Sunsetter

SunsetterA NovelCurtis LeBlanc ContentsDedicationFridayEarlier That DaySaturdaySundayAcknowledgementsAbout the AuthorCopyright Dedicationfor Gabrielle & Marc Friday Dallan DermottThis month of May—the hottest in memory. The oil gone and the work gone with it. Gone, too: the colour of the paint on the abandoned workyard buildings and refineries, and the green of the earth around the open gravel pit on the south side. The rusted trucks and their trailers—Carlsbad Company in peeling red block letters—parked again on the outskirts of Perron. This weekend, a pulse reverberating from the Sunsetter Rodeo grounds outward, and Dallan and Brooks now at the centre.On the midway, Brooks tells Dallan that it’s the black-and-yellow tent, the one with the banner that reads Cover the Spot. Brooks’s younger brother, Aaron, filled him in. He frequents the smoke pit at school between periods, huffs white clouds among friends with similar interests. Earlier today, he told Brooks some out-of-towner came by, probably about seventeen or eighteen, and gave them a lead on where to get good, clean shit for cheap at the Sunsetter. Dallan has always supposed Aaron got his penchant for hard partying from his older brother, but the truth is that it’s a common pastime in any town with nothing to do and nowhere else to go for miles and miles in all directions. Dallan approaches the black-and-yellow tent with Brooks. He’s sure it’s the one—how many spot-covering games could there be?There’s some commotion there now, two guys getting into it, and that doesn’t bode well for their plan. There are always cops patrolling the midway and it isn’t hard to pick out the jagged movements and breathy grunts of a fight about to break out.Think something’s getting busted up? Dallan asks.Don’t know. Doesn’t look good, though.They stand dead centre in the thoroughfare and watch to see how the situation unfolds. A stream of people splits around them like they’re two stones in a shallow stream. Dallan is nervous. He doesn’t do this sort of thing often, but Brooks tried rolling the month before and said he had a blast, that it’s like the world around you is shivering with bliss and you love everyone you see, and they love you right back. The two of them did most things together, and so Brooks convinced him that the Sunsetter would be the perfect place to try it out, with the music and the lights, the rides and the girls.It looks like it’s dying down, Dallan says.I know that guy, says Brooks. That’s Travis Lent. From the team. Starting point guard, our junior year.Travis Lent walks away from the crowd with his friends, their arms around each other’s shoulders. He’s probably heading to the beer tent to blow off some steam or the smoke pit for a Black and Mild.They’re about to pass by Dallan and Brooks, but Travis stops up. Brooksie, he says. He has a wide smile on his face. What’s good, man? Brooks and Trent do a choreographed handshake, the likes of which Dallan has never seen, sliding their fingers along each other’s palms and bumping fists at the end. Just hanging, man, Brooks says.Right, right, Travis says. Who’s your pet? He wags his chin at Dallan.Dallan Dermott. He graduated with us, same year. You know him.Right, Travis says again. Say, Brooksie, you know where we can get some tight shit tonight? Our hook-up fell through right before we came out here.I’m checking something out in a bit. Find me later and I’ll let you know if it’s decent.Cool, Travis says. He and Brooks do their handshake again, this time ending in a firm embrace.By then, Dallan and Brooks had been at the Sunsetter for a couple hours. The gates had opened up at four in the afternoon, but the early hours were a little tame for them, so they stole a few beers from Dallan’s place and drank them in an alley in the commercial district beside the rodeo grounds while they waited for the night to start. Once the cars started to flood the parking lot and people crowded the admissions area, they crossed the street, paid their way, and went straight for the grandstand to watch the first chuckwagon races of the weekend.They sat at the very top of the aluminum bleachers, going against what most rodeo-goers do, sitting as close to the action as possible. That’s because, after much debate between the two of them over many years of attending the Sunsetter, Dallan convinced Brooks that this was the only spot where you could appreciate the race as a whole, the breakneck battle in every corner and the separation gained or lost in each straightaway.In truth, Dallan knew he was the only one of them who was interested in the chuckwagons at all. It was his father’s favourite event and he’d developed an attachment to it at an early age. Familiarity has always been at the root of most of his fondness, and it still gave him and his father something to talk about when he finally returned home after his long days and nights at the rodeo. Brooks, on the other hand, had always been drawn to the excitement of an out-of-body experience, the strangeness inherent in getting fucked up or being intimate with strangers in the dark corners and the fringes of public places. He never went to the rodeo with his dad, who always took the time-and-a-half weekend shifts at Public Works that no one else wanted. Brooks’s parents came from the city, and before that both had emigrated from Jamaica as kids, so the entire Sunsetter phenomenon was lost on them.Down in the dirt arena, four wagons prepared for their first heat, each of them brightly coloured, covered in the logos of their local and national sponsors. The drivers in the front seats wore the kinds of cowboy hats that came with their own hard shell carrying cases and button-up shirts in palettes that matched whatever sponsor had been most generous to them that season. They held the reins tightly