Mister Boots (17 page)

Now he just sits and stares, or wanders about in his purple turban smoking cigars. (We have to cut back on everything, so how come he gets to have his cigars? I'll bet Aunt Tilly could have her hair back red and curly if she had his cigar money. I'd give her some of my money, but that would bring up too many questions.)

Our father doesn't seem to notice anything about Rosie. You'd think he would, considering she's another mouth to feed.

 

 

There's a batch of bums always hanging around. I don't know why they pick other poor people to beg from. But then everybody's poor now. People do share things a lot, but these bums steal from the farmers—corn and grapes—and try to sell them to us, so the farmers are against us, too. The problem is, they want the camp removed and all of us thrown out. We're a blot on the whole neighborhood.

They're going to make us leave, and then they're going to burn the place to get rid of the fleas. All of a sudden we have one week to get out of here before they kick us out. Rosie and I want to go to town, so I guess we have to go right now.

These days everybody hitchhikes, but Jocelyn says, for me, it's strictly forbidden, even though she used to have to do it all the time. I'm the only, only one who's not allowed to.

I want to buy a couple of dresses for Rosie. Everything she owns is falling apart. And I want to get us nice shoes. All I have are boy's ones, and they're
still
too big. I'll get Rosie anything she wants, and we'll have maple walnut sundaes. Maybe even two or three.

 

 

But in town everybody looks at us funny. They think it's odd that kids our age should have money. (Neither of us look as old as we really are.) We have to change our plans. I tell Rosie, “Let's buy watches. We can say they're gifts for our mothers and our dads gave us the money for them.” All I do is make her cry because her mother would have wanted a watch. And I make myself feel bad for the same reasons, even though my mother had one. But I can't let myself cry, so then I say, real quick, “Let's get some banjos.” I want to make her laugh, but it doesn't work, so to cheer ourselves up we go for ice-cream sundaes right away. That'll be an early lunch. Later we'll do it again for another lunch.

Then we go to the secondhand store. There, people don't look at us so suspiciously.

I buy Rosie two dresses for ten cents each. For a nickel I get her a lady's purse that's hardly worn out at all. For myself I get a rusty old harmonica that only cost two pennies. I'd better not let our father see it. He'll say it's full of germs.

 

 

On the way back, that same farmer from where we gave our show recognizes me and picks us up in his rattly truck. He keeps talking about how wonderful our father is. How proud I must be, of him and of myself, too. And if our father wants a job helping out on the farm, he'll put us up. Not much pay, but we'd have a place to stay. I say I don't think our father knows anything about farming. (The truth is our father would rather starve than be anything but a magician—or maybe a singer.)

The farmer doesn't take us all the way to the camp. We have to walk the last three or so miles. He says he's tired, but I'll bet we're tireder than he is. How come he lets two children who he thinks are only seven years old go off by themselves like this? And it'll be dark by the time we get back.

But I don't mind. We watch our long shadows. Our shadow heads go all the way to the edge of the first hills until the sun goes behind the mountains on the opposite side.

Even though it's late, we hear a racket as we get close to the camp, which is odd because it's a family kind of place. Usually by this time it's nice and quiet: soft talk around the fires, maybe a little music going on here and there, but the closer we get, the more it sounds like a riot. Then we see tents getting taken down and hear babies crying as if they all got wet and hungry at the same time, and people are running back and forth and there's soldiers and police and they have their pistols and rifles out. It's like we're all criminals.

We were supposed to have three days more, but they've come early. I hear people say they did that on purpose, came at night, too, so we wouldn't be ready.

Then I see people starting to get quiet and crowding over toward our place, and I see our father standing up on the back of somebody's truck telling jokes and doing tricks. His voice is sounding out over all the people's heads like it always does. People are calming down and laughing and bunching up around him. The whole spirit is changing. Camp people and soldiers stand next to one another and laugh together. All over again I'm thinking:
My
father.
Mine!
He's making everybody laugh and making everybody get along with one another.

He brings out the last of our rabbits (there're only four left), and every time he makes one appear out of his top hat he gives it to a soldier or a policeman. And then our father sees me and waves me over and says, “Lassiter and Son.
And
Son!” like he's as proud of me, right this minute, as I am of him. Then he has me come up on the bed of the truck and do tricks, too. He stands to the side and claps for me. “Let's give the boy a big hand,” and they do. I thought I was all worn out and couldn't wait to get to bed, but I'm not tired now.

Before we've hardly finished the act, the army wants us to put on a show for them, and if we're gone we can't do it. So there's a lot of talk and then our father and the head of the camp and the sheriff go away, and pretty soon they come back and we not only get our three days, but a whole week more on top of that, all because of our father.

But people don't trust the police. A lot of them move out right away. They were already half packed up, anyway. Instead of being overfull, all of a sudden the camp is half empty. It's nice this way.

We have to get ready for the big army show, so I have to keep in practice, but I find some time to be with Rosie. We go back to the boulders where we used to play. The bums are gone, chased out I guess, and it's a mess, old rusty cans and pans and bottles and pieces of dirty tarp, but all the better for playing house.

We change around. Sometimes Rosie is the husband, and I'm the wife. I say, All right, I'll be a wife, but no spankings. She says she wouldn't do that to me anyway, even if I did a very bad thing.

Rosie wears her new dresses all the time, even out there to play in the dirt. Sometimes she changes so as to wear both in one day. She carries her purse everywhere, too. It's already full of useful things—safety pins and rubber bands and money that I gave her in case of emergency. But I don't play my rusty harmonica much. The rust hurts my lips. Actually I'm a little worried about germs on it myself.

 

 

At the army camp we do our whole big show, and our father and I do doves together and do our cane duet, and our father looks at me like I'm the best thing going.

Except . . . I do a bad thing.

I didn't mean to. I reveal a trick. I open a box before I should. The whole inside shows. I did it because I got hurt.

Our father makes it a joke the way he does when things happen that aren't supposed to. I see it does make a difference in how the audience feels. I have blood dripping down my leg, but I know the show must go on. I've gone on with a bad stomachache. Once I threw up every time I went backstage, but I knew I had to come back and go on, and not only that, I had to smile. That's what you have to do.

Those men made all sorts of jokes and said bad words, even though there were ladies present. But our father, even then, got everything back on track.

 

 

I lose my appetite for supper. Something's going to happen. I can see it in the way our father walks. Or maybe it's my own guilty conscience that makes him seem so scary. Except I didn't do it on purpose. I wasn't ready. I got scared. With reason. I have a cut to prove it. And maybe it was even his fault. Maybe he was too fast.

But “No excuses” is his favorite thing to say. When I grow up, I'm going let people have excuses.

“I've told you over and over, it's not for the likes of them to know.”

“So I'm supposed to just lie there and lose half my leg?”

“It didn't come close to that and you know it.”

“What do you call this, catsup?”

And then he does what he always does, twists my arm up behind me, but this time . . .

I hear it crack. He's done it again. He hears it, too. He gets an odd look on his face.

It really, really hurts.

Rosie sees everything. She's the one who yells the loudest yell. She runs out and starts pounding on our father. Yelling and pounding. Next to our father she looks smaller than ever.

Our father starts to laugh. He actually falls down laughing—sits back on his fat hind end and laughs and can't stop, and Rosie keeps pounding on him. Of course it's not doing anything to hurt him.

Here comes Aunt Tilly, and I think, Now our father will get it, but first she just stands and looks, at me then at Rosie, then me and then Rosie again, and then she—even she—starts to laugh. I guess it is funny, Rosie, pounding away, yelling and kicking as hard as she can and not getting anywhere. But here I am, trying to hang on to my broken arm and nobody cares. Except Rosie.

And except Jocelyn. She comes right to me without stopping to think or laugh. She forgot to put down her knitting and the needles are falling out and the knitting is unraveling. First she's afraid to touch me for fear she'll hurt me. She reaches for my shoulder, but then puts her hand on my head.

Finally Aunt Tilly pulls Rosie away and hugs her tight so she can't punch anymore, but she waited until she had herself a good laugh.

And here comes Mister Boots, looking like he doesn't know what to do.

And then I throw up, and then Boots gives a big whinny, sort of like that first time when he told me he was a horse only more so, lifts his head up and back, and starts so high . . . It's a kind of scream. You wouldn't think a horse could do that, nor a human being either.

That stops everybody. We're all posed, as if some big god said, “Silence!”

How can there be any doubt now about what Boots is? Except I'll bet nobody believes their ears. They'll all think: Did I really hear that? Then they'll think: I guess not. I couldn't have. I'll just wait until it happens again to see if it really did.

 

 

I get out of a whipping, except this is worse. Maybe worse—depending. It's an adventure because I get hauled off to the doctor in the big town—hauled off by Mister Boots and Jocelyn in a borrowed car. Our father disappears before they even find the car for me. (He never likes to be around throw-up. Besides, Mister Boots, as a horse, always did scare him. After that whinny, he'll wonder things.)

Before we go, Mister Boots binds my arm up tight to my body. He's good at that. He can sense how things feel a lot better than anybody I ever knew. He talks to me all the way through, making me think of other things.

Jocelyn drives. She's not good at it, and she doesn't like to (it's kind of jerky at first), but she always comes through when things are important. All the way to town, I don't even try not to cry. I tell Jocelyn I'm sorry but I can't help it, and she says it's all right, and I should do it as much as I want, so I do.

And then I tell her I'm even sorrier but I have to throw up again, and she says that's all right. Seems to be, when you break your arm, everything you do is suddenly all right.

At the hospital I get called a brave boy by the doctor, and told that most seven-year-olds aren't this brave. “How about girls?” I say. But the doctor just tousles my hair, and says, “Don't you worry about girls. Not yet.”

But I really wanted to know.

The doctor says my arm isn't ever going to be the same, but it wasn't the same before, anyway.

I get to have a cast and I get pain pills that make me woozy. I get to have a maple walnut ice-cream cone. We get to stay all night in little cabins outside of town that are no bigger than our biggest tent. There's hardly room for the double bed and the cot. There are nice pictures all over the walls. Jocelyn says they were cut out of the
Saturday Evening Post
. I ask if we can do that someday if we ever settle down, and if we ever can afford a magazine. She says, “Don't be silly. Of course we can.”

Boots and my sister register as Mr. and Mrs. Blue. I could hardly believe it considering how my sister said she wouldn't ever do anything to make Boots a real person on paper.

We don't have pajamas or anything, so I sleep in my underwear the way I used to do back before everything began to happen.

After we get back, nobody says one single word about Boots's whinny, so it's just as I thought. Or maybe it's embarrassing, like something you're not supposed to mention—a human being screaming a whinny out like that in public.

 

 

While we were gone, Rosie and Aunt Tilly went down to the little town we'd been to before and Aunt Tilly got Rosie two dolls. I'd have thought of that myself, but dolls always seemed too dangerous. Even Aunt Tilly never did dare get one for me, but she told Rosie one of these is really for me and which did she want? But Rosie said she told Aunt Tilly, since I'm the one with a broken arm, I should get first choice, but I knew Rosie would want the yellow-haired, blue-eyed one with ringlets, and I didn't want that one, anyway. She was too girlish. I may want to be what I really am, but there are limits.

I guess our father has kind of the same idea: I mean about giving me things in exchange for a broken arm. He sends a big package that is full of smaller packages. I get excited in spite of myself, though, since it's from our father, I ought to know better. Rosie and I open them alternating and as slowly as we can. We want to make the mystery of it last as long as possible. I know the mystery is going to be a lot better than the reality. I suppose that's how magic is, too—much better not to know. Which is exactly why I have a broken arm.