Read Online Mister Boots by Carol Emshwiller - Free Book Online

you,” I say. “I want to learn how to throw fire.”
    â€œGood boy.”
    â€œBobby!”
    I notice my sister isn’t calling me Roberta. More and more I’m thinking all this must have started way back with Mother. I’m glad. I like having secrets, but I like being a secret even more.
    â€œThink a minute. Think ,” she says, standing up and looking at me. “You can’t. You know perfectly well you can’t.”
    So then I do think, and what I think is: Yes I can. I haven’t had any trouble being a boy so far, and I haven’t even tried. I know our father wouldn’t want me if he knew I was a girl. My sister knows that, too. She could have stopped all this right then with that one single word: Roberta.
    â€œThere are no magicians like there used to be.” Our father is sounding kind of dreamy. “No one anymore at all like me. I’ll teach you, boy. Hundreds of secrets. Thousands.” He’s nodding to himself, and he has this little satisfied smile. He looks as if everything is exactly the way he wants it, but then he says, “The money,” and keeps on nodding and smiling to himself. “The money.”
    I don’t know why he needs our money, what with his fancy horse and fancy boots and clothes. He has to be rich enough already.
    â€œI told you,” my sister says, “we can’t find it. We’ve looked all over. All of us.”
    â€œWe’ll see,” our father says. “I’m not in any hurry.”
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    I can’t wait until I can get off alone and check for false bottoms or odd mirrors. I can’t tell my sister. She shouldn’t know these magic things. Our father told me not to tell anybody about those boxes. He said magicians have to swear not to tell and he said, now that I know, I have to swear it, too, and not even tell my sister. He said, “What’s the use of magic if everybody knows about it?” It’s easy to see that that’s the exact truth.

chapter four
    Right then, we hear the doctor’s a-ooo-ga, a-ooo-ga coming down our little road. We’d have known he was coming anyway because he rattles. We all stand up, and my sister looks at me hard. I look cross-eyed at her again, and I start to giggle. Now we’ll see about those clothes.
    Our father hides his pistol and his magic wand under the chair cushion.
    I got to like the doctor a little bit, little by little. Maybe he got to like us little by little, too. He did a lot of good things. I hope he doesn’t get hurt. I’ll jump in front if our father takes out the pistol.
    The doctor’s not even all the way in the door when he stops, shocked, and says, “So it was you! All this time, you!” And then, “You’re their father. I’ve heard about you.”
    Why would he guess right away that this greasy-haired fat man is our father? Unless I look like him some way I don’t know.
    I’m mixed up because, on the one hand, I’m glad our father is getting blamed for stealing the clothes, but, on the other hand, I don’t want him hauled off to jail just when I was about to go with him and learn to be even more magic than I already am.
    The doctor walks right in, and there they are, belly to belly—both of them as well dressed as anybody I ever saw. Our father and the doctor are about the same size, and they look kind of alike except the doctor has white hair and is mostly bald.
    â€œThis is disgraceful,” the doctor says.
    â€œWhat are you talking about?” our father asks.
    â€œUnconscionable.” The doctor swings around as if he can’t stand the sight of our father. He’s so angry he can’t contain himself. I think maybe he’ll hit our father, but instead he does the opposite; he gets himself all calmed down (you can see him doing it, taking a big breath), then he goes to Mister Boots. “Let me see your ankles.”
    He helps Boots lie