Lean on Pete

by Willy Vlautin

  Dinner was sloppy joes with green beans, and there were two bags of potato chips on the table. She set down a plate in front of me and asked me if I wanted a soda. I nodded and she came back with two.

  “Just in case you’re really thirsty,” she said and then she sat down at the end of the table. Everyone was eating and the food was good. She opened a can of soda for herself and when she did her grandfather stopped eating and wiped his mouth with a paper towel.

  “Mike, she won’t even drink diet soda. She won’t even do that to help herself.”

  Mike looked at the old man and nodded.

  “I don’t understand it. I don’t understand how a person can get like she is.”

  The woman just sat there and ate. She had the same amount as us, she didn’t have any more.

  “If I were as big as a semi I’d try something. I’ve caught her in her room eating a whole bag of Snickers bars.”

  “I was not,” she said. “You know that’s not true.” She had a nice voice. It was soft and warm. “You shouldn’t drink beer. You get ugly when you drink beer.”

  The old man looked at her and we kept eating. When she got up to get us seconds the old man started talking about her even though she was just a few feet away.

  “When she came to live here she was getting big and now she’s so big she can’t go up the stairs. I had to put in a shower downstairs because she can’t take a bath ’cause she can’t fit in the tub. It cost me three hundred dollars to do that. Look at her. She won’t eat much around me, but God knows when I’m asleep she puts on the feed bag.”

  Mike and Dallas and I just sat there and listened. Then Mike set down his fork and said, “You’re lucky you got someone looking after you, Mr. Kendall.”

  The old man just looked at Mike, but Mike looked right back, then smiled and drank from his beer. Laurie set down a plate with extra sloppy joes on it.

  “Do you boys need any more beer?” the old man asked.

  Both Dallas and Mike nodded and the woman went over to the fridge and brought back two. We all kept eating until the food was gone, then I helped clear the table and Laurie did the dishes. Mr. Kendall brought out a bottle of whiskey and they all went back out to the porch.

  “Do you want me to dry?” I asked her.

  “If you want,” she said and handed me a towel that was hanging from a hook on the wall. “What are you doing with Mike?”

  “My truck broke down. I’m waiting for my ride. I just met Mike today.”

  “He’s alright, I guess,” she said. “Do you like ice cream?”

  “Sure,” I said, and when we’d finished cleaning up she made us two bowls of vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce and we went into the living room and watched TV. There was a movie on and we watched it until it was over, then we found another one.

  “It’s going to take him a week to recover from tonight,” she said.

  “Who?” I asked her.

  “My grandfather. He’s not supposed to drink anymore. He’s an asshole when he drinks. It’s why no one ever comes here.”

  We were silent for a long time.

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Okay,” she said.

  “Why do you stay here? He seems really mean.”

  “I don’t know where else to go,” she said, and then she reached over to the end table and opened a drawer and took a pack of Werther’s candy and gave me one. Our legs touched as we sat next to each other on the small couch and it felt good that they were. Then Mike came in and got me and told me we were leaving. I told the woman goodbye and we went outside. Mike started the car and we drove down the side of their property to a hay shelter. He got out and climbed up a huge stack of hay and threw a bale down.

  He put it on top of the car and we started driving again.

  They were both so drunk they could hardly talk. Dallas had the music loud and we drove out the driveway onto the paved road and went fifteen miles an hour along it. We were halfway to the trailer when Dallas opened the door, leaned out, and puked.

  “Don’t get any on my car,” Mike said and stopped. He laughed and got out of the car. I got out, too.

  “You should stop puking and look at these stars,” Mike said and lit another cigarette.

  “I hate sloppy joes,” Dallas said. He sat up, wiped his face with his shirt, and got out of the car. “I’ve always hated them.”

  They both sat on the hood and Mike started talking about the army but I couldn’t understand what he was saying. After a while we drove back. Mike had to help Dallas out of the car because he was so drunk and he practically carried him into the trailer.

  I pushed the bale off the roof and carried it over to Pete. I cut the bale strings and gave him three flakes and filled his water.

  “I like you a lot, Pete,” I told him. “I’m sorry about what happened today. I’ll stand up for you better next time.” I pet him, then went inside.

  The TV was going but they weren’t in the living room. I walked down the hall towards the bedrooms and saw Dallas face down on a twin bed, passed out. He lay there on the bed snoring. I called out to Mike but when I went back to his room he was passed out with headphones on and I could hear music coming from them.

  I went into the bathroom and locked the door. I started the shower and took off my clothes and got in. I stayed there for a long time. When I got out I used a towel that was on the floor, then I looked through the medicine cabinet and found a tube of toothpaste and I put some on my finger and tried to brush my teeth.

  When I went back out they were both still asleep. I went into the kitchen and looked through the cupboards. I found two cans of stew, a can of soup, and a couple cans of corn and I put them in a plastic sack. There were two empty gallon jugs and I filled both those with water, then I found a piece of paper and I wrote them a note. I thanked them and told them I’d pay them back for the canned food and the hay. I put the note on the counter and left.

  Pete was still eating when I went to him and I waited until he finished.

  The night was full of stars and it wasn’t cold. I sat down in the dirt and leaned against the barn and fell asleep. When I woke it was still dark and Pete was just standing there. I got up and put as much hay as I could in the duffel, then took a rope and tied one end around a jug of water and the other end around the other jug. I put the halter on him and opened the gate. I put my sleeping bag over my shoulder and carried the duffel and the plastic sack of canned food and the water and led Pete out of the pen and onto the road.

  Chapter 19

  When it got light we moved off the road and began following it from a distance as we had before. We kept walking and the landscape stayed the same, just sagebrush and rock and dirt and desert. We went through gullies and across long straight stretches of nothing.

  We came to a fence. It was barbed wire running north and south and it blocked us from going east. I took us south, farther away from the highway, and we went for miles until there was a break and we went across there. I couldn’t see the highway anymore and I couldn’t hear it. Pete took shorter steps and I knew the rocks hurt his feet. At one point I stopped and looked at his shoes and saw he was missing his hind right. I didn’t know what to do so we just kept going. I came to a dirt road. We followed it for hours but I never once heard the sound of cars or trucks and I didn’t see any house or building either. Above us there were no clouds and it was really hot. There were no trees or shade anywhere.

  Late in the afternoon we stopped to rest. I put out a flake of hay for Pete and while he ate I drank as much water as I could, then I cut the top off the plastic jug and held it in front of him. He didn’t drink from it for a while, then he finally did. I sat down on the road and opened a can of stew and ate.

  We started walking again but I was tired and sunburned. I saw a ranch in the distance, maybe a mile away. It was dusk by then so I unrolled the sleeping bag and sat down. I took the extra rope and tied it to Pete’s lead so he’d have more room to move around, then I
tied the end to my ankle and held on to the rope with my hand and night came.

  We heard coyotes whine and it seemed like an ocean of them surrounding us. A wind picked up and it got cold. I put on my coat and fell asleep. In the middle of the night Pete pulled away from me and the rope around my ankle tugged and I woke up. I untied the rope and went to him and pet him and we stood in darkness and you could tell he was worried. I told him what a good horse he was, and how fast he was. I told him we’d find a place where both of us could stay for a long time. A place where his feet would get fixed, a place where there was a lot of food.

  I kept talking to him. I told him about a time my dad and me and some friends of his spent a weekend at a cabin in the snow, and I told him about school, about teachers I had. About changing schools four times. About girls I saw and sat next to, about friends I had. I liked the school part of school alright, but I barely got good enough grades to play sports. I told him about getting free lunch and being embarrassed by it, and running to the cafeteria so I could eat before anyone I knew saw. Then I told him about my mother. About how I used to have a picture of her but that I threw it away one night when I was mad and how I tried never to think about her.

  Her name was Nancy and she was my dad’s girlfriend when they worked together at a grocery store. She had black hair and was tall and was ten years older than him. My dad broke up with her but after a while they got back together and he got her pregnant. Then they broke up again. When I was born I stayed with her but when I was a year old she left me with him for a week and never came back. He thought she might have moved to North Dakota because that was where she was from but he didn’t know. He always said he wasn’t sure why she left, but said he was glad she did. When I was younger I used to ask him about her all the time, but he’d never say anything at all. Then one night when he was drunk he told me she was the moodiest person he’d ever met. He said there were times when she’d walk in the door and you’d swear she was a different person. Even the way she talked was different. He said she could be mean one hour and then nice the next, then mean again. She could spend days on the edge of both at the same time.

  “I ain’t gonna lie to you,” he said. “She ain’t called or sent a card but I know deep down she loves you. She really does. She’s just fucked-up in the head and likes to party too much. I know it’s hard to hear, but its a good thing she’s gone. I ain’t shit but I like being here with you.”

  When it was light enough to walk I rolled up my sleeping bag and gave Pete the last of the hay from the duffel. I watched him eat and while he did I drank water and the last can of stew.

  When I saw the ranch again in the morning light I could see it was a pretty big operation. Trucks and cars were parked in front of the house and there were two barns to the side of it and a huge hay field behind it. A tractor was heading down a dirt road. There were too many people and it made me nervous so I headed further south, where I could see nothing but more hills and more sagebrush. I figured I’d go around the ranch and then make my way back near the highway.

  The day went slow and was hotter than it had been. A couple times I got so tired that I wanted to sit down in the sun but I knew if I did I’d be ruined. We came to a steep gully and it took us a long time to get down it. I moved Pete as slow as I could because there were so many rocks, but he ran into me and I fell and I let go of the lead rope. I wasn’t hurt or anything and he just moved ahead of me and made it to the bottom. I thought he might run off but he didn’t, he just stopped.

  We came to a small muddy creek. The water moved slow and was brown. It was maybe three feet wide and there were a handful of aspen trees that lined it. Pete ate grass from the small patches that lined the banks. I decided we’d rest there. I tied his lead to the base of the largest tree and laid out my sleeping bag in the shade and sat on it. I ate a can of soup, then drank the brown muddy water from the creek and rested. When I woke it was late afternoon. Pete was just standing there. He had sagebrush stuck to his tail and he was dusty. Every once in a while he’d stomp or move his tail to chase away a fly but other than that it looked like he was sleeping. I got up and went to him. I got the brush off his tail and pet him, then took off my shoes and set my feet in the water.

  “This ain’t so bad,” I said to Pete. “If there was enough food we could probably stay here all summer.” I lay back and looked up at the sky. There were clouds but none of them blocked out the sun.

  “I just have to figure out how to make us money. I’ll make sure you’re alright so don’t worry about that. We’re a family now. And if I can’t find my aunt I’ll get a job at a place where you and me can live until we figure something else out. Last night I started dreaming that I made a ton of money and one day Del came by our place looking for a job. ‘Well, Del,’ I said to him as I sat behind a huge desk. ‘If you weren’t such an asshole I might give you a try. If you weren’t such a mean pervert cocksucker I’d at least lend you a twenty. But let me talk to my partner, maybe he’ll help you out.’ Then you’d come in and Del’s eyes would get huge with worry and he’d start shaking, he’d be scared out of his skin. He’d be sweating bullets and then you’d push him outside and he’d start screaming and then he’d get hit by a huge Greyhound bus!”

  I started laughing at that, but Pete just stood there dozing in the heat. Only his tail moved as it worked against the flies.

  When night neared I got hungry again and ate a can of corn, then I got inside my sleeping bag. I lay awake for hours. It was the first night I was really scared. I could hear coyotes yelping and they seemed right next to us and you could tell it was making Pete uneasy, too. Then it got windy and the leaves on the trees shook. It sounded like someone was walking towards us and I couldn’t sleep. It was only with daylight finally approaching that I conked out.

  I woke hours later from a nightmare. I was in a restaurant and the Samoan was there. My dad had gone to use the restroom and the Samoan came in and sat at a table and stared at me. You could tell he was angry, it was boiling over in him. He began hitting the table, almost breaking it. I thought that at any moment he’d come and attack me but he didn’t, he just waited. I couldn’t leave, it was like I was glued to my seat. Then my dad came back and I tried to warn him but I couldn’t say anything. I tried and tried but no words came out. Then the Samoan jumped up out of his chair and ran as hard as he could and tackled my dad and strangled him to death. He had his big hands around my dad’s throat and my dad’s face turned red and then purple and he looked at me, he looked at me like it was my fault.

  When I opened my eyes I was sweating and the sun was over me. I moved to the shade of the trees and I sat there for a long time and tried to clear my head. Then I rolled the sleeping bag up, filled the jug with water from the creek, ate my last can of corn, and we left. We followed the creek and I hoped we’d find bits of grass he could eat and for a while there was some, then the creek became mud and then it disappeared altogether. We kept walking. It got so hot out that I took off my pants and walked in my underwear and by the late afternoon we’d finished all the water.

  We went up one ridge and then down another. We didn’t stop for a long time. Then I saw a series of ranches and houses and fences. There was a paved road. I put my pants back on and we waited until past dusk, then walked down the ridge and towards the people.

  It was completely dark when we made it to the paved street and we walked on it for a long while. Seven or eight different ranches and houses passed before us but we didn’t see anyone and we kept going. We came to a hay field, I could smell it, and we walked along it until we came to a rusted-out old gate. It was tied with wire but I opened it and Pete and I went through it and out onto the field. I took us as far from the road as I could and stopped and Pete ate.

  I laid the sleeping bag down and the moon was out and gave off enough light that I could watch Pete eat. I extended the lead rope again and tied it to my ankle and lay down. I was tired and thirsty and I fell asleep. Pete moved throughout the night an
d the rope pulled on my ankle, but I was so tired I just moved the sleeping bag closer to him and lay back down.

  I woke the next morning to a Mexican shaking me with his foot. He was standing over me. He was old, in his fifties or more. He was short and wore a baseball hat and had on a stained long-sleeve dress shirt and jeans.

  “Hola,” the man said.

  “Hello,” I said and looked up at him.

  “¿Es tuyo ese caballo?” he said.

  “What?”

  “You horse?” he said and his accent was really thick.

  “No,” I said and stood up. I looked around the field but there was no one else there, just a truck parked alongside the road near the gate.

  He looked at the rope tied from Pete to my ankle.

  “Eso es muy peligroso,” he said and shook his head. “No es una buena idea.”

  I bent down and untied the rope. He took it from the ground, looped it, and held it. He ran his hands along Pete’s back.

  “¿De quién es el caballo?”

  I shrugged my shoulders.

  “Who own him?”

  “No one,” I said. “He’s his own horse.”

  “His own horse?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  The man laughed out loud. He kept petting Pete and said things to him in Mexican.

  “¿Eres un fugitivo?”

  “What?”

  “Runaway?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Where are you from?”

  “Portland.”

  “Portland?”

  “Yes.”

  The man laughed, then shook his head.

  “Far.”

  I nodded.

  “Where going?”

  “Wyoming.”

  “Wyoming?”

  I nodded again.

  “Walking?”

  “I guess,” I said. “I don’t know.”

  “Guillermo,” he said and put out his hand.

  “Charley,” I told him.

  “¿Tienes hambre?”