Mister Boots Read online

  It’s the middle of the night. Even those mornings when my sister hitchhikes there aren’t a lot of cars or buggies way out here, so I say, “I’ll get the first horse I find and I can be halfway to town in an hour.” But my sister says that I don’t know the towns and I don’t know where the doctor lives, and that I should stay with Mother. (I’m scared. I don’t know what to do to help her.) My sister says for me to go get a horse and she’ll ride it.

  “Won’t you be scared?”

  “This is for Mother.”

  Then I get the idea of Mister Boots. I believe him—I did all along—he really is a horse. He’s still limping some, but he’s much better. “I know a horse that, if you fall off, he’ll stop and put you back on himself himself. I know a horse you can cluck to and kiss to or tell him in words, or point your chin to where you want to go. Moonlight Blue.” (Of course Moonlight Blue. I’ll have to remember to tell Boots what I named him.)

  My sister says “Moonlight Blue” slowly, and gets this funny look, as if she’s staring off at some sunset or other.

  “I’ll be back in ten minutes.”

  I don’t know for sure if he can help us, but at least he’s sort of a grown-up, and might know what to do. Well, my sister’s a grown-up, all the way up to twenty, but she sure doesn’t seem like it.

  It’s as if Moonlight Blue knew when he heard me gallop up. I got myself a neighbor’s horse and rode to our tree. He’s there, under the tree, looking as if straight from the moon, black mane and tail, of course four black feet. In this light, his coat is silvery, but I can see he’s what they call a “flea-bit gray,” which is a typical Arab color. A smallish horse, and every rib showing. I reach out, and he blows on my hand like they do. Then he whinnies. He starts way up high and goes way down. I recognize that whinny.

  “Mister Boots?”

  He paws the ground as horses do when they want to say, For heaven’s sake, let’s get on with it.

  My sister reaches out to let him blow on her hand. She gets an apple and splits it for him with her own teeth. She rubs his poll and down his nose. (Think of rubbing Mister Boots’s poll!) After he finishes the apple, he leans low and chews at nothing to show, horse way, that he’ll do anything she wants him to, and then he puts his bony forehead against her breast, which is not a good sign, so I’m glad to see my sister is just as scared to mount up as she always is.

  I say, “You be careful now. I mean it!” I’m talking to Mister Boots, but my sister says, “I will.”

  He lopes the smoothest, most collected-up lope I ever saw, and I know my sister will be all right, at least with the riding part.

  Mother is curled up on the floor by her bed. I wish she would get in it. I curl up next to her, not too close because, with all this pain, she can’t bear to be touched. There’s nothing I can do but worry—about her and my sister. I mean, maybe Boots is a bank robber. What if he runs away with her? I guess I don’t really think he will, and I guess she’d have sense enough to jump off if need be. Except she might freeze up and not be able to. Except he did care about our tree.

  “Roberta,” my mother says.

  (Roberta! This is serious.)

  “There’s things I have to tell you. Things I should have told you before.”

  Then she doesn’t say anything. Later—practically a half hour later, she seems to feel a little better. She gets into bed and sips at the warm water I bring her. (That was all she wanted.) She says, “I worry about you. I don’t want you to live so much in your imagination. I don’t want you believing in everything you think up, like you can fly. Things are scientific.”

  (She tells me this all the time.) “But what were you going to tell me? You said you needed to tell me things you should have told before?”

  “Oh, I’m better now, so no need. We’ll pick a nice time to talk later. Just the two of us. Maybe down by the ditch.”

  “If you told me more things I’d know better what to believe.”

  “You’re still so young.”

  “Ten,” I say. “Did you forget?”

  “Roberta, Roberta. I’m sorry about your name.” (What does she mean by that?) “I never dared call you anything but Bobby.”

  She reaches toward me. (She’s always a great hand-holder—when she isn’t holding her knitting needles.) Now she reaches way out. “Honey . . . Roberta, you know those funny old clothes. . . .” And then she keels right over, banging her head on the floor.

  I try to lift her back on the bed and when I can’t, I straighten her out and put the pillow under her head. I keep calling, “Ma. Mother.”

  I suspect. But I don’t want it to be true. Pretty soon I know for sure.

  “Those funny old clothes,” were her last words—but at least her next to last word was, “Roberta.”

  I go outside then and listen and look. First I’m listening and looking to see if my sister and the doctor and Mister Boots are coming back. I need them. But then I listen and look around at the night. We’re not religious, or if we are, nobody told me, but I look at the moon and then I go down on my knees as if to some moon god. Mister Boots was right; everything is magic. I feel the breeze on my cheeks, as if it’s Mother’s hand.

  I say, “Ma,” again. I whisper it, as if I could call her back from somewhere out there. I guess I must have loved my mother. I never thought about it, but I feel sorry—sorry for myself and sorry for her because she worked so hard. Sorry I didn’t help any. And maybe there was something I should have done to help her not die.

  Then I think: What am I supposed to do now? Say a prayer? Wash the body? Sing a sad song? Homeschooling didn’t teach me anything at all about this. But my sister should be here to sing with me, and we should wash Mother together. That’s the kind of thing Mister Boots would say. So I wait. Boots said that a lot of life was being patient. I said, “Yes, if you’re a horse and tied up all the time,” but he said, “Every creature—people, too,” and he was right.

  Dawn. (Time is going by pretty fast.) The sun is just below the mountain. I want to tell Mother, “This is how it is on the morning after you died, everything pink and orange and purple. Rain over toward town, maybe on my sister and Moonlight Blue.” Maybe the rain is tears. I would like a little rain. I would like to look up and have wetness on my cheeks.

  “Mother, how can it be that the horned lizard by our doorstep is still alive. Even still!”

  I don’t seem to notice time anymore. It goes on until the sun is twelve o’clockish. I finally see the long tail of dust, and pretty soon I hear the rattle of what turns out to be the doctor’s car. Mister Boots isn’t with them . . . nor Moonlight Blue. Pretty soon they’re close enough so I can see my sister is crying and she doesn’t even know about our mother yet. Her whole front is wet even though she holds the doctor’s big handkerchief wadded up against her cheeks. I get worried.

  “Where is he? My Moonlight Blue?”

  That starts her off even more. The doctor has to tell about it for her. “He was stolen weeks ago. Other horses escaped at that time, too. They got them all back except this one. They said his ropes and halters were still hanging there, tied to the rail. It had to be—”

  My sister interrupts. “A person! The halters were unbuckled.” Once she gets started talking, she can’t stop. “They said it might have been me. After all, who needs a horse more than I do? And there I was, riding him. They say he should be shot—because of his legs. When we got to town, he collapsed. I couldn’t stand for him to be shot.”

  “We’ll take all our money—it’s ours now—and buy him and pay the doctor to fix him.”

  But the doctor says, “Son, I saw that horse. He should be put out of his misery as soon as possible. I don’t like to see an animal suffer.”

  “You could fix him. We’ll pay.”

  “I don’t do horses, and I’m not so sure he can be fixed. He’s never going to be much good again even if his legs do heal. He’s not worth two dollars. You’d have to pay two dollars to have him hauled off.”

/>   My sister says, “Moonlight Blue was sweating and shaking, but he waited till I got off before he collapsed.”

  “Tell me, quick, how to get there!”

  “Go back with the doctor,” she says. “He’ll show you.”

  The doctor goes inside and comes right out. “She’s dead,” he says. He turns to me. “Did you realize that?”

  My sister slumps down on her knees just like I did. Then the doctor looks more sympathetic and reaches to touch her shoulder. “I’m sorry. Can you children manage?” Then he asks my sister how old she is and when she says twenty, he says, “I thought you were hardly seventeen,” and then again, “Will you manage?”

  “Can I ride back with you?” I say. “I have to go for Mister . . . I mean for Moonlight Blue.”

  “It isn’t right to go chasing after that no-good horse at a time like this.”

  My sister says, “That horse is special.”

  “Maybe he was once, but not anymore. And he doesn’t even belong to you.”

  I ask my sister, “Where did Mother keep the money? Pay the doctor, and I’ll need some more to get Moonlight back. Hurry!”

  But she doesn’t know where the money is any more than I do.

  “But you earned half of it yourself! More than half, I’ll bet! There must be some somewhere.”

  We look in all the normal places a person would hide money and some not-so-normal places, but we don’t find a single dollar, and we don’t have time to do a good job of hunting. Mister Boots might be in trouble already.

  We give the doctor a white crocheted afghan for payment. It looks special, like for a wedding. I’ll bet it’s worth a lot more than his visit out here for no other reason than to say, “She’s dead.”

  I gather up a few knit things in case I need to pay for Mister Boots and for a coffin for Mother. I should be thinking about her, but I hardly can because Mister Boots might be being shot right this very minute.

  I ride back with the doctor. I don’t like him, but I’ve never been in a car before. We make a nice big plume of dust.

  By the time we get to town, it’s evening. All the way I worry more and more about Mister Boots.

  I guess if you find a man lying naked in a horse stall with ruined legs, you don’t doubt at all anymore that this man is the same as that horse. Mother said I shouldn’t believe things like this. Those were practically her dying words, but I just can’t be the way she said to be.

  At first I think he’s dead, too. I know horses often die from trying too hard. But then I see the whites of his eyes flicker—catch the light for a second as he opens them a little bit.

  “Mister Boots?”

  Then he really looks at me and tries to speak, but only a blowy, horsey noise comes out. I get him water in the horse bucket and help him drink.

  “Did I do it?”

  “You did. You did.” I stroke him on the shoulder like you do a horse.

  “So it’s all right then.” And he shuts his eyes again.

  His feet and ankles are so swollen I wonder if he can stand up. I round up horse leg wraps and horse bandages and bind his feet and ankles. He grunts and throws his head back and forth. I know I’m hurting him. Then I cover him with dirty old sweat-stiffened saddle blankets to keep him warm and after that with straw to hide him.

  I’m going to have to steal him some clothes all over again. Why not the doctor’s? He was hardly any help at all, and yet he took that beautiful white afghan.

  I tell Mister Boots I’ll be right back—that I’m off to get him clothes. I’m not sure he hears me. (He’s way beyond caring if he has any clothes on at all, let alone if they’re nice.)

  Lights are on at the doctor’s house. (They have electric lights!) It’s a big house, so I’m wondering, Why did he need to take that afghan when he has such a big house and car and everything?

  I look in the downstairs windows. It’s just the kind of thing I like to do at our house back home. I see the doctor and a wife and, off and on, a maid. I hear music. (They have a Victrola!) My mother’s afghan is right there, on the wife’s lap—the most beautiful thing in the room, though there’s lots of beautiful things. I get sad again, thinking how my own mother made such a nice thing.

  The doctor is reading the paper, but the wife is knitting! She’s doing it for the fun of it. That isn’t fair.

  I want to hurry back to Mister Boots, but I have to do this carefully or it’ll just take longer and I might get myself arrested and never get back to him. He’ll starve with nothing but hay and alfalfa to eat, and if he turns into a horse again, he’ll be shot first thing.

  I sneak in. It’s no harder than when I sneak around our own little house. (It’s sometimes good being small and thin and always barefoot.) I never can sneak up on Boots, though. He has horse sense.

  I take a fancy suit with a vest. I take a white shirt. He’ll have clothes that match his long nose and his long slim hands.

  I’m as bold as I always am. I hide in the hall closet until the doctor and his wife climb the stairs to bed. Then I hide under the back stairs and watch the maid go off to her room.

  I have to wake Mister Boots again. I have to dress him all by myself, and it’s hard since he’s so loose and floppy. It’s good the clothes are a little too wide. I forgot to get a belt so I use a halter rope. He looks dressed up except for that one thing—and his feet.

  If you’re stealing things anyway, you might as well steal other things to go with them. You might as well steal a big strong hairy-footed horse that can easily hold two people because I know Mister Boots can’t hold himself on a horse by himself. I’m not even sure how to get him up on one. (Together we don’t weigh more than one person, but I want to ride that big shire. There might never be another chance.)

  “Mister Boots.” I have to shout. I have to shake him. He’s feverish. That’s why he’s so slippery. “Boots, you have to help me get you up.”

  He comes to a little bit. I prop him partway on the ladder to the loft. I hook his arm over the rung above him, I move the horse in close. It’s the wrong side, but these big horses are the sweetest of all; they don’t mind anything. What the horse will mind is that we’re leaving his partner horse behind. They’ll make a racket calling to each other. I hope nobody comes to check on them.

  I’m not worried about being seen once we get going. I’ll just say I’m helping this drunken gentleman get home after a bad night. Except I doubt if there’s a single person in town who wouldn’t recognize the big shire. Well, I still could be helping a drunken gentleman to get home.

  Now and then Mister Boots mumbles something and I say, “What?” and he says, “I won’t ride horses,” and I say, “You have to, just this once.”

  “Take the bit out then. Use your calves.”

  “Calves? I thought it was my magic.”

  My sister is waiting for us way out by the gate. As if she’s been there all this time. She’s kneeling in the sand, and when she hears us clop-clopping she gets up and runs to meet us, and then walks along beside us. “Poor Moonlight Blue,” she says, and then I know she knows.

  “His name is Boots,” I say. “Mister Boots.”

  We bring the big black shire right up to the porch steps, and lift Boots down. (Mostly we drop him.) We sort of drag him inside to the couch. After we straighten him out he does look elegant in the doctor’s clothes—except for being rumpled and with straw here and there. I hadn’t realized—not really—until this very minute that he could look this good.

  My sister kneels beside him and kisses him and not just once. Cheeks and lips. Calls him Dear. Thank goodness he’s too far gone to notice.

  I suppose, with these good clothes, he’s all the more attractive to her. I should have thought of that. I should have known she’d fall in love with somebody who was a horse. If I know my sister, and I do, it’s too late to do anything about it—it’s gimpy old Boots, too old, too thin, too odd.

  I ought to be getting that big horse back (I’ll be accused of stealing hi
m and Moonlight Blue), but I don’t want to leave my sister and Boots alone together. I want to see what’s going to happen when he comes to.

  “I don’t think you should be kissing him like that, on the lips and all. I think you need to get to know him first.”

  “I do know him.”

  “I’m the one that knows him. I’ve helped him for weeks. I brought him food and clothes from that room.”

  “You gave him our father’s clothes?”

  “Our father! When did we ever have a father? Besides, they’re not gone, you know. Boots probably left them out under our tree. And I didn’t give him fancy ones.”

  But then she starts to cry, for no reason. “I’m not crying,” she says.

  I feel like crying, too. “I know,” I say. “But with Mother gone, all the more reason to be careful.”

  We get Boots cleaned up as best we can and covered up, then—I can’t believe it—my sister measures him and starts on a sweater! (She picks red. Well, as a horse, being cream with fly-speck color, he would look good in red, but it doesn’t seem right for the man.) I suppose she knits because she’s nervous and knitting is her whole life. I know she was set to work knitting as soon as she could hold a knitting needle without poking her eye out. Not like me. Just knitting away and hardly even looking out the window. I never thought about it until right now.

  And another thing I never thought about: our father—that I even had to have had one. Was that what Mother was about to tell me when she started out, “You know those funny old clothes. . . . ”?

  “Jocelyn, what about our father?”

  “If Mother didn’t tell you, I don’t think I should say.”

  “For heaven’s sakes, I’m ten. And that was before. Now it’s just you and me.”