Fifty More Bales of Hay. Rachael Treasure

this strange conversation she was having with a naked rodeo clown.

      ‘Would it surprise you if I was? How else does a rodeo protection athlete do his job? We have to know a bit of kinesiology, a bit of quantum physics, a bit of ethology so we can read the bull. How else do we keep ourselves and the bull rider alive unless by knowledge of energetics and our own intuition so we can keep two steps ahead of the bull? And on the ranch, how else does a cowboy gauge the movement of a herd of cattle or the inner ways, the emotions, of his horse? It’s all energetics. With some critters, the softer you are, the more powerful you are.’

      ‘Then why torment those poor bulls and horses?’

      ‘Torment! Those animals are bred for it, trained for it, fed and conditioned for it. They are athletes too. They have long lives, long careers and they love it. You can’t make a bull buck, same as you can’t make a horse buck. You’ve no doubt heard the expression that you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. It’s the same with this game. If they don’t want to do it, they just don’t do it. But the animals that do want to do it, they’re chasin’ the same rush as us. We’re a team, them animals and us.’

      ‘I don’t need to hear your pro-rodeo spiel,’ she said, realising she’d been staring at his buttocks and back for a long time. She took another big slug of rum. ‘I’m just here to ask questions for my assignment.’

      ‘Well, that’s a shame,’ Randy said, turning to face her as the water streamed over his toned body. ‘I thought I could’ve changed your mind about aggression in men. Most of us cowboys are gentle types. Gentle with horses, gentle with women. Family men.’

      When Anne saw his face for the first time clean of make-up, she almost fainted again. He was so good-looking, so beautiful, it felt to Anne as if she had looked into the eyes of a god. Cleaned of the face paint, Randy had looks that stole hearts. His skin was smooth and tanned, his jet-black hair framed a manly square-jawed face, his teeth were white and perfect and his sensuous mouth was now moving into a slowly evolving grin.

      ‘I don’t mean to be rude, Miss Boxright, but if you stay at university too long, you’ll forget about real life. And you may miss your calling as a mother.’

      ‘Excuse me!’ she said, red-faced, and angry yet again at this arrogant, yet incredibly delectable, man before her.

      ‘You use this too much,’ Randy said, tapping his temple with an index finger. ‘When you don’t get around animals much, lots of folk forget they are animals. You are an animal, and you gotta go with your instincts as the female of the species, not against them.’

      ‘My instinct is not to have children yet … I’ve got a whole…’

      ‘Would your instinct be to hop into this shower with me, as an animal, say, not as a woman, a student and a feminist? As an animal?’

      ‘No, it certainly would not!’ she said.

      ‘That’s a shame. You might only have fifty eggs to lay.’

      ‘Pardon? Fifty eggs to lay?’

      ‘That’s all you might have left inside there.’ He gestured to her stomach region. ‘So if I were you, I’d be gettin’ in touch with your animal instincts. Can you get me a beer, by the way? I wanna wash my hair. If you’re feelin’ fine to stand and all.’

      As Anne got up and reached for a beer out of the tiny fridge, she felt anger simmering within her. She knew he was teasing her. She knew he was playing her. A cowboy as good-looking as him, and clearly as smart as him, could get any woman he wanted.

      She thought of Simon, of his spindly legs and flaccid computer-geek arms. His glasses that had fogged when they first kissed. The way he liked to tie her up and hit her with his computer cords. He was weird with sex. She had thought it might grow to be fun, but as time went on, Anne had found herself withering within as a woman. As a lover. No amount of academic reading or study on the matter seemed to ease or help the situation.

      ‘I have a boyfriend, you know,’ she said defensively.

      ‘That’s just a social construct,’ Randy said. ‘You know back in the day when we all lived in caves, women mated with many men, at the same time. That’s why nowadays men are visually stimulated by watching copulation, because essentially, we are all still animals. It was the strongest sperm that the female was after, so to get a whole bunch of it from different males meant the strongest would fertilise her egg. Mother Nature helping human survival. And, I’m tipping, it’s the same today. If women were more like animals and forgot about the money and what life is supposed to be according to the TV, they’d pick the kinder males for most of their love action.’

      ‘And where on the rodeo circuit did you come up with your ingenious anthropological insights, Mr Carter?’

      ‘You’re not the only one who is university educated, ma’am, with respect,’ he said with a quick tilt of his head and a lift of one eyebrow.

      As she handed Randy the beer, their hands touched. She felt water splash onto the front of her top and she looked down to see that the lace bra beneath was clearly showing through.

      ‘You’re very pretty,’ Randy said, ‘and I’m going to embarrass myself in this here shower if you don’t turn that lovely face of yours away along with those two pretty lady thangs.’

      She looked at him with her deep brown angry eyes. ‘Getting all male on me, are you? And what about my prickly energy … you happy to fuck that too?’

      ‘There’s no need to be coarse and hostile now, Anne,’ Randy said, sipping calmly on his beer. ‘I can see what’s within you. You’re like a scared filly that keeps laying her ears back at the world and threatening to kick. Once you find your place of love and lose the fear, you’ll learn to look at the world with your ears forward, gal. And you’ll learn the words “thank you”. You’re a rare creature. And a beautiful one at that. Worth educatin’, I’d say.’

      Her present mind flashed insult and anger, but beneath the surface flashed disappointment in herself. In her disasters with men. Her anguished relationship with Simon. His distant, cold ways once he was unplugged from the violence of his virtual reality games. She felt she had been lost in the world of drug-induced nights in clubs, along with other sweating unhinged souls, lost in the facades of materialism. But here before her was perhaps the toughest, rudest, yet most peaceful, gentle man she had ever met. She felt a tiny crack in her armour.

      ‘And how would you suggest I find my place of love? Through some southern-drawling Jesus church, like you clearly have?’

      Anne felt Randy grasp her tiny wrist.

      ‘Our capacity to love is all we truly have,’ he said. He pulled her under the jets of the shower and began to kiss her. With a hunger like no other, Anne began to kiss him back. Desperately she helped him peel the sodden shirt from her, reefing off her skirt, dragging down her lace panties, unhooking her bra until she stood naked. The water caressed the skin of her hot, fearful body, washing away the stress of the day and softening her to this foreign world that was such a contrast to the rush and bustle of her life in the city. The aggressive rush and bustle of the city, she realised now, that man-made concrete world of commerce and consumerism. She was swamped by it.

      Not like here, this dozing place of summertime and countryside, where Mother Nature ruled and there was a peacefulness even in the midst of a jostling rodeo ring. Coarse and rough maybe sometimes, but Anne had seen there was a steady, polite and caring rhythm in the people, a calmness in the animals and a grounding presence from the land. It was all so much more gentle than where she was from.

      Pressing herself against Randy’s torso, Anne felt his gentle hands roving over her skin. There was a sureness to his touch and with it, she felt every nerve in her body settling. Yielding to him, like she’d seen the horses yield. Big strong men reining their beautifully educated horses around with the softest of imperceptible cues, like a male dancer leading his partner in a waltz.

      Randy’s lips were full and soft, and his tongue