If Wishes Were Horses

"I wish you'd change your mind." The little prof had wire glasses and a sweater vest, and he had these fluttery little hands. Dr. Jameson. That was his name. Nice guy, but damn.

Bill shook his head. "If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride." That was what his momma had always said. His daddy would just say, "If a frog had wings he wouldn't bump his froggy ass."

"Yes, but, Bill, you have such potential."

Uh-huh. That was why he'd gone in the first place. Some asshole sat him down and reminded him how his ten year eligibility on the GI Bill was almost up, how he'd always been the smart one, how said asshole had cancer and wasn't gonna be around forever and Bill should go to college and get that degree in animal husbandry....

Fucker. A year after Bill had started college at the University of Wyoming, Charlie had pooped out on him, passing away in the middle of the night in the hospital bed they'd brought in when Charlie went to hospice care.

Christ. It had taken him a year to get back to where he could do more than collect the checks Charlie's retirement fund sent as next of kin and go to class, doing lab work on Tuesdays and writing papers on cross-pollinating and soils. By the end of that year, though, Bill had known what he knew.

He wasn't cut out for school. He'd just been making a dying man happy.

Wasn't no sense in throwing good money after bad, even if the government was paying part of it. Bill was going to go back to what he did best.

Cowboying was in his blood, after all, even if Charlie had never held with it.

"I think if you think about this, Bill," the little professor was saying, "you'll see that you need to finish your education."

"Well, that's just it, Doc." Bill smiled, slinging his duffel bag over his shoulder, comprising what was left of everything he'd ever owned. "I thought long and hard, and I figured out what a smart man always does."

"What's that?"

"Where he belongs."

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