Catch Rider (9780544034303) Read Free Page A

any of them except old Beezie Winants, who was a legendary horse trader in her own right. She was the only one worth a damn. I think Beezie caught him with someone else, which was too bad, because she was a load of fun. She took me riding all the time at her place and gave me a bunch of free lessons.
    The others were too flirty and pretended like he was some kind of cowboy. When I would show up to ride and see some lady hanging on the fence rail talking to him, I would find something else to do until she was gone.
    Uncle Wayne worked as a farm caretaker, but he used to get a new job with a new truck every couple of years. If I asked him, he just said the old job didn’t suit him, but it was really because he’d go on a crazy drunk and disappear for weeks. Then he’d sober up for another six months, or a year, or two years. My mother, Melinda, said there was no rhyme or reason to when it happened. He’d do it if things were good, and he’d do it when things were bad. Jimmy said one time that Wayne did it when he needed to get something bad out of his system, like a wave tossing a piece of garbage up on the beach. I’ve never been to the beach, but that’s what I imagine. What it actually was—well, that was Wayne’s secret.
    I figured he must have stayed at this caretaker job just because the farmer there left him alone. Wayne watched the cattle and patrolled for coyotes with a rifle twice a week, and in return, he could buy and sell as many horses as he liked and keep them there.
    When we finished eating, Wayne drove me home in his blue pickup. I loved that big old truck. We sat on Navajo sad- dle blankets. They were half polyester, not wool or anything, but they were soft. That old Ford truck had the biggest cab—felt like a tractor-trailer in there. The window handle was so big, sometimes I’d pretend I was cranking the winch on a big ship out in the ocean, raising the mainsail or whatever it’s called, when I put my window up.
    The mist hung over the hay fields and the water splashed into the wheel wells when we went through puddles. We passed a pond on a cattle farm, and I saw the snapping turtles poking their heads out of the warm layer of rainwater.
    Whenever we passed that stretch of Route 687, I’d look out to the west and remember the time Jimmy said that the Appalachian Mountains were the oldest in the world. Five hundred million years ago, they were the tallest mountains on earth, like the Himalayas are now. Another time he told me he’d heard that the mountains in southern China are similar, with the same trees, same climate. I figured one day I might just go there and see if this was true. Maybe I would ride one of those tough Mongolian horses on the Great Wall itself.
    I looked at the creases in Wayne’s face. His thick hands rested on the steering wheel, yellow stains on his fingers from smoking. Jimmy and Wayne used to stay out late and come home laughing loudly, and when I’d wake up, Wayne would be snoring on the couch. I loved those mornings. Melinda didn’t like the drinking, but she and I loved all of us waking up together. We’d eat sausage and gravy, and waffles with syrup, and we’d watch cartoons. Jimmy used to laugh so hard at Daffy Duck that he could barely breathe, at how Daffy was always mad at everyone about everything. Strange how people laugh at different things. Jimmy didn’t get mad about nothing.
    When Jimmy died, four years ago, Melinda and Wayne pretty much stopped talking about him. They certainly didn’t talk about how he died. I didn’t want it this way. I guess it was the only way they could handle it. But after that I was so scared something would happen to one of them, I barely let them out of my sight without having a nervous fit. The one thing they told me about the accident was that he hit a tree on Route 220, like lots of other people had. They said it was foggy. I knew where it was, because I