown off.

Excuse me while I light this cigar. Hey, grab me that bottle of whiskey and that glass from that table next to you. When you’re older, this drink will make you a man someday. Now where was I? Oh yeah, that’s right. The bull rider. Now there was this particular rider, no one really knew his name or where he came from. He just showed up in town one day and just kind of made himself at home. But what we did know was that this SOB was the best damn bull rider there was in the west and that there is no over exaggeration. Now this man was something special. He would ride those bulls so well we all thought he was trying to best the devil. No other rider and I mean no one, would even come close to the kind of records that this man built.

People would come from all over to see this man ride and he had to have beaten every bull there was in the west. Hell, some even say he sold his soul to Satan himself to be as good as he was. Well one day this rider made a giant scene in the middle of the town. He was feeling himself you see. He wanted one last ride before he took off for good and he wanted to leave his legacy. He had beaten every bull in the west. All but one. The great black bull. This bull was something of it’s own kind of legend. Every rider that tried to tame this massive beast failed and they had their sorry asses thrown off within seconds. I mean this big son of bitch was real mean. He hated people and he would be damned if he let some hillbilly tame him.

This was the monster that needed to be brought down if the rider wanted to get the validation he was looking for. So, one day the whole town went down to the rodeo. We all knew this match up was going to be epic. Everybody would talk about this until the end of time. I mean, this was the type of shit they put in the history books. So, we filed in and with hushed voices, waited. The rider came up, mounted that big black beast and on the buzzard, the gates opened and the ride was on.

Now, what happened next shocked us to our very bones. In what seemed like seconds, the rider was thrown off of the bull and thrown to the ground. In triumph, the bull continued to kick and jump, it took five men to get the creature back under control. We was stunned. This man, this great bull rider, was bested by what we believed to be the best bull in all of the west. This wasn’t just no normal bull; this big bastard was a creature made by the gods. The rider was defeated. For the first time, he had been beaten. The next day he was gone, almost like he was never a part of the town at all. Damn, I don’t know. Maybe he was just lucky. But I tell you what, I never forgot that bull. I don’t think anyone has and to this day, if you go out west to that old town right now, the statue of that giant beast still stands.

Oh, and what about the rider you ask? Well, no one knows. He left town and was never seen or heard from again. Some still call him the greatest bull rider that never was.