Ghetto Cowboy (16 page)

Leroy looks at the TV crew who’s filming it all, then back at us. I think he knows it was me.

“You like that horse, son?” he asks.

I nod. “He’s my horse. Sir.”

He sighs, scratches his neck, then says loud enough for the suit and the cameras to hear, “Well, as it turns out, I made a call to the vet who checked out those horses that were taken from the stables yesterday. He said that, contrary to what was originally suspected, the horses were
not
malnourished and that they were actually in pretty good shape.”

The guys get all quiet, then Leroy actually smiles a tiny bit. “So . . . all charges of animal endangerment have been dropped, and the City has agreed to return the rest of your horses.”

A cheer goes up as the guys wave their hats. The suit throws a fit and starts yelling at the other cops, who just shrug.

“But —”
Leroy holds up his hand.

“Here we go,” says Tex.

“That still doesn’t solve your two biggest problems: building-code violations and land rights. Now, I’ve made some phone calls, and in light of everything, you have been granted
one
week to upgrade your facilities to code. Do that, and they can’t use it as an excuse to tear down the stables. As for who has the rights to that land, that’ll be up to the courts to decide. That’s the best I can do.”

I look over at the stables and think,
One week?
Maybe one month or even a year. That place needs some serious work.

“We’ll take what we can get,” Harper says, shaking Leroy’s hand. “Thanks, man.”

Harper soaks in the scene. I can see him lookin’ at the newspeople and all the crowds gathered around. Then he gets a look in his eyes. I can almost see the wheels in his head startin’ to turn. He grins for the cameras.

“Philadelphia! Last year when they shut down the Bunker stables, the crime rate rose in that area because the teens had nothing to do but get in trouble. Support your local culture
and
help the kids by giving them something healthy to do with their time! Horses, not crime! Come lend a hand and help keep North Philly safe
and
special!”

The suit’s not happy watching all this go down. “I’ll be back in one week, and believe me, we’ll have that bulldozer ready.”

I give him the evil eye. “You do what you gotta do, mister. We’ll be here.”

Jamaica Bob shouts out, “Say it, brother Train!”

When I look around, I can see the crowd is twice as large now. I guess word got out around the neighborhood, and folks showed up. They come up to Harper, saying they’ll do whatever they can to help. Some people is carpenters, some electricians, some handymen; some is just kids who don’t know nothing. But a body is a body that can help out somehow.

When everyone leaves and things calm down, suddenly the situation don’t look so rosy. There’s a lot of work ahead. Harper gets all serious, then starts writing out a week’s worth of work on a pad of paper, with a list just for me. It’s a crazy-long list, but he says I should consider it community service for going behind his back and taking the horses.

I can’t argue with that.

T
hat week, I work harder than my whole life put together. My entire body hurts. My arms. My legs. My back. But I keep going ’cause everybody else does too.

Harper shows me how to build stuff, how to hammer and saw and measure stuff right. I help them repair the roof, but this time, I stay on the ground. There’s always ten things going on at once. But nobody complains. Even people who have nothing to do with riding show up carting spare wood, roofing stuff, equipment.

Leroy even shows up to help give that poor dead horse a proper burial. We all stop working when he hauls it away in a big oversize truck. I try not to think how it got here, with the accident an’ all. That just makes me think of Mama, and then I feel bad for hanging up on her.

I do think about calling her back sometimes, but it’s been way too crazy this week. Seems like we up at dawn and asleep as soon as we walk back in the house. Maybe when things quiet down some, I’ll figure out what to say to her.

In between building and fixing stuff, the guys make me take care of the horses and show me a thing or two. Like how to brush ’em proper-like, how to put the saddle on, how to clean out their hoofs, stuff like that. Even that kid CJ and a few of his friends show up wanting to help. Everyone is so busy, I put them to work myself, doing some of the grooming and feeding, stuff I learned. They seem like they excited just to be doing it, and I said if they did a good job, they could start riding too. Harp saw me teaching them and put me in charge of finding them stuff to keep ’em busy. I like that.

A lot of the older kids and me go for rides with the guys around the neighborhood after a hard day’s work. Boo seem to trust me pretty good now. He even gallops a bit, and Harper shows me a few racing tricks, saying I’ll be good to go at the Speedway soon if I keep it up.

Luckily, the rain stays away and the sun dries out everything pretty good. Soon, most things is looking better. Some gardening guy saw us on the news and said he’d help us get rid of that big ol’ pile of crap by giving it to some urban-gardening projects all around the city. Said that stuff really makes vegetables grow great, which probly explains why I hate vegetables. It took him and us like a whole day to get the job done, but in the end, the lot looked pretty good. After that, we even heard a rumor that ’cause a the news, the City was gonna start picking this stuff up again. That would make my life a lot easier.

The Ritz-Carlton’s looking more solid — not new but better, with a roof that looks like it’ll hold up during the next storm. We also built some outside structures for the horses to stand under during a rain or to keep the sun off. Some of the neighbors even started talking about making a garden project of their own on one of the vacant lots. So things is looking up.

But money is tighter than ever and even after all that, the guys seem to have doubts that the stables will be around for long. A few say we’d won the battle, but the City will win the war sooner or later.

Some of the horses leave when guys find other stables outside the city. Harper don’t stop ’em. He understands. He calls one of the reporters and says we need a lawyer to help represent ourselves in court so we can keep the land. There’s a few leads, but not much.

When the week’s up, Harper seem real nervous. We’d spent the day before the inspection really cleaning up the horses and making sure they looked healthy and nice. I even brushed Boo’s teeth.

We hear the news guys ain’t coming back to do a follow-up, and most the guys ain’t surprised ’cause doing the right thing for the neighborhood ain’t sexy or violent enough to make the news. But one of the kids who’s helping out said he gonna video the whole inspection in case anything fishy goes down. The inspectors show up, but the dude in the suit ain’t there. The inspectors go on a tour with Harper, who explains all the work we done and how the whole neighborhood pulled together.

After a hour, they leave, but it takes a whole other week before we hear back. Harper gets a letter at the stables one day. Everyone gathers around. He don’t look too happy.

But then he grins and says we passed!

We about to all jump up and down, when he adds that we’ve won only half the battle. “There’s still the question of who has the rights to this land. We’ve taken a step in the right direction, and”— Harper looks at all of us proudly —“we’re not going to give up now. We’ll find a way to call this land our own. Even if we gotta buy it from the City to make it proper in everyone’s eyes.”

“Where we gonna get that kinda cash?” asks Tex.

Harp smiles and shrugs. “Haven’t you seen the price of real estate around here? They should give us a rock-bottom price just to shut us up!”

Maybe. But still, it can’t be that cheap. I start thinking of things we can do to raise money. I seen how good he is with the kids in the neighborhood. Maybe the schools would pay him to get the kids working with horses. Maybe Tex could show off some of his rodeo skills. You never know. . . .

O
ne morning, I hear a bunch of noise downstairs and go down to find Harper taking Lightning out.

“Where y’all going?” I ask.

“Ol’ Lightning here is moving back to the stables now that they’re all fixed up. Besides, I’m tired of him making noise in the middle of the night.”

I stare into his makeshift stall. “What you gonna do with that space?”

“Thought I’d have you clean it out.”

I make a face. “Had enough of that kind of work. I need to rest for a month just to recover.”

He shakes his head. “I was thinking it could maybe be your room, after we fix it up some, of course.”

I give him a look. “You want me to
live
in there?”

He shrugs. “Hey, it was made for people first. Lightning was just a temporary renter, you know.” He pats Lightning, like he thinking of something to say. “But if you want to, you know, stay here for real . . . this could be your room.”

The room is dark and dirty, but I seen what we just done with the stable, so I can imagine it all fixed up nice with my own bed and stuff. It might be cool to have my own room. Even back home, I had to sleep on the couch.

“What happens if someone wants this place back?”

He steps outside, looks at the row houses around his, half boarded up. “No one will want it back ’cept us,” he says sadly.

Then he looks at me and smiles. “Think about it. It’d be nice to have someone here who could clean up after himself.”

I nod and watch him and Lightning go.

I wander into the kitchen to get some cereal, thinking about what my room could look like. I hear the door open and shut again, so I shout, “Don’t tell me you changed your mind?”

“Yeah, Cole. I did.”

I whip around and almost drop my bowl.

Mama.

We stand staring at each other for a long time. Half of me is real glad to see her. The other half still hates her for what she did. But there is still a part that knows I never woulda become a cowboy without her.

“Does Harper know you here?” I ask.

She shakes her head slowly.

“Why
are
you here?” I ask.

She struggles to say it. “I want you to come home, baby.”

I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. Just when I was thinking maybe I could stay here, she shows up again. Just when I thought I might be okay without her, she wants me back.

I watch her as she stares at the broken wall, with Lightning’s stall inside. She sighs. “I can’t sleep at night. I don’t like thinking of you living like this.”

I put my bowl down. “It’s okay. They taking care of me all right.”

“They?” She looks surprised.

“Harp and the guys at the stables. I been learning to ride and all. I helped them build the barn up and stuff.”

She moves toward me. “I miss you, Cole.”

I step back. I don’t feel like hugging her. She stops, searches for something to say. “I wasn’t trying to punish you, Cole.”

I know that. I look at the rings under her eyes and I know that. But why can I forgive Harp and not her? “We doing okay,” I say, knowing the
we
gotta hurt.

But she takes it, ’cause she knows she has to. “I’m getting help now.”

That throws me. “Help?” I say. “Why
you
need help?”

She looks at her shoes. “Because I’ve been feeling over the last few years like I’ve been disappearing, like I couldn’t handle anything or anyone. It was like things was getting too hard to handle.”

“You mean me?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “You were just a part of it. As soon as I left you here, it kind of woke me up. I went and found someone who can help me, you know, cope better, and that’s why I’m here.”

That kinda surprises me. “You mean like a counselor or something?”

She nods. I can’t picture her doing them sessions, but looking at Mama, she seem like she really trying and that she really do want me back. “Cole, I know you know what it feels like to be helpless, even if you don’t say it. That’s what I was feeling.”

Helpless. I think of all the times I felt that way. Most of the time maybe. I thought I was the only one feeling like that. And there she was, feeling the same thing all along.