The Ride of Their Lives
Rodeo bulls, like the boys who dream of riding them, are unpredictable creatures.
牛仔竞技公牛，就像梦想骑它们的男孩一样，是不可预测的生物。
They can start out shy and skittish, then suddenly turn ornery.
他们一开始会害羞、易激动，然后突然变得脾气暴躁。
They’ll lie down in the chute one day and try to gore you the next.
他们有一天会躺在降落伞里，第二天就会试图刺伤你。
The most dangerous bull ever ridden, by some accounts, began as a scrawny yellow calf in 1988.
根据一些说法，有史以来最危险的公牛诞生于 1988 年，当时它还是一头骨瘦如柴的黄色小牛。
Half Charolais and half Brahman, he was still long and bony at age three, but liable to turn fat and ungainly if his breeding held true.
一半是夏洛莱血统，一半是婆罗门血统，他三岁时仍然又长又瘦，但如果他的血统属实，很容易变得肥胖和笨拙。
His owner, Phil Sumner, named him J31—he wasn’t sure the bull would live long enough to earn a real name.
它的主人菲尔·萨姆纳 (Phil Sumner) 将它命名为 J31——他不确定这头公牛能否活到足够长的时间来获得真正的名字。
Sumner took him to a few scrubgrass rodeos in northern Oklahoma, but didn’t see much fight in him.
萨姆纳带他去看了俄克拉荷马州北部的几场灌木丛牛仔竞技表演，但没有看到他有太多的战斗。
“I was thinking, Dude, you’re going to have to step up your game plan or you’re going to be going to McDonald’s,” Sumner told me.
“我在想，伙计，你必须加强你的游戏计划，否则你就要去麦当劳，”萨姆纳告诉我。
Then one Sunday afternoon at a small arena outside of Okeene, Oklahoma, something in the bull snapped.
然后一个周日的下午，在俄克拉荷马州奥基恩郊外的一个小竞技场里，公牛身上的东西突然断裂了。
The kid who was riding him got his hand caught in his rope.
骑在他身上的孩子的手被绳子卡住了。
He was flopping around on J31’s back, trying to dismount, when the bull suddenly went crazy beneath him.
他在 J31 的背上翻来覆去，试图下马，这时公牛突然在他身下发疯了。
He leaped up and spun around, bucked forward and kicked back, his legs so high behind him that he almost flipped end over end.
他跳起来，转身，向前猛冲，又向后踢，双腿在身后高得几乎翻了个身。
By the time the boy pulled free, the bull had nearly gone over the fence.
当男孩挣脱束缚时，公牛几乎已经翻过栅栏了。
“It just freaked him out,” Sumner said.
“这让他吓坏了，”萨姆纳说。
Animals, as a rule, don’t like to have other animals on their backs.
一般来说，动物不喜欢背着其他动物。
They find it strange and distressing—an attack or a violation, an act of dominance.
他们觉得这很奇怪而且令人痛苦——这是一种攻击或侵犯，一种统治行为。
This hasn’t kept us from trying to ride them, of course.
当然，这并没有阻止我们尝试骑它们。
Horse, mule, donkey, camel, llama, yak, and elephant—the bigger the animal, the more likely we are to climb on top of it.
马、骡子、驴、骆驼、美洲驼、牦牛和大象——动物越大，我们就越有可能爬到它们的上面。
People have sat on ostriches, orcas, alligators, and water buffalo, straddled giant tortoises, and set toddlers on St. Bernards.
人们骑在鸵鸟、逆戟鲸、短吻鳄和水牛身上，骑在巨龟身上，还让幼儿骑在圣伯纳犬上。
Their mounts may try to shake them off at first, but the contest is an unequal one, and they tend to knuckle under eventually.
他们的坐骑一开始可能会试图摆脱他们，但这场比赛是一场不平等的比赛，他们最终往往会屈服。
Some even learn to like it.
有些人甚至学会喜欢它。
Not rodeo bulls.
不是牛仔竞技公牛。
Their brains aren’t wired for submission.
他们的大脑不适合屈服。
They not only refuse to be ridden; they find ever more inventive ways to cast people off.
它们不仅拒绝被骑，而且还拒绝被骑。他们找到了更有创意的方法来摆脱人们。
Watching old videos of J31, you can see him learn as he goes.
观看J31的旧视频，你可以看到他边走边学。
At first, he just charges around the ring and jumps up and down.
起初，他只是绕着擂台冲锋，上蹿下跳。
But the older he gets the crueller and less predictable he becomes.
但随着年龄的增长，他变得越来越残忍，越来越难以预测。
He spins one way, then the other, charges forward, and jerks to the side.
他向一侧旋转，然后向另一侧旋转，向前冲锋，然后猛地向一侧移动。
His front and back ends start to uncouple, jackhammering the ground independently.
他的前端和后端开始脱开，独立地用手提钻敲打地面。
His spine twists and rolls, leaving the rider with no balancing point, no center of gravity.
他的脊柱扭曲和滚动，使骑手没有平衡点，没有重心。
By the age of five, he weighs nearly two thousand pounds and is built like a clenched fist: all hoof and horn and fast-twitch muscle.
到五岁时，他的体重已接近两千磅，体格像紧握的拳头：全是蹄子、角和快速抽动的肌肉。
Sumner eventually sold him to another rancher, Sammy Andrews, figuring that he was too much bull for the local rodeo circuit.
萨姆纳最终将它卖给了另一位牧场主萨米·安德鲁斯 (Sammy Andrews)，因为他认为它太牛了，不适合当地的牛仔竞技表演。
It was Andrews who gave him a name to match his reputation: Bodacious.
安德鲁斯给他起了一个与他的名声相符的名字：“大胆”。
“He was like a monster once he matured,” Tuff Hedeman, a four-time world champion, told me.
“一旦他成熟了，他就像一个怪物，”四届世界冠军塔夫·赫德曼告诉我。
“Even the good guys were super scared of him.
“即使是好人也非常害怕他。
You’d see world champions ride him for a jump or two and then get off.” In 1993, at a rodeo in Long Beach, California, Hedeman drew Bodacious for what some consider the greatest ride in history—a near-perfect exhibition of balance and anticipation.
你会看到世界冠军骑着他跳一两下，然后就下车了。” 1993 年，在加利福尼亚州长滩的一场牛仔竞技表演中，赫德曼绘制了 Bodacious，展示了一些人认为历史上最伟大的骑行——一种近乎完美的平衡和期待的展示。
Two years later, the bull got his revenge.
两年后，公牛报了仇。
At the world championships in Las Vegas that August, Hedeman was leading the standings by what proved to be an insurmountable three hundred points when he drew Bodacious again.
那年八月在拉斯维加斯举行的世界锦标赛上，当赫德曼再次抽到“博达西斯”时，他以不可逾越的三百分领先积分榜。
This time, a split second after leaving the chute, the bull bucked forward with all his might.
这一次，公牛在离开滑道后的一瞬间，用尽全力向前猛冲。
Hedeman did what riders are supposed to do: he leaned high over the bull’s shoulders and flung his arm back as a counterbalance.
赫德曼做了骑手应该做的事情：他高高地靠在公牛的肩膀上，并将手臂向后甩以保持平衡。
But just as he came forward, Bodacious threw his head back—smashing it square into Hedeman’s face.
但就在他上前时，博达修斯把头向后一仰，正好撞到了赫德曼的脸上。
Hedeman stayed on somehow, his hand twisted in the rope, only to get head-butted again, thrown into the air, and bounced off the bull’s back like a rag doll.
赫德曼不知何故坚持了下来，他的手扭在绳子上，结果又被头撞了，被抛到空中，然后像布娃娃一样从公牛背上弹了回来。
The ride broke every bone in Hedeman’s face below the eyes.
这次骑行折断了赫德曼脸上眼睛以下的每一块骨头。
It took thirteen and a half hours of reconstructive surgery and five titanium plates to repair the damage, and Hedeman’s sense of smell and taste never returned.
经过十三个半小时的重建手术和五块钛板才修复了损伤，赫德曼的嗅觉和味觉再也没有恢复。
“I told my buddy afterward, I must have broke my jaw, because when I bite down my teeth don’t come together,” he recalled.
“我后来告诉我的朋友，我一定是摔断了下巴，因为当我咬下去时，我的牙齿就无法合在一起，”他回忆道。
“People were looking at me and then turning their eyes away or putting their hands over their faces.
“人们看着我，然后把目光移开，或者把手捂在脸上。
I thought, I must look like Frankenstein or something.”
我想，我一定看起来像弗兰肯斯坦之类的。”
Seven weeks later, when a rider named Scott Breding drew Bodacious at the National Finals Rodeo, he elected to wear a hockey mask for protection.
七周后，当一位名叫斯科特·布雷丁 (Scott Breding) 的骑手在全国牛仔竞技总决赛中赢得了“博达西斯”(Bodacious) 时，他选择戴上曲棍球面罩进行保护。
It didn’t help.
这没有帮助。
In less than four seconds, the bull had knocked Breding off with the same move, fracturing his left eye socket.
不到四秒，公牛就用同样的动作击倒了布雷丁，导致他的左眼窝骨折。
The next day, Sammy Andrews retired Bodacious from competition.
第二天，萨米·安德鲁斯 (Sammy Andrews) 从比赛中退役。
“I didn’t want to be the guy who let him kill someone,” he told me.
“我不想成为那个让他杀人的人，”他告诉我。
The boys at the Camp of Champions couldn’t wait to get on a bull like that.
冠军营的孩子们迫不及待地想骑上这样的公牛。
How else would they be world champions one day?
否则他们怎么可能有一天成为世界冠军呢？
Bull riding is a collaborative sport—a pairs competition in which one partner tries to kill the other, like an ice dance with an axe murderer.
骑牛是一项协作运动，是一项双人比赛，其中一个伙伴试图杀死另一个伙伴，就像与斧头杀人犯跳冰舞一样。
If a rider manages to hang on for eight seconds, he’ll earn up to fifty points for his own form and fifty for the bull’s.
如果骑手能够坚持八秒，他自己的表现将获得最多 50 分，公牛的表现将获得 50 分。
The meaner the animal the better the score.
动物越卑鄙，得分就越高。
“Ooh, I really want to ride 44!” Wacey Schalla told his friends Trigger Hargrove and Jet Erickson one morning.
“哦，我真的很想骑44！”一天早上，韦西·沙拉 (Wacey Schalla) 告诉他的朋友触发·哈格罗夫 (Trigger Hargrove) 和杰特·埃里克森 (Jet Erickson)。
He jumped up and down on the catwalk along the arena, and pointed at a bony brown calf in the chute below.
他在竞技场的过道上跳来跳去，指着下面滑道里一头瘦骨嶙峋的棕色小牛。
“I hear that sucker’s rank!”
“我听说那个混蛋的军衔了！”
Wacey, Trigger, and Jet were eight years old.
韦西、扳机和杰特当时八岁。
The tops of their heads barely cleared my waist, yet they already had the rangy look of seasoned riders.
他们的头顶几乎没有露出我的腰部，但他们已经具备了经验丰富的骑手的修长外观。
They wore saddleman jeans and paisley Western shirts, tooled leather boots and straw cowboy hats, oversized to fend off the broiling June sun.
他们穿着马鞍牛仔裤和佩斯利西部衬衫、工装皮靴和草帽牛仔帽，帽子尺寸过大，可以抵御六月的炙热阳光。
Wacey was the smallest of the three and the most intensely focussed.
韦西是三个人中个子最小的一个，也是最专注的一个。
His eyes would turn to slits above his freckled cheeks as he visualized his next ride.
当他想象下一次骑行时，他的眼睛会变成长满雀斑的脸颊上方的裂缝。
Trigger was taller and leaner, with a natural swagger—he was an excellent roper as well as rider.
扳机更高、更瘦，天生神气十足——他是一名出色的绳索手和骑手。
Jet was the shyest and the most delicately built.
杰特是最害羞的，也是最精致的。
While Trigger kept up a running monologue—“That 36 nearly yanked my arm off!
扳机不停地自言自语——“那个 36 差点把我的胳膊扯下来！
But then the next one didn’t hardly buck at all”—Jet slumped against the rails, adrift in his own thoughts.
但接下来的那辆几乎没有发生任何变化”——杰特瘫倒在栏杆上，沉浸在自己的思绪中。
“He’s kind of a floater,” his father, Everett, told me.
“他有点像个漂浮者，”他的父亲埃弗雷特告诉我。
“But when he scoots up on that calf and it takes off, his body takes over and he just rides .” He laughed.
“但是当他骑上那头小牛并且它起飞时，他的身体就接管了，他只是骑着。”他笑了。
“It kind of reminds you of the legends of the past, watching them kids.”
“这会让你想起过去的传说，看着他们的孩子。”
In the past two decades, selective breeding has made rodeo bulls more dangerous and valuable than ever before.The best ones cost half a million dollars and their semen can fetch thousands.
在过去的二十年里，选择性繁育使竞技公牛比以往任何时候都更加危险和有价值。最好的公牛价值五十万美元，它们的精液可以卖到数千美元。
In the past two decades, selective breeding has made rodeo bulls more dangerous and valuable than ever before.The best ones cost half a million dollars and their semen can fetch thousands.|||
在过去的二十年里，选择性育种使牛仔竞技公牛比以往任何时候都更加危险和有价值。最好的公牛价值五十万美元，它们的精液可以卖到数千美元。|||
Almost every weekend, the three boys would ride against one another at some small-town rodeo in Oklahoma.
几乎每个周末，这三个男孩都会在俄克拉荷马州的一些小镇牛仔竞技比赛中相互骑马较量。
The previous Saturday, it had been Elk City, with Wacey coming in first, Trigger second, and Jet third.
上周六，是麋鹿城，韦西排名第一，扳机排名第二，杰特排名第三。
But the order could easily have been shuffled.
但顺序很容易被改变。
“It’s just back and forth with those three,” Trigger’s grandfather, Eddie, told me.
“这三个人就这样来来回回，”特里格的祖父埃迪告诉我。
“They’re the fiercest competitors and the best of friends.” All three were the sons of professional rodeo riders.
“他们是最激烈的竞争对手，也是最好的朋友。”这三个人都是职业牛仔竞技骑手的儿子。
They’d gone from bouncing around on sheep at the age of three or four—“mutton busting,” it was called—to riding calves at six and now the occasional steer.
他们从三四岁就骑着羊蹦蹦跳跳——这被称为“赶羊”——到了六岁就骑小牛，现在偶尔还牵牛。
In two or three years, they’d get on their first bulls.
两三年后，他们就会养出第一头公牛。
Their winnings came mostly in the form of engraved belt buckles and prize saddles—“I’ve got a bunch more in my closet somewhere,” Wacey told me, when he showed me a few buckles at his house—as well as small cash purses.
他们的奖金主要以雕刻皮带扣和奖品马鞍的形式出现——“我衣柜里的某个地方还有一堆，”当韦西向我展示他家里的一些皮带扣和小现金钱包时，他告诉我。
But they’d grow more substantial soon enough.
但它们很快就会变得更加庞大。
Caden Bunch, one of the eleven-year-olds at the camp, had made more than a hundred thousand dollars.
卡登·邦奇 (Caden Bunch) 是营地里 11 岁的孩子之一，他的收入超过了十万美元。
The Camp of Champions was a final tuneup for the biggest rodeo of their lives: the Youth Bull Riders World Finals.
冠军营是他们一生中最盛大的牛仔竞技表演的最后一次调整：青年斗牛士世界总决赛。
The event would draw the top fifty riders from six age groups to Abilene, Texas, in July.
该赛事将于 7 月吸引来自六个年龄段的前 50 名骑手前往德克萨斯州阿比林。
It would feature rougher stock than most of them were used to riding, so they wanted all the help they could get.
它的特点是比大多数人习惯骑行的更粗糙，所以他们希望获得所有能得到的帮助。
The camp, founded by a bull rider turned cowboy preacher named Andy Taylor, was a combination rodeo school and revival meeting.
该营地由骑牛人、后来成为牛仔传教士的安迪·泰勒 (Andy Taylor) 创建，是一所牛仔竞技学校和复兴聚会的结合体。
The first half of the week had been devoted to girls’ events—barrel racing, goat tying, and breakaway roping—and the second half to boys’ events: calf roping, bull riding, and bronco busting.
本周的前半周主要是女子项目——绕桶比赛、拴山羊和脱离绳索——下半周是男子项目：套小牛、骑公牛和破坏野马。
The camp was held on the grounds of the Trinity Fellowship, a budding megachurch in Sayre, Oklahoma, on the short-grass prairie just east of the Texas Panhandle.
该营是在三一团契的场地上举行的，这是俄克拉荷马州塞尔的一座新兴大型教堂，位于德克萨斯州狭长地带以东的短草草原上。
There were livestock pens and dusty red arenas to one side and a striped tent to the other, where the campers met for church services every morning and evening.
一侧是牲畜圈和尘土飞扬的红色竞技场，另一侧是条纹帐篷，露营者每天早上和晚上都会在那里举行教堂礼拜。
“You know what’s cool, boys?” Ted Nuce, one of the trainers and a former world-champion bull rider, told them.
“你们知道什么很酷吗，孩子们？”训练师之一、前世界骑牛冠军泰德·努斯 (Ted Nuce) 告诉他们。
“Riding bulls is a Jesus trap.
“骑牛是耶稣的陷阱。
You guys are going to pray because you want to.
你们会祈祷，因为你们愿意。
You need some protection out there.”
你在外面需要一些保护。”
Earlier that day, the boys had been to the first of the morning services.
那天早些时候，孩子们参加了第一次晨间礼拜。
These had a comforting sameness to them.
这些对他们来说有令人安慰的相似之处。
The house band, led by a local bulldozer operator and his sons, would play some Southern-flavored Christian rock.
由当地推土机操作员和他的儿子们领导的家庭乐队会演奏一些南方风味的基督教摇滚乐。
Andy Taylor would drawl a few lines of Scripture, then some retired bull riders would come up to testify.
安迪·泰勒会慢吞吞地读几行经文，然后一些退休的骑牛人会上来作证。
These were small, wiry, tightly wound men—“the bantam roosters of the rodeo world,” one calf roper called them—accustomed to keeping their pain to themselves.
这些人身材矮小、精瘦、伤口紧绷——一位驯牛师称他们为“牛仔竞技界的矮脚公鸡”——习惯于将痛苦隐瞒在心里。
They’d talk, haltingly, about the injuries that had laid them low at the height of their careers, and how little they knew about earning a living in the real world.
他们会结结巴巴地谈论在职业生涯巅峰时遭受的伤病，以及他们对现实世界谋生的了解是多么少。
How they’d succumbed to drink and drugs, disloyalty and meanness before the Lord pulled them through.
在主帮助他们渡过难关之前，他们是如何屈服于酗酒、吸毒、不忠和卑鄙的。
“Some of my family members just abandoned me,” a young, bespectacled bull rider named Matt Austin confessed.
“我的一些家人抛弃了我，”一位戴眼镜的年轻骑牛人马特·奥斯汀承认道。
“I was broken.
“我心碎了。
But I’m here to tell you that God will never leave you.”
但我来这里是想告诉你，上帝永远不会离开你。”
I couldn’t tell how deeply this registered with the eight-year-olds.
我不知道这对八岁的孩子来说有多深。
Riding calves is less life-threatening than riding bulls, and Wacey and his friends seemed to think they were immortal anyhow.
骑小牛的生命危险比骑公牛要小，而且韦西和他的朋友们似乎认为无论如何他们都是永生的。
They were by turns the best-behaved boys I’d ever met—they addressed adults as sir and Ma’am, took off their hats in church, and lowered their eyes and mumbled “Excuse me” when they bumped into you—and the rowdiest, the least domesticated.
他们是我见过的表现最好的男孩——他们称呼成年人为先生和女士，在教堂里脱下帽子，撞到你时低下眼睛，咕哝着“对不起”——也是最吵闹、最不驯服的。
“They make me proud,” their counsellor, Keith Hutton, told me on my first night at camp.
“他们让我感到自豪，”他们的辅导员基思·赫顿在我到达营地的第一个晚上告诉我。
He was about to say more when a chorus of screams and shouts erupted from the bunkhouse below, in the church basement.
他正要再说更多的话，下面教堂地下室的工棚里突然爆发出一阵尖叫声和叫喊声。
“He’s bleeding!” a high voice was squealing.
“他在流血！”一个高亢的声音在尖叫。
“There’s blood everywhere!” Hutton sighed and blew out his cheeks.
“到处都是血！”赫顿叹了口气，吹了吹脸颊。
He waited a moment for the noise to subside, then lurched up from the couch and trudged downstairs.
他等了一会儿，等噪音平息下来，然后从沙发上摇摇晃晃地站起来，拖着沉重的脚步下楼。
Reports on the incident would remain muddled and contradictory.
关于该事件的报道仍然混乱且矛盾。
As far as Hutton could tell, Wacey was jumped by another boy after beating him in a game of H-O-R-S-E .
据赫顿所知，韦西在一场 H-O-R-S-E 游戏中击败了另一个男孩后，被另一个男孩跳了下去。
Trigger waded in to defend him, and in the ensuing fracas the assailant fell and smacked his head, opening up a gash.
扳机涉水保护他，在随后的争吵中，袭击者摔倒并撞到了他的头，留下了一道口子。
“It was kind of a freaky deal,” Hutton told me the next morning.
“这是一笔奇怪的交易，”赫顿第二天早上告诉我。
“It looked like his head had fallen off, there was so much blood.” By then, in any case, the boys were all friends again, monkeying around in the breakfast line while Trigger practiced his roping tricks.
“他的头好像掉下来了，流了很多血。”无论如何，到那时，男孩们又成了朋友了，他们在吃早餐的队伍中闲逛，而扳机则练习他的绳索技巧。
A little blood, they knew, came with the territory.
他们知道，这片土地伴随着一点血迹。
Trigger’s uncle had torn off a thumb roping steers, and Jet’s father had snapped the C1 vertebra in his neck when a bull named Stoney tossed him on his head.
扳机的叔叔撕断了拴牛的拇指，而杰特的父亲则在一头名叫斯通尼的公牛把他扔到头上时折断了他脖子上的 C1 椎骨。
He spent the next six months immobilized in a halo, not sure if he could ever get on a bull again.
在接下来的六个月里，他在光环中一动不动，不确定自己是否还能再次骑上公牛。
“We know it’s dangerous,” he told me.
“我们知道这很危险，”他告诉我。
“But there’s more glory in it than injuries, I’ll promise you that.
“但其中的荣耀比伤病更重要，我向你保证。
And the pain always goes away.
疼痛总是会消失。
Sometimes you just have to wait longer than others.”
有时你只需要比别人等待更长的时间。”
When breakfast was over, Hutton corralled the boys into a little trailer hitched to a golf cart and hauled them over to the arena.
早餐结束后，赫顿把孩子们塞进一辆挂着高尔夫球车的小拖车里，然后把他们拖到竞技场上。
(He was legally blind, so he couldn’t drive a van.) “The Calf-Rider Express is pullin’ out!” he shouted, then turned and fixed them with a baleful glare.
（他在法律上是盲人，所以他不能驾驶货车。）“小牛骑士快车即将驶出！”他喊道，然后转过身来，恶毒地瞪着他们。
“Hey!
“嘿！
I don’t need to hear a bunch of yellin’!
我不需要听到一堆喊叫！
We had enough of that foolishness last night.
昨晚我们受够了这种愚蠢的行为。
And don’t go jumpin’ off the trailer!
并且不要从拖车上跳下来！
That freaks me out.” Bald and gap-toothed, with bright, bewildered eyes, Hutton grew up an Army brat in England.
这让我很害怕。”赫顿是在英国长大的一名陆军小子，他秃头，牙齿有缝隙，眼睛明亮而困惑。
He got deported for selling black-market cigarettes, and spent the next few decades smoking weed and paying rent, as he put it, until he found Jesus.
正如他所说，他因出售黑市香烟而被驱逐出境，并在接下来的几十年里吸食大麻并支付租金，直到他找到了耶稣。
“This hot blonde was on me to come to church,” he said.
“这个性感的金发女郎让我来教堂，”他说。
“I thought she might give me a little, but I ended up crying out thirty years of being pissed.
“我以为她可能会给我一点，但我最终哭了三十年的生气。
I’ve been clean ever since.” When he wasn’t volunteering at the church, Hutton worked as a roofer, a substitute teacher, and a drug counsellor.
从那以后我就干净了。”当赫顿不在教堂做志愿者时，他做过屋顶工、代课老师和毒品咨询师。
It sometimes seemed like he’d treated someone in almost every family in his town.
有时候，他似乎治疗过镇上几乎每个家庭的某个人。
Western Oklahoma is a tough place to live in the best of times.
即使在最好的时期，俄克拉荷马州西部也是一个难以居住的地方。
The soil is poor and full of gypsum and clay.
土壤贫瘠，充满石膏和粘土。
The winds can rise to catastrophe out of a clear blue sky.
晴朗的蓝天上的风可能会带来灾难。
In the right light, there’s a kind of grandeur to its vast, featureless sweep, where every truck stop and water tower can take on totemic power.
在合适的光线下，它广阔而平淡的范围有一种宏伟的感觉，每个卡车停靠站和水塔都可以呈现出图腾的力量。
But any sense of self-importance has long since been wrung from the local population.
但当地居民早已失去了任何自以为是的感觉。
People age quickly here.
这里的人老得很快。
The young men with hips cocked and thumbs hooked through belt loops turn into swaybacked old ranchers soon enough, beer guts tucked into embroidered shirts.
那些翘起臀部、把拇指勾在皮带环上的年轻人很快就变成了摇摇晃晃的老牧场主，啤酒胆塞进了绣花衬衫里。
The girls in ponytails and rhinestones weather into creased, careworn women.
扎着马尾辫、戴着水钻的女孩们逐渐变成了满脸皱纹、忧心忡忡的女人。
They know that the eyes of the world are focussed elsewhere—on Texas, perhaps—and do their best to get on with it.
他们知道世界的目光都集中在其他地方——也许是德克萨斯州——并尽最大努力继续下去。
Early that morning, a towering thunderhead had rumbled in from the east, stripping branches from the cottonwoods and flooding the streets of Oklahoma City.
那天一大早，一个高耸的雷雨云从东方隆隆而来，刮掉了三叶杨的树枝，淹没了俄克拉荷马城的街道。
But the sky blew clear within minutes, leaving only muddy ruts behind.
但几分钟后天空就放晴了，只留下泥泞的车辙。
“They’re saying that this is going to be the next Mojave Desert if we don’t have a weather change,” Hutton said.
“他们说，如果天气没有变化，这将成为下一个莫哈韦沙漠，”赫顿说。
“It’s been going on for ten or twelve years now.” The fracking industry had brought new jobs to the area—Elk City was growing fast—but without water the boom might not last long.
“这种情况已经持续了十年或十二年了。”水力压裂行业为该地区带来了新的就业机会——麋鹿城正在快速发展——但如果没有水，这种繁荣可能不会持续太久。
And what with the low minimum wage and the high teen-pregnancy rate, methamphetamines and prescription-drug addiction, life was lived ever closer to the bone.
由于最低工资低、青少年怀孕率高、甲基苯丙胺和处方药成瘾，生活变得越来越接近骨头。
Around here, the notion of childhood as a safe, protected place—a benign bubble—seemed like poor training for life.
在这里，童年是一个安全、受保护的地方——一个良性的泡沫——的观念似乎是对生活的不良训练。
Religion and rodeo made more sense.
宗教和牛仔竞技更有意义。
Rodeo camp features calf roping and bronco busting for boys; for girls, there’s barrel racing, goat tying, and breakaway roping.
牛仔竞技训练营的特色是男孩绳小牛和野马表演；对于女孩来说，有绕桶比赛、拴山羊和绳索脱离比赛。
Rodeo camp features calf roping and bronco busting for boys; for girls, there’s barrel racing, goat tying, and breakaway roping.|||
牛仔竞技训练营的特色是男孩绳小牛和野马表演；对于女孩来说，有绕桶比赛、拴山羊和绳索脱离。|||
When the eight-year-olds had arrived at the arena and put on their helmets and protective vests, one of the trainers gathered them around him in a circle.
当这些八岁的孩子们到达竞技场并戴上头盔和防护背心时，一名教练将他们聚集在他周围，围成一圈。
“We don’t do this for the money,” he told them.
“我们这样做不是为了钱，”他告诉他们。
“We do this because the very first time we got on a bull—the first time we got bucked off and hit the ground and got up—right there we knew that this is what we were meant to be doing.” He cast his eyes around the circle, peering hard at each one of them.
“我们这样做是因为当我们第一次骑上公牛时——第一次我们被推倒并摔倒在地并站起来时——我们就知道这就是我们应该做的事情。”他的目光扫视了一圈，仔细地审视着每一个人。
“God has a plan for you being here,” he said.
“上帝对你来这里有一个计划，”他说。
“What you learn in bull riding you’re going to be able to apply to everyday life.
“你在骑牛中学到的东西将能够应用到日常生活中。
When life gives you a storm, you can sit back and let it toss you wherever it wants to toss you, or you can have the confidence to know that God created you to be a winner, and to have honor and glory.”
当生活给你带来一场风暴时，你可以袖手旁观，让它把你抛向任何它想抛向你的地方，或者你可以有信心知道上帝创造你是为了成为胜利者，并拥有荣誉和荣耀。”
The boys didn’t need convincing.
男孩们不需要说服。
A bucking calf seemed like the ultimate amusement-park ride to them—a bumper car and extreme coaster rolled into one.
对他们来说，一头猛烈的小牛似乎是终极游乐园游乐设施——碰碰车和极限过山车合二为一。
When they weren’t in line for another ride, they were practicing their moves on the Mighty Bucky: a padded barrel perched on a steel pivot and springs.
当他们没有排队等待另一次骑行时，他们就在 Mighty Bucky 上练习动作：一个带衬垫的桶位于钢枢轴和弹簧上。
I never saw a serious injury among the eight-year-olds, but plenty of boys were bawling by the time they picked themselves up off the ground.
我从未见过八岁的孩子受到严重伤害，但很多男孩在从地上爬起来时都在嚎啕大哭。
Yet they couldn’t wait for the next round.
然而他们已经等不及下一轮了。
The teen-agers, if anything, were even more eager.
如果说有什么不同的话，那就是青少年们更加渴望。
Nearly every ride left one of them hobbling to the gate, clutching an arm or leg.
几乎每次骑行，他们中都会有一个人扶着胳膊或腿，一瘸一拐地走到门口。
I saw one boy’s cheek split open by a bull’s horn and another boy dragged across the ground like tin cans behind a bumper, then stomped on for good measure.
我看到一个男孩的脸颊被牛角劈开了，另一个男孩像保险杠后面的锡罐一样被拖过地面，然后用脚踩了下去。
Both were back on another bull the same day.
两人在同一天又回到了另一头公牛。
I thought about a playground near my house in Brooklyn, in Park Slope.
我想到了布鲁克林我家附近公园坡的一个游乐场。
A couple of years ago, it was beautifully renovated by the city, with a rock-lined stream meandering through it and an old-fashioned pump that children could crank to set the water flowing.
几年前，城市对它进行了精美的翻新，一条岩石两旁的小溪蜿蜒流过，还有一个老式水泵，孩子们可以摇动水泵让水流淌。
The stream was the delight of the neighborhood for a while, thronged with kids splashing through the shallows and floating sticks down the current.
这条小溪一度成为附近居民的欢乐之地，孩子们在浅滩上戏水，木棍顺流而下。
Yet some parents were appalled.
然而，一些家长却感到震惊。
The rocks were a menace, they declared.
他们宣称，这些岩石是一种威胁。
The edges were too sharp, the surfaces too slippery.
边缘太锋利，表面太滑。
A child could fall and crack her skull.
孩子可能会摔倒并导致头骨破裂。
“I actually kept tapping them to check if they were really rocks,” one commenter wrote on the Park Slope Parents Web site.
“我实际上一直在敲击它们，以检查它们是否真的是岩石，”一位评论者在公园坡家长网站上写道。
“It seemed odd to me to have big rocks in a playground.” Within two weeks, a stonemason had been brought in to grind the edges down.
“我觉得操场上有大石头很奇怪。”两周之内，一名石匠被请来打磨边缘。
The protests continued.
抗议活动仍在继续。
One mother called a personal-injury lawyer about forcing the city to remove the rocks.
一位母亲致电人身伤害律师，要求市政府拆除这些岩石。
Another suggested that something be done to “soften” them.
另一位建议采取措施“软化”它们。
“I am actually dreading the summer because of those rocks,” still another complained.
“因为那些岩石，我实际上害怕夏天，”还有一个人抱怨道。
The parents at the camp flipped this attitude on its head.
营地里的家长们彻底改变了这种态度。
They valued courage over caution, grit over sensitivity.
他们看重勇气胜过谨慎，看重毅力胜过敏感。
They revelled in the raw physicality of boys.
他们陶醉于男孩的原始肉体。
The mothers sat in the bleachers taking videos and hollering advice—“Wyatt, just ride the way Daddy taught you!” The fathers straddled the chute, leaning over their sons to cinch the rope and shove the calf into position: “Are you ready?” “Yes, sir!” “You’ve got to take the fight to him.” “Yes, sir!” “You’ve got to want it.” When the gate blew open, they leaped up on the rail and watched their sons with clenched fists and narrowed eyes.
妈妈们坐在看台上一边拍视频一边大喊大叫——“怀亚特，就按照爸爸教你的方式骑吧！”父亲们跨坐在降落伞上，俯身在儿子身上，拉紧绳子，将小牛推到位：“准备好了吗？” “是的，先生！” “你必须向他发起战斗。” “是的，先生！” “你必须想要它。”当大门被炸开时，他们跳到栏杆上，紧握拳头，眯起眼睛看着儿子们。
They weren’t stage parents, for the most part.
大多数情况下，他们不是舞台父母。
They just took following your bliss to its logical extreme.
他们只是把追随你的幸福推向了逻辑的极端。
“I’d let my kid do whatever he has a passion for,” one mother told me, “even if he wanted to be a piano player.”
一位母亲告诉我：“我会让我的孩子做任何他感兴趣的事情，即使他想成为一名钢琴演奏家。”
How dangerous is bull riding?
骑牛有多危险？
The best numbers come from a sports epidemiologist named Dale Butterwick.
最好的数据来自运动流行病学家戴尔·巴特威克(Dale Butterwick)。
In 2006, when he was at the University of Calgary, Butterwick set up a registry of rodeo injuries and spent three years filling it with data from rodeo medics and riders’ self-reports.
2006年，当巴特威克还在卡尔加里大学时，他建立了牛仔竞技伤害登记册，并花了三年时间用牛仔竞技医务人员和骑手自我报告的数据来填充该登记册。
Between 1989 and 2009, he found, twenty-one contestants had died in the United States and Canada.
他发现，1989 年至 2009 年间，美国和加拿大有 21 名参赛者死亡。
Sixteen were bull riders, including one twelve-year-old boy.
十六人是骑牛人，其中包括一名十二岁的男孩。
Another twenty-eight sustained “life-changing” injuries.
另有二十八人遭受了“改变生活”的伤害。
Butterwick’s study didn’t track the riders’ less grievous accidents—the breaks, tears, gashes, dislocations, concussions, and contusions that can occur on almost any ride.
巴特威克的研究没有追踪骑手不太严重的事故——几乎任何骑行中都可能发生的断裂、撕裂、割伤、脱臼、脑震荡和挫伤。
But, according to a twenty-five-year study that used data from the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association, injuries tend to cluster in four areas: the head and face (sixteen per cent), the neck and back (fifteen per cent), the knees (twelve per cent), and the shoulders (twelve per cent).
但是，根据一项使用专业牛仔竞技协会数据的二十五年研究，受伤往往集中在四个部位：头部和面部（16%）、颈部和背部（15%）、膝盖（12%）和肩膀（12%）。
“It’s not if you’re gonna get hurt; it’s when,” some of the parents at the camp acknowledged.
“问题不在于你是否会受伤；而在于何时受伤，”营地的一些家长承认。
Others downplayed the risk, saying they’d rather have one bull try to kill them than eleven football players.
其他人则淡化了这一风险，称他们宁愿让一头公牛试图杀死他们，也不愿让十一名足球运动员杀死他们。
Yet bull riders are ten times more likely than football players to be seriously injured.
然而，骑牛人受重伤的可能性是足球运动员的十倍。
Theirs is the most dangerous organized sport in the world.
他们的运动是世界上最危险的有组织的运动。
Butterwick’s data ended with an alarming spike: in the last two years of the study, the rate of catastrophic injury was more than double that of the twenty-year average.
巴特威克的数据以惊人的峰值结束：在研究的最后两年中，灾难性伤害的发生率是二十年平均水平的两倍多。
This came as no surprise to Cody Custer, the senior trainer at the camp.
对于营地的高级教练科迪·卡斯特来说，这并不奇怪。
“The quality of the stock just keeps getting better,” he told me.
“股票的质量一直在变得更好，”他告诉我。
“When we were riding, you might go to ten rodeos and maybe get one bull that bucked really hard.
“当我们骑马的时候，你可能会去看十场牛仔竞技表演，也许会看到一头非常猛烈的公牛。
Now, out of a herd of thirty, twenty-two will be buckers.
现在，三十头牛群中，有二十二头是鹿。
It’s an epidemic, really.”
这确实是一种流行病。”
Custer’s son Brett was a sixteen-year-old bull rider at the camp.
卡斯特的儿子布雷特是营地里一名十六岁的骑牛人。
He was a little stud, Custer said.
卡斯特说，他是个小种马。
“But all it takes is one time to break an egg in there—or kill a kid or paralyze him.” The Camp of Champions played it safe by rodeo standards.
“但只需要一次就能打碎一颗鸡蛋，或者杀死一个孩子，或者让他瘫痪。”按照牛仔竞技表演的标准，冠军营表现得很安全。
The boys had to wear helmets and vests, the trainers stressed caution, the livestock were somewhat less than homicidal.
男孩们必须戴头盔和背心，训练员强调要小心，牲畜的杀戮程度也有所降低。
But at the Youth World Finals all bets would be off: the previous year, among the oldest contestants, three out of four had been bucked off.
但在青年世界总决赛上，所有的赌注都将落空：前一年，在最年长的参赛者中，四分之三的人都被击败了。
When Custer was born, in 1965, rodeo still seemed an extension of ordinary cowboying.
1965 年卡斯特出生时，牛仔竞技似乎仍然是普通牛仔运动的延伸。
He joined his first roundup at the age of four, on his family’s ranch south of the Grand Canyon, and spent much of his youth riding bareback.
他四岁时在大峡谷以南自家的牧场参加了第一次围捕，并在青少年时期的大部分时间里骑着无鞍马。
He learned to loosen his hips and shift his weight, to roll with every pitch and yaw.
他学会了放松臀部、转移体重、随着每一个俯仰和偏航而滚动。
He learned to ride with his feet, clamping them tight to an animal’s sides and reacting to the slightest twitch.
他学会了用脚骑行，将脚紧紧地夹在动物的身体两侧，并对最轻微的抽动做出反应。
He learned to use every inch and ounce of his lariat-thin frame, sitting tall to increase his leverage and send pressure down his legs.
他学会了利用他瘦弱的身体的每一英寸和每一盎司，坐得高高的，以增加他的杠杆作用，并将压力传递到他的腿上。
By the age of fourteen, he’d ridden some twenty-five hundred steer.
到十四岁时，他已经骑了大约两千五百头牛。
These were castrated animals, not nearly as strong and wild as an uncut bull, which was just what he needed.
这些都是阉割过的动物，不像未受割礼的公牛那么强壮和狂野，而这正是他所需要的。
“Most of them just went straight up and down,” he told me.
“他们中的大多数人只是直线上升和下降，”他告诉我。
“But my confidence got sky high and so did my skills.”
“但我的信心变得很高，我的技能也变得很高。”
In his twenty years on the circuit, Custer had his share of injuries: a collapsed lung, several broken ribs, and a broken jaw that had to be wired shut for five weeks.
在职业生涯的二十年里，卡斯特也受过伤：肺部塌陷、几根肋骨骨折、下巴骨折，必须用电线缝合五周。
He had major surgeries on both shoulders and one of his knees and suffered a string of severe concussions, the worst of which knocked him out for more than half an hour.
他的双肩和一个膝盖都接受了大手术，并遭受了一系列严重脑震荡，最严重的一次让他昏迷了半个多小时。
Yet he counts himself lucky.
但他认为自己很幸运。
Custer won a world championship in 1992, was elected to the Professional Bull Riders Ring of Honor in 2003, and was still walking when he retired, that same year.
卡斯特于 1992 年赢得了世界冠军，并于 2003 年被选为职业公牛骑手荣誉戒指，同年退役时仍在行走。
“I got away pretty good, all things considered,” he told me.
“从各方面考虑，我逃得很好，”他告诉我。
“You probably won’t be hearing about twenty-year bull-riding careers anymore.”
“你可能不会再听到二十年的骑牛生涯了。”
Bodacious changed the way rodeo animals are bred.
大胆改变了牛仔竞技动物的饲养方式。
Before him, most bulls were a dubious commodity—worth more for beef than for bucking cowboys.
在他之前，大多数公牛都是一种可疑的商品——作为牛肉比作为顽强的牛仔更有价值。
A rancher might get a hundred dollars every time his bull was ridden, twice that much at big events.
牧场主每次骑他的公牛可能会得到一百美元，在大型活动中这一数字是两倍。
The riders made the real money—they were the ones that people came to see.
骑手们赚了真正的钱——他们是人们来看的人。
Bodacious changed that equation.
大胆改变了这个等式。
People who’d never heard of Tuff Hedeman knew the name of the bull who’d “rearranged his face,” as Hedeman’s wife later put it.
从未听说过塔夫·赫德曼的人都知道这头公牛的名字，正如赫德曼的妻子后来所说，它“重新排列了他的脸”。
After Bodacious was retired, he toured the country like a war hero, appearing in GQ and Penthouse , making personal appearances at restaurants, casinos, and car dealerships.
Bodacious 退休后，他像战争英雄一样环游全国，出现在《GQ》和《Penthouse》中，并在餐馆、赌场和汽车经销店亲自露面。
“It was unreal,” Sammy Andrews told me.
“这太不真实了，”萨米·安德鲁斯告诉我。
“I thought we’d sell two or three T-shirts.
“我想我们会卖两三件 T 恤。
But we had tour buses coming around to see him.” There were Bodacious coffee mugs, belt buckles, jewelry lines, and condoms.
但我们有旅游巴士来看他。”其中有 Bodacious 咖啡杯、皮带扣、珠宝系列和避孕套。
“If a Brahman bull ever were a superstar, then Bodacious just might be,” the band Primus sang.
“如果婆罗门公牛曾经是超级巨星，那么 Bodacious 可能就是，”Primus 乐队唱道。
“He’s a cream-colored, beefy-brawn, full-fledged, four-footed bovine celebrity.”
“他是一位奶油色、肌肉发达、羽翼丰满的四足牛名人。”
Wacey Schalla (left) and Jet Erickson practice on an oil-barrel bull.
韦西·沙拉（左）和杰特·埃里克森在一头油桶公牛上练习。
With fewer and fewer ordinary animals to practice on, the learning curve gets steeper every year.
随着可供练习的普通动物越来越少，学习曲线每年都变得更加陡峭。
Wacey Schalla (left) and Jet Erickson practice on an oil-barrel bull.
韦西·沙拉（左）和杰特·埃里克森在一头油桶公牛上练习。
With fewer and fewer ordinary animals to practice on, the learning curve gets steeper every year.|||
随着可供练习的普通动物越来越少，学习曲线每年都变得更加陡峭。|||
It wasn’t long before breeders found that they didn’t really need riders to make money.
不久之后，饲养员发现他们并不真正需要骑手来赚钱。
As Bodacious’s brand of notoriety spread to other bulls—Wolfman, Dillinger, Asteroid, Bushwacker—ranchers began to earn more from selling sperm, swag, and licensing agreements than they did from rodeos.
随着“大胆”的恶名蔓延到其他公牛——沃尔夫曼、迪林格、小行星、丛林威克——牧场主开始通过出售精子、赃物和许可协议赚取比牛仔竞技更多的收入。
At events called futurities, the bulls could now compete directly against one another, carrying dummy cowboys on their backs while judges rated their bucking ability.
在名为“未来”的赛事中，公牛队现在可以直接相互竞争，背着假牛仔，而评委则对他们的对抗能力进行评分。
The top bull could earn a quarter of a million dollars at a single event, and as the purses grew so did the sport’s attention to genetics.
顶级公牛在一次赛事中可以赚取 25 万美元，随着奖金的增加，这项运动对遗传学的关注也随之增加。
Ranchers once content to breed any bull that leaped around now turned to outcrossing and in-vitro fertilization to select specific behaviors: the dropkick, the side spin, the twisting belly roll.
牧场主曾经满足于培育任何跳跃的公牛，现在转向异型杂交和体外受精来选择特定的行为：踢腿、侧旋、扭转腹部。
The result was a succession of ever more powerful, more athletic, more murderous bulls.
结果是一连串更强大、更运动、更凶残的公牛。
The only question was who could ride them.
唯一的问题是谁可以骑它们。
When Custer won his world championship, in 1992, he rode more than three-quarters of the bulls he drew.
1992 年，当卡斯特赢得世界冠军时，他所骑的公牛有四分之三以上。
Last year’s world champion rode just half.
去年的世界冠军只骑了一半。
The change has been especially hard on young riders.
这种变化对年轻骑手来说尤其困难。
Their learning curve gets steeper every year, and there are fewer and fewer ordinary animals for them to practice on.
他们的学习曲线一年比一年陡峭，可供他们练习的普通动物也越来越少。
“These kids that are eleven, twelve, thirteen years old—they’re getting on bulls that we never saw until we were pros,” Custer told me.
“这些十一岁、十二岁、十三岁的孩子——他们正在骑着我们成为职业选手之前从未见过的公牛，”卡斯特告诉我。
“It’s like a phenomenal little football player being put in with a bunch of college kids who want to knock his head off.”
“这就像一个出色的小足球运动员和一群想要敲掉他的头的大学生在一起。”
Custer is a hard man to rile up.
卡斯特是一个很难激怒的人。
The dashing young cowboy from the old videos now wears tinted glasses and button-down shirts and ends every conversation with “God bless.” But when he talks about rodeo politics you can see the old bull rider in him.
旧视频中那个风度翩翩的年轻牛仔现在戴着有色眼镜，穿着纽扣衬衫，每次谈话都会以“上帝保佑”结束。但当他谈论牛仔竞技政治时，你可以在他身上看到老骑牛人的影子。
Four years ago, when his son was still in junior high, Custer sent a letter to the National High School Rodeo Association asking for steers to be used rather than bulls for the smaller contestants.
四年前，当他的儿子还在上初中时，卡斯特致信全国高中竞技协会，要求为较小的参赛者使用阉牛而不是公牛。
A number of retired rodeo stars co-signed the proposal, but the request was ignored.
一些退休的牛仔竞技明星共同签署了该提案，但该请求被忽视。
“The guys who are raising the bulls, most of them have dollar signs in their eyes,” Custer told me.
卡斯特告诉我：“那些鼓吹公牛的人，他们中的大多数人的眼中都有美元符号。”
“Their interest is not in that little boy.
“他们的兴趣不在那个小男孩身上。
Their interest is in the bull.”
他们的兴趣在于公牛。”
A couple of weeks before the Youth World Finals, I went to visit Dillon Page, the co-owner of D&H Cattle Company, in south-central Oklahoma.
世界青年总决赛前几周，我拜访了位于俄克拉荷马州中南部的 D&H 养牛公司的合伙人狄龙·佩奇 (Dillon Page)。
Page’s family has been raising livestock in the bottomland along the Washita River for three generations.
佩奇家族三代人都在瓦什塔河沿岸的洼地饲养牲畜。
When he bought his first set of bucking bulls, thirty years ago, there were a few dozen rodeo stock contractors in the country.
三十年前，当他购买第一组狂野的公牛时，全国有几十家牛仔竞技表演承包商。
Now there are close to a thousand.
现在已经接近千人了。
For the past few years, Page has managed the ranch with his son Hoyt Dillon, at one point winning the Professional Bull Riders Stock Contractor of the Year award for six years running.
在过去的几年里，佩奇与他的儿子霍伊特·狄龙 (Hoyt Dillon) 一起管理牧场，曾连续六年荣获职业牛骑士年度最佳股票承包商奖。
H.D., as his son is known, runs the breeding operation and shuttles the bulls to rodeos, while Dillon directs the day-to-day workings of the ranch.
他的儿子 H.D. 负责饲养业务，并将公牛送往牛仔竞技表演，而狄龙则负责牧场的日常工作。
On the morning I visited, he’d been up since seven, haying the fields.
我去的那天早上，他七点就起床了，正在田地里干草。
“We’ve got some bulls acting like queers back there,” he told me as we walked toward his truck to begin the morning feeding.
“我们那里有一些公牛表现得像同性恋，”当我们走向他的卡车开始早上喂食时，他告诉我。
“Seems to happen every time you get a weather change.
“似乎每次天气变化都会发生。
A couple of bulls start ridin’ each other, then they go to fightin’, and it just turns into a blasted mess.
几头公牛开始互相骑乘，然后开始打斗，场面变得一团糟。
That’s how you end up with a lot of your cripples.” Page, who is sixty-three, has the crouched, sinewy build and the flinty manner of an old deputy sheriff in a Western.
这就是你最终会落下很多残废的原因。”佩奇现年六十三岁，身材魁梧，身材魁梧，举止冷酷，就像西部片中一位年长的副警长。
He holds the small of his back as he walks and rubs his neck, which is deeply creased and baked red by the sun.
他一边走路，一边扶着自己的腰，揉揉被太阳晒红、有深深皱纹的脖子。
As he muttered instructions to the cowboys on his property, a gold tooth flashed from time to time in his upper jaw.
当他低声向他领地上的牛仔们发出指示时，他的上颌不时闪出一颗金牙。
Some five hundred bulls were scattered across the ranch’s fifteen hundred acres.
占地一千五百英亩的牧场上散布着大约五百头公牛。
Tawny, black, mottled, white—rodeo bulls are almost always mutts—they grazed under spreading pecans, in thirteen pastures separated by tall steel fences.
黄褐色的、黑色的、斑驳的、白色的——竞技公牛几乎都是杂种——它们在被高高的钢栅栏隔开的十三个牧场里，在山核桃下吃草。
The best of them could go for half a million dollars in their prime, but the ranch made even more by selling half-interests in calves.
其中最好的在鼎盛时期可以卖到五十万美元，但牧场通过出售小牛的一半权益赚得更多。
An investor might pay twenty-five thousand for a yearling, cover all its expenses and entry fees, then split the winnings with Page and his son.
投资者可能会支付两万五千美元购买一岁鸽，支付其所有费用和报名费，然后与佩奇和他的儿子分享奖金。
If all went well, the bull would get sent to thirty-five or forty rodeos a year, earning five to ten thousand in fees and up to a hundred thousand in futurities and other winnings.
如果一切顺利，公牛每年会被派去参加三十五或四十场牛仔竞技表演，赚取五到一万的费用，以及高达十万的期货和其他奖金。
After eight or nine years, he’d be retired, then used to sire calves for another decade or more.
八九年后，他就会退休，然后再养小牛十年或更长时间。
A single straw of champion semen could go for upward of five thousand dollars.
一根冠军精液的售价可达五千美元以上。
When we reached the first pasture, Page jumped out of the truck to open the gate and drove over to a row of galvanized troughs.
当我们到达第一个牧场时，佩奇跳下卡车打开大门，开到一排镀锌槽前。
He put the truck in neutral to set it rolling slowly beside them and flipped a toggle beneath the steering wheel.
他将卡车置于空挡，让它在他们旁边缓慢行驶，然后扳动方向盘下方的拨动开关。
This triggered an auger in back to release the feed—a mixture of cracked corn, cottonseed, soybean hulls, and dried distiller’s grain.
这触发了后面的螺旋钻释放饲料——破碎的玉米、棉籽、大豆皮和干酒糟的混合物。
As it poured down the length of the troughs, Page jumped out of the cab again and ran back to pull some hay from the truck bed.
当雨水沿着槽倾泻而下时，佩奇再次跳出驾驶室，跑回来从卡车床上拉出一些干草。
He scattered it around the troughs, ran back to the cab, climbed in, and drove to the next gate, then started the process all over.
他把它撒在槽周围，跑回驾驶室，爬上车，开到下一个大门，然后重新开始这个过程。
At one point, a big white bull came shouldering toward him, testicles hanging nearly to the ground.
有一次，一头白色的大公牛用肩膀朝他走来，睾丸几乎垂到地上。
Page shouted and waved his arms.
佩奇大喊并挥舞着双臂。
When that didn’t work, he bent down and picked up a dirt clod and pelted him with it.
当这不起作用时，他弯下腰，捡起一块土块朝他扔去。
The bull stood his ground and gave a deep grunt, then shook his horns and clattered off.
公牛坚守阵地，发出一声低沉的咕噜声，然后摇晃着牛角，哗啦啦地离开了。
“You just hope they don’t decide to run over you,” Page said when he got back in.
“你只是希望他们不要决定从你身上碾过去，”佩奇回到车里后说道。
Before he bred bulls, Page tried his hand at riding them for a few years.
在饲养公牛之前，佩奇曾尝试骑乘公牛几年。
He was never good enough to make a career of it, he told me, but he got off easy where injuries were concerned—just a few broken bones and a ruptured spleen.
他告诉我，他从来都不够优秀，无法以此为职业，但他在伤病方面却很轻松——只是几处骨折和脾脏破裂。
Although there was that one ride, when he was seventeen or eighteen—the one that left him with three ribs broken off into his lower belly.
尽管有过一次骑行，那是在他十七岁或十八岁的时候——那次骑行让他的三根肋骨折断到了下腹部。
“I was pissin’ and shittin’ blood for four days,” he said.
“我已经尿了四天了，尿血了，”他说。
“I don’t know if it was my bladder or my kidneys, but something wasn’t right in there.” The pain got so bad that he had a friend haul him to the emergency room in Ardmore.
“我不知道是我的膀胱还是肾脏的问题，但里面有些东西不对劲。”疼痛非常严重，他的一个朋友把他拉到阿德莫尔的急诊室。
But the doctors kept him waiting for four or five hours, so he went back home.
但医生让他等了四五个小时，他才回家。
Two weeks later, the bleeding finally stopped.
两周后，血终于止住了。
“I guess it wasn’t life-threatening,” he said.
“我想这不会危及生命，”他说。
I asked him how he would have fared on bulls like the ones he breeds now, and he laughed.
我问他如果像他现在饲养的公牛那样，会表现如何，他笑了。
“Oh, not very well, I guess.
“哦，我想不太好。
I rode some pretty good ones in my day—one of ’em, J’s Pet, hadn’t been rode in five years.
我当时骑过一些相当不错的马——其中一个，J’s Pet，已经五年没有骑过了。
I thought I’d done a pretty good deal.
我以为我已经做了一件很不错的事情了。
But he couldn’t even hold a light to some of these things that we buck today.”
但他甚至无法理解我们今天所反对的一些事情。”
Bucking bulls are like human athletes: every generation has a few that are unaccountably great.
斗牛就像人类运动员一样：每一代人都有一些非常伟大的斗牛。
The Peyton Mannings and LeBron Jameses can’t really be reproduced or used to gauge the average level of play.
佩顿·曼宁斯和勒布朗·詹姆斯不能真正被复制或用来衡量平均水平。
It’s when you look down the bench that you start to see a pattern.
当你低头看板凳时，你就会开始看到一种模式。
“Take Stone Sober over there,” Page said.
“带斯通·清醒去那里，”佩奇说。
He pointed to a red bull pacing inside a trailer next to the pasture, soon to be taken to a rodeo.
他指着牧场旁边的一辆拖车里踱步的红牛，很快就会被带到牛仔竞技表演场。
He was built like a middleweight wrestler, with bunched shoulders and thick veins ridging his muscles.
他的身材就像一名中量级摔跤手，肩膀紧绷，肌肉上青筋暴起。
“We’d rather have him a little bigger,” he said.
“我们宁愿让他大一点，”他说。
“He’s probably thirteen hundred, fourteen hundred pounds—his mama was little bitty.
“他大概有一千三百、一千四百磅——他妈妈有点矮。
But he can jump as high as this fence with somebody on it.
但当有人在上面时，他可以跳到栅栏那么高。
He can turn back and spin and go the other way, and he has a lot of kick and a great big belly roll.
他可以转身、旋转和向另一条路走，而且他有很多踢腿和一个很棒的大肚皮滚动。
Shucks, there ain’t no telling what he’s gonna do.
糟糕，谁也不知道他会做什么。
I don’t think he knows hisself.” In the past three years, Stone Sober had bucked off twenty-two out of twenty-three riders, most of them in under four seconds.
我认为他不了解自己。”在过去的三年里，斯通·索伯 (Stone Sober) 击败了 23 名骑手中的 22 名，其中大多数都在四秒内完成。
Jadeyn Lara (left) and Shayne Spain after completing the third round of mutton busting.
杰登·拉拉（Jadeyn Lara）（左）和谢恩·斯班恩（Shayne Spain）完成第三轮宰杀羊肉后。
Spain finished third over all; Lara finished eighth.
西班牙队获得第三名；劳拉获得第八名。
They have become friends through competing together.
他们通过一起竞争成为了朋友。
Jadeyn Lara (left) and Shayne Spain after completing the third round of mutton busting.
杰登·拉拉（Jadeyn Lara）（左）和谢恩·斯班恩（Shayne Spain）完成第三轮宰杀羊肉后。
Spain finished third over all; Lara finished eighth.
西班牙队获得第三名；劳拉获得第八名。
They have become friends through competing together.|||
他们通过一起竞争成为了朋友。|||
An animal like that is a freak of nature, Page said.
佩奇说，像这样的动物是大自然的怪物。
It’s a petri dish full of exotic mutations—of tics and phobias, spastic nerves and explosive rages, carefully culled and combined.
这是一个充满奇异突变的培养皿——抽搐和恐惧症、痉挛神经和爆炸性愤怒，经过精心挑选和组合。
The sperm from a champion sire is usually collected off-site, mixed with eggs from a proven dam, and transplanted into a rancher’s cows.
冠军公牛的精子通常是在场外收集的，与经过验证的母牛的卵子混合，然后移植到牧场主的奶牛身上。
It doesn’t always work.
它并不总是有效。
Genetic recombination is a crapshoot, and the outcome depends as much on psychology as on physiology.
基因重组是一种冒险行为，其结果既取决于心理学，也取决于生理学。
“Confidence plays a big part in it,” H.
“信心在其中发挥着重要作用，”H.
D.
D .
Page told me later, on the phone.
佩奇后来在电话里告诉我。
“If a bull gets rode every time he pokes his head out the gate, he’ll either quit buckin’ or change his buckin’ pattern to win.
“如果一头公牛每次把头伸出门外时都被骑着，他要么放弃斗牛，要么改变他的斗牛模式来获胜。
Some of them just figure it’s not worth the effort, and some of them learn to enjoy their jobs.
他们中的一些人认为这不值得付出努力，而另一些人则学会享受自己的工作。
They get addicted to the adrenaline.”
他们对肾上腺素上瘾。”
The result can be as unhealthy for the bull as for the rider.
结果对于公牛和骑手来说都是不健康的。
When a two-thousand-pound animal leaps six feet in the air and hammers down on his back legs, things can go wrong: joints pop, tendons snap, backs get thrown out of kilter.
当一头重达两千磅的动物在六英尺高的空中跳跃并猛击后腿时，可能会出现问题：关节断裂、肌腱折断、背部失去平衡。
One of the pastures on the Pages’ ranch was full of hobbled old gladiators, kept around for semen or sentiment.
佩吉斯牧场的其中一个牧场上挤满了步履蹒跚的老角斗士，他们为了精液或情感而被保留在周围。
“This one here broke his leg at the finals,” Page said, pulling up next to a white-headed bull with a black eye patch.
“这个人在决赛中摔断了腿，”佩奇停在一头戴着黑眼罩的白头公牛旁边说道。
“Hard Twisted.
“硬扭曲。
Won a hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars as a two-year-old, but you can’t set a broke leg.
两岁的时候就赢了十二万五千美元，但你不能把一条断腿接回来。
See how crooked it is?” He let the truck idle a little farther, then pointed to a big brown bull stepping gingerly beside the fence.
你看看它有多歪吗？”他让卡车继续怠速一点，然后指着一头小心翼翼地走在栅栏旁边的棕色大公牛。
“His leg?
“他的腿？
He broke it so bad that it drawed up.
他把它弄坏了，以至于它被拉起来了。
It don’t even touch the ground.” He shook his head.
它甚至没有接触地面。”他摇摇头。
“I shoulda done killed him.
“我应该杀了他。
They make the best hamburger meat there is—well muscled and lean.
他们制作的汉堡肉是世界上最好的——肌肉发达且瘦肉。
Ain’t nobody that’ll have better hamburger meat.
没有人会吃到更好的汉堡肉。
But sometimes you get to thinkin’ too much and you keep ’em around when you shouldn’t.”
但有时你会想得太多，并且在不该想的时候把它们留在身边。”
I asked Page if he ever wonders if things have gone too far.
我问佩奇他是否想过事情是否已经太过分了。
His son tried to ride Bodacious three times, yet here they are trying to make bulls even meaner.
他的儿子曾三次尝试骑“大胆”，但这次他们却试图让公牛变得更加卑鄙。
Is there a limit to how dangerous a bull can or should be?
公牛的危险程度或应该达到的程度是否有极限？
“I hope not,” he said.
“我希望不会，”他说。
“Because I intend on making one that’s a whole lot ranker than we’ve had before.” He smirked.
“因为我打算制作一个比我们以前排名更高的作品。”他傻笑起来。
“You know the bad thing?
“你知道坏事吗？
We can’t breed cowboys.
我们不能培育牛仔。
If you could figure out how to get a set of women and three or four sires that had all that heart and the other ingredients that it takes, then you could match the sires and the dams up like we do the bulls.
如果你能弄清楚如何获得一组女性和三到四只拥有全部心力和所需的其他成分的公牛，那么你就可以像我们匹配公牛一样将公牛和母牛进行匹配。
Then maybe we’d have a great bull rider.”
那么也许我们就会有一位出色的骑牛人。”
In the meantime, there’s only one alternative: start them young.
与此同时，只有一种选择：从小就开始。
The Taylor County Expo Center, in Abilene, must have looked like the Taj Mahal to Wacey and his friends.
对于韦西和他的朋友来说，位于阿比林的泰勒县博览中心一定看起来像泰姬陵。
They’d been to a lot of rodeos by then—dusty little arenas at the edge of town, with a rickety concession stand on one side and some bleachers on the other—but never one like this.
那时他们已经看过很多牛仔竞技表演了——城镇边缘布满灰尘的小竞技场，一侧是摇摇欲坠的小卖部，另一侧是一些看台——但从来没有像这样的。
The parking lot was as big as an airport, with what looked like a giant spaceship in the middle.
停车场有机场那么大，中间停着一艘看起来像巨型飞船的东西。
It had a hallway inside that went clear around it, filled with folks selling cowboy hats and rifle cases, saddle soap, tooth guards, rope rosin, and T-shirts that said things like “Mama Tried” and “The Hurrier I Go, the Behinder I Get.” When you walked down the tunnel and out into the arena, the seats went up and up on every side.
里面有一条周围很干净的走廊，里面挤满了人，出售牛仔帽、步枪盒、马鞍肥皂、护牙套、松香绳，以及写着“妈妈尝试过”和“我走的匆忙，我的落后者”之类的 T 恤。当你沿着隧道走进竞技场时，四面八方的座位都在升起。
The roof looked like it was five stories high.
屋顶看起来有五层楼那么高。
The floor was covered in a maze of pens and chutes full of livestock, with cowboys hanging off all the rails.
地板上布满了迷宫般的围栏和装满牲畜的滑槽，牛仔挂在所有的栏杆上。
There was even air-conditioning—at a rodeo!
牛仔竞技表演时甚至还有空调！
Imagine that.
想象一下。
The World Finals are really six separate competitions, each for a different age group and animal.
世界总决赛实际上是六场独立的比赛，每场比赛针对不同的年龄组和动物。
The four-to-six-year-olds ride sheep, the seven- and eight-year-olds are on calves, the nine-to-eleven-year-olds on steers, and the rest on increasingly fearsome bulls.
四到六岁的孩子骑绵羊，七八岁的孩子骑牛犊，九到十一岁的孩子骑公牛，其余的则骑越来越可怕的公牛。
Each contestant rides once a day for three days, earning up to a hundred points per ride from the four judges stationed around the arena.
每位参赛者每天骑行一次，持续三天，每次骑行从驻扎在赛场周围的四位评委那里获得最多一百分。
On the fourth day, the top fifteen scorers out of the fifty in each group compete for their division championship.
第四天，每组50名选手中得分前15名的选手争夺分区冠军。
There are cash prizes for the highest scores every day and a big pot at the end for each champion—more than sixty thousand dollars altogether.
每天最高分都有现金奖励，每位冠军最后还有一大笔奖金——总共超过六万美元。
“A lot of this event is about the luck of the draw,” Curtis Spain, one of the event’s organizers, told me.
“这次活动很大程度上取决于抽签的运气，”活动组织者之一柯蒂斯·西班牙告诉我。
The best buckers earn the best scores for their riders, but they’re also the most likely to toss a rider off.
最好的投手可以为骑手赢得最好的分数，但他们也最有可能将骑手击倒。
“We call that thinning the herd.” Back home in Forney, Texas, Spain had his own rodeo arena as well as a mechanical bull.
“我们称之为牛群稀疏化。”回到德克萨斯州福尼的家乡，西班牙拥有自己的牛仔竞技场以及一头机械公牛。
His son Mason was one of the top eleven-year-olds in the finals, and his daughter Shayne, age seven, was an excellent mutton buster—one of only two girls in the finals.
他的儿子梅森是决赛中成绩最好的 11 岁选手之一，而他七岁的女儿谢恩则是一名出色的羊肉杀手，是决赛中仅有的两名女孩之一。
Girls could qualify for the older age groups as well, but most dropped out before that—often at their parents’ urging.
女孩也有资格进入较大年龄组，但大多数女孩在此之前就退出了——通常是在父母的敦促下。
“The world’s most dangerous sport is not something you really want to let your little girl do,” her father told me.
“世界上最危险的运动并不是你真正想让你的小女儿做的事情，”她的父亲告诉我。
“This is Shayne’s farewell tour.”
“这是谢恩的告别巡演。”
The first round was rough on Spain’s kids, as it was on the boys from Oklahoma.
第一轮对西班牙的孩子们来说很艰难，就像对来自俄克拉荷马州的孩子们一样。
All of them rode well but drew sluggish animals, earning mediocre scores.
他们都骑得很好，但画的动物却很迟钝，得分平平。
Trigger was the exception.
触发器是个例外。
He drew one of the feistiest calves in the pen—a big black Holstein—but got bucked off right before the buzzer.
他画了圈内最活泼的小牛之一——一头黑色的荷斯坦大牛——但在蜂鸣器响起之前被击倒了。
“He came out and took two big blows and then started lopin’,” Trigger told me the next morning.
“他出来后受到了两次重击，然后开始狂奔。”第二天早上，特里格告诉我。
“The second blow put me over on the side, and it’s really hard to stay on when he’s lopin’ and bouncin’ like that.” I told him that I was sure he’d do better this time, but he didn’t look convinced.
“第二次打击让我跌倒在一边，当他像那样蹦蹦跳跳时，我真的很难坚持下去。”我告诉他我确信这次他会做得更好，但他看起来并不相信。
“Hopefully,” he said, picking at his chaps.
“希望如此，”他一边说，一边挑剔着他的伙伴们。
“The Star-Spangled Banner” was blaring over the loudspeakers by then—a taped version by LeAnn Rimes, sounding like a country girl who’d just walked out on her worthless lover.
当时扩音器里正在播放《星条旗永不落》——这是莉安·莱姆斯的录音版本，听起来就像一个刚刚抛弃了她毫无价值的情人的乡村女孩。
Over by the chutes, the mutton busters were getting ready to start the second round.
滑道那边，羊肉破坏者们正准备开始第二轮比赛。
Shayne Spain leaned against a rail and glanced up at Jadeyn Lara, the only other girl in the finals.
谢恩·西班牙靠在栏杆上，抬头看了一眼贾登·拉拉，决赛中唯一的另一个女孩。
Shayne was a year older and half a head taller, with a gap in her front teeth.
谢恩比她大了一岁，高了半个头，门牙上有一个缺口。
Her stringy blond hair fell loose across her shirt—her brother’s, which she’d worn for good luck.
她的金色头发松散地披在衬衫上——她哥哥的衬衫，她穿这件衣服是为了好运。
Jadeyn had on a pink vest that said “Ridin’ Dirty” and pink chaps stitched with dollar signs—her nickname was J.
贾登穿着一件写着“Ridin’ Dirty”的粉红色背心，穿着缝有美元符号的粉红色裤子——她的昵称是 J。
Money.
钱。
She’d positioned herself at the highest point in the arena, on a platform above the center chute, and was kneeling there with her head lifted high, like the figurehead on a ship’s prow.
她把自己定位在竞技场的最高点，中央降落伞上方的平台上，跪在那里，高高地抬起头，就像船头的船首雕像。
She and Shayne had both dominated their local rodeo circuits—Shayne in north-central Texas and Jadeyn in the southeast—and both wanted badly to be the first girl to win the finals.
她和谢恩都统治了当地的牛仔竞技巡回赛——德克萨斯州中北部的谢恩和东南部的贾登——两人都非常想成为第一个赢得决赛的女孩。
“The boys hate it,” Curtis Spain told me.
“孩子们讨厌它，”柯蒂斯·西班牙告诉我。
“They hate losing to a girl.
“他们讨厌输给女孩。
But little girls develop faster than little boys, and Shayne is fearless, man.
但小女孩比小男孩发育得快，谢恩无所畏惧，伙计。
She likes rubbing their noses in it.”
她喜欢用鼻子蹭他们的鼻子。”
Sheep aren’t all that into bucking.
绵羊并不那么喜欢逆行。
Truth be told, they don’t like to run that much, either.
说实话，他们也不喜欢跑那么多。
It takes a sharp spur and a clanging cowbell to get most of them moving, and even then they’re a pretty smooth, well-cushioned ride.
大多数车都需要尖锐的马刺和叮当作响的牛铃才能移动，即使这样，它们的行驶也相当平稳、缓冲良好。
Still, the mutton busters found ways to fall off.
尽管如此，羊肉破坏者还是找到了摆脱困境的方法。
Some lost their grip on the wool and keeled over sideways.
有些人失去了对羊毛的抓握，向侧面倾斜。
Others held on tight and pulled their mounts down on top of them.
其他人则紧紧抓住，将坐骑拉到他们身上。
One or two hit the arena wall and got peeled off, or flipped head over heels when their sheep came to a dead stop.
一两只羊撞到了竞技场的墙壁并被剥落，或者当他们的羊完全停下来时翻了个跟头。
Shayne and Jadeyn both managed to hang on, but Shayne got the better draw.
谢恩和贾登都坚持了下来，但谢恩获得了更好的抽签。
Her sheep had been sheared recently, so it was harder to hold but also faster and jumpier.
她的羊最近刚剪过毛，所以抓起来比较困难，但速度也更快、更跳跃。
She scored a sixty-four, for fifth place over all.
她获得了六十四分，在总成绩中排名第五。
Jadeyn started off well, or at least upright, then slowly began to tip over.
贾登一开始很好，或者至少是直立的，然后慢慢地开始翻倒。
By the time the buzzer sounded, she was hanging off her sheep at three o’clock, yet she never fell: fifty-four points—enough for eighteenth place.
当蜂鸣器响起时，她已经在三点钟挂在羊身上了，但她从未跌倒：五十四分——足够获得第十八名。
A junior bull rider loaded in the bucking chutein the final moments before a ride.
一名初级斗牛骑手在骑行前的最后一刻将货物装进了冲撞斜槽。
Contestants at the Youth Bull Riders World Finals range in age from four to nineteen.
青年公牛骑手世界总决赛的参赛者年龄从四岁到十九岁不等。
A junior bull rider loaded in the bucking chute in the final moments before a ride.
一名初级斗牛骑手在骑行前的最后时刻将货物装进了反冲滑槽。
Contestants at the Youth Bull Riders World Finals range in age from four to nineteen.|||
青年斗牛士世界总决赛的参赛者年龄从四岁到十九岁不等。|||
By the time the calf riders’ turn came, the crowd was getting giddy.
当轮到小牛骑手的时候，人群变得头晕目眩。
“Sweet Child O’ Mine” was playing on the P.A., with a ragged chorus of bleats and bellows behind it.
扩音器里正在播放《Sweet Child O’ Mine》，后面是杂乱的咩咩声和吼叫声。
As the contestants lined up, the m.c.
当参赛者排队时，主持人。
introduced each one with a verbal drumroll: age, home town, championships, and sponsors.
口头介绍了每一位选手：年龄、家乡、冠军和赞助商。
Tiger Mart, B&B Towing, Pop’s Honey Fried Chicken.
Tiger Mart、B&B Towing、Pop’s Honey Fried Chicken。
A lot of the boys already had stage names: Dusty Rhodes, Colt Christie, Fate Snyder, Tater Tot Wilcox.
许多男孩已经有了艺名：达斯蒂·罗兹 (Dusty Rhodes)、柯尔特·克里斯蒂 (Colt Christie)、法特·斯奈德 (Fate Snyder)、塔特·托特·威尔考克斯 (Tater Tot Wilcox)。
Their parents knew that rodeo is one part extreme sport, one part show business.
他们的父母知道牛仔竞技一方面是极限运动，另一方面是演艺事业。
Some of the riders looked as gaudy as rodeo clowns in their embroidered shirts and lizard-skin boots, crested Roman helmets, and vests that read “Cowkids for Christ.” But it was up to the calves to make them look good.
一些骑手穿着绣花衬衫和蜥蜴皮靴子，戴着罗马冠头盔，背心上写着“牛仔为基督”，看上去就像牛仔竞技表演的小丑一样俗气。但要让小牛看起来好看，就得靠小牛了。
Wacey drew a big white Holstein with mean-looking eye patches.
韦西画了一头巨大的白色荷斯坦牛，上面戴着看起来很卑鄙的眼罩。
The calf looked promising at first, but proved to be a halfhearted bucker.
这头小牛一开始看起来很有前途，但事实证明它是个三心二意的人。
It was all Wacey could do to score sixty points, leaving him in thirteenth place—just enough to make the championship round, if he rode well the next day.
韦西竭尽全力获得了六十分，使他排名第十三——如果他第二天骑得好的话，这足以进入冠军赛。
Jet drew one of the rankest calves in Abilene: a twisting, half-spinning specimen who’d bucked off his rider the day before.
杰特画了阿比林最凶猛的小牛之一：一只扭曲的、半旋转的标本，前一天从骑手身上摔了下来。
For a second or two, Jet looked loose and in control.
有那么一两秒钟，杰特看起来很放松，但一切都在掌控之中。
Then he leaned a touch too far forward, the calf changed directions and kicked up its back legs, and just like that the boy was tumbling through the air.
然后他向前倾了一点，小牛改变了方向，抬起了后腿，就这样，男孩在空中翻滚了。
A few minutes later, Trigger met the same fate.
几分钟后，触发器也遭遇了同样的命运。
He came out looking stiff and off center, got thrown to one side, and bounced off just before the buzzer.
他出来时看上去僵硬且偏离中心，被抛到一侧，并在蜂鸣器响起前弹回。
Both boys got up crying but dried their tears by the time they reached the gate.
两个男孩都哭了起来，但当他们到达门口时，他们都擦干了眼泪。
They would not qualify for the final round.
他们将没有资格进入最后一轮。
“He hit the ground trying,” Jet’s father told me afterward.
“他尝试着摔倒在地，”杰特的父亲后来告诉我。
“That calf would dang sure have been hard for any kid to ride.” Trigger’s dad was less philosophical.
“那头小牛肯定会晃来晃去，对任何孩子来说都很难骑。”扳机的父亲没那么有哲理。
“He’s in a slump,” he said.
“他正处于低潮期，”他说。
“First time I’ve seen it in his life.
“我这辈子第一次见到这种情况。
It’s just really frustrating—he’s got so much natural talent.
这真的很令人沮丧——他有如此多的天赋。
When he’s locked in, he can’t be beat, but he’s been riding like an average kid.
当他被锁定时，他无法被击败，但他一直像一个普通孩子一样骑行。
Those first two calves, he could ride those with his eyes closed.”
前两只小牛，他闭着眼睛都可以骑。”
The next morning, before the national anthem, one of the event directors made his way to the microphone.
第二天早上，在奏国歌之前，一位活动总监走向麦克风。
A tall, barrel-chested Texan named Danny Malone, he worked as a lineman northwest of Fort Worth and had a sixteen-year-old boy in the Open Bull competition.
丹尼·马龙 (Danny Malone) 是一位身材高大、胸肌发达的德克萨斯人，他在沃斯堡西北部担任巡边员，并有一个 16 岁的男孩参加公牛公开赛。
It had been brought to his attention, he announced, that some parents had been acting inappropriately—using foul language and “whuppin’ on” boys who’d been bucked off.
他宣布，有人引起了他的注意，一些家长的行为不当——使用粗言秽语，并对那些被拒绝的男孩进行“殴打”。
“Well, I’m here to tell you that that will not be tolerated,” he said.
“好吧，我来这里是想告诉你，这种行为是不能容忍的，”他说。
“It’s the reason we have U.S. Marshals and Texas Rangers here.
“这就是我们这里有美国法警和德克萨斯游骑兵队的原因。
If you are caught, you will be asked to leave this property and you will not be allowed back.” He paused, then added, almost beseechingly, “Guys, come on!
如果你被抓住，你将被要求离开这处房产，并且不会被允许回来。”他停顿了一下，然后几乎是恳求地补充道：“伙计们，来吧！
They’re young and they’re trying their best.
他们还年轻，正在尽最大努力。
If they’re not—hey, we don’t know what’s going on in their heads.
如果他们不是——嘿，我们不知道他们脑子里在想什么。
Maybe they’re just having an off day.
也许他们只是休息了一天。
Now, I know I’m not their parent.
现在，我知道我不是他们的父母。
I can’t tell you what to do with your kids in private.
我不能告诉你私下里该怎么对待你的孩子。
But if I see you whuppin’ on them I will not tolerate it.
但如果我看到你对他们大打出手，我就不会容忍。
And, yes, I know who you are.”
而且，是的，我知道你是谁。”
Most parents at the World Finals weren’t used to seeing their kids bucked off, much less three out of four times.
世界总决赛上的大多数家长都不习惯看到自己的孩子被淘汰，更不用说四分之三了。
At one point, I watched one of the fourteen-year-olds leave the arena after getting thrown off his second bull.
有一次，我看到其中一个十四岁的孩子从他的第二头公牛身上被甩下来后离开了竞技场。
He sat down, took off his helmet, and smashed it into his forehead.
他坐下来，摘下头盔，砸在额头上。
Then he did it again, methodically, five times in a row.
然后他又重复了一遍，有条不紊，连续五次。
“That’s gotta hurt,” someone next to me said.
“那一定很痛，”我旁边的一个人说。
It was the first time I’d heard that at a rodeo.
这是我第一次在牛仔竞技表演中听到这样的说法。
When I asked Malone for a rundown of the week’s injuries, he mentioned “the usual bumps and bruises”—rodeo-speak for everything from deep lacerations to hobbling hematomas.
当我向马龙询问本周的伤病情况时，他提到了“常见的肿块和瘀伤”——牛仔竞技表演中的说法，包括从深度撕裂伤到步履蹒跚的血肿等各种情况。
Then he went on to list a dislocated hip, a fractured eye socket, and a stock contractor whose incisors had been knocked in by a swinging gate.
然后他接着列出了髋关节脱臼、眼窝骨折和一名门牙被旋转门撞断的库存承包商的名单。
“We had to put his teeth in saline and send him to the trauma center,” Malone said.
“我们不得不把他的牙齿放在盐水中，然后把他送到创伤中心，”马龙说。
Malone’s son Austen was one of the best riders in Abilene, as well as one of the most injury-prone.
马龙的儿子奥斯汀是阿比林最好的骑手之一，也是最容易受伤的骑手之一。
A lanky, sweet-faced kid with long curly blond hair, he’d had several concussions, broken arms, and a dislocated neck.
他是一个身材瘦长、面容甜美的孩子，有一头长长的金色卷发，曾遭受过几次脑震荡，手臂骨折，脖子脱臼。
He’d shattered his right leg so badly that the tibia and the fibula were snapped off completely, the foot turned around backward.
他的右腿骨折得很严重，胫骨和腓骨完全折断，脚向后转。
The previous year, Austen had spent a week in the hospital after a bull jumped on his chest.
去年，一头公牛跳到奥斯汀的胸口后，他在医院住了一个星期。
Yet he’d come back to win the World Finals.
然而他回来了并赢得了世界总决赛。
“I worry about it.
“我很担心。
I do,” his father told me.
我愿意，”他的父亲告诉我。
“We discuss it all the time.
“我们一直在讨论这个问题。
If something serious happens in the arena and God calls his number—if a fatality happens to my son bull riding—it’ll be a struggle.
如果竞技场上发生了严重的事情并且上帝呼唤了他的号码——如果我儿子骑牛时发生了死亡——那将是一场斗争。
I’m not going to lie to you.
我不会对你撒谎。
But I’ll know that my son will be at peace.
但我知道我的儿子会很平静。
That he died happy and enjoying what he was doing.”
他幸福地死去，并享受他所做的事情。”
A few minutes later, the mutton busters came out to kick off the third round.
几分钟后，羊肉大佬们登场，第三轮比赛拉开帷幕。
Shayne was just seven points out of the lead, but her father didn’t have much faith in the sheep she’d drawn: its last rider had scored only fifty-four points.
谢恩仅落后领先者 7 分，但她的父亲对她画的羊没有太大信心：最后一位骑手只得到了 54 分。
Shayne’s only hope was to spur it out of its torpor, working its sides with both heels, though she’d have a harder time keeping her balance.
谢恩唯一的希望就是用双脚跟推动它的两侧，让它摆脱麻木状态，尽管她会更难保持平衡。
“I told her to let fly the leg,” Curtis said.
“我告诉她放开腿，”柯蒂斯说。
“Just let fly.
“就放飞吧。
Get all the points you can.” The tactic worked.
尽可能获得所有积分。”这个策略奏效了。
The sheep pelted across the arena with sudden vigor, the girl kept her seat, and the ride earned sixty-two points.
羊突然充满活力地冲过竞技场，女孩保住了座位，这次骑行获得了六十二分。
“You know what they say,” the m.c.
“你知道他们说什么，”主持人说。
shouted.
喊道。
“Sometimes the best cowboy for the job is a cowgirl!” Shayne was now in third place for the championship round.
“有时最适合这份工作的牛仔就是女牛仔！”谢恩现在在冠军赛中排名第三。
Even better, she’d outscored her rival, Jadeyn, who hadn’t been as lucky in her draw and was stuck back in eighth.
更好的是，她的得分超过了对手贾登，而贾登在抽签中就没那么幸运，只能排在第八位。
“We’re making our way up!” Curtis told me.
“我们正在向上走！”柯蒂斯告诉我的。
“We’re like a shark, circling, circling, looking for a chance.”
“我们就像一条鲨鱼，盘旋、盘旋，寻找机会。”
Wacey was in a tougher spot, twenty-one points out of first.
韦西的处境更加艰难，落后第一名二十一分。
He needed both a great ride and some help from the leaders to win.
他需要出色的表现和领导者的帮助才能获胜。
When I found him on the catwalk, waiting for his third ride, his brow was furrowed and his eyes fierce with concentration.
当我在T台上发现他等待第三次骑行时，他眉头紧锁，目光专注。
“Just thinking about the business of what I’ve got to do,” he said.
“只是想想我必须做的事情，”他说。
At his parents’ ranch, in Eakly, Oklahoma, he’d spent hours watching bull-riding videos to perfect his form.
在他父母位于俄克拉荷马州埃克利的牧场里，他花了几个小时观看骑牛视频，以完善自己的体态。
He’d been working on keeping his free hand high to help control his upper body, and his other hand pulled tight against the rope.
他一直在努力保持空着的那只手高高，以帮助控制他的上半身，而他的另一只手则紧紧地拉着绳子。
When the calf kicked up, he needed to lean forward off its haunches, and when it broke to the side, he had to keep his butt down, centered and correct.
当小牛踢起时，他需要从臀部向前倾，当小牛向一侧倾斜时，他必须保持屁股向下，居中且正确。
“Riding bulls is such a mind game,” his father, Luke, told me.
“骑公牛是一种智力游戏，”他的父亲卢克告诉我。
“You can buck yourself off just as easily as anything.
“你可以像任何事情一样轻松地摆脱自己。
But he’s a little young for that.
但他还太年轻了。
The truth is he’s on top of his game.”
事实上，他在比赛中处于领先地位。”
Earlier that morning, the third-round draw had been posted on the wall of the tunnel to the arena.
那天早上早些时候，第三轮抽签结果已经贴在通往竞技场的隧道墙上。
Luke peered at it for a second, then nodded with a tight grin.
卢克盯着它看了一会儿，然后咧着嘴笑着点了点头。
For once, Wacey had a bucker.
这一次，韦西有了胆量。
Calf No. 99992 had tossed his rider on the first day and hadn’t been ridden the second, so he’d be fresh.
99992号小牛在第一天就摔倒了骑手，第二天就没有再被骑过，所以他会很新鲜。
“That’s good,” Luke said.
“那就好。”卢克说道。
“He can score some points on that one after those sorry calves he’s had.” His wife, Nikki, wasn’t so sure.
“在经历了那些令人遗憾的小牛之后，他可以在这方面得分。”他的妻子尼基不太确定。
She’d seen what happened to Jet and Trigger.
她亲眼目睹了杰特和扳机的遭遇。
“I was kind of hoping for something a little more average,” she said, her face pale and drawn behind her shades.
“我有点希望能有更普通一点的东西，”她说，她的脸色苍白，在墨镜后面显得憔悴。
Wacey, though, had no doubts: he wanted that calf.
不过，韦西毫不怀疑：他想要那头小牛。
A former champion who is angry about the breeding of fiercer and fiercer bulls says, “You probably won’t be hearing about twenty-yearbull-riding careers anymore.” Riders know that injury is a matter of when, not if.
一位前冠军对饲养越来越凶猛的公牛感到愤怒，他说：“你可能不会再听到二十年的骑牛生涯了。”车手知道受伤只是时间问题，而不是是否会受伤的问题。
A former champion who is angry about the breeding of fiercer and fiercer bulls says, “You probably won’t be hearing about twenty-year bull-riding careers anymore.” Riders know that injury is a matter of when, not if.|||
一位前冠军对饲养越来越凶猛的公牛感到愤怒，他说：“你可能不会再听到二十年的骑牛生涯了。”车手知道受伤只是时间问题，而不是是否会发生的问题。|||
When his turn finally came, he punched his helmet and climbed into the chute.
当终于轮到他时，他敲击头盔，爬进降落伞。
He clamped his legs around the calf’s bony, squirming back, rubbed some rosin into his rope, and wrapped it tight around his fist.
他用双腿夹住小牛的骨头，向后蠕动，在绳子上抹了一些松香，然后将它紧紧地缠在拳头上。
“Ride him like a champ, Wace!” Jet yelled, from the catwalk above him.
“像冠军一样骑着他，Wace！”杰特在他上方的过道上喊道。
Trigger was there, too, grinning down at him.
扳机也在那儿，低头对他微笑。
Then the gate flew open and the calf charged out, leaping and flexing across the arena like a steel spring shot from an old tractor.
然后大门打开了，小牛冲了出去，在竞技场上跳跃和弯曲，就像从旧拖拉机上射出的钢弹簧一样。
He twisted one way and the other, jackknifed in the air and rolled his belly, but could not get the rider off.
他左右扭动，在空中转折，翻滚着肚子，但还是没能把骑手甩下来。
Wacey matched him rhythm for rhythm, free arm waving and heels flying, spurring him on even harder.
韦西配合着他的节奏，自由的手臂挥舞着，脚跟飞舞，激励着他更加努力。
When the buzzer sounded and he’d tumbled to his feet, he gave one of the bullfighters a high five and ran off.
当蜂鸣器响起，他从地上站起来时，他向其中一名斗牛士击掌五分，然后跑开了。
A little later, the m.c.
过了一会儿，m.c.
announced the judges’ tally: 74.5—the highest score for a calf rider all week.
评委们宣布了得分：74.5——本周小牛骑手的最高分。
Wacey would go on to win the round and finish the rodeo in style, riding his last calf cleanly for a sixty-two.
韦西继续赢得了这一轮比赛，并以风格结束了牛仔竞技表演，干净利落地骑着他的最后一头小牛，获得了六十二分。
It wasn’t quite enough to win the championship: his calf was game but underpowered, and he finished third.
这还不足以赢得冠军：他的小腿很出色，但动力不足，他获得了第三名。
But his record from the previous round would stand.
但他上一轮的记录将保持不变。
Shayne ended on an even better note, winning the last round.
谢恩以更好的成绩结束了最后一轮比赛。
She finished third in her group as well.
她也在小组中获得第三名。
She and Wacey each earned a little more than a thousand dollars for their efforts—enough to cover their families’ costs and perhaps a dinner at Applebee’s on the way home.
她和韦西每人的努力赚到了一千多美元——足以支付他们家庭的开支，或许还可以支付回家路上在阿普尔比餐厅的一顿晚餐。
By the time the judges had cut their checks and passed them out in the hall, the Expo Center was nearly empty, its booths packed up and the parking lot deserted.
当评委们切下支票并在大厅里分发时，博览中心几乎空无一人，展位挤满了人，停车场也空无一人。
The other parents had headed home hours ago.
其他父母几个小时前就回家了。
Their boys had a long road ahead of them, and it would soon be past their bedtime.
他们的孩子们还有很长的路要走，而且很快就过了他们的睡觉时间。
Watching the medics put away their ice packs and syringes, painkillers and rolls of bandages, I thought about the last time Tuff Hedeman drew Bodacious.
看着医护人员收起冰袋、注射器、止痛药和绷带卷，我想起了塔夫·赫德曼上次画《大胆》时的情景。
It was December of 1995, just seven weeks after the bull had nearly killed him.
那是 1995 年 12 月，距离公牛差点杀死他仅七周。
Hedeman had lost twenty-five pounds and his body was still healing, but he’d managed to qualify for the National Finals Rodeo anyway.
赫德曼减掉了二十五磅，身体仍在康复中，但无论如何他还是获得了全国牛仔竞技总决赛的资格。
Like Cody Custer and Lane Frost—the hero of the movie “8 Seconds,” who was killed by a bull named Takin’ Care of Business in 1989—Hedeman belonged to a generation of riders who prided themselves on never backing down.
与科迪·卡斯特 (Cody Custer) 和莱恩·弗罗斯特 (Lane Frost)（电影《8秒》中的英雄，1989 年被一头名叫“Takin’ Care of Business”的公牛杀死）一样，赫德曼也属于以永不退缩为荣的一代骑手。
“They just had something the guys don’t have today,” Dillon Page told me.
“他们只是拥有了今天的人所没有的东西，”狄龙·佩奇告诉我。
“They were raised up in the country and they got on bulls to win.” Yet when Hedeman drew Bodacious again, in the sixth round of the finals, he knew what he had to do.
“他们是在乡下长大的，他们靠公牛来获胜。”然而，当赫德曼在决赛第六轮再次抽到博达西斯时，他知道自己必须做什么。
“I thought at first that I might have done something wrong the last time,” he told me.
“我一开始以为我上次可能做错了什么，”他告诉我。
“But when I watched a video of the ride, the fact is that I was in perfect position for a bull of that calibre with that bucking pattern.
“但当我观看骑行视频时，事实是我处于完美的位置，可以对抗具有那种逆行模式的那种能力的公牛。
There was nothing I could do.
我无能为力。
If I’d tried to lean back to avoid his head, I would have been stretched out vertically, and when his back legs hit the ground the force of the downdraft would have jerked me off.
如果我试图向后倾斜以避免他的头，我就会被垂直伸展，当他的后腿撞到地面时，下降气流的力量会把我猛地甩开。
That’s why most people really feared him.
这就是为什么大多数人真的害怕他。
He was a great bull, but he got to the point where you could ride him correctly and still nearly get killed.” And so, when Hedeman’s turn came to ride that night at the National Finals Rodeo, he climbed into the chute and onto Bodacious’s back.
他是一头伟大的公牛，但他已经到了你可以正确骑乘他的地步，但仍然差点被杀死。”因此，当晚轮到赫德曼参加全国牛仔竞技总决赛时，他爬进降落伞，爬到了博达西斯的背上。
But when the gate swung open, Hedeman let the bull charge through without him.
但当大门打开时，赫德曼让公牛独自冲了过去。
Then he tipped his hat to him and left the arena.
然后向他脱帽致敬，离开了赛场。
Three rounds later, Scott Breding put on his hockey mask and gave Bodacious his final ride.
三回合后，斯科特·布雷丁 (Scott Breding) 戴上曲棍球面罩，为博达西斯 (Bodacious) 进行了最后一次骑行。
Hedeman wouldn’t trade his bull-riding experiences for anything.
赫德曼不会用他的骑牛经历来换取任何东西。
The closest he’s come to that feeling has been flying in an F-16 fighter jet.
他最接近这种感觉的是驾驶 F-16 战斗机。
“It’s just this explosion of adrenaline,” he told me.
“这只是肾上腺素的爆发，”他告诉我。
“It’s indescribable.” Still, when one of his sons started to get interested in the sport a few years ago, Hedeman took him into his trophy room and showed him some pictures of the guys he used to ride with.
“这是难以形容的。”尽管如此，几年前，当他的一个儿子开始对这项运动感兴趣时，赫德曼把他带进了他的奖杯室，并向他展示了一些他曾经一起骑车的人的照片。
“I told him, ‘Just look at them.
“我告诉他，‘看看他们。
Those are the best guys that rode every year.’ Then I pointed at a few and said, ‘I watched this guy die, this guy die, and this guy die.
这些都是每年骑车的最好的人。’然后我指着几个人说，‘我看着这个人死了，这个人死了，这个人死了。
This guy’s in a wheelchair and this guy’s in a wheelchair.’ For me, ninety per cent of it was good.
这个人坐在轮椅上，这个人坐在轮椅上。”对我来说，百分之九十都很好。
I never had a life-threatening injury.
我从未受过危及生命的伤害。
But the last thing I would ever want my son to do is ride bulls.
但我最不希望我儿子做的事情就是骑牛。
It’s insane.”
这太疯狂了。”
His son never did take up bull riding, but for other boys Hedeman’s story was just the sort of cautionary tale that hooked them on the sport for life.
他的儿子从未开始骑牛，但对于其他男孩来说，赫德曼的故事只是一种警示故事，让他们终生迷上了这项运动。
At the Camp of Champions, I’d watched a succession of stiff-backed and patched-together men walk up to the microphone and, as the Oklahoma sun flamed and guttered on the horizon, do their best to warn the boys about what lay ahead—what a brutal, debilitating world this could be.
在冠军营，我看到一连串背部僵硬、拼凑在一起的男人走到麦克风前，当俄克拉荷马州的太阳在地平线上燃烧并闪烁时，他们尽最大努力警告孩子们未来的事情——这可能是一个多么残酷、令人衰弱的世界。
Yet the result was only to earn more converts.
然而结果只是赢得了更多的皈依者。
“Blessed be the Lord, oh, my soul,” as the cowboy preachers sang.
“愿上帝保佑，哦，我的灵魂，”牛仔传教士们唱道。
“For I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”
“因为我受造奇妙而可畏。”
On the last afternoon, a cattle trough was hauled under the tent and twenty or thirty boys lined up to be baptized in it.
最后一天下午，一个牛槽被拖到帐篷下面，二十或三十个男孩排队在里面接受洗礼。
Andy Taylor had asked the campers if any of them were ready to be born again, and Trigger, Jet, and Wacey all raised their hands.
安迪·泰勒问营员们是否有人准备好重生，扳机、杰特和韦西都举起了手。
When the time came, though, only Trigger and Wacey went down easily.
然而，到了那个时候，只有扳机和韦西轻松倒下。
Jet, stripped to his swim trunks, climbed in willingly enough but then seemed to change his mind.
杰特脱光了泳裤，很乐意地爬了进去，但后来似乎改变了主意。
He pushed his feet up against the end of the trough and gripped the rim tight with his hands.
他把脚顶在槽的末端，用手紧紧地抓住槽沿。
For just a moment, he hung there like a spider perched above a water glass.
有那么一会儿，他就像一只停在水杯上的蜘蛛一样悬在那里。
Then one of the church elders cradled his head and slowly, quiveringly, Jet let himself go under.
然后，一位教会长老抱住杰特的头，杰特慢慢地、颤抖着沉入水中。
♦
❖
Burkhard Bilger has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 2001.
布克哈德·比尔格 (Burkhard Bilger) 自 2001 年起担任《纽约客》特约撰稿人。
His new book, “ Fatherland ,” will be out in May.
他的新书《祖国》将于五月出版。
This Week’s Issue Never miss a big New Yorker story again.
本周的问题 再也不会错过《纽约客》的重大报道了。
Sign up for This Week’s Issue and get an e-mail every week with the stories you have to read.
订阅本周的期刊，每周都会收到一封电子邮件，其中包含您必须阅读的故事。
The Sporting Scene The Wall Dancer Ashima Shiraishi’s route to the top.
体育场景 墙壁舞者阿诗玛·白石 (Ashima Shiraishi) 的登顶之路。
By Nick Paumgarten
作者：尼克·鲍姆加滕
New York Journal Bumping Into Mr. Ravioli A theory of busyness, and its hero.
《纽约日报》邂逅馄饨先生 忙碌的理论及其英雄。
By Adam Gopnik
亚当·戈普尼克
Culture Desk Out Loud: Growing Up in the Rodeo By The New Yorker
文化台大声朗读：《纽约客》在牛仔竞技中成长
A Reporter at Large Iphigenia in Forest Hills Anatomy of a murder trial.
森林山的一名自由记者伊菲革尼亚 (Iphigenia) 解剖一起谋杀案的审判。
By Janet Malcolm
珍妮特·马尔科姆