I would later learn what he didn't tell me. Both his parents died in the fire. But that was best left out of it. In fact, he pretended that it was fake, although it was actually what had happened. He had told me later, shortly before he died, when he thought I was old enough to get it. At age 10, I was a bit simple. I couldn't have counted to his age, and still thought babies came from storks and Santa Claus came down our chimney on Christmas. I was visiting my house, seeing my mother Doris again and my stepfather Jeff, who my Grandpa didn't approve of. My Grandpa didn't approve of anything anymore. He was a neophobic old coot who couldn't figure out how to work a light switch more. The brakes let out on the old age car and it went right off the road.
It was unsettling to sleep in those rooms, my old rooms, with Grandpa and his five o'clock that reappeared whenever shaved. He had finished two books, typing them away on a typewriter with arthritic fingers. He wrote a history of Myanmar and a book about German Expressionism. Then he relapsed into senility and watched infomercials for nose-hair trimmers and ergonomic beds, recovering from a bypass surgery. He would wear only his underwear and boots. He'd watch the news, appear from his bedroom, and announce "Its f*ed". When we'd ask him, what was “f*ed”, he'd scream "Everything!" He'd slam the door. Jeff would laugh. Doris would scold. The both wore flower print skirts, straw hats and fishing hats. They would squabble over TV shows plots and the simpleton local newspaper they would get, the one printed on pulpy paper, the one that reported New York Times news two days after the New York Times reported it. It was world problems turned into mush, baby food that was digestible for toddlers without teeth. This was the day before I would leave to go back to Los Angeles, across long stretches of nothing and washboard roads. Doris and Jeff had gone out and I was left with Grandpa. At that point, I was twenty-one, he was eighty-three. {spell out numbers less than 100}He decided to tell me that story he had told me at Bill's house eleven years ago. The story of the cowboy. He told me the story in his auction announcer voice, his radio show host voice. He told it again in fine detail.
"The maid had taken the hero out of the house and the bandits were coming for him, but the cowboy came out from nowhere. They didn't know who he was but they feared him immediately. The bandits thought they were faster but little did they know that the cowboy was faster. He shot them both and he picked up the hero, who was still a baby, saved the nurse, and rode away into the sunset." He stopped and lit his cigarette with his lighter, letting on a puff of smoke. I coughed and he immediately snuffed it out in a glass of water and blew away the smoke. However, he let me in on something. Now that I didn't believe in the Tooth Fairy anymore, he decided to tell me that the story was true. He was afraid before that the story would break my ten-year-old heart when he first told it.
"It was all true, if it wasn't for the cowboy, no Doris and no you. That cowboy is your protector, our protector."
He died two weeks after I left. He never gave his daughter his money. However, secret to all was the fact that the money would eventually befall me, as written in his will.

All this talk of this cowboy, this guardian angel that swooped down from above and saved my family from fires, was pretty much thought to be malarkey up until his appearance in my life. This was two years after I first heard the story at Bill's. I had never told Grandpa that I had met the cowboy. I didn't think it was necessary just because I didn't connect the dots in my head yet. To me, it was just a kind stranger, not some sort of family protector with a penchant for saving us in dire circumstance. However, while driving back on the bad roads and having my brain rattled in my skull, I thought about my first and only encounter with the cowboy. This made me remember the time, when I was twelve, that I met this odd person, this silent man with no name. I had that sort of childhood where I got a Swiss army knife if I was a good boy and then a gun later on. It was a shotgun and I was taught with careful instruction with what to do with it. We had no cattle to put down, and no rustlers to shoot (especially since this was the late 20th century and rustlers were a thing from the movies). There were no birds to shoot and lizards weren’t particularly fun. So I shot at cactuses. That was entertaining. I biked around, unloading buckshot into cactuses. I recall one incredibly hot day when I was doing this and eventually my bike’s tires just popped. So I leaned up against a stone on the side of the road and cleaned my shotgun. Always point it into soft ground, never into a wall or rock. Then carefully swab the greasy parts. I had finished scout training as well and was dressed in that preppy little uniform with the green bandanna. I took pride in the silly thing because uniforms seemed noble to me. My great ambition was to be in the army. How disappointed my past self would have been if he saw me today, still an ordinary civilian in ragged t-shirt and jeans. A while had past while I cleaned my shotgun at least a million times and I had foolishly drunk my water already. I was starting to get thirsty. I tried to cover my neck with my Boy Scout bandanna and that ridiculous hat. It had been at least an hour at that point and nothing had happened. Nothing on the road for miles. I curled up in a ball and prayed. The sun was low in the sky and I was making the sign of the cross and whispering for help forever. There was nothing. The first star appeared in the sky, the sun was a splinter of light on the horizon, barely peaking over enough to cast a ghostly light on the mountains. This was the time where the climate switched to the opposite extreme, where things got cold and dark, when the animals came out of their holes in the ground, enough crusty creatures to count on one hand because the desert was too harsh for any other kind of animal. I looked around, forever hopeful, and saw the silhouette of a man riding a horse. Positioned on tip of a small dune, the horse sidestepped down it. Unsaddling his horse, the man walked over to me, picking up my bike and gun. He smelled piney, like dust {dust is repeated. Is there a definite reason for this? If so, bring it out more.}and bourbon and a long travel's sweat. He picked me up and put me on the horse. Dressed in rough cotton and spit-shine leather boots, he was all I had ever thought a real cowboy was. We tracked through the desert silently. I said "Mister?" and couple times and tugged his sleeve but he didn't talk. He was beyond words. Beyond anything earthly. He spoke in radiation that burned on the back of your neck. I couldn't see him still, just a rough outline of a man, tall and thin wearing a cowboy hat. We could hear the sound of a car. The lights shone far away, the lights going round a bend. The cowboy pulled me off the horse and doffed his hat in the darkness, waiting to see me go in the direction of the road and then turning his back to me and riding away. I thought that he would be beamed into his flying saucer and zip into the stars, disappearing into a blink among the constellations. Jeff came down the road in his gigantic pickup truck as I waited near the road. He was with his friend Lizard Lee, a mechanic at the nearby nudist colony in Palm Springs with both his front teeth missing from a bar fight. Lee was the one who punched out his teeth. It was a very heated Super Bowl debate and much alcohol was involved. They were both in winter vests. Their hi-beams caught me in the glare and they pulled over and ran out.
“There you are boy! Why you out here, boy!” Jeff said, running towards me and snatching it out of my hand.
“Give him a stiff talk, Jeff.” Lee said out of the back seat.
“Your mom’s been scared for your life! It's dark out here now! You been lost for hours!” Jeff yelled. Lumbering in his bubble jacket, he stood over me, with that same just-woke-up look that he always had with a bright lantern shining on his face.
“You tell him, Father of the Year.” Lee said again.
“Why would you do something foolish like this, boy?”
“Safety first kiddo” said Lee.
“Shut up, Lee. Trying to talk to my boy.” Jeff leaned on his haunches and stared into my eyes.
On the way back he made an awkward attempt at an apology and we shared a hug when we arrived home. Jeff seemed confused. He didn't know quite where to go from there and he held me with his dead-fish grip for a while until he gave up on affection and walked away. Sometimes he was sweet, other times he was that big, mean soap opera stepdad with mashed potato for brains and beer for blood, one that lived for fatty foods and loud guns. However, his attempts at conversation were admirable, and pathetically sweet. He was like a cat trying to run on a newly waxed floor.
Jeff eventually took me home, and soon we arrived at the house where Doris ran out and hugged me. She blubbered, looking hysterical in her runny mascara, bunny slippers, and bathrobe.
During dinner, after obsessing about me, Doris did her usual thing: removing all the veins from her steak. She also took out the fiber from the corn. This was alway a pet peeve of Jeff and he constantly told her that it was a waste of food, that the veins gave the flavor, but she continued to dissect her food.
She went on and on about how worried she was, how stupid they were to give a twelve–year-old a shotgun and how she was glad that Jeff found me. She started talking about the time when a tourist who didn’t know his way around the hills got lost. There was a helicopter flying over for hours but no one could find him. The desert had just swallowed him up.
Jeff grunted and chugged a huge can of Fosters as he ate his steak without cutting it. I sat there not talking much and staring at my food, while Jeff told me I have to eat. Lee ate with the appetite of a starving man, eating mash, and only stopping to smother his food in gravy.
Jeff was still lecturing me but at that point I couldn’t hear anything at all. The winds howled against the doors and short-lived sand devils smacked against the windows, trying to get inside.