Mister Boots

by Carol Emshwiller

  New York! That’s a long way from us here in California.

  Our father eats his last few bites standing up, washes everything down with coffee, and then goes (of course) into that never-used room.

  (We hadn’t even thought of putting Mister Boots in there. I guess both my sister and I wanted him handy in the living room, not shut away down the hall in that back bedroom. Besides, it’s a terrible mess; you can’t even get to the bed, partly because we’ve been looking for the money in there and then because my sister has been rummaging around in the clothes to find things for Mister Boots. Not a single one of us ever cleaned up in there. We just kept the door shut.)

  Our father looks shocked the minute he steps in. I start to giggle even before he opens the door, and I can’t stop. I have to go outside or else I’ll burst.

  I sit on our front step, my hand over my mouth. Mister Boots ought to be out here—all his talk of breezes on cheeks and skies that go on forever. I’d help him to come out, but I have to get rid of my giggles first. I keep giggling until suddenly I start to cry—for no reason whatsoever. For a while, it’s either cry or giggle. Finally it stops.

  When I go back and check that room again, it looks as if our father has had a fit in there. Even what was hanging in the closet is on the floor. I hear a lot of thumping and scraping, and I see right away where the secret hiding place is. There’s a trapdoor in the ceiling of the closet. Our father is up there cursing. I’ve heard the wranglers next door say lots of things. I was hoping to learn more words, but our father doesn’t say anything I haven’t heard already.

  Of course my first thought is to close the hatch and lock him up up there, but the hatch is on the closet floor and I can’t figure out how to do it.

  My second thought is that Mother would never have gone up there, so our money can’t be up there. I mean, Mother never even went in that room that I know of. If she had, she’d have cleaned it up a long time ago.

  Our father throws down an oblong box. Dust flies up when it hits the floor, and it gets even more broken than it already is. You can see where it used to be red with gold designs, but the colors are almost all worn off. The lid is just barely hanging on, and there’s something odd about the bottom, as if there’s two bottoms. Then he jumps down, carrying a smaller, square box as worn out as the bigger one, and it looks to have two bottoms, too, and one’s a mirror. The money has got to be someplace like that, a secret extra bottom.

  “So where is it?” our father says. He’s dusty and sweaty and streaked with dirt.

  “Well, it’s not up there.”

  “I know that.” He looks at me like he knows I’m guilty—like it’s always got to be me. So then I start thinking it’s got to be me, too. I’m the one who does all the bad things around here. Except I don’t know where anything is, money or brandy or anything. The trouble is I say I know. “Buried in the yard,” I say, “in the nice soft dirt of the vegetable garden. Seventh carrot.”

  Our father gets his face up real close to mine. He smells of fat-man sweat and cigars. I turn away because of that, so then his hot sloppy whisper gets right inside my ear. “And you’re the one who’s going to dig it up.”

  I twist away and run. I get to the field next door, grab a fence post, vault the barbed wire, jump on Rusty, and gallop off.

  Our father’s horse is right there by the door, all cinched up and ready. I’m just riding a pony. He’s going to catch me, and we’re going to be out here all alone. But I keep on, and when I get to my tree, I don’t get off, I just reach up and grab the first branch as we gallop by and start climbing. I’m thinking how good I am at things like this and how no fat man can get me. But our father does exactly the same thing. I thought he was too big and soft for that. Then I think if I get high enough, the branches will be small and our father will fall.

  “Where there’s a will there’s a way,” our father says.

  Oh, for heaven’s sake, I’ve heard Mother say the same thing, too often, though mostly she said, “Well begun is half done,” and of course most of all, “A stitch in time . . .” I’ve heard Mister Boots say the same sorts of things, except Boots’s were odder, as if a horse had made them up all by himself. Like, “When we want enough, we get a little.” I’m sick of all those things.

  I thought my tree would save me by breaking itself. It’s not easy getting water way out here. I thought it would do something for me for a change. I know this is exactly the kind of thinking Mother didn’t want me to do when she told me to be scientific, but I thought it anyway.

  Some branches do break, but not enough. Our father grabs me by the ankle in no time and pulls me down to him. Even before we’re on the ground, he twists my arm up behind me.

  “I’ll let go when you say you’ll come down quietly like a good boy for once in your life and go dig up the money.”

  I say, “Why not?”

  “Promise.”

  I don’t want to promise anything I won’t keep. I just say, “Of course.” That’s not really a promise. I didn’t say, of course what.

  Rusty has run off to a nice grassy spot, but our father’s horse is still there, obediently ground-tied.

  I ride behind our father. It’s good I’m small. The poor horse has enough to do with our father on him.

  We pace. Nice and smooth and fast. I thought so. I knew this horse was a harness racer from the bit our father used. You’re not supposed to ride those.

  I ask what the horse’s name is, but our father just grunts a whole batch of angry grunts. I wonder what he’ll think when I dig up the doctor’s fancy clothes instead of money.

  When we get back, our father keeps a good hold on me and starts me digging.

  I see my sister staring out the kitchen window at us. She was washing the dishes and saw us right away. Our father sees her, too, so I feel a little bit safer.

  The doctor’s clothes aren’t hard to dig up. I just heeled them in until I’d have time to take them to a better spot. I think to run the minute a little bit of them shows, but our father has his eye on me. I just go on digging until the clothes are completely out. I pick them up and shake the dirt off so he can see they’re not bags of money.

  He gets this funny look. Then he slaps my cheek. Says, “What’s going on? Why are these buried? Where’s the body?” Things like that. But the way he’s bouncing me around, I couldn’t answer if I wanted to.

  Then my sister is there, and Mister Boots is hobbling out behind her.

  And there our father goes with my arm up behind me again. “Keep back,” he says, “or else.”

  My sister and Mister Boots grab each other to hold each other back. My sister says, “Easy. Nice and easy,” as if trying to slow down a horse that’s going a little bit too fast, but Mister Boots is standing as still as could be, though he’s trembling. My sister is, too. I can see the bottom of her skirt shake.

  “Pick up those clothes,” our father tells me, “and we’re all going inside. Quietly and calmly. You two first.”

  They go and stand in the doorway, but we go to his horse, where some stuff is still tied on his saddle. (I’m thinking about what Boots said about being tied up for hours, and how this horse still has a tight cinch, too.) Our father keeps hanging on to me, so he has to do everything one-handed. He reaches in his saddlebag and takes out a pistol.

  Would he shoot his very own child? And especially would he shoot me if he thinks I’m a boy?

  He sticks the pistol in his belt and then takes out a black stick thing with silvery edges. It looks like a quirt, only it isn’t. He points it at me as if it’s the pistol. I know what it is. I remember from a long time ago. A magic wand. He points it at me and grins a big grin like, Now I’ve got you. “Blam,” he says. “Blam, blam, blam.” Then he laughs and it’s like I not only inherited his black Japanese hair, but that high-pitched, stupid laugh. I will never laugh again, not like that anyway, even if I have to go out in the desert to practice up a new one.

  “Mother didn’t believe in magi
c wands,” I say.

  “She didn’t believe in me either, but I’m here, big as life.” (Bigger, I’m thinking, bigger and fatter than life.) “And I kept you all in lots more than beans.” He waves the wand right close to my face, and flowers pop out of it. So fast they hit me in the eye, and so many and such big ones you’d think . . . you’d know they couldn’t come out of that narrow tube. Except they don’t smell good. They make me sneeze. But what about Mother! All the things she said not to believe in are true.

  I reach to take the flowers. Since they came out of thin air, why would he need them back when it’s so easy to get more? But he snatches them away and stuffs them in the saddlebag, so then I know they can’t be real or they’d be ruined in there. No wonder they smell bad; they’re old.

  Our father puts the magic wand in his belt beside the pistol. He’s pretty good when you think he’s doing all this with just one hand, and that I’ve wiggled all around and sneezed a whole half dozen times.

  My sister and Mister Boots are still in the doorway watching. I have to admit they look good together.

  “Hold your horses,” our father says. (Does he know!) “Now everybody just go in and sit down.”

  We sit exactly as before. Our father lets go of my arm and holds me between his knees instead. “Watch,” he says. Then . . . One minute his hands are empty and the next a flame flies out—flies across the room and hits the far corner wall. We all jump, but Mister Boots shies practically out the door. You’d think he’d be ashamed, except he didn’t shy as much as most horses would from a flash of fire. Most would be gone.

  “Now,” our father says again. He lets me go and sits, legs as wide apart as before, the knees of his riding britches nice and snug, but his crotch drooping, the pistol and the magic wand tucked right out in front. He smiles around at everybody. “Now listen, I’m going to take this boy here along with me. All the way to Los Angeles. I need him. He’ll get to see the world. Get to ride real horses. Maybe drive my trotter. I’ll teach him all the tricks. He’ll wear decent clothes and eat decent food. Lots of oranges and no more beans.

  “Boy,” he says, and turns to me, “I’ll raise you up in the air, with, like they say, no visible means of support. Only you will know how it’s done. You’ll have a nice costume. Any color you want.” Then he says, “Lassiter and Son,” three times.

  All of a sudden I want to go. I don’t care that I don’t like him, or even that he’ll twist my arm behind me. I want to make flowers pop out of things. I want to throw fire. I want to go so badly I start feeling sick to my stomach.

  My sister shouts a great big, “No!”

  “I’ll go instead,” Mister Boots says. “I’m used to this kind of thing.”

  My sister shouts about a dozen no’s in a row.

  “This boy’s wasting his life out here.” (Yes, I am. I always knew it.) “And he wants to come.” He turns to me. “You’ll like it. You’ll be around men. Now you go shake these clothes out real good for me, boy. I want to try them on. They’re high-quality clothes.”

  He takes the pistol from his belt, aims out the door, and shoots. Right through the screen. Outside a puff of sand flies up, and Mister Boots shies again. It’s good he’s not being a horse and nobody is riding him. They’d have fallen off for sure.

  “Nervous fellow,” our father says. (Of course he’s nervous, what horse isn’t?) Then, “You just all sit quietly while I go get dressed.”

  When he’s gone, we look at one another. My sister shakes her head. “Like he says, we’ll all sit quietly. We don’t want anybody shot.”

  I say, “I want to throw fire.”

  My sister says, “Think, for heaven’s sake! Remember who you are!”

  “I am thinking.”

  When our father comes back, he does look impressive. “Now then . . . Mister Boots, is it? Now Mister Boots, I want to know how you did that trick earlier today? Projections? Mirrors? I didn’t quite catch it.”

  What if Boots doesn’t know what he’s not supposed to say? I have to change the subject.

  “I do want to go with you,” I say. “I want to learn how to throw fire.”

  “Good boy.”

  “Bobby!”

  I notice my sister isn’t calling me Roberta. More and more I’m thinking all this must have started way back with Mother. I’m glad. I like having secrets, but I like being a secret even more.

  “Think a minute. Think,” she says, standing up and looking at me. “You can’t. You know perfectly well you can’t.”

  So then I do think, and what I think is: Yes I can. I haven’t had any trouble being a boy so far, and I haven’t even tried. I know our father wouldn’t want me if he knew I was a girl. My sister knows that, too. She could have stopped all this right then with that one single word: Roberta.

  “There are no magicians like there used to be.” Our father is sounding kind of dreamy. “No one anymore at all like me. I’ll teach you, boy. Hundreds of secrets. Thousands.” He’s nodding to himself, and he has this little satisfied smile. He looks as if everything is exactly the way he wants it, but then he says, “The money,” and keeps on nodding and smiling to himself. “The money.”

  I don’t know why he needs our money, what with his fancy horse and fancy boots and clothes. He has to be rich enough already.

  “I told you,” my sister says, “we can’t find it. We’ve looked all over. All of us.”

  “We’ll see,” our father says. “I’m not in any hurry.”

  I can’t wait until I can get off alone and check for false bottoms or odd mirrors. I can’t tell my sister. She shouldn’t know these magic things. Our father told me not to tell anybody about those boxes. He said magicians have to swear not to tell and he said, now that I know, I have to swear it, too, and not even tell my sister. He said, “What’s the use of magic if everybody knows about it?” It’s easy to see that that’s the exact truth.

  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 tell
s 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.”