Mister Boots

by Carol Emshwiller

  “Those clothes cost a lot of money.”

  Our father looks down at himself again. “I can see that.”

  “It’ll take more than a batch of knitting to pay for them. And I don’t go along much with wife beatings.”

  “Discipline. And self-discipline. He’ll learn it in a hurry when he’s with me.”

  Our father is taking the jacket off and then the vest. Everybody’s looking at him, so I run again. But this is different. I’ve already found out where not to go. I go out, around the house, and then right back and in a window.

  As soon as he notices I’m gone, our father yells, “Don’t let him get away.”

  As I hoped, everybody rushes after me. I hear our father jump on his horse. I hear the car door open. The doctor is checking for me in his car. I hear my sister telling Mister Boots to sit down, and I hear that he doesn’t obey her, which is very unhorselike for a trusting horse in love, who’d jump off a cliff for you. Perhaps he’s more man than I think.

  I hear everybody get farther and farther away until, finally, everything’s quiet. They’re all off someplace. Even Boots. Nobody thinks to look back in the house.

  Now’s my chance to check for false bottoms. First I go to Mother’s cedar chest. It’s the most logical. I make a lot of holes in the bottom of it with a kitchen knife and a screwdriver, and it’s just a regular bottom. Then I make holes in the bottoms of all of Mother’s drawers. Even her yarn baskets. I ruin them all. Our father will say how it’s just exactly like me—if he ever finds out.

  Pretty soon I hear somebody coming back. I’m still in Mother’s room. I roll under the bed and listen. It’s Mister Boots and my sister. If they’re the ones who find me, it won’t be so bad. Especially Boots. I can always talk to him. It’s the horse in him that makes him listen.

  I might have to stay here all night. I can do that. I can think about throwing fire and going to Los Angeles. I want to so much I start breathing hard, which I should stop or they’ll hear me, especially Boots. (He might know about me being here anyway, and not say.) To make myself calm down, I study my hands. I like how stringy and square and brown they are. I think how Mister Boots talked about hands. “The joy of them,” he said.

  Then I rest my cheek on my hands and listen to my sister and Mister Boots. They’re not talking about me or where I might have gone off to. Boots is just talking the way he always does. “The glance of a horse is two separate worlds.”

  My sister whispers, so all I can hear is, “Something, something, Moonlight.” She’s loving everything he says, no matter what it is.

  I roll over. Right on the pistol. I forgot I had it. I take it out and put it on my stomach. I think about how you have to cock it first. I don’t want to forget that. I don’t want to shoot anybody—unless I have to. Not anybody here. I need all these people. I even need our father.

  Now Boots and my sister come into Mother’s room. (All I see is feet.) Boots is saying, “. . . center of gravity. What keeps human beings upright.”

  My sister says, “That night you were the most mystical magical wonderful thing I ever saw. You were as if made of moonbeams.”

  “Would you tell me if I should say things in a different way? In order to be a man, I mean. I could change.”

  “Never. Ever.”

  “I’m not really like a man.”

  “That’s why I love you.”

  They’re kissing now—or nuzzling—slurping at each other, anyway.

  He says, “To think I once thought the round pen was the center of the world, while all the time it was here with you.”

  Slurp, slurp, slurp—kiss, kiss.

  I guess it’s kiss, but I’ll bet neither one of them knows much about kissing. I may not know from experience, but I know more about all that than my sister. She never found out anything unless from some book or other, and there’s no book I ever heard of about “How to Kiss,” or I’d have read it myself and long before she ever did.

  Then they sit on the bed!

  For heaven’s sake!

  The springs dip down so far they actually touch my face and my stomach. I squinch over to a better spot. Don’t they remember Mother died right next to this very bed and not so long ago?

  “Do you . . . love?” she says. She’s too shy to put the “me” on the end of it.

  “As if my meadow,” Mister Boots says. “As if my shady tree. You and I, we’d stand, tail to head and head to tail, and swish away each other’s flies. We’d drink from the same bucket. If you were gone, I would wait at the gate forever.”

  Can’t he just say “I love you” like everybody else would?

  My sister says, “Hold me.” I never thought she’d be so bold. First she’s supposed to ask him, what are his intentions?

  What are his intentions, anyway? Why doesn’t my sister ask? I’ll bet she doesn’t care. With Mother gone, I’m the only one around to see that things are done properly. I won’t be able to if I go off with our father.

  I’m looking up at the bedsprings—right next to my nose. The mattress is light blue. Faded. The springs are rusty. They squeak with the two of them up there.

  I don’t know what to do. I just keep looking up at the faded blue with rusty marks on it. . . .

  And I find the money.

  chapter five

  I hear the doctor and our father come clattering back. Both of them pound their heels down hard on the porch as they come in, as if they’re still angry. That gives Mister Boots and my sister plenty of warning to get out of Mother’s room.

  Then our father comes into Mother’s room and changes his clothes practically right in front of me, except (again) I don’t see anything but feet. He gives the clothes back to the doctor. I hear the doctor crank his car, and then I hear him putt-putt-putt away.

  Everybody sits down and has coffee and everybody wonders where I could be. Then our father notices the gun isn’t under the chair cushion. First he wonders where it got to. Then says, “For sure it’s that undisciplined child has it. I don’t trust him as far as I can spit.” He says it about a dozen times and half a dozen different ways.

  The three of them keep on talking about me. Now our father’s trying to convince everybody I should go with him. Of course nothing of what he says makes any sense to my sister because she’s only thinking that one single thought about me. She doesn’t argue, she just says, “He can’t go.” But she keeps saying “he,” so everything is fine.

  Finer than fine. I have the gun and I have a lot of money—four bundles of it—and my sister isn’t telling on me. I could walk right out to them and I’d be in charge of every single thing and nobody would know it but me.

  I put the pistol up there with the money. I climb out Mother’s window so it’ll look as if I came from outside. I roll in the garden dirt—no special reason—I guess to make them think I come from some odd place out here. I come in by the front door. I walk like I’m in charge of everything, which I am.

  I was hoping everybody could tell, but, first thing, our father grabs me by the ankles and flips me upside down, quick as could be, shakes me, and then feels me all over (not the important place).

  Mister Boots is looking vicious again.

  Our father says, “So! Where is it?”

  Why should I stoop to answer? I’m the one who knows everything and has everything.

  “I expect that pistol to be back on that table in five minutes, or else.”

  “It’ll take . . . umm . . . three days.” I’d better be careful, or I’ll get the giggles again.

  Even though I’m all dirty from rolling in the garden, my sister comes and hugs me. She’s changed in every single way there is. This is a real hug, too. Maybe she doesn’t want me to go with our father because she really likes me and wants to look after me just like I want to look after her. I always used to think of my sister not only as shy and scared and ignorant, but as younger than me. Now she seems about the same age.

  She and Mister Boots both look kind of rumpled, an
d her blouse is buttoned up all wrong. That with the buttons doesn’t seem at all to be a horsey thing for Mister Boots to have done. That’s pure man.

  My sister says, “It would be best, you know. We won’t watch you go get it.”

  “The hell we won’t!”

  My sister is still hugging me as if she wanted to keep me away from our father.

  (If I do go get the gun, how come our father doesn’t think I’ll shoot him with it right away?)

  Mister Boots says, “He is being who he is.”

  Our father looks disgusted. “Straight from the horse’s mouth.” Why did he put it like that?

  I twist away from my sister. It’s a lot easier than getting away from our father. Of course this was a hug, not a clutch. I don’t run, I just stand there.

  Our father takes some metal rings out of his pocket. They’re handcuffs, except I don’t know this until he snaps them on me and laughs his crazy laugh. He goes on laughing much too long, as if he wants to show what a jolly person he is and how this is just a joke. Then he throws the key way up almost to the ceiling and catches it in his mouth and pretends to chew. “Yum,” he says. I don’t know where the key really went.

  I hadn’t noticed until now how graceful his hands are—fat, but graceful even so. They make me think of birds’ wings. I’m upset, but I notice. Or maybe I notice because I’m upset.

  He says, “Maybe it’s my turn to bite you. How’d you like that? Did you ever hear of ‘Do unto others’?”

  “You already did bite me.”

  “Bullshit.”

  My sister flinches when he says that. She doesn’t know, even now, what people always say, but with our father around, she soon will.

  I pull on the cuffs so hard I hurt my wrists. All of a sudden I realize I’m trapped. I want to reach out. I want to hold things. I can’t breathe. I can’t think. I hear myself yell, and I didn’t even mean to. I kick out at nothing. I’m going crazy. I know I am.

  And then I do go crazy. I guess I do. For a minute it’s as if here’s Moonlight Blue, all hazy . . . right in front of me, the river horse . . . white in the moonlight . . . the sound of hooves, which is the sound of my heart.

  Then I’m not just yelling out one big shriek like I like to do to scare people, I’m yelling and yelling and crying at the same time. I wonder if I’m doing it on purpose as a good idea to do. But I don’t know if I can stop or not. All of a sudden I’m on the floor, banging my head on Mother’s little hooked rug.

  My sister goes down on the floor with me and holds me tight so I can’t kick or bang my head anymore.

  And then I throw up. Right on Mother’s rug. That, for sure, I hadn’t planned on doing.

  I see our father leaning over me. He’s taking up all my ceiling. He’s raising his hands as if to say, Oh, for heaven’s sake.

  Then I pass out. Or maybe I just forgot everything right after. That happened to me once when I fell off a horse. All of a sudden I was on the ground, and now, all of a sudden, here’s me, on the couch instead of Boots, a damp cloth on my head and no handcuffs anymore. My sister is kneeling on the floor cleaning up Mother’s rug. And Boots is sitting beside me on the stool, wiping me off just as tender as could be. He’s saying, “Easy now. Sweet boy.” I like being called sweet.

  Our father is saying, “But what about the pistol? What about that?”

  My sister says, “I’ll see to it. Don’t worry.”

  And I’m thinking: Well, that was one way to get things done I hadn’t ever thought about before, but I’m exhausted. I’m not sure I’d ever want to do that again.

  I wish I had turned into a bird instead of all this, and flown away like my sister said I maybe did. I guess I was just about scared enough to have that happen, but it didn’t, which is not a good sign for me ever getting to be a bird. I guess it’s good I didn’t; I’d never have been able to fly with my wings cuffed together like that.

  Afterward, when everything’s all calmed down, we have iced tea and my sister sits on the couch and holds me on her lap, which never happened before that I can remember. Of course I never wanted her to before. I wouldn’t have let her if she’d tried.

  Our father says (mostly to my sister), “It’s criminal to leave a boy out here doing nothing. Look at him.” He reaches over and circles my wrist with his sweaty thumb and forefinger. “No decent food, no decent clothes, no exercise. ‘Mens sana in corpore sano,’ I always say. Now a girl would be different, but a boy has to get out of here. If you had any sense you’d see that. What can his future be, stuck way out here? And you, too, knitting your life away? Even Mister Boots here. Does he do anything at all?”

  My sister must know that these are very good questions. She doesn’t say a word because there isn’t anything to say.

  “I suppose you think this boy’ll go off someday and do something? Well, not unless you let him come along with me.” Then, “Women! Always trying to keep everybody safe. There is no safe!”

  “Not me,” I say. “I don’t want to be safe.” But nobody is listening.

  chapter six

  We get to relax and breathe the next morning when our father rides to town (for cigars, and new clothes for me, and something about Mother at the undertaker’s, too). I’ll bet that horse can get there in no time.

  I thought I’d finally have a chance to do something of my own, but Jocelyn talks to me almost the whole time he’s gone. I know better than to say one single thing; that just makes people talk more. I go, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

  In a way it’s nice. We sit on the couch, and she puts her arm around me, and I put my head on her shoulder. A cross-breeze comes in the kitchen window and blows out through here and on out the screen door. It’s one of those days when the sage smells really strong. It almost makes me cry to be so cozy, but I’m tired of all this talk, talk, talk.

  “Do you want to be handcuffed again, for heaven’s sake? When he was here before, Mother and I did all the dirty work without a minute’s rest. If we wanted any money for ourselves, we had to knit. He thinks it’s good for people to grow up hardworking, like he did. But . . . Oh dear, I don’t know what to do. You know as well as I do you can’t go. You just can’t! You can’t! That’s all there is to it.”

  “I’m not deaf.”

  She quiets down, and in a bit I actually fall asleep leaning on her shoulder. I don’t know how long I sleep, but she lets me stay. (This is a whole new thing—as everything is these days.) I don’t wake up until our father comes back. With clothes for me. And shoes!

  I’ve already listened to just about all the talk I can stand for one day, but next thing our father is taking me out by myself, too. Not for a talk (I certainly don’t need to be convinced of anything), but to work on tricks. He wants me to get started being his helper.

  First thing, our father shows me how to throw fire. It’s probably a sort of bribe to get me to want to go with him even more than I already do. But you can’t just go off and throw fire whenever you feel like it. It’s tricky. You have to be prepared, and you have to use special paper. That’s a big disappointment. I think about how Mother said not to believe in magic. Maybe she was right. Throwing fire is just regular once you know how.

  Then he shows me about the magic wand and scarves and flowers, and then about other things where you have to stand a certain way, like sideways—even your hands sideways. He tells me how I have to practice all the time to keep my fingers nimble.

  He says “Butterfingers” when I drop things, but I’m surprised he doesn’t get disgusted with me. All of a sudden he’s patient. He said he never loses his temper; that’s not true, he did lots of times, but he doesn’t now. He says “Good boy” a couple of times, and gives me a man-to-man punch on the shoulder.

  Then he tells me he has a nice surprise for me if I practice—something he got for me in town—something I’ll like. I wonder if I will.

  And then, after all this getting talked at in the morning and taught things all afternoon, right after beans, Mister Boots .
. . even Mister Boots takes me out to talk to me. I never had a day like this before.

  He wants to go out a ways because it’s his first time really away from the house, so we walk down by the irrigation ditch where the grass is long and juicy. Mister Boots likes it there even though, in his present form, he won’t be eating any of it. We sit on it instead—at first almost on a killdeer nest. Boots sees the mother bird doing the broken-wing trick to make us come after her, and then he sees the nest and we move a bit farther down. I lie back and look at the moon coming up from behind the mountains and get ready for a lot of his usual nonsense. His voice is soft and breathy, and he speaks thoughtfully, slowly, like he’s thinking hard, and I guess he is.

  “I want to say it properly,” he says.

  His words make me sleepy—in a nice way. They make me look around at the hills and the mountains, and then closer in, at blades of grass.

  We watch the moon come up till it shines on Mister Boots so you can almost see Moonlight Blue underneath his humanness—his face, so pale, his mane blowing. I’m glad Jocelyn didn’t let our father cut it.

  “Your sister says I should convince you, but convincing doesn’t convince. If you need to make a mistake, you should make it. But your sister said to try.”

  “You always try. But I need to ask you something. It’s important. I need to know your intentions.”

  “What intentions?”

  “We don’t just . . . you know human beings don’t . . . well, stand . . . mount and then wander off and then mount somebody else. I mean what are you going to do about my sister?”

  “Love her. Isn’t that enough? Is that enough?”

  “No.”

  And then I tell him all about marriage, which makes him thoughtful and sad (not that he doesn’t look thoughtful and sad all the time anyway).

  “I was told of it, but no one ever told me as well as you do now.”

  “You have to stay with her till death do you part. You have to tell her that, and you have to make money.”