Read Online Mister Boots by Carol Emshwiller - Free Book Online Page B

holes in the bottoms of all of Mother’s drawers. Even her yarn baskets. I ruin them all. Our father will say how it’s just exactly like me—if he ever finds out.
    Pretty soon I hear somebody coming back. I’m still in Mother’s room. I roll under the bed and listen. It’s Mister Boots and my sister. If they’re the ones who find me, it won’t be so bad. Especially Boots. I can always talk to him. It’s the horse in him that makes him listen.
    I might have to stay here all night. I can do that. I can think about throwing fire and going to Los Angeles. I want to so much I start breathing hard, which I should stop or they’ll hear me, especially Boots. (He might know about me being here anyway, and not say.) To make myself calm down, I study my hands. I like how stringy and square and brown they are. I think how Mister Boots talked about hands. “The joy of them,” he said.
    Then I rest my cheek on my hands and listen to my sister and Mister Boots. They’re not talking about me or where I might have gone off to. Boots is just talking the way he always does. “The glance of a horse is two separate worlds.”
    My sister whispers, so all I can hear is, “Something, something, Moonlight.” She’s loving everything he says, no matter what it is.
    I roll over. Right on the pistol. I forgot I had it. I take it out and put it on my stomach. I think about how you have to cock it first. I don’t want to forget that. I don’t want to shoot anybody—unless I have to. Not anybody here. I need all these people. I even need our father.
    Now Boots and my sister come into Mother’s room. (All I see is feet.) Boots is saying, “. . . center of gravity. What keeps human beings upright.”
    My sister says, “That night you were the most mystical magical wonderful thing I ever saw. You were as if made of moonbeams.”
    â€œWould you tell me if I should say things in a different way? In order to be a man, I mean. I could change.”
    â€œNever. Ever.”
    â€œI’m not really like a man.”
    â€œThat’s why I love you.”
    They’re kissing now—or nuzzling—slurping at each other, anyway.
    He says, “To think I once thought the round pen was the center of the world, while all the time it was here with you.”
    Slurp, slurp, slurp—kiss, kiss.
    I guess it’s kiss, but I’ll bet neither one of them knows much about kissing. I may not know from experience, but I know more about all that than my sister. She never found out anything unless from some book or other, and there’s no book I ever heard of about “How to Kiss,” or I’d have read it myself and long before she ever did.
    Then they sit on the bed!
    For heaven’s sake!
    The springs dip down so far they actually touch my face and my stomach. I squinch over to a better spot. Don’t they remember Mother died right next to this very bed and not so long ago?
    â€œDo you . . . love?” she says. She’s too shy to put the “me” on the end of it.
    â€œAs if my meadow,” Mister Boots says. “As if my shady tree. You and I, we’d stand, tail to head and head to tail, and swish away each other’s flies. We’d drink from the same bucket. If you were gone, I would wait at the gate forever.”
    Can’t he just say “I love you” like everybody else would?
    My sister says, “Hold me.” I never thought she’d be so bold. First she’s supposed to ask him, what are his intentions?
    What are his intentions, anyway? Why doesn’t my sister ask? I’ll bet she doesn’t care. With Mother gone, I’m the only one around to see that things are done properly. I won’t be able to if I go off with our father.
    I’m looking up at the bedsprings—right next to my nose. The mattress is light blue. Faded. The springs are rusty. They squeak with the two of