Lean on Pete (10 page)

It was dusk when I walked back to the track and locked myself in Del’s tack room. I sat there and got more scared. I had no idea what I was going to do and no plan I had made sense so I just lay down on my sleeping bag and waited out the night.

When I got up again it was
5
a.m and I hadn’t slept at all. I put my sleeping bag away and went out and looked in on Pete. His legs still seemed alright and I pet him and talked to him and told him what had happened. I started crying again and I felt worse about things than I had the day before.

Del didn’t come in until seven o’clock and hardly said a word all day. He worked three of his horses on the track and the others he put on the hotwalker for an hour, then sent them back to the stalls. Towards the end of the day he went to his truck and came back with a black bag. He told me to halter Pete and I did. We took him to a stall that had no bedding on the ground, it was just flat concrete. I tied Pete to a post and Del pulled Pete’s shoes and told me to fill a bucket with water and grab a couple towels out of the tack room.

When I came back he soaked the towels in the bucket, then took one out and wrapped it around Pete’s front right leg. He had me hold his foot like we were going to pick it and grabbed a small paint brush and a glass jar of liquid. He opened the jar and put the brush in it and brushed the liquid on the bottom of Pete’s hoof.

“What is that?”

“Jet fuel,” he said. He let it sit for a bit and then he took a lighter from his shirt pocket and lit the bottom of the hoof. It flashed in flames for a second, then died out.

Del told me to put his foot down. I did and looked at Pete but he just stood there like it wasn’t bothering him.

“What’s it for?” I asked him.

“To kill the nerves in his feet. They’re causing him a lot of pain and he won’t run worth a shit if I don’t try something.”

“Does it hurt him?”

“Does it look like it hurts him?”

“No,” I said.

“We gotta do his three other feet, so hurry up.”

I nodded and we did the same for his three other feet and then Del had me put him back in his stall and left.

I finished my work, then walked back to the house, and everything was the same when I got there. I went into my room and put some clothes in my duffel, then took the picture of my aunt and me and my two trophies and packed them as well. I left everything else.

My dad’s room had a double bed and a dresser with a lamp sitting on it. He had a black and white TV sitting on a chair and in the closet he had hangers holding his clothes. I took a few things. I found his leather belt that had his name on it, Ray, in silver letters. I took off my belt and put on his. There wasn’t a notch small enough for me so I went to his toolbox and found a hammer and a nail and made one so the belt would work.

I went through his drawers and found ten dollars and a handful of change. There were two snapshots underneath his clothes in the dresser. Both had me in them. One was when I was just a kid and I was sitting in a shopping cart. The other was of him and me at a pizza parlor. We were both smiling and he had his arm around me. I took that one and left the other.

In the kitchen I took two knives and forks and spoons and wrapped them in a paper towel and put them in the duffel. Then I turned on the TV and heated a can of soup and ate. After that I took a shower. When I was done I grabbed the towel and the soap and shampoo and put that stuff in the duffel as well and left.

It wasn’t late at all, not even five o’clock, when I walked back to the track. I looked in the parking lot for Del’s truck but I couldn’t find it so I went through the backside gates and walked down the shedrow. Inside the tack room I looked around for a place to hide both my clothes bag and my sleeping bag but there wasn’t enough room. I could hide the sleeping bag or the clothes but not both. I didn’t know what to do and finally just stuck my duffel on top of a filing cabinet and wrote a sign on it. “Charley’s Football Gear.”

As it neared evening I left the backside and went to a Chinese restaurant and ate dinner. After that I just went back to the tack room. I tried to go to sleep but I couldn’t and there was nothing to do in there. I turned the light back on and went through Del’s things. There were a few boxes and a file cabinet, but besides papers there was nothing but horse gear in there. I turned the light off again and lay down but I was restless. My mind got darker and darker thinking about my dad and the uncertainty of things and the only thing I could think of to do was to go back to the house and get the TV. So I got up and turned on the lights and put on my shoes. I’d explain to Del that he might like a TV in the tack room. That if he didn’t mind, I’d hang out there and watch TV on breaks. It seemed like an alright idea and so I headed back to the house.

It was dark when I got there. I’d left all the lights off. The door was still locked and I found my key and opened it and turned on the lights in the living room. I called out but no one answered. I looked through the place and everything seemed okay so I went to the fridge and made myself a triple-decker peanut butter and jelly sandwich and wrapped it in a paper towel and put it in my coat pocket. The TV was in my bedroom. I unplugged it, picked it up, and left.

It was a
16
-inch TV and it was hard to walk with. I made it down the street, but it was slow going. I passed the mini-mart and started down the main road. I was almost a half a mile on it when a police car pulled up behind me. I didn’t notice it and then all of a sudden there were flashing lights and I stopped and turned around.

The officer got out of his car. There was a gun hanging from his belt. He was big and had a moustache and he wore his police hat back on his head almost like a cowboy hat.

“Where are you going with the TV?”

“To my house,” I told him.

“Where’s your house?”

“What?” I said.

“You heard me. Where’s your house?”

“It’s the pink one near the horse track,” I said. It was the only house I could think of. It sat alone by itself near a Motel
6
and the track parking lot.

“Whose TV is that?”

“It’s mine. My dad bought it for me.”

“Why are you carrying it down the street?”

“What?”

“That’s the second time you heard what I said and didn’t answer. Why are you carrying it down the street?”

“I just got it fixed.”

“You had it fixed on a Saturday night?” he said.

“My friend fixed it.”

“What’s your name?”

“My name?”

“What’s your name?”

“Ray.”

“What’s your last name?”

“Thompson,” I said.

“Do you have an ID?”

My hands started shaking.

He asked me again and I dropped the TV and started running. He yelled at me to stop, but I didn’t. I ran underneath the overpass and came out the other side. I looked back and I could see he’d gotten in his police car and was going to follow me. I started running again but there was nowhere to go. On one side there were warehouses and on the other was the barbed-wire fence that lined the track. I kept running and then I jumped up on the chain link and climbed over the barbed wire. One of the barbs went into my hand but I barely felt it. I got to the top and another one caught on my coat and ripped it and another cut into my leg. I fell to the other side. The cop stopped and his spotlight looked around until it found me. I got up again and started running. By then I was on the track itself and I didn’t look back until I made it to the backside and by then I couldn’t see him at all. I ran down the shedrows until I came to Del’s tack room. I unlocked it and went inside and shut off the light.

I sat down on the floor and waited. With every sound my nerves got worse and I was sure the policeman would find me. I could feel blood leaking out of my hand and I could feel the cut on my leg and when I felt around it, it was wet. I sat in darkness for a long time. It seemed like hours even though I know it wasn’t. Then my leg started to hurt so much that I turned on the light.

My hand was covered in blood. I went to my duffel and found a sock and wrapped it around my palm. My pant leg was torn and it was dark with blood. I pulled it up and saw that my calf had a long cut in it. Blood was coming out pretty fast. I took a T-shirt and wrapped it around my leg and tried to stop the bleeding.

I didn’t know what to do. If I went to the hospital they’d want to know where my folks were. I had no insurance. I only had thirty dollars. I put pressure on my leg and held the sock tight around my hand. I looked around the room. There wasn’t a first-aid kit, but I found a cardboard box full of leg wraps. I took one and looked through Del’s desk until I saw a pair of scissors. I grabbed another T-shirt from my things and cut it in a continuous strip the best I could. I took the other shirt off my leg. The cut was still pushing out blood and the shirt was soaked with it. I rolled the cut-up shirt around my calf, then put the leg wrap over that. There was a roll of duct tape hanging from a hook on the wall and I put strips on it to hold it in place. Then I took the sock off my hand. It was still bleeding so I took another clean sock and re-wrapped it, then duct taped it as tight as I could. My pants were all covered in blood so I took them off and put on my other pair.

I set out my sleeping bag and lay down, but my hand wouldn’t stop leaking blood and I got nervous about it and decided I’d have to get real bandages. There was a Walgreens pharmacy a half-mile away so I put on a red windbreaker that was hanging off Del’s chair and left.

I walked on the side of the road and kept a look out for the cop. Every once in a while I stopped and pulled up my pant leg to see if there was any blood leaking out, but there never was.

At Walgreens I bought a box of gauze, a package of white bandages, a bag of cotton balls, a bottle of hydrogen peroxide, two ace bandages, a roll of white tape, a bottle of aspirin, and a tube of Neosporin. When I went up to the counter I kept my hurt hand in the windbreaker pocket, and I got my money out with my good hand and paid for it. Afterwards I walked out of the store into the parking lot and looked again for the police but they weren’t there.

It was late when I got back to the tack room. My leg hurt bad, but when I took off my jeans there was only a little blood leaking through the bandage. The cut itself was red and filled with blood but it wasn’t gushing out like it had before. I poured hydrogen peroxide on it, and it spit up and foamed but it didn’t hurt. After that I covered the cut with Neosporin, wrapped it with the new bandages I’d bought, and covered it with the ace. I did the same with my hand, then I tried to clean up the place the best I could. There was blood soaked into the plywood floor, and I couldn’t think of anything to do about it except cover it in dirt and straw. I took four aspirin, got in bed, and shut the light off. As I lay there I kept imagining the cop walking down the shedrow looking for me. I tried not to move at all or make any sound and time passed. I tried to sleep but every time I got tired I began thinking about the cop and then I started thinking about the Samoan and my dad in the hospital and I hardly slept at all.

When I got up at six-thirty my hand hurt right off but my leg felt alright until I started moving around; then it hurt pretty bad. I put on my pants and hid the sleeping bag and put the duffel away and went out and cleaned the stalls.

Del didn’t show up until eight and he was in a foul mood and yelled at me a couple times, then he yelled at the girl, Maxine, who fed the horses and she started crying.

Del didn’t work Pete at all so he was just stuck in his stall. He wasn’t favoring any of his legs, and he didn’t look like he was hurting, he just looked bored. When I was done working I pet him and talked to him and told him about my cuts and the cop and the broken TV. Then Del found me and I helped him wash down a horse named Simmer Slew.

“What happened to your hand?” he said when he saw the bandage.

“I was helping my neighbor tear down a fence and I wasn’t wearing gloves.”

“Is it gonna get in the way of you working?”

“No,” I told him.

“You feel like making some extra money?”

“Sure.”

“You know how to stack wood?”

“I’ve never done it,” I said.

“It’s not hard,” he said.

“And you’ll pay me?”

“I’ll give you ten bucks.”

I only had seven dollars and change left so I agreed. I followed him to his truck and we drove a couple miles to a neighborhood in Northeast Portland, where we stopped in front of his house. In the driveway was a huge load of split firewood.

He unlocked the door and I followed him. I could smell something bad in there right off but I couldn’t tell what from. The entry was full of boxes and you could hardly walk by. There were stacks of
Daily Racing Form
s and newspapers and magazines and there were a couple bales of hay stacked against a wall. He led me to the living room where on a couch was an old dog. It wagged its tail but didn’t get up. The smell was coming from him.

The wood stove was in that room and Del wanted me to stack the wood behind it, along the wall. He brought in a chair and said I could use it to stand on so I could get the wood all the way to the ceiling. Then he went into another room, turned on a TV, and shut the door.

I stood there for a while and just looked around. There was nothing on the walls, no pictures or photos, and nothing really in the room except the couch with the dog on it and the stacks of boxes. On the floor was a worn-out tan carpet that was covered in dirt and pieces of bark and scraps of wood. I made sure the bandage on my hand was alright, then I walked back out to the front and started bringing in the wood, but it took forever. For a start I could only really use one hand, and there was so much stuff in the hallway I couldn’t bring very much at one time anyway. The old dog just lay there and Del stayed in his room with the TV going.

I stopped an hour later to take a leak and check my leg. The bathroom was right off the kitchen and it wasn’t much to see either. The toilet hadn’t been cleaned and the tub was full of mold. The shower curtain was black with it and there were only a few hooks still holding it up. Scattered everywhere were empty toilet-paper rolls and old newspapers and racing forms. I pulled up my pant leg and the bandage was holding alright and I couldn’t see any blood.