Mister Boots

by Carol Emshwiller

  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 si
ster 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.

  “There used to be some brandy,” our father says. “Trust your mother to have poured it on the grapevines.”

  “No, I did that,” I say, and giggle.

  My sister doesn’t know what to make of me. I cross my eyes at her, but I don’t know what to make of me either. She sits down next to Mister Boots. She pats his shoulder as if to calm him. The way his hair hangs over his forehead, half to one side and half to the other . . . I’ve seen the exact same thing with horses. It always gives them a mild, sweet look. Even so, right now, he doesn’t look so mild. “Easy, easy,” my sister says, exactly as you say to a horse. She turns to our father. “You came back because Mother’s dead. We’re fine.”

  (Does she mean even with no mother and no money?)

  Our father takes out a partly smoked cigar, lights it, and puffs out a smelly cloud. Mister Boots moves to the far end of the couch and blows a blustery horse blow.

  “You need me. I would never leave you children out here by yourselves.”

  “Need you!” My sister turns around and pulls up her blouse to show her bare back. She has some of those exact same scars. No wonder she doesn’t like men. So then what about Mother? If Mother has them, the undertaker will know all about it. But it won’t be the first time he’s seen that. I’ve seen scars on those wranglers next door when I watch them wash up in the cow pond. Not just on the black men, but the white men, too, though not quite as bad. (They don’t care about me watching. They all think I’m a boy.)

  Mister Boots looks at my sister’s back and then he turns and stares at our father. I know that stare, that lowered head, but our father doesn’t get the message. I’ve never seen Boots look like this. His face is as impassive as a horse’s always is to humans, but I can almost see Moonlight Blue with his ears plastered back. Can’t our father see that?

  Our father doesn’t seem to care that my sister’s back looks terrible. He shakes his head as if to say, Yes, yes, I know all that. And I guess he does. “Well,” he says, “if no brandy, how about some coffee then?”

  My sister says she’s already served him often enough when she was six years old and even younger, and she isn’t going to do it anymore.

  But I think, How about pouring boiling hot coffee on our father’s head, and then how about we all jump him and hold him and maybe whip him so he’ll have the same marks all over him that we have on us? Except he probably has them already.

  “I’ll get it,” I say, but my sister shouts, “Don’t!”

  Mister Boots hasn’t moved from his ready-to-attack position. Or is it ready-to-run? That’s what horses always do first.

  But nobody is doing anything. I’m beginning to suspect it might be all up to me. Besides, I’m the only one with any luck.

  “I’m going to get the coffee,” I say. I need for something to be happening. I start to jump—jump and jump and jump toward the kitchen. It’s not easy. Why in the world am I doing this? The good thing about it is, everybody is looking at me and wondering about me. I want to go on acting crazy. Or maybe I want to go slowly so my sister can stop me just in case I’m doing the wrong thing, and she does get up to do that.

  Our father says, “Good boy.” He gets up, faster than you’d think a fat man would, and grabs my sister’s arm and twists it up behind her so she gasps and has to lean way down as if she has a stomachache.

  Then I remember. I’ve had this dream, over and over, my arm twisted exactly like that. I’ll bet I didn’t fly like my sister said I did. I’ll bet our father broke my elbow just this way. If I was only three years old, it probably wouldn’t have taken much twisting to do it.

  I keep on jumping and jumping, and when I’m in the kitchen, I stop. I stir the fire in the stove and throw on kindling, and then I stand still and listen. I hear my sister gasp again. I feel bad for her, and I feel bad that I’m not strong enough to rescue her.

  And then—but I didn’t see any of it. I hear a clatter that sounds like hooves on our wood floor. I hear our father make a funny noise. I go back in and everybody is sitting exactly as before, except not a single person looks the same. My sister is next to Mister Boots on the couch holding Boots’s wrist. Boots is staring at his bandaged feet. Our father is in the chair, again lounging back, except it doesn’t look like lounging anymore. It looks . . . Well, he’s kind of shriveled.

  Boots couldn’t have, could he? I mean he couldn’t change just for half a minute—just time enough to stamp around—and then change back again so fast?

  Our father looks at me and says, “I thought you went for coffee.” His voice sounds as if he’s suddenly caught a cold. He’s staring down at that little round rug Mother hooked that has birds all over it and is so pretty. We always keep it in front of that big chair. There’s not much around here Mother didn’t make.

  I say, “Oh,” and go back to get the coffee. This time I walk like a normal person. I still don’t know if I’ll pour the whole pot of boiling coffee on our father’s head or not.

  I’m beginning to remember all those things I used to do when I was little and everybody said I was a handful. I did mess things up, but it must have been only when our father was here.

  Anyway, my very own father doesn’t know how old I am and th
at I’m not a boy! Maybe my mother and my sister tried to fool him. Maybe he wouldn’t have wanted me if I wasn’t a boy. All the babies in the graveyard are boys and he already had my sister so maybe he didn’t want any more like her.

  I bring the coffee, all very normal, on a tray and with oat cookies my sister made for Mister Boots. (Boots doesn’t like coffee, so I brought him tea. I brought myself cider but in a cup so it looks like coffee, so my sister will be mad at me.

  Nobody says anything; we all just eat and sip. And pretty soon my sister gets up to get supper, which is nothing but beans. We don’t have any money for really good food. This is the best we have. I used to think everybody in the world ate mostly beans, but by now I know beans are a dead giveaway to how poor a person is. It’ll especially be a dead giveaway when we have beans again tomorrow.

  (I never saw a person eat so much so fast as our father. We could have had three more meals on his just one.)

  We have this little table in our little kitchen. Hardly room enough for four. We don’t have a dining room. We have a sitting room and then the little kitchen with worn-out linoleum, which I never noticed how worn-out till right now. But we have a nice big window over the sink with very nice curtains Mother made. They have ducks on them.

  We’ve been eating without any talking when all of sudden my sister asks our father if he knows where any money might be. I wish she hadn’t said anything. If she wanted to ask things, she should have come to me and discussed it first, because if our father knows where any money might be, he’ll just take it for himself. I’ll bet that’s why he came back.

  And then he practically says it—at least that he did it before. “Why, I took the money with me.” Then he smiles around at each of us. “I was off all the way to New York. To make money for the family. I knew you’d get along. Even then your mother was knitting away so fast you wouldn’t believe it.”