Excerpt from The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint by Brady Udall, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Nobody had ever given my mother such attention, especially not in public and with two thousand people looking on. She didn't know what to do, so she wandered up and down the grandstand steps, trying to hide behind the remaining puffs in her tray.

Arnold bided his time until the call came over the loudspeakers for amateur bull riders. Anybody who had the desire could try their luck on an old worn-out bull named Wicked Joseph. A rider who could manage to stay on for the required ten seconds would win a fifty-dollar gift certificate from the B&B Williams Tack and Feed Store. Besides Arnold, the only other person who took the challenge was a fat teenage kid in a too-tight T-shirt who appeared to be drunk; he pumped his knees and shook his butt as he went down the steps, which made the considerable fat contained in his shirt jiggle and heave. Everybody in the stands clapped and hooted and agreed there's not much that can beat a fat drunk kid for entertainment. Not to be outdone, Arnold promenaded down the steps, kicking his heels and throwing his hips around like a belly dancer—but the drunk fat kid had been much funnier, so only one or two people bothered to give Arnold any encouragement.

The fat teenager went first and he fell off the bull—right into a fresh puddle of cow shit—before he made it out of the chute. Wicked Joseph never even got a chance to buck; the big gate swung open and the kid slid right off the old bull as if it had been slathered back to front with petroleum jelly. The kid picked himself off the ground, half covered in green, pudding-like bull puckey, raised both chubby fists in victory, and the crowd went crazy for him.

Undaunted that he was getting one-upped by a fat drunk kid, Arnold got on Wicked Joseph. He stayed on the bull well over the required ten seconds; he stayed on so well that once the horn had sounded, he didn't really want or know how to get off. The old Brahma kept bucking away, his gargantuan balls flailing like cathedral bells between his legs, and Arnold, holding on with two hands now, began to slip slowly off to the side, managing to hang on by wrapping both arms around the bull's neck and squeezing with such conviction that he looked like he was trying to strangle the thing. Wicked Joseph, who was, I imagine, thoroughly annoyed with Arnold's persistence, situated himself in a corner of the ring and began ramming Arnold into a steel livestock gate, which made a boom-boom-boom noise like somebody banging on a battleship with a sledgehammer. Still Arnold hung on, his brand-new, jammed-on hat getting loose from his head, quarters and nickels and dimes zinging out of his pockets, his big round face still caught in that oblivious grin. All around the arena cowboys were standing up on the fence, cussing and shouting, "Let go you idiot!"

Finally Arnold was rammed into the gate with enough force that his collarbone was broken and he had to relinquish his death grip on poor old Wicked Joseph. Even with the broken bone he hopped right up, looked around and yelled, "Where's my hat?" An exhausted Wicked Joseph galloped a wide U-turn and made a halfhearted attempt at goring Arnold in the back, but Arnold spotted him and scrambled through the slats in the fence. This time the crowd was duly appreciative; Arnold got a standing ovation.

After locating his hat, accepting his fifty-dollar certificate and having his shoulder inspected by the on-site doctor, who told him to get his crazy ass to a hospital as soon as possible, Arnold tracked down my mother near the concession stand. He stood next to her, his face still flushed from his bull-riding triumph. She tried not to look at him while she waited for the concessions manager to count out her pay; she had seen him ride the bull and thought he was a lunatic.

He cleared his throat like he was preparing for a speech. "I'd—hah—I'd like to ask you a favor, you know, help out a guy a little," he said.

Excerpted from The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint by BRADY UDALL. Copyright © 2001 by Brady Udall. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.