The Paper Cowboy

by Kristin Levine

  “I’ll teach you.”

  “I’m writing another story.”

  “Sam.”

  “What?”

  “Come on. You can finish the story tomorrow.”

  I grabbed his arm and pulled him up. Sam was on my team. Eddie rolled the ball to him, nice and gentle. Kick ball is pretty easy, and when Sam kicked the ball and made it to first base, everybody cheered.

  After school, we all decided to go down to Sam’s Sandwich Shop for root beer floats. Well, all of us except for Eddie. He kind of lurked behind.

  “Come on, Eddie,” I said. “What’s wrong?”

  “My dad’s not drinking so much anymore, but he still hasn’t found a job,” he admitted. “I don’t have any money.”

  Sam dug the pennies he’d collected for his story out of his pocket and pressed them into Eddie’s hand. “You do now.”

  Eddie looked at the pennies in his hand, little copper circles on his palm. He closed his hand around them, the coins clanging together, and put them back into Sam’s hand. “I can’t take them. I’ve been so mean.”

  “It’s a peace offering,” Sam said.

  “That’s what I said about the stocking,” Eddie said.

  “Well, unlike you,” I quipped, “Sam keeps his word.”

  Sam and Eddie both laughed.

  “All right,” Eddie said. “Give me back the coins.”

  At the sandwich shop, the five of us squeezed into a booth meant for four. When we placed our orders, Mr. McKenzie promised to give us all extra ice cream in our floats. It was only the second week the shop was open, but I guessed it was doing pretty well. There were only a couple of empty seats at the counter.

  The door opened and Lizzie Johnson walked in. She was wearing a red-and-white ruffled dress that made her look like a peppermint. I jumped up and walked over to her. “Lizzie!”

  “Tommy!” Her smile was wide and her blue eyes sparkled.

  “Want to get that root beer float?” I asked.

  “Sure.”

  We sat down at the counter together.

  “Tommy!” Eddie called. “Don’t you two want to come sit with us?”

  “We’re fine here,” I said, and Lizzie blushed.

  In the booth, I could see my friends laughing and I knew they’d tease me about Lizzie tomorrow. But I’d teased them enough in the past. Surely I could take a little good-natured ribbing myself.

  The next day after school, I drove with Mom to the hospital to pay the last of Mary Lou’s medical bills. She was coming home in a few days and was so busy practicing walking up and down the halls, I barely got a chance to say hello. Pinky and I ran around the courtyard we’d played in that very first day. The leaves were small and green now, the first flower buds just starting to form. Susie was home with Mrs. Glazov.

  Mom took a deep breath as we left the hospital, tall and elegant as a swan as we walked to our car. “Tommy, I want to say thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “For doing the paper route. I thought we’d have to give it up when Mary Lou got burned. We needed the money, but I told Dad I wasn’t sure you could do it. You really rose to the occasion. I’m grateful.”

  It felt nice but kind of odd to have Mom paying me a compliment. I thought of all the people I’d met on the paper route: Mrs. Glazov, and Pa and Ma, and Mrs. Scully and even Mr. McKenzie. “I’m grateful too.”

  On the way home, Mom hummed softly in the car. Pinky fell asleep as we drove. It was the first time I’d felt okay in the car with my mom since that horrible drive to the hospital. I was almost dozing off myself, when Mom turned away from our regular route.

  I was instantly as alert as a horse that’s spotted a rattlesnake. “Where are we going?” I asked, struggling to keep my voice from shaking.

  Mom didn’t answer.

  Had she gotten another speeding ticket? Panic rose in my throat. But I wasn’t the same kid I’d been then. I could handle this.

  Mom didn’t turn in to the courthouse. She kept driving until she reached the cemetery. Then she turned off the ignition and sat still. It was the cemetery where Busia was buried. I’d only been there once before, for the funeral.

  Mom was curled up in the front seat, like a hurt bird in its nest. “I didn’t go that day,” she said.

  I remembered. It had been hot and Mom had been hugely pregnant with Susie. And she’d been hysterical.

  “I didn’t go to my own mother’s funeral,” she said, her voice flat.

  “She would have understood, Mom.”

  Mom snorted. I wasn’t quite sure if she was sad or angry, but when she climbed out of the car, I followed her. Pinky slept on in the backseat.

  It was only a few steps to Busia’s grave. The headstone was dark marble. It looked nice. “I should have brought flowers,” said Mom.

  “Next time,” I said.

  “I’ve never been here before,” Mom admitted. “Pa suggested I should come.”

  “Don’t feel bad, Mom,” I said. “You had a new baby. Mary Lou got hurt and—”

  “It wasn’t that Mary Lou was hurt,” Mom said, “it was that Busia was my mother and sometimes I hated her.”

  And Mom began to cry. All the times she’d cried over the past year, all the tears and weeping and yelling, this was the first time I really understood why.

  I reached out and took her hand.

  Mom cried harder.

  But I held on. Mr. McKenzie had cried when he thought he’d lost his store. I’d sat with Sam when he’d lost his mom. Sometimes there were words to make things better. And sometimes there weren’t. Sometimes, the best you could do was just stand there and hold someone’s hand.

  When she was done, Mom looked more like herself than she had in a long, long time. “Come on, Tommy,” she said quietly. “Let’s go home.”

  50

  MARY LOU’S WELCOME-HOME DINNER

  It was early May, the day before Mother’s Day, and Mary Lou was finally coming home. She’d been in the hospital almost eight months. Mom and Dad had gone to pick her up. While I was waiting, I ran my hands over the white picket fence around our front yard. The top edge went up and down in little waves. One summer when we were painting it, I had asked my father about it. “Wouldn’t it have been easier to make all the slats the same length?”

  “Easier, yes,” Dad had said. “But life isn’t like that. There are good times and bad. Ups and downs.” He painted quietly for a moment, and then added, almost to himself, “Sometimes I need that reminder.” I hadn’t understood what he’d meant at the time, but I kind of did now.

  “Tommy!” Pinky ran out the front door, stumbling on the three steps. She was five now, and looked more like a little girl than a baby. “Mrs. Glazov’s making chicken and potato dumplings for dinner.”

  Mary Lou was going to love them. I sat down next to my little sister on the front stoop.

  “Mary Lou will braid my hair?” she asked.

  “She will,” I said.

  “And play dolls?”

  “I bet she will if you ask her.”

  Pinky sighed. “She sounds nice.”

  “Don’t you remember her?” I asked. “She was home at Christmas.”

  “’Course I do,” Pinky said. “But sometimes I forget.” I realized that Pinky hadn’t been allowed to see Mary Lou in the hospital at all. The visit at Christmas had been awful, and except for the concert, she hadn’t seen Mary Lou for five months. That was a long time for a little kid. And Susie was almost one now, but she wouldn’t remember Mary Lou at all.

  “Well, you’ll like her,” I said, giving Pinky a hug. “I’m sure about that.”

  Two more cars drove past, and then another, and then the next car turned into our driveway. Mary Lou was waving a mile a minute from the backseat. We ran to the car and pulled the door open.


  Mary Lou smiled up at me. She’d gotten her hair cut since I’d last seen her, a couple of days before. Her brown hair was short and curly now, and it made her look more grown-up. “Give me a hand, Tommy?”

  “Sure, sis.” I took her fingers in mine and carefully pulled her out of the car. She put a hand on my shoulder for a moment to get her balance. “I’m fine now,” she said, and I backed off.

  Mary Lou moved slowly, taking small, careful strides. “Three steps,” she said, looking at the front porch. “They made me practice at the hospital.”

  My father stood on one side and I was on the other. We gripped Mary Lou’s arms, prepared to lift her, but she shook us away. “No,” she said. “I can do this.”

  She wore a new pleated skirt, like the one she’d worn the day of the burning, but this one was longer and covered more of her legs. Still, I could see her ankles. They looked a bit swollen, her calves puffy from some bandages under her stockings, but if I hadn’t known about the burns, I’m not sure I would have noticed.

  Mary Lou gripped the railing and held it tight. She slowly lifted her leg up onto the step. She winced a little, but pulled her body up after it. We all held our breath as we watched her, like seeing a tightrope walker wobble on the wire high above the circus ring. Two more steps and she was walking through our front door. Mom and Pinky actually clapped.

  “Mary Lou?” Mrs. Glazov called, coming out from the kitchen. She was wearing her pink polka-dot apron. “That you?”

  “Yes.”

  Mrs. Glazov leaned over and hugged her.

  “You’re right, Tommy.” Mary Lou laughed. “She’s very friendly.”

  Mrs. Glazov blushed. “Dinner be ready in a few minutes. You go unpack.”

  “But I could help—”

  “Ah,” Dad said, “never argue with Mrs. Glazov.”

  Mom followed Mrs. Glazov into the kitchen. Mary Lou and I walked down the hall and into her room. “It looks exactly the same,” she said.

  I laid the suitcase on the bed for her, and she directed as I put her few things away. When we were done, I stared at the empty suitcase. Mrs. Glazov still hadn’t called us for dinner.

  “I’ll put it back in the attic,” I said.

  “Thanks.”

  I went into the hall and pulled down the little ladder. Careful to step only on the rafters, I found a spot for the suitcase. I was about to climb back down when I spotted Dad’s old cardboard box, labeled College Days. Jumping from one rafter to the next, I made my way over to the box.

  It contained a notebook filled with my dad’s handwriting. A book or two, dusty with age. And another copy of the Daily Worker. I held it for a moment. Strange that one little newspaper could cause so many changes.

  “Dinner’s ready,” I heard Mom call.

  “Coming!” I yelled.

  And that’s when I accidentally stepped off the rafter.

  White plaster dust filled the room as I fell through the ceiling. I grabbed a board, my legs dangling in midair, the other half of me still in the attic.

  “Psia krew i cholera!”

  I looked down through the big hole I’d made. My legs were hanging directly over the dining room table. The food was sprinkled with a fine layer of plaster dust. Mom was already sitting at the table too, and her black hair was now as white as Mrs. Glazov’s.

  Mary Lou and Pinky and my father sat in their places, slightly less dusty, and gaped up at me.

  “What are you doing?” my mother wailed. “Dinner is ruined!”

  I pulled myself up and looked down. Mom’s face was red, the little vein starting to pop out. I could see her mouth open as she prepared to yell, could practically hear the words Go get your father’s belt.

  But before she could say a word, Mrs. Glazov walked in carrying the noodles and began to laugh. Really laugh. It was a laugh I’d never heard from her before.

  Mom just stared at her.

  Mary Lou joined in, laughing like she hadn’t since before she’d been burned. “It’s so funny,” she choked out. “Tommy stepped right through the ceiling and . . .” She collapsed into giggles again.

  Baby Susie began to laugh in her high chair. A little tiny baby-hiccup laugh. My father joined in then, and his wasn’t a little laugh, no sir, it was a big belly laugh, like I was one of the Three Stooges and I’d just stepped on a banana peel.

  Pinky shook her head and little white flakes fell out of her hair. “It’s snowing in the house!” she marveled, and that only made Dad and Mary Lou and Susie and Mrs. Glazov laugh harder.

  “What is wrong with you?” scolded my mom. But even she sounded less angry.

  “Sorry,” I called down from the attic. “I was putting Mary Lou’s suitcase away and took a wrong step.”

  Dad laughed harder. “And you used to complain he never helps out.”

  Even Mom cracked a smile at that. She took a deep breath. “Well, what are we going to do about this dinner? It’s ruined. And I’m hungry.”

  Dad wiped tears from his eyes as he tried to stop laughing. Mrs. Glazov picked the chicken up from the table and dumped it into the trash.

  “That was a whole chicken!”

  “Oh, Mrs. Wilson,” Mrs. Glazov said. “No one was going to eat it.”

  And that started us all laughing again, even Mom.

  “Come on down, Tommy!” Dad called. “We’ll fix the hole tomorrow. Tonight, let’s go get sandwiches from Mr. McKenzie.”

  Mom sighed and went to the bathroom to brush the worst of the plaster out of her hair.

  “I go home,” said Mrs. Glazov quickly. “Tea and bread fine for me.”

  “No,” said Dad, putting an arm around her. “You’re family too now.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  Mrs. Glazov smiled and brushed a tear from her eye. “Miracle,” she said. “Like I got to know my grandchildren after all.”

  I was so glad she felt that way. I did too.

  Mom came out of the bathroom then, her hair brushed clean and hanging loose around her face. “All right, everyone,” she said with a smile. “Let’s go eat.”

  51

  BURNING THE TRASH, PART 2

  I wish I could say things were perfect then, but of course they weren’t. When she got stressed, Mom still yelled. But she went to see Pa every week. And Mrs. Glazov would come right over if Mom got too loud, even if she was in the middle of a music lesson, and so there were no more beatings.

  I’d like to say that Sam and Eddie and the choirboys all got along perfectly. But that would be a lie. “You’re like the center of a wheel,” Sam told me one day at the shop, over an ice cream sundae. “When you’re there, Tommy, it all holds together. But when you’re not around, we fall apart. I’m back to being Little Skinny.”

  “No,” I said. “You’re Sam now. Even when I’m not there.”

  “No, I’m not,” he said.

  “Cowboy Sam,” I said, pulling out the silver star and handing it to him.

  “This was your present from Mary Lou,” he said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “But I don’t need it anymore.”

  Sam smiled and put it on. “Thanks.” And I swear he sat a little taller. I could almost see the ten-gallon hat on his head.

  Monday, May 17, was Mary Lou’s first day going back to school. I woke up before my alarm. The glow-in-the-dark clock read 4:28 a.m.

  I liked the dark and quiet now; it was my own special time, to think about the day and the kind of person I wanted to be. Eating breakfast alone was peaceful, Boots begging at my feet. The fur had grown back in over his belly, although if you looked closely, you’d notice that the hairs over his scar grew in the opposite direction from all the others.

  The red bike in the garage was oiled and shiny now, the holes in the tires patched. I loaded up the basket and pushed off, sailing smoothly into the w
eakening darkness. My balance was perfect.

  Pa was sitting on his front porch, watching the sunrise. “The community picnic is next week,” he told me as I rode up. This was a new event the homeowners’ association had started at my dad’s request. We were going to meet at the Prince Pond shelter and cook out. Everyone was invited. “You’re coming, right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Ma’s beside herself with excitement.” He grinned.

  I waved at him as I rode off.

  “Bring that accordion!” he called after me.

  Mr. McKenzie was just turning the lights on in the sandwich and ice cream shop. He always got started early. It took a long time to bake the bread for all those sandwiches. The lights were still off in Sam’s room. I’d see him at school.

  Mrs. Scully was standing on the porch, waiting for me. “Tommy,” she yelled as I pulled up on my bike. “I got a new train. Come by this afternoon to take a look?”

  “Gladly!” I said.

  She threw Boots a piece of sausage and we headed home. My legs didn’t even hurt anymore. They just felt strong. By the predawn light, I could see that Mrs. Glazov’s garden was already half planted. I had plenty of time to change my clothes, do my chores and catch the bus to school with Mary Lou.

  My sister was standing in the hallway, looking at herself in the mirror, when I walked in. For the first time since that day, Mary Lou was wearing her school uniform again: navy-blue wool pleated skirt, white blouse, matching sweater thrown across her shoulders, thick white knee socks and penny loafers so new, there wasn’t a scuff on them. There were only a few weeks left before graduation, but she was determined to go back.

  “How do I look?” she asked. “Can you see them?”

  I knew she meant the scars. There was just a hint of red on her left wrist, and an odd twisting of the flesh on her neck, barely visible under her collar. “No,” I said.

  And it was true. Because I really didn’t see them. Not even the horrible ones across her legs before she pulled her knee socks on. Because all I saw was my sister.

  After breakfast, I watched Dad lug the box that said College Days to the fire pit. As soon as I was done with my oatmeal, I went out to stand beside him. “You don’t need a newspaper to remember an idea,” I said.