The Truths Behind a Pumpjack Dare, Northern Alberta, 3rd July, 1991 by Kate Axeford

I’d hauled myself skywards on steep metal rungs. You were safe below, hurling taunts like stones. We’re two brothers, poles apart, but I’d climbed the ladder. I’d had to. You’d dared me to rodeo the Donkey.

Pumpjacks on prairie fields. Metal beasts, rocking. You spied a crude seesaw, devised a cruel test.

“Only a faggot would wimp on a ride.”

So I’d bucked my truth to scale that steel brute. Mr Donkey just kept on nodding.

The infinite kiss of the prairie skyline. From the top of that pumpjack, all possibilities shimmered ahead. Just one year to go and I could leave those giant fields. Leave the rednecks, the Donkeys, for the sparkle of the city. One summer left before I could leave you to fester, to grunt and squeak springs in the bottom pine bunk. Your centrefolds glazed with the same dead-eyed pout. Girls stuck in pages, trapped under your mattress. Our Mom knew them too by the stink of your sheets.

One fall, winter, spring, of lying above you counting down days until I’d finish school. That last bell ringing freedom: my time to skedaddle to seek pastures new. For my dreams, unzipped, were of stubble. 

So, spurred on by jeers, I’d straddled that beast. His neck between my thighs for a white-knuckled ride in the harsh July heat. It took just seven seconds for that bronc to buck me.  

Afterwards, I heard the boasts: how you tore through rapeseed. How your 911 made sirens come, wailing. How your calm instructions and pin-point directions mustered city paramedics, to stretcher and save me. How they found me paralytic, so pale in the sunshine, weak amongst weeds. How it could have been a very different story.

But I’ve made it to the city, thanks to you. Two months lying in this calm white room. A hospital bed with its skyscraper view. The kind doctor promised, I will walk from here, but for now I must lie and be patient.

Yet these broken bones rage as the night minutes grind. I sweat through the pain, breath in city lights. I still hear your taunts — the canker you spread everyday through my childhood. But don’t worry brother, I won’t split on you. The days you drive mom here, and stare at your shoes. Her life has been shattered enough as it is, although I’ll swear I caught a wink when she brushed away my tears, the roughness of her working hands tender on my face.

“I’ve always known my baby boy’s destined for the city. Maybe there’s a way for you here.”

So, my truth is out, and I’ll keep yours, for now. But to help seal these lips, I’ve a special dare too. Downtown, there’s a store where the cowboys stand proud. Bold on the top shelf, unsaddled, unbuckled. You can walk in, buy a brown-bagged stash. I’m a prone bronco champ, but I still feel the heat of the prairie, brother. I still crave the real graze of stubble.

Kate Axeford (she/hers) social works by day. She lives in Brighton and loves the sea. Her work has appeared in Brilliant Flash Fiction, Bending Genres, Janus Lit and Splonk and she’s been Longlisted for Bath Flash Fiction Award. Find her at @kateaxeford.bsky.social

Thanks to Finn Burnett for recording this story for NFFR.