by J P S Brown
Mikey's horse Pancho could keep him out of the trees. Every evening the horse came out of a mesquite thicket in his pasture to be fed. Before his feed was put out, Mikey climbed up and sat on the top of a railroad tie that served as a corner post of the pasture fence to talk to him and pet him.
Pancho's inky, blue-black color came from feral Berber blood that the Spaniards brought to Mexico. His eyes were blue-black from a distance because they reflected his coat, but up close inside the clear globe, they were brown as wet dirt. When he came to the fence, Mikey talked to him and looked into his eye from a range of two inches. The clear, outer globe of his eye enclosed another complete and alive brown world composed of rained-on muddy mesas and fertile valleys.
Mikey thought the world in Pancho's eye was a model of the best spot on earth. A place on earth waited for Mikey that was the same as that world in Pancho's eye. It was a place of his own clay, a spot that God held only for him. Someday he would find it and live there.
As Mikey grew, he was given to understand that it would be his lot and privilege to use his life in the care of cows. That was the work for which he must prepare. Only until he had spent himself as a cowman could he be lowered into a grave of the sod that he saw in Pancho's eye.
Mikey's time with Pancho was his most peaceful time. He watched for everything and everyone he loved to become reflected in Pancho's eye. He liked to watch his father's, mother's, and dog's reflections appear in the eye when they came near. That was where they belonged, where they were most pure as themselves, side by side with him in Pancho's eye. He could see the cows in the hospital pen, too. The dirt and trees were the background and staples of the world he saw every day in Pancho's eye. The fathers, mothers, horses, dogs, and cows of his world were the most loved, but they were transient. The dirt and trees were constant and would never change. He hoped nothing and nobody of his and Pancho's private world would ever change and that thought gave sadness its chance to lurk into his happy heart.
Once, Mikey ventured to touch the clear globe of Pancho's eye. He only wanted to find out more about it because of all the purity and warmth that emanated from inside it. He thought Pancho liked to be petted everywhere. He wanted to caress the beautifully clear and fragile globe that covered the precious clay in the eye because it was so perfect and it reflected everything he loved and made the details of his dreamworld so clear. But he wanted to touch Pancho's eye mainly because it was the window of this brother creature that gazed back at him with such calm friendliness.
That was when he learned that he'd better not touch Pancho's eye if he wanted him to keep coming to the fence to visit. He found out he could not could get so proprietary as the owner of Pancho the horse that he thought he could touch him anywhere he wanted to, because Pancho the friend might go away and not come back. Mikey was lucky Pancho was so noble that he did not stop liking him because Mikey had touched his eye. He flinched so quickly away that Mikey was afraid he had hurt him, but he came right back and settled his head as close as ever, so close that Mikey could feel his breath on his belly again and could watch his own breath fan Pancho's great whiskers and lashes.
Thus, Mikey became sufficiently awed by his horse early so that he had a chance to someday become a horseman. He hoped that Pancho loved him but he suspected that he was unworthy of the love of a being so pure. Pancho was good to him, but he might be too much of an aristocrat to reciprocate Mikey's deep affection. Pancho might only love other matchless horses, which was only right.
Mikey imagined that he found in Pancho's gaze everything that was good about fathers, mothers, horses, dirt, dogs, cows, trees, grass, bosom pals, and what he believed would be good about sweethearts, though a sweetheart never visited him in Pancho's eye. The movie star Jeannette MacDonald was the one he dreamed would visit him some day.
In those first days when Mikey came to realize that he had been planted alone in a small and helpless quantity of flesh upon the face of the earth, he found that dirt could be his for the time that it was under his feet. Dirt was free to be trod upon, manipulated, covered, used, sifted, dug, or tasted, especially the dirt around his Granny's house. However, when he was near other people's dirt, especially the dirt under the feet of crowds at events like rodeos and Mass at Sacred Heart Cathedral, he learned that he'd better mistrust the footing. When he was barefoot or in his boots, he could almost always get where he wanted to be. He wore his boots when he rode Pancho. In his bare feet, he was light, free, and difficult to hold. Barefoot, he could almost fly. He only wore his shoes when he went to town to be among the crowds and when he did, he knew if he did not look out he would be stepped on. Baxter, Mikey's white dog whose tail curved over his back like a scorpion, marched along close to his side as long as he remained on his own turf. If Mikey left the yard, Baxter pulled up, panted with his head up, and let him go on alone. The reasons Mikey stayed home were so he could be with Baxter, climb his trees, visit with Pancho, take on adventure that visited him in his own yard, or sometimes Maggie would make him stay.
Mikey and Baxter knew, loved, and understood each other completely. When he was with Baxter. . .even when he was away from him and could only think of him, remember him. . .even after he grew up and Baxter was long gone, the dog lay warm and light and loving on his heart. Eran únicos was the Mexican saying that fit them. Baxter's spirit was one with Mikey's. That is why the boy hated so much knowing for certain a car would kill him someday. He saw so many dogs and cats, horses and cows and wild little animals killed by cars on the pavement of the Tucson road in front of his house that he knew it would happen to Baxter. He worried about it all the time. Dread of it would settle in his heart and cause him to stop and talk to Baxter about it. He believed that Baxter did not go out on the highway or leave his yard like other dogs because he knew it worried Mikey.
Mikey loved his home sod with his whole soul, heart, and mind because it was his headquarters for world adventure and his sure haven of rest and love, but he learned early that home cannot hold the natural man. Home was his rallying point, but most of all his sallying point. He could never feel good about staying in his rallying point if he did not sally forth and contest the world at every opportunity.
Maggie's strictest standing order was that Mikey stay at home, especially when she was not there. Consequently, she had to spank him every single day for "running off'". When she was not home, Mikey's urge to venture away was unsupportable and he never once resisted it. When she was home he usually did not like to stay long in her company nor did she want him to, but he found out later that if he went far enough away, to another county, or another state, he missed her more than anything or anybody.
Mikey walked away from home when Maggie was there, called away by attractions he could not resist. These attractions were so natural to him and irresistible that he did not realize he was being disobedient. He was not sneaky; he was drawn and held away by the absolute urgency of his commitment to adventure. Mikey liked Paul's, Granny's, Pancho's, Billy Shane's, Baxter's, and Nina's company the most and it was an adventure for him to be with them. His godmother Nina was Billy Shane's mother, and she lived two doors down the highway
Mikey's trees were the stages, the sets in the theater upon which he played to become a man, his substitute for tallness until he grew up, the vantage from which he solved each deep, sore problem that came up, his haven from danger and from grownups who tried to make him into somebody he did not want to be. In the trees he learned the advantage of having great style; that courage was better than cowardice; that real bravery could not be realized unless real fear was surmounted; that recklessness was admired and envied by all his people; and that height and space gave a special grace to a boy's play.
The highest, thinnest, leafiest branches that could sustain only the weight of his small carcass were Mikey's ideal perches. When he was in the trees nobody could intrude on him because he could hide unseen and untouched. In the trees, his life was as it ought to be because even the grown-ups admired that
he could do something they could not do. Even when he returned to Earth to be with everybody else, he could do it in a style that was inimitable, a style heedless of the ordinary laws of gravity, balance and counterbalance, and of self-preservation, a style his elders would remember even when they used their power to control him on the ground.
Natalia Shane, whom he called Nina, the Mexican nickname for godmother, had been in the house when Mikey was born. Billy Shane, Nina's boy, was Mikey's first best friend. Billy was three and already full of adventure when Mikey was born and he could not wait for Mikey to grow up and run with him. He was the first to lead Mikey up into the high branches of a tree. He was wild and tough, but was a gentle boy who put all his heart into his endeavors and that suited Mikey. He never was one to play with toys or eat candy. By the time Mikey could run with him, Billy owned no toys. He could not sit still for long in any but a Tarzan movie, so he seldom went with Mikey to the picture show. Mikey never saw him completely enjoy anything but his own adventures. Mikey kept a teddy bear to sleep with until he was four, and Granny gave him lead soldiers and toy guns, but he never trotted them out when Billy was around.
Billy and Mikey did not have to work. They only ran and played with all their might from morning until night. By the time Mikey was three and Billy was six, Mikey began to try to fly to keep up with his friend. They had the big trees in front of their houses in which to climb and swing. They had the arroyo that ran by their houses for sand, and soft, high banks from which to let themselves fall. They had the steep, rocky hills behind their houses to climb and use for headlong downhill flight. They smoked elderberry roots in the arroyo and hugely enjoyed them. A thick, round elderberry stogie gave forth thick, white smoke, drew evenly, and did not make them drunk or sick.
The Horrells lived between Billy's house and Mikey's. Mr. Horrell was a customs officer who worked with Billy's father. Mikey called Billy's father "Uncle Bill." Mr. Horrell, Uncle Bill, and other customs service officers practice-fired their pistols and rifles in a vacant lot between their houses. Billy and Mikey would dig the slugs out of the hillside and lay them on the tracks for the train to flatten and polish when it whistled by.
Uncle Bill Shane kept a two-acre truck garden on his property and he grew and sold vegetables. He drew water from his own well with a gasoline engine that pumped it into a steel storage tank he had erected on the side of the steep hill behind his house. The tank was in a precarious spot and was secured by four guy wires that stretched from the brow of the tank to steel stakes in the ground. Uncle Bill was a Texan like Paul, but he was settled and he loved to be with his family and work hard in his garden. As soon as he got home from his shift at the garita on the line, if any daylight remained, he changed into work rags, donned a floppy straw hat to protect his fair skin from the sun, and went out to sweat in his garden. He smoked crimp-cut Prince Albert tobacco that he rolled in white papers. Mikey knew he would smoke Prince Albert cigarettes rolled in white papers when he grew up to work as a cowboy and he would revere Uncle Bill every time he lighted one. The thought that he might rise to Uncle Bill's stature and do anything Uncle Bill could do made him happy, for he believed the man was another of his fathers. Paul smoked Bull Durham in brown papers. Mikey liked brown papers better than white, but he knew that he would prefer Prince Albert and so would settle for white papers because Uncle Bill would never smoke the wrong kind.
Billy and Mikey did not get into much trouble for being mean, unless scaring their mothers could be called mean. They were spanked on their butts for scaring their mothers with their adventures, just as they would have been punished for playing with matches, breaking a window, or swiping something from a store. So they knew that scaring their mothers was a crime, though not one that made them feel guilty, nor one they could stop committing. Their mothers punished them for the scares even before Billy got a bicycle and Mikey started climbing trees and riding Pancho, but the boys' butts were so tough from spanking that their mothers had to stop being scared or perish from worry.
One day Maggie produced a pair of bib overalls and told Mikey he could wear them over his shorts and did not have to wear anything else: no socks, no shirt, no shoes. He and Billy went down the road to visit Skippy Swikert and the Anderson kids who lived by the Indian Springs store. They never bought anything at the store and Billy did not like Skippy or Charley Anderson or his sister Maureen. Mikey got along with them, especially Skippy, but though Mrs. Anderson was kind to Mikey he suspected that she did not like him and he was dead certain she did not like Billy.
Indian Springs was down in a deep well behind the store. Mrs. Anderson warned Billy and Mikey to stay away from it because it was dangerous. Calling it that in an awesome tone ensured that Mikey would have to get as close to it as possible to see if anything would come apart.
A few boards had been laid across the open mouth of the well and covered with a few rusty sheets of tin weighted down by rocks. Billy and Mikey moved the tin to see into the dark well and it indeed appeared to be a dangerous place, though pleasantly cool and shady. Mikey figured the water would probably be cold and sweet if he fell in and had to drink a lot of it. Billy assured him that if he fell in, if the scare did not kill him, the fall would stun him so he would probably not float and the water was so deep he would drown.
Billy already knew how to swim, but Mikey did not have any idea how a person would save himself if he fell into that well and survived the fall. So, he had to get closer and closer to the fall while Skippy and the Andersons warned him to stay away. To show them how safe it was, he walked on the tin. When they shouted at him to stay over the boards he had to show them that the tin alone would support his weight. It might buckle for some ordinary kid, but not for Mikey. Was he not the one who could climb higher than any other kid into the smallest branches of the trees without falling? Then, just as he thought he had proven his immunity to the law of gravity, down through the tin he plunged, deep into the dark space, smack onto the hard, cold water. The shock of immersion stunned him, but he did not stiffen. He relaxed and thought he would never come up for another breath of air, even if he could have known which way was up. When he did come up, Billy had skinned down the well ladder into the water at the speed of falling and was yelling at him to grab his suspenders. Mikey grabbed them and Billy hauled him out. They climbed the ladder and hit for home as Skippy's and the Andersons' mothers scolded them to get home and scolded their own to get in the house.
Mikey's new overalls were so drenched that they poured, gushed, squished, and squirted water in all directions all the way home. Mikey's Nina was watering her flowers in the backyard when the boys arrived. ln an instant she appraised their condition, read their anxious looks as boys who thought they had lost their last friends, and ruled that they would not find any in her yard, either. She jerked Billy around by one arm, began stripping him of his clothes, and ordered her godson banished to his home and out of her sight.
Mikey looked back once just as Nina bared Billy's butt. Billy, in despair because he was sure that he was about to die, cried out with a final statement: "All right, kill me, but I'll never save Michael Paul's life again."
With the spitspitspit, spat, spat of Nina's hand on Billy's butt, Mikey ducked his head and hurried on spraddle-legged in his wet overalls toward home. Maggie already knew that he must be coming under a cloud of disgrace because the whole neighborhood could hear the slap of Nina's hand on Billy's butt and his awful howls. Maggie was hungry for reprisal against her son even before she knew what he had done. As soon as he was in range she gathered him up, jerked down the overalls, and spitspitspit, spat, spat, spat, splat...splat...splat went her open palm upon his butt. And then, the hunger satisfied, Mikey was lifted by one arm, stood on his kicking feet, and released, and except for the telling, retelling, and the laughter over the story of the Indian Springs plunge, the adventure was at an end.
That evening Mikey's cowboy father came home from Mexico and Maggie told him about Mikey's tailspin into the w
ell and how he had baptized his new bib overalls. Paul thought about it and puffed on his cigarette a moment, then said, "Well, what did you expect? Put a cowboy in a pair of bib overalls and he'll fall in a well and nearly drown every time."
The two mothers never measured the boys for their spankings or wound up and landed haymakers on them with murder on the mind or with premeditation. They found the range and spitspitspit. If they could have stopped after the first three whacks their sons would hardly have felt spanked, but they always warmed up to it and continued for another six or seven whacks in the plush before they quit. Five minutes after the last whack, the boys stopped hurting. Their butts were so tough the spanking hurt their mothers' hands more than they did the boys.
Once, Maggie, realizing this, took a new hairbrush to Mikey but shattered the handle before she even got started. With that, she broke down and cried. She had sacrificed a week's lunches at her job in the county assessor's office to buy that new brush and she did not have the money to buy another in that Depression. Mikey felt so bad about it, he begged her not to cry, then told her that a peach switch hurt a whole lot more anyway.
Mikey could never stand to see his women cry. Later, when he began having sweetheart trouble, he always knew it was over if he felt a secret glee when they cried. He thought Maggie was bawling because she had not been able to finish the job on his butt after she got in the pay dirt. He told her she could get in the plush real quick with a peach switch. That was how they knew they loved each other: they were always able to give away their secrets of self-preservation as consolation to each other if they found they had pushed too far.
Mikey and Billy did a lot of tearful bellering around that neighborhood, but mostly because they were sorry they had angered their mothers, not so much because the spankings hurt. Most of the time Maggie and Natalia would grab them just as though they were going to kill them, and then only succeed in raising a lot of dust out of the seat of their pants. The boys were always down in the dirt. The mothers had to strip them if they were to make an impression.