Strider (4 page)

Today Mom said I had to take our washing to the laundromat, which usually makes me mad, but this time I was still feeling good from Dad's visit, so I didn't complain. When I got there, I hitched Strider to a light post and held up the
STAY
sign. Then I loaded the washer by the window so he wouldn't feel abandoned and worked as fast as I could before any kids from school came along and saw me.

After that I went next door to the thrift shop to look for a thin paperback to stuff in my back pocket so I would have something to read whenever Strider and I stopped to rest. I was paying for
The Human Comedy
, by William Saroyan, when I saw a shirt hanging on a rack of clothes. It was a brand-new shirt my size, a shirt with imagination, a shirt that
shouted, “Buy me! Take me out of here!” I really liked that shirt, but I felt I wasn't the type. If I wore such a wild shirt, everyone would laugh.

Back in the laundromat, I moved the clothes from the washer to the dryer as fast as I could. Outside, I sat on the curb with my feet in the gutter, opened
The Human Comedy
, and began to read about a boy in Fresno.

Wouldn't you know? A girl with long wavy red hair came along on her bike. I had seen her—Jessica or Jennifer or something that begins with a
J
—around school because nobody can miss a girl with hair like that. She stopped in front of me and said, “Leigh Botts, what are you doing there with your feet in the gutter?”

“Reading.” I didn't know what else to say.

“That's what I thought,” she said and pedaled away with her long hair flying.

I sat there feeling silly for a minute. Then suddenly I felt great. Dad had come to see us, I had grown, and a
girl
knew my name. I felt so great I went into the thrift shop and bought that shirt.

“Wear it in good health!” the thrift shop lady called after me.

At home I put on the shirt and looked in the bathroom mirror, the only mirror we have. The shirt looked as good as I thought it would. The left side is blue with pink dots, and the left
sleeve is pink with blue dots. The right side is purple with blue crosswise stripes, and the right sleeve is blue with pink dots. I twisted around so I could see the back. One half is purple and blue crosswise stripes, and the other is green and blue up-and-down stripes. The collar and cuffs are plain purple. The best part is I
chose it myself and paid for it with money I had earned. I felt as good as my shirt looked.

I heard Mom come in, so I burst out of the bathroom. “Ta-da! Like it?” I asked. “I bought it for school.”

“Well—it will take a little getting used to, but I'm glad you have the courage to wear it.” Mom looked so pleased I was surprised.

Then I got to thinking. Mom looked that way because I never would have worn such a shirt when I was a new kid in school moping around, being miserable about the divorce, and trying to look inconspicuous.

I hung my shirt in my closet to keep it new for school, put on an old T-shirt, and took Strider for a run. My feet felt so light they skimmed the path by the bay. A great shirt and a girl who knew my name. On a scale of one to ten, I would rate this a ten day.

Yesterday Mr. Brinkerhoff invited Strider and me to go to the airport to meet Barry's plane. We had to wait outside because dogs are not allowed in airports. When the plane landed and Barry saw his father, he let go of his sisters' hands and threw his arms around Mr. Brinkerhoff as if he never wanted to let go. His father hugged him just as hard. When they parted and looked at each other, Barry had tears in his eyes but managed to say, “Dad, it sure is good to be back.”

I had tears in my eyes, too, because my dad and I hug, but not like that.

Barry grinned and said, “Hi, Leigh.” Then, to hide his feelings he said, “Hello there, Strider, old boy. How's our dog?”

Strider wagged his piece of tail and sat down
with his chin up and ears back, which meant he wanted to be petted.

I tensed up, waiting to see if Strider would place his paw on Barry's foot. He kept all four feet on the sidewalk.

Whew!

Now that Barry has returned, summer is going fast. Barry puffs when we run with Strider. After being exercised by my, I mean
our
, dog for the past month, I don't puff at all.

When I showed Barry my shirt, he fell over on the couch laughing and said, “You mean you're going to wear
that
to school?”

“Sure,” I said. “You're just jealous.”

“Me, jealous? Of
that
?” Barry laughed some more. I started to pound him, and we scuffled. This made Strider so anxious we stopped. We weren't sure which of us he would defend, but I was pretty sure it was me. I mean I.

I wish I could forget Barry's saying, “Me, jealous?”

Last night Dad telephoned from Bakersfield to say that today he was coming through Salinas with a load of garlic and wanted to know if I would meet him at the bus station and ride with him to the dehydrator in Gilroy. Would I!

I got up early this morning, whizzed around with the mop at Catering by Katy, exercised Strider, showered, left Strider in Barry's yard, and caught the bus to Salinas. A couple of minutes after I got there, Dad came barreling up in his tractor. He was hauling two flatbed trailers loaded with wooden bins of garlic stacked two high and tied on with cables.

I climbed into the cab beside Dad, who asked, “How're you doing, Leigh?” Bandit looked up from his bunk behind the seat and went back to sleep.

I told Dad I was doing okay, and we drove off smelling of garlic. An empty Styrofoam cup rolled around the floor of the cab.

Traffic was heavy on 101. There were tractors hauling double gondolas of tomatoes or grapes, and because summer vacation is almost over, tourists with carloads of kids were hurrying toward home.

High in the cab, I had a good view of the Santa Clara Valley. We passed acres of tomatoes,
cauliflower, and spinach, a few dying orchards, and beautiful fields of flowers. Zinnias, I think they are called, and marigolds. I asked Dad if the people who raised them got the idea from the Steinbeck story of the man who raised acres of sweet peas. Or maybe it was the other way around. John Steinbeck got the idea for his story from fields like these. Dad said he wouldn't know, but he did know the flowers were raised for seed, which brought a good price.

Because of the dehydrator, Gilroy is a town you can smell before you see it. Once before when I rode with Dad, the whole town smelled like frying onions, which made me hungry for a hamburger. Today, when the dehydrator was working garlic, Gilroy smelled like Mrs. Brinkerhoff's kitchen when she makes spaghetti sauce.

As we turned off near the dehydrator, the air was so heavy with the smell of garlic that it made my mouth water. “Do you suppose the garlic smell makes everybody in Gilroy salivate all the time?” I asked.
Salivate
. That's a word I had never used before. I usually say drool, but salivate is a good word to save for school. Teachers like large vocabularies.

“Nah,” said Dad. “They're so used to it they probably can't even smell it.”

After the garlic was unloaded at the dehydrator, we were so hungry from the smell of garlic that we stopped for pizza for us and water for Bandit. As Dad and I sat facing each other under a wall-mounted TV set showing reruns of boxing matches, Dad asked, “Leigh, you made any plans for the future?” He spoke through a mouthful of pizza. Dad always eats fast. In places like this, he also eats with his cap on. He wouldn't if Mom were around.

“Oh, not really,” I admitted. The future is something I try not to worry about.

“Just don't drive a truck like your old man,” Dad told me. “It's a rough life. Sleeping in the cab and eating in cafés gets old after a few years.”

“I wasn't planning to,” I said. Now that I took a good look at Dad, he did look tired. Maybe all those country-western songs about truckers are true.

Suddenly Dad asked, “How's your mother getting along?”

“Okay,” I said. “She works pretty hard.”

“She making any friends?” he asked.

What Dad really wanted to know was, Does she have any
men
friends? Dad had let me ride with him so he could snoop. This made me so mad I said, “Sure she has friends. They get together to make stuffed animals to sell at craft fairs.” I wasn't going to squeal on Mom and tell him about Bob from the hospital lab, who sometimes jogs with her and stops by for breakfast, or the paramedic who drives an ambulance, wears a beeper, and takes both of us out to dinner once in a while. Mom always refers to him as the Beeper. Nice guys, both of them, but I don't think Mom is serious.

Dad was silent, trying to think how he could find out what he wanted to know without letting me know what it was he wanted to know. I was so annoyed I asked, “What about you, Dad? Are you making any friends?”

Dad shot me a look that wasn't exactly friendly. “Sure,” he said. “I got lots of friends.”

We let it go at that. I didn't really want to know about the friends Dad makes at truck stops. As we sat facing one another in that booth, it seemed to me that Dad and I didn't have much to say to each other. Maybe we never did.

Dad made good time back to the Salinas bus stop, but we were quiet most of the way. Without a load, Dad was losing money and was in a hurry to get to Bakersfield to load up more bins of garlic. As I watched him drive off, I felt sad. If he asks questions about Mom, he must be lonely, deep down. I wish I had been nicer.

My pants are too short! All of them!

When Mom and I were looking over my clothes for school, I got out my pants and discovered they don't even reach my ankles. They are only good for cutoffs, which are what I have been wearing all summer. I wondered if Mom had noticed the hair I was growing on my legs.

Mom hugged me and said, “I'm going to miss my little boy.” Then we were off to Penney's for pants. We left Strider shut in the shack.

After pants, we went to the shirt department, where I reminded Mom of my thrift shop shirt which I was saving for school.

She said, “Oh, that shirt,” as if she was both amused and annoyed by it.

As we drove home, I couldn't forget her remark about missing her little boy. It made me
feel guilty. How am I supposed to become a man and be her little boy at the same time?

There was nothing I could do about it, I decided. Besides, I have new pants, hair on my legs, and a great shirt.

By the time we came home, Strider had eaten a corner out of the rug. It's a good thing it's our rug, not Mrs. Smerling's.