Mister Boots

by Carol Emshwiller

  I put my good arm around Moonlight Blue’s neck. “Don’t die,” I say. “Please don’t die. I’ll take you out to where those wild mustangs are and let you go free. I don’t have any money anymore, but I’ll find a way. Cross my heart and hope to . . . Don’t die.”

  I feel his soft, soft, velvety horse lips, as he blows against my cheek. Like a sign. Like a kiss. What is there ever in the whole wide world as soft as the lips of a horse?

  And then he isn’t blowing anymore.

  I think about what Boots said about death, what I heard him tell Jocelyn: “When I’m no longer able to hear the tunes of your voice . . .”

  And she said, “Why do you keep thinking about death?”

  “When we can, we twist and run, and when we can’t . . . Human beings have little resignation about something we all have to do.”

  I hear people yelling and rushing around. I feel cold bumping down on Boots and me. The tent isn’t leaking, but I feel the cold of the water through the canvas. Finally the tent gets pulled off, and I can breathe again.

  chapter thirteen

  Money isn’t everything. Mister Boots said that all the time. But I think money really is something, the way all the people of the camping place ran around in circles that morning, yelling and trying to gather it up. There was a horse lying dead right there in front of them, and all they cared about was the money. Rosie, too. She was running around waving her arms and shouting, “Oh, no! Oh, no!”

  Our father did the disappearing act, no mirrors, no boxes, no smoke. . . . Well, smoke. Nobody saw him go. The wagon and the car were still there. I guess he got too scared even to take the car, but after all, all he did was shoot a horse. Who cares about horses? Especially old lame ones? Of course he always thought that there was just a skinny, clumsy man who tripped over his own feet. When Jocelyn signed them in at the cabins as Mr. and Mrs. Blue, that’s the only time there ever was a record that Boots existed.

  I’m finally out at our tree. I brought water like I always do. I didn’t dare go before. I was scared that maybe Boots would be waiting there, naked and thirsty and glad to see me.

  I lie down and look at the sky the horse way, through the dry yellow grass.

  I don’t want a world like this—Mother dead and Rosie’s mother dead and Boots dead. The world never used to be like this back when nothing happened.

  I can just hear Boots saying, “It’s the world we were made for; that’s why we like it so much. Taste of water, smell of hay . . . All ours.”

  But I’m thinking, No, it isn’t. Not my world. I wasn’t made for any of it.

  “Mister Boots, you mustn’t be gone! I especially need you now. I need you to tell me how to think about you not being here.”

  Odd to think I got myself and everybody else, too, into all this because I wanted to throw fire. That was my dream back then.

  But it wasn’t all me. Our father wanted me along. Knowing what I know about him now, I’ll bet he would have kidnapped me if I hadn’t wanted to come. And then Mister Boots and my sister would have followed, and everything would have happened just as it did. So I guess it’s not all my fault.

  Aunt Tilly says to look on the bright side. So I say to her, “Well, at least you’re not dead yet.” And she says, “For heaven’s sake, the things that child thinks of.”

  “Well then, why do the songs you sing make us all so sad? Like ‘Beautiful Dreamer.’ There has to be a reasonable reason for singing all those songs. ‘The Last Rose of Summer’ and all. Are they looking on the bright side?”

  “But look at all the good things. You have Rosie for another sister. You can be Roberta and not sneak around and steal dresses. You can be ten . . . well, eleven now. That’s a nice number, too. Mister Boots would think so.”

  “He wouldn’t.”

  “You know he would.”

  “I’d give all the good things away to have Mister Boots back.”

  “Honey, come sit on my lap now, even though you are eleven. Come. Don’t think at all.”

  “Boots said, ‘Think.’ ”

  “He didn’t mean all the time.”

  I guess there are a few good things. It’s good when Aunt Tilly sings and plays the ukulele. And she’s teaching me. She sings and plays the piano at the hotel in town every weekend and makes money.

  Another good thing: I’m finally growing. We’ve been measuring. It’s right there on the doorway.

  Rosie and I get to go to the village school. I stick up for her. I fight for her even though she’s bigger than I am. It’s as if I’m still thinking of myself as a boy.

  We have a lot of secrets—new ones, little ones, and one great big one—but not any more about our ages or what sex we are.

  And another good thing: the baby. Sometimes my sister holds her on her lap, “as foal or girl,” just like Mister Boots would say. We expect, as a horse that is, she’ll turn as light-colored as her father as she gets older. We all want her to be a flea-bit gray.

  Moonlight Marilyn Blue.

  She’s the big secret, but I’m used to secrets.

  She’s especially a secret if our father ever comes back. Jocelyn doesn’t want Marilyn to have a life like Boots’s.

  Our father would like her too much. She could make a lot of money and she’d look good on a poster. If he found out, I’ll bet he wouldn’t even care if she was a girl or not.

  She looks kind of funny, but of course all new babies look funny. I know that much. She has Boots’s big caramel-colored eyes and long head; fuzzy, black, baby foal hair. . . .

  It’ll be like I was. They won’t dare send her to school for fear people will find out. With me it was that I wasn’t a boy; with her it’s different. They’ll have to wait at least until she’s old enough to keep herself a secret, so I’ll teach her. She’ll get to know every single thing I know.

  It’s good we have her. Jocelyn would feel too bad about Boots without Marilyn to care for.

  Sometimes I think maybe I’d be even more of a triumph going onstage as a girl magician, wearing a scanty costume like Aunt Tilly used to wear. (If I ever get breasts.) My helper would be a man in a dress suit, top hat, and all—and a goatee. I’d make him curl up in boxes. I’d saw him in half and stick him full of swords. When I get to be a grown-up, I can do anything I want.

  Right now I have to go to school and grow up a little more. Jocelyn says that’s what Mister Boots would say, and he would.

  But it seems like an awful long wait. People always tell me I’ll change my mind when I get older. I hope I don’t because being a magician is what I really, really, really want to do.

  CAROL EMSHWILLER is the author of many acclaimed novels and story collections, including Carmen Dog, The Start of the End of It All (winner of the World Fantasy Award), Report to the Men’s Club and Other Stories, The Mount (winner of the Philip K. Dick Award and a Nebula Award Finalist), and I Live with You and You Don’t Know It. In the winter, she lives in New York City and teaches in the NYU Continuing Education program; in the summer, she lives in Bishop, California, between the Sierras and the Inyo White Mountains.

  Her Web site is www.sfwa.org/members/emshwiller