Mister Boots (5 page)

My sister leans her head into the couch cushions and begins to cry. Mister Boots turns and nibbles at her neck. I'm wondering if he knows how to kiss? It looks like he doesn't.

Then my sister turns and they're cheek to cheek, nuzzling and nibbling like horses do, even my sister. I'm not sure, but I think he licked her neck. I don't know what to do to stop it.

“Mister Boots, I'm not a boy, you know. Mister Boots. Mister Boots. I'm not a boy.”

Nobody is listening.

My sister says, “I don't want you ever hurt,” and I say, “Moonlight Blue is a horse and did you see his color? Flea-bit, flea-bit. That's really what they call it. Sometimes they even call it fly-specked.”

“Moonlight Blue,” she says, as if it's the most beautiful name there ever was. (Does she know it was me thought that name up? But then I never told her.) “Moonlight Blue. I love you, Moonlight Blue.”

Mister Boots says, “I felt a bird inside my chest the first time I saw you.” And Jocelyn says, “Oh yes. Oh yes.”

So they lean against each other until Mister Boots falls asleep again or maybe passes out from the painkiller. My sister keeps patting him like she forgot she was doing it, but she finally turns back to her knitting.

I'm resigned—to everything. What else is there to do? I tell my sister I want to help knit things so we can get some more money, but she says she doesn't have the time to teach me now. Maybe later. She says she could knit three things in the time it would take her to teach me to do one messy, no-good thing. Except all she's doing is just knitting this red sweater for Mister Boots. If she goes on like this, she'll never make any money.

“I've heard tell horses can't even see red anyway.”

“I like it,” she says. “It fits with how he looks.”

I guess I'll go off and look for money-hiding places. That's more practical than what she's doing.

I wish she wasn't so beautiful. She could have any boy she wanted if only she didn't always hide in her hair. If she was ugly I wouldn't mind her loving Mister Boots. I'd think he was all the love she could ever get.

But I don't go look for the money. I go outside in the dark and pick up another little nothing pebble. I hug it in both hands. I want to make it feel comfortable. I think how holding my pebble is just as if I held a star. I know that's not even a little bit true (it isn't that my mother and my sister haven't homeschooled me enough—too much in fact), but I like thinking it. I lie down on the sand and put the pebble in my mouth. We never have candy. I can't remember last time I had some. (After I find the money, I'm going to sneak some for candy.) Then I almost swallow the pebble, so I take it out and put it in my belly button to keep it warm. It fits perfectly. I squint to make the stars funny and fuzzy. I hold my breath and tense up all my muscles and think hard. If I once was so magic I could fly, I ought to be magic enough to find our money.

Just then an owl flies right over me. Utterly silent. Utterly magic. I see the white underbelly. I feel him, too—the rush of air. I think about flying, how I could raise my arms and lift myself right up. I think I'm floating away, but I fall asleep by mistake. I know I just dream it.

 

 

My sister must have knit all night. When I wake up and go inside, Mister Boots is wearing the red sweater and my sister is shaving him . . . shaving off those sparse, coarse, horsey whiskers. She says she's not going to cut his hair. She's keeping it like a mane. After she shaves him, my sister begins knitting him a pair of socks. I wonder if she's ever going to get back to knitting for us to sell?

 

 

(Could my sister have a horse baby? Could that really happen? Good thing a foal's hooves are soft at first.)

Mister Boots is as curious as a horse. As soon as he can hobble around holding on to walls, he examines our house. He says he's only been in two houses in his whole life. That's not so odd, I've hardly been in more than that myself. He leans close. Blows. Licks. Nibbles. Tastes. It's a good thing Mother isn't here to watch. She'd say he's getting germs all over. And she wouldn't like the way he pries into drawers and boxes, and how he lies down on all the beds, even my little one (which nobody fits but me). When he was out with that man who helped him, he slept on hay. They both did. Back then Boots never even knew there were such things as beds.

 

 

I found out that he can't read. I brought him my book,
Black Beauty
. I thought maybe, since Mister Boots was mostly just lying around recovering, he'd read to me some evenings, but I'm the one who has to read to him. We hardly have any books. We're too poor. There's Jocelyn's old learning-to-read books that I learned on, there's a dictionary, and there's one really good book called
Smoky the Cow Horse.
I've read that a dozen times.

 

 

I haven't been out to water my tree lately, so I decide I should go. I'll bet water to a tree is like candy to a person. I'll bet the tree sucks it in real slow to make it last a long time.

I usually go at night when I can secretly borrow somebody's horse, but this time I borrow one in daylight—Rusty, the pony. From what they said in town it's never been a secret, anyway.

When I get close I see a horse and a tent, and when I get closer I see that it's a
very
nice horse. Then a man comes out of the tent, and it's just the opposite of when I found Mister Boots. This man's all dressed up in fancy clothes, riding britches, and shiny English-type boots. The man's too soft and too fat, but the horse is in good shape—probably from having to carry a fat man around all the time.

The man has shiny, Japanese-ish hair, a showy little mustache, and a teeny, useless little goatee. Everything shiny black. He says a fancy “
Good
morning,” and gives me a fancy, phony smile.

I don't answer. I get off the horse and, real quick, pour the water down at the tree roots. He's not going take any water away from my tree. Besides, a man like this will have canteens.

So then he says, “What's your name, Sonny?”

I already know who this is, and even
he
thinks I'm a boy. Was I even Mother's secret? I don't know if I should answer, so I don't.

“So your mother's dead?”

It's
sort
of a question, but I know he knows, and that's why he's here. All of a sudden I wonder if he knows where the money is. Maybe he came for it.

“How old are you now? Seven? Eight?”

I know I'm small for my age, but can't he keep track of
anything
? I'm not going to answer, and that's that.

He starts gathering his things and tying them on his horse. I jump back on Rusty. She's small enough that I don't need to put her in a low place for getting on. (I shouldn't think “jumped on her.” I really pulled myself up by her mane, which, since she's a pony, she doesn't have much of.)

“That your pony? Your mother must be making money to have a nice horse like that.”

I do answer. “She doesn't belong to us. We don't have a horse. We're too poor.”

I'm wondering, Can we get hold of this fancy one he's riding? Mister Boots won't be any good to us as a horse—if as anything at all but another mouth to feed.

I wait while our father packs up his tent and mounts up, and we head for the cottage. He rides in front, and he sure knows the way. When we're almost there, I jump off Rusty and put her in the neighbor's pasture where she belongs. Then I walk along behind our father. My sister comes out to the porch. She heard the horse, and she knows somebody riding up on a horse isn't going to be me; I never ride all the way in. When she sees our father she just stands and stares. She looks
wonderful
! All of a sudden taller—standing straight for a change—and her mussed-up hair all golden in the sun. She has her knitting needles in her hand. The way she's holding them makes her look dangerous. I realize she's not as helpless as she's always seemed to be. Yes, I think, yes!
My
sister!

Our father dismounts and walks toward her holding his arms out as if to hug her, but she steps back. The way she looks now, nobody would dare hug her.

“Everything I did was for your own good. That's the only reason I ever did anything. And look at you now.”

My sister turns away.

“So where's your mother?”

She knows he knows, just like I did. So then our father walks right in, thumping down hard on the porch boards with the heels of his fancy English riding boots.

Of course who's in there is Mister Boots, dressed in our father's clothes. He's lying with his bandaged feet propped up on cushions and the couch arm, but when our father comes in, he sits up fast, and carefully doesn't look him in the eyes. That's the horse way, so as not to challenge.

Our father stares though. He's taking in his own old circus-type clothes—how they droop on Boots and are too short. How his fancy alligator belt has a hole punched in it to make it smaller.

He doesn't say anything. He just grunts and goes back to Mother's bedroom and then comes right out again, asks, straight at Mister Boots, “Where is she!” as if Boots had hidden her away. Our father looks like he's going to punch Mister Boots, so my sister says, “She's at the undertaker in Tungsten Town.”

“Well . . .” Our father plops down in our only overstuffed chair. He looks relieved. “So she really is dead then.”

Had I thought at all about having a father, he's not the sort I would ever have wanted. His eyes are squinty, and his cheeks are chubby (having a goatee doesn't help at all). His thighs must be as big around as my waist.

“I guess you're not so glad to see me. I can understand that, but things will be better with me here.”

“But you . . . You . . . All of us . . .” My sister's so upset she can't talk. She has tears in her eyes again, but this time from frustration—maybe at herself for not being able to say anything at all.

“I never did one single thing that wasn't for your own good. Take this boy, here. From the very start he disobeyed everything we said. Remember? Tore up books, unraveled knitting, even played with fire. It's a wonder he hasn't burned the house down by now. There wasn't anything bad he didn't do. Look,” he says, and bares his forearm. “He bit me. Look at these teeth marks. And here on my hand, too. You were a big girl then, what? Ten . . . twelve years old? You remember all that.”

(Maybe she does, but I don't remember any of it. And I wouldn't have torn up books. Would I? Is that why we hardly have any?)

My sister
is
impressive. I used to think “wishy-washy and dishwater blond,” but now I think “golden lion-type hair.” She looks like she might even yell out “Bullshit!” like those wranglers at the next-door ranch do. I wish she would.

What she does is snort. She sounds as much like a horse as Boots does.

“Who is this man here?” Our father is pointing at Mister Boots as if to shoot him with a finger. “What has this man got to do with your mother? Where is this man sleeping? Are you married? I never heard about it.”

“When would you hear anything?”

Are we about to have a fight? I'll help.

But I guess I must be nervous because I hop and jump and cavort around. Then I laugh like a crazy person, and I give this screech. It makes everybody jump. I remember I used to do that a lot a long time ago, to scare people. I forgot all about it. I don't know what I'm trying to do now. Maybe I want to be as bad as our father says I used to be.

He sits up straight and frowns at me. “There now, what did I tell you?
Discipline!
Like I always say.” He slaps his hand hard on his own knee, as if it's instead of hitting me. Then he turns to my sister and whispers, “I never lose my temper. Never!” He settles back, his fat knees wide apart. “Never!” Then he asks if there's any beer around, but we haven't ever had any such thing as beer or liquor, just that little bit of sherry we found and drank all up. I don't need to wonder anymore what it's like to get drunk.