Lifting the Sky (6 page)

I wasn't much of a cook, but then Mam wasn't much of a critic. For supper I made spaghetti with peanut-butter-flavored veggie sauce for Stew Pot and me, and a meat sauce for Mam. I even mixed up a cake and spread it with peanut butter and coconut icing. It made it look like a party with everything spread out on the pretty cloth, although my mom thought we'd better put it away again right after supper. Mam said it was the best meal she'd eaten in ages. She also said thanks a lot, but she wasn't so tired that she couldn't do the cooking from now on.

Ever since I can remember the two of us almost never sat down to a meal without something to read. Me, I was deep into a book about Indians, homed in on a part about how they showed how courageous they were by reaching out and touching the enemy, a practice called “counting
coup.” It seemed like a nifty idea because it would sure take a lot more guts to do that than to just shoot someone from far off. As for Mam, she had her nose buried in an encyclopedia. “I'm going to get through the whole set,” she said.

There were twenty-six books. How much time would that give us? When she wasn't so tired that she couldn't see straight she could read a regular-sized book in one evening. I'd already caught her skipping from A to M and then peeking at Z. I'd have to keep track. Not that getting through the set would be reason enough for her to stay in one place. But at least it was something I could pin a few hopes on. “Have another,” I could always say. “Surely you haven't yet read all of T….”

Up in my attic, after the dishes were washed and put away, and after my mom had trailed off to bed lugging two heavy volumes, I opened my journal. I'd missed several days, so I searched for the date in the little calendar in the back.
Sunday,
it said.
May 13.

I jumped out of bed. “Happy Mother's Day, Mam,” I yelled down through the hole in the floor.

I practically lived with my bums. Some nights I found myself out in the shed, not sure how I got down the steep attic stairs and out the front door without waking. I'd curl up with Lucky Charm and Wonder Baby and wake only when the sun tipped over the mountains and spilled its light into the valley. Then I'd stumble to the kitchen, mix up two bottles of milk, and head back and feed my babies.

Both calves had gotten strong enough to stand up and suck on a bottle. Just try holding a squirming wobbly-legged calf between your knees to feed it. And of course be sure you hold on to the bottle with both hands 'cause otherwise it'll get jerked this way and that and the nipple will shoot off and you'll both take a bath in the calf's milk. Try to keep calf number two from butting in while this is going on—see what happens.

I smelled like sour milk. Even Pot turned up his nose when I passed.

Lucky Charm's lights had brightened up right away. Wonder Baby's—well, her lights had perked up after that first day when I'd been afraid she might not make it. She stumbled and clunked about with her casted leg and even managed a few hippity hops, but then sometimes she'd fall down and stay that way until I picked her up.

I chanted their names as I stroked them, and while I stoked them I concentrated on the light in my fingers. It didn't take long to catch on that I didn't have to puff myself up like a blowfish or even actually
touch
them to make the lights grow bigger. Just holding my hands above them and thinking about what I wanted to do seemed to be enough to make light flow gently out of my fingers.

My hands even started picking up things that my eyes didn't catch. On Thursday morning, one week after I got the two calves, I noticed a prickly tingle poking at my hands as I was checking Wonder Baby's leg. I moved my hands back and forth through the air. That was strange. I could feel bulges and tingles and odd bumpy places. It was the same sort of feeling you'd get if you stuck your hand out the truck window and felt the wind pushing against it.

The thing to do, I figured, was to smooth those rough places out. But how?

I leaned my head down and blew at the airy bumps. I blew till I almost passed out, then felt around in the air above the calf's leg. The bumps were still there. I scratched over them by crooking my fingers and then dragging them through the lumpy air. I noticed that doing that seemed to
smooth out the bumps, so I raked and scraped the air above Wonder Baby's body till the lumpy air and the tingles and prickles dwindled away to nothing.

Wonder Baby snored. Somehow, I'd banished the bumps. I'd also put her to sleep, so I slipped off her cast and examined the break. It didn't seem worse, but then again, it didn't seem better. Cripes, I thought. If it wasn't such a long ride to the highway, I'd ask Mam to take her to a vet to get it checked out.

Being careful not to wake my bum, I slipped off to the house. Mam had started keeping a supply of medical stuff in the cabinet above the sink. I grabbed a bundle of elastic bandages and tape and some disinfectant and hurried back to the pen.

I've learned a lot in one week,
I said in my head as I wrapped Wonder Baby's leg and slipped on the makeshift cast again. But if I'm going to use this light …

My head was swimming. This light. What I'd almost said was this
power.

My schoolwork would've been almost all done by now if I hadn't had so much other stuff to do. I hadn't even had a chance yet to go off and explore! Sure, I'd taken different routes down to the barn and the cookhouse, and hiked through the fields and along the edge of the woods by the creek, but I hadn't yet climbed one single hill. A long, purplish hill ran along one side of the ranch. Steep cliffs rose up along another side. But the biggest, most climbable hill was behind the house on Indian land, just a short way from the
fence line. I could hardly wait to get up it and check out the world from the top.

That afternoon I scribbled a note.
Gone for a hike. Be home before dark.
Then I grabbed my backpack, whistled for Pot, and struck out.

When we got to the fence I stopped. The sign near the road had said “Absolutely No Trespassing.” Mr. Mac had said
not
to. But obviously there was no one around to ask for permission….

“I'll tiptoe,” I whispered to Pot, “and no one will know I was there.”

I trailed along the fence until I found a place where the wires had come loose. By the tracks and the hairs in the barbs I could tell it was where antelope slipped under and where deer, elk, and moose leaped over on their way down to the creek or back toward the mountains. I tugged up the top strand of barbed wire and squeezed through.

Stew Pot loped ahead of me, sniffing under rocks for chipmunks and such. “We're on sacred land,” I reminded him. “Behave. Sniffing is fine, but no chasing!” Not that Pot does—he's a ranch dog and knows better.

Halfway up I flopped on the ground to catch my breath—funny how a hill suddenly became so much steeper when you actually started to climb it. I took a detour over to a rocky ledge that dropped into a deep narrow canyon. “Whoo, whoo!” I yelled down to hear what the canyon would answer. The hills rang with echoing whoo-whoos as I turned and hiked the rest of the way up the hill.

“Maybe this is why the top of a hill's called a crown,” I wheezed when I caught up with Stew Pot. “It's 'cause you feel like a queen—or a king, in your case—when you finally get there. And this”—I threw out my arms—“this will be my throne.”

“This” was a juniper tree, a tree so big it fit the word “majestic.” Even before I got close to it I could feel it. A thick field of energy seemed to surround it, like what I'd been feeling around the bum calves. The field seemed much bigger than the actual tree. What I could
see
around the juniper was a fuzzy green haze.

The juniper leaned over the rocky rim as if spying on the valley below. Its roots wrapped around boulders and dipped into and out of the ground as they clung to the rim for dear life. Gnarly branches looped to one side around a twisted trunk to form a shadowy cave. The tree was loaded with greenish blue berries. I grabbed a handful and munched. Tangy and bittersweet. Mam loved them. She said they tasted like gin.

I kissed my finger. “I hereby dub you my very own special tree.” I reached down and picked up a small pink granite stone. “My
wishing
tree,” I said, and I closed my eyes and made my first wish.

“My dad. Please let him find us. And then everything will be
perfect
.” I tucked the stone into a crook in a twisted branch of my tree. “Thank you,” I whispered.

From the hill I could see my whole queendom. The ranch tucked in its valley, the house looking as small as a dollhouse and Ol' Yeller like a toy truck parked beside a
toy barn. The hills tumbling down to the badlands and far distant mountains. The mountains looming behind. And everything bursting with light, as if the land itself made its own sunlight.

I sank to the ground, slipped off my backpack, and sat still as the tree, still as the rocks and the hill.

First came a chipmunk, creeping across the rocky ground, sniffing at my toes, zipping over my leg as if it were just a bump in its path. A crow swooped down and, tipping its head to the side, took one peck at my jeans and then hopped away and flew off. Two magpies landed on the rocky rim behind me and fussed at each other, acting like I was just part of the landscape. Below me, a herd of antelope slowly munched their way across the hillside. Like the smaller creatures, they seemed to pay no attention to me.

I dug out my journal and pencils. Page after page got filled with golden-brown blotches with long spindly legs. It took lots of practice before I got one that looked halfway like a pronghorn antelope.

Soon I noticed I was drawing one particular antelope over and over. I could pick her out of the herd by the white markings on her neck, since their neck bands were all slightly different. For some reason the lights around her seemed brighter than the lights around the other antelopes. Her belly was big, like the rest of the older does. Soon she'd be having her fawns. I knew that pronghorns usually had twins because having two made it more likely that at least one would survive.

I drew comic-book panels showing the antelope
bowing her neck, kicking her heels up, and sprinting away from the herd. I sketched the big handsome buck that ran up onto a rocky mound and then stood there looking like he was the boss. And acting like it too, the way he huffed and puffed and snorted at her. Next I sketched her being chased by him. I drew her fluffing up her white rump as she ran, and I noticed how the reddish brown ruff on her neck stood straight up when she turned to confront him. I drew him edging her back into the herd. I drew her hop-hop-hopping away from him again, and then looking back and panting with her black tongue sticking out. “So there!” I wrote in the bubble over her head.

I called my comic “The Adventures of Lone One.”

By now the rest of the herd had scattered out of sight. I got up and stretched. The lone antelope stared up at me, cocking her head to the side. I mirrored her. I cocked my head. I sprinted and stotted around in a circle on top of the hill, and she was so incurably curious that she looked up and watched the whole show. When I stumbled over my feet and went
splat,
she sprinted off after the herd.

I'd barely noticed the shadows creeping into the valley and filling it up to the rim with deep violet blue. Golden rays spiked up behind the mountains so that for a minute they looked as if they'd just been crowned. Down below, Ol' Yeller was now parked by the house.

I stuffed my things into my pack. “Race you,” I said to Stew Pot, and the two of us charged down the hill.

A few days later, Mam stomped into the kitchen, ripped off her gloves, and slapped them down on the table. “Mr. McCloud wasn't kidding,” she said.

“About what?” I looked up from the math problem I'd just solved and shoved my notebook aside. I'd had it with schoolwork.

“Damn beaver dams.” She filled her teapot, switched on the stove, and banged the pot down on the burner.

I cringed and peeked over my shoulder. The teapot was still in one piece. Sure, she'd been working too hard, but all in all everything had been going great. It was perfect, her not having a boss around and no one shouting orders at her. It was almost like having our very own place.

“Yesterday I went to the ponds.” She drummed her fingers on the edge of the stove as she waited for the water to boil. “It's a lot of work undoing those dams stick by stick. Today the ditch is bone dry—overnight, the rascals rebuilt
their dams. No
wonder
the hands resorted to dynamiting the dams and setting out traps.”

“But they have rights too,” I said, twirling my hair on a finger, not sure if I should stick my neck out by sticking up for the beavers. “They only dam up the water to make ponds for their lodges….”

“Yeah, so they can have babies and make more dams. Well, the ranch's got water rights too,” Mam responded. “No water gets to the ditch that's supposed to irrigate the whole west side of the ranch. It'll be a full-time job undoing those dams. I'll have to go up every other day.” She plopped her elbows on the table, propped her chin in her hands, and let out a big sigh. “Unless I try trapping them…”

“I can help undo them,” I said. There I was. Volunteering again. Undoing the dams would be an excellent excuse. I could disappear to them when that dreaded time came around.
Branding time
…

“It's like magic, Blue,” Mam used to say, “the way you can make yourself disappear when you want to get out of branding….”

My absolute total loathing of it started when I was six-going-on-seven. Mam had hired on at a dude ranch where the dudes sometimes helped out, but usually just got out their cameras and took pictures. I'd been happy showing off that morning, riding out to help round up the cattle. Then I'd sat on a corral with some kids and watched as the cowboys roped the calves and dragged them to the pairs of
calf wrestlers. But as the hot branding iron sizzled the hide of the first calf, I leaped down. To my eyes it looked as if the calf had burst into flames. As usual, back then, when I saw lights that scared me, I took off like a banshee and hid.