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Authors: Carol Emshwiller

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BOOK: Mister Boots
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I didn't bring Mister Boots any of those fancy things, I just brought ordinary clothes. At least now I know whoever they belonged to wasn't as tall as Boots and was chubby.
 
 
I've been looking after him for a couple of weeks now while his legs get better. Like he says himself, if not for me, he'd be naked and starving. “And worse than that, just plain dead.”
He says, “Boy.” (Just like everybody else, he doesn't know what I really am. Nobody does, and if they once knew, they forget, even my mother! But I guess I can't fault her for that. Sometimes I forget it, myself.)
He never says, “What have you been up to?” like everybody else does, but I tell him anyway. I might tell things to my sister, but she's so wispy, and I don't think she approves of me. She thinks I should be more ladylike. Once she said, “I'd love to have a little sister who isn't so much like a little brother.”
I tell Boots about how lucky I am and how magic, except nothing ever happens around here, but he looks at me like he doesn't think I'm as lucky as I think I am. He says, “Don't worry, what happens will come, and sometimes hardly any time between one thing and another. I was told that by an old man when I was young. Up there in the mountains.” He gestures with his chin. “That man said, ‘All in good time,' and he was right because it
is
all in good time, as look, I'm here right now.”
“First of all, I don't worry, and second of all, nothing's gone on around here. To you maybe, but not to me.”
“You'll see. Things will.”
But it does worry me, so I say, “Maybe this stuff that's waiting to happen might go right by. Here I am already ten years old. I can't wait much longer.”
I tell him how ten is the perfect age. It's a perfect number, too. I like how it looks. I'd like to be ten for a long time. I say, “I'm going right out to look for all that stuff so I can still be ten when something happens,” but he says, “Please wait till I get my legs back in shape.”
“How did you hurt your legs? And who are you, anyway? I mean really?”
“All right, I'll tell you. You see, I was a horse once. Actually, I
am
a horse. With four black socks. That's why I'm called Boots.”
“Yeah, yeah. Me, too.” (More of a horse than he ever was, I'll bet, and I've galloped all around here on my own two feet.)
“I knew you wouldn't believe me, but I was, and sometimes I miss seeing all the way around behind me, though I like looking out straight ahead, for other reasons. Eyes in front, the world is two halves of the same thing, not two halves of two different things like it was before. The sky,” he says. “I used to see it from behind a tuft of grass and not even know or care that it was the sky.”
“The sky is nothing to get excited about.”
“It is to me.”
He gets a dreamy look and starts off on a different subject altogether. “It was hard not to just turn and run at the slightest excuse. Even the wind. I used to run all over when it was windy. Everything was shaking. Everything looked scary.”
(I could say all these same things about myself when I was loping around pretending to be a horse, but I won't bother.)
“Well, I have to admit I wasn't that scared, partly it was an excuse to jump and shy. In the wind, I was always more excited than I ought to be. Running was my pleasure. Just as much fun was rolling in the dusty spots.” He makes a horsey noise as if the very thought is fun. “I'd turn my tail to the storm and turn my ears away from the wind. Back then I wouldn't go near anything dead no matter what, or anywhere bears had been.”
“If you were a horse, you know what? You'd be already dead, shot because of your bad legs.”
“All the more reason to be a man. And how do you think I got way out here in the middle of nowhere, no clothes and all, without I was a horse?”
Then he whinnies. He starts way up high, almost a whistle, and goes way down low. He's good at it, but I can do it just as well, so I do. He laughs and I laugh, too. He puts his hand on my shoulder, as if for man to man. (Or maybe horse to horse.) I like it.
“You ought to come along with me,” he says. “I could use a boy to help me out.”
“Are you going somewhere? Where is it any better than right here?”
“Boy, you don't have the logic of a horse, but I do. When my legs get better, I'll show you places you wouldn't believe. You can ride me. That's a promise.”
“You can't even hold yourself up.”
He throws his head like a horse does when you have the reins pulled too tight. His black hair flies out behind him. I'll bet he wants me to think how like a mane it is. I have to admit there's a horsey look in his eyes, and his beard is sparse and horsey, too. He needs clipping—man or horse.
“My sister. She's always wished we had a horse. She'll like you if you're a horse, but she won't like you if you're a man.”
“Then I'm just the one. So . . .” He swings his arms up on both sides, palms out. “Wish granted,” he says.
I'm not sure I want my sister—my beautiful, wispy, frightened sister—riding around on somebody like Boots, who's maybe a bank robber. “I'll bet you weren't a horse. I'll bet you used to be a mule, an ugly bony old mule.”
“I wouldn't mind. I have a partiality to mules.”
He always says odd things. Once he picked up a stone not worth the dirt it lay on. “Rocks,” he said. “They have magic. Feel how warm it is. Even now, in this cool night, it's still warm.”
I don't need to know this. Anyway, I'm the one joking him more then he's joking me. I have the secret of myself, which he'll never guess in a million tries. I'm glad, because I wouldn't want to get called Girlie.
chapter two
But things happen faster than I would have thought, especially considering how nothing much has happened all this time.
Mother is sick. She's had bad spells before every now and then, so at first we don't think much of it. But then this seems worse. She's rocking back and forth and saying she's sorry to be groaning, but it makes her feel better so would we please excuse her.
It's the middle of the night. Even those mornings when my sister hitchhikes there aren't a lot of cars or buggies way out here, so I say, “I'll get the first horse I find and I can be halfway to town in an hour.” But my sister says that I don't know the towns and I don't know where the doctor lives, and that I should stay with Mother. (I'm scared. I don't know what to do to help her.) My sister says for me to go get a horse and she'll ride it.
“Won't you be scared?”
“This is for Mother.”
Then I get the idea of Mister Boots. I believe him—I did all along—he really is a horse. He's still limping some, but he's much better. “I know a horse that, if you fall off, he'll stop and put you back on himself himself. I know a horse you can cluck to and kiss to or tell him in words, or point your chin to where you want to go. Moonlight Blue.” (Of course Moonlight Blue. I'll have to remember to tell Boots what I named him.)
My sister says “Moonlight Blue” slowly, and gets this funny look, as if she's staring off at some sunset or other.
“I'll be back in ten minutes.”
I don't know for sure if he can help us, but at least he's sort of a grown-up, and might know what to do. Well, my sister's a grown-up, all the way up to twenty, but she sure doesn't seem like it.
 
 
It's as if Moonlight Blue knew when he heard me gallop up. I got myself a neighbor's horse and rode to our tree. He's there, under the tree, looking as if straight from the moon, black mane and tail, of course four black feet. In this light, his coat is silvery, but I can see he's what they call a “flea-bit gray,” which is a typical Arab color. A smallish horse, and every rib showing. I reach out, and he blows on my hand like they do. Then he whinnies. He starts way up high and goes way down. I recognize that whinny.
“Mister Boots?”
He paws the ground as horses do when they want to say, For heaven's sake, let's get on with it.
My sister reaches out to let him blow on her hand. She gets an apple and splits it for him with her own teeth. She rubs his poll and down his nose. (Think of rubbing Mister Boots's poll!) After he finishes the apple, he leans low and chews at nothing to show, horse way, that he'll do anything she wants him to, and then he puts his bony forehead against her breast, which is not a good sign, so I'm glad to see my sister is just as scared to mount up as she always is.
I say, “You be careful now. I mean it!” I'm talking to Mister Boots, but my sister says, “I will.”
He lopes the smoothest, most collected-up lope I ever saw, and I know my sister will be all right, at least with the riding part.
 
 
Mother is curled up on the floor by her bed. I wish she would get in it. I curl up next to her, not too close because, with all this pain, she can't bear to be touched. There's nothing I can do but worry—about her and my sister. I mean, maybe Boots
is
a bank robber. What if he runs away with her? I guess I don't really think he will, and I guess she'd have sense enough to jump off if need be. Except she might freeze up and not be able to. Except he did care about our tree.
“Roberta,” my mother says.
(Roberta! This is serious.)
“There's things I have to tell you. Things I should have told you before.”
Then she doesn't say anything. Later—practically a half hour later, she seems to feel a little better. She gets into bed and sips at the warm water I bring her. (That was all she wanted.) She says, “I worry about you. I don't want you to live so much in your imagination. I don't want you believing in everything you think up, like you can fly. Things are scientific.”
(She tells me this all the time.) “But what were you going to tell me? You said you needed to tell me things you should have told before?”
“Oh, I'm better now, so no need. We'll pick a nice time to talk later. Just the two of us. Maybe down by the ditch.”
“If you told me more things I'd know better what to believe.”
“You're still so young.”
“Ten,” I say. “Did you forget?”
“Roberta, Roberta. I'm sorry about your name.” (What does she mean by that?) “I never dared call you anything but Bobby.”
She reaches toward me. (She's always a great hand-holder—when she isn't holding her knitting needles.) Now she reaches way out. “Honey . . . Roberta, you know those funny old clothes. . . .” And then she keels right over, banging her head on the floor.
I try to lift her back on the bed and when I can't, I straighten her out and put the pillow under her head. I keep calling, “Ma. Mother.”
I suspect. But I don't want it to be true. Pretty soon I know for sure.
“Those funny old clothes,” were her last words—but at least her next to last word was, “Roberta.”
 
 
I go outside then and listen and look. First I'm listening and looking to see if my sister and the doctor and Mister Boots are coming back. I need them. But then I listen and look around at the night. We're not religious, or if we are, nobody told me, but I look at the moon and then I go down on my knees as if to some moon god. Mister Boots was right; everything is magic. I feel the breeze on my cheeks, as if it's Mother's hand.
I say, “Ma,” again. I whisper it, as if I could call her back from somewhere out there. I guess I must have loved my mother. I never thought about it, but I feel sorry—sorry for myself and sorry for her because she worked so hard. Sorry I didn't help any. And maybe there was something I should have done to help her not die.
Then I think: What am I supposed to do now? Say a prayer? Wash the body? Sing a sad song? Homeschooling didn't teach me anything at all about this. But my sister should be here to sing with me, and we should wash Mother together. That's the kind of thing Mister Boots would say. So I wait. Boots said that a lot of life was being patient. I said, “Yes, if you're a horse and tied up all the time,” but he said, “Every creature—people, too,” and he was right.
Dawn. (Time is going by pretty fast.) The sun is just below the mountain. I want to tell Mother, “This is how it is on the morning after you died, everything pink and orange and purple. Rain over toward town, maybe on my sister and Moonlight Blue.” Maybe the rain is tears. I would like a little rain. I would like to look up and have wetness on my cheeks.
“Mother, how can it be that the horned lizard by our doorstep is still alive. Even still!”
 
 
I don't seem to notice time anymore. It goes on until the sun is twelve o'clockish. I finally see the long tail of dust, and pretty soon I hear the rattle of what turns out to be the doctor's car. Mister Boots isn't with them . . . nor Moonlight Blue. Pretty soon they're close enough so I can see my sister is crying and she doesn't even know about our mother yet. Her whole front is wet even though she holds the doctor's big handkerchief wadded up against her cheeks. I get worried.
“Where is he? My Moonlight Blue?”
That starts her off even more. The doctor has to tell about it for her. “He was stolen weeks ago. Other horses escaped at that time, too. They got them all back except this one. They said his ropes and halters were still hanging there, tied to the rail. It had to be—”
My sister interrupts. “A
person
! The halters were unbuckled.” Once she gets started talking, she can't stop. “They said it might have been me. After all, who needs a horse more than I do? And there I was, riding him. They say he should be shot—because of his legs. When we got to town, he collapsed. I couldn't stand for him to be shot.”
BOOK: Mister Boots
8.2Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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