Ghost Medicine (12 page)

We knew better than to even knock on her door without first gathering up a couple armloads of stovewood.

The inside of that round steel house saved up all the colds from a year of nights. Maybe it wasn't so much the temperature as the thought of those black widows dangling up there. Rose was bundled in what looked like at least six layers of sweaters, the outermost pink, and stretched to the limit of its buttons' holding strength.

“Sit down, boys,” she said, pointing us toward her two folding chairs and the oak half-barrel that doubled as a table and a third seat. We dumped the wood down on the dirt floor by the stove.

“We got some stuff for you. Food, too,” I said. “We'll be right back.”

And we went out to get the supplies we'd brought.

“You better believe I do,” Tommy said when Rose asked him if he had any tobacco.

As soon as we sat down, that brown kitten pounced on my lap, but I pushed it down. Tom spit at it and it howled and kicked its back legs up and disappeared in the dark end of Rose's home.

“He's a real mean cat,” Rose said. “That's good out here ‘cause he might live a long time that way. Anyways, I don't use bug spray no more.”

And then Rose spit at the side of the woodstove, making a hissing sizzle. “You boys come for your horses, then? Well, you better get out there and catch ‘em. It's not gonna be too easy, you know.”

“It'll be easy enough,” Tommy said, and spit on the floor.

“Are you sure it's gonna be okay if we take one for each of us?” I guess I still couldn't believe she was just letting us take some horses for nothing.

“Sometimes people'll just give you something, Tennis Shoes, without expecting nothing in return,” she said, and pushed the tobacco down deeper in her front lip with her tongue. “Is that so hard for you to reckon with?”

“Sometimes everything is too hard for that boy to reckon with, Miss Rose,” Tommy said. “But we're working on him. Let me just get him up on that horse of his and he'll stop asking you to say no to him.”

Rose pushed herself away from the stove and turned to face me.

“Well, get up. I want to see you cowboys catch those horses.”

Tommy reached out his right hand and pulled me to my feet. I almost never took my hat off inside Rose's house, but not just because I was afraid of the spiders, it was that I felt like Rose's place was somewhere you just didn't need to take it off and it wouldn't matter. I pushed my hat down straight as we walked out the door into the bright sunlight. Tommy snapped at his can of tobacco and held it out to me.

“Want some?”

“Okay.”

Rose laughed behind me as I dipped my fingers into the can. “Ha! Look what he's doin' to that boy now! Ha!”

I told Tom, “Last time I did this, you got bit by a snake.”

We didn't get any horses that day from Rose. I could hear her belly-laughing as we took off after them, Reno trying to cut right into them and Arrow lagging back on the outside. Tom and me leaning forward over the saddle horns, swinging ropes to move the ones we had our eyes on, trying to cut them out. The black mare that I admired looked like she would be foaling soon, and I didn't want to scare her too bad, but she was smart and stayed away from us by hiding among the other horses. Tom was after a real tall reddish-roan stallion that looked to be about two years old, and maybe seventeen hands already. And he was the one in charge, I could tell, because where he went the rest of those horses followed along, younger colts trailing in the back. There was no way Arrow would get Tommy anywhere near that mean boy.

We weren't used to riding like that, either. Reno was so tall and Arrow's legs were so stiff, and cutting wild horses from a nervous herd was a lot harder than they always made it look in the movies, where no one would ever get dirty or make a mistake, or have his horse going one way when he was leaning the other.

Tommy was the first to fall off. He landed on his elbow and was bleeding pretty good, but got right up and brushed himself off, cussing at Arrow, and went back for another try.

I laughed at him when he fell, and then immediately fell off myself when Reno took a sharp turn to his left and I flipped, facefirst, over his shoulders. I landed on my chin, got dirt in my mouth, and a cut over my eyebrow. But it was still fun. I came up spitting dirt, and my tobacco with it. I wiped the blood away with the back of my gloved hand and replaced my hat as Tom rode up to me.

“Want some more?” he asked, holding out his can of tobacco.

I spit out some more dirt. “Yeah.”

“Is it me, Stotts, or are these the spookiest horses you ever saw? And fastest.”

“I can only get close to the ugly ones.”

“I guess they like your looks.”

“Well, that big roan of yours is going to have to get shot before you lay a hand on him.”

“With a bazooka.”

“Twice.”

I looked down and noticed one of my shoes had come off and was about ten feet away in a patch of weeds. I limped over and got it, jamming my dirt-crusted socked foot back into it without untying. I tossed Tom his tobacco, and he snapped it down and took some more for himself. “What do you say we try again another day, Stottsy?”

“I was just waiting for you to say so. Let's go tell Rose we'll try again after we're healed up. And clean.”

Rose was waiting outside her house when we rode up. That small brown cat saw us and took off into the brush, running like it was on fire. The sun was getting low and the afternoon was cooling.

“Ha! You two cowboys look like you run into a pack of Indians.”

“Might've,” Tom said, and spit.

“We're hoping if you don't mind if we come back another day and try again,” I said.

“Mind? Mind? It's you the ones who should mind doing it again. Ha!” Then she turned toward her door. “Well, get down now and I'll give you something to drink before you go home. Of course I don't mind you boys coming back to get your horses. I gave ‘em to you.” And she opened the door.

Tommy looked at me. I shrugged my shoulders, then, painfully and slowly, we got down from our horses.

Rose was opening up one of those big green jugs of wine when we came in.

“You boys just drink a glass of this and you'll feel a lot better.”

“Okay with me,” Tom said.

So we sat there around the light of her stove in our usual places, Tommy looking out for that cat, and she gave us each a big glass of yellow-looking wine.

That wine tasted horrible at first, but it kind of changed flavors as I drank more and more of it out of the glass. And she was right, it did make the hurting stop; and it made me feel real warm inside, too. Tommy finished his first and Rose offered him more, but I said no, ‘cause we had to go before it got dark. We got up, a little rubber-legged, but I felt more like riding my horse right then than I had in a long time. At that moment, Tom wouldn't have even had to ask me twice to go out there and try to catch that roan and the black mare again, too. We thanked Rose and told her we'd be back soon; then we left.

“Man, I got to pee really bad,” I said.

“Me, too. Let's go over there in those trees. I guess it would be pretty rude to take a piss right here next to her house.”

“Rude? Jeez, Buller, she's not the Queen of England.”

And then we both laughed, really hard.

The sun was down and the sky was pale slate by the time we rode away from that steel house. Along the way, I noticed that Tommy was getting Arrow to move pretty good and confident, despite the lameness in his front legs.

“You look like hell, Stotts.”

“You've probly rode with uglier. I'm not cut bad, anyhow, it just bled a lot,” I said. “It doesn't hurt.”

“I bet it doesn't right now.”

“When do you want to come back?”

“Tomorrow. And I'm bringing her some bug spray for that new cat of hers.”

“Then you won't have nothing to spit at in there.”

“I bet you're not much bigger than that cat, Stottsy.”

“Do you think she knows we don't know what we're doing?”

“It's a fair guess.” He spit and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand.

“We could put up a pipe corral on the other side of the fence when we catch ‘em,” I said. “Benavidez wouldn't mind. We could tame ‘em there.”

“We're never gonna catch ‘em,” Tommy said.

He lifted his hat and scratched his fingers through his black hair.

“I am.”

“You got some kind of strategy?”

“I'm gonna try to be nicer to ‘em, I think.”

Tommy burst out laughing. “Damn, Stotts, that's a good one. You know what I believe?”

I leaned forward in my saddle. Tommy had to be drunk, I thought. He never told me what he believed, not one time in my life.

“What?”

“Wild horses don't even know what sugar is.”

And we laughed and slid sideways and slumped over in our saddles along the trail to the ranch as darkness fell, all the way back to that little chute we had cut in the fence.

“Watch this, Tommy. I'm jumping it.”

“I guess you still have plenty more blood left in your head, then.”

And I snapped Reno's reins a little and gave him a kick and we circled around once and went right for that barbed wire fence and I pulled him up, staying low and forward on him, and he glided right over the top of that fence like it wasn't even there.

I believe that things happen for a reason, but I do not believe, like most people I know, that those reasons are conscious and directed. There might be a God, but if there is, I know He is not benevolent; He is, at best, ambivalent to all of the things set in motion in this world. So things do not happen by coincidence, and everything that is, is really a collision of paths. And so luck, which I also do not believe in in the way that most people do, is merely a chain of certain reckless collisions.

I believe all things happen for a reason, then ripple like the surface of a pond once a rock has been skipped. And I believe in the medicine, the signals. Tom Buller had the snake medicine that brought change, the shedding of the skin, that ability to just crawl out of the past and be new. Nothing seemed to matter or leave a mark on him. That summer, we all had the ghost medicine that made us vanish and fade in ways we never thought, never saw. Anyway, it was what we wanted. And I guess that's how all boys die.

I spent a lot of days after that season of the ghost medicine, as I remember it all now, wondering how I ended up banging and scraping into so many troubles in such a short time, through such a young life.

I remember sneaking to her house to meet her, the night after Chase Rutledge punched me; I can almost hear the faintness of our whispers, feel the warmth of her breath at my ear.

“Luz?”

She looked over at me. Her feet were bare; she didn't want her father to hear her stealing through his home to meet a boy outside his front door. She stood on the second step, just tall enough there to look directly at my eyes.

I took my hat off and held it at my side. I know she could see the sweat pasting my hair to my ears and neck. I should have been home, in bed. But I couldn't sleep for thinking about getting punched by Chase, and considering all those things I should have done and didn't; so I came to see her, my throat knotted tight, determined to say to her what I knew I had to.

“You're the most important person there is to me. We've been together since almost as long as I can remember and you're my best friend. I know we're supposed to be together for a long time. Don't ever go. I don't know what I'd do if he sent you away.”

“Did he tell you that?”

“Yes.”

We were so close. I could feel the heat of our breathing mixing together, clothing us, connecting.

“Don't listen to him.”

“I have to. I'm scared of him.”

“He's scared of you.”

And I remember Tom Buller, standing in a pen at the ranch next to one of Benavidez' breeding stallions, about to touch the horse's nose, standing carefully beside him; and the stallion took a bite at his hand. We both knew how the worker Ramiro lost a finger to a stallion like that one; and then Tommy just went crazy on that horse, punching him right on the neck so hard it sounded like hitting a watermelon with a baseball bat and he flailed his arms and screamed and the horse leapt up and tried kicking at Tommy. And Tom just breathed right then, all calm, no more than two seconds later, and began talking sweet and soft to that stallion and walking up real slow with that same hand held out to his nose. And he told me, “I'm scared of him, but he's terrified of me. So we'll just learn to play brave around each other and see who quits first. Till he learns that I'm more important. Now you watch, Stotts. I bet this stallion never so much as pretends to nibble at me again.” And then he stroked the horse's nose and walked away from him just like that. And that horse never bit again.

Tom Buller was the best with horses I ever saw or will see.

“It's cold in here,” I said.

It was the day after we tried chasing Rose's wild horses. We drove the truck out there after work.

“I know,” Rose said. “I just didn't feel like getting out of bed today.”

Tom spit, and then looked at me.

“I'll get that stove lit,” he said.

“Thank you, boys.”

“Here.” Tommy handed her three new cans of tobacco. “If you didn't get out of bed, I bet you're missing this.”

Rose struggled with opening a can and then Tommy just took it from her, having gotten the stove lit, and made a circle around the wrapper with the edge of a fingernail. Then he swatted it down a few times and gave it back to her.

“You boys are too nice to me.”

“One of us is,” Tom said.

I sighed. “Well, this isn't good, Rose. What were you gonna do if we didn't come by? Just stay there in bed?”

“Haven't you ever had a day when you just didn't want to get out of bed?”

“I haven't had any other kind,” I said.

“Will again in the morning,” Tom added.

“Well, when you lived as long as me, you get to do it sometimes, that's all. Ha!”

I opened a can of soup and put it on top of the stove.

“You need to eat something,” I said.

“Never thought I'd hear Troy Stotts saying that to anyone,” Tommy said, then spit.

“Eating in front of others is bad luck,” Rose said.

“We wouldn't want that.”

“Well, I guess we could break it if you boys'd have a glass of wine with me. Ha!”

“I'll pour it,” Tommy said. “It'll warm us up for that ride home.”

I brought the can of soup over to Rose's bed. Tommy brought her the wine and then we both sat down by the stove and drank ours. It warmed me up right away and Tommy quickly refilled all our glasses before I could suggest leaving after the first, but I didn't protest.

“How old is your girl?”

“Sixteen.”

“Sixteen? Ha! When I was sixteen I was married!”

“He practically is, too.”

I shot a look at Tom, and he spit again.

Tommy went on, ignoring me, “He doesn't do anything without calling her first, just so she knows where he is all the time.”

“But then I was a widow when I was eighteen and I went off to work making clothes for the movies and I never got married after that. Ha! Never wanted to, neither.”

“You never had any kids?” I said.

Rose looked at me, then out the window. I could see the light of the fire from the stove in her eyes. She looked tired and sad.

“Never had no one,” she said. “But I have you two fine cowboys now. Ha!”

“You don't want us,” Tom said. “Believe me.”

She smiled at Tommy and drained her glass, then went back to spooning the soup from that opened can.

“Tell me about your folks.”

“I only have a dad, he's a schoolteacher. My mom died in June.”

I never said it aloud before. It stuck in my throat. I felt naked.

“Oh, that's terrible. I'm sorry, Troy.”

“So am I.”

That was the only time I remember her calling me Troy. Then she turned to Tommy, sitting there in that cave of a steel house.

“Well, how about your folks then, Tom?”

That was the only time she ever called him Tom, too.

And I saw Tommy lose his smile for just a moment. He turned his face and pretended to look at the floor, just like he did when we stood over that cat we'd killed.

“I only live with my dad, too. My mom ran out on us when I was too small to remember.”

“Aww… boys shouldn't have it like that. And you still both growed up perfect anyway. And beautiful handsome, too. You're both so lucky.”

She stood up, a little wobbly, and moved over to where I was sitting across from the stove. Then she lifted my hat and kissed me right on top of the head. I looked at Tommy. I could feel myself turning red. And then she walked over to Tommy and he just about recoiled in terror.

“Take your hat off, so I can kiss you, too.”

“I don't smell good.”

“Ha!”

And he was really embarrassed, too, when she kissed him.

“You smell like chewing tobacco and horses. If they ever put that in a bottle, I'd drink it.”

“They do bottle it. It's called bug poison.”

“Ha!”

She sat back down and folded her hands on her lap.

“I knew that about you, Tennis Shoes. I could tell the first time I saw you that you were extra sad about something. I could see it in your eyes. But this one—he's always the happy one, isn't he? You want to always have friends like that, so if you're ever starving to death or freezing in the cold, you know he's gonna just say, ‘It ain't that bad.' “

And we finished a third glass before I could make Tommy agree to leave, but I knew he had to pee by then so getting him out of the house was pretty easy.

“She didn't look very good,” I said.

“Damn, Stotts. If she ever did we weren't born yet. Our dads weren't born yet.”

I laughed.

“You know what I mean.”

“This time I do. I guess.”

Tommy cleared his throat. “Stotts? I never said it, but I'm sorry about your mom.”

“Okay.” I watched as Tommy raised a crumpled can to his mouth and spit, but he kept his eyes straight ahead, watching the road rushing beneath us. I remembered how Tommy was just “that skinny boy who doesn't have a mom” when he and his father moved to Three Points so Carl could take the job with Mr. Benavidez. Tommy was eleven. He was the first kid I knew who didn't have a mother.

I said, “I'm sorry about yours, too.”

And Tommy got real serious, like I'd never seen him.

“Your mom got taken away,” he said. “Mine ran.”

I looked out at the land, dimming, running past my eyes in the twilight.

“I got mad about it,” I said. “You get mad?”

“Nope.” Tom Buller looked over at me, showing the beginnings of that grin of his. “If the things that happened to me never did, I wouldn't be sitting here right now. Want some tobacco?”

“Yeah.”