Riding Invisible (6 page)

and plenty hay for that pretty horse!”

RUNYANCYRUNYANCYRUNYANCYRUN

So I rode and I rode, wondering where we could spend the night. When Shy plodded down the crowded boulevards, I wished he was wearing Frank's fluorescent equine leg wraps that glow in the dark for night riding, but they're back in the barn. My eyes scanned the sidewalks when we cruised along and Shy's metal horseshoes pounded rhythms:

WHEREAREWEGOINGGOINGOING?

WHATAREWEDOINGDOINGDOING?

We reached a busy corner and waited for the light to turn green. This burly girl with tattoos stepped off the curb. Her olive green T-shirt declared
WAR IS NOT THE ANSWER!
which is a pretty cool statement, in my opinion. “Can I ride him?” she asked, and her braces took over her mouth when she grinned, but just then the light changed, so Shy and I kept on heading forward. Just forward. Keep on keepin' on.

So after maybe fifteen minutes of sidewalk riding we passed this tavern where a pregnant lady leaned against a large, shiny sign with big letters printed in this very cool font:

Her sobs jabbed the chilly night, and the sound made me shiver.

So then finally, around 8 p.m., we got off the busy street and rode through a quiet neighborhood where all these run-down houses filled the sides of the streets and eventually we came to a run-down park.

That's where we are right now, the place where I am writing, me perched on top of a carved-up picnic table like I own it. The brown grass reminds me of rusty nails sprouting like a spiked metal carpet, and tall streetlamps are perfect for suicidal moths, but I don't like to watch them die.

Shy slurped up a bunch of water, and he's been unsaddled. Steam is drifting into the moist air straight off his wet, sweaty coat. God, these are the last of his pellets, and horses eat so much. They can't live on the vitamin-drained, dried-out grass that grows along the roadsides.

In between writing I've been talking to Shy, trying to project a hopeful sound in my voice, even though I know I am trembling in my gut. “Don't worry, boy,” I tell him. “There's gotta be a way out of this. You have to trust me, is all.” And I leave out the parts about how I don't trust myself, and there's no more feed for either of us, and…

Shit! Someone's coming….

11:30 p.m. or later—Homeless City, U.S.A.

Later…much later…God, a horrible interruption after my last entry and this is why I'm spending the night
HERE
, in this place I've named Homeless City, U.S.A., where all residents remain
INVISIBLE
.

I am keeping the info current and I am not being a Drama Queen when I write that this entry could be my last.

Back in the park I was writing in my journal when a loud, threatening voice made me jump to my feet with my fists raised.

And the voice, gravel-rough-mean: “Hand over your cash, homeboy.”

There goes my stomach—big dive—leaves body through asshole, because I figured I was dead. These two guys were big, bigger than Will, and maybe seventeen or older and wearing black knit caps and Raiders jackets. They had plenty of piercings with silver rings on their lower lips and more rings on their eyebrows and studs on their earlobes. Christi might say they gleamed with tacky bling.

“Hand it over,” the heavier one ordered. “The wallet! Where is the wallet?”

His eyelashes were white. Both dudes had their legs spread, wearing foul expressions that transformed their faces into masks. Oh yeah, they were ready for Halloween, which happens to be this month, but I decided not to tell them. I also didn't tell them how the yellowish street lighting made them look like corpses. My butt pressed against the picnic table while my mind did nothing—nothing!!

“Give us your cash NOW, or we'll take your horse!” White Eyelashes yelled.

He snatched the air in Shy's direction, which made Shy toss his head, and I could see that white rim around the top part of his eyes. Fear.

OKAY, I'M LISTENING!
And I dug deep in my back pocket and held out my wallet, and the white-eyelashes guy opened it and pulled out all the bills and tossed the wallet on the grass.

“Keep the change!” he screamed. Then, like slimy jerk-offs, they danced through the park laughing and hooting, like maybe they were wild animals, and then they huddled under a lamp to count the loot.

“Shit!” one of them said in the distance. “Hardly worth the effort, bro.”

And they kept going, and my energy was zapped, the same feeling as running all the bases when the catcher tags me at home plate. Over! Ruined! (No one cheered.)

I don't remember packing my stuff, but when I hopped in the saddle using the picnic table, I do remember how Shy bolted forward. I do remember his indecision, like he was asking: Left? Right? Straight ahead? Give me some guidance. At least a hint! You, rider. Me, transportation.

And then we disappeared in the darkness, both ambivalent, hesitant, completely zoned out,

riding invisible

Maybe a half mile down the road by some tracks we found this place where I'm hanging right now. Homeless City. We moved in. So that's it and now I'm all scrunched up like a discarded newspaper

And all these guys, hidden in the shadows, high on meth or whatever and talkin' soooo weird.

“Hey, baby,” this one person just mumbled with a Southern drawl. “You got some tricks?”

And I wondered,
WHAT IF HE'S TALKING TO ME?

But, thank God, another person answered in a high-pitched voice, maybe a female impersonator. “Why you be askin', Big Ben? I know you ain't got no money for no tricks from me, sweetheart.”

I'm trying to write while I've got Shy's lead rope pressed against my chest, because there's no place to tie him, and anyway I am not separating myself from my horse. I AM NOT STUPID. Shy is standing over me like a protective dog, but equines are about as protective as cats. If they could talk, they'd say, “Sure, go ahead and kill my owner, but don't forget to feed me before you leave.”

Every time I poke my head out from underneath my flannel–lined sleeping bag, the air smells like old winos and burnt rubber. At least I have the almost round lunar ball to keep me company, and it rises slow over a telephone pole, and when it finally rests on the “
T
,” I want to close my eyes and coast, stay awake, don't sleep, you have to be on guard, don't sleep, not tonight. I wish I could keep writing all nite long….

morning—near the tracks

I'm still alive. I now measure my success in terms of survival:

ALIVE? YAY! DEAD? BOO!

So back to when I was in Homeless City, U.S.A., I did float off to sleep, kind of, squeezing the reins in my fists. And then in the early morning, campfire smoke woke me and also this creaking, rattling noise close to my head. A filthy man dressed in a ripped black parka stared down at me, his arm resting on a blue plastic shopping cart with crooked, wobbly wheels, his shoes totally falling apart and holes in his socks, too. He looked like he hadn't shaved in a while. The air around him smelled like rancid liquor and flat beer.

I rubbed my eyes and climbed to my feet, and Shy poked his nose inside the cart to investigate. Empty aluminum cans and wine bottles banged together, clinking hopelessly against a dusty vase filled with plastic flowers, a pair of cowboy boots, a charred frying pan, and a blow dryer.

“Nice gelding,” the cart owner said. Then he checked out Shy's tail. “Well, would y' look at that tail! They always bobbed the draft horse tails when I was a kid, you know. Said it was safer, so the long hair wouldn't get caught in the machinery when the horses pulled the plow. Is this a farm horse?”

“No. He's a trail horse.”

The man squinted and his eyes wrinkled shut, and I wondered what color they were. His skin looked like the bark on a tree.

“I used to own a horse when I lived in Echo Park,” the shopping cart owner told me. “She was my polo pony. Real, real nice. I mean it. And she was kinda pricey, but I used to be a rich lawyer, mind you, and I had her boarded at the Los Angeles Equestrian Center.” The man surveyed my gear and rubbed Shy's nose. “We're all runnin' away, I suppose. And guess what? I have a present for you.” He dug deep in his cart and lifted out a smashed box of crackers like it was a fragile treasure and handed it to me and then pointed parallel to the tracks. “There's an empty lot fulla weeds about two blocks down where you can graze the pretty horse.”

I ate a few crackers, and they were super tasty, and I thanked the guy and carefully placed the box back in the cart because I was thinking that he needed food more than I did. And I automatically reached for my wallet to give him a couple of dollars. But, oh yeah! I had that bad dream about two losers who sucked up the rest of my limited spending cash, even though they only got $19.

“So hang in there,” I said.

“Best of luck to you, boy. You're a real good kid. I can tell that much by just lookin' at you.”

A few minutes later, Shy trotted off, me barely balanced in the saddle, my shoulders all hunched like those old cowboy dudes after a gunshot wound, until we arrived at this place I'll call Desperation Junction. And Desperation Junction was a frame of mind with me almost not caring what happened next. At least Homeless City was behind us, with not much up ahead in My Immediate Future.

Shy continued trotting beside the tracks until we found that empty lot the old guy from Homeless City had described. Trash and junk all over the place. Weeds full of burrs and stickers. So, still playing the role of an old cowboy who realizes he's defeated, I slid off the saddle, a sloppy dismount, hitting the ground too hard, which stung the bottoms of my feet. Shy didn't rub his face against my back like usual. If horses can go into Depressed Mode, he was probably in that zone with me. He grabbed at a dead weed, making seeds spray in all directions, and I pulled his head up because I didn't want burrs getting stuck to his tongue.

“Who's that?” someone said, and I glanced behind me. To the left of the tracks, this abandoned building sitting there, no paint, no doors, and all of a sudden two dirty kids appeared in the doorway. They waved. Maybe they were twelve years old.

“Boy, you got some food?” one asked.

I noticed his ripped yellow shirt and dark streaks across his cheeks. The other kid looked cleaner, but with stringy red hair and thin shoulders, his bones pressing against his tattered hoodie. That one stretched both hands toward me. His dark eyes looked almost empty, and I could tell there was a reflection of ME in them. Me and my homeless future.

“Sorry,” I said. “No food and no money.”

So the red-haired one flipped me off. “Liar!”

And they darted back inside their building. Shy tried to get another bite of those nasty plants, and he stamped his hoof, impatient, hungry. We were both so desperate, starving like those two boys, and that's when I pulled the wadded napkin out of my pocket. The printing, all childlike and the phone number with dashes in weird places, like phone numbers people write in foreign countries.

I led my horse along the tracks for about a hundred yards until we reached an area where there were no weeds with stickers for him to grab, and I didn't even sit down. I figured that maybe the batteries were completely gone on my phone, but one bar remained on the screen, so I dialed, and that's why I'm here writing in my journal waiting for my transient past to catch up with me. I call this place my Town of Defeat.

10:15 p.m.—about 20 miles outside Palmdale

After so much has happened, maybe I'm safe but not for sure. Safety is one of those weird words that for some people are meaningless. I know this because when I was born, Will was already there.

Two hours after I made the phone call, the Mexican Tavo drove up in his faded pickup, and the truck looked especially shabby, because it was hauling this brand-new shiny white horse trailer with the words
CIRCLE R. ARABIANS
on the side.

“That horse is thirsty,” Tavo said. It wasn't a question. He opened a side door on the trailer and reached into the tack compartment, grabbed a blue bucket, and rotated a spigot at the bottom of a small water tank in the corner. Thirty seconds later Shy plunged his nose in the water and guzzled most of what was there.

Tavo helped me pull off the saddle and swung the wide trailer door open in the back. Shy hopped in and I bet he was happy, because there was a flake of fresh hay stuffed in the feeder. When I heard him bite off a big mouthful, I felt better than if someone had just handed me a hamburger. Before Tavo locked the trailer gate, I stroked Shy's short tail.

The man patted my shoulder. “You hungry, son? I pay for
DESAYUNO
, for breakfast.”

Hungry? I nodded my head up and down fast, realizing that this wasn't hunger, this was beyond hunger, and my mouth started to water just thinking about food. Tavo took big, energetic strides heading down the street and I almost trotted like a horse to keep up with him, but what I felt like was a calf heading straight to the slaughterhouse.