EXCERPT FROM CHAPTER ONE
Trudy Moncha spun the barrel around checking every stave, every ring of the safety barrels that were placed about the
rodeo center arena. She bounced the rubber mallet against the sides with the
force a bull might hit it with. She wanted to be absolutely sure that all the barrels were sound. Call her paranoid if you will, but another defective barrel like the one Cyclone smashed to smithereens
had nearly cost Trudy her life. That was no accident. There was no way it was going to happen again. Not to her, not to any
other rodeo clown either, she thought massaging her game hip as she limped from one big barrel to the next.
The loud speaker bellowed “Trudy Moncha to the office trailer please,” The office trailer of the rodeo
grounds supervisor sat out in the secured lot behind the rodeo grounds. As she limped to Kyle Houston’s trailer she
wondered if maybe this was the day he told her to hang up her face paint and retire from the rodeo circuit. And do what? She thought; entertain at kids’ birthday parties as a has-been rodeo clown. What would she do if she couldn’t follow the rodeo in some capacity?
It had become her life. Well, she’d have to cross that bridge when she came to it.
Kyle looked drawn and pale when Trudy entered the trailer. He handed her
a telegram. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled his eyes downcast.
She shook as she took the telegram from him. Trudy didn’t like the look on the usually jovial man’s face. She wasn’t getting fired, but maybe that would have been easier to deal with.
The language of the telegram’s cryptic bursts slashed at Trudy’s insides as though a knife ripped across her heart.
“Mother dead, buried.” Stop “Come home at once.” Stop “Linda” Stop. “Call
555-1212” Stop.
The full weight of the rift between Trudy and her mother struck her like the weight of a rodeo bull on her back. How
could she just up and die on her? Trudy's emotions rode the bucking tide against
the belief of what she read. Anger, anguish, rage flew at her like mud clods from a bronco’s hooves.
