Tex (3 page)

“Robert!” Mason called from the kitchen, “come here a second.”

Sometimes Mason called Bob Robert. He was the only person who did that. Bob didn't like to be called Robert. He took a lot off Mason, though.

“By the way,” Bob called, “Cole is looking for you two. I have the feeling there's going to be some butts blistered.”

“Aw, Bobby, why didn't you say so?” Johnny frowned. His father would still whomp him one if he thought Johnny needed it, and hardly a week went by that Jamie didn't get spanked or grounded or both. Bob, being seventeen, could get away with more.

“Let's get going,” Johnny said, picking up his helmet.

“Oh, we're going to get it, anyway, so we might as well stay.”

“If Cole finds us
here
, we're dead ducks.”

Cole Collins didn't like his kids hanging around me and Mason. He thought we were bad influences. He might have found out Pop had been in prison once, too, but I wasn't sure. I never told anybody, not even Johnny. Mason said he'd skin me if I did. But Cole might have found out, anyway. There were a lot worse people than me and Mason, but you couldn't tell Cole that. He judged a lot by money, and we sure didn't have any.

“I want to make sure Mason's through beating up on people for the night,” Jamie said. I looked over at her and realized I liked the way she cut her hair. It looked like somebody had put a bowl over her head and cut around it. She had almost-black hair. It looked good with blue eyes.

“What could you do about it if he isn't?” Johnny said.

“I don't like my friends getting pounded on.”

“He's
my
friend,” Johnny said.

“My friend, too,” Jamie said.

I felt kind of dumb, sitting there being talked about like a dog or something. I was real tired, too. I felt like I had a headache all over.

“Maybe you better go home,” I said. “I don't want you guys to get into trouble.”

“Yeah, Jamie, if we get grounded this week we can't go to the Fair.”

“Well, okay. Just wait a minute.” Jamie went to the door of the kitchen. “If you ever hit Tex again I'll…”

I don't know what she was going to threaten him with. Mace just cut her off short. He said something he doesn't usually say to girls, but with four brothers I doubt that it was anything Jamie hadn't heard before.

And Bob said patiently, “Jamie, go home.”

“All right. Come on, Johnny. Let me drive, huh?”

“Cole said you weren't supposed to.”

“Cole,” she said sarcastically, “is not here. You don't exactly knock yourself out to obey his every rule, anyway.”

“Girls…” Johnny began, and Jamie snapped, “You give me any of that garbage and I'll make you sorry.”

Johnny gulped in mock fright but handed her the keys and the helmet. Jamie had the reputation of being a really mean person. “Bye, Tex. Seeya.”

I just nodded.

“Come on,” said Jamie, “I bet I can hit sixty between here and home.”

They only lived about a half a mile away.

“You better not,” called Bob. Big brothers are all alike.

I almost felt like going to bed, I was so tired and achey. But it wasn't time to go to bed, so I picked up a
Western Horseman
magazine off the floor and crawled into the big chair to look at it. That put me right next to the kitchen wall and I could hear everything Mason and Bob were saying. I hadn't planned it that way, but I didn't move, either.

“…swear I could have killed him,” Mason said. “It was like I blew a fuse or something. And it wasn't his fault. Damn Pop—he's the one who ought to be punched out. God, I didn't mean to hit Tex like that.”

“Well, he looks like he'll live. Forget about it, Mace. He will.”

“I'm not so sure. I wouldn't.”

“You're not Tex. Mason, we could have bought the horses. You know Cole is already looking for a way to get Johnny off that bike, and Jamie's going to start hounding him for one pretty soon.”

“Yeah, sure,” Mason said bitterly. “You think I could take knowing you guys had our horses on top of everything else you've got?”

They were silent. I always thought the Collins couldn't help having a lot of money any more than we could help not having any, but whenever Mason thought about it, it really hacked him off.

Bob understood him, as usual. “You had to sell them, Mason, and you knew Tex would take it hard. You're going to have to quit brooding about it.”

“If I hadn't sold them, they would have starved, or we would have. I am not going to quit school and get a full-time job. I'm not even going to get a part-time job till basketball's over with. Basketball is my out. I'll sell anything I have to to make it through this winter. I have
got
to get out of here, man … Bob, I've had three different scouts talking to me already. If I can get through this winter, I can go anywhere.”

I went to bed, more to get away from that conversation than anything else. If Mason could get a good price for me, I wondered how long it'd take him to make out the bill of sale. Before today I didn't really think he could go off and leave me here by myself if Pop didn't come home. Now I knew. He'd go so quick it'd make my head spin. And Pop—but he had to come home. He always had. He'd just forgot about how long he'd been gone. Anyway, if he knew Mason was gone, he wouldn't leave me here by myself. I couldn't imagine being here by myself.

The house was colder than a frog's tail. I decided to sleep with my clothes on, which I do sometimes anyway, if I don't feel like taking them off. I piled all the quilts on top, instead of saving one to sleep on, and a mattress button bit me all night. We didn't have any sheets. Sheets get torn up real fast, especially if you take a nap with your spurs on.

I woke up at six, just like always, pulled on my boots and jacket, and stumbled out the back door to the garage, where we keep the feed. I noticed we were low on grain, and thought about reminding Mason to get some. Then I went up the well-beaten path to the corral. It wasn't till I got there, wondering why nobody was nickering, that I remembered.

I stood staring at the empty corral, shivering. The horses were gone. Negrito was gone. I'd never find them. It was final.

Once, a couple of years ago, I got into trouble with the law. I borrowed a car that somebody had left the keys in. I took it back, but the police were waiting there for me. They let me sit in a jail cell a couple of hours to think about it before they called Pop.

I remember seeing his face, when he came to get me, almost like he had written me off, like I wasn't his kid anymore. I remember thinking, “This is the worst thing that'll ever happen to me.”

And here I was, wrong.

I sat down at the kitchen table, sore and dazed and half-surprised that the world seemed to be rolling along as usual. Mason, came into the kitchen with a bottle of iodine. I looked away while he dabbed some on the cut above my left eye and on the raw knot on my forehead. I couldn't think of anything to say to him.

Then he laid the back of his hand on my forehead and said, “You're running a little bit of a fever—you want to stay home from school today?”

“All right,” I said. Then I said, “I'll tell everybody I was sleep-walking and fell down the back steps.”

I still wouldn't look at him, but after a second he reached out and patted me on the head like a puppy. I knew we were made up. But things weren't the same.

I knew, in the back of my mind, that Mason had changed a lot during the last couple of years, but now it seemed like I really didn't even know him too well anymore. He used to laugh more and yell less and while he always had been a reserved kind of guy, at least he used to talk to me like I was another human person. Nowadays he was constantly surprising me. I couldn't tell how he was going to act, what he was going to do next.

Like a couple of days later, he announced he wasn't going to the Fair. I was as shocked as if he'd said he was going to skip Christmas.

“How come?” I was sitting in the kitchen, riding a chair backward, watching him make the weekly batch of chili. Mason was really good at chili-making. A funny thing, though, when people tried asking him for the recipe, he never could remember how he did it. I'd watched him a dozen times before, and he never did make it the same way twice.

“Why should I go? It'll just be the same as last year. And the year before that. Rides and crummy sideshows and gyp games and livestock shows…”

His voice trailed off. Any time the conversation got near horses, a funny kind of uneasy silence would drop on us like a cloud promising thunder. Since the fight both of us had to work at it to sound like we were carrying on a normal conversation, but now he was thinking the same thing I was. Last year I'd entered Negrito in some of the Western classes at the Fair and won three ribbons, one of them a first place. And Mr. Kencaide, of Kencaide Quarter Horse Ranch, came up to me after and said, “You've done a lot with this little horse, kid. You've done a real good job.” Mr. Kencaide is the kind of guy who doesn't go around talking to a lot of people.

Thinking about Negrito made my stomach lurch like I'd dropped off a cliff.

“Anyhow,” Mason continued quickly, “it's a waste of money. I didn't like it last year.”

“You've been to the Fair every year of your life!” I said.

“So I ought to know what I'm missing, right? I just outgrew it, Tex. That's all there is to it.”

He tasted the chili, then added some more peppers. Mason's chili was good and strong.

“Well, I ain't And I'm going,” I said. He didn't say anything.

“I ain't going to outgrow it, either. I'll think the Fair is fun no matter how old I get.”

“That,” Mason said, “is quite likely.”

I breathed a little easier. At least he wasn't going to try to keep me from going.

“Can I take the pickup?” I asked finally.

“Nope. No way. Last time you drove it by yourself you got in that drag race that almost killed you. You wouldn't last ten minutes in the city. Anyway, you don't have a license.”

That was pretty corny. We both started driving when we were twelve years old. But he never had let me drive in the city by myself.

“I bet Bob'll drive me and Johnny,” I said.

“Probably. Bob doesn't have the sense God gave a goat. Here's three bucks. That's all you're going to get, so don't ask for any more.”

I was surprised to get that much. Mason didn't part with money easy. If Pop had been here he probably would have given us ten bucks apiece.

“I wish Pop would come home,” I said. Mason looked hacked-off. Just mentioning Pop got him irritated lately. You'd think since he was Pop's favorite kid, he'd be a little easier on him. I'd known Pop liked Mason better ever since I can remember. It was a little hard to figure, since I was the one who acted like him, who wanted to be like him. Pop and Mason weren't anything alike. Pop never took anything too serious. Even that time I got into law trouble, he got over it quicker than I thought he would. Pop was a lot of fun. Mason wasn't exactly Mr. Chuckles.

“Maybe he ain't coming back,” Mason said. It seemed like my heart stopped beating for a second, then started off at a gallop.

“What makes you say that?”

“Well, he's never been gone this long before. He's not making any money rodeoing anymore, it's just an excuse to go roaming around with the other good ole boys. I figure one of these days we're going to slip his mind completely.”

“You're nuts,” I burst out desperately. “He's coming back. You're crazy to talk like that.”

“Maybe so,” Mason said, but he didn't sound like he meant it.

“Is your hair wet?” he asked suddenly.

“Yeah, I just washed it.”

“Again? You washed it yesterday.”

“Yeah, well, Jamie said it looked better when I wash it every day.”

“Jamie gonna pay the hospital bills when you come down with pneumonia?”

There was a funny kind of quiet. Our mother had died of pneumonia. It was a long time ago.

“I bet Pop's home by Thanksgiving,” I said.

Mason said, “You're on.”

Sunday was the first day of the Fair and Bob Collins drove us into the city for it. He had a date with him, so me and Johnny had to swear to sit in the back seat and not move and not talk and only breathe enough to keep us alive. Bob had driven us places before.

We lived about twenty miles from the city. That was good in a way, since it was close enough to get to when you got really bored with a small town, and you probably knew what was going on more than somebody in a small town who was a hundred miles away from a city. But it was bad, too, since as soon as you said you were from Garyville, the city kids thought you were a hick. Almost all the kids in our town wore long hair and old jeans and smoked grass and got drunk, just like the city kids, but somehow everybody thought it was more cool when the city kids did that stuff. Especially the city kids.

Me, I liked living in the country and some of the other kids liked it, too. Some of them pretended they did because they couldn't live anywhere else. Then you had the people like Mason, who were itching to get out. I couldn't quite figure out why.

Me and Johnny kept our word and didn't pester Bob a bit on the way to the Fair, in case he decided to turn around and take us back. (We had several things planned for the way home, when he couldn't do much about it.) We did clown around a little bit, but I doubt that he heard us—his girl friend talked a mile a minute. Bob dropped us off in front of the north entrance to the Fair grounds and told us to meet him there at ten o'clock, then he drove on to the movies or wherever he was going.

It cost a dollar just to get into the Fair, which was a good inspiration for trying to figure out a way to sneak in. I'd managed it the year before, and me and Johnny walked up and down the fences for about half an hour looking for a safe spot to crawl over. Maybe a lot of people had managed it the year before, because this year there were too many cops and guards to even try it.

“Shoot,” I said, as we forked over the dollar at the entrance, “that leaves me two bucks. I'll get about two rides out of that.”

“Don't worry about it,” Johnny said. “I'm loaded.”

Johnny never tried to brag about having money—he got five-dollars-a-week allowance, and could usually get some more from either Bob or Jamie, and he'd been saving up for the Fair for a long time. He was real generous, not to show off or anything, it was just that money was something to have a good time with, and if you were his buddy, he wanted you to have a good time, too. I liked that attitude. I never felt bad about letting him pay for anything if I didn't happen to have any money. Mason, man, he wouldn't let you give him the time of the day.

I was sorry Mason was missing the Fair this year, but I was glad to be there with Johnny. Whenever I went with Mason, he just about drove me nuts, because he wanted to plan everything out. He'd walk up and down, and look everything over, and decide exactly which ride was the scariest, and which game he could win at (shooting baskets last year he cleaned up on stuffed animals), and where to buy the cheapest hot dog. We'd be there an hour before we really did anything.

The only kind of plan I ever followed was going through the mile-long livestock barn first, so I could look at the different breeds of horses. But this year I didn't feel like looking at a lot of horses, so after we gawked at the cattle awhile I said, “Let's head on out to the Midway.”

Johnny said, “Sure,” not asking a question. Johnny was smarter than most people thought. Once you get a reputation for being scatterbrained, people always think you never have a serious thought in your head, but that isn't always true. I ought to know.

We ran from ride to ride, just hitting the scary ones. Some were fast, and some flipped you upside down, and some whirled you around, and some did all three about a hundred feet in the air. Between rides we ate corn dogs and fried chicken and ice cream and corn on the cob. When we weren't eating or riding we played the games, trying to knock down bottles with baseballs, or pitch nickels in a plate. I won a big red toy poodle rifle-shooting. They always screw up the sights or something on those rifles, but after one round I figure out how to compensate for it, and the rest is easy. I am a very good shot. I hunt ducks mostly.

Johnny won a bear, throwing darts. We felt silly carrying the animals around and gave them to some little kids. Then we watched the preview of the girlie show, but you had to be eighteen to go in. Johnny wanted to go through the freak show, so I stood around outside while he did. I'd been through the freak show before, and last year it depressed me for some reason.

Me and Johnny got kicked off the double Ferris wheel. Even though it was the highest ride at the Fair, giving you a view of the whole city, after some of the other rides it seemed a little tame. So we livened it up a little by rocking back and forth. We were on the top wheel, trying to scare each other, forgetting neither one of us has the sense to be scared. We almost flipped the seat, but then some people down below noticed and the operator brought us down in a hurry, yelling at us before we even came to a stop. He was a mean-looking carnie, and we shot off before he got a chance to do much more than holler, “You kids want to kill yourself, go jump off the Mad Mouse!”

We ran behind a hot dog stand, and leaned against it, laughing.

“Well, I wondered who those two idiots were, and I might have guessed.”

I turned around. There was Jamie and some other girl. Jamie had on blue jeans and a blue sweater and a funny blue Fair hat with a big feather in it. She looked really cute.

“We were just having fun,” Johnny said. “That's what it's for, isn't it?”

“You moron,” Jamie said. Then she said, “This is Marcie, her mother brought us.”

I'd seen her friend at school, but hadn't paid much attention to her. Ninth-graders don't mess around with seventh-graders much.

We started down the Midway again, Johnny and Marcie walking together, me talking to Jamie.

“You're almost looking human again,” Jamie said. “I'm surprised at how many people believed that sleep-walking story you were giving out.”

“Well, I do sleep-walk,” I said. People always seemed to find that fact more interesting than I do. “You didn't tell them any different?”

Jamie shook her head. “Wouldn't do me any good if I did. Mr. Super Cool Mason can do no wrong, as long as we get to the state finals in basketball this year.”

Some of the couples we passed had their arms around each other, with one hand in the other's back pocket. That looked like fun, but I didn't think Jamie would go for it.

“You guys been to the fortune teller yet?” she asked.

“Naw, we wouldn't waste money on junk like that,” Johnny answered.

“She really is good,” Jamie said. “Come on, let's go. I want to hear what she tells you guys.”

We followed along. Jamie had a way of making you do what she said. Anyway, if the fortune teller was any good, maybe I could find out where Negrito was. We stopped outside the booth.

“No way,” Johnny said. “I'm not going to throw away a whole dollar.”

“Well, hell, I'll pay for it.” Jamie slung her purse off her shoulder.

“Cole's going to cream you if he hears you cussing like that anymore.”

“He's not here to hear it, is he? Go on in.”

Johnny took the dollar, winking at me. One of his favorite tricks was to see how much money he could worm out of his family. He was good at it, but then, he wasn't related to Mason.

“Maybe you guys could ride home with Bob and us,” I said.

“No thanks,” Jamie said. “I'm around them enough.”

“You know, Jamie,” Marcie giggled, “your brother is really kind of cute.”

“You should see Charlie,” Jamie said shortly. I got the definite feeling she didn't like other girls being interested in her brothers.

Johnny came out of the small tent. “Did she say you were going or staying?” Jamie asked him.

“Staying,” Johnny said.

“What are you talking about?”

“You'll see.” Jamie started to get out another dollar.

“I'll pay for it,” I said. It was my last dollar, and one Johnny had loaned me at that, and I sort of wanted to save it to do the shooting gallery again. Jamie liked stuffed animals. But I wouldn't feel right letting her pay for anything.

I went inside the tent. It was kind of cramped, and so dark after the neon glare outside that I had a hard time seeing at first. With the curtains pulled shut, all the Fair noises seemed muffled and far away. The place sort of gave me the creeps.