Mister Boots (18 page)

Rosie likes the presents more than I do. For her they're unusual, but I'm sick and tired of always getting things like this. First I open a toy fire engine, and then Rosie opens a soldier suit my size (which is Rosie's size, too). She says, “Please, please, please, please, can I have it, pleeeeease?”

“Of course, yes, and good riddance.”

And another thing, more yarn. That must have been hard for him to give.

Then a big bag of pecans and a jar of honey and some oranges. Things he thinks are good for me.

Aunt Tilly says, “What if it was a couple of steaks to grill? Now that I would even cook myself.”

Mostly we keep having stew, served on top of crackers. If you're rich enough for bacon, that goes in, and cheese, too, and most anything else. We're about rich enough for cabbage and corn and potatoes.

I've a good mind to go buy a steak for Aunt Tilly myself, but how would I explain how I got it? No matter what I said, everybody would think I stole it.

But we have to get out of here just like all the ordinary people. We start packing. I help even though I'm in a cast and my sling. I need to pack all my secret things, and I need to do it by myself.

When we sit around our campfire, we talk about where we should go, like maybe home to our house, but Aunt Tilly says our father will be back. She says whatever we decide to do, he'll change it no matter what it is, so we should just pack and not make plans.

He comes exactly on the next to last day, with a car and a wagon and plans for a performance just outside Los Angeles.

He comes at suppertime, but he won't eat our stew. He's smoking a cigar as usual, and then he gives us one of his lectures, so he must be feeling better now that he has a job lined up. The lecture is mostly to me.

It's dark when he comes. The days are getting shorter, and it's cooler. We have a big fire, and Mister Boots propped logs up behind it, slanty-wise, nice and neat, to throw the heat out toward us. Rosie and I sit next to each other like we always do. Our father stands on the far side, hands behind his back, looking even more like a devil than usual. The mustache and the little nothing of a goatee . . . Everything very neat. The red glow of the fire on his face reflecting red. Even his white shirt looks red.

It turns out I'm not out of the new show just because of a mere broken arm. I have a duty to my public to make an appearance even if I can't perform my usual tricks. Then he tells me, “You broke your arm in a fall from our trotter. That's how it happened.”

We don't even
have
Houdie anymore.

I hear my sister gasp.

He says it again slowly and louder. “From. Our. Horse. You landed on your elbow.”

He looks as if he believes it himself. I'm beginning to think he'll never believe anything that's true. I'll get breasts—maybe even big ones—I'll look like Aunt Tilly, and he'll still be calling me “Boy.”

“Just go out and take a bow and do something simple. We'll do the cane duet. You can do a dove one-handed and a few scarves. You can pull them out of your cast. They'll go for that.”

“When did you ever let me ride Houdie?”

“I hardly let myself ride him; you know that.”

“How could I know that when you rode him all over the place back home? Besides, he's sold.”

“That horse shouldn't be ridden at all, only by experts.”

“Mister Boots is an expert.”

“Your Mister Boots . . . He's hardly good for shoveling you-know-what.”

We're all looking into the fire. We're all not saying anything. Something has happened to us, which doesn't count our father. We work together like horses hitched to the same coach. Well, better than that, because some horses let other horses do most of the work. And here, Rosie appears with us and pulls with us, and we all pull together with her, too.

 

 

Next morning we're almost ready to leave. Mister Boots is about to take the garbage to the dumping spot. Big paper bags of it. (He always does the garbage jobs. He'll do all the messiest things. He doesn't want anybody else to have to do it, least of all Jocelyn.) Aunt Tilly is carrying packages to the wagon. I help take things that only need one good arm.

Our father is packing the wagon because he's the absolutely only one who, as he keeps saying, can do it properly. He keeps telling us, “For heaven's sake hold steady, for heaven's sake use your noggin, and hurry up; we have to get down south so we can unload while it's still daylight.”

If he wasn't here we'd be just as fast—maybe faster—and I'll bet we'd all be humming.

 

 

The fire is still hot and the coffeepot is still propped on a stone near it for everybody's one last drink. (Except for me; I'm still not allowed coffee.) Jocelyn is sweeping the last tent. It's down, and she's sweeping the top of it before folding it up. She makes a funny face at Boots, and he waves and drops the garbage bags. (As a human being he's always so clumsy!) The garbage spills out of both of them. When our father sees that, he punches the railing of the wagon and then tosses his turban way, way out—I can't believe it—it knocks over the coffeepot and lands right in the fire.

“That's it!” he says. He jumps off the back of the wagon and heads right for Boots. Boots is leaning over, up to his elbows in garbage, trying to get it back together. Our father gives him a kick in the behind that knocks him right into the mess.

Talk about “That's it!” I'm tired of all this myself: tired of our father and tired of moving around from one place to another all the time and tired of having a broken arm and tired of not having any horses to ride and tired of me and Mister Boots always getting the brunt of everything.

I bellow out—my stage voice, but no words. A big, just plain bellow.

All right, this really is it.

By now I know better than to try and shout, “I'm a girl, I'm a girl.” Nobody will pay attention, and our father will say, “Don't be sassy.”

It's not so easy with a cast, but I take off all my clothes.

 

 

It doesn't take him—not half a minute—to realize. So fast I think he must have suspected.

He comes to our baggage, fat-man fast. . . .

Like I dreamed it before. And like a dream. The sound of the hippopotamus. Which I don't know what that is, but this is it. Fire crackling. The sword box burning, and the box where I disappear, even the swords and the saw, into the fire. Boxes with our clothes . . . gasping . . . sputtering . . . our father . . . making this hippopotamus noise.

I have my treasures packed up in my pockets, but my knickers are down around my feet now. I reach down to get the pistol, but our father pushes me away and reaches faster. He shakes my clothes and out comes everything. Money all over the place. The rubber bands that held it have broken. Money, in the air. Even in the fire. Which is bigger and bigger all the time.

And there's my pistol.

Everything is slowing down. I see the paint on the boxes fizzling, the red goes first and the gold after. I hear a raven sound a warning. I hear the stream. There's plenty of time. I pick up the pistol.

Except there isn't any time at all. I get off one shot. There's a thump and the ground spits where the bullet landed. Our father takes the gun as easy as could be and kicks me away like he did Boots. I'm going into the fire with everything else. I'm flat-out right in it.

Everybody's staring at the money flying by. Except Boots. It's Moonlight Blue, right into the fire, to me. To save me. A horse from . . . hellfire! Like that man said. Red and smoke and horse screams and the sound of the hippopotamus.

Our father, grinning like the crazy man, shoots. All the rest of the shots, the four, into Moonlight Blue. And Moonlight Blue topples over right in the middle of fire, partly on me.

I think, as if looking back already: Once we had a horse. A long time ago we had a horse who was a man. As sweet, as sweet . . . as wet grass.

Sparks fly up. Blow! Way, way up all over. The money flying up and away, too.

And here's my sister, hauling the collapsed tent, throwing it over both of us. I didn't know I was on fire, but I guess I must have been. It's terrible under there, dusty and smelly and suffocating. There are so many things in this life you just have to do no matter what, and keep on doing.

I put my good arm around Moonlight Blue's neck. “Don't die,” I say. “Please don't die. I'll take you out to where those wild mustangs are and let you go free. I don't have any money anymore, but I'll find a way. Cross my heart and hope to . . . Don't die.”

I feel his soft, soft, velvety horse lips, as he blows against my cheek. Like a sign. Like a kiss. What is there ever in the whole wide world as soft as the lips of a horse?

And then he isn't blowing anymore.

I think about what Boots said about death, what I heard him tell Jocelyn: “When I'm no longer able to hear the tunes of your voice . . .”

And she said, “Why do you keep thinking about death?”

“When we can, we twist and run, and when we can't . . . Human beings have little resignation about something we all have to do.”

I hear people yelling and rushing around. I feel cold bumping down on Boots and me. The tent isn't leaking, but I feel the cold of the water through the canvas. Finally the tent gets pulled off, and I can breathe again.

Money isn't everything. Mister Boots said that all the time. But I think money really is something, the way all the people of the camping place ran around in circles that morning, yelling and trying to gather it up. There was a horse lying dead right there in front of them, and all they cared about was the money. Rosie, too. She was running around waving her arms and shouting, “Oh, no! Oh, no!”

 

 

Our father did the disappearing act, no mirrors, no boxes, no smoke. . . . Well, smoke. Nobody saw him go. The wagon and the car were still there. I guess he got too scared even to take the car, but after all, all he did was shoot a horse. Who cares about horses? Especially old lame ones? Of course he always thought that there was just a skinny, clumsy man who tripped over his own feet. When Jocelyn signed them in at the cabins as Mr. and Mrs. Blue, that's the only time there ever was a record that Boots existed.

I'm finally out at our tree. I brought water like I always do. I didn't dare go before. I was scared that maybe Boots would be waiting there, naked and thirsty and glad to see me.

I lie down and look at the sky the horse way, through the dry yellow grass.

I don't want a world like this—Mother dead and Rosie's mother dead and Boots dead. The world never used to be like this back when nothing happened.

I can just hear Boots saying, “It's the world we were made for; that's why we like it so much. Taste of water, smell of hay . . . All ours.”

But I'm thinking, No, it isn't. Not my world. I wasn't made for any of it.

“Mister Boots, you mustn't be gone! I especially need you now. I need you to tell me how to think about you not being here.”

 

 

Odd to think I got myself and everybody else, too, into all this because I wanted to throw fire. That was my dream back then.

But it wasn't all me. Our father wanted me along. Knowing what I know about him now, I'll bet he would have kidnapped me if I hadn't wanted to come. And then Mister Boots and my sister would have followed, and everything would have happened just as it did. So I guess it's not all my fault.

Aunt Tilly says to look on the bright side. So I say to her, “Well, at least you're not dead yet.” And she says, “For heaven's sake, the things that child thinks of.”

“Well then, why do the songs you sing make us all so sad? Like ‘Beautiful Dreamer.' There has to be a reasonable reason for singing all those songs. ‘The Last Rose of Summer' and all. Are they looking on the bright side?”

“But look at all the good things. You have Rosie for another sister. You can be Roberta and not sneak around and steal dresses. You can be ten . . . well, eleven now. That's a nice number, too. Mister Boots would think so.”

“He wouldn't.”

“You know he would.”

“I'd give all the good things away to have Mister Boots back.”

“Honey, come sit on my lap now, even though you are eleven. Come. Don't think at all.”

“Boots said, ‘Think.' ”

“He didn't mean
all
the time.”

I guess there are a few good things. It's good when Aunt Tilly sings and plays the ukulele. And she's teaching me. She sings and plays the piano at the hotel in town every weekend and makes money.

Another good thing: I'm finally growing. We've been measuring. It's right there on the doorway.

Rosie and I get to go to the village school. I stick up for her. I fight for her even though she's bigger than I am. It's as if I'm still thinking of myself as a boy.

We have a lot of secrets—new ones, little ones, and one great big one—but not any more about our ages or what sex we are.

And another good thing: the baby. Sometimes my sister holds her on her lap, “as foal or girl,” just like Mister Boots would say. We expect, as a horse that is, she'll turn as light-colored as her father as she gets older. We all want her to be a flea-bit gray.

Moonlight Marilyn Blue.

She's the big secret, but I'm used to secrets.

She's especially a secret if our father ever comes back. Jocelyn doesn't want Marilyn to have a life like Boots's.