Lean on Pete

by Willy Vlautin

  When I was done I looked up and Del was staring at me.

  “You don’t have any manners, do you?”

  “What’d I do wrong?” I asked.

  “You’re not supposed to lower your head to the plate and shovel it in. And you got to let yourself chew. I don’t know how you eat so fast without choking. What does your mom say about it?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know her,” I said.

  “Is she dead?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Does your dad have any manners?”

  “I’ve never noticed,” I said.

  “Your mom has never shown up?”

  “No.”

  “You don’t hear about that often. A mom leaving her kid.”

  “I guess.”

  “It’s rare. She must have been a real piece.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t have a step-mom?”

  “No.”

  Del opened his shirt pocket and took a toothpick out of it and began picking his teeth. “The way you eat makes me lose my appetite. If we’re gonna eat together you have to get manners. But don’t ask me. I don’t have time to teach you everything. Alright?”

  “Alright.”

  “That’s it for today. I’m going home.”

  “Can I work tomorrow?”

  “Be here at six.”

  “You said you wanted me here by five.”

  “You can get here at five if you want.”

  “Do I get paid every day?”

  “You don’t get paid until you know what you’re doing. I don’t pay anybody for teaching them something. Plus you owe me for the groom’s license. I’ll take that out first and then I’ll let you know.”

  “Do I have to take any tests for the groom’s license?”

  “No,” he said. “You just have to be fifteen.”

  “So when do you think I’ll get paid?”

  “When you’ve learned something.”

  “Alright,” I said and got up. “I’ll be here at five tomorrow.”

  “Suit yourself,” he said and went back to the paper.

  When I got home I took a shower and fell asleep in front of the TV. I woke up around six and put on my running clothes and headed towards the river. When I got there I did my push-ups and sit-ups and ran sprints down the street. I’d run as fast as I could for a block, then I’d jog the next block, then I’d sprint again. Every time I wanted to quit I thought about them not letting me on the team, about them making fun of me ’cause I wasn’t tough enough, and I kept going until I couldn’t go anymore.

  For the next two weeks I worked for Del, doing whatever he told me to do. I got there in the morning at five and stayed until eleven or so. He was the moodiest guy I’d ever met. Sometimes it was like I was his grandson. He’d walk around and tell everyone he’d finally found a kid that would work, that could put his nose to the grindstone. Then maybe an hour later he’d tell me I was the dumbest kid he’d ever had work for him, that I wasn’t worth a rock on the side of the road.

  At the end of the first week he paid me fifty bucks and I was more than relieved. But at the end of the second week he only gave me thirty when I’d worked more hours and learned more. I knew the names of his horses and which ones needed what. I knew how to clean stalls and which order he did things in. I put on leg wraps and helped him do anything he couldn’t do with one hand. It didn’t make sense that he’d pay me less. I wanted to say something about it but he didn’t look like he cared if I did. When he gave me the money it was like he knew I didn’t deserve it, like he might hand me the money and say, “I don’t need you anymore.” So I just kept my mouth shut.

  That first time I got paid I went to the grocery store and spent most of the money there. When I got home I put the groceries away and made a batch of spaghetti. I cut up onions and garlic and put in canned tomatoes and ground beef. My dad had a bottle of Italian spices that he’d gotten from work and I put some of that in the sauce as well.

  After I was done eating I moved the TV into my bedroom and watched a movie about a guy who becomes a mountain man and lives by himself for a long time in the middle of nowhere. He meets a mute boy whose family got killed by Indians and he adopts him. Then he gets married to an Indian girl and then both the girl and the kid get killed and the mountain man spends the rest of the movie trying to murder every Indian that did it. It was a horribly sad movie because the girl and the kid were really nice and they all tried to start a family together. When it was over I shut off the TV but I thought about it for a long time before I went to sleep.

  Around one or so my dad came in. I woke up when I heard him open the front door. He went into the kitchen and turned on the radio and it sounded like he was making something to eat. I dozed off again and the next time I woke it was because someone was beating on our front door and I could hear a guy yelling. The second my eyes opened I knew something wasn’t right. I could just feel it. I was asleep one moment and then nervous and scared the next. I sprung up from the bed and went out to the main room in my underwear. My dad was still in his work clothes and he was pushing against the door, trying to keep it shut. I stood in the back near the kitchen. The man outside kept banging on it and you could see it shake. I wanted to say something to my dad but I couldn’t get any words out.

  “Fuck you,” the man screamed through the door. “Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you.”

  “Look,” my dad said. His voice shaky and nervous. “She told me she was single. It ain’t my fault. It’s her fault. She told me you guys were over.”

  “I heard about what you two did tonight,” the man said.

  “Look, it’s not my fault she ain’t sure what to do. It ain’t my fault she calls me.”

  And then the man broke down the door. He kicked it in. You could see the wood around the bolt lock give way and all of a sudden a man who weighed over three hundred pounds was in our house. It was the Samoan. He had his curly black hair in a ponytail and he was dressed in a T-shirt and sweats with flip-flops on his feet. I don’t know how he kicked in a door with flip-flops on but he did. My dad moved back in the room, but he didn’t run, he just stood there. The Samoan hit him in the face as hard as he could. My dad fell back into the wall and then the man picked him up and threw him through the big window that overlooked our front yard. He picked up my dad like you would a little kid and hurled him into the glass and my dad went all the way through and fell outside on the ground.

  I couldn’t move. Then the Samoan saw me and I froze in panic. But he didn’t do anything to me. He just stared at me then turned around. He walked outside, got into his car, and drove off.

  When I saw his tail lights disappear I went out to my dad. He was lying on the ground and he wasn’t moving. There was glass everywhere and his face was bloody, but I could see he was still breathing. I went inside and called 911 and got dressed while I talked to them. Then I took two towels from the bathroom and a flashlight I kept by my bed and went to him. I shined the flashlight on him and it was then I could see a big piece of glass coming out of his stomach. There was a dark pool of blood around it. There were cuts on his arms and on his neck and on his chin. His nose was bleeding.

  I didn’t know if I should put the towel around his stomach or if that would move the glass and make it hurt worse, make it bleed more. I didn’t know the right thing. So I just stood there with the flashlight on him and the towels in my hand. I tried to tell him he’d be alright but every time I spoke I started crying.

  I got so scared I couldn’t move.

  The ambulance and police came and I watched them work on him. They left him on his back, put a neck brace on him, and then put a pack around the piece of glass in his stomach and put him in the back of the ambulance and drove off. They didn’t even tell me where they were going.

  There were two cops and they asked me who I was and my relation and I told them.

  “Where did they take him?” I asked.

  “They took him to th
e hospital,” one officer said.

  “Which hospital?”

  “Good Samaritan,” he said.

  “Oh,” I said, but I didn’t know where that was. And then I thought about how big Portland was and how I didn’t know anybody and I started crying.

  When I calmed down they asked me my name and I told them.

  “What happened tonight?” the other officer asked.

  “I was asleep and this guy started beating on the door and yelling at my dad, and then he broke the bolt lock and came in the house. I was up by then and standing in the kitchen. I saw this big huge guy hit my dad and throw him out the window.”

  “What did the man look like?”

  “He was huge. I think he was Samoan.”

  “Samoan?”

  “My dad’s going out with a lady whose husband is Samoan. I think it was him.”

  “Do you know his name?”

  “No.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Lynn, but I don’t know her last name. They work together at Willig Freight Lines.”

  “What did the man do after he threw your dad through the window?”

  “He got into his car and drove away.”

  “What kind of car?”

  “I’m not sure. I know it wasn’t a truck.”

  “Do you have anyone coming to stay with you tonight?”

  “What?”

  “How old are you?”

  “Fifteen.”

  “Do you have someone to look after you tonight?”

  I paused for a while.

  “My uncle’s coming,” I said.

  I looked around. There were neighbors out on their lawns. Everyone’s lights were on and they were all looking at us, watching us.

  Another police car came up and the officers told me to wait. They walked over to the car and when they turned around I went back in the house, grabbed my coat, and walked out the back door. I hopped over the fence and went through our neighbor’s gate and began walking down the street.

  Chapter 9

  I walked for a mile or so, then hid in some bushes alongside the road. It was hours before I went back to the house, and when I did the police cars were gone. All the neighbors were back in their houses and their lights were off. I went inside and made myself look in each room but there was no one there and everything looked the same as it had. I sat in the kitchen and tried to figure out what to do, then I went into my dad’s room and got his toolbox. I took a hammer and broke out the rest of the glass from the big window. When I did a neighbor across the street came out in his bathrobe, but he didn’t say anything. He just stood in his yard and stared. I waved to him but he didn’t wave back. I put the hammer down and went to the closet where we kept an extra sleeping bag and I unzipped it and nailed it to the wall over where the window had been. When I was finished I called a cab to take me to the hospital.

  It was almost 4 a.m. when I got there and just going inside made me sick to my stomach. I’d never really been in a hospital. Not a big one, anyway. I asked the front-desk lady at the emergency room about my dad and she said he’d been admitted and that he was in surgery. She was nice and asked me if I was his son and I told her I was and she told me I could sit in the waiting room if I wanted. She told me she’d come get me when I could see him.

  It was past morning when I saw him. He was in intensive care and asleep with tubes going in and out of him. The nurse said the glass cut up his bowel, spilling infection into his gut causing a bad case of peritonitis. I asked if that was serious and she said it was like he’d been poisoned, so yes, it was really serious.

  He had stitches on his face and on his arms. He looked terrible. He barely looked like my dad, more like an old man. I sat down on a chair next to the bed and stayed there until a nurse came in and told me it would be alright if I took a break. She said he’d be asleep for most of the day.

  I went back out to the waiting room and watched TV until I fell asleep in the chair. When I woke it was hours later and I stood up and got a drink from a water fountain, then went to the bathroom and washed my face. I went back to his room and looked in on him, but he was still asleep so I went to the cafeteria and ate. Then finally, in the afternoon, a nurse came out to where I was watching TV and told me he was awake and led me in to him.

  “Are you okay?” he said softly when he saw me. “Did he hurt you?” His lips were chapped and his face was swollen and pale. He had sweat on his brow. He looked bad off.

  “I’m okay,” I said. “Nothing happened. Are you okay?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Does it hurt?”

  “Not yet, they got me pretty doped up.”

  “But you’ll be alright?”

  “I hope so.”

  “Do you think the guy will be back?”

  “Which guy?”

  “The guy that threw you through the window?”

  “No, I’ll tell the police about him. He’s a big fucker, isn’t he?”

  “Yeah,” I said, and then, just like that, I started bawling.

  “Don’t worry about him, okay?”

  “What am I going to say to the police? They’ll take me away if they know no one else is in the house.”

  “If you see cops just go the other way until I can get my head together, alright?”

  I nodded. “I’m sorry that guy threw you through the window.”

  “Me too,” he said. “You don’t have to stay here with me. You can go back to the house if you want.”

  “The house scares me.”

  He nodded.

  “I nailed a sleeping bag over the window.”

  “That’s good thinking. It’ll be alright, Charley. It’ll take a bit but I’ll be alright. My clothes should be here somewhere. Get my wallet if it’s still here. Take the money out of it. I might be stuck here for a while. I’m having a hard time staying awake, alright?”

  “Okay,” I said and then he closed his eyes.

  I got up and went through the drawers and found his wallet and his car keys. He had seven dollars and I put that in my pants pocket and shut the drawer. I sat there for most of the day and into the night and then they made me leave. It was late by then and I walked miles before I found my way back to the house. I put the TV in my bedroom and locked myself in. I hammered nails into the floor by the door to keep it shut and I slept in my clothes.

  When I woke up it was four-thirty in the morning. I didn’t know what I was going to do. I wanted to go back to the hospital and see if my dad was alright, but I had less than twenty dollars and I knew I’d have to try and keep the job with Del. So instead of going to the hospital I went to the track.

  Chapter 10

  It was still dark out when I got there and Del’s horses were in their stalls and hardly anyone was around. I looked in on Pete and pet him and whenever I’d stop he’d move towards me and stomp and shake his head. I turned on the light in his stall and went in. It was the same as all the others. The floor was covered in straw and there were no windows, just three walls of painted brick that was worn and covered in dust, and a gate keeping him in. There was a bulb hanging from the roof rafters, and an automatic drinking fountain for him to get water. I scratched his neck and when I did his lips quivered. There were scars on his face and long scars on his rear. I’d asked Del what they were from and he said most were from when Pete was laid off and put back in a herd. Horses are always arguing, Del said. But the scars around his leg were from when he’d reared back in a starting gate and threw the jockey and got himself cut up. Del said Pete used to be full of it, that he used to be a handful, but now he was tired out and had thrown in the towel.

  I stayed in there with him and kept petting him, then I turned off the stall light and sat down on the ground. I told him about the Samoan and my dad in the hospital and about what had happened. I told him how there was blood and glass everywhere and how in the hospital there were tubes running in and out of my dad and how I didn’t know what I was going to do if he wasn
’t alright. How I wished he and I could just disappear. We could live in a place where there was no one else around and it would be warm with miles of grass for him to eat and no one would ever make him run. There would be a barn and a house and the house would be lined with food from floor to ceiling and there would be a TV and a huge swimming pool.

  It was almost six o’clock when Del showed up. I saw him walking down the shedrow. “What are you doing here?” he said.

  “Getting ready to work.”

  “You weren’t here yesterday.”

  “I couldn’t work yesterday,” I said.

  “You can’t choose the days you work for me. I tell you when to work, you don’t tell me.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “I got enough problems.”

  “I couldn’t work yesterday. I wanted to.”

  “Just go home,” he said.

  “My dad’s in the hospital.”

  “No shit?” He smiled and gave me a look.

  “And I don’t have your phone number or I would have called you. I’ve asked you for it. Remember that day in the truck? You told me I didn’t need it.”

  “Your dad isn’t in the hospital. That’s a load of shit.”

  “You can call down there if you want.”

  He took his fingers and pulled the chew from his mouth and threw it on the ground.

  “What hospital?”

  “Good Samaritan.”

  “I’m gonna call down there,” he said and paused. “Here’s the deal. You can work for me but I ain’t paying you for this week. I’ll pay you next week same as usual but you got to learn a lesson. Take it or leave it.”

  “I want to keep working,” I said, but I was really mad at him. I began to hate him. “I need your phone number though. My dad really is in the hospital so I’ll call you the night before in case I can’t come in.”

  “I guess that’s fair enough,” Del said and shook his head. He reached for a pen in his shirt pocket and took an old receipt from his wallet and wrote his number on it.