Beanpole Bill we called him. He could have been called other things, like eagle beak, because of his aquiline nose, or sidewinder, because of the crooked way he walked, which wasn’t caused by a physical disability or anything. It was more like his gyroscope was off kilter, causing him to go down the street like an old car with a bent frame.

The first time I stood really close to him, I thought we should call him stinky. His parents owned a cow and some chickens and stuff like that, and it smelled like he‘d slept with them. I moved a few steps away, and then I felt rotten, because he looked down at me with his sad eyes that were spaced to close together as if to say “What’s the matter, do I stink?” so I moved closer, and closed off my nose and breathed through my mouth.

Bill was about six feet tall with a tuft of hair on the top of his head that looked like a clump of crab grass. He didn’t go to school any more. Some said he’d graduated. Others, myself included, wondered if he’d ever gone. The law said you had to go to school until you were sixteen so I guess he went, but people said there wasn’t much complicated at home between his ears.

Every time I saw him he wore the same clothes: khaki pants that were six inches too short, a checkered, short-sleeved shirt, red socks, and brown oxfords that were scuffed everywhere, but mostly on the toes. One toe had scuffed completely through, so you could see his red sock sticking out. Once when he was sitting on a rail fence looking at his cow, I saw the big holes in soles of his shoes.

I never saw him with a girl, not that we had a lot to go around in our small village, but all the other guys his age had girls. If they couldn’t find one locally, they went on scouting trips to the neighboring towns. One guy even brought in a girl from the big city to the north, but she didn’t look that great. Bill told us her tits weren’t real. We didn’t know much about tits, real or not. Bill said she had a bony ass. We knew about asses; next to our local girls, she had no ass.

When I asked him once why he didn’t have a girl, he told me he was waiting for the right one to come along. I had to think about his answer for a long time. Somehow, I couldn’t picture a girl of any kind, let alone the right one, coming along to find Bill. “Maybe you should go and get one,” I said to him one day. “You live out here at the edge of town. Maybe the right girl doesn’t know where you live.”

He took the long grass stem out of his mouth and speared it at the ground. “She’ll find me,” he said, and jumped down from his perch atop the rail fence. He started to walk away, so I followed, taking giant strides to step in his footprints that made donut centers in the dust from the holes in the soles of his shoes. In our path was a fresh cow flop that looked green and runny and had big bottlenose flies buzzing about; it stunk like it was up my nose. He stepped in it as though it wasn’t there. I stopped trying to follow in his footprints.

“Maybe her name is trouble,” he said, looking back to see if I was still with him.

I gave him a look that was meant to say, “I don’t know what you mean.”

He laughed a cackling laugh for a man, and his ears that stuck out like jug handles twitched. “Or maybe her name is misery. Or maybe her name is sadness. How about depression? Do you like that one? A girl whose name is depression?”

I didn’t like it when he talked that way, mostly because I was afraid he was losing it, and that someone would come and take him away in the paddy wagon. We already had a crazy person in our small town, a woman who tried to stab her husband about once every six months. Then the white coats would pack her off to the nut house for a spell. I didn’t know her, and I didn’t like her kid, so I didn’t much care about her troubles, but I knew and liked Bill. I didn’t want him hauled off to some nuthouse. Besides, two crazy people for a small town was one too many. “Yeh,” I said. “I guess so. Where we goin'?”

“Up to the canal for a swim. I got to do the bull thing later, but first I need a swim.”

It was getting close to supper time, and my old man would kick my ass if I was late for supper. “What time is it?”

He shielded his eyes and glanced up at the sun. “About four.”

That didn’t sound right, but he’d checked the sun. “I gotta be home by six.”

“Plenty of time.”

I realized I didn’t have my swimsuit. “I don’t have my trunks so I’ll have to watch.”

“I don’t wear trunks. Don’t need trunks at the canal.”

“What if some girls are there?”

“They won’t be.”

The grassy banks of the canal were about two hundred yards ahead. We climbed through a barbed wire fence, after checking to make sure it wasn’t electrified. Our checking consisted of Bill grabbing it with his hand and telling me it was OK.

A few willow trees clumped together on the bank provided a changing place, although Bill pretty much just walked out of his clothes and jumped in the water. I ducked down in the willows and took my time.

Bill had hair on his chest and under his arms, but most of all, he had a ton of hair on his balls. I didn’t have hair anywhere but on my head. He also had a dick that looked like a banana. Mine looked like a raisin.

“You coming in or what?”

“Coming,” I said, taking one last look around to make sure none of the girls from town had decided to bicycle up for a swim, mostly trying to figure out how I was going to make it to the water without Bill seeing how hairless and dickless I was. I crouched down, covering my privates with my hands, and made a mad dash for the water.

Soon, we were like two otters. Then we started winging bottom mud at each other, and clumps of wet canal grass. Bill laughed like I’d never heard him laugh before.

“Let’s moon the world,” he said, diving under and sticking his hairy white butt into the air. “Did you do it,” he said, coming up for air.

“Here I go now,” I said, diving under the murky green, making sure my lily white hairless butt was shoved high into the sky.

“Good one,” he said, “now together, double moons,” and under we both went, double mooning the world, resurfacing after a moment, sputtering and spitting and laughing our heads off.

“One man on deck,” Bill said, flipping backwards so that only his periscope like penis showed. When he resurfaced, he said, “Your turn.”

“Nah, I don’t want to do that one. I get water in my nose when I go in backwards.” I wondered if he saw through my lie. How could I do a one man on deck when I didn’t have a man to put on deck? I was afraid he would laugh at me, call it a pimple on deck.

“I used to be shy, too,” he said. “My belly button stuck out further than my dick. And there’re lots of guys with bigger dicks than mine. It used to bother me, but any old bull got a bigger dick than all of them combined, so I don’t think much about it no more. Another thing I’ve noticed, guys with really big dicks don’t seem to have many brains so given the choice, I’ll keep my small dick.”

I looked at him as though I didn’t know who he was. This was Beanpole Bill I was talking to, the one most everyone, including me, thought a vacancy sign hung between his ears. He laughed then, and dived under, heading for the far bank. I saw his head pop up in the canal grass.

“Watch this,” I said, flipping over backward and propelling my hips skyward so my penis at least broke the surface.

“Good one,” he clapped, when I came up for air.

“Did you even see it?”

“I did.” It was a girl’s voice.

I whipped my head around. Oh, no! The love of my life was standing on the canal bank. My heart didn’t know whether to soar or sink, so it lodged somewhere in the middle until it figured out what direction to take.

Standing astride her new blue bike, her first girl’s bike, she had on pale blue jeans with white bobby sox, a crisp white blouse, she always wore crisp white blouses, and black penny loafers with quarters in the slots. I couldn’t see the quarters, but I knew they were there. Her father was rich, or at least as rich as small town people were allowed to get. I couldn’t even keep pennies in my loafers.

“Hi, Polly.” Bill was still on the far side in the canal grass. Only his head was sticking out of the water.

“Hi, Bill,” Polly waved. “Whatcha doing,” she said to me.

By now only my head was showing, but I didn’t have the canal grass to hide in. The sun was in my eyes so I couldn’t tell if she was laughing or angry or disgusted or what. “Just taking a swim before dinner,” I said.

“It’s seven o’clock.”

My fear heart replaced my suspended love heart. Supper in our house was at six. My old man would kill me. I turned to glare at Bill. He’d lied to me; he’d betrayed me. I was destroyed to think that he thought so little of our friendship. He was stupid. All that other stuff that made him sound smart was forgotten. He was a big dumb. I needed to get out of there, but with Polly standing between and my clothes, I was stuck.

“Sorry,” Bill said. “I thought it was earlier.”

Tears were coming to my eyes. I couldn’t let Polly see that, so I ducked under real quick and then came back up.

“I’ll ride you home,” she said.

“You don’t have a bar.”

“You can sit on the seat or on the handle bars, or you can pedal and I’ll ride on the seat.”

“My clothes…”

“I’ll cover my eyes. Tell me when I can look.” She put her hands over her eyes.

I trusted her not to peek, but even if she did, what choice did I have? I climbed up the muddy bank, not stopping to rinse off, and ran to the willow grove for my clothes. It took me about ten seconds to pull on my under-shorts and pants and T-shirt and kick my feet into my penniless loafers. I shoved my socks into my pockets. When I emerged from the willows, I told Polly she could uncover her eyes, which she did by flinging her hands apart and giving me a big smile. My love heart soared. My fear heart trembled.

I looked back at Bill, who had started to cross the canal. “You bastard,” I said to myself, “you have got me in big trouble with my old man. I can’t even tell him I was with you because that will just piss him off more.”

I could hear him shouting, “What’re you hanging around with the likes of him for? Is that how you want to end up? No brains, no talent, no job.” Then he’d whack me. “When we say supper is at six, we mean supper is at six.” Then he’d whack me again. Then he’d curse for about ten minutes, making sure no Deity was left unscathed, and then he’d whack me again.

I’d either start bawling my head off, hoping he’d show some mercy, or hoping my old lady would intercede, or I’d stare silently, answering his questions with smart ass rejoinders. “No, I want to end up like you living in this shithole of a town in this shithole of a house with a shithole of a car.” Or I’d say, “Only low class people eat supper at six. High class people don’t even eat supper, they eat dinner, and they eat at nine or ten.” And then he’d whack me again, and I’d start to wonder if this was going to be the Last Supper.

“See you tomorrow,” Bill shouted, as Polly and I started down the canal bank toward the dirt road leading to town; I was pedaling, she was on the seat. “Don’t forget, we have to do the bull thing.”

“Yeah,” I hollered back, though I thought he’d said he had to do the bull thing tonight, whatever doing the bull thing meant, and knowing it didn’t matter because I was through with stupid Bill.

“You doing the bull thing tomorrow?” Polly asked.

I could tell from the sound of her voice she was impressed. Her father was a rancher, so she probably knew about doing bull things. “Yeah, we’re doing the bull thing tomorrow,” I said, pedaling a little harder. I felt her hand come to rest on my back, and I knew from her touch that she was in awe.

My old man loved Polly as much as I did. He was in the front yard when we pedaled up, probably practicing up for the end of my life, I thought.

“Hi, Mr. Mac,” Polly chirped in that special way she had of chirping. “Sorry we’re late, but my bike broke. I don’t know what I’d have done if your handsome son hadn’t happened along.”

I could have kissed her, but our relationship hadn’t progressed to that point yet, and I was sure if it had, I could never kiss her in front of my old man. Anyway, the important thing was that my old man’s fuse had been put out, and I would live to ride another day.

Polly lived four doors away; I watched as her balloon tires kicked up puffs of dust, and she disappeared behind the large trees around her house.

“Mother’s kept a plate warm for you,” my old man said, and continued cutting at the garden hose with his knife. I don’t know why he was cutting at the garden hose with his knife, and I didn’t ask. I beat it inside the house.

I didn’t get away from the house until ten the next morning, afraid I’d missed Bill and doing the whole bull thing. For some reason, my old man hung around the house longer than normal. He and my old lady seemed to be in a playful mood, which I had begun to notice happened every so often. It had nothing to do with me, because when they were in their playful moods, it was as if I didn’t exist.

Bill was standing at his rail fence looking at his cow when I ran up the road and into his yard. Another stem of grass hung from the corner of mouth, flipping around like it had something to say. Bill didn’t. He just stared and stared at his cow. Maybe he’s thinking about a girl named depression, I thought. Finally he looked down, as though he had just realized someone was standing beside him. “Sorry about last night,” he said. “Hope your old man didn’t give you a hard time.”

“Nah.” I couldn’t tell him that Polly had saved my neck. That didn’t seem a very masculine thing, particularly when we were going to do the bull thing, which I was sure ranked right up at the top of masculinity scale. “Nothin’ I couldn’t handle.”

“My old man used to beat the shit out of me,” Bill said. “He’d come home drunk every night and beat the shit out of me.”

“Why?”

“He used to say it was because I was stupid, that I’d never be anything, but one day I realized it wasn’t me, it was him.”

“Is that when he stopped?”

“He stopped the day I beat the shit out of him.”

I didn’t know what to say. I could never think of fighting my old man, even if he was wrong, which so far he had always been. But he didn’t beat up on me because he was drunk, and mostly he just gave me a few good whacks, which was a far cry from getting the shit beat out of me. “Did it make you sad?” I couldn’t believe I had said what I’d just said. Where did that come from?

“Yeah, in one way it did. I was sad because he’d wrecked a good part of my childhood. In another way, I was glad. He talks to me once in a while now. Before, he never talked to me at all, except to tell me I was stupid, and then beat the shit out of me.”

I was glad I hadn’t called Bill stupid last night. I was sad I’d thought it.

“Ready to do the bull thing?” he asked.

From the sound of his voice, I knew he’d switched gears, and boy, was I ready to do the bull thing. I thought of Polly’s hand on my back. I needed to do the bull thing, and as much as I was dying to know what doing the bull thing meant, I dared not ask. Having a penis the size of a raisin was one thing—I figured not knowing about doing the bull thing was in another universe, a sure ticket to eternal humiliation.

“You can help if you want. Ever seen it done before?”

“Yeah, a couple of times. Never helped before. I’d like to.”

“You’re a brave man.”

I puffed out my chest. Bill had called me a man. Polly had lain her hand on my back. My life was changing for the better.

Bill turned and walked toward the house at the same time that a battered old International Harvester half-ton, once red but now a sun-bleached pink, pulled into the driveway in a cloud of dust. It had stock racks and whatever it was carrying must have weighed a lot because the old truck sagged down so far in the back that it looked like the front wheels might leave the ground.

I recognized the driver, Mahuger, one of the local farmers who lived a mile from town. Franklin Thompson was his real name but everyone called him Mahuger. He weighed about three hundred pounds, and I was sure if he got out of the truck, the front wheels would be sure to leave the ground.

His once white cowboy hat was made of a straw-like material that had torn in several places along the brim and around the crown, and grass- like sprouts, his hair stuck out of the rips. His face was big and round like a pumpkin, except that it was pink, like his sun-bleached truck.

Before, when I said Bill stunk like he slept with the cows and chickens, it was nothing compared with how Mahuger and his truck stunk. And between the slats in the stock racks, I could see a large shadow moving about. Then, whatever was back there, lurched violently, about toppling Mahuger’s truck on its side.

“Better get that sumbitch out of there,” Mahuger said. “He gets another whiff of the cow, he’ll kick it down.”

I was beginning to think doing the bull thing was more than I’d bargained for.

Bill nodded with his head for me to follow. I could pretend I didn’t see him, and silently slip away somewhere to die, or tag along, which I knew I had to do, but was beginning to dread.

“When I open the back, stand to the side while I back him out. Then we’ll take him to the pasture. You hold the rope, and I’ll hold the stick.”

By now I was scared shitless, but nodded, and stood where he pointed. Skepticism about my success in this venture occupied every pore. I didn’t want to hold the rope, but the stick was a six-foot pole with two shiny prongs at the end that looked like it took some kind of advanced animal degree to operate properly.

When Bill threw up the back of the rack, I damn near high-tailed it. The ass of the biggest cow I’d ever seen stared us square in the face. Bill grabbed the two ropes, one on each side, and started to coax this giant snorting and huffing and stamping thing down the makeshift ramp that led from the truck to the ground. I was certain Mahuger’s truck would soon be flattened. But slowly the beast came, Bill talking the whole time, Mahuger lolling his big head out the window of his truck, and me with afraid I'd soon retch from the fear and the stink.

Finally, the brute of an animal was out, and Bill moved fast like some athlete, tossing the ropes to me as he grabbed the stick. “Pull the ropes tight,” he yelled.

I sensed the urgency in his voice, and pulled hard on the two ropes tied to a ring in the big snorting nose. All that did was yank the huge head with the biggest horns I'd ever seen straight at me, and I didn't need to stare into its fiery eyes to know it was royally pissed off. Slobber hung from its mouth and it tried to toss its head, but I held fast. And then it made bawling sound straight from hell and took a step in my direction. Bullshit on this, I thought, about to toss the ropes and get the hell out of there.

“Hold on,” Bill shouted, and ran up beside me. “That is one mean looking bull.” He hooked the stick in the bull’s ring and held it fast. “Good work with the ropes,” he said. “C’mon, let’s take him to my cow.”

Mahuger's big head continued to hang out of the window when we led his giant cow that I now knew was a bull, out to the pasture where Bill’s cow chewed its cud and looked at us with its big lazy eyes. I was dying to know what happened next, but between trying to avoid stepping in cow shit and having a bulls horn rammed up my ass, I never got to ask.

When we got to the cow, Bill slipped the ropes from the bull’s nose ring and tossed them to me, unhooked the stick, and yelled, “Let’s get out of here.” He took off for the fence like a bat out of hell.

Now at least he was doing something I had wanted to do ever since Mahuger had arrived, and like he was standing still, I raced past dodging through cow patties like a pro and hitting the fence at a full gallop. I was on the top rail and headed for the other side when Bill arrived.

“It’s OK,” he said. “He’s not interested in us.”

I stopped, safely astride the high wooden fence, and looked back. “Jesus, what the hell is he doing to your cow?”

Bill looked up at me and winked.

I forced another look. I now knew what he meant about bulls having big dicks. But what was it doing? “Jesus,” I said again.

“Yep,” Bill said, “the bull thing.”