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Authors: Carol Emshwiller

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BOOK: Mister Boots
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“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 him
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.”
She's sitting on the floor next to the couch, leaning her shoulder against Mister Boots's shoulder. I never saw her knitting on the floor before. I hardly ever look closely at her, but she really is beautiful. She has naturally curly hair, and now it curls all around her face, pasted to her cheeks with sweat. (I must look like our father. My hair is straight and black.) She's staring at me, thinking hard, then she says, “He never came back.”
“I know that already.”
I'm thinking about how those clothes are odd, like that pink turban with the jewel, and silky things, and two pairs of pants with a satin stripe along the sides.
“What was he? Why didn't Mother want me to know anything?”
“He disappeared.”
“I know that! But she thought he'd come back, didn't she? Or she knew he would. Is he coming back?”
She stops knitting. “I hope,” she says, and then she just sits. She looks exactly the way I feel, like everything is falling apart. “I hope,” she says again, as if there never would be any, “he doesn't.” She starts to knit again. She's so fast she has a couple of inches already. “He wasn't around much, but when he was, he was teaching you to be part of his magic show.”
“I knew it! I knew I was magic! I always knew.”
She looks at me like I'm being ridiculous, but she goes on. “Once you . . . (You were lots smaller and thinner then. We wondered if you'd live.) Once, you flew, and that one and only time, you flew away. To escape him. I didn't see it, but it had to be that. You were all the way out at the creek. Mother didn't want us to believe things like that, but how could you be that far away without flying? I found you. I brought you home. You were hardly three years old.
“When our father was here, we had plenty of money, though being poor without him is better than being rich with him. He whipped all three of us, but back when I went to school, the teacher did that all the time, too. Even the girls, though not as much. Of course our father thought you were . . . You know.”
“But Mother told me over and over not to believe in things like flying.”
“How else did you get way out there? You must have landed hard and broke your elbow. But sometimes I wonder if he broke your arm himself—by mistake. He wouldn't do it on purpose. He wanted you to grow up to be part of his show, but he didn't know his own strength.”
Right then Mister Boots groans a long, shaky groan. My sister turns around and puts her arm across his chest. “It's all right,” she says. “You're going to be fine. Just rest.” She's talking to him as if to some wild animal that's hurt and frightened. My sister never has dared talk to hardly anybody, but now she goes on and on. She lifts his head and holds water to his lips. “Your feet are in bad shape, but we'll have the doctor here soon.”
“What! We can't,” I say. “These are the doctor's clothes.”
“We have plenty of clothes.” She's completely calm about it. “Help me dress him and then go take the big horse back and say we need a doctor—for a different reason.”
“He won't do horses.”
“Bobby!”
“And why didn't Mother ever call me Roberta?”
BOOK: Mister Boots
6.63Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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