Taming the Star Runner (4 page)

“If my lesson runs late Mom'll kill me. I've got to go straight to piano from here. Oh, damn.”

She led the horse out of the barn at a trot, and almost ran down the red dirt road toward the ring.

The little girls from the first class were riding into the pasture behind the ring. He decided he'd get the stalls watered and be back in the house before they got back. Little girls didn't interest him.

The work didn't take long.

He stopped halfway in the kitchen door. There was a blond woman in the kitchen. She looked too well dressed to be a burglar, but Travis froze a minute anyway…

She paused, too, then relaxed. But she was staring at him as if she were seeing a ghost.

“You must be Travis,” she said finally. “God, you look more like Ken than Christopher does. I'm Teresa,” she added.

Teresa, Ken's wife, or soon-to-be ex-wife. Boy, she was good-looking—but he always had been a sucker for brown-eyed blondes. What was Ken divorcing her for? Then he remembered: she was divorcing him. Immediately he was on Ken's side.

“I guess I mean you look like Tim. I never did meet him, but in their pictures they look quite a bit alike.”

“Yeah.” Travis could remember only one picture of his dad, in his Air Force uniform; he remembered the eyebrows, especially, being like his, almost joined in the middle. Stan had made Mom put it away. But frankly, he didn't see this big resemblance to Ken everyone else did. “But he's premature gray.”

“He's premature thirty-seven,” Teresa said dryly.

Travis gave her a look that let her know whose side he was on, and she changed the subject. “I brought Christopher out. I'm going out of town tonight on business and I knew Ken wouldn't mind getting him a little early. I tried calling him at the office but he was out.”

Christopher. The little kid. He seemed to remember Ken saying something about the little kid coming out this weekend, but he hadn't been paying attention. He thought of something: He'd been planning to nag Ken into doing
something
this weekend, even if it was just going to a movie. Now they wouldn't be going anywhere more exciting than a Dairy Queen.

“I will say this,” Teresa went on, “—Ken gets an A-plus in the daddy department. That's so important for a boy—” She broke off suddenly and, in a voice trying too hard to be pleasant, asked, “Now, what was it you got in trouble for? It wasn't drugs, was it?”

Travis had it on the tip of his tongue to answer, “No, it was attempted murder.”

But something made him change it to “Oh, my stepdad and I don't get along too good, Mom wanted us to chill out for a while.”

“Yeah, broken families are the pits, aren't they?” She stopped to examine a nail. Poor lady was having a hard time finding a polite subject. “You want to meet Christopher? He's up in his room making sure all his toys are still there.”

“Uh, I got a lot of homework, I thought I'd get started on it.”

He just wanted out of there.

“Sure. You guys will have plenty of time to get together this weekend.”

I bet, Travis thought sourly in his room, throwing himself across the bed, turning his radio up. He'd never been around a little kid and was positive it was going to be a real pain.

All the damn radio stations sucked.

At home, he'd be hanging around the record store, maybe he and Kirk would be planning to pick up some girls…

He gave up on the radio and slammed in a tape and turned over on his stomach. Motorboat was walking up and down on his back, his happy feet pricking holes in his shirt—he had ruined a lot of Travis's shirts.

At home, he'd be cruising to this music, or sitting around the front porch with four or five guys, somebody would be peeling out down the street, whooping out a car window as they passed.

He lit a cigarette, remembering well enough he'd promised Ken not to smoke in bed, but it wasn't like he was
sleeping
or something.

At home there'd be people to talk to, whether it was the most outlandish lies or absolute truths or both in the same sentence…

Something tickled his nose and he was startled to find it was a tear.

There was a light knock on his door. Quickly he sat up and brushed his face off.

“Yeah?”

“Travis, there's someone here to see you.”

Travis, completely puzzled, opened his door.

“Casey's in the front hallway,” Teresa said, and added, “Good God. That cat is huge! Is he, uh, gentle?”

Travis glanced down. Motorboat's head was level with his knee.

“Yeah,” he said absently. “Sort of.”

Teresa didn't seem too reassured, but Travis couldn't care right now.

Why would Casey want to see him? He'd thought she had some big meeting to go to.

She was waiting patiently in the entry hall, and Travis thought suddenly that if she were a boy, with that angular profile and long-distance gaze, she might be sort of good-looking.

When she turned that gaze on him, however, he could have sworn it was with a mixture of laughter, anger, and contempt. He shifted uneasily in silence, finally saying, “Yeah?”

“Are you an idiot?” she asked, pleasantly, as if she were asking, “Are you a Leo?”

“What?”

“I mean, are you brain damaged or what? Ken didn't mention it, and I didn't think to ask.”

“What?”

“What did I ask you to do this afternoon?”

Travis had a sudden flashback: He was eleven years old and absentmindedly made lemonade with six
cups
instead of six
tablespoons
of sugar … Stan had had a really good laugh about that one … What a stupid thing to think about, right now…

“Water the stalls,” he answered. He could tell something horrible was coming, he'd look up and see a freight train on top of him and there wouldn't be time to move.

Casey nodded. “So that's what you did. Watered the stalls.”

They stood there for a moment under the hall light, and it seemed like all this had happened before, that they had played this scene in a play a dozen times before, he could even tell her next line:

“You are an idiot.”

And as Travis realized the mistake he'd made, he couldn't even argue with her. A slow wave of heat spread upward and he knew he was bright red.

“Now I've got ten stalls inches deep in water. Couldn't you figure out I meant put water in the buckets—not all over the floor? Good golly, kid, are you brainless?”

Travis thought later he should have slugged her. How could he have stood there and taken that?

Probably because at the time he agreed with her and couldn't even get the air to say so.

“I bet,” Casey said slowly, “that when your mama asks you to tie your shoes, you rope them to the bed.”

Travis stood there a long time after she closed the door behind her.

He wasn't cool. He wasn't tough. He wasn't even good-looking. He just stood there, a brainless, homesick idiot.

Dear Travis: Every thing is OK hear. The Twins got Fired for comin in stoned so me and them are doin stuff for Orson. NOT DEALING. Kirk is going preppie. It make you sick. He is even dating Lisa Mahoney. Hows it goin
.

Joe

A short letter, but a lot to think about. Travis wished he had the twins here, so he could knock their heads together. He knew it. He knew the minute he left town, they'd turn into dopers. Here he'd gone to a lot of trouble to get them into his group, get them some friends because they were too shy to get their own, and they knew how he felt about heavy doping.

Billy and Mike weren't book smart, but in their field, mechanics, they were damn geniuses. Travis was awed by the way they could take things apart, put things together. They had a ticket there, and they were going to blow it.

Fired. How were they going to pay their car insurance? And the three of them, Joe included, were idiots for “doin stuff” for Orson.

You'd better get paid in cash, up front, guys, he thought.

Kirk going preppy, huh? Travis, looking back, could see it coming; he had noticed last summer when Kirk gave up cutoffs and sneakers for Jams and loafers. No, that didn't surprise him at all. He'd known all along Kirk planned on college—he'd never tried to hide his good grades, like Travis sometimes had.

Not that there was anything to hide, now.

“How's it going?” Well, Travis thought, I'm hanging out with an uncle, a little kid, and a bunch of girls. It is just going super.

He could still hang out with the girls. He'd followed Casey down to the barn and silently taken the shovel and wheelbarrow and helped clean up the stalls.

In return she'd told people the water pump had broken.

It'd been one of the hardest things he'd ever had to do, but if he hadn't he'd never go to the barn again, and he had to have
somewhere
.

He wasn't sure yet how he felt about the little kid. Christopher was a big pain, just as he'd expected. But there was something kind of interesting about someone who just said and did whatever came to mind without worrying about it.

Christopher was the roundest person Travis had ever seen. His chubby face was round. His big brown eyes were round. His blond haircut was round. His chunky little legs and arms were round.

And his round mouth moved constantly.

“Well, hi.” He crawled up into Travis's bed early Saturday. A lot earlier Saturday than Travis liked.

“Are you sleeping?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“ 'Cause I'm sleepy.”

“Why?”

“ 'Cause it's early.”

“Why?”

In a very short time Travis thought he'd freak out at the sound of that word.

Christopher was exact. If you failed to say please, thank you, or you're welcome, he'd correct you. If you called something by the wrong name, he'd correct you. “It's not a cuckoo clock. It's a bird clock.”

You couldn't have a sandwich or a Coke to yourself. You had to share. He was real big on sharing. And it was a little disconcerting to be around someone you didn't know too well who didn't hesitate to crawl all over you.

Christopher poked into everything, messing up his tapes, drawing on his papers. And Motorboat, who had stared down Ken's Labrador and slapped the chow's nose the first day he was out of the house, spent the weekend cowering under the bed or behind the sofa.

But Ken seemed to think everything Christopher did was cute, and took it for granted that everything revolved around him. He jumped when Christopher said, “More juice please,” scrubbed his hands before every meal, and when Christopher waddled bare assed into the den with his underwear around his ankles and announced, “I did poo, come see,” Ken reacted like it was a miracle.

Hell, thought Travis, it'd be more of a miracle if he didn't do any.

He hated to admit it, but maybe he was just a little bit jealous.

He watched Ken answer the phone and try to talk with Christopher climbing up his back, hanging around his neck, yelling, “I will fall you down!” and laughing till Ken couldn't hear or make himself heard; Travis marveled at his patience. He'd have pitched the kid across the room by now…

“It's for you,” Ken repeated, holding out the phone, and Travis shook himself awake. Who'd be calling him?

He took the phone, grateful that Ken was hauling Chris out of the room.

“Hi, hon.”

It was Mom. He remembered how he'd called her Donna the Hon, even to her face, and he was suddenly ashamed.

“Hi.”

“How are you?”

“Okay.”

“How's Kenny?”

“Okay.”

“Everything fine?”

“Yeah. What's up?”

He couldn't bring himself to ask about Stan.

“I just wanted to make sure you were all right.”

“Yeah.” Surely she knew Ken would call her if he got run over by the school bus or something.

“Well, hon, are you getting enough to eat?”

“Sure,” he lied a little; it was spooky that she'd ask that, though…

“Travis, you've got a letter here from a publishing house—you haven't been buying a lot of books or joined a book club?”

“Naw.” Travis thought for a minute. “No—wait! Don't open it!”

“What is it?”

“I don't know.” He paced in a small circle, dragging the phone, tripping over the cord. “I don't know. Just send it to me, okay? Don't open it.”

“All right, hon. I'll get it in the mail tomorrow.”

“Tonight.”

“What?”

“Get it in the mail tonight, okay?”

“Well, hon, by the time we get through with dinner I think the post office will be closed.”

Let the big slug skip dinner for once, Travis thought, but knew that was impossible. He couldn't think. He couldn't talk.

“Hon? I've got to get off the phone now, I promised Stan I wouldn't talk too long.”

“Put it in the mail right now,” Travis said slowly.

“Say hi to Kenny for me. I wish I could see his little boy. Send me a picture, okay?”

“Don't open it.”

“Bye, hon.”

Travis had trouble getting the phone back on the cradle, weird damn phone, shaped like a doughnut.

The book! The book! He was going to hear about the book he'd written! He'd tried hard just to forget about it, knowing it'd be a long time before he heard anything, but it had nagged at him like a dull toothache.

That was probably why he hadn't been able to write lately, he thought suddenly, why he hadn't really written anything since he'd sent the manuscript off. It was like something unfinished…

He expected a rejection. All writers got lots of rejections. Hemingway had gotten about a million of them. He wasn't sure how many Stephen King got.

It was okay, getting a rejection. You wanted to write, you just had to get used to it, like if you wanted to fight you had to take getting punched. He'd just send it to another publishing house, he had the next three places picked out already. What he was hoping for, really, that whoever read it this time would tell him something, anything, it was too long or too short or too—whatever. Why they didn't want it—that was all he was hoping for, this time.

But maybe they did. Maybe they were saying, “We'll publish it and here's a million dollars!” He had a strong desire to call Mom back, have her open it and read it to him. He wasn't going to be able to stand it.

No, she didn't even know he'd written a book, much less sent it off. She knew he wrote, sure, but seemed to think it was some weird phase he was going through, though after all these years you'd think…

No, it was his book and his letter, no matter what it said. Nobody needed to know anything. Just him and somebody in New York. For a second he wondered who…

Ken was grilling hot dogs on the Jenn-Air.

“Anything up?”

“Naw.” Travis wished Ken weren't such a hard ass about letting him drink anything. He sure could use a slug of bourbon. “She just wanted to make sure everything was okay. Was I eating right, you know.”

“I hope you lied.” Ken took the mustard knife away from Christopher, who was trying to mustard the hot dogs still on the grill.

“Yeah, I did.” He remembered something. “She said to say hi. She called you Kenny, made you sound like a little kid.”

“She always did—called Tim, Timmy too. He swore when he had a kid, the name'd be something she couldn't put a
y
on.”

“I thought she picked my name.”

“She did, but Tim had to approve it. He was sure you were going to be a boy … She got the name out of a book, didn't she? The MacDonald mystery series?”

“No,
Old Yeller
. The dog book.”

“Tim used to tease her about all the books she read.”

Mom reading? He hadn't seen her read anything except
Reader's Digest
and
National Enquirer
and those books that always had a picture of a pirate ripping the shirt off some girl. That wasn't
real
reading.

“Your mom was a real sweet girl. Pretty too. She thought Tim hung the moon.”

Hung the moon. What a weird expression. Travis had never heard it.

“She's fat now,” Travis said. He tried to think of Mom young, pretty, and reading, and couldn't do it. Young, pretty, and reading and thinking someone hung the moon … Obviously she thought a lot more of Stan than Travis could, but he wasn't any moon hanger.

“Come here,” Ken said suddenly. He picked up Christopher and sat him on one of the high barstools at the center island table.

“Put your hand next to Chris's, open your fingers. See?”

Travis stared at the two hands, wondering … then he saw. Christopher's hand was a miniature of his own. The shape of the fingers, the set of the thumbs—Travis was startled to see even a lot of similarity in the palm prints.

“Wow.”

“He's got Teresa's coloring and features, but my details: Ears, hands, feet.”

“Let me see yours.”

Again, an amazing resemblance. Travis thought: That's how my hand will look. But surely not that old.

“Do I remind you of my dad?”

“Just in looks. You're a lot quieter. Tim was a very … vivid personality.”

“You guys get along?”

“Once a year.”

“Why'd you let me come here?”

Ken met his eyes. Ken had light brown eyes, clear, like iced tea with the sun shining through.

“Why'd you want to come?”

And Travis knew exactly when the same thought went through both their minds: I thought you'd be Tim.

Federal Express, he thought, I should have told her to Federal-Express it. He couldn't eat, he'd hardly slept, and he couldn't expect the letter for two more days, anyway. It would have cost a lot of money, he wasn't sure how much, but he could have hocked his tape player—no, calm down, whatever the letter said it would say the same thing two days from now.

He went directly to the barn after he'd put in his time at school. The house was more peaceful, now that Christopher was gone, but Ken was in a bad mood. He was ticked off because Christopher had left saying a word he hadn't said before; Travis figured if Ken had cable TV like any normal person the kid would have said it long ago. Anyway, it was plain that returning Christopher to Teresa was what was really bothering him.

Anyway, it was fun down at the barn after the lessons, although the girls were sillier, louder, goofier, than any bunch of guys could be. And the second he walked in, they got sillier, louder, and goofier than ever. Kristen and Kelsey weren't twins, they just acted alike. Which meant they screamed a lot. Robyn had an incredible motor mouth (Travis realized that coke was at least partly to blame—she'd offered him a hit the second time he saw her), and Jennifer mostly giggled; to get her to squeal you only had to see—or pretend to see—a mouse.

Mary, the older lady, always left as soon as she'd cooled off her horse, but unless there was a music, or ballet, or some other kind of lesson (Travis was amazed at how some days they absolutely ran from lesson to lesson), everybody hung around for a while.

Motorboat loved the barn. He'd spent a lot of his time there since the weekend—Christopher wasn't allowed in the barn. He lazed on the rafters or sat on a horse, doing happy paws—once in a while he brought out a mouse for Jennifer to squeal at.

Casey didn't seem to mind the noise, but usually she was too busy to add to it. She went straight to the little office-tack room. She kept an orderly record book—who had a lesson on what day, whose horse she was riding, vet records, horseshoe bills.

She either did that, or stopped down by the paddocks to stare at her big gray horse, the Star Runner. Everyone said the Star Runner was a mean dude—Travis hadn't seen Casey ride him, so all he could judge for himself was that the Star Runner was the only horse to have a paddock all to himself; he was the only horse who seemed to be constantly in motion, walking rapidly up and down, up and down.

Today Casey was in the office on the phone, oblivious to the noise.

“You know, you shouldn't smoke.” Kristen had Charlie, her horse, untacked, ready to lead it out to the water pump for a shower. She paused beside Travis, then suddenly snatched his cigarette pack out of his T-shirt pocket.

“Come on, give 'em here.”

“They're really bad for you.” Kristen ducked to the other side of her horse, giggling.

Travis sighed. Now he'd have to go chase her around for a while, or give up his last pack. They weren't too easy to get around here.

“Give 'em here.” He just straightened up off the wall, but Kristen shrieked as if he were lunging for her, and ran out of the barn with her horse trotting behind her.

“Hey, get back here,” Travis shouted from the doorway. Damn dumb kid. He felt stupid having to chase her, and mad that she could make him do it.