Pick a side and move it all over, I said. I didn’t know what it meant when I said it, but I’d heard this question and answer before with other men, on other trails.
My father wore a face bunched in pain for the rest of the trail. He couldn’t keep his toes up, his shoulders square; he looked completely amateur, sloppy, bumbling. When I think about riding, this is what I love most: I have a power, a strength, a language with animals big enough to kill a person, easy. It’s the one thing that I have.
Are you paying Uncle Whack to hang out with me? I ask.
He needs the money, my mother says. He’s on a good track, doing the good work. One day at a time.
What about Uncle Kai?
He’s not ready, she says. Not responsible, not yet.
Auntie T?
Auntie T isn’t coming back for a while.
Fine, I say. If we do grown-up stuff. But only if.
My parents give Uncle Whack very clear instructions like they’ve been practicing for this moment all their lives—Parenting—to show somebody what it is they know.
She doesn’t like to be left alone, says my mother, especially at night. She has night terrors. Chronic nosebleeds, but she knows how to handle it. She can cook soup for herself, and mostly she’ll read all day. Letters, too. You’ll have to take her to the barn to feed her horses; you’ll have to help her take her boots off—pull by the heel; you’ll have to make sure she wears a helmet. You’ll get it. And whatever you do, obviously, don’t let anyone in this house without a warrant. Lock up. The alarm code is 7-11.
When I’m older, I’ll understand that this is around the time the FBI became interested in my father and his friends. My uncle. Jordan Belfort. Soon, our family will make headlines. But right now, I nod and say, We are very private people, yes, the way I’ve been taught. My father winks at me. He hands Uncle Whack a wad of cash, thick as a hockey puck, folded over in half. Careful with her, he says. She’s good.
Uncle Whack is twenty-six years old, and I think he’s the oldest friend I’ll ever have. He wears blue basketball shorts with tiny pinprick-sized holes all over them, pulled down to just above his knees. Above that, plaid boxers lumpy with his white tee. His face is a perfect boyish circle, dimpled in the cheeks, and sometimes he wears a sideways baseball cap over the skunk-do. He doesn’t look like any of my men on black box channels 590–595.
Got it, Mad Man, says Uncle Whack, giving a salute.
Almost forgot, says my father, handing him the keys to our car.
Careful with my Jag, he says. I know people who’d take care of you if anything happens to my Jag. Yeah? Yeah? He points to Uncle Whack and play-punches him in the chest. We all laugh along. Uncle Whack slings my father’s bags over his shoulders—Louis Vuitton printed leather, matching—and straightens his back like a butler as he walks my parents to the limousine parked on our black yawn of driveway.
Next week, Vegas! screams my father. Get ready, baby!
I wave from the front door.
Did you know a rat lives inside our Jaguar? I ask.
Did you know is my favorite game to play with Uncle Whack. It makes me sound informed, knowledgeable.
Nah, ma, that ain’t true. He tosses his baseball cap on our pink leather couch, then dives into it.
Did you know that rat attacks are real? The last one happened in New York in nineteen-seventy-something. Nobody believes me about the rat in our car because it lives in the backseat, but one day it’s gonna rat attack me with a rat pack and my eyeballs will get chewed out by the time my parents get on the Sawgrass Expressway.
Damn, ma. Why you always so twisted? Uncle Whack pulls a pack of Parliament Lights from the waistband of his boxers. He bites into a filter, lights up, blows the smoke up into our skylight. A band of wavy light streams down on his body as if he’s a saint.
Did you know smoking will kill you? I say, But your body can and will repair itself within five years of your last cigarette?
What are you, ten? Chill with that shit. You read that in the Cyclopedia?
Last week, a major anti-smoking organization came to our school and taught us about the dangers of tobacco. We sang a song about cigarettes to the melody of Peter Pan’s “I Won’t Grow Up,” as a group of PTA parents and teachers filmed us on camcorders for a potential television commercial. I won’t light up! we sang, I will never smoke a day, ’cuz tobacco is EVIL, it’ll take your youth away. ’Cuz cigarettes are awfuler than all the awful things that ever were, I’ll never light up, never light up, never light up—not me!
At the end of the day, a blonde dreidel of a woman passed around a pack of Salem Lights and told us all to sniff them and let the consequences spill over our hearts. I never wanted to let go of that pack. I wanted to absorb that woody, muscled smell. I wanted to be the blonde-permed Sandy at the end of Grease—zipped in black, tight and shining as a seal—desired and getting it once she chewed out that cigarette with a stiletto twist, as if it were a natural instinct, one she’d known all along. I pulled a Salem from the pack and ran it back and forth under my nose like a harmonica, feeling every bump of paper on my skin. I considered stealing it—pocket? Caboodle?—but the dreidel woman snapped at me to pass it on and so I did.
Did you know I’m going to be famous? I say. A famous No Smoking advocate.
Uncle Whack thumbs at the remote, and then another remote, and then a third. My father likes this setup: a six-foot big-screen TV, with three smaller TVs on top of it. This way, he can watch several games at the same time. Uncle Whack flicks ash into my father’s ashtray on the couch.
So, whatcha wanna watch on Daddy Whack’s black box?
I do not tell him the truth.
At the barn, Uncle Whack is afraid of the horses. I show him how to palm carrots into their mouths, fingers webbed away from the teeth, but Uncle Whack keeps his distance. He adjusts his hat, turns it forward and back, saying, Nah, ma, I don’t do big dogs.
What’s your guy’s name? he asks.
I have four of them, I say. But this one’s my favorite. I kiss my pony on the nose. Nicky is his home name, but his show name is Cloud 9. I’m convinced the temperature of Nicky’s nose can predict the weather. Today, I feel rain.
What’s a show name?
Your home name is, like, stupid. It’s who you are at home. Alfie or Frisky or Wrinkles—usually kind of embarrassing. Your show name is the one you use in horse shows, and big stadiums, when you’re all braided up and exactly who you want to be. They’re jazzier. Better. My horses are Cloud 9, Velvet Slippers, and Bid’s Glitter Man, see? Tulip is my mini-pony, and she doesn’t have a show name because she’ll never grow up or be famous.
Uncle Whack rolls his eyes. I can tell he’s not taking me seriously.
Wanna help me tack up? I ask.
Can I sit while I do it?
I guess.
I clasp Nicky into the crossties in the aisle of the barn. I ask Uncle Whack to hand over my bounce pad, my saddle. He flinches when I tighten the girth around Nicky’s barrel-belly, saying, Damn, yo, that’s rough. He loops the leather martingale around his own neck and smiles, Giddyup, it’s Uncle Whack! I don’t think he’s ever been around horses before.
I remove Nicky’s halter and wrap my arm around his head before I say, Watch this, plunging my fingers into his gums, behind his molars, his mouth grinding grassy foam onto my shirt as I lift a snaffle bit over his tongue. There is nothing exciting or impressive about putting a bridle on a horse, but I want to show Uncle Whack that I’m not afraid of teeth, that I can be firm and deliberate.
Did you know I brought Nicky to school for show-and-tell?
I think I heard about that, says Uncle Whack.
I took him on a course around the playground and we jumped the seesaw, back and forth. It was groovy. The school news did a whole segment on me.
Is that what fancy school’s like these days? In the Rat’s Mouth? Kids bringing their ponies to school and shit?