Lucky Breaks (12 page)

She heard Lincoln fooling around for a long time, talking in a low voice to Paloma, once getting HMS Beagle to go lie somewhere else. Time was a thick, murky soup in which Lucky was submerged.

Finally she couldn’t bear it any longer. “Hey,” she called. “What’s going on? What’re you doing?”

“Listen,” Lincoln said after a minute. “I’m sending down some rope. This time it’s secured up here, but don’t jerk it, and let me know when it gets to where you can grasp it easily.”

“Lincoln, my hand is badly hurt!” Lucky pressed a finger against her palm until she located the splinter, which was no longer painful but which
could
get infected or might already
be
infected. She imagined herself being hauled up by a rope around her waist. She did not like this idea. “I can’t use my hand, and I’ll never be able to tie a rope around myself.”

“And I’d never let you; you wouldn’t know the right knots,” Lincoln said. “I’m making a pulley. Please let us handle this.”

“A
pulley
?” Lucky retorted, as if he had said a “washing machine” or a “vacuum cleaner
.
” “What kind of ridiculous plan do you have? If you drop me, you’ll break
every bone in my body
.”

There was no answer to this, but Lucky could hear them talking quietly to each other, most of the words indistinct but probably to result in her horrible death. Then clearly, there was Lincoln saying,”…and see if you can yank out that tire rim by the old car.”

“Lincoln!”
Lucky shouted. “Forget the tire rim! Whatever your plan is, don’t do it! Go get someone
now
who can rescue me from becoming a mummy or a pile of broken bones!”

Suddenly Lucky heard metal clanging on metal.

“It worked! Catch this end when I throw it over the top.” Lincoln was now talking to Paloma, apparently. “See if you can bring it around to me—wait; go under the post. Yeah, perfect; got it. I have to test the weight. The knots and the rope are fine, but I’m not sure about these old posts and the pole.”

“What’s happening?” Lucky demanded.

No one answered. Lincoln said, not to her, “This is my safety. If the pole or the posts don’t hold, my line’s attached to the ladder. We’ll have to trust it.”

“This is scaring me to death,” Paloma said. “Which, what if the ladder doesn’t hold? You’ll fall all the way and kill both of you.”

“It’s the third safety and I did test it; it’ll hold. But
if
you have to go for help, you know the way now?”

“Wait!” yelled Lucky. “What are you
doing
?”

Lincoln’s head appeared at the rim above.

“You’ll be up here in another ten minutes, if you relax and cooperate.”

“No! I won’t! It’s impossible, and what does an old tire rim have to do with this?”

“Lucky,” Lincoln said, in a warning kind of way that was not at all like his usual, calm, knot-tying tone. It was a voice in control of the situation, a voice that knew what it was doing and had had enough of explanations. “Just. Shut. Up.” After a moment, this being Lincoln, he added, “Please.” And even though she had many questions, suggestions, and orders that badly needed to be communicated, Lucky did.

But now part of her couldn’t wait for Lincoln’s stupid plan to fail, so she would be right, and he would be wrong.

Lucky saw the opening of the well fill up with arms and legs, which blotted out the sky. “Try pulling that end, Paloma,” Lincoln instructed. “See if you can handle my weight…good. Keep it taut around the pole. Okay. It’ll work.” Then Lincoln pulled himself out again.

“Heads up!” Lincoln called down at her. Lucky saw that some large, floppy thing was descending. “Shout out when it’s about a foot off the ground.”

“Are you talking to me?” demanded Lucky. She did not like that everyone knew what was going on but her. She did not like being given orders. She did not like not being consulted. And she definitely did not like being the rescuee instead of the rescuer.

“And try not to get it all tangled up!” Lincoln cautioned.

By the time the thing was level with her head and Lucky touched it, she knew it was that big net Lincoln had been working
on for so long. His fishing net from the black plastic trash bag.

The net that she had cut with scissors in three separate places.

Obviously, she was supposed to get into the net and be hauled up.

“No!” Lucky shouted. “I’m not some fish, and I’m not getting into your net! It’ll break or you’ll drop me!” She heard Paloma laughing. Paloma was only supposed to laugh
with
Lucky. Not
at
Lucky. “And quit laughing, Paloma!” she added.

“She’s not laughing at you,” Lincoln said impatiently. “Pay attention, Lucky. Is it low enough?” he called. “Should I stop lowering?”

“Almost…Okay, stop. It’s a foot off the floor. But don’t expect me to get into that fish net.”

“It’s a hammock, Lucky,” Lincoln said. “Sit on it with your legs hanging down, and hold on to each side, like on a swing at the playground. Tell me when you’re ready. And don’t worry. We won’t drop you.”

Lucky considered refusing to get into the hammock—what a stupid project, anyway, a hammock, since Lincoln was no
way
the type to take naps; and what if the tear-repairs didn’t hold?—but she decided, instead, to be intrepid. Maybe this would turn out to be the heroic act, the last she would ever do: the act of trusting Lincoln.

The hammock was a net made with smooth, thin cords in an open weave. Two long ropes extended from the ends of
the swaying net up to the top of the well, where they joined into one single rope. She found her wet backpack, the dead flashlight, the water-bottle rope she’d jerked out of Lincoln’s hands. Suddenly she realized that she hadn’t even tried to find the fragment of the lost brooch. But she was done with the well, and the brooch, forever.

She steadied the hammock and backed into it, bunching up the netting at each side to give herself a good, firm grip. She sat, testing her weight, and took a deep breath. “Okay, I’m ready,” she called.

And then slowly, slowly, the hammock swing began to rise, with brief stops at intervals as Lucky dangled. Lincoln’s voice became clearer, orchestrating some kind of system with Paloma where they pulled, anchored the rope so it couldn’t slip, pulled, anchored. With the useless soggy former survival kit on her back, Lucky rode up to the surface in Lincoln’s net, heading for the light.

There was one tricky part, at the very top, where she had to kind of take a flying leap, with Paloma pushing the net-swing from behind and Lincoln waiting to catch her as she sailed out over the edge of the well, but it worked and Lucky was free. HMS Beagle crowded in close, sniffing, and Lucky hugged her until she stopped feeling shaky.

For a person who is close to becoming a mummy one minute, and who then turns out to be completely alive with only a little splinter and no other major damage ten minutes later, the world is a little odd. Nobody else realizes what it’s like to wait alone at the bottom of a dark well. All they think about is to hurry up and get home before the adults find out. A part of Lucky
wanted
the adults to find out, so they would respect her heroism and courage. But another part of her, a realistic part, knew that she would only get into big trouble, and Paloma, too. And still
another
part of Lucky thought her friends, at
least, should be congratulating her, and asking her all about what it had been like, and admiring her intrepidness. It was irritating that they didn’t do this. So in return Lucky acted as if the rescue operation was equally no big deal. She slammed her heart shut, hugged her dog, and said nothing.

Her two friends were slapping palms together and carefully gathering the net, Paloma admiring the brilliance of Lincoln’s improvised pulley made from the old tire rim. It wasn’t that they ignored her, just that they were filled with their own victory and triumph: They were the glorious rescuers. Feeling left out, Lucky cradled her hand. She hoped it would get infected and leave a scar. “I’ve got to get this hand looked at,” she said. “I think it’s pretty serious.” Even Lucky herself thought this sounded like bad TV.

“Let me see it,” Paloma said, and examined the splinter at close range. “Well, I bet it hurts a little, but it’s small and not deep. Which, I can get it out easily with a pair of tweezers. Remind me when we get back. My mom made me bring this complete first aid kit. Lincoln, let me carry the other rope.”

Lincoln was looking at the well. “I should come back tomorrow with some boards and barbed wire,” he said. “Nail it over that opening.”

Lucky gathered all her dignity. “
I’ll
do it,” she said. “That stupid well should be
completely
off-limits. Imagine if some
child
was playing here and—”

Lucky stopped. Paloma had pulled her lips inside and
widened her eyes. Then she looked at Lincoln and pointed at Lucky and said, “‘
Completely
off-limits!’” Lincoln grinned and said, “‘Imagine if some
child
was playing around here!’” They howled with laughter and then Lincoln said, “You may be right about that, Lucky, now that I think of it.” And he stuffed the net carefully back into his black plastic trash bag, slung it over his shoulder, and turned toward Hard Pan.

Then he looked back. He said, “It was a round turn, and two half hitches through the beckets at the ends of the hammock that did it. I wasn’t worried about the strain; that net’s got a lot of weight-bearing strength and I repaired all the tears—or actually, the cuts—with two-strand knots. So it was able to take a lot of stress.”

His bringing up how she had cut his net like that, without straight-out accusing her, made embarrassment and shame surge up through Lucky’s body to right under the skin of her face; they made it red and hot. A bad taste rose into her throat from deep down at the back of her stomach where bile was waiting. It was the bitter flavor, too strong to bear, of knowing you’d been wrong and acted mean, and Lucky tried to bury the wretched taste of it under more meanness. “Lincoln,” she said, in an exasperated tone. “What about
my
stress? Can you even imagine what I’ve been through? And can we please talk about something besides knots?” She noticed Paloma off to the side, no longer laughing, staring at her.

Lincoln repositioned the sack over his shoulder, gripping
its neck with both hands. He gazed at Lucky for a moment, nodded, turned away, and strode off toward Hard Pan.

“Bye!” Lucky called in a light tone to show she didn’t care; to show that she had Paloma and didn’t need him anymore.

Paloma continued to look at Lucky, her droopy eyes stunned. Finally she said, “Lincoln’s pulley contraption was so cool.” They set off behind him. “Which, I bet we could have hauled up an elephant, just the two of us.”

Lucky said nothing. She trudged on, sand filling her shoes like grains of misery. A crow screamed from far overhead.

“Want a Maui Punch?” Paloma offered her a blue Pixy Stix.

Lucky took it, ripped the top off the paper straw, tipped her head back, and poured every speck of Pixy onto her tongue. Usually she made her Pixy Stix last much longer, but this time she wanted everything at once. She wanted her whole mouth to close around that Maui Punch flavor, which Paloma had saved for her.

“Paloma,” she said, “I…should never have sent you out, like, practically to your doom. You were almost lost.”

“Lost—are you kidding? With
my
mother?” Paloma said. “No way I was going to get lost. I found a stick and dragged it along to mark the ground, which, if I had to retrace my steps I probably could have. Of course, I was going in the complete wrong direction, so if Lincoln hadn’t seen me I would have come back. He was looking for you. The thing is—” Paloma broke off.

“What?”

“Well, the thing is, he likes you, Lucky. Which, I don’t get why you’re so mean to him.”

Lucky shrugged. She already knew Lincoln liked her. She knew that
she
would never like someone like her. She would hate someone like her. She would really, really hate someone who acted like her, and she’d get as far away as she could.
But how,
Lucky thought,
do you get away from someone you can’t stand if that person is you?

Paloma said, “Anyway, I told him you needed Short Sammy and he asked what was going on, so I explained how you were trapped in the well. He said he could get you out, which, I told him you really wanted Sammy.”

As they walked, Lucky asked, “What was the thing that happened with Short Sammy, anyway?”

“It was strange,” Paloma said. “Lincoln explained more of it to me on our way back to the well. He said Short Sammy left the Captain in charge of stirring the stew while he went out to work on his adopted highway. He was supposed to be back in about
an hour. Which, after two hours the Captain started to wonder. Sammy hadn’t returned.”

“Probably more trash on the highway than usual,” Lucky said, “because it’s the weekend.”

“That’s what everyone thought,” Paloma said, carefully avoiding a prickly-looking bush. “But then Sammy came driving back in his Cadillac. He’s so short, Lincoln said all you could see through the window was his hat. But it turned out he wasn’t alone in the car.”

“He found someone out on the highway who needed help?” Lucky asked.

“Kind of. He found a dog.”

“What dog would be way out here on a highway in the middle of nowhere?”

“Lincoln didn’t know. It’s a mystery,” said Paloma. “But Sammy had come home, and he got out of the car with the dog in his arms, went straight into his water tank house, and shut the door behind him. He wouldn’t answer the door to anyone. So Lincoln and I came back to get you out ourselves.”

“Wow,” said Lucky. “That is so messed up.” She was sure that Sammy would have come running if he’d known the grave danger she’d been in. Lucky’s white blood cells pumped out resentment antibodies. She felt a little bit cheated, and mad at Sammy, and mad, weirdly, at Lincoln for being able to so easily do what a grown-up should have been in charge of, and mad at Paloma for being so cheerful about everything. And mad, most
of all, at Lucky Trimble for not being able to stop herself from having all these stupid thoughts.

“Pal,” she said. “Do you know that you’re always saying ‘which’?”

Paloma looked confused. “When?”

“Like, all the time. You’ll say something and then you say something about what you just said.”

“I do?”

“Yeah. It’s like you’ll say—this is just an example—‘Lincoln always ties knots, which, how weenie is that?’”

“I’d never say that!”

“It was just an example.”

“I mean, I’d never say weenie, which, it’s such a baby word.”

“See, you just did it—,” Lucky began.

Paloma whirled around to stand in front of Lucky. To the side, a little waist-high group of prickly cholla, backlit by the sun, glowed as if wearing halos. “And I’d never call Lincoln anything bad. Which, I mean, Lucky, jeez. I’d still be wandering around in the desert and you’d be at the bottom of that abandoned well right now if it weren’t for him. Would you please give him a break?”

Lucky flung her head all the way back as far as it would go and then flopped it all the way forward as a way of saying
Yes
and
Duh
and
That’s really beside the point
. “I know that, Pal,” she said patiently, as if explaining something to a young child. “All I meant is about how you say ‘which’ all the time.”

“Okay! I’ll say something without saying ‘which.’ You’re
horrid
to Lincoln!”

Then Paloma, Lucky’s Pal, turned and ran on ahead, finally catching up to Lincoln. With HMS Beagle waiting beside her, Lucky stood where she was, tasting not the leftover sweetness of Maui Punch but a bad, bitter mixture of regret and loss.

“Beag,” she said finally. “I lost them.” HMS Beagle glanced at her, then pointed her nose at the jumble of footprints left by Lincoln and Paloma. Lucky nodded. “I know, but I ruined everything.” Her dog stood staring straight ahead. “We should go find them, shouldn’t we?” Lucky said. “At least we should try.” The Beag agreed, and they began walking toward home.