My Seoul Man

Chapter 21

Kept my promise to Wally that weekend mostly so that AJ could get a look at one of Arizona's largest and most legendary ranches.

And Wally put on a show for him, too--introducing him to the stars of that show like a proud papa, via an app that made AJ let out a little whoop.

"It's like Tinder for bulls," he said. Swiping right on a monster of a specimen named "Big Boss Man" to read his "bio."

Wally laughed and said, "There he stands! Out there by that stack o' hay—you see 'im?"

You couldn't help but see him. He was the Samson of all Wally's stock, bruh.

Massive at the shoulders and almost comically slender at the hips. Which made him dangerous in the rodeo arena. Cause he could use all that muscle up front to whip that ass in any direction he wanted the bull rider to go flying.

Wally pushed his Stetson back and grinned like a proud father. "He was a little bit like Bodacious, that boy there. So, we hadda take 'im off the circuit, but he's one o' the best sires we ever had. Brings in top dollar."

AJ frowned, but I knew what he meant and why he had to be pulled from rodeo work.

So as AJ leaned on the wood corral fence to further examine The Boss, I told him, "Bodacious was a rock star in the rodeo world. But he was a stone-cold killer, though."

"Wait—he killed people?"

"Damned near," Wally said. "He'd jump up real high and throw the rider over backwards like a rag doll. And then he'd buck his butt forward and they'd come crashin' down between the horns on that big, rock-hard head of his. Faces looked like hamburger meat after the clowns finally got 'em dragged out of harm's way."

"And the crowd ate it up, right?"

"Oh, he's still considered the rankest bull of all time pretty much. There's statues of that bad boy."

"I believe he's the one that retired Charlie Sampson," I said. "Charlie was the first Black man to win, God...all kinds of titles. One of the first to become a millionaire, too. Lived to tell the tale—lives up this way, in fact. Trains kids from the rez and inner cities to ride now."

"He's a good ol' boy, Charlie," Wally said. "Used to call 'im Pee Wee 'cause 'e was kinda small for a bull rider. But he rode tall, though."

"So, they're bred to be mean like that?" AJ asked.

And Wally winked and said, "Well...c'mon, lemme show you how we do it."

"It's PG-rated," I said, when AJ hesitated.

"Yeah, science took alla fun out of it long ago," Wally told him.

He was in a rare mood after seeing and sampling that big Sunday dinner I'd brought him.

Wally grew up in the southeast where his father worked the coal mines before moving on to the oil fields of Texas at some point. So he craved the same kind of food my Mama made. He'd have her make enough of it for a week or more sometimes, to freeze and fill up on whenever he got really homesick.

To be honest, I think he had a little crush on Mama Sadie, though she was older than him by at least a decade. And like I've said, there were things we just didn't do back in the day. So he settled for a chat and chew at the counter while she got those big orders cooked and packed up.

AJ gaped a little bit as we followed him into the very comfy looking and meticulously temperature-controlled barn that housed his best stud bulls and the ranch hands who babied them.

And after he'd walked us into what looked like a big meat locker, Wally headed for a counter lined with a row of stainless-steel containers.

He chose one toward the middle of the row to open. And with a set of tongs attached to the side of the thing, he pulled up something like one of those honey straws we gave the kids at school as a lunch snack. Only it was all frozen and frosted up by the liquid nitrogen at the bottom of the tank.