Mister Boots

by Carol Emshwiller

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  chapter one

  chapter two

  chapter three

  chapter four

  chapter five

  chapter six

  chapter seven

  chapter eight

  chapter nine

  chapter ten

  chapter eleven

  chapter twelve

  chapter thirteen

  BOOKS BY CAROL EMSHWILLER

  NOVELS

  Carmen Dog

  Ledoyt

  Leaping Man Hill

  The Mount

  Mister Boots

  STORY COLLECTIONS

  Joy in Our Cause

  Verging on the Pertinent

  The Start of the End of It All

  Report to the Men’s Club and Other Stories

  I Live with You and You Don’t Know It

  VIKING

  Published by Penguin Group

  Penguin Young Readers Group, 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia

  Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2

  Penguin Group (NZ), cnr Airborne and Rosedale Roads, Albany, Auckland 1310, New Zealand

  First published in 2005 by Viking, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group

  Copyright © Carol Emshwiller, 2005

  All rights reserved

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Emshwiller, Carol.

  Mister Boots : a fantasy novel / Carol Emshwiller.

  p. cm.

  Summary: The life of ten-year-old Bobby Lassiter changes drastically

  when she meets Mister Boots, a man who is also a horse.

  eISBN : 978-1-440-69595-7

  [1. Horses—Fiction. 2. Metamorphosis—Fiction.

  3. Magic—Fiction. 4. Fathers—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.E69627Mis 2005

  [Fic]—dc22

  2005003950

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be

  reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any

  means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written

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  http://us.penguingroup.com

  To Eve, Susan, and Stoney

  and to David

  chapter one

  I was born (which is a lucky thing in itself, and I’m lucky that I’m me and no one other). But also I’m lucky I was born right here, because I have the whole place to myself and nobody bothers me. Twenty-five acres of nothing—desert nothing—surrounded by other people’s even bigger nothing. And I have the best mother because she doesn’t care. I mean she loves me, but she doesn’t care what I do. I can go out the window in the middle of the night. I can sleep under the stars. . . . And I’m lucky in having my big sister. She does all the things I’d have to do if she wasn’t here. She likes to do everything I hate the most. And I’m lucky to have Mister Boots. Nobody knows about him but me.

  My mother and my sister have too many of their own things to think about to worry about me. Like money. Like the next meal. Like new shoes. (I don’t wear shoes, which is another lucky thing, but they do.)

  Their minds are on their knitting. Their needles go wobbling back and forth all day. They make sweaters and caps and socks and lots of things for babies. They can’t afford to make anything for themselves (or me). My old sweater barely comes down to my elbows. Mother keeps saying she should knit me another and what color do I want? I keep telling her sky blue, but does a sky blue sweater ever come along in my size?

  Mother calls me Dear and Sweetie and Honey. My sister calls me Bobby and Booby. I wonder if anybody around here remembers my name? I’ve been called “cute” things all my life, and I never did like “cute,” but I don’t care, I have names I call myself to myself, like Scar.

  And I do have scars crisscrossing my legs, but I don’t remember how I got them. Maybe I was too little to keep away from a Spanish dagger plant. (Mister Boots has the exact same kinds of scars, and other bigger ones, too, where a whole chunk of skin came off.) I have a crooked elbow that won’t go straight, but it doesn’t bother me. My bad arm can do anything my good arm can do. I remember flying through the air once, but I don’t know if I got thrown or dropped. Maybe I fell out of a tree. Or maybe I thought I could fly (I do remember thinking that now and then), and found out I couldn’t.

  They say my mother is past looking out for me or anybody and that’s why I have these scars and such. (A baby needs somebody to pay attention.) They say our little graveyard just got too full up for her before I came . . . all her little boys died at birth. Bad for her, but lucky for me because I don’t want any looking after. Besides, what could happen that wouldn’t have already happened? Except Mister Boots happened. That’s one new thing.

  My sister is beautiful, but she’s so shy. Boys from the nearest ranch hang around sometimes but not for long. She doesn’t have time for them anyway; she has to help Mother with the knitting and everything else, and she’s the one who has to take the knit things to the towns—to all the little stores. Mother won’t go. I wouldn’t mind going, but I won’t help with the knitting. They know better than to ask me.

  My sister has golden hair exactly the right length to hide behind. She shakes her head so her hair hangs down in front of her face and she peers out from behind it. She thinks she’s safer back there. I suppose she is when she cries or when she blushes, which she always does. She says she hates herself when she cries. I never cry. I’d hate myself, too, if I did.

  She has to go to all the little towns by hitchhiking. She hates that more than anything, but she has to do it. She always has a big suitcase full of knit things, and the circle she has to make is too far for walking. Even the closest village is four miles away. The whole loop she makes is almost too far even for the wagons she hitches rides with. I wouldn’t mind hitchhiking, but they think I’m too young. I don’t know why it’s any safer for a beautiful girl to be doing it than me.

  Once she even got a ride in a car. That really made me jealous. There are hardly any cars around, though they say pretty soon there’ll be lots. (I can just imagine, a-ooo-ga, a-ooo-ga all over the place.) They’re mostly owned by people not from here. Nobody’s that rich even in our biggest town. That’s eight miles from here. I’ve never even been there.

  I’m the midnight moonlight starbright rider. We don’t have any horses—we can’t afford them—but the neighbors do. Their horses come to me all by themselves, no grain, no carrot, no apple. They follow me to the fence where I can get on, or I put them in an irrigation ditch and I get on from the bank.

  Mister Boots says he’ll never ever, ever ride a horse. Never! Even if his legs don’t get well, he’ll not ride, and that’s that.

  I almost made a big mistake. I told Mother that once a whirl-wind picked me up and put me down someplace else. I said, “I remember it,” but Mother said, “Little and light as you are, that just couldn’t happen.�
�� I told her Mister Boots said it could. I’m not even supposed to go to the next ranch over and talk to the wranglers, let alone to somebody like Boots.

  “Mister Boots,” she said. “What Mister Boots?”

  And then I remembered she doesn’t know about him and isn’t supposed to.

  “Nothing,” I said. “Nobody and nothing.”

  She said, “Honey . . .” (How can you ever learn your real name if you’re always called Honey or Sweetie Pie?) “I guess you haven’t been homeschooled enough about reality and science. It’s nice to make things up sometimes, but you have to stop believing whatever comes to mind. Mister Boots, for heaven’s sake! What will you be thinking of next?”

  So then I felt safe because she wouldn’t believe in him anyway. But Boots isn’t a name that’s just out hanging on a tree—unless it’s for a cat. Or, of course, a horse with four black feet.

  How I found Mister Boots is, I was out in the middle of the night riding like I do, and I came to this naked man curled up under our one and only big tree, which is half dead because there hasn’t been enough water lately. I always take bucketsful out there. Just then I had two canvas buckets, one on each side of the horse’s withers, and I rode up and slid off, not knowing if I should give some to the man or all to the tree. I figured the man was as thirsty as the tree, and the tree as thirsty as the man, but the man was asleep, and besides, the tree is my friend.

  But right then he woke up and started looking thirsty. So I gave him a drink. He said, “Thank you kindly,” three times. “I’m grateful.” After he’d had a drink, he patted the tree trunk as if he was as much friends with it as I am, and said, “It’s thirsty, too,” so I knew he was like me.

  Then he looked down at himself as if he just realized he was naked. “You wouldn’t happen to have clothes that might fit me a little bit?”

  We did have some men’s clothes packed away at home, so I said yes, and that I’d get them right now because it was a cool night.

  Then he said, “Can you keep a secret?”

  “Course I can.”

  “Can you keep me a secret?”

  “Course.” (It isn’t as if I haven’t kept almost everything a secret anyway. My whole life is a secret.) “Why? Are you a bank robber or what? Or maybe you escaped from someplace where they put crazies.”

  “I’m not. I didn’t.”

  “Why should I believe you? Looks kind of funny, you out here naked and limping.”

  “Would a bank robber be naked?” He asked it as if he really wondered.

  “Maybe your clothes were for prisoners. And maybe you hurt your legs jumping out a jail window.”

  “I don’t have a weapon, not even a knife.”

  He couldn’t be too bad, because he did know the tree was thirsty. “I do believe you.”

  I asked him how he lost his clothes, and he said, “I didn’t have any,” and I said, “If you didn’t have clothes before, why do you need some now?” and he said, “It’s your way, not mine,” and I said, “Why?” Then he laughed, and said, “You don’t know much more than I do,” and I said, “I know just enough for right here and right now,” and he laughed some more, and then I went and got him pants, and a nice warm shirt, and shoes and socks. . . . “The whole caboodle,” he said, and then, “Isn’t that a nice word?”

  I guess I’d have to say I stole those clothes, but nobody was using them. I was hoping to get big enough to wear them myself pretty soon, but it takes a long, long time to grow even a little bit.

  I never did dare ask Mother about the clothes. Why were they just hanging there for years and years in the spare room that never gets used for anything? Why didn’t she give them to somebody? Or sell some? There’s two silky shirts. I’ll bet they’re worth something. There’s a dressy jacket with tails in back with pockets sewn inside them. There’s even a purple turban with a jewel pinned on it.

  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.