The Last Pickup Fiction Story

` The Last PickUp  

      By: Mason Dehmlow

Why did this happen? Jack was lying in the hospital bed not knowing what had happened. He sat up, looked around, and suddenly realized, he had no legs.

Jack grew up the son of a saddle bronc rider. Jack and his family went to watch his dad perform every weekend. After each rodeo, his dad would be so tired and sore from being pounded into the ground by horses. There would be weekends where his dad would stay on the horse for eight seconds and then the pickup men would ride up along side of his horse and rescue him.  The pickup men saved his dad many times when the situation could have ended up badly.

When Jack was seventeen, he and his family were at a rodeo watching his dad just like any other normal weekend, however little did they know, it wouldn’t be a normal weekend. It was his dad’s turn to ride. He got into the chute, got on the horse, and nodded his head for the gate to be opened. His horse didn’t move. All of a sudden the horse flew out of the chute. His dad fell off immediately. He scrambled back into the chute for protection but the horse charged back into the chute after him. The horse reared up and brought all one thousand one hundred pounds on top of him. The cowboys ran to help the downed cowboy. The horse was taken care of and Jack’s father laid there in the chute, motionless. The ambulance crew came as fast as they could. It was too late, he was gone.  Jack  jumped down from the crowd and into the arena as soon as the horse had been taken care of.

He knelt down beside his dad and started to tear up. His father was gone. All of the memorable weekends, the long car rides to the different rodeos, the Saturday nights his family would eat out at a fancy restaurant, the outstanding rides his father had, they were all just gone. Jack stood up and walked away. He didn’t know what to do. He went and sat in his father’s truck to think. After a couple of hours, he decided that he would be a pickup man. A pickup man is a cowboy on a horse, that helps the cowboys riding the bucking horses, to  dismount their ride safely.

Jack finished school in the following two years and finally became a pickup man. Jack traveled all around the country saving cowboys from the danger of the bucking horses that they ride to make a living.

Once again, it was a regular weekend just like any other. Little did Jack know that his life would be changed once again forever. Jack had saved a lot of cowboys that weekend.

It was the last rodeo on Sunday night. It was about halfway through the rodeo and it was time for another ride. The cowboy came out of the chute. The horse started to buck, kick, and spin, but the cowboy stayed on for eight seconds. The whistle blew and Jack rode alongside the horse and rider. He assisted the cowboy in dismounting the wild horse. The cowboy got away safely and Jack roped the bucking horse to take him back to the coral. Suddenly the horse charged Jack and pinned him and his horse to the wall. Jack’s legs were broke. Jack passed out.