Lucky for Good

by Susan Patron

  “If Brigitte died,” Lucky said aloud to her Higher Power, “I’d just die too. It would be too sad to bear.” Lucky cried a little, which she often did during these conversations. “If the Beag died,” she went on, “I’d also die from the sadness.” She wanted to make it clear to her Higher Power just how much dying she could cope with before it killed her. Sometimes there was an answer, not in an actual voice, but as a sign. This was one of those times. It had been a very still, breezeless morning, like the world was holding its breath. And just then a big billow of warm wind blew right into Lucky’s face, the breath of her Higher Power gently blowing out a candle. This, Lucky decided, was a sign. But she wasn’t at all sure of what the sign meant.

  And there was no one she could ask. She definitely never told anyone about her death thoughts, because she suspected they would make her go to doctors for testing and she’d end up at a school for disturbed children. Well, she was probably a little bit disturbed, but wasn’t everybody? And it was not in a bad or alarming way, only inside her own head, where it didn’t bother a soul in the world.

  So she carefully kept her thoughts to herself, in the privacy of her mind.

  Especially her worst thought, a suspicion she was pretty sure about, that no matter how much you try to prepare yourself, no matter how carefully you have thought it all out—what could happen and how you would manage—you can never be ready.

  22. safety first

  Lucky had collected a large quantity of owl pellets from under one of the Chinese elms behind the old abandoned jail. She wanted to dissect them, so she brought a plastic bag to carry them in and two toothpicks. Since she could never get away with this type of scientific experiment at home because Brigitte wouldn’t allow owl pellets in the trailers, Lucky headed to Mrs. Prender’s. Justine was pretty cool about Lucky hanging out there, and Miles could play with HMS Beagle. Mrs. Prender herself was at her new job in Sierra City.

  That morning Miles had marked off the yard in front of Mrs. Prender’s double-wide with a dozen large orange plastic traffic-control cones; it looked as if some major highway construction was going to take place between the unpaved street and the four washing machines lined up on either side of the front door. Miles, wearing Short Sammy’s bright orange Adopt-a-Highway vest, was now enthusiastically spearing litter within this coned-off area. He used an official-looking tool with a long pole handle. As Lucky and HMS Beagle approached, the dog ran to Miles and stretched out her front legs, head low, rear end high. Then she leaped straight up in the air.

  “It’s not a game,” Miles said to the Beag, who bowed again and then leaped even higher, all four legs off the ground, like one of those gazelle-type animals on a PBS program. “Explain to her, Lucky. This is official work.”

  “Sure,” Lucky said, and turned to her dog. “Beag, you heard him. Miles isn’t playing. The State of California is hiring six-year-olds to stab the litter in their own front yards.” Although Lucky said this ironically, HMS Beagle gave it serious consideration, listening with her head cocked to the side. “If you’ll check out the traffic cones,” Lucky went on, “and the orange vest, you’ll notice that this is an official roadwork area.” Lucky and Paloma were extremely interested in irony. They agreed that irony was similar to sarcasm, only more mature. Both Lincoln and Miles were becoming accustomed to a lot of irony popping up in everyday conversations.

  Miles rolled his eyes. “First, nobody hires the Adopt-a-Highway people. They volunteer. I got Short Sammy to lend me his equipment because of too much arguing.”

  Lucky frowned her eyebrows. “And these orange traffic cones have to do with too much arguing exactly how?”

  “Well, last night my grandma told Justine she prayed too much, and Justine told Grandma maybe she didn’t pray enough, and they argued about that, and then they argued about some other things.” He stabbed a paper cup with his pole. “I hate it when they argue.”

  “Let me try that thing,” Lucky said. She removed the paper cup, threw it on the ground, and restabbed it. “This is a cool tool.” She gave it back to him. “So how did it get from arguing to Adopt-a-Highway in your front yard?”

  “Well, I told them about Short Sammy’s equipment and asked could I make a special zone here in front if I clean it up, where there’s no arguing allowed. And then they stopped arguing and Justine got out her prayer journal and Grandma said it was okay,” Miles explained.

  Lucky glanced at the front door. A Gatorade bottle, now serving as a hummingbird feeder, hung upside down from the porch ceiling. “So they’ll still argue inside, but if you get sick of it you can come out here and stab litter. Good plan.” Miles peered at her for traces of irony. She sighed and ruffled his thick, coppery hair and said, “Well, for Pete’s sake, throw a stick or something. HMS Beagle thinks the cones and the vest and the pole are some kind of game and that you’ve been hoping she’ll come and play with you.” She turned back to her dog, leaning forward to put her hands on her knees, and slapped her palms on her thighs. HMS Beagle understood. She ran in a circle and leaped in the air.

  Miles grinned, placed his pole to the side, and looked around the yard, which was nearly free of litter but still contained a wealth of discarded but potentially useful stuff. He spotted an ancient, rotting tennis ball, coming apart at the seams and encrusted with layers of dirt and grit, but still a ball. HMS Beagle, who was watching him because she understood that he was ready to play, also saw the ball and knew what it was for. It was a thing for throwing, and it smelled of rabbit urine and the rubber of a car tire that had run over it, and it smelled of Miles, who had picked it up earlier and then dropped it back onto the ground because it was still too good to get rid of. The Beag knew he would throw it as far as he could and she would bring it back. She was outstanding at this game. She turned her body in readiness to fly after the ball, never taking her eyes off Miles’s hand. He raised his arm and sailed the ball out toward the faraway Coso Range. The dog was after it in a blur and returned a few seconds later, dropping it at Miles’s feet, waiting for him to throw it again.

  Lucky moved toward the front door as Miles praised the Beag and made several feints with the ball, pretending to throw it. HMS remained alert but lowered her rear to the ground to show she knew this was part of the game; she could wait. Lucky gave two short raps on the door, called out “Justine?” and eased the door open slightly, waiting to be invited inside. This was good visiting manners in Hard Pan. She turned back around to say, “Hey, I’m dissecting some owl pellets inside. You can watch if you want.”

  Miles shook his head and turned back to HMS Beagle. He’d seen plenty of owl pellets, and he had a pretty good idea Justine would not like them one bit. “We’re fine out here, aren’t we, Beag?” he said.

  HMS Beagle crowded up close to Miles so he would scratch her right between her shoulders, in the place she couldn’t reach herself. He did, and the Beag noted that he smelled of many things: of himself most strongly, of ball, of Short Sammy, of cookies, and of Lucky. He smelled, in other words, exactly right.

  23. mucus

  “Back here,” Justine called, and Lucky walked through a curtain of walnut shells that clicked and clacked against one another like a kind of musical instrument. Justine had made it by drilling tiny holes in the tops and bottoms of each half shell and threading them with lengths of dental floss. These long ropes of shells were then tied close together onto a pole across the top of the door frame. She said they acted like a screen, keeping flies away, and also helped her keep track of Miles as he ran in and out of the house. Everyone in town wanted her to make them a walnut-shell curtain, but Justine had run out of shells, and besides, she said she wanted a new project.

  Lucky found her on the floor of the kitchen, locked in battle with a wire coat hanger, as if she wanted to maim it badly before putting it to death. “Hey,” Lucky said as she sat, cross-legged, on the beat-up linoleum.

  There were three main aspects about Justine that Lucky had observed. One: She was very, very re
ligious, but without being all holy or saintly about it; two: She always seemed nervous or worried; and three: She liked to make things out of stuff people threw away. Like the walnut-shell curtain and the hummingbird feeder, and probably, Lucky guessed, whatever this wire hanger was being made into.

  Fortunately, Justine was also beginning to pick up some basic mom-skills. Lucky knew for a fact that she made excellent hot dogs (the exact proportion of ketchup and mayo and mustard and chopped onions and sweet pickles) and great tuna melts and also perfect mac and cheese and a good PB&J sandwich. A strong, reliable, and good-tasting repertory. Lucky was used to Brigitte’s unstoppable interest in food, every kind of food and every way to prepare it and season it and serve it, and how to store it and preserve it and when to get more of it. So it was kind of restful to be around a mom who wasn’t constantly experimenting with strange ingredients and who didn’t talk about food all the time.

  The tradeoff was hearing a lot of stuff from the Bible. To Justine, every single thing in the world had a connection to the Bible. It was her rule book. Ask a question about anything and she could find the answer, or something that she could interpret as an answer, in her Bible. It was interesting as long as she didn’t go too far overboard.

  As Miles’s almost-big-sister, Lucky felt it her duty to be available in case Justine needed tips, pointers, or the benefit of her wisdom in terms of motherhood decisions, just as she had helped Brigitte in her beginning-mom period. Lucky was very generous with her advice. So she hung out at the Prenders’ every so often when Mrs. Prender herself was at her cashier job at the Buy-Mor-Store in Sierra City. (Justine had been the one who wanted a job, but she didn’t have a driver’s license or a car, so instead her mother, Mrs. Prender, got hired and drove into town four days a week.)

  After watching Justine’s fierce assault on the hanger for a few more minutes, Lucky asked, “Um, Justine, what’s up with the coat hanger?”

  “I need pliers to bend this thing. Where do you think she keeps them?”

  “Probably in the jar-lid drawer,” Lucky said. “Wait a sec.” She found the tool and handed it over to Justine. Then she pulled an old newspaper off a stack in the corner and spread it on the floor, dumping the plastic bag full of owl pellets on top.

  “I’m trying”—Justine broke off as she struggled to bend the curved hook at the top of the hanger back and downward—“to rig up a book-holder. So I can prop a book open while I work. I have to make Miles’s lunches.”

  Lucky had noticed a row of bread slices on the kitchen counter; it looked like the whole loaf. “What, you make more than one day’s lunch at a time?”

  Justine clamped the pliers onto one foot of the wire triangle’s base. With a mighty effort she bent it forward, forming a little corner. “It’s a time-saving technique,” she explained to Lucky. “You make five lunches at a time and then it’s all done and ready in the morning and you’re not all frantic, flying around to find the peanut butter and making Miles miss his bus.”

  “Wow,” Lucky said admiringly, although the white bread was already drying out. Everything dried out—apples, bread, salt, even things you don’t think of as having humidity, like newspapers and wooden salad bowls—just by being exposed to the Hard Pan air, which sucked up moisture like Miles sucked up chocolate milk with a straw. Even the stuff in your nose—mucus, one of those words Lucky loved because it sounded medical and much more scientific than “snot”—dried out. It got so dried out that it became like little rocks stuck in your nostrils. Lucky had observed, without people realizing it, that everyone in Hard Pan picked their noses at some time or other to get rid of that dried-out mucus.

  But Short Sammy had once pointed out to Lucky that sometimes scientists make observations without necessarily expressing all of them aloud. So she did not share with Justine either her mucus thoughts or her dried-out-bread thoughts. She had learned that living in Hard Pan sometimes meant dried sandwiches, and there are worse things in the world.

  Justine nudged a stack of small brown paper bags that had had previous uses but were now flattened out as much as crumpled brown bags can be flattened out. “You just do an assembly-line kind of thing, get everything organized. You mark your little lunch bags with his name.” She bent the opposite side of the hanger, making another corner so that the two ends of the base of the wire triangle curved forward and the top hook was twisted back. She set it on the floor and carefully placed her open Bible into its grasp. The book stayed open and propped up at a perfect angle for reading.

  “That’s extremely cool, Justine,” Lucky said, “being able to read and make peanut butter sandwiches at the same—”

  “Ew!” Justine said. She had just noticed Lucky’s pile of brownish gray, furry-looking ovals, each about an inch long—owl pellets. “What are those?” She scooched away from the newspaper and snatched the Bible from its holder and clutched it to her chest, wrapped in her arms, as if the pellets, just lying there, could contaminate it. She leaned her head on her knees, one heel beating a fast rhythm on the floor, and took deep breaths. Then she looked piercingly at Lucky, waiting.

  Lucky frowned at her. “Justine, these are owl pellets! It’s, like, fur and bones and teeth and other stuff that owls can’t digest.”

  “But why would you want those things? Why did you dump them here?” She pointed to the kitchen floor. “That is the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen. Gah!”

  “Hang on, Justine. Check this out.” Lucky got out her two toothpicks. “So what they do, the owls—and these are the small ones you see about a half hour after the sun sets—is they eat a mouse or a little bird or a wood rat. But—think about it—owls don’t have teeth!” Lucky loved this part. It was such a clever way for owls to have adapted to not being able to chew. “So they swallow everything whole or in big chunks and it all gets sorted out in their stomach. In a thing called a gizzard. Then after a while, they regurgitate these pellets, the stuff they couldn’t digest.”

  Justine’s already high-pitched voice got even higher. “When do we find out what you’re doing with them, and why you’re doing it on this kitchen floor?”

  “Okay, wait. Don’t freak out.” Lucky gently pulled a pellet apart with her toothpicks. It was dry and not too dense, and there was a mild, not unpleasant musky smell. Inside the pellet were the perfectly clean white bones of a tiny creature. She put these aside in a little pile, then started on another pellet with her toothpicks.

  Justine gaped at the tiny, delicate bones. “Wash your hands before you touch anything,” she said, but she sounded different, not so disgusted. She leaned forward to look at the bones more closely. “What kind of animal are they from? These look just like human leg bones. Whoa—that’s a skull.”

  “I think it’s a little mouse, or part of one,” Lucky said. “It’s not a bird, because this stuff is fur, not feathers.”

  Justine carefully picked up one of the bones. It was half the length of a toothpick and intricately shaped. “Incredible,” she said.

  Lucky frowned. As a scientist, she loved studying the pellets. But Justine seemed fascinated for some other reason. She’d gone from totally repulsed to totally interested in three seconds. What was up with that?

  “Can you take all the bones out of those pellets and give them to me? Can you get more?” Justine was now arranging the bones on the palm of her hand, lining them up. Lucky stared at her. “I can’t get over how perfect they are,” Justine continued. “Very light, but strong.”

  “Hey, wash your hands before you touch anything,” Lucky said, feeling half-ironic and half-crabby. “Why should I give you my owl pellets?”

  “I don’t want the whole thing. Yuck. Just the bones inside them.”

  Lucky couldn’t figure what the deal was with the bones. “But what for?” she said.

  Justine was rearranging the skull and the pelvis; she seemed to be concentrating. “I need them, Lucky,” she said, not exactly answering the question. “All that you can find. I’ll owe you. I don’t h
ave any money, but we can figure out some other way I can pay you back. I could make you something. Please.” She looked like a kid begging for a pair of red leather cowboy boots—something she wanted bad. And this appealed strongly to Lucky.

  Maybe owl pellets would be a really big point in Hard Pan’s favor if Justine was ever thinking of moving away with Miles—like if she wanted to live in a town where there was a church. If owl pellets meant Miles could stay, Lucky would gather them forever. And providing the stuff would be easy: She knew the particular branch of the Chinese elm where a couple of owls always went to regurgitate their pellets—she could get, maybe, eight of them every day at the same place.

  “Well,” Lucky said. “Okay, I guess. But you have to tell me why you want them.”

  “Next time, when you bring more. Leave me everything you have there, and when you come by tomorrow afternoon you’ll see.”

  So Lucky set to work separating the bones from the other material in the pellets, and Justine aligned them in various patterns. For once, the Bible lay, along with its coat-hanger holder, off to the side, unread.

  Before she left, Lucky washed her hands and helped Justine finish making the sandwiches. Remembering a tip from Short Sammy, she dropped a piece of peeled carrot inside each little plastic Ziploc sandwich bag, to give the bread something with moisture that it could suck up.

  As they worked, her radio playing rock-and-roll music in the background, Justine studied her pile of tiny bones again and again. When they finished making the sandwiches, she pulled Lucky’s hands together and clutched them tightly in her own, their four hands a ball that Justine tucked for a moment under her chin. It was a little odd and but also cool, having her hands captured like that, as if they were precious to Justine, and Lucky didn’t try to take them back.