by Betsy Byars
“We were coming down to the stream, me and Bones and Alado, just like we planned.”
He stopped and I said, “Go on, Charles. The three of you were coming to the stream.”
“Yes, and just then I looked up and saw a javelina ahead with her babies.”
“Go on.” A javelina is a wild pig. They can be mean, but there’s not much danger as long as you let them alone. “You didn’t bother them, did you?”
“No, as soon as I saw them, I started backing up. I was going around to the other side.”
“So what happened?”
“Well, when I stepped back, I stepped right on Bones. He was behind me, see, and as soon as I did this, he let out a terrible howl and leaped forward and landed directly in front of the javelina.” He paused and shook his head. “After that I just don’t know what did happen. It was like a tornado. Pigs were charging—it seemed like there were a hundred of them—and Bones was howling and running—and I was trying to grab Bones and we all rolled right into the path of Alado.”
“And Alado flew,” I said with a sinking feeling.
“It was terrible at first, Uncle Coot. I was never so scared in my life. And then all of a sudden he was flying. It wasn’t like at the snake den. He was really flying.”
“Well, that’s great.” I knew there was something that he hadn’t told me yet. “If Alado can get control of himself, he’ll be safe,” I said, sort of marking time. “We won’t have to worry about him.”
“I thought he was never going to stop, Uncle Coot. He flew and flew and flew.”
Suddenly a terrible thought came to me. I said slowly and carefully, “Where is Alado now, Charles?”
At that question Charles’s face sort of crumpled.
“Where is he now?” I asked, hitting at every word.
Charles swallowed.
“Where is Alado?”
Without a word Charles lifted one hand. He pointed to the top of the mesa. With a sort of sick feeling in my stomach I looked up and saw standing on top of the mesa, about fifty miles above us—anyway that was how it looked—the colt Alado.
Those Who Can—Fly
CHARLES RAISED HIS HEAD, and we both looked up at the colt for a moment. The height gave him a frailness, and Charles looked away quickly. He said in a rush, “But he flew real good, Uncle Coot. I wish you could have been here. He really flew!”
“I can see that.”
“I mean he can really fly, Uncle Coot. He—”
“I can see that, Charles. There’s no other way he could get up on top of that mesa.”
There was a moment of silence, and then Charles said, “How are you going to get him down?”
All at once I felt tired. I suddenly thought of the early days of movie gags. The stunt men never used to look real in their falls. They would gallop up at top speed, bring their horses to a halt, and then fall out of the saddle. I felt like that was what was going to happen to me now. I had come galloping up as fast as I could, and now suddenly I felt so tired I could have just dropped out of the saddle.
It was Charles’s last statement that did it, I think, that “How are you going to get him down?”
I sighed. I realized that maybe it wasn’t that I felt tired. It was that I felt just like what I was—a man with a lot more than his share of scars and a lot less than his share of brains. I was aware of my bum hip and my scarred cheek, my gored leg, my twice-broken wrist. The years of knocking around rose up and hit me all over again while I was sitting there.
Charles said again, “How are you going to get him down?”
“Well,” I said finally, “I reckon he’ll have to get down the same way he got up.” To tell the truth I didn’t know what to do about the colt. The sight of him up on the mesa had made me feel like I’d had too much sun.
“You mean fly down?” he asked.
“Yeah, I guess he’ll have to fly down.”
“But, Uncle Coot, he only flies when he’s startled or frightened. He would never just fly on his own. He can’t reason that out. You told me yourself that horses can’t reason.”
“Well, some horses can probably reason,” I said. “I’m no expert.”
“You told me that horses do foolish things sometimes because they can’t reason. I remember you saying this at the table one night, like horses will run straight into a fire instead of away from it.”
“But flying is an instinct with this horse.”
“I know he won’t fly down.”
“Well, we can wait and see, can’t we? We don’t have to start risking our lives this second.” I wanted some time, but I could see I wasn’t going to get it.
“You can wait if you want to.” Charles started scrambling up the side of the mesa. His position hadn’t been good to start with, and what with all the sliding and slipping he ended up even lower than he had started. He looked at me and said, “Don’t try to stop me.” And he started up again.
I stayed where I was. When Charles had slipped a second time I said, “Now, look, Charles, don’t get in such a hurry. Why don’t we—”
“I’m not going to wait around for him to fall off and kill himself. I don’t care what you do.” He was still making climbing motions, but he had worn through the legs of his pants and skinned both his knees, and that was slowing him down some. He said again, “There’s no need your trying to stop me.” This time he said it like he was trying to give me an idea.
The last thing in the world I wanted to do was get off my horse and climb that mesa, particularly when I didn’t know what to do when I got up there. I sat a minute more, leaning forward on my saddle. I shifted, and then before I could say anything Charles blurted out, “You don’t care about Alado at all, do you?”
It caught me by surprise, the way he said it and the way he was looking at me. “What?”
“You don’t care about Alado.” He paused. “You don’t care about anything.”
“Wait a minute now,” I said. “I care about the horse.”
“You didn’t want to get him that night in the storm.”
“The night I almost killed myself going after him? That night? I’m not Superman, you know, I’m just—”
“You didn’t want to go that night and you didn’t want to look for him after the storm, and then that day at the rattlesnake den, you—”
“Now, just hold on a minute,” I hollered. He shut up because my voice had gotten loud as thunder. I wanted to say something then—he was listening—but for some reason I froze. All my life I’ve been troubled by not being able to say what I wanted.
He waited, and the moment for me to speak came and went. He said, “You don’t care about anything,” in a low voice. Then he added, “Or anybody.”
Suddenly I remembered when I was six years old and I came galloping across the front yard on old Bumble Bee, standing up, arms out, yelling like an Indian. “Pa, look at me!” Later, when I hit the ground and lay there half dead, my pa came over and started pulling my belt to get the air back in me. He said, “You want to get yourself killed? Is that what you’re trying to do?” It was the first summer I had seen my pa since I was a baby, and I wanted him to notice me so bad I would have tried about anything. Every time I got near him I’d put his hand on my head or his arm over my shoulder or I’d try to climb on his back or swing on his arm. I broke my wrist two times that summer trying to make him show he cared about me.
I said, “I’ll go up and get the colt.”
Charles wiped his nose and climbed down a few steps. I turned my horse to the right. For some reason I felt like my insides had been churned up with an egg beater.
Charles slid the rest of the way to the ground. He said, “How will you get him down?”
“I don’t know.” I rode Clay all the way around the mesa until I found a place where I might, with a lot of luck, be able to climb up without killing myself.
Charles came running over, out of breath. “Is this where you’re going up?” he asked, squinting at the mesa.
“This is whe
re I’m going to try to go up, yes.”
“You can make it. I know you can.”
I never felt less like a superman in my life. I said, “The cameras are not rolling now, Charles.” I got off the horse and slung the reins over a bush.
Charles paused, and then he came over and rested one hand on Clay’s neck. He hesitated. He said, “Maybe we could wait a little while, Uncle Coot. What do you think? Maybe he will fly down.”
I started up the side of the mesa without saying anything. I’m not much of a climber. My bum hip bothers me when I have to put a lot of weight on it, and I slipped twice before I went ten feet.
“Uncle Coot, if you want to wait for a little while it’s all right with me.”
I kept going. I managed to get about halfway just by going real slow, one step at a time, the way a little kid goes up stairs. I stopped to rest against an outcropping of rock. “Are you doing all right?” Charles called from the ground.
“Wonderful.”
“You look like you’re almost a fourth of the way to the top.”
I had thought I was bound to be a good bit farther than that, but I didn’t say anything.
“The rest of the way looks like it’s going to be a little harder though,” he called. “It’s steeper and there don’t seem to be as many bushes to hold on to.”
So far the total number of bushes I had found was one prickly-pear cactus which I would not advise holding unless it was a life-and-death situation. I rested a moment longer, and I started thinking how much easier things are in the movies. Like sometimes in a movie when somebody is supposed to be climbing up a cliff, they will just let him crawl on his stomach on the ground, and they will film this at a steep angle to make it look like he’s climbing. Or when they’re filming a sand storm, they throw stuff like talcum powder up in front of big fans and let that blow on the actors.
“Why are you stopping, Uncle Coot?” Charles called up. “Is there any special reason?”
The hurting in my hip had begun to ease. I looked down at him. “No, nothing special.” I started climbing again.
I can’t tell you exactly how long that climb took me, but it seemed like the longest afternoon of my life. And all the while Charles was calling things about my progress. He couldn’t seem to shut up. Once I guess he looked away, because he called, “What happened? Did you slip?”
“Slip?”
“Yes, I thought you were farther up than that.”
“No,” I said, “I’m not any farther than this.”
“Well, it just seems like you’re lower now than you were, Uncle Coot.”
“Lower in spirits,” I said.
“What?”
“Nothing!”
“What? I couldn’t hear what you said.”
“Nothing!”
He must have known from the way that “nothing” rumbled down the side of the mesa that it would be a good idea for him to shut up. He didn’t call to me any more, just gasped once when I did slip a little. I looked down at him right before I pulled myself up on top of the mesa, and he was standing there with his hands raised against his chest like a small church steeple.
The top of a mesa isn’t anything beautiful—just some dry grass and rocks and a few straggly plants, but it looked good to me. I lay there on my stomach for a moment and then I stood up. My hip was hurting so bad I thought I wouldn’t be able to walk. I shook my leg a little, which sometimes eases it, and tried to put weight on it.
Across the top of the mesa Alado was standing watching me. “Here, boy,” I said.
He came over slowly, tossing his head. He had the reluctance any animal has in a strange situation, and he shied away a few times before he came. I patted him and scratched his nose. “When you fly, boy,” I said, “you really fly, don’t you?”
“Hey, Uncle Coot?” Charles called from below.
“What?”
“Is he all right?”
“Yes.”
“He’s not hurt or anything?”
“He’s not.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Well, how are you going to get him down? Have you got any ideas yet?”
“No.”
“As soon as you get an idea will you let me know?”
“Yes.”
I looked at the colt and I scratched his nose again. “Alado,” I said, “we are stuck.” Then I shook my leg and rubbed his neck and tried to think of some way to do this impossible thing before dark.
Those Who Can’t—Walk
THE SUN GETS THE color of desert poppies at sunset out here, but this evening it was something I dreaded seeing. I had been stuck up on the mesa with the colt for three hours, and I was no closer to getting him down than I had been at first. I was also bone tired and hungry and I did not have an idea in my whole head.
When I first got up I had tried to startle Alado a few times by waving my arms at him and tossing my hat under his feet. All I got for my trouble was a crumpled hat. The thing was that Alado wouldn’t get near the edge of the mesa. As long as Charles and I had both been on the ground he had looked over constantly, coming right to the edge. Now that I was up here with him, he stayed in the exact center.
I didn’t blame him really. If he went over the side, he wouldn’t have to fall far before he struck the rocks, and it turned me cold to think about that. Still, if he got a good running start, I kept thinking—Then I would give him the old hat under the feet a few more times. Nothing doing.
After a while I sat down and picked up little pebbles and tossed them at a weed. Sometimes when I’m doing something like that my mind works better, but this time it didn’t help.
“Uncle Coot?” Charles called from below.
“Yes.”
“Are you still there?”
I sighed and bombarded the bush with every pebble in my hand. “Yes, I am still here.”
“Well, what are you doing?”
“Thinking.”
He paused and then yelled, “What are you thinking about?”
What I was thinking about was those chutes they used to build in the early days of movies, tilted over the edge of a cliff and greased. The chutes were hidden so they wouldn’t show on the film, and once a horse got started down the chute he couldn’t stop. He would have to go off the cliff. They got a lot of good pictures that way, but a lot of ruined horses. In my mind I had sent Alado down that greased chute half a dozen times. “I’m not thinking of anything, Charles,” I yelled back.
“Well, if you do think of something—”
“Yeah, I’ll let you know.”
It stays light a long time out here—sunset is usually about nine-thirty—but once the sun drops it gets dark fast. By this time the sun was disappearing below the horizon. I got up, went to the edge of the cliff, and called: “Charles!”
His head almost snapped off his neck he looked up so fast. “What is it, Uncle Coot?”
“I want you to take Clay and go on back to the house, hear?”
“I don’t want to.”
“Well, do it anyway. There’s no need both of us spending the night out here.”
“I don’t want to leave Alado,” he said. “If you could only go ahead and get him down, then we could all go home together.”
“Yes, that’s true.”
He looked down at his feet and then back up at me. He said, “I don’t want to leave you either.”
Sometimes a man’s life shifts in a moment. It’s happened to me more times than most men because I’ve had a hard fast life. I felt it happening again.
“Did you hear me, Uncle Coot? I don’t want to leave you out here either.”
I nodded. We kept standing there and I knew somehow that Charles, looking up at me on top of the mesa, seeing me from that distance, suddenly noticed how little separated us. I wasn’t so much of a superman at that moment, and when I looked down at him, I could have been looking back over the years at myself. The truth slithered up to us like a sidewinder. Separa
ted by the height of a mesa, we were the closest we had ever been.
“All right,” I said, “go home, then, and get yourself a blanket.”
“Thanks, Uncle Coot.” He untied Clay quickly and rode off toward home. I watched till he was out of sight. Then I lay down, put my hat under my head, and tried to get some rest.
“I’m back, Uncle Coot,” he called after a while.
I got up, walked to the edge of the mesa, and watched him spread out his blanket in the moonlight.
“I’ll be right here if you need me.”
“Fine, Charles.”
I went back and lay down. There’s no getting comfortable on top of a mesa—I had already found that out—but I got settled for a long night the best I could.
Alado was standing near my feet. He was so still I thought he must be asleep. About midnight—although I didn’t think it would ever happen—my eyes closed too.
I woke up and it was two o’clock in the morning and I couldn’t see the colt. I got up slowly. My hip had stiffened while I was asleep, and I limped forward a few steps.
I whistled and called: “Alado!” The sky was as bright with stars as I’d ever seen it and the moon was big. I looked around and I still couldn’t see the colt. “Alado!”
For a moment there was silence and then I heard a whinny to my right. I hobbled over and saw what had happened.
On this side of the mesa there was a gentle slope. At the bottom of the slope was a steep cliff, straight down to the rocks, but the colt didn’t know this. The moonlight made everything look different, and I could see why he had been fooled. The colt had seen the slope, started down, and now he couldn’t get back up.
“Here, Alado, come.”
I reached down to take his halter and lead him back. Sometimes all a horse needs is a familiar hand to help him do something he couldn’t do on his own. As I reached down, though, my hip gave way. It just buckled.
I yelled, more with surprise than pain, and then I slipped down the slope. I hollered and scratched and grabbed at whatever I could find. I went wild for a moment. I knew that if I didn’t stop I would slip right off the cliff, take the colt with me, and both of us would end up on the rocks below.