Memory 1 Week 9

Somewhere in Wyoming, when I was twelve, I met a second cousin who didn't shave,
and a third who was younger than me at a family reunion for my grandmother's side.
My dad's uncle Denny owned a 14 bedroom ranch with a series of tools named
after farm animals. That was the summer I drove a mule.
The KAWASAKI--green, with a cage on the back for the rifles and other guns
I don't know the names of--felt like a golf cart, but with a better turn radius
and a shitty gas pedal. He told me I had to punch the brake with my foot,
ease the other, keep both hands on the wheel and not go past 15. My cousin,
two weeks older and brutish, stood belly out, arms crossed, as my sister and I
doughnutted the gravel driveway. Uncle Denny said not to be afraid to drive them,
they wouldn't bite. We couldn't hurt them.
When everyone else is over 18 and trying to sell bracelets for their side job back home,
there's not a whole lot to do. After someone pulled out a corn hole set and a tambourine,
my sister and I found the keys to a mule and buckled up for safety, heading out past
the turn around, to a road narrower than my underweight second aunt's neck.
I don't remember how far we went, but I do remember attempting to back up the side
of a mountain, so we could turn around and not fall off the side. It was my first 3 point turn.
I told my sister to sing a song, because she was freaking me out with her "we're gonna die,
we're gonna die," and all I wanted to do was get out of the cart and leave it there,
but someone really would have killed me, and my uncle Denny was too nice to cross.
It's always the nice ones, I swear. It must have been five by the time we safely back and forthed
our way around, racing back the way we came, to the turn around where another mule waited.
There was Denny, pacing back and forth in front, and my cousin, perched and smiling
in the passenger seat. I was demoted from driving after that, and if I wanted to ride,
my cousin had to drive. He dangled the key in my face and I asked if he was overcompensating,
but not to his face. Afterward, I ate too many apricots and said the word Fuck for the first time.