Tex (10 page)

“His birthday was the twenty-second of October. Last month.”

“Oh. I was thinking it was November.”

Mason didn't say a word. He just got up and left. Pretty soon we heard the pickup squealing out of the driveway.

Pop shook his head. “That young-un can get his back up over the silliest things. I'm sorry about that, Tex.”

“Shoot,” I said, “it doesn't bother me. It proves you didn't forget about it completely, which was what Mason tried to tell me. Anyway, I thought it was funny.”

“I don't think Mace thought it was funny,” Pop sighed. I had to agree with him there.

The light blinded me. I hung onto something next to me to keep from falling into the white space. I heard the voice again and this time I could make out the words:

“What's goin' on?”

It was Pop. And I heard Mason's voice saying roughly, “Nothing is going on. He's having a nightmare, that's all.”

My eyes adjusted to the light. It was just the bedroom, not some big expanse of empty white space. I was sitting on the edge of the bed, like I was ready to get up and go somewhere. I was in a cold, sick sweat. I slowly realized I was clutching Mason's arm in a grip that'd leave bruises, and I tried to let go.

“I'm okay,” I whispered.

“Gosh, Tex, do you still have nightmares? I thought you'd outgrown that.”

I shook my head, still unable to talk too much.

“We were kidnapped at gunpoint not too long ago,” Mason said. “I reckon that could give anybody nightmares. I've dreamed about it myself.”

“Sorry I woke y'all up,” I said, trying to convince myself I really was awake, that the terror was over. “I'm okay now.”

I dug my fingers out of Mason's arm and tried my best to look okay. I couldn't quit shivering. Pop looked dubious. “You sure?”

“Yeah. I didn't mean to be hollerin'.”

“Well, maybe we can all get back to sleep now. You guys have to be at school pretty early.” Pop switched off the light and went back to his sleeping bag on the couch.

I swung myself back under the quilts. Mason crawled back around to his side.

“Mace?” I said. “You really have nightmares about that hitchhiker?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I figure they'll go away pretty soon.”

I was quiet. “I don't think that's what I was dreamin' about,” I said finally.

“I didn't figure it was,” he said.

I never did dream about the hitchhiker, and what's more, I didn't think about him much. All that seemed unimportant now that Pop was back, and Negrito was coming home. I did kind of get a kick out of the fuss people made over me at school, though. Nobody else in the whole school had ever been kidnapped, and only one other kid had been on the news, and that had been in grade school, in a spelling bee.

Miss Carlson was absent that day and we had a substitute teacher. We did all the usual things we do to substitutes, coughing at exactly one minute till, forming lines at the pencil sharpener, till she slapped a pop quiz on us. I got the feeling she'd been a substitute teacher before.

Before class was over she sent me to the office for talking. It wasn't my fault, really. Everybody wanted to know about the hitchhiker. Fortunately Mrs. Johnson saw my side of it, just told me not to let fame go to my head. While I was in the office I heard somebody say Miss Carlson had gone to a funeral, and then somebody else said it was the hitchhiker's funeral.

That bothered me. It took the fun out of being famous. I never thought about him having a funeral, or somebody going to it if he did. I hadn't thought about anybody missing him.

When Miss Carlson showed up the next day, I decided to find out for sure.

“Uh, Miss Carlson,” I said, standing at her desk after everybody else had gone on to their next class, “somebody told me you went to that guy's funeral, the one the highway patrol shot.”

“Yes,” she said. “I did.”

She didn't look like she was mad at me about it. She had real long eyelashes. I bet she was good-looking when she was young.

“Was he a relative or something?” That was what I was afraid of.

“No. Not even a friend, really.” She paused, like she was hunting for the right words. Finally she said, “I read a book once that ended with the words ‘the incommunicable past.' You can only share the past with someone who's shared it with you. So I can't explain to you what Mark was to me, exactly. I knew him a long time ago.”

I stood there, feeling like I do when I bump into things, not knowing what to do. “I'm sorry.”

Miss Carlson shook her head. “Tex, please don't let it worry you. I'm sad about what happened, but not surprised.” She glanced down into her grade book. “Now what ever happened to that other book report?”

I couldn't wait till the end of the month. Negrito would be coming home! Pop didn't get his old job back, at the cement plant, but he got another one, at the feed mill, pretty quick. Pop never had much trouble getting jobs. People tend to like him.

The day he was due home with his first two-week paycheck, I went bouncing through school like a ricocheting bullet. Somehow I didn't get sent to the office, though. Johnny broke the speed limit getting me home—riding double on his machine was breaking the law anyway, so it didn't take much to get him to break two.

Then it was an hour to wait till Pop got home. I thought I was going to go nuts. I went up to the horse pen and straightened up a couple of sagging fence posts and tacked up a strand of loose barbed wire. I'd spent the week before putting the rails back up on the pickup, so we'd have something to cart him home in. Negrito loaded surprisingly easy for a high-strung horse. All you had to do was show him a bucket of grain in the truck.

Pop wasn't home an hour later. Another hour later he still wasn't home. I got to thinking he had a car wreck. Mason came in, hot and sweaty from jogging.

“No, I don't think he had a wreck,” Mason said, dropping into a kitchen chair and gulping buttermilk straight from the carton. “It just slipped his mind.”

“Naw, something happened.”

“Nothing happened except somebody probably asked him to stop off and have a beer.”

About that time the phone rang. I let Mason get it. He got most of the phone calls at our house. A lot of them from girls.

“Oh, yeah? Well, what about going to get Tex's horse back? Forget about that?”

I went sick inside. Pop had forgot. Damn Mason, I got so tired of him being right all the time.

“Yeah, I know where he is. Sure, I'll do it. Will the check bounce? How much? Pop, I'll have to offer more than they paid me for him. Okay. Yeah, sure. Good luck.”

Mason came back in the kitchen. “Me and you'll have to go after him. Pop's in a pool tournament over in Broken Arrow. No telling how long he'll be there. Says he's sorry, he just clean forgot.”

“Well, at least he's giving me the money to get him back,” I said defensively.

“I thought I was supposed to be the stubborn one in this family,” Mason said.

My disappointment was beginning to fade. I was getting excited again. “Well come on, let's go!”

“No way. I got to take a bath first.”

“Mason!”

“It'll just take ten minutes.”

I started swearing at him, but he went on to the bathroom anyway. I had to resist an urge to go hold his head under water.

We got on the road finally. We had to drive clear to Muskogee.

“Boy, you really made sure I couldn't find him again, didn't you?” I said.

“That would have been all I needed, you getting arrested for horse stealing.”

“You're the one that should have been arrested,” I said.

Mason didn't say anything. We drove through Muskogee and turned down a blacktop road. It was getting dark, but you could see we were driving through a little housing development. The houses were each set on a couple of acres of land.

“You know your way around here pretty well,” I remarked.

“I came out to look the place over first. I told you I made sure those horses got good homes, didn't I?”

Him and his truth hang-up, I thought sourly. Then I brightened up as we turned into a driveway. I heard hoof beats as soon as we got out. “I'll be around back!” I shouted. Mason went to the front door. He could take care of the business end of it. I wanted to see Negrito.

There were floodlights turned on over a small wood corral in back. Negrito was tearing around some barrels, set up for barrel racing. Even though he could turn on a dime and hand you back a nickel change, I had never done barrel racing with him and was amazed to see how good he'd caught onto it in so short a time. After bending around the last barrel so sharp his rider's foot nearly touched the ground, Negrito flattened out in a dead gallop finish. When she pulled him up, he was blowing through his nose and snorting, the way he did when he was happy. I decided I could take up barrel racing if he liked it so much.

His rider saw me. She nudged Negrito into a canter and had him do a sliding stop at the fence where I stood.

“Who are you?” she asked. I didn't even look at her. Negrito was so surprised to see me that his ears were practically touching and he kept nickering from way down in his chest. I had all I could do to keep from grabbing him around the neck and crying.

“He used to be my horse,” I said. I reached out and stroked his neck. Man, he was clean. He must have been brushed morning noon and night to be that clean. It's a mess trying to get dust out of a winter coat.

“You're not the boy we bought him from,” the girl said. Her voice sounded stiff. For the first time I looked at her, seeing her. She was about twelve or thirteen, blonde, freckled, braced, her eyes a light sky color from behind her glasses.

“That was my brother. I didn't know he was selling him. It was sort of an accident.”

The girl slid off and stood by Negrito's head, holding the reins tight, like she thought I might grab them away from her.

“We paid for him,” she said. “It was fair and square.”

“Sure,” I said. Negrito was nibbling on my sleeve, the way he would just before biting a hunk out of you. I was getting so sick I couldn't see good. They weren't going to sell him. I wasn't going to get him back. Like she knew what I was thinking, the girl said, “He's my horse now.”

I looked around at the nice little paddock, with an open-faced barn. They didn't need the money. They could feed him through the winter. She wouldn't come home from school and find that paddock empty.

“I had a pony, but he died,” she was saying. “I didn't think I'd ever want another horse. Nicky was a birthday present.”

Didn't even get his name right, I thought bitterly. I asked Negrito how he liked it here.

“Oh, great, man, great.” His head bobbed up and down. “Good food, good fun, lots of attention.”

I didn't remind him I'd given him lots of attention, too. Horses are like real little kids. Now is what's important.

“He bites,” I said to the girl, not looking at her, still patting Negrito's neck.

“I know.”

He'd put on weight, but he'd been worked enough to turn it into hard muscle. His thick winter coat was like velvet.

“He spooks at things, too,” I said.

“I know.”

“He ain't really scared though, he's mostly just playing. I never hit him for it, you shouldn't hit a horse unless you really have to.”

I turned to her. Her face was stiff and she kept wrapping the reins around her wrists. “I know.”

I heard Mason honking for me. I knew he hadn't been able to make a deal. I leaned my head against Negrito's neck for a second. Horses really smell good.

“He missed you,” the girl said suddenly. I looked at her and she seemed to be sorry she let me have that much, “at first.”

I gave Negrito a final pat and turned away.

“I know,” I said.

“He just wouldn't sell. I offered him more than they gave for him, but he didn't even listen. Said his kid was happy with the horse and he wasn't going to upset her. Seems like her pony died last year and he thought she never would get over it. I did what I could.”

“Yeah,” I said, hardly able to talk for the ache in my throat “You did what you could all right.”

Mason got a defensive look on his face. “Well, it's a good home.”

“He had a good home.”

Mason didn't say anything, stepping on the speed a little when we passed a hitchhiker.

“Mace,” I said evenly, trying to keep my voice from shaking, “I am going to hate you the rest of my life for this. I mean it.”

Mason looked straight down the highway. “Who cares?” he said. But I'd seen a muscle in his jaw jump, and I knew I'd hurt him. It felt good.

It was the first time I realized hurting somebody could feel really good.

Somehow, losing Negrito that second time was harder than the first time. It was just knowing he really was gone for good, somebody else was feeding him and brushing him and he was watching for somebody else in the mornings and after school that made me feel like I had a constant toothache or something. Even when I was thinking about something else, I could feel it in the back of my mind. The only thing that could really take my mind off Negrito was Jamie.

We were kind of going together. I couldn't figure out exactly how it had happened, except that we started meeting between classes and had lunch together and I quit riding home on Johnny's cycle so me and Jamie could go to the drugstore and get a Coke before we rode the bus home. Everybody in the school knew we were going together. I used to wonder how guys ever got the nerve to ask a girl for a date, but since Jamie had been my friend before she was my girl friend, it was really easy to say at lunch one day, “You think Cole'd let you go out with me?”

She shook her head. Her hair curved around her face like dark feathers.

For a second there I hated Cole Collins. Then I didn't hate him, because he was Jamie's father and I'd have to learn to get along with him.

“It's not just you,” she said. “Cole thinks I'm too young to date anybody. No car dates until I'm sixteen. And Mona agrees with him. All she ever does is agree with him. If I ever get married, I'm never going to agree with my husband.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Not ever?”

She looked at me with the eyes of a wicked colt. “Oh, maybe sometimes … Anyway, I bet Cole wouldn't mind me going to watch Bob play basketball. If you were watching Mason, we could sit together.”

“Cole doesn't go to the games?” I asked. Pop never missed one.

“Cole went through all that stuff with Charlie, only it was football. And when Blackie refused to go out for anything, sports got to be a family hassle. Cole and Blackie really had some go-rounds … you know what? Cole would like to have Mason for a kid, I bet. And Mason would like a father like Cole.”

“Huh,” I said, because I figured it was politer than saying, “Mace hates Cole's guts.”

“No, really, Tex, listen. That time you and Johnny and Bob came home drunk, Cole kind of hinted real strong for us to stop hanging around with you guys, but I could tell he'd been impressed with Mason. He's not too impressed with any of us. Charlie's too much of a playboy and now Bob's got it into his head that he wants to be a priest; Johnny's such a scatterbrain I think Cole'll be relieved if he just makes it to twenty-one. And me. The little lady. Cole has the hardest time understanding that I'm a person, just like the rest of his kids, that being a girl doesn't mean I'm going to be sweet and dainty and grow up to be a devoted little mother just like Mona. Geez, it gives me cold chills just to think of it…”

She scrunched her face up like she was hearing squeaky chalk across the blackboard.

“How about Blackie?” I asked. This was really interesting. I never thought about what parents would want out of a kid. I thought you just took what you got.

“Don't ever tell anybody I told you this.” She dropped her voice. “Swear?”

“I swear.”

“You know when Blackie moved out—he didn't just move, he ran away from home. It was after a big fight with Cole about not going to college. Not playing football was bad enough, but Blackie didn't even want to go to college. He didn't even want to go to art school. Said he had to know what he could teach himself first. Man, it drove Cole nuts to argue with him, because Blackie never argued back. You know how quiet he was. Sometimes I couldn't tell he was in the same room with me. He just stood there and let Cole get madder and madder. Then that night he took off. He wrote Mona from San Francisco to let her know he was okay. Tex, Cole and Mona had some awful fights about it. I'd never heard them fight before. They didn't know we were listening. Me and Johnny sat on the stairs and listened to them and we both were crying like little kids…”

I reached over and took her hand. I couldn't stand the thought of her crying. She took a sudden deep breath. “Anyway, Cole hasn't made a big deal out of sports since. Basketball was Bob's idea. Blackie had the perfect build for football … it must be weird for him, to look like a football player and be totally different on the inside.”

I had my mind on other things. “Mason sometimes goes to parties after the games,” I said suddenly. “With a bunch of other people. So I could get the pickup and drive us around.”

Suddenly I remembered Johnny. If I had the truck, he'd want to go driving around, too. It would be hard to tell him the truth. He'd never understand how I felt about Jamie. He was interested in girls, sure, but it was like being interested in
Playboy
pictures and stuff like that. He hadn't got to the point where he was interested in
real
girls. And even though he loved Jamie in the same way he loved their dog, he didn't quite realize that she was a girl, the kind of girl somebody would lay awake thinking about for hours.

“Johnny—” I began. Jamie quirked the corners of her mouth down. “I'll tell Johnny he's not wanted.”

“But…”

“Well, he's not, is he? All right. He'll take it a lot better from me than you.”

Boy, she was mean. I really liked that. I really did.

They were out to kill Mason. It was plain from the second he stepped on court and the opposing team started booing. People were trying to make him foul, or just plain knock him down and put him out of the game. They didn't know Mason. That kind of thing just made him cooler and cooler. He really played better when people were booing him than when our side cheered him. I took Mason pretty much for granted at home, but watching him on a basketball court kind of put you in awe. Man, he was good!

I don't think I could have stood having all those people not liking me. But then, Mason never cared much whether people liked him or not.

“Everybody does though,” I said to Jamie, after telling her that.

“You mean he's popular. Everybody thinks he's cool. Not everybody likes him.”

I didn't want to know if that included her. It would really bother me if she didn't like Mason.

It took everybody screaming at once to get my mind back on the game. Everybody was on their feet screeching as Mason caught a rebound and made a wild shot that turned out to be a basket and on his way down from the leap an opposing player slammed into him. He came up off the floor so fast it looked like a bounce and for a second I thought that the other guy was going to get stuffed through the basket, head first. Whistles were blowing all over. It looked like everybody was going to rush into the middle of the court and start killing each other. People were just going crazy.

Mason stood there, holding his right elbow. As far away as I was I shivered. I remembered one other time I'd seen him fighting to control himself like that. He was right on the edge of blowing up like a stick of dynamite.

The coach came out and looked at Mason and then Mason turned and stalked off the court. The screaming was unbelievable. He sat down on the bench while the doctor looked at his elbow, bent his arm up and down some, then said something to Mason that made him shake his head angrily. You could see the doctor getting mad. Finally Mason got up and followed him out.

“Hey,” I said, “he must be hurt.”

I doubt that Jamie heard me. The guy who had knocked Mason down was being taken out of the game, boos and cheers following him. I looked over to where Pop was sitting with Ernie Driscoll's father. He was pushing through the crowd, going to the locker room.

“Come on,” I grabbed Jamie's wrist. “I want to see how he is.”

“You go. I've got a brother in this game, too, you know.”

I didn't like leaving her there in that screaming mob, but on second thought, she could hold her own pretty well. I shoved my way off the bleachers and ran to the locker room.

“It's not serious,” the doctor was saying.

“Then I can go back in,” Mason said. His arm was in a sling. Pop watched him worriedly. Suddenly I remembered when I busted five ribs in a junior rodeo. Pop had been nice, concerned, but not real worried. Of course, my memory could be wrong. It's pretty good, though, mostly. But he always had worried about Mason more.

“Not this game. A lot of good you'd be with your right arm messed up,” Pop said roughly.

Mason shrugged. “My left is just as good.”

Mason is ambidextrous. That means he can use either his right or left hand. For some reason, when I was little, I thought that meant he was part water lizard. Don't ask me why.

“You're out of this game all right,” the doctor said. “You're lucky you're not out of the season.”

Just the thought of it made Mason flinch, and to hide it he said, “Hey, Tex. Want to trade clothes with me and go shoot a few baskets?”

“Sure,” I said.

“Got another basketball player in the family?” the doctor asked.

“If we do, I didn't know about it,” Pop said.

“Well, maybe you ought to take the time to find out,” Mason snapped. He never was much fun to be around if he was mad or hurting, so I just said, “If you're okay then I'm getting back to the game.”

“Good idea. Go root for Bob Collins. He's gonna need all the help he can get, now.”

Being a big shot didn't go to Mason's head. Much.

He was right, though. Poor Bob was everywhere, trying to make up for Mason not being anywhere. His main function had been to get the ball to Mason, and you could see Bob forget and pause and wonder where the heck Mason was. He even tried shooting baskets, which shows you how desperate he was. He wasn't too bad at it, though, for a short person.

Me and Jamie yelled ourselves hoarse for him, along with a few hundred other people, but it wasn't any use. We lost by six points.

“You'd think Mason was their lucky rabbit's foot or something!” Jamie griped as we drifted with the crowd out to the parking lot. Most of the people from our school were pretty mad. “They just gave up without him. I'd like to know just what it is that Mason's got. Look at Bob, smarter and nicer and twice as good-looking, and everybody likes him—but ask anybody who the most popular guy in the school is and they'll say ‘Mace McCormick.' And Mason's too snotty to speak to half of them.”

“Maybe being popular and being liked ain't the same thing.” I said, deciding not to point out to her that the same things could be said about her. The bunch she ran with was the “popular” girl group, but they weren't all well-liked, even Jamie.

The Riverview people were acting pretty silly, jeering and cheering and stuff, but I didn't pay much attention till Ralph Hernesy poked me and said, “I guess that shows you, huh, Mac?”

Even though we went to different schools I'd known him a long time, from horse shows and rodeos. And school games.

“Oh, bug off,” Jamie said. Or something like that.

Now I wasn't in the best mood I've ever been in. I probably wasn't as bad off as some of us were, judging from looks on faces, but losing the game, and knowing we only lost because they'd put a hit man on Mason, hadn't exactly made me cheerful.

Ralph looked at Jamie. “I never thought you was any judge of horses, Tex, and you sure ain't any judge of a…”

I belted him so quick I didn't realize what I was doing till after it was done and Ralph was sitting on the ground spitting out a tooth.

Somebody shoved me in the back. “What's the matter? Sore loser?”

I whirled around, but the shover took off and disappeared in the crowd. I turned back to Ralph. He was crawling around frantically, looking for his tooth. “That was my false tooth, dammit!”

“Ain't you a little young for false teeth?” I asked, dumbfounded.

“I knocked the real one out last year at a rodeo. My Mom will kill me! It cost a fortune.”

I squatted down beside him, licking the blood off my skinned knuckles. “Huh. Can you put it back in if you find it?”

“I think so.”

I looked around for it for a second, till Jamie poked me with her foot and said, “I think we're going to get to see a riot.”

All round us people were shoving each other, or already into fights. I jumped up and grabbed Jamie's wrist, dragging her through the crowd.

“Wait! I want to see what's going to happen!”

I blocked a punch somebody threw at me and speeded up.

“Sweet stuff,” I told her, “if you want to watch a riot, watch it on TV. If you're there, you're in it.”

I opened the door to the pickup and shoved her in. You could hear the police sirens coming. I didn't particularly want to renew my acquaintance with the town cops, so I laid a little rubber getting out of the parking lot.

Jamie twisted around on her knees to look out the cab window.

“I wanted to know what was going to happen!”

I slapped her on the bottom, and she turned back around and slid down onto the seat.

“You'll hear all about it tomorrow.”

“Secondhand.”

“Yeah. The black eyes'll be secondhand, too.” I paused. “What time you supposed to meet Johnny and Bob?”

“In an hour. At the car wash. We've got time to get a Coke or something.”

I followed the highway to the gravel pit road and turned off. After a mile or so I pulled the truck over and switched off the lights.

“They sell Cokes around here?” Jamie asked mildly. In the cold starlight her eyes glittered like a cat's.

“You had a Coke at the game and I ain't thirsty.” I said. I put my arm around her. I had been thinking about this for a long time. I kissed her, soft, so not to spook her, but it wasn't any rinky-dinky Mickey Mouse kiss. After the first one, I wasn't fooling. I loved her so much it seemed like she was a part of me, or should be, or there was a way for her to be…