Ghost Medicine (4 page)

I'd never really thought about it before, but I was suddenly aware of my straight-mouthed face. But I don't think I felt sad, really, at least not at that moment. I just sometimes felt like I was in some kind of audience, watching myself do things between moments of distraction.

And then before I knew it, Luz whirled toward me and grabbed the back of my neck in both of her hands and kissed me straight on my straight lips. Then she was up on Doats, giving out a “hyaw!” and they were off toward the trees, heading down the mountain.

I guess I always knew that eventually one of us would break down and do that, and so many times I'd pictured myself getting slapped afterwards.

I let out a “who-eee,” loud enough for her to hear as she rode off. I stood there, watching her go; openmouthed, chest pounding, smiling big.

I went into the cabin and gulped down the coffee she had left in her tin cup, kind of wondering what side she had drank from, trying to keep that feel of her lips on mine. I just sat there on the edge of that plank bed, looking at the stove, not blinking. I felt a little tired and dizzy. I could smell her hair there, like strawberries and tea where she had laid her head down on my sleeping bag and it reminded me of all those times we had gone to the Benavidezes' when I was small; Gabe running around the house barefoot, constant trickle of snot from his nose at three years old, her trying to get me to play doll house or with her toy horses, the sounds of our moms' voices through the halls, laughing about things we would never know.

I called out the doorway: “You want to go home, Reno?” And Reno, of course, answered back in his own language that I understand, but can't put into words.

I started gathering up my belongings and I repacked them a little less carefully than I had organized them when I left home that morning weeks ago.

I wondered which way I would have gone if Luz hadn't come looking for me; if I stayed up there, waiting for something.

My father just waited; he always did that. His patience and quiet ways made most people think he was aloof, that he didn't care about anything. And it frustrated me, too, to watch him expect things to be predictable, and then try to act unsurprised when what he expected never happened. But I knew things about my father I didn't have to say; all boys know those things about their dads.

After Will left us, my father stopped talking more than a few words every day, and I thought of him as some kind of professor who was quietly measuring the experiment of our lives with emotionless eyes. And I could tell he wanted to say things, too, but he held them in and I tried to be good and strong like his older boy. And I wanted to tell him things, too, but after my mom died, when it was just us left alone, I couldn't bring myself to do it, even if I kept telling myself I had to.

As Reno and I made our way down through the trees, I listened to the rush of the river.

I remembered Tommy and Gabriel coming to my house, kidnapping me on my sixteenth birthday, and how my father had insisted I go with my friends as my mother lay sleeping in the room where she would die. And I didn't want to go; I didn't want to do anything, but my dad told me to go, and Tommy and Gabe practically dragged me out before I could even get my shirt on. That was when we took out the kayak Tommy found and went over the falls. I lost my shoes and nearly drowned; and I remembered them taking me to the Foreman's house afterwards, the smell of the cake Luz had baked for me there, and me, completely stripped naked out of my freezing clothes, shivering and wrapped in nothing but a hole-pocked towel, as Luz laughed and insisted on taking a picture of me at their surprise party.

And that night, when I came back home, dressed in Tommy's clothes, my dad didn't say anything; didn't ask where we went, or why I was wearing Tom Buller's things, even though I knew he noticed, was measuring the changes in me, quietly, at his distance.

Once we had come down into the foothills and passed through the break in the old white plank fence surrounding the apple orchard, Reno began moving purposefully, knowing exactly where and when he would stop. The apples weren't nearly in yet, but some of them were big enough that Reno spent a few minutes at one of the branches, hanging bent with red-green fruit, before turning away and resuming his quickened pace toward the familiarity of his barn.

It was late afternoon now, the long shadows of mountain, hill, and treetops painting over our white barn with its loose-boarded sides, the broad open breezeway turned at an angle against winter winds. Reno's stall was positioned along a row of others off to one side, the hen house on the other, all of it contained by a big pipe-and-wire fence. Our three goats stood in front of the breezeway, eating at a fresh flake of hay that must have been dropped there by my father. Hens scratched and squatted in the dirt, cooling their feathers after the long hot day.

I stepped down from Reno and opened the pipe gate to his stall. He went in, chuckling, willingly, on his own. I threw his reins over the top rail and removed his saddle and pad, soaked with sweat, and threw them onto the pipe rail, as well. I looked for the little nail in the wall to make sure his brush still hung there as I freed him from that halter.

“Are you hungry, Reno?”

Those were probably the words he recognized most, and he threw his head up and down, nodding and neighing, smelling the alfalfa there.

“I'll brush you down when I get you some food.”

I latched the gate behind me and then walked down the breezeway to the small hay room where we stored the feed. I could hear Reno stamping at the bottom rail with his front foot, trying to knock it open, as though he were afraid I'd walk off for good and not feed him first.

“Troy? Troy?”

I heard my father calling me from out by Reno's stall.

He was standing back at the end of the breezeway when I turned out of the hay room, blue-flowered alfalfa sprinkling down from my cradling arm.

“I'm here, Dad.”

He moved through the hallway straight to me and grabbed me by the shoulders. And then he hugged me hard, pressing the flake of hay into my chest. I think he was crying.

He knocked my hat back off of my head and put his fingers in my hair. He kissed my ear and said, “Oh my God, Troy, don't you know how much I love you, son?”

Do you know who my favorite boy in the whole world is?

I am.

Do you know how much I love you?

Forever and ever.

We used to play that game when I was four. Every day. Every day until maybe I got too old, or maybe he thought I just forgot the answers. But even when I was four, I knew he was afraid, and that he was trying to hold on to me because he couldn't hold on to the son who was born first.

“I'm sorry, Dad. I love you. I'm sorry.”

Then he held me back and looked at me, all the way down to my dirty tennis shoes.

“She used to always say you were disappearing. Look at you, boy, you look like you've lost twenty pounds that you can't spare.” And he pulled the waist of my 501s out from my side. They opened a gap out about four inches from my body.

“You look like you haven't been eating regular either, Dad.”

“Why don't we do something about that, Troy?”

I looked at all the hay scattering down my front, into my pants, pockets, and the sides of my shoes. “I'll bet Reno's wanting us to remember he was out there for all that time, too.”

“Do you think you've got enough for him?”

“I'm wearing enough for all the Benavidez horses.” I thought about my mouth. Straight. “And I better go easy on him right now, anyway, or he might get sick.”

My dad didn't know horses.

He put his hand on my right shoulder and we walked like that out to Reno's stall. I tossed the flake into his feeder and he went right to it. I brushed him down as he ate.

“You've got yourself a good one there, son.”

“Yeah. I know.”

“But I'm surprised he stands still for being brushed by a kid who smells as bad as you do.”

I looked at my dad. Straight mouth, too. I never had noticed that before. “I guess I could use a shower and a change before I eat.”

“I won't stop you.”

The shower steam was fogging up the mirror. I took my shirt off and dropped it on the counter by the sink, small black circles staining the shoulder from the time I landed on my head after falling asleep on Reno. I realized I hadn't really looked at myself since before she died. I was way too skinny. And I seemed kind of old, too. I wondered what I looked like to Luz.

The mirror fogged up and I looked like my father. I stared, glassy-eyed at a reflection in which I saw him for the first time; this was my father's face. Then I wiped away the steam droplets and stared straight into the eyes of my mother. I rubbed the itch from my eyes and got into the shower.

We sat down at the kitchen table across from each other, he just looking at me for the longest time. The yellow pad was gone, replaced by a new, unused one. We ate a dinner of eggs and bacon. He had poured me a glass of milk, even though he knew I couldn't stand milk. I drank it anyway.

“I missed you a lot, son. It made me crazy there for a while. But I knew—hoped, you'd come back.”

“So did I.” And then I asked: “Luz didn't come by earlier today?”

“Yeah. She did. So I knew you were okay.”

“Thanks for the dinner, Dad. This is about the best-tasting food I've ever had in my life.” And he watched me as I took a difficult swallow of milk. I was trying to make him feel good, even if I knew I couldn't.

“Where'd you go for all that time? What did you do?”

I told him that I went up onto the mountain. I left some parts of it out, for whatever reasons, but I did describe the cabin to him, and the nice pond where I fished for trout nearly every day.

“I'm jealous, Troy. I wish I could do that. Maybe someday we can go up there together and live like that for a while by ourselves.”

“We need to get you on a horse, first.”

And my dad laughed. He mostly felt about horses the way I felt about milk. But I drank it for him, so I figured he could find a way to tolerate a horse, too.

“I read a couple books, too, Dad. But I've got some questions about one of ‘em….”

The morning after I came back I called the Benavidez house to see if Gabe was around. Of course, I was hoping Gabe wouldn't answer the phone, but that would still have been better than talking to Mrs. Benavidez. As I listened to the phone ring, I played through all the things I'd say depending on which person answered.

Luz answered the phone. And even though I wanted that to happen most of all, I realized I didn't have a clue as to what to say to her.

“Hi. I got back last night.”

“Hi, Troy.”

“I was going to come by and see Gabey this morning if you're all not busy or something.”

“Do you want to talk to him?”

“No.” And then I felt really stupid. “You could just tell him, if it's okay.”

“Okay.”

I panicked, thinking she was about to hang up.

“Luz, you're not in trouble, are you?”

“No. I'll tell you later.”

“Oh. ‘Cause Luz,” I gulped, “I'll be leaving in about ten minutes and coming in through your west gate on Reno. Okay?”

“I'll see you later, Troy.”

So I knew she would be there.

The west gate to the Benavidez ranch was huge, made from three straight redwood poles, the lintel pole ornately carved with the family name. They had been on this land for more than a hundred years and raised the finest cutting horses and thoroughbreds that could be found anywhere. On both sides of the gate, along the outside of the fence rail, sat benches made from wagon wheels. Luz was sitting there when I rode up.

She was dressed in her usual manner: tight jeans and gray Justin boots (she and Tommy Buller always wore Justins), a loose and untucked shirt unbuttoned at the top, hair down, and hatless.

“You clean up pretty nice, Troy Stotts.”

I got down from Reno. “Once or twice a year,” I said, and as I sat down beside Luz I pulled my hat down straight over my eyebrows, low, the way I liked it.

“Is your dad okay?”

“Yeah, he was pretty happy to see me come home. And I feel a lot better about things now, too. I really want to thank you, Luz, for coming up there to look for me,” I said, and I held her hand, “and for being such a good friend, too. I hope you didn't get in too much trouble with your mom.”

“She hasn't even said anything about it yet. After you called, she told me to ask you to come for dinner tonight.”

“Dinner? By myself?”

“No, Troy, the rest of us plan on eating, too. I'll tell her yes. And Gabey's real excited about seeing you, too. I had to sneak out just now so he wouldn't follow me down here. But will you please take that hat off?”