chapter four
Right then, we hear the doctor’s a-ooo-ga, a-ooo-ga coming down our little road. We’d have known he was coming anyway because he rattles. We all stand up, and my sister looks at me hard. I look cross-eyed at her again, and I start to giggle. Now we’ll see about those clothes.
Our father hides his pistol and his magic wand under the chair cushion.
I got to like the doctor a little bit, little by little. Maybe he got to like us little by little, too. He did a lot of good things. I hope he doesn’t get hurt. I’ll jump in front if our father takes out the pistol.
The doctor’s not even all the way in the door when he stops, shocked, and says, “So it was you! All this time, you!” And then, “You’re their father. I’ve heard about you.”
Why would he guess right away that this greasy-haired fat man is our father? Unless I look like him some way I don’t know.
I’m mixed up because, on the one hand, I’m glad our father is getting blamed for stealing the clothes, but, on the other hand, I don’t want him hauled off to jail just when I was about to go with him and learn to be even more magic than I already am.
The doctor walks right in, and there they are, belly to belly—both of them as well dressed as anybody I ever saw. Our father and the doctor are about the same size, and they look kind of alike except the doctor has white hair and is mostly bald.
“This is disgraceful,” the doctor says.
“What are you talking about?” our father asks.
“Unconscionable.” The doctor swings around as if he can’t stand the sight of our father. He’s so angry he can’t contain himself. I think maybe he’ll hit our father, but instead he does the opposite; he gets himself all calmed down (you can see him doing it, taking a big breath), then he goes to Mister Boots. “Let me see your ankles.”
He helps Boots lie down with his feet on the cushions, and he pulls up the footstool, sits there, and examines him. First I thought he’d be so mad he might be rough by mistake, but he’s about as gentle as I ever saw anybody be. He bandages Boots in clean bandages. And tells him, “For heaven’s sake, stay off your feet!” Then he turns to my sister. “He must, you know. It’s important. And, my dear, there’s something else.” (You can tell he likes my sister.) “They have your mother in a nice box. Do we bury her out here with the dead babies, or—” he turns to our father, suddenly angry again “—cremate her and put her in a jug on the mantel? What do you expect me to do, just stand here and let all this go by as if nothing has happened? And another thing, the undertaker says your wife had marks of being whipped. That isn’t done anymore nowadays. I’d like to take a look at these children.”
If I’m going to go on being a boy, he mustn’t do that.
Our father’s looking more and more nervous. “You have to agree children are little savages.”
“What about the clothes? The clothes?”
Our father looks as innocent as he really is.
“What have you got to say for yourself?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“My clothes. What are you doing wearing my clothes?”
Our father gets this funny look, like, Oh! He looks down at himself as if he’s surprised at what he has on. Then he looks back at the doctor, and there’s no doubt that these clothes belong to the doctor. They’re exactly like what he already has on—same exact gray—except the vest is tan on the doctor and cream-colored on our father. I picked the cream-colored one specially for Boots. I knew he’d look good in it.
Nobody is paying any attention to me. I sidle over to where the pistol’s hidden under the cushion. My clothes—those old cut-off men’s overalls I wear—leave a lot of room to put things. They have man-sized pockets back and front.
“What in the world were your clothes doing buried out in our vegetable garden?”
They stare at each other. They wait. And then they look at me. Everybody does. I guess it’s all pretty clear.
I don’t feel scared. After all, I have the pistol now.
“Don’t worry,” our father says. “He’ll not do any such thing after he’s been with me awhile. He won’t dare.”
“Those clothes cost a lot of money.”
Our father looks down at himself again. “I can see that.”
“It’ll take more than a batch of knitting to pay for them. And I don’t go along much with wife beatings.”
“Discipline. And self-discipline. He’ll learn it in a hurry when he’s with me.”
Our father is taking the jacket off and then the vest. Everybody’s looking at him, so I run again. But this is different. I’ve already found out where not to go. I go out, around the house, and then right back and in a window.
As soon as he notices I’m gone, our father yells, “Don’t let him get away.”
As I hoped, everybody rushes after me. I hear our father jump on his horse. I hear the car door open. The doctor is checking for me in his car. I hear my sister telling Mister Boots to sit down, and I hear that he doesn’t obey her, which is very unhorselike for a trusting horse in love, who’d jump off a cliff for you. Perhaps he’s more man than I think.
I hear everybody get farther and farther away until, finally, everything’s quiet. They’re all off someplace. Even Boots. Nobody thinks to look back in the house.
Now’s my chance to check for false bottoms. First I go to Mother’s cedar chest. It’s the most logical. I make a lot of holes in the bottom of it with a kitchen knife and a screwdriver, and it’s just a regular bottom. Then I make holes in the bottoms of all of Mother’s drawers. Even her yarn baskets. I ruin them all. Our father will say how it’s just exactly like me—if he ever finds out.
Pretty soon I hear somebody coming back. I’m still in Mother’s room. I roll under the bed and listen. It’s Mister Boots and my sister. If they’re the ones who find me, it won’t be so bad. Especially Boots. I can always talk to him. It’s the horse in him that makes him listen.
I might have to stay here all night. I can do that. I can think about throwing fire and going to Los Angeles. I want to so much I start breathing hard, which I should stop or they’ll hear me, especially Boots. (He might know about me being here anyway, and not say.) To make myself calm down, I study my hands. I like how stringy and square and brown they are. I think how Mister Boots talked about hands. “The joy of them,” he said.
Then I rest my cheek on my hands and listen to my sister and Mister Boots. They’re not talking about me or where I might have gone off to. Boots is just talking the way he always does. “The glance of a horse is two separate worlds.”
My sister whispers, so all I can hear is, “Something, something, Moonlight.” She’s loving everything he says, no matter what it is.
I roll over. Right on the pistol. I forgot I had it. I take it out and put it on my stomach. I think about how you have to cock it first. I don’t want to forget that. I don’t want to shoot anybody—unless I have to. Not anybody here. I need all these people. I even need our father.
Now Boots and my sister come into Mother’s room. (All I see is feet.) Boots is saying, “. . . center of gravity. What keeps human beings upright.”
My sister says, “That night you were the most mystical magical wonderful thing I ever saw. You were as if made of moonbeams.”
“Would you tell me if I should say things in a different way? In order to be a man, I mean. I could change.”
“Never. Ever.”
“I’m not really like a man.”
“That’s why I love you.”
They’re kissing now—or nuzzling—slurping at each other, anyway.
He says, “To think I once thought the round pen was the center of the world, while all the time it was here with you.”
Slurp, slurp, slurp—kiss, kiss.
I guess it’s kiss, but I’ll bet neither one of them knows much about kissing. I may not know from experience, but I know more about all that than my sister. She never found out anything unless from some book or other, and there’s no book I ever heard of about “How to Kiss,” or I’d have read it myself and long before she ever did.
Then they sit on the bed!
For heaven’s sake!
The springs dip down so far they actually touch my face and my stomach. I squinch over to a better spot. Don’t they remember Mother died right next to this very bed and not so long ago?
“Do you . . . love?” she says. She’s too shy to put the “me” on the end of it.
“As if my meadow,” Mister Boots says. “As if my shady tree. You and I, we’d stand, tail to head and head to tail, and swish away each other’s flies. We’d drink from the same bucket. If you were gone, I would wait at the gate forever.”
Can’t he just say “I love you” like everybody else would?
My sister says, “Hold me.” I never thought she’d be so bold. First she’s supposed to ask him, what are his intentions?
What are his intentions, anyway? Why doesn’t my sister ask? I’ll bet she doesn’t care. With Mother gone, I’m the only one around to see that things are done properly. I won’t be able to if I go off with our father.
I’m looking up at the bedsprings—right next to my nose. The mattress is light blue. Faded. The springs are rusty. They squeak with the two of them up there.
I don’t know what to do. I just keep looking up at the faded blue with rusty marks on it. . . .
And I find the money.