Mister Boots (10 page)

I jump off and let the horse go. She'll just eat this good grass for a while and then go back to her herd.

I sit on the bank of the creek. It's just a teeny-weeny little creek, but it's nice and gurgly. I look around at the willows and aspen and listen. There's raven sounds—jays, too. I'm not in a hurry because I want our father to worry about how maybe I'm gone for good.

I sit and just look, and pretty soon here comes Houdie, curious as a horse. They always want to know what's going on, as who wouldn't? And since I'm all hunkered down here in a lump, not at all threatening, he comes right up to me to see what I am. I don't move at all. I hold my breath and use my magic. It's still good. Finally I reach out and let him blow on my hand, and then I blow on his nose. Then I stroke him, and we get to be friends. I still don't get up. I'm in no more of a hurry than he is.

(How will we keep Mister Boots from letting Houdie go again? That's the one main thing he likes to do. When his legs get well, it'll be even worse. Of course the doctor said they'd never heal completely, which is a good thing for anybody who wants to keep their animals. We'd better get an automobile. Wouldn't that be something! I probably have enough money for it all by myself.)

Little by little our father is getting everybody packed up. He doesn't trust any of us to do it properly. Not even our own stuff. Even when we pack something up nice and neat, he unpacks it and does it over. It's true, he can get twice as much stuff into a box as we can—he's had a lot of practice—but why don't we get to practice? This way we'll never learn.

We have to travel light, because of all his magic things, though most of his stuff is in storage down in Sylmar. That's a place just north of Los Angeles.

He paints a big yellow stripe on everything that doesn't already have one—even Jocelyn's purse and knitting basket, so we and everybody can see, real fast, what belongs to us. I paint a yellow stripe across my forehead and that just makes them mad and I have to get washed with turpentine.

Of course during all this packing is when our father discovers the ruined drawers in Mother's room and the ruined bottom of Mother's cedar chest.

This time, instead of coming to me with a switch or taking off his belt, he goes to Mister Boots and brings him into Mother's room—which is our father's room now. (He doesn't know what he's sleeping on top of.)

“Mister Boots, just look at all this. You have to let me do what needs to be done. And how do you suggest I get that pistol back? You know it's not safe for a boy to have that.”

Our father hasn't figured out yet how Boots just plain hates for any creature to get whipped—even a little tiny bit of a switching to a tiny little creature.

Boots says, “He brought you back Houdie. That's a kindness.” Then, “There are better ways.”

“Well I don't know any.”

At least I don't get whipped.

 

 

Our father not only won't let me take any of my favorite things, but not any of my old clothes. Only these new things he bought in town. They match my new boy haircut: two pairs of heavy corduroy knickers, white shirts and plaid shirts, a bow tie, a tweed cap, striped pajamas. And shoes! Our father got them much too big, so there's room to grow. He says I have to wear them from now on. He says we're going off to where people are civilized, not like around here.

“But can't I have just one single little box of things for myself? Please? Just one little one? That locks?” (If he doesn't say yes, what will I do with the pistol and the money? You can't wear things like that on you all the time.) “Well, what about Jocelyn's knitting then? It's bulky. Does she get to take all that?”

It's yes to her and no to me—he says because I'm a boy and boys don't need a lot of things like girls do. Boys travel light and get along with practically nothing. But he's the one with the most stuff of any of us, and he hasn't even got all of it yet. And that pink turban has a great big padded box all its own.

 

 

So the big surprise our father got for me in town is—for heaven's sake—a baseball and mitt. I'm supposed to bring those along instead of a little box of my own special secret things!

He gives them to me when he sees how I'm practicing my quarters-out-of-ears. He says my fingers are small, but I'm dexterous for my age (which, as far as I know, nobody has told him what that is). I even surprise myself. Quarters are coming out of everywhere. That's one trick you can do anywhere as long as you have a quarter. Maybe I can get rich asking people for quarters. Except I'm already rich. I wish everybody would go away so I'd have a chance to get the money out from under our father's bed and count it.

I show Jocelyn how good I am at quarters, but she gives me one of those smirky smiles. She thinks no good will come of any of this.

“But don't you want adventures? Our father's right you know; nothing's going to happen here.”

“Moonlight Blue is enough of something happening for me. I'd rather just be here with him.”

“But you know exactly what to do to stop this.”

“First of all, our father won't believe us without you completely naked. He's thought you were a boy from the very first. He got it into his head all by himself, and he was so delighted that he finally had a boy who didn't die at birth that Mother didn't dare tell him the truth. Mother was afraid I'd say something. She said she didn't know what he was capable of. For a while he was good to her because of you being a boy. I remember flowers all the time. I hate to think what will happen when he finds out.”

“There isn't going to be a when.”

I think even if things do turn out badly, it'll be good for all of us to get out of here. I say, “I was born to travel,” though this is the first I've thought that.

My sister says, “Pooh.”

 

 

The very next day our father gets me up before dawn; it's to go—I can't believe it—fishing! He's taking time out from packing and repairing his old magic boxes. He thinks this is something I must have always wanted to do, especially with him. A boy and his dad.

I can't think of anything I'd rather not do than go fishing. I hate all the things where you have to sit. But most of all I don't want to be off alone with our father even though it's a beautiful morning, the mountains turning purple, and there's pink outlining the tops of the highest. Birds are waking up. I love this time of day, but I wish I was alone. Even though we get along all right when he teaches me magic, I don't trust him.

We go off without any breakfast because our father thinks that will be good discipline for me.

“Even if you're sick or starving, the show must go on. Might as well practice that.”

Of course the more he likes me, the more I might get to drive the trotter someday. So while we do the fishing thing, I don't talk because, the way I feel, I'll surely say something he'll think is sassy.

He doesn't talk either. He's smoking a cigar and humming. He sounds a lot better than when Boots is trying to sing, but I'd rather it was Boots, grunting out what he thinks is a tune instead of our father's . . . they call that “baritone.” He sounds as if he can really sing, then, all of a sudden, it's “Danny Boy,” loud and clear and beautiful. Kind of fits with the sunrise.

After a long while he says, “Isn't this cozy?”

My stomach growls back at him.

We listen to the birds and pretty soon he says, “You have to admit, a boy of your sort needs a lot of looking after.”

Sit and sit.

“Put all that energy of yours into useful projects.”

Growl, growl goes my stomach, and tweet go the birds.

All of a sudden he says, “Have a puff,” and hands me his cigar. And I do and then I cough. “If you're a chip off the old block, you'll get to like it one of these days.”

Mister Boots hates that cigar smell. Just thinking
Boots
makes me see things in a different way. I lie back on the creek bank and see the sky through a screen of weeds. That's the horse way.

But there's somebody out there, way, way off. I lift my head out of the weeds, and it's Boots. I recognize him from the hat he always wears—Jocelyn's old gardening hat—a ladylike kind of hat for a man, but Boots doesn't mind. He's staying pretty far away, and he's riding a horse! With his bad legs, he can't come out here without riding. He's doing it for my sake, that's what. I see our father sees him, too.

Wouldn't it be funny if Boots changed while he was riding, so one horse was plopped on top of another? I laugh out loud.

“You giggle at nothing just like a girl. You'll scare the fish away.”

Pretty soon I'm so hungry I can't stand it. I actually get a stomachache. After all, I'm a growing boy.

Finally we head back, but before we go in, our father says he needs to check on how I throw a ball, and then he's upset by the way I do it. He says I throw like a girl. He says I can't eat until I throw properly. It takes a half an hour's worth of more starving, but I finally do it—throw a couple of times like a boy. I thought maybe I never would be able to, being what I am. I wonder what it means about me that I finally got so I can do it.

Right after what might be called breakfast, I help my sister do the dishes, which I normally don't. Mister Boots does that a lot, though our father thinks it's not a good thing for a man or boy to do, so I'm doing it for lots of good reasons, though it would be easy to get out of.

“Jocelyn, I want you to teach me how to knit—right now, right after dishes.”

“Do you think that's wise?”

“Please, please, pleeeease! I'll help with the dishes every single time if you'll teach me. I can practice it while you sew me up the costume for the show.”

“I don't think you should.”

“Well, since you think I shouldn't knit, but I think you ought to marry Mister Boots before something bad happens, then we're even.”

“Our father thinks we're already married, so everything is fine. Besides, how would we do it? I, Moonlight Blue, take thee . . . or, I, Boots . . . ? And I think you have to have papers and things to prove you're you. Birth certificates and such. Besides, I don't care one way or the other.”

“Where were you brought up?” Which is what Mother used to say all the time.

“This is nothing like any other relationship in the whole world. Boots isn't a man. He won't run off like our father always does. And you'd better watch out; our father might run off again. What if he did it when we were stuck out in the middle of nowhere? Then where would we be?”

“We're out in the middle of nowhere already.”

 

 

Jocelyn does start me knitting right after we finish the dishes. I think she wants to see what will happen as much as I do. It's to be a scarf for Mister Boots. She lets me pick the color, which is navy blue.

She starts me up and sets me out on the porch steps. For the first time in my life I feel like a girl. So this is how Mother and Jocelyn felt all day long and on into the night. My knitting doesn't look at all like anything she and Mother ever did. It's not easy. I was sorry for them before, but now, what with dropping stitches and all, I'm even sorrier.

We're waiting to see what our father's going to say, but he fools us. He looks at me hard and long, but he doesn't say anything. Then he gets busy repairing those old broken magic boxes. And pretty soon he comes out on the porch and sits beside me to paint new golden curlicues on them.

“Throws a ball like a girl, but knits like a boy,” he says.

Pretty soon I hear from the tone of our father's voice that he's finally come around to what he wanted to say when he first came out here on the porch.

“You'll inherit all these valuable things; everything I own will be yours. All I ask is that you keep the show on the road. That's all I'll ever ask, that you learn the business and keep the name Robert Lassiter in the public eye. We're on the same team, you know. The magic makers against everybody else.”

Maybe this is a good thing. I'm the son and heir. Robert Lassiter the second. Why not?

I say, “I will. I'll do it.”

He reaches down, pulls my hand away from my knitting (I drop a half a line of stitches), and makes me shake hands—man to man.

It takes me ten minutes to get back to where I was. I'm not going to give up. I want Boots to have this scarf.

So we sit awhile doing what we're doing, and then our father says if I give him back the pistol, he'll get me a BB gun—a rifle. I think having a real grown-up person's pistol is better.

“I'll teach you how to shoot. We'll shoot together.”

Yeah, I know, just like we fished—sit out in the woods without any breakfast waiting for something to walk by and get shot.

“So, that's settled, then, all of us going. It might work out. You'll like the train. I always did like trains. First there's a hundred miles of the narrow gage. Then we have to change to the full-sized one. You're going to like them both.”

Then he says we've got to board up the windows. This is getting scary. What will be here to come back to? I start thinking about Mother again. Mother wouldn't like this at all. She loved this place just as much as I do.

I have to go somewhere. I get up. I throw down the knitting and give this yell, which I didn't even mean to. Our father spills his paint, and I hear Jocelyn, way inside the house, drop something that breaks.