Lucky Breaks (7 page)

In the middle of the night, a noise—so loud and close that it jolted the canned-ham trailer—made Lucky sit bolt upright. HMS Beagle bounded to the door. Seconds later Brigitte flew in, leaped on the bed, and grabbed Lucky in both her arms. The noise—neither human nor machine—blasted into the trailer again. It sounded like an enormous giant jumping on the creaky, rusty metal bedsprings of an old bed with no mattress. Up and down the giant jumped, ancient metal shrieking into an amplified microphone. Brigitte held on tighter, and Lucky could feel her heart pounding.

“What is this terrible sound?” Brigitte whispered.

Lucky had heard it before, though never from so close. “It’s a burro,” she said.

Brigitte loosened her grip. Lucky’s eyes were getting used to the dark, and she could see Brigitte’s scared-looking face by the moonlight through the window. Even after living there more
than two years, Brigitte found life in the high desert mysterious and sometimes threatening.

“What is he doing here?” she asked, already going from scared to mad. “This burro should not be in our yard.”

Lucky smiled to herself. “It probably thinks
we’re
in
its
yard.” She stood and went to the porthole window. “Don’t turn on the light—come see.” She gestured to Brigitte to join her. HMS Beagle had her nose to the crack under the door, sniffing. She looked from Lucky to the door and back, asking to be allowed to go out and run off the intruder. “Shhhh,” Lucky said, her signal to the Beag not to bark.

The burro was meandering around the Café tables but stopped when it came to Brigitte’s potted herb and lettuce garden.

Brigitte put her face next to Lucky’s in order to look out of the tiny window. “He is going to eat my vegetables!” she said in an outraged whisper.

Lucky wanted to stay quiet and watch. She had a perfect view of the whole yard. Right away, she liked this burro. Its belly sagged and its coat was very shaggy, which made it look old and kind of run-down. One ear tilted way out to the side, on a head that looked enormous in proportion to its smallish body. A breeze blew its scent, which was grassy and horsey, into the trailer.

“I am going to frighten him away,” Brigitte said. “He has not the right to eat my parsley!”

“Wait.” Lucky stalled for time. “Let’s see what happens. He reminds me of Chesterfield.”

It was interesting that the short-legged animal, who was maybe only half as big as a regular horse, had such a huge head, ears, and voice. Lucky decided that he looked more like a really ragged pet than a wild creature.

“And who is this Chesterfield?” Brigitte asked. “I do not know him.”

“Just a made-up burro in stories I tell Miles.”

The burro’s ears swiveled toward them, and he turned his head in their direction.

“Shhhh,” Lucky said again very quietly.

The burro raised his lips and opened his mouth, showing very large and yellowish teeth. He brayed again, straight at the window.

“Why do I whisper when he is yelling insults at me?” demanded Brigitte.

Just then, the burro began to pee. A huge stream of urine shot out with such force that it gouged a trench in the sandy topsoil. Lucky watched with interest, gripping Brigitte’s hand to keep her there. He went on peeing and peeing. A pee-lake started to form. As a scientist, Lucky wished she could measure exactly the quantity of pee and the time it took. It was very surprisingly and wondrously a
lot
.

Brigitte wrenched her hand out of Lucky’s and stamped into the kitchen, where she grabbed the flyswatter. Lucky was on her heels.

“Brigitte, what are you going to do?”

“Swat that big nuisance and make him go away! He peed in our Café!”

“No! He’ll kick you! He could break your leg!” Lucky had no idea if this was true, but she wanted Brigitte to leave him alone. Maybe she could make friends with him. She imagined saying to Paloma,
Oh, look, here comes Chesterfield. He’s wild, but he kind of likes to hang out here.
She could see Paloma’s expression, and how cool Paloma would think it was to have a wild burro as a friend. Also, she knew Paloma would
die
of laughter if she ever got to see Chesterfield pee.

“I am not afraid of that beast,” Brigitte said unconvincingly.

Lucky clicked her tongue and shook her head in a professional-desert-resident way. In certain cases with Brigitte it was important for Lucky to act like she had total command of the situation. “He’d become loco the minute he saw that flyswatter, Brigitte,” Lucky improvised. “It’s common knowledge around here. You
never
want a burro to catch sight of a flyswatter or any other sort of flapping thing in your hand. Just let me handle this.”

“You will not go out there!” Brigitte exclaimed.

As if she were concentrating too hard to hear, Lucky opened the fridge, grabbed a carrot and an apple, and mumbled, “This should work,” like she was an experienced burro expert dealing
with a situation that she would soon have well under control. HMS Beagle went to stand at the kitchen door.

“You stay here, Beag,” Lucky said in a strict voice, and gave her dog the carrot. “That burro might think you’re a coyote.” To Brigitte she said, “Don’t worry; I know what I’m doing. Please keep HMS Beagle inside.”

Lucky had often allowed Brigitte to think that her adopted daughter had more experience than was actually the case. This came in very handy, time after time. Brigitte said, “His teeth will bite off your fingers!”

But Lucky, barefoot and wearing her warm-weather nightie, slipped out quickly, closing the door behind her.

Brigitte wrenched it open immediately, but stayed in the doorway.

Instead of looking straight at the animal, Lucky turned her face to the side because she knew that non-meat-eaters, like the burro, do not like it when meat-eaters, like Lucky, look at them directly. His own eyes, outlined in white, were slanted up in a way that made him look sleepy and sweet. Lucky scratched the skin of the apple with her fingernail, releasing its apple smell.

She walked, slowly, to the closest Café table and put the apple on it.

“Here you go, Chesterfield,” she said in a soft voice. “You can have the apple but not Brigitte’s parsley or vegetables.” She could hear Brigitte’s breathy
pfft
of disbelief behind her.

The burro twitched its scraggly tail. Dust floated off its thick, patchy-looking coat in the moonlight. Up this close, even
viewed from the corners of Lucky’s eyes, he was a really dilapidated burro, probably old enough to be a great-grandfather. Everything about him was tough and worn and dried out except his gentle, long-eyelashed eyes and his white velvety muzzle.

Lucky glanced back at the kitchen trailer doorway. Brigitte, wearing the oversize T-shirt she slept in, clutching the flyswatter, did not take her eyes off the burro.

Lucky sighed. It was good that, like Lincoln, Brigitte and the Beag watched out for her, but at the same time too bad none of them realized how strong and swift and smart she was in dangerous situations. They didn’t know how much like Charles Darwin she was. Just like him, she would have tons of adventures, make important discoveries, and live to be very, very old. She could take care of herself.

Chesterfield put his great head to the ground for a moment, then slowly turned and wandered off toward the open desert on neat tiny hooves. Lucky watched him awhile, then came inside, feeling disappointed.

HMS Beagle sniffed her thoroughly, sneezed, and went to curl up on the little rug by Lucky’s bed. Brigitte drank a tall glass of water, still watching out the kitchen window.

In the morning the apple was gone.

HMS Beagle and Lucky were examining the burro’s hoofprints in the early morning light when Brigitte called, “There is e-mail for you!” and Lucky ran into the kitchen where the Dell laptop was open. Brigitte gave Lucky her place at the little built-in table. “Please do not take too long—I have some reservations for the weekend to answer, and also orders to make.”

The weekend meant customers, and Brigitte was ordering some meat and vegetable deliveries over the Internet. Lucky slid into the seat.

“Dear Luck,” she read. “Mom said yes! C U Friday!!!!! P.S. Have you learned to swim yet? Xxx Pal.”

Lucky yipped and raised her two fists. “Her mom said yes!” she told Brigitte.

“Because I promise her on the telephone you two girls will be careful. She does not really know us, and she is very, very worried about Paloma’s safety.” Brigitte gestured toward the miles and miles of Mojave Desert outside. She put her hands
on each side of Lucky’s face and leaned over, zinging waves of seriousness straight out of her eyes and straight into Lucky’s.
“Ma puce,”
she said in her deep, quiet voice, “you must be thinking always about this and not get into even a little bit of trouble or she will never let Paloma come back.”

“I know,” said Lucky, and made her own eyes gaze back at Brigitte, beaming a 100 percent promise that trouble was the
last
thing she and Paloma would get into. Brigitte let her go, and Lucky clicked on Reply. “Dear Pal, YAY!!!!!!” she typed. “P.S. Plastic bucket big enuf for both to learn to swim. Treading water until Friday. C U xxx Luck.”

But a little later, Lucky had another e-mail. “Uncle Rocky can’t get away this weekend. I cried so hard my mom and dad decided to bring me themselves. Bad mistake!!!!!!! Now we R stuck! Xxx Pal.”

Lucky puzzled over this message. Paloma hadn’t talked much about her parents except to say her father was in the Industry, which she explained meant he had something to do with the movies, and that her mom had been a child actress but no one famous, just commercials and parts on TV. To Lucky they sounded interesting and gorgeous, and she wondered why Paloma didn’t want them to come to Hard Pan.

One thing she remembered was that Paloma said her mother listened in on her phone calls and wouldn’t let her have her own cell. Lucky had laughed and said cell phones didn’t work in Hard Pan because of the mountains and hills all around, so she didn’t have one either.

Lucky resolved to make a good impression on Paloma’s parents by being conscientious, careful, and well behaved. And Hard Pan would be the most safe and perfect place for kids to be, with no danger whatsoever. That way they would allow Paloma to visit often on weekends. And if Lucky and Paloma did have some adventures, they would just be careful that no one found out.

But deep in the crevices of her mind, worried thoughts of Paloma’s mother and father wormed around day and night.

That was why, on the bus ride to school, Lucky imagined herself to
be
Paloma’s parents. Next to her, Miles was hunched over
Brain Surgery for Beginners
. Even though he had to sound out, aloud, some of the words (a very tedious experience for Lucky to endure), he pressed on. And he talked endlessly about brains.

Lincoln was holding
Knot News
in one hand and two cords in the other. Lucky’s eyes, now with Paloma’s parents’ minds superimposed over her own mind, saw both boys in a new way. Instead of his usual comfortable self, Lincoln seemed abnormal. Maybe even
sub
normal. “Can’t you ever
not
knot?” she asked him suddenly.

Lincoln looked surprised.

Lucky knew that even his teachers had tried to get him to quit knotting in class ever since second grade, but they gave up when he got As in everything
whether he knotted or not. “This issue of
Knot News
is about repairing tears in a net,” he said, as if that answered her question, looking straight at her in his level, open way. “And this,” he went on, “is a double fisherman’s knot. It’s handy if you need a weight-bearing knot to join two different cords.”

“Lincoln, that’s just it. I
don’t
need one.” Lucky had never lied to Lincoln, but now she pretended not to know why he was reading an article about repairing tears. One of her brain crevices told her that it wasn’t really lying if you didn’t actually say anything. But right behind her eyes, Lucky felt a hot finger of shame pressing on her tear ducts.

Lincoln raised his eyebrows at her as if she had completely missed the point. “Between you and eternity could be the right knot,” he said.

The grown-up-ness of this answer, and the calm, kind way he said it, and the hard-to-get-ness of its meaning irritated Lucky, which was a relief because it made her stop feeling like crying. An image popped into her mind of Mount Rushmore, with its four presidents carved out of the stone mountain, looking wise and strong and forever. She pictured Lincoln’s face chiseled up there with them. Okay, fine, she thought, but couldn’t Lincoln just be a
little
more like other kids, just a bit more normal? Lincoln didn’t even talk like a regular person.

Miles, in his own way, was even worse. His hair looked as if it had never been combed, which was more or less true; his face was smeared with traces of cookies, his fingers were sticky—the
fingernails black—and his pants were shiny-dark on the sides where he rubbed his hands. He would definitely give Paloma’s parents a very bad impression.

It would be impossible, even for Lucky, to reform both Lincoln and Miles in one day, so the only solution was to keep Paloma’s parents from meeting them at all.

When Sandi the bus driver pulled up in the town of Dale and made five little kids hurry up and get in their seats so she could stay on schedule, Lucky looked out the window and said casually, “Paloma’s coming back tomorrow to stay for the weekend.”

“Oh, good,” said Miles, who had mooched several cookies off her. “Maybe Chesterfield will even come back and pee again, and I bet Paloma’ll laugh so much she won’t be able to stand up.” Miles had heard the whole story of the burro’s visit while they’d waited for the bus. He’d made Lucky promise to call him on the phone, any time, day or night, if Chesterfield showed up again.

Lincoln concentrated on his knot, looking back and forth from a series of complicated-looking diagrams in
Knot News.

“But her parents are coming too, and from what I hear you two probably better not come around.”

“How come?” asked Lincoln, glancing up at her.

“They’re—worrywarts,” Lucky said, which was true. Then she began improvising. “They’re kind of scared of children….” She realized that their own daughter was a child, and corrected herself. “I mean, they’re scared of
boys
.”

“Why?” Miles asked.

“Danger,” Lucky said after a pause.

“What kind of danger?” Miles looked extremely fascinated by this subject.

Lucky wished she’d thought this out ahead of time. “Well,” she said, “this boy told a lie about Carmen, that’s Paloma’s mom, and got her in trouble when she was exactly Paloma’s age.”

“What lie did he tell?”

“It’s a…secret,” said Lucky. “Even Paloma doesn’t know for sure.”

Lincoln had his head to one side, gazing at a corner of the bus. “I’m trying to think what kind of lie would be so dangerous,” he said.

“All Paloma knows is that her mom almost died. So now as a parent she’s very strict and won’t even let Pal have a cell phone.”

Lincoln gave Lucky an odd look, which she ignored.

“What happens is, lots of times when Carmen sees boys, she remembers the terrible lie from when she was a child and sometimes—she can’t help herself—she even
bites
them. She bites their earlobes, really hard—I’m talking about
absolute strangers
—grabbing them with her teeth and not letting go. Especially boys between six and twelve.”

Lucky paused to assess how well her story was working as a way to make Lincoln and Miles stay away from Paloma’s parents. Miles looked impressed and a bit fearful. Lincoln was only gazing at her with a little smile, like someone waiting for the punch line of a joke.

“So if you want to come over, well, that would be okay as far as Paloma and I go, but it might”—here Lucky got a great inspiration—“it
could
really upset Brigitte, she being a brand-new official mother. It could give her a very bad example of parenting. Before that, she’d never even have
thought
of biting boys’ earlobes. But once she sees it…” Lucky sighed deeply and shook her head.

“You mean you think that could make
Brigitte
start biting boys’ earlobes?” asked Miles in horror.

They had nearly arrived in Sierra City by then, and Lucky was glad. Her story was good, she thought, in general, having intrigue, excitement, and tragedy, but it wasn’t quite working with Lincoln. “Who knows for sure?” she said. “Brigitte is really feeling her way along as far as being a mom. A lot of trial and error. I don’t think it would be good for her at all to see that kind of behavior in another mom. In my opinion, just for this weekend, maybe boys should keep their distance.”

Lucky started pulling on the straps of her backpack. “That’s just my opinion,” she repeated, and shrugged in a but-it’s-entirely-up-to-you way.

Miles said, “
I’m
going to stay far enough away so she can’t catch me and bite my earlobes, and if she tries, I’ll bite
hers
.”

Lucky saw that she had more embellishing to do on the story, especially when Lincoln Clinton Carter Kennedy, possible future president of the United States,
Knot News
under one arm and the giant black plastic bag slung over his back, climbed down the steps of the bus, laughing.