“Silver Blue and Gold” by Cynthia Sylvester (Fiction ’05)

Silver Blue and Gold

Her dad was a cowboy, or at least that’s what she thought. He listened to country music, dug fence posts and ran the wire himself. He wore western shirts, Lee jeans, and cowboy boots – work ones and show ones. The show ones were kangaroo and ostrich, and on Sunday mornings, she would apply some elbow grease to them and make them shine. He could dance the two-step, drove a pick-up truck, drank whiskey, and sprinkled salt in his beer.

On Saturday’s, she might get to go to the dump with him. Then her and her dad might take the twenty-two and shoot bottles, or stop at Red Dog Dan’s Saloon on the way home. Red Dog Dan’s was a topless bar. But the topless part was behind a curtain he’d sometimes disappear behind, while she stayed perched on a bar stool drinking coke, eating popcorn, admiring the velveteen paintings on the wall, and listening to the country hits on the jukebox. It may not seem like something a responsible father would do, but it was Albuquerque, New Mexico, and he was a cowboy, and she was his little renegade Indian.