Mike stopped again. This time he looked to the side, not directly at the horse.
The horse stood waiting.
Mike walked away from it. Just kind of strolled off. And the horse took a few steps toward him. Amazing.
Mike stopped.
The horse stopped.
Mike walked, the horse followed.
This went on for a few minutes until the horse finally walked all the way up to Mike’s back. But Mike didn’t try to put the rope over its neck. In fact, he didn’t even turn around. He just stood with his back to the horse. When the horse was only a couple of feet away, Mike finally turned and faced it. He said something softly.
“What he’s saying?” Sammy asked.
“Who knows. Weird, man.”
“You telling me.”
Mike reached up to put his hand on the horse’s nose. And the horse didn’t throw its head like it always did when Henry got near it. Mike said something again, and reached into his pocket.
“What’s he got?” Sammy asked.
Henry didn’t answer, too interested in how Mike was taming the horse.
The horse ate whatever it was Mike had in his pocket, and Mike ran his hand along its neck. Then, slowly, he looped the rope around the horse’s nose, making a kind of rope bridle. There was a name for it, but Henry couldn’t remember what it was. Hack-something. Anyway, the horse let Mike do it, just let him.
“Look at that,” Henry whispered.
“He still ain’t riding it.”
Mike led the horse over to the pond, then let the end of the rope fall to the ground. The horse stood still.
Mike took off his shoes and socks. He took off his hat and set it on the shoes. Then his watch.
“What he going do now?” Sammy said. “Go swimming?”
“Shhh. Quiet.”
Mike unbuttoned his shirt, took it off. Then his pants and olive green undershirt. He looked back at Henry and Sammy and grinned.
“Look at that dingdong, standing there in his boxers.”
“I think you’re right. He’s going swimming.”
“Man, that guy is white.”
“Look like a squid.”
Mike led the horse into the pond, talking to it and easing it in slowly. The horse went willingly. No problem. Right in, up to its chest. Mike dipped his hand in the water and scooped up a handful, then let it fall over the horse’s back.
“He’s giving it a bath,” Sammy said.
Henry frowned. What was the guy doing?
Then Mike leaned against the horse. Just leaned.
A minute or two later he threw himself up over its back, so that he lay over it on his stomach, like a blanket. The horse moved but settled down quickly.
“Ahhh,” Henry whispered. “The guy is smart, very very smart. He going get on it in the water, where the horse can’t run, or throw him off, or if it does throw him off, going be an easy fall. Smart.”
When the horse was settled, Mike eased up on its back and sat, bareback. For a long moment he just sat.
Henry grinned. He liked what he was seeing. Someone could at least get on the horse, even if it was a mainland army guy. Mike was okay, you know?
Mike took up the rope bridle and nudged the horse with his heels. The horse jumped, then walked out of the pond. Mike rode around the pond. Rode up to the top of the pasture, then back.
Henry thought Mike looked pretty good on it.
Mike clucked his tongue and the horse broke into an easy run. Mike rode smooth on its back, and Henry could hardly believe that someone could ride a horse like that with no saddle and not bounce off.
“I don’t believe it,” Sammy said.
“The guy knows what he’s doing.”
“Unlike us.”
“Yeah, unlike us.”
A few minutes later Mike rode up. Stopped, sat looking down at them. “This is still a fine horse, Henry. He’s a little old, and he hasn’t been ridden in a while, but he’s been ridden in the past.”
“It wouldn’t even let me near it.”
“You just have to know how to talk to him, that’s all.”
“Stupid to talk to a horse,” Sammy said.
“No it ain’t. It’s part of gaining his trust. After that, he’ll let you ride him.”
Sammy frowned.
Henry said, “Well, I guess you won the bet.”
“You want to try riding him?”
“Nah.”
“Come on. He’s your horse.”
“It won’t let me on it.”
“Sure he will.” Mike slid off. “Come, stand here by him, let him smell you, let him look at you.”
“Uhhh . . . I don’t know,” Henry said.
The horse twisted an ear toward him.
“Go ahead,” Mike said. “Rub his nose, tell him he’s a good horse.”
Henry inched closer and rubbed the horse’s nose. It was soft, soft as feathers. The eye was big and shiny. Brown. “Nice horse,” he said, like you’d say to a dog.
“Good,” Mike said. “Here, take the rope. Walk around, let him follow you.”
Henry led the horse around the pond.
Mike and Sammy stood silently watching.
Out on the ocean two destroyers and a transport ship were heading away from Pearl Harbor. In the distance you could hear the faint cracking of rifle shot, men maneuvering in the hills. A plane droned by, silver in the clear blue sky.
When Henry got back, Mike said, “Okay, see if you can get on him. If he gets jumpy, you can take him into the water like I did. He likes the water. Come up and lean on his side, let him get used to you. Then try to get up on him.”
Henry put his arms over the horse’s back and leaned on it. The horse’s ears turned back, then forward again.
“See,” Mike said. “Now go on, get on him.”
Henry took the rope bridle, grabbed a hank of mane, and jumped up on its back. The horse took a few side steps, then settled down. Henry grinned.
“See,” Sammy said. “I told you you could ride it if you were nice to it.”
Henry rode the horse to the top of the field, then back down again. “He’s really not a bad horse,” he said when he got back.
“No, he sure ain’t,” Mike said.
Henry rode around the pond two times, then came back and slid off. He took the rope bridle off and set the horse free. But the horse just stood there.
Mike went down to the pond to get his clothes. He was dry now, from the sun. He got dressed, and the three of them walked back over to the road.
Mike said, “So it’s okay, then, if I come see the horse?”
“Yeah yeah,” Henry said. “Anytime. Just come see ’um, ride ’um, whatever you want.”
Mike grinned and shook hands with Henry and Sammy. “Thanks. I hope I can get up here a couple more times before I ship out.”
“Yeah, couple times,” Henry said. “Hey, what you had in your pocket, that you gave the horse?”
“Jelly beans.”
“Hah,” Henry said.
“When he does something right, reward him. Always reward good work, good behavior.”
Sammy said, “Like when you guys get a medal, yeah?”
Mike looked down and said, “Yeah, like that. Well . . .”
“Yeah,” Henry said.
Mike nodded and waited a moment, then nodded again and started down the road to the bus stop.
“He’s not a bad guy,” Sammy said. “For a haole army guy.”
“He sure knows horses.”
“Yeah.”
Henry and Sammy were silent a moment. Henry kept thinking of what Mike had said about waiting for the war. Waiting for the war. He’d never thought of it like that before, all of those guys just waiting to go fight. They’d always just been guys causing trouble around town. But that was nothing next to the trouble they were waiting for.
“He might die soon, you know, Sammy.”
Sammy shook his head. “A lot of them don’t come back.”
For the first time since the bombing of Pearl Harbor, for the first time since the three-day ship fires and massive clouds of dirty smoke and mass burials, for the first time since the arrest of his Japanese friends and neighbors, for the first time since then, Henry thought about how even now, right now, today, guys like Mike were out there somewhere dying in the war, going out on a transport ship and not coming back. Young guys, like him and Sammy. Just kids from Texas.
“I hope he makes it,” Henry said.
“Yeah.”
“But probably . . .”
In that moment, with those words, Henry paused, feeling something in his gut, like a dark thought unfolding—all those young guys were just like him, only they came from the mainland, from farms and towns and cities, coming way out here to wait for the war, to wait, to wait, to wait—then to go. And die. All of them would die, he thought.
Henry winced, then shook his head. He rubbed the back of his neck.
“You know what I going name my horse, Sammy?”
“What?”
“Mike.”
“Mike?”
“After the guy.”
“Yeah,” Sammy said. He was quiet a moment, then he said, “Because why?”
“Because that guy . . . he going ship out . . . and he ain’t coming back.”
“You don’t know that.”
“One way or the other, Sammy, he ain’t coming back.”
“What you mean?”
“I mean he going get shot and die. Or he going live through things that going make him feel like he was dead. That’s what I think, and it ain’t right, you know? It ain’t supposed to be that way.”
“Yeah, but he could be a hero.”
“Maybe. Yeah.”
“He could.”
They were both silent for a long while.
Finally Sammy looked back at the horse and said, “Mike.”
“That’s a good name . . . Mike.”
The horse took a step forward, grazing. And above the green mountains, white clouds slept.
The Doi Store Monkey
“Rossman, listen . . . I . . . I’m sorry about the monkey, okay?”
. . .
“Rossman?”
Johnny Smythe slapped the back of his neck, once, twice. Then his arm. “I know you’re hiding in there, so come out, okay? It’s creepy out here, Rossman. And these mosquitoes are (slap!) eating me alive.”
Stupid mosquitoes.
“Rossman, listen. It’s past midnight, already. What do you want me to do? Beg? Okay, I’m begging you to come out of there and go back to the dorm with me.”
But nothing came from the black jungle that edged the school. No rustle of leaves, no skittering insects, not even a ghostly whisper. Nothing. The only thing on earth Smythe could hear was the mosquitoes. And the nagging voice in his head. Worm, maggot, scorpion. Heartless scumbag. Yeah, that’s you, Smythe.
Tsk.
“Could be black widows in there, Rossman. Or maybe the loloman. Yeah, what if the loloman’s in that jungle with you?”
Hmmmff. That would make him think.
Smythe shuddered and looked around for moving shadows, remembering the crazy man. He didn’t live far from here. They’d found him by accident—they being him, Riggins, Pang, and McCarty. Riggins thought the loloman was probably only about thirty years old, but he looked a hundred because his teeth were gone, at least from a distance it looked like they were.
This crazy whacko loloman, as they called him, lived in a broken-down one-room shed in the jungle. Riggins discovered him one afternoon during the second week of school when they were farting around out behind the dorm. They’d all crawled up on their hands and knees and peeked through the bushes. Smythe remembered how his hands had trembled with fear and excitement as he watched this wild-haired man standing in his doorway, scraping a fork on the door jamb to clean it. When the man went back inside, they’d all raced back to see if they could find Rossman and talk him into sneaking up and peeking into the crazy guy’s house. Rossman would do stuff like that. He’d do it because he wanted friends. Any friends.
Stupid Rossman, Smythe thought.
But anyway, they’d found him and brought him back and sent him into the clearing by the loloman’s shack with that big, fat, stupid, lopsided grin of his plastered all over his face. He’d just stumbled up and looked in the door.
Oh man, had that lolo guy gone nuts! From inside his shack he’d screamed at Rossman in some strange language none of them understood. Smythe remembered how Rossman had staggered back, looking more stunned than scared. Confused, disoriented. And that’s all Smythe had seen, because he and the rest of the guys had taken off out of there, terrified that maybe the crazy man had a gun and would come out shooting.
Rossman was mad as a hornet when he got back to the dorm, and to avoid Riggins and the rest of them, he hid out in the jungle for three hours, hid right there where Smythe was now, slapping mosquitoes.
But Rossman got over it and soon came slinking back to the dorm, where he joined in and laughed about it with everyone else, just like every other time Riggins and the rest of them faked him out or got him to do something stupid like that.
But this monkey thing . . .
“Rossman! Come out of there,” Smythe said, scowling in the dark. “This is getting old.”
Worm.
Still no sound came from the shadows.
“Rossman?”
Smythe took a step closer to the jungle, but it was thick and dense and dark and way too spooky at night to go inside, and he sure as spit wasn’t going in there to drag Rossman out. So he sat down just outside the bushes in the tall, cool grass, smooth and silvery in the moonlight. “You know what your problem is, Rossman? You try too hard, that’s what. It makes you look stupid.”
Was that it? Smythe thought. Was that really it? Or was that just an excuse? A smoke screen for a maggot? Smythe frowned and bunched up his lips.
He looked up at the moon, bright as a fresh pearl. But clouds kept passing over it, making the night blacker. Smythe picked at the long pasture grass, tearing blades out of the ground and ripping them apart. When his thoughts drifted back to the monkey, he ripped a whole hank of grass up and threw it and punched his hand. “Rossman! Come out of there!”
Jeese, Rossman drove him crazy.
Or was it guilt that did that?
“Come on, Rossman,” Smythe said, now more gently, as if he were talking to a true friend, or to some scared kid. “Just come back to the dorm. I’m sorry, okay? We’re all sorry.”
So Riggins was a worm. I guess we all were, Smythe admitted. If you thought about it. Yes. Definitely scumbags. Okay, maybe Pang wasn’t, because he tried to do the right thing by staying out of it. But the rest of us were worms for sure.
Prep school. What it does to you. Turns you into morons.
But it’s weird, Smythe thought. Ever since he’d been there, he’d had more fun than ever before in his life. All the guys. All the cussing and insulting and joking around and being cool and stealing each other’s love letters and cookie stashes and hanging out in the dorm with no parents to crab all over them. He couldn’t believe that he even liked the Saturday morning white-glove locker inspections. And flag ceremony. And even Sunday chapel, for cripes sake. Not the kind of life he was used to, but he liked it. Algebra, geography, French.
Oh, and private lessons from people like Riggins on how to be a first-rate genuine-article blue-bellied zit-faced screaming-eagle scumbag.
“Hey, Rossman. Remember when Pang opened that reeking jar of kimchi in Mr. Chapman’s class? Man, was that funny. Remember that?”
A slight rustle.
Or something. Maybe a black widow, rubbing its hands together.
Smythe mashed down the grass and made himself comfortable, looked up at the moon. Wait him out, he thought. For a while, anyway. There was a limit to this guilt. He hoped. Why don’t you guys just leave him alone, Pang had said. He’s just like that monkey, except at least
the monkey can get out of his cage once in a while. Smythe remembered wondering what the spit Pang was talking about—at least the monkey could get out of his cage. What kind of mumbo jumbo was that?
The clouds moved away from the bright, glowing moon, leaving it alone in the sky. Smythe covered his eyes with the crook of his arm. Why couldn’t he just forget about the stupid monkey?
And Rossman.
Who’d showed up at school a couple of days late. Classes had already started, and everyone was pretty much settled into dorm life. Being late like that would have made it hard for anyone. That’s for sure, Smythe thought. I mean, you’d get the worst bunk and the worst locker, and you wouldn’t know anyone, and you’d have a pile of homework to catch up on, and at that school they dished up homework like saltpetered mashed potatoes.
But for Rossman being late was only a small problem.
Very small.
You see, Rossman had some kind of disease or something. Smythe didn’t know what it was, but they called him a spastic.
His body didn’t work. His mouth was lopsided and he drooled. He slurred his words when he talked, and he was hard to understand. His arms and legs went every which way when he walked. But he didn’t use a wheelchair or a cane. He just stumbled ahead on his own.
Smythe still found it hard to believe that someone had actually sent him there to live with a bunch of idiot ninth graders whose parents had kicked them out of the house because they were too busy to raise them or they didn’t like them or they wanted them to get into some hoity-toity Ivy League college and turn themselves into lawyers and doctors and investment bankers. Jeese, so funny. Could you even imagine someone like Riggins as a banker? Embezzler maybe would be more like it.
Anyway, Smythe thought, what were they thinking when they dumped this Rossman kid into the midst of us scorpions? Who did they think was going to help him? Who was going to understand him? Who was going to stop people from making fun of him? Criminy, it was like dropping a fly into a jar of toads.
At first Smythe felt embarrassed for him. He looked like a goof, and everyone laughed at him. Smythe laughed at him. Rossman even laughed at himself. That’s the kind of guy Rossman was, now that Smythe thought about it. Someone who could laugh at himself. Smythe figured it took a pretty big person to laugh at himself.
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