Lean on Pete (19 page)

Pete looked up as a truck drove past us on the road. He startled at the sound, but then he calmed back down and started eating again. His black coat was full of dust and it was fading brown from the sun. It was no longer shiny. Every once in a while he’d snort or look around, but really all he was interested in was the grass. I looked in the plastic sack and took out a can of black beans, opened it, and began eating them.

“And the vet has a huge hay field and he lets you eat on it all the time and their pool has a slide and the bed-in trailer has an electric blanket and the barn you sleep in has a stereo in it and there’s always new dogs and horses there trying to heal up. And on Fridays they have movie night. We all sit out there and watch movies in the barn.”

We started walking again. As dusk fell we came to more houses and ranches. It felt like we were getting near a town. I knew I should get us off the road, but everywhere was fenced. I could find no open land so we just kept walking and it grew dark. The cars that passed seemed to be going faster and their lights would shine bright on us making Pete uneasy.

Not much later I heard the sound of motorcycle engines. I looked all over but I couldn’t see where they were coming from. It was a sea of noise. Pete got worried. He was pacing back and forth and it was hard to hold him. I tried to calm him, but he didn’t even notice me. He pulled back and I almost lost the lead rope. The engines grew even louder, but even so I couldn’t see anything. Then behind us suddenly was a group of dirt-bike motorcycles.

I held on to Pete the best I could but he reared up and spooked and tried to take off and I fell down. I dropped the cans of food on the pavement. I dropped the duffel bag. He was dragging me and I tried to hang on but in the end I let go and he sprinted off down the road. The people on the dirt bikes passed on the opposite shoulder. I tried to yell at them to stop but they couldn’t hear me.

I got up and ran after Pete. The dirt bikes turned off on a side road and Pete was fifty yards away sprinting in a panic down the street. The road went up a hill and he kept going and as he neared the top of it I saw a truck’s headlights heading towards him. It was a pickup truck. I screamed out his name, but he didn’t hear me, and they crashed into each other.

The truck stopped and Pete was knocked over, and he was trying to get up. His front leg was broken. It hung on by skin and swung in the wrong direction. Pete was frantic. He got up once for a moment, then he fell back onto the pavement.

When I got to him he was still alive and breathing. There was blood all over him and the ground. You could hear him crying out. I got down on my knees and pet his neck. I began crying. The truck headlights reflected off his eye. He tried to raise his head and move his legs but couldn’t.

An old lady got out of the pickup truck that hit him. She was saying something but I couldn’t hear what. Pete tried to move and you could tell it hurt him to do so, and then all of a sudden he just stopped moving. I put my arms around his neck. There was blood all over me and all over Pete.

“I’m sorry,” I told him over and over. “I’m sorry.”

I held on to him but he was just heat and blood and sweat.

“Don’t hate me,” I begged him. “Please don’t hate me.”

I looked up and the old-woman driver was standing next to me, crying.

Chapter 21

A police car came. Its lights flashed in the darkness. An officer got out of the car and went to the old woman and asked her questions, then walked over to me.

“Are you alright?” he asked.

He had a flashlight and he was shining it on me and Pete.

“Are you okay?”

I shook my head.

“Are you hurt?”

I shook my head.

“Is this your horse?”

“No,” I said barely. “He’s his own horse.”

The policeman went back to the old woman and talked to her and she went to her truck and started it. It took a while but she got it going. One of her headlights was out, her hood was crushed, and her windshield was cracked all over. The engine didn’t sound right, but she moved it to the side of the road. The officer used his radio and called for a tow truck, then told them about Pete and he spoke on the radio asking for a tractor and a flatbed truck. He came over to me.

“Can you stand up?” he asked. “Can you walk over to the car?”

“I can’t leave Pete,” I said.

“Pete’s the horse?”

I nodded.

“Where do you live?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where’s your family?”

“I don’t know.”

“What’s your name?”

“Charley Thompson,” I said.

“Where did you used to live?”

“Portland,” I told him.

“Okay,” he said, “Just stay here, alright?”

I nodded and he went back to his police car and he was there for a long time.

When he came back he shined the flashlight in my face.

“Did you steal a truck and a trailer? Did you steal this horse?”

I just held on to Pete. I didn’t say anything.

“Are you that Charley Thompson?”

I nodded.

The flashlight was pointing right at my face and he wouldn’t take it away.

“I didn’t mean to,” I said. “Del was going to send him to Mexico. I know he was.”

“Del’s the owner of the horse?”

“Yeah.”

“Where were you heading?”

“Wyoming.”

“What’s in Wyoming?”

“My aunt,” I said and started crying.

“So you’re a runaway?”

“No,” I told him.

“Where are your parents?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

The officer looked at me for a while. He wasn’t mad, he had a kind voice. “We’ll take you in and get you cleaned up. We’ll figure out what’s going on. Okay?”

“Okay,” I said.

Pete’s head was lying on the asphalt. His tongue was hanging out. There was blood everywhere and you could see his broken leg bent up towards his neck.

I looked up at the old lady. She stood there on the side of the road looking at me. She was still crying. I saw the officer go back to his patrol car and open the trunk and when he did I just got up and started running down the road. I could hear the officer yell but I couldn’t make out what he said. I saw a field and went through a barbed-wire fence and ran as hard as I could into the darkness.

When that field ended I went through another barbed-wire fence and into sagebrush. The moon was half full and there was enough light for me to keep going. Every once in a while I’d look around, but I didn’t see any lights shining towards me; no one was following me.

I walked for hours. I could see house lights in the distance and they kept getting further from me. I walked until I got so tired that I just sat down on the dirt. I could hear coyotes cry and once in a while I’d hear other things, rustling or movement. But I didn’t care. I just sat there, then I lay down and closed my eyes.

When I woke the next morning the sun was over me and I was sweating. My clothes were covered in dried blood and dirt. My arms were painted in it and I felt my hair and it was in there too.

In the daylight I could see no buildings or anything, only sagebrush and hills. I took the Polaroid of my aunt and me from my pocket. It had a new tear in it and was beginning to wear out. I stared at it and my thoughts were black. Because of me, Pete was dead. I took him when I didn’t have a plan and I didn’t even know where my aunt lived or if she was still alive. And if she was, maybe she wouldn’t want me. The images of him wouldn’t stop and I hated myself more than I ever had. I looked at the picture and I almost tore it up but I couldn’t, I just couldn’t. I put it back in my pants pocket and stood up. I picked a direction and began walking.

I walked up and down hills and through miles of brush until I came to a green trailer home. There were no cars parked in front of it, there was nothing else around it except a dried-out lawn, a barbecue, and a metal shed.

I stood by the front door and listened but I couldn’t hear anything. I knocked on it but no one answered. It was locked. I checked all the windows and found one open. I moved an old metal burn drum that was in the shed and set it underneath the window sill, then I got up on it and crawled through the window into a bedroom.

There was a double bed and a TV and a dresser. There were clothes all over the floor and there was nothing on the walls. The bed was unmade and near it on a night stand was an ashtray full of cigarette butts. I walked down a hall. I passed a laundry room and another room that was empty. I came to the living room that had a TV sitting on an entertainment center. There was a couch and an easy chair. There were beer cans and another ashtray full of cigarette butts. There were fast-food bags and pizza cartons, but there were no pictures or paintings on the walls.

The kitchen didn’t have a table to sit at. In the sink there were dirty knives and forks and spoons. I put my mouth underneath the kitchen faucet and drank as much water as I could. I looked in the cupboards but there was no food. Not even a can of soup. There were dishes and coffee cups and glasses, bowls, and a frying pan, but they all looked new and unused. Inside the refrigerator were three eggs in a carton behind cans of beer, and on another rack there was a half a loaf of white bread, a plastic bottle of pancake syrup, and some margarine.

I went back to the window and looked out, but I saw no one coming and I could barely see the main road it was so far away. I emptied out my pockets. I had the ten dollars from the Mexican, the Polaroid of my aunt and me, the map, a can opener, my pocket knife, and a lighter. I set it all on the kitchen counter. I took off my clothes and walked back to the laundry room and put them in the washer, added the soap, and started it. I moved the La-Z-Boy chair so it blocked the front door. I looked out the window again but it was still clear.

I went into the bathroom and started the shower and got in. I washed myself as fast as I could but it took a while. My hair had blood and dirt in it and my arms were the same but it was worse because they were sunburned and it hurt pretty bad to try and scrub them. It took a long time. I shut the water off every so often because I’d think I’d hear something, but when I shut it off all I could hear was the washing machine running so I’d start the water again. When I got out there was a towel on the floor. It was old and smelled but I dried myself with it and wrapped it around my waist.

There was toothpaste laying on the sink and I brushed my teeth with my finger then walked to the main room and looked out the window but there was nothing out there. I lit a burner on the stove and put the frying pan on it and put some margarine in it. I broke the eggs into a bowl and mixed them and soaked the bread in the eggs to make French toast. I used all the eggs and ate the rest of the bread while the French toast cooked. I ate five pieces covered in syrup while I looked out the window and watched the road. I put my clothes in the dryer and went back to the kitchen and did the dishes and put everything back to where it was.

I went outside and sat behind the metal shed in a lawn chair and watched the road. The sun was beating down but it felt alright because there was a breeze. When I heard the buzzer for the dryer I got up and went inside. My jeans looked alright but my shirt was ruined with bloodstains. I put on my underwear, socks, and pants. I put on my shoes. In the bedroom closet I found a light blue long-sleeve Western shirt, I put it on and it fit alright.

I went back out to the kitchen and grabbed my money and things and drank as much water as I could. I opened the windows to air things out and put the towel in the dryer, then set it back in the same place it was. I left the window in the bathroom open and hoped everything would dry by the time the man who lived there got home. I moved the La-Z-Boy back, shut the rest of the windows, and left.

Chapter 22

I walked down the drive, then took another dirt road for a while before coming to a paved street. I went along it, trying to hitchhike. Car after car passed but no one stopped. It was hours before a car finally pulled over. It was an old-looking tan station wagon with fake wood panels. I ran up to the passenger side window and leaned down and looked in.

There was an old man inside and he was alone. He rolled down the window. When he spoke it wasn’t through his mouth, he spoke through a box on his throat. I could understand him alright but the voice sounded like it was coming out of an old AM radio.

“Are you looking for a ride?” he asked. He had a gray moustache and was wearing a suit and had a gut that sat in his lap like a dog. He was bald on top and the hair on the sides was so black that I knew it was dyed. It was greased back and combed.

“Where are you going?” I asked him.

“Boise,” his voice said. The box made me uneasy, but it was better than walking.

“Would it be alright if I rode with you until then?”

The man nodded and unlocked his door and I got in and he started driving. We drove for a while, then he put up the windows and started the A/C.

“What are you doing out here?”

“My car broke down,” I said.

“I didn’t see a car back there.”

“It’s farther back off the road.”

“What happened?”

“The clutch went out.”

“Where are you heading?”

“Wyoming,” I told him.

We sat there quiet for a long time after that, then he said, “Do you smoke?”

“No,” I told him.

“I smoked three packs a day. That’s sixty cigarettes.”

I nodded. I looked out the window at the houses and ranches we were passing.

“Did you hear me?”

“Yeah,” I said. I looked over at him.

“I’m just telling you not to smoke.”

“Okay,” I said.

“There’s a pack of cigarettes on my dash. Do you see them?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“They’re there as temptation. Man is ruled by temptation. Do you understand that?”

I nodded. He looked over at me.

“Temptation leads to excess and excess leads to talking through a box. Do you understand that?”

“I think so,” I said and then he quit talking again. We drove on and I saw a sign that said we were entering Idaho. We drove for a while longer, then we got on the interstate.