Boy on a Black Horse (8 page)

This feeling also scared him. It sent him hurrying into the shadowy living room, with its tall windows, and beyond, to the glassy glittering dining room, the dark kitchen. He could not escape outside, as he would have liked—Chavali might wake up and need him. But his discomfort sent him prowling, on the hunt for something, he did not know what.

Without turning on any lights he found the rack full of kitchen knives. He found no guns, no clubs or whips or chains, but he found the cupboard full of drain cleaners and poisons. Still in the dark, he found the basement stairs and went down there and found the circuit breaker box and the alcove where the gardening supplies were kept, weed killers, chemicals. Back in the living room he discovered the coat closet. It was very dark in there. He burrowed to the back wall, behind the thick coats, and he closed the door. Good, no one would hear him, even if he screamed. No gadjo would care if he rotted in here. In the midnight blackness he started softly to sing:

“
Hey hey far away

I can hear her call to me

Shady lady in the sky

Help me spread my wings and fly

Most days I just want to die
.…”

Grandpa came back early in the morning, before school, and brought the clothes and stuff that were left at the Altland place. He was quiet and polite when he said hi to me and when he asked Chav his questions. Chav was quiet and polite when he didn't answer them—he didn't tell Grandpa a thing, not even his name. Baval was happy and polite and told Grandpa he was the son of a Gypsy princess and he was looking for his real father. Lee was cheerful and polite and she made all of us French toast and scrambled eggs. Grandpa kept his tie on and wouldn't eat any. Chav didn't eat any either, just helped Chavali with hers. He seemed wound too tight to talk or eat.

As soon as Grandpa left I called Minda and caught her still at home. “Listen,” I told her, “you and I have had a fight.”

“We have?”

“Yep. A humongous fight. So you're not speaking to me in school today. Hang around other people.”

She said plaintively, “Am I allowed to ask why?”

“Sure. Ask.”

“Why?”

“Because I need you to find out who wrecked up Mr. Fischel's cemetery. People are blaming Chav.”

Silence.

“Minda?”

She said, “I'm just trying to figure out what it is with you and Chav.”

“Well, he's living at my house right now, for starters.”

“He's
what
?”

“I'll tell you all about it later.” Much later. “Will you do it?”

“Do what?”

“What I said! Find out who trashed the graveyard.”

“Why not?” She sounded as if she were getting into it now. It's not every day a person has a chance to be an investigator. “If I'm allowed to bad-mouth you,” she added.

“Absolutely.” It was the best way to get information. People would see Chav come to school with me. If they wanted him to get blamed, they might not say things in front of Minda if she was still my friend. But if she was against me, they might.

As soon as I hung up, Topher called and talked with Liana, wanting to know if she needed anything or if there was any way he could help. “Topher says tell you Rom is fine, Chav,” she called after us as we headed out the door. He nodded, but he didn't really seem to hear her.

It took me a few days to realize how much better Liana was. She made homemade soup. She brought down boxes of picture books from the attic and read to Chavali for hours. She got a neighbor to baby-sit Chavali and went shopping and brought home armloads of new clothes for Baval and Chavali and even Chav, bright red and yellow and blue ones for them, black ones for him. Topher came over and she fed him lunch. She helped Chav and Baval with their homework and let them help her with the dishes. In the mornings she got up and wanted to see how everybody was doing. She picked up Chav and Baval and me at school in the afternoons when the weather was bad, and she wanted to know how it went. She got us to help her fix huge suppers, and she hummed while she was cooking them.

Something was making Lee feel a lot better.

The reason it took me a few days to notice all this was that I was worried about Chav. He wasn't saying much to anybody. Not that he was being rude or mean. He thanked Liana for the clothes, and he wore them. But all the time he went around with a strange stretched-tight look like something was threatening to tear him apart.

I tried to get him to talk to me. “I guess you've missed a lot of school,” I said while we were doing algebra at the kitchen table. He was flunking, but who cared? I mean, does anybody anywhere except teachers actually use algebra in their life?

Chav didn't say anything.

“Good thing you're not still living in a silo,” I tried again. It was pouring down rain outside, like it had been for the past three days, raining so hard we hadn't gone out to the stable at all.

No answer.

“You're older than me, right?”

This time he answered, sort of. He nodded.

“How old? About fifteen?”

Nod.

“What do you want to do once you're out of school?”

He gave me a what-the-hell-is-she-talking-about look, like it was not something he had ever thought about. Like the whole idea of his having a life was totally weird.

Liana was in the bathroom with Chavali, and Baval was in the living room watching TV, so nobody should have been listening in. All of a sudden I decided to go for broke.

“Chav. Is it true what Liana thinks, that somebody used to beat you?”

Baval came charging in. “It is not!” he yelled before Chav could answer.

Chav's face had gone hard. I had seen that look on him often before, but now I understood what it meant, and I thought, He must have spent a lot of his life being scared.

Baval kept yelling. “He got those scars to save us from a big goon carny,” he hollered at me. “When we were in the circus. This big no-neck got drunk and wanted to hurt us, but Carl—I mean Chav—he jumped in the way and fought him. The guy was a foot and a half taller and he weighed about three hundred pounds, but every time he knocked Chav down Chav got up again and kept fighting him. He fought him and fought him and hit him and hit him and hit him until finally he wore him out and got him backed into a corner and hit him once real hard in the jaw and knocked him out.”

Chav wouldn't look at me, and I could tell he wanted to just sink through the floor and disappear. He was a good fighter, but he wasn't Superman going
kapow
—he had never done any of this, it was another of his wild stories, and he knew I knew it. It was the first time I had ever seen him embarrassed. He was blushing like fire, red under his brown skin until his whole face turned the color of a brick. “Urn, bro, listen,” he said, his voice low and struggling, “that's not really the way it was.”

Baval looked like he had been slapped. “Yes, it is!” he screamed. “You were bloody all over. I wrapped you up. I took care of you afterward.”

“No, it's not.”

“It is so!”

“Do you know what we did in the circus?”

“Sure! You were a horseback acrobat. Chavali rode a giraffe. I was a knife thrower.”

“How come you didn't just throw a knife into the big goon and help me out?” Chav asked him.

Baval's face went tight as he tried to think, and now I got to see what he looked like when he was scared. His skin went gray. “Maybe I forgot my knives?” His voice squeaked, and he was shaking. “Maybe I didn't have my knives with me, was that it? C'mon, Chav, tell me! You remember.”

Chav gave in. “Okay, that must have been it,” he said softly. “Okay, all right, calm down.”

“Don't
do
that! Don't tell it one way and then another!” Baval started to cry. Chav gathered his little brother into a hug and held him against his shoulder, and I guess it was bad enough that Baval was crying, but the look on Chav's face—he was a person caught in a trap and he couldn't see a way out. I couldn't take it. I had to get up and go see how Liana and Chavali were doing.

The day the rain finally cleared up, Chav and I walked home from school and there was Topher having coffee with Lee.

“You want to come ride?” he asked me. “I'll drive you.”

“Yeah! Thanks!” That was really nice of him. He knew I would be going crazy without my horse fix, and he knew Liana wouldn't want to leave Chavali.

“I'll even bring you back. Just call me Topher the Chauffeur. How about you?” he asked Chav. “You want to come say hi to that snortin' black horse of yours?”

The answer should have been about the same as mine. But Chav surprised all of us. His face went flat and closed, and he shook his head.

“You sure?” Topher asked, managing to keep his voice halfway calm and quiet. “That's quite a horse you got there. You sure you don't want to come see him?”

Chav sat down at the kitchen table, hunched over.

“Chav,” I just about yelled at him, “come on! I know you miss Rom.”

He winced like I was hitting him. “Let him alone,” Liana told me.

I didn't feel like I could just go ahead and eat a snack and get my boots on. I stood there. Nobody knew what to do or say.

Chav lifted his head and asked Liana, “Where's Baval?”

“He got sent home from school. His turn to be sick.”

“Chicken pox?” I asked.

“Yeppers.” She sounded cheerful about it. Now that Chavali was feeling a lot better, maybe she needed another sick kid to take care of. I am a nice enough person that I didn't shout hooray or anything, but I have to admit it was good news to me too. With Baval sick, Chav would not go away—yet.

I knew in my heart of hearts that someday soon Chav was going to go off like a firecracker. I kept hearing him walking around in the night, in the darkest midnight part of the night. That poem of his had told me that night was private and magical to him, so I never got up and asked him what he was doing. But that poem of his had told me other things about him as well.

I didn't want to think about them right then. “Chav,” I coaxed, “Baval doesn't need you. Come on out to the stable and see Rom. You can go riding with me.”

“No,” he said. “Don't make me.” He had that black-ice hard look on his face. Scared—but of what? Of Rom? Scared of the black horse?

C
HAPTER

8

“Well,” Topher complained, “if Chav doesn't want to ride him, I think I will.”

I wasn't paying much attention because Minda was there and we were laughing and hugging. Nobody from school was watching at the stable, so we didn't have to pretend to hate each other.

“Did you find out anything?” I asked her when we got done hugging.

“Not yet. But at least I feel like there's something there to find out. You know how it is when people won't say anything, but they grin?”

“Like what people?”

“Matt Kain, mostly.”

It figured. “Keep trying?”

“Sure. Now, you tell me. What is it with you and Chav?”

“Nothing, really.”

“Oh,
sure
. Nothing?”

She had “boyfriend” on her mind, which wasn't true, but—I would never in a thousand years be able to explain to her what Chav meant to me, even if I knew for sure, which I didn't yet. “Minda, let's just ride, okay?”

I went out into the ankle-deep mud hole Topher called a paddock to catch Paradiddle, and Minda had to do the same thing to get Dude, and of course both horses had rolled. They even had mud caked in their ears. They looked so proud of themselves. We used the horse vacuum on them, but it still took us half an hour to clean them off. When we finally got them saddled up and let them out, there was Topher, cowboy hat and all, on Rom.

And Rom was dancing.

Not acting up. Dancing. Like a ballet horse. Minda and I stood gawking, and Topher sat arrow straight in the saddle with his legs down long around the horse, and I never saw his cowboy boots move or his hands move on the double reins, but Rom tucked his chin and arched his neck and strutted in place. Topher shifted balance ever so slightly and Rom waltzed six feet sideways, his front feet crossing over each other. Topher leaned back just a little and the horse pirouetted full circle on his hind feet.

“I just had a hunch.” Topher loosened the rein and Rom stood still, and Topher patted him on his arched neck. “This horse is trained for upper-level dressage,” he said. “He's like a fine-tuned machine. And he's a stud. He's been used for breeding. How the hell …”

He let the words trail away and didn't say it, but I could have said it for him: How the hell did a horse like that end up roaming the countryside with a Gypsy kid?

“C'mon, Minda,” I muttered, and I turned away to go ride Diddle.

Grandpa came over that evening and accepted coffee and actually took off his tie and laid it beside his place mat. “Well, boy,” he said sourly to Chav across the kitchen table, “you'll be glad to hear I haven't been able to find out a damn thing about you.”

Chav just looked back at him, trying to hide what he was feeling, but relief flickered across his face anyway and his chest heaved. I saw.

So did Grandpa, probably. “How am I missing the boat?” he asked, not expecting anybody to answer. “You don't have a criminal record. I ran your prints. Got them off this.” He handed a school notebook back to Chav. “You aren't a runaway. Or if you are, nobody's looking for you. Nobody's looking for anybody who matches you or those other two.”

That should have felt awful, to be a kid on your own with nobody missing you, nobody who cared. But Chav sighed with relief again.

Grandpa was watching him. “Not that I think Chav is your real name,” he added. “I'm not stupid.”

“It's a Gypsy word,” Chav told him quietly and courteously. “All it means is ‘boy.'
Baval
means ‘in the wind.'
Chavali
means ‘little girl.'”