Mister Boots by Carol Emshwiller Page A

me.
    â€œI’ll let go when you say you’ll come down quietly like a good boy for once in your life and go dig up the money.”
    I say, “Why not?”
    â€œPromise.”
    I don’t want to promise anything I won’t keep. I just say, “Of course.” That’s not really a promise. I didn’t say, of course what .
    Rusty has run off to a nice grassy spot, but our father’s horse is still there, obediently ground-tied.
    I ride behind our father. It’s good I’m small. The poor horse has enough to do with our father on him.
    We pace. Nice and smooth and fast. I thought so. I knew this horse was a harness racer from the bit our father used. You’re not supposed to ride those.
    I ask what the horse’s name is, but our father just grunts a whole batch of angry grunts. I wonder what he’ll think when I dig up the doctor’s fancy clothes instead of money.
    When we get back, our father keeps a good hold on me and starts me digging.
    I see my sister staring out the kitchen window at us. She was washing the dishes and saw us right away. Our father sees her, too, so I feel a little bit safer.
    The doctor’s clothes aren’t hard to dig up. I just heeled them in until I’d have time to take them to a better spot. I think to run the minute a little bit of them shows, but our father has his eye on me. I just go on digging until the clothes are completely out. I pick them up and shake the dirt off so he can see they’re not bags of money.
    He gets this funny look. Then he slaps my cheek. Says, “What’s going on? Why are these buried? Where’s the body?” Things like that. But the way he’s bouncing me around, I couldn’t answer if I wanted to.
    Then my sister is there, and Mister Boots is hobbling out behind her.
    And there our father goes with my arm up behind me again. “Keep back,” he says, “or else.”
    My sister and Mister Boots grab each other to hold each other back. My sister says, “Easy. Nice and easy,” as if trying to slow down a horse that’s going a little bit too fast, but Mister Boots is standing as still as could be, though he’s trembling. My sister is, too. I can see the bottom of her skirt shake.
    â€œPick up those clothes,” our father tells me, “and we’re all going inside. Quietly and calmly. You two first.”
    They go and stand in the doorway, but we go to his horse, where some stuff is still tied on his saddle. (I’m thinking about what Boots said about being tied up for hours, and how this horse still has a tight cinch, too.) Our father keeps hanging on to me, so he has to do everything one-handed. He reaches in his saddlebag and takes out a pistol.
    Would he shoot his very own child? And especially would he shoot me if he thinks I’m a boy?
    He sticks the pistol in his belt and then takes out a black stick thing with silvery edges. It looks like a quirt, only it isn’t. He points it at me as if it’s the pistol. I know what it is. I remember from a long time ago. A magic wand. He points it at me and grins a big grin like, Now I’ve got you. “Blam,” he says. “Blam, blam, blam.” Then he laughs and it’s like I not only inherited his black Japanese hair, but that high-pitched, stupid laugh. I will never laugh again, not like that anyway, even if I have to go out in the desert to practice up a new one.
    â€œMother didn’t believe in magic wands,” I say.
    â€œShe didn’t believe in me either, but I’m here, big as life.” (Bigger, I’m thinking, bigger and fatter than life.) “And I kept you all in lots more than beans.” He waves the wand right close to my face, and flowers pop out of it. So fast they hit me in the eye, and so many and such big ones you’d think . . . you’d know they couldn’t come out of that narrow tube. Except they don’t smell good. They make me