Riding Invisible (8 page)

I was, like, speechless—what could I say other than: “Tavo…you
OWN
this place?”

And he started laughing, a big hard internal rumble with tears sliding down his cheeks. “Ay, Yancy. No! Ha! I no own nothing! Me? I am the worker, the hired help around here, the guy who do all the work! Ha!”

And then I was laughing too.

12:15 p.m.—Triple R Ranch—in the barn

When Tavo drove under that big sign yesterday, it was obvious that this ranch is a first-class private equestrian center. I mean, irrigated pastures? White-rail-PVC fencing? Two fancy barns? A covered arena with lights? There's even warm water at the wash racks for pampered horse bathers. Frank would die to see this place.

Tavo and I bounced along in his rattle box of a truck, and I stared while the driveway sloped up a hill until, all of a sudden, I was Jack at the top of the beanstalk, looking straight at a mansion glaring white and elegant like an uprooted house from Beverly Hills, almost like it was floating up there in the dark gray sky.

Around the back of the barn, we unloaded Shy and took him straight to a clean stall. Inside, the floor was all covered with thick rubber mats and fluffy, sweet-smelling pine shavings. Tavo piled hay in the feeder, but Shy charged past the hay, lunging toward the corner where he pushed his nose against the automatic waterer. I listened to it gush, soothing, like I was inside a spa where worries aren't allowed.

Then we unloaded the trailer, and Tavo tossed my gear at me. “You need a shower before you meet
SEÑOR
Arnold,” he said. “We gonna tell the boss that you my nephew from San Diego, okay?”

And I said sure okay while I was thinking,
YEAH, I WILL LIE. I WILL DO ANYTHING BECAUSE SHY HAS FEED AND PLENTY OF WATER
.

“You bring clean clothes?” Tavo asked, and I told him uh-huh, still in the saddlebags. So Tavo led me to a travel trailer with four inches of gravel out front covered by pale yellow-and-brown leaves and two bare trees standing tall and sad. I kept moving while my feet shuffled through the leaves, and through slender branches that had fallen on the ground, so dry and so brittle, crackling CRUNCH-CRUNCH under my boots, CRUNCH like the sound of a cat eating a bird.

So after my amazing, unbelievable, super-fabulous shower with WARM water and IVORY SOAP, it was time to meet the owner of the Triple R. Tavo and I climbed the driveway by the front of the big house where Mr. Arnold was waiting to meet me, standing beside a fantastic bronze statue of a galloping Arabian horse. And for sure this guy looked like a designer cowboy. (I bet he never gets on a horse.) The outfit included a leather jacket with long fringe, brand-new stone-washed jeans, a gourmet cigarette, and an expensive Western hat. Oh, and snakeskin boots. Plus—the best detail of all—not one molecule of dust anywhere.

Before we shook hands, the boss moved the unfiltered cigarette to his left hand. “Nice to meet you, Yancy,” he said with a hint of a European accent. “Tavo explained that you're visiting for a while. How interesting to discover he has relatives in the States.” Mr. Arnold turned toward his employee. “I never knew you had people here.”

And Tavo grinned, stared at the ground, moved his feet a little. “Yes, boss. San Diego. Not so far from Mexico, no?
MI HERMANA
—my sister, she live there.”

“Hmmmmm,” said Mr. A as he turned to look at me again. “Well, if you want to help your uncle by working on the ranch for a while, Yancy, I can pay you a small wage and feed your horse for free. Sounds pretty fair, doesn't it?”

“Yes, sir! More than fair.”

“You lived on ranch property in San Diego with the horse, did you?” he asked.

“Uh, no,” I answered, thinking fast. “I had my horse at a boarding facility. That's why he's here. I'll save a little board money. We—we're having a family emergency. That's why I came without warning Tavo.”

Arnold squashed his cigarette on the pavement and clicked a garage door opener that he pulled out of his hip pocket, and then he climbed inside a black Corvette.

“Thanks, boss!” Tavo called, and the rich guy waved.

The 'Vette resembled an alien eight ball as it silently rolled over the asphalt, and then it was burnin' itself a path all the way out to the road, vanishing fast in the desert until it blended into nothing. And wouldn't it be cool, I told myself, if Mr. A would let me drive that thing? I almost kicked up my heels and hollered:
I'M EMPLOYED! SHY'S SAFE! MY NEW BOSS OWNS A CORVETTE!
But I held it in.

Tavo picked up Arnold's squashed cigarette butt and tossed it in a trash can. “Okay,” he said with a wink. “Now we go work.”

I followed him down the driveway, walking fast, like I knew exactly where I was heading.

8 p.m.—inside my new trailer home

Horses are work, and I like work, and Tavo got right
on it this afternoon by asking me to help. I'm used
to hard labor at Frank's stable because Shy gets free
board there, and Frank works my butt off to pay for it.
Mindless shoveling, stacking, cleaning, sweeping. I am useful on the Triple R.

The p.m. feeding was interesting, measuring special vitamins for certain horses, weighing grain or bran or beet pulp for others. A few horses needed injections. Tavo has got to be intelligent to keep track of it all.

Dinner finally, and Tavo's
MACHACA
tacos were better than Dad's, and I loved the mild salsa because it didn't make my eyes water.

Now my back presses against plastic-covered beige cushions, my bed for later on where I am writing, always writing, and here I sit with no friends but Tavo. But hey, no Will either. My mom says when you're really down or lonely, think about something pleasant.

So I am thinking about when I was in kindergarten and how my teacher, Miss Lewis, the first love of my life, set up easels with large, creamy newsprint paper. Then she mixed thick tempera paint in empty milk cartons that she told us to save from our lunch trays. One day an independent discovery happened and I figured out how to blend colors after the teacher read us a picture book called
LITTLE BLUE AND LITTLE YELLOW
, which was about two splotches of color that blended into
GREEN
. I can remember the excitement of watching the shades come together when I painted with both hands using two brushes at once. I still see the dips and dashes of reds and blues that leaped into strange purple hues climbing off my gooey hands and drip-filled brushes to travel across this imaginary world created by ME the five-year-old. Dad still has the old newsprint artwork. He and Mom swear that each one is “a masterpiece.” My parents framed a few, and the work is hanging in our den along with my more recent stuff. Mom had small plaques made:
YANCY APARICIO—ARTIST
with my age at the time, and they show my life, frame by frame, a progression of experience and new technique, and sometimes it's like walking inside a tunnel of what I might end up with, all the things I might become, so my pleasant thought right now is our den being filled with more and more of my creations. Maybe my parents will frame some of my poetry with plaques:
YANCY APARICIO—WRITER
. If I ever go home again. And maybe if I don't.

Tonight when we were sitting beside the small fake-wood table during dinner, between bites I mentioned to Tavo how he's such a great cook, and he nodded his head and made a big grin, and it took over his face.

“Sí, for survive I learn, but my wife, Anita, she the good cook. The two babies, they love Mama's cooking.”

“So your family's in Mexico?”

“
Sí, VERACRUZ, MUY LEJOS, BUT GRACIAS A DIOS
they no come with me. I have the dangers to come here.”

This statement made me curious. Dangers? Sounded like a good story, and I said, “Dangers?” out loud, hoping to encourage Tavo so he'd keep going.

“
Sí, MUCHOS PELIGROS
.”

He served both of us more Mexican rice.

“So what happened?”

“Well, for come here, Yancy, to
LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS
, I pay money, all my
DINERO
, and hide under the floor in a big van. The month, it is August, and the day, it is very hot. Two men,
HOMBRES MEXICANOS
, they drive me and four more people. We are all hiding. We no can breathe under that floor! And we get to the desert across border in the U.S., and the men, they yell, ‘Get out!' We do this, then they leave.”

And what Tavo told me almost made me choke, and I had to drink my Pepsi to stop the coughing. “What do you mean, they left?”

So he goes, “I mean they leave us and drive away. The desert so hot
¡AY, TAN CALIENTE!
and after one day, a man, he is very old this man, he die. Then comes a car and they see us, and these people give help to us and call the
AMBULANCIA
for take us to the hospital. And I feel very afraid they send me back again to Mexico, so I run from the hospital. Then after three months I find this ranch, the Triple R, and now I here legal. Mr. Arnold help me to get immigration papers.”

Tavo's story forced me to stop eating for a while, and the rich taste of
MACHACA
and corn tortillas faded off my tongue until the only thing left was a faint saltiness.

“God, don't you hate those men?” I asked. “If it was me, I'd be out to kill those guys. I mean, it's like you could've died in that desert. You probably want to destroy them, right?”

The brown-skinned man stared at his wide, strong hands. The wind blasted against the trailer, and he said no. “No time for hate. The life, it is short, Yancy. You understand this? I make up for bad if I do much good, then maybe that help me wash away all the
MALO
from those men.”

And while I considered that idea, the canvas awnings started to flap outside. They were slapping like frenzied drums while the trailer vibrated with the force. I thought about how much good Tavo will have to accomplish in order to meet his goal. I mean, he'll never catch up. Not in his lifetime.

Later on when the rain started, the first rain I've heard since April, the drops battered our metal roof, quick and sharp. Tavo opened the window above the miniature sink, and cold air blasted in like a slap. The scent it carried was parched sand that had been exposed to a small bit of new moisture. Both of us breathed long and deep. My thoughts went to shelter, how Shy and I both have a roof tonight. And Tavo? He didn't tell me what he was thinking. We stood there inhaling something in our universe until, five minutes later, the rain stopped.

9:15 p.m.—in the trailer

10 p.m.—in the tack room

So three days have gone by since I got here, and I can't believe how much work Tavo accomplishes around
this place. It's like he's always exercising horses or
irrigating the pastures or driving to town for more
equine vitamins or calling the vet or cleaning manure
out of the stalls or grooming horses or bathing them
or leading them down to the arena so the trainer can
work with them. It's crazy, and I can barely keep up
with the guy.

Every morning we get up at 5 a.m. and my breath explodes into bursts of steam while Tavo and I feed twenty classy Arabians. Ol' stocky Shy is lookin' out of place beside these fine-boned animals, and I tell him so, but I don't think he cares a bit.

Today after breakfast, I was pushing a heaping manure cart down the center aisle where the light slides in and dust floats through. Someone near the entrance walked by in a hurry and I was able to notice something interesting—a very nice female ass in tight jeans. Too bad she turned the corner, because I didn't see much else. Except for long black hair. My question of the day: