Read Online Ghost Medicine by Andrew Smith - Free Book Online

happen or how things fit into this world. I told my friends about it, too, and the saying made it seem unarguable to me.
    I said it to Tom and Gabe, and they got serious enough to stop laughing and consider it.
    â€œAnd bears mean strength,” I added. “If you dream about ‘em. Or if you see ‘em at the right moment.”
    â€œEverything’s some kind of sign, I guess,” Gabe reasoned.
    Tommy leaned forward and spit a long brown splash of tobacco, sizzling, into the fire. We watched him as he threw a pine cone into it, making it flare like an illusion in a magic show.
    And then he got that joking, black-eyed coyote look in his eyes and kind of winked at Gabriel and said, “Yeah. And pine -cone is dumbass medicine.”
    And we all laughed at that.
    Gabriel played to Tommy’s teasing and fixed his serious eyes on me. “And my sister is …”
    Then they both looked at me, thinking I would finish it.
    â€œI don’t know.”
    We stared into the fire for a long time after that, each, I’m sure, thinking about what I really would have said if I were telling the truth.
    â€œWhat about horses?”
    And I said, “Horses. They’re all different. Some are smart, some are stupid. Some are good, some are bad. Some of ‘em you just can’t ever like. And some of ‘em you like right away and you understand ‘em, and there’s no telling why.”
    Tommy yawned and stretched his long legs out against the rocks in front of us. “I like your Reno. He’s a good one.”
    â€œEveryone likes him.”
    â€œYou never said why Benavidez gave him to you.”
    â€œ ‘Cause I don’t really know.”
    And then Gabe smiled, but you could never tell with that smile of his what he was meaning because he was usually so serious. Or maybe scared. “I do.”
    I could tell he was waiting for me or Tommy to just beg him to talk, but we just stared straight into the fire, my eyes getting heavy and watery from the smoke and light. And we sat like that, silently, for the longest time before Tommy put his head all the way back on that old saddle in the ground, like he was about to go to sleep. Then I gave out and took my hat off and just rested my head straight back in the dirt.
    â€œOkay, I’ll tell you what I think,” Gabe said.
    We were flat on our backs, staring up at the sky, the stars, the rising smoke, feet toward the fire.
    â€œGet ready, Stottsy, he’s thinking now, too. This’ll be really good.”
    â€œHe’s the kind of horse anyone would want. But the kind of person who’d pay for him would be the wrong person for the horse. So my father made a bargain with the horse. The horse chose you and in exchange, he made him promise that one day he’ll take you far away from Benavidez land.”
    And I guess I took Gabe’s bait. “All right. Why?”
    â€œTom, I think you were right about the pine cone medicine.”
    â€œTrue, Gabey. True.”

    I thought I could feel myself getting smaller. It was an easy enough thing to feel, lying there on my back in the dirt, looking up at the endlessness of the night and listening to my friends pick away at me because they knew more about me than I thought I would ever show them.

FIVE
    When I got to the Foreman’s house in the morning, Carl Buller was standing with his right foot up on the trailer hitch, resting an elbow on his knee and smoking a cigarette. Tommy was coming out the screen door, pulling a T-shirt over his head as he switched his hat from hand to hand.
    I had been working at the ranch for about a week, and nobody bothered me with questions about where I had gone when I ran off, or what I had done, so I was willing to let it go that way. I knew what it was that caused their distance, too, because I saw how their faces slightly changed when they were around their own parents. And what does a kid say to his friend whose mom just