The Paper Cowboy

by Kristin Levine

  “Well, thanks for your advice,” I said sarcastically. I was kind of disappointed. I’d thought she’d be excited too. Finding the paper was the best thing that had happened today.

  “I mean it! You’re going to get in trouble.”

  “Nah.”

  “Tommy! Remember last month when you found the BB gun in the woods and—”

  “Fine,” I sighed. “I’ll burn the paper.” But I was going to show it to the other boys at school first.

  After Pinky and Susie had been put to bed, Dad and Mary Lou and I shared a tense and silent dinner of pierogi sprinkled with carpet fibers. Mom had been right. They weren’t very good. The filling had turned out mealy, not at all like Busia used to make them.

  “Did you like the cowboy boots?” Dad asked gruffly, when we were nearly done.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Thanks a lot.”

  He nodded. I waited for him to say something about Mom throwing all the food, but he didn’t. Dad took off his glasses and I could see the fine lines around his eyes. He looked tired.

  After dinner, Mary Lou and I did the dishes and listened to The Lone Ranger on the radio. I loved how it always started the same way: “Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear!” and the music and the “Hi-Yo, Silver! Away!” I loved how the Lone Ranger’s best friend, Tonto, always called him ke-mo sah-bee, which means “trusted friend.” I loved how in thirty minutes the bad guys were caught and all the problems solved.

  When the program was over, Mary Lou shut it off. She smiled and the freckles on her nose and cheeks popped out. Sometimes, in the right light, her hair had just a tinge of red. “Hey, Tommy,” she said. “I’ve got something for you.” She pulled a small, newspaper-wrapped package out of her pocket.

  I smiled. Mom might be unpredictable, but I could always count on Mary Lou.

  “Take it, stupid,” she said, pressing it into my hands.

  I unwrapped it slowly.

  It was a silver star-shaped pin, just like the ones the sheriffs wore in the movies.

  “We might argue sometimes,” said Mary Lou. “But you’re still my favorite brother.”

  “I’m your only brother.”

  “Well, that too.”

  I gave her a hug. “Thanks, ke-mo sah-bee.”

  “Sorry you didn’t get a cake,” she said.

  I shrugged. “It doesn’t matter.” But it did. Who doesn’t want a cake on his birthday?

  “You know Mom,” she said, her voice just a little strained. “She’ll probably get up in the middle of the night to make you a new one.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Maybe so.”

  Mary Lou yawned. “I better go to sleep,” she said. “Got to get up early to deliver those papers.”

  I nodded. “See you in the morning.”

  Boots padded over to me then and rubbed his head against my leg. I stroked his fur absently, then went to get ready for bed myself. I was just about to climb under the covers when I heard someone moving around in the kitchen. Mary Lou was right. Mom had gotten up to bake me another cake. The smell of angel food batter and sweet orange icing lulled me to sleep.

  3

  BURNING THE TRASH, PART 1

  The angel food cake was waiting on the counter when I woke up, looking light and fluffy, coated with an orange glaze. I wasn’t sure how I felt. Glad she’d baked me a replacement, I guess. But it didn’t erase the memory of her throwing the first one against the wall.

  Still, cake was cake. And Dad left for work early and Mom slept late, so when Mary Lou came back from her paper route, she and Pinky and I each gobbled down a slice. With a glass of milk, it was delicious. We were almost done by the time Mom stumbled into the kitchen and Mary Lou handed her a cup of coffee.

  I never knew quite how to react after one of Mom’s fits. Sometimes if you looked at her funny, it would set her off again, so I kept my eyes firmly on my plate. I crushed the last bite of white cake with my fork.

  “The cake was so good, Mom,” Mary Lou said.

  “Thanks.”

  Mom sounded calm. I risked a glance up.

  Her eyes were clear. Her fingers didn’t tremble as she sipped her coffee. She had her pink robe wrapped around her and had even taken the time to pull her hair back into a ponytail. Maybe the throwing was a fluke. A onetime thing. The tension slowly drained out of me like a clogged sink.

  “Did you like the cowboy boots?” Mom asked.

  I held up one foot. I was wearing the boots.

  Mom laughed. “You can’t wear those to school.”

  “I know,” I said. “I’ll change into my shoes after I burn the trash.”

  You see, Mary Lou did the paper route because she was oldest, but my job was to burn our trash in a pit in the backyard. Newspapers were saved for the paper drive, of course, but there were always tin cans and bits of packaging and the brown paper from the dry cleaner. When the fire cooled, we’d pick out the cans and other metal. The homeowners’ association got money for holding scrap metal drives as well.

  I picked up the trash piled by the back door and walked out to the fire pit. There was a slight September wind, so I put a couple of soup cans on top so the paper wouldn’t blow away. Then I threw in the match, just like Dad had shown me. “Always watch to make sure it lights before you turn away,” he’d said. He didn’t have to tell me to keep my eyes on the fire. I loved that moment when the tiny match ignited the paper and it all burst into a big yellow flame.

  That morning when I got dressed, I’d rolled up the Daily Worker and stuck it in my back pocket again. For a moment, I thought about throwing it into the fire like Mary Lou had told me to so I could see the flames jump again. But I didn’t.

  “Tommy! Hurry up,” called Mary Lou from the kitchen. “It’s almost time for the bus.”

  I ran back to the kitchen. Mom held out the box from the cowboy boots and some more brown paper from the cleaners. “You forgot to burn these.”

  I didn’t know what to do. I still had to change my shoes. No way the nuns would let me come to school in cowboy boots. But if I said no, it might set Mom off and she’d start yelling again. And if I said yes, I’d miss the bus. And missing the bus would . . .

  “I’ll do it,” said Mary Lou, reading my mind and taking the paper and the box from Mom.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  She shrugged. “Just get your shoes on.”

  I tucked the copy of the Daily Worker into my school satchel and sat down to pull off my boots. At the time the moment didn’t seem so special, watching Mary Lou walk out to the fire pit, a pile of papers in her arms. But afterward, I kept picturing it again and again—the sun shining on her brown hair, which she had brushed and combed into two neat braids. Her navy-blue wool pleated skirt, white blouse and matching sweater. Her polished penny loafers leaving footprints in the wet grass. But the main thing I remember was how lightly she walked, with a little skip in her gait. I realized Mary Lou actually liked burning the trash. She’d done it until last year, when she’d gotten the paper route. She liked scrunching the paper into balls so it wouldn’t blow away, lighting the match and throwing it, and the way the fire would lick across the paper, slowly at first, then bursting all at once, like a tiger lily opening in the morning sun.

  She threw the match in just like Dad had shown us, and watched the flame catch to make sure no burning paper blew away.

  “Mary Lou!” I called. “Thanks again!”

  She turned then, suddenly, to say something mean and teasing to me. I still wonder what it was going to be. You owe me one, cowboy! Or Shut up, Tommy! Or even simply You’re welcome. But I never found out, because as she turned, her pleated skirt flew out over the pit.

  At first I thought it was just a glare—that the sun was shining on her again, making her glow orange. But then I heard the screams.

  4

&nbs
p; BRANDED

  There are a lot of things I can’t remember. How to spell Mississippi. Times tables. The capital of Nebraska. Then there are the things I don’t want to remember—like the ride to the hospital. But that memory is seared in my head, a brand on my brain. At least, part of it is. Other parts are gone, like holes in an old coat, eaten away by moths.

  Mary Lou was screaming, and then the next thing I knew, Mom was placing her in the front seat of our car, still wrapped in the blanket she’d used to smother the flames, as gentle as a mother cat licking her kitten. At some point, I’d gotten the baby and I held her squirming in my arms in the backseat of our car and though Mary Lou was screaming bloody murder, it was Susie’s crying that upset me the most. “Shut up!” I snapped at her finally, and she stopped. Pinky sat still as a rock, her dress covered in oatmeal.

  I remember waiting at the railroad crossing just a block from the doctor’s. A train was chugging by, carrying people going to work, and it was moving so slowly, I could see the expressions on the passengers’ faces. Mom alternated between curse words so bad I’d have my mouth washed out with soap if I said them, and prayers to the Virgin Mary.

  Then we were double-parked in front of our doctor’s office, Mom leaning on the horn. Dr. Stanton ran out to the car with a huge needle and I knew he was going to stick it into Mary Lou and for some stupid reason that scared me more than the burns did. I would have started screaming myself, but Susie had fallen asleep, a little warm ball on my chest, and I didn’t want to wake her. She felt damp, like she’d soaked through her diaper. The sour smell filled the car, along with something worse, like rotten meat left on the campfire too long.

  The hospital was forty-five minutes away. The shot made Mary Lou stop screaming, but every time we ran over a bump in the road, she moaned and that was even worse.

  We finally got to the hospital and Mary Lou was put on a stretcher and someone picked up a corner of the blanket but her skin came off too, so they put it back down, and then she was wheeled away, my mom rushing after her.

  Pinky, Susie and I were left in the reception room, alone. There was a large brown overstuffed couch and a small table in front of it. Pinky had fallen asleep, so I sat down on the couch and rocked Susie back and forth. My mind didn’t seem to be working right. I’d glance at the clock and whole chunks of time would disappear. I’d look out the window, only for a minute or two, and then realize forty minutes had passed. I said so many Hail Marys, it seemed like those were the only words left in the whole world.

  “Tommy?” Pinky said finally, in her tiny voice.

  “I’m here.”

  She stared at me with her wide blue eyes. “There’s oatmeal on my dress.”

  I looked at the clock. It was almost noon. “I don’t have a change of clothes for you.”

  “It’s sticky,” Pinky whined.

  “Shh!”

  But the nurse at the information desk had heard her. She got up and rummaged in a closet, then brought me a plain white gown.

  “Thanks,” I said. “Do you have a spare diaper for the baby?”

  She nodded and rummaged some more. As she handed me the cloth, she tilted her head and studied my face. “You’re the brother of the burned girl,” she said, as if the idea had just occurred to her.

  I nodded.

  Her lips made a little round O. I could see the lipstick on them. Mary Lou wanted to wear lipstick, but Mom wouldn’t let her. She said it was only for loose women. I wondered what that meant, and if this woman was loose too.

  “Is Mary Lou going to be okay?” The words were out of my mouth before I realized I was going to say them. If I had, I wouldn’t have dared.

  The nurse pushed her lips together as if she were going to answer, but then she frowned and only said, “There’s a courtyard outside. You can change your little sister there.”

  Pinky was happy to put on a fresh dress. It was a beautiful day, the leaves flecked with orange and gold and drops of purple. Pinky ran back and forth under the maple trees, like nothing was wrong, as I changed Susie’s diaper. When Pinky tired of playing with the leaves, we went back inside and sat on the couch. Susie started crying and no matter how much I rocked or bounced or sang to her, she wouldn’t stop.

  “I think she’s hungry,” the nurse said finally.

  “Yeah,” I agreed.

  “Want me to feed her for you?”

  I handed Susie over to her, relieved.

  While they were gone, I read to Pinky from the only book in the waiting room, a collection of Bible stories. She sat still and listened, even though usually she preferred to run around. We made it through the Garden of Eden, Daniel in the Lions’ Den, David and Goliath, and were halfway done with Moses Parting the Red Sea before she fell asleep in my lap. I held her, unmoving, unthinking, exactly like Lot’s wife.

  I guess at some point I must have fallen asleep too, because when I finally opened my eyes, Mom was standing in the room, as still as a statue. I could tell by the light it was late in the afternoon.

  “Is she . . . okay?” I asked.

  “She’s alive,” Mom said.

  Pinky woke up then, stretched and rubbed her eyes. “Mom!” she cried. She scrambled off my lap and hugged Mom’s legs.

  “Will she have scars?” I asked. Cowboys have scars. Bad guys have scars. Sisters aren’t supposed to have scars.

  Mom slapped my ear.

  I gasped, not because it really hurt, but because Mom never hit us. She yelled all the time, but even if we were really bad, she’d wait for Dad to get home and have him spank us. Mary Lou had told me once that Busia had hit Mom all the time when she was little, and Mom had vowed never to be like her. “Ouch,” I said, rubbing my cheek.

  “Do you want me to slap you again?” Mom demanded.

  I shut up.

  The nurse brought Susie back then. She took a step toward Mom, then changed her mind and handed Susie to me. I wondered if she’d seen the slap.

  As soon as we got in the car, Mom started crying. She was sobbing so hard, I wasn’t sure how she could see the road.

  “I didn’t mean—” I started to say.

  “Shut up,” she screamed at me. “This is all your fault!” Most of her hair had fallen out of its bun, and it hung around her face like dark spiderwebs. “If you’d just taken the trash out like you were supposed to, this wouldn’t . . . it was your job!”

  The rest of the way home, none of us said a word. I held Susie in my arms and Pinky leaned against me. She kept trembling, as if she were trying not to cry. My skin itched every time we went over a bump and I remembered Mary Lou. Mom swerved all over the road and I couldn’t help wondering, If we had a car accident, whose fault would it be—Mom’s or mine?

  Somehow, we made it home in one piece. Dad was in the kitchen when we walked in, wearing Mom’s flowered apron over his suit and tie. “Mrs. Sullivan brought over a casserole,” he said. “But I think I burned it.”

  The dish, black and scorched, smoldered on the stove top.

  Mom said nothing.

  Dad cleared his throat. “How is—”

  “Same as I told you on the phone,” Mom said.

  Dad nodded. The creases in his face seemed as deep as a desert canyon. “By the time I got the message at work, it was too late to go to the hospital.”

  Mom went straight into her bedroom and shut the door.

  Dad and Pinky and I sat at the square kitchen table, eating peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches for dinner. Dad gave Susie a bottle, but awkwardly, so she kept fussing. It was like he’d never fed her before. I tried to remember if he ever had. The table suddenly seemed way too large. I longed for someone to bump into me as they reached for their water glass. The peanut butter stuck to the roof of my mouth, and I was concentrating so hard on prying it off with my tongue, I jumped when the phone rang.

  Dad stood up slow
ly to answer it. “Hello?”

  He took his glasses out of his pocket and put them on, as if they would somehow help him hear better. Dad let the person on the other end of the line go on and on before he spoke. “We’ll let you know if there’s any news.”

  More talking on the other end.

  “No need. Tommy can do it.”

  He listened again.

  “Yes. And thank you for the casserole. It was delicious.” It must have been Eddie’s mom. She knew everyone and liked to talk. By morning all of Downers Grove would know about my sister.

  Dad hung up and walked slowly back to the table.

  “Do what?” I asked.

  “Mary Lou’s paper route.” Dad picked up another piece of sandwich and chewed seriously, as if it demanded his full attention. A blob of jelly dripped out of his mouth onto Mom’s flowered apron, which he still hadn’t taken off.

  Me? I wanted to complain, but what could I say? It had been my job to take out the trash.

  “You do know how to do the paper route, don’t you?” Dad asked, suddenly worried.

  “Of course,” I lied.

  “Good,” Dad said. “And I will burn the trash from now on.” He continued eating.

  “Bath time!” said Pinky.

  We looked over at her. Cleaning her up was Mary Lou’s job.

  “I’ll do it,” I said, getting Pinky down from her high chair.

  As I gave my sister a bath, every bone in my body ached. It was like I’d been thrown by a bucking bronco, even though all I’d done was sit in a hospital chair all day. Pinky seemed just as exhausted, not even asking for a story as I tucked her into bed. I brushed my teeth, laid out my clothes for the next day and set my alarm. I knew Mary Lou got up at 4:30 a.m. each day to do the paper route. The rest I’d have to figure out as I went along.

  Boots scrambled into bed with me. I put my arms around him and buried my nose deep in his dirty fur. If I imagined real hard, I could picture myself out on the prairie, ready to lay out my bedroll under the stars. Boots licked my face, and soon I was asleep.