by Susan Patron
“Where’s your shoe?” she said into his ear. He hadn’t loosened his grip on her neck.
“I don’t know! I lost it.”
“Okay, look. I’m going to carry you piggyback. You have to help by letting go and then climbing on me.”
“Please don’t trick me and leave me here, Lucky!”
“I promise I won’t, Miles. Come on.”
Even though she’d had a lot of practice lugging her survival kit backpack all the time, Lucky was surprised at how heavy a five-year-old boy could feel. She staggered back up the hill to the dugout, feeling as if the day had been going on for weeks.
Her worst thought was that she didn’t have pliers to grip the cholla burr and pull it out. Even if she made a very clumsy glove by folding the dishcloth over and over on itself, the cholla’s steel-hard needles would plunge right through the cloth and get stuck in her hand.
Miles sat on the towel with his bare foot propped on his other leg to keep anything from touching the burr and making it hurt worse. He gulped Gatorade, finishing the bottle. HMS Beagle spent a long time lapping water.
“I already tried to get it out,” he said, “but it hurts your fingers to touch it.”
“I know,” Lucky said. She rummaged through her supplies and survival kit. She’d seen Short Sammy dislodge a burr stuck in a boot by slipping a fork between the needles and the leather and f lipping it out, instead of trying to pull it out.
But Lucky didn’t have a fork or even a comb, which also might have worked. She needed something toothed. But the toothbrush bristles were way too soft.
“Lucky?”
“Miles, I’m concentrating. What.”
“Nothing.”
Lucky sighed. “Okay, what?” she said in a nicer, paying-attention way.
“You don’t look normal. You look kind of…fancy.”
Lucky scowled.
“But you look pretty and kind of…grown up,” he added.
Lucky thought of herself as someone highly adapted to her habitat, being all one colorless color, rather than pretty. She narrowed her eyes at Miles to see if he was up to something, but he was looking worriedly at the cholla burr, with its needle-sharp thorns sticking out in every direction—a dozen of them in his heel. She tucked the thought of prettiness into a safe crevice, for thinking about later.
Suddenly Miles said, “Is Brigitte coming to make our dinner?”
“No, Miles. We ran away.”
“I didn’t run away.”
Lucky let that go.
“Then why is her thing for parsley here?” Miles asked.
“Just a keepsake, like when you want to remember someone and—” Lucky broke off. Her mind had found a great spectacular idea. She plucked Brigitte’s gadget from the pile of supplies and released its little latch. The two parts separated—a funnel-like part where you crammed in the parsley and a little spoked part with a handle.
She gripped the top of Miles’s foot in one hand. “Don’t move,” she said. Very carefully she angled the tin spokes under the cholla and with a hard, sure, sudden twist, she flipped the whole burr away.
“Ow,” Miles cried.
All the needles were out. Lucky kicked the burr aside and then crushed it with a rock.
“This is quite a mild case,” Lucky said professionally as she peered at the foot. “It will hurt for a while, so you have to be brave about that.”
“I will,” he snuffled. “I didn’t run away on purpose, Lucky. I was just looking for Chesterfield.”
“You won’t get into trouble, don’t worry,” Lucky said, without knowing if this were actually true.
But now she had a major problem named Miles to worry about. Running away is one thing. Running away with a one-shoed five-year-old is much, much more complicated and dreadful.
19. Eggs and Beans
The windstorm seemed to be getting dis-couraged at last. It was less noisy, and you could see parts of blue sky through the dust. Lucky hoped strongly that the storm would blow way out into the desert that stretched before them like an ocean. From their protected spot in front of the dugout, the desert was all they could see. Hard Pan was far, far behind them.
HMS Beagle raised her head, her black nose twitching, when Miles began making the where-are-
you, where-are-you, where-are-you call of a quail. Lucky let him. Being around Miles took a lot of energy, and she didn’t have much left.
Suddenly Miles quit. He lay facedown on the towel and began to cry softly. Lucky sighed.
“Time for dinner,” she said in her brisk nurse voice. As expected, Miles sat up and looked interested.
“I have sand in me everywhere,” he announced. “Even under my clothes. What are we having?”
“First, hard-boiled eggs.”
“Ewww. I only like eggs when the white part and the yellow part are mixed up together,” Miles explained. “Can’t we have scrambled eggs?”
“Do you see a stove around here? Do you see a fridge with fresh eggs inside? Do you see a pan for cooking?”
“No,” said Miles in a small voice. “Is there any gravy? I love gravy for dinner.”
“Beans,” said Lucky in a don’t-push-it, Brigitte-
like way. She was saving the Fig Newtons for a later emergency. Maybe by breakfast time tomorrow Miles would decide to like hard-boiled eggs.
Miles peeped softly to himself while Lucky found the can, spoon, and little packets of ketchup. She was very hungry and thought how delicious the beans would taste.
But there was one problem, she realized.
No can opener.
“What’s wrong?” Miles asked.
“Nothing. We’re going to open our can just like the old miners who once lived in this dugout did, okay?” She had no idea how yet. Because of the look on his face, she said, “Miles, do you realize we’re having a big adventure? This is going to be a lot of fun, but we also have to be adaptable, like Chesterfield and the other burros.”
Miles still looked worried. “I can’t run away overnight,” he said. “I’m not allowed to.”
Lucky decided to deal with that later. She peered into the cool darkness of the dugout. It smelled like ancient earth, like she imagined a tomb would smell, which was why she’d never explored in there before and did not want to go far inside now. She did not like that smell. But it wasn’t too deep to see into the corners. A wooden crate held a jumble of old junk.
Checking first for the sticky, messy-looking web that black widows spin—not at all like Charlotte’s beautiful flat web—Lucky searched for something she could use to get the lid off her can. There were a couple of sand-filled glass jars and bottles, a broken rake, a lot of rabbit droppings, and a rusty screwdriver.
She rubbed the screwdriver with sand to get off all the old germs and gunk, then wiped it with a corner of the towel. By holding the screwdriver at the rim of the can and pounding the handle with a rock, she made a small puncture. Steadying the can between her feet, she moved the screwdriver very slightly and made another puncture, widening the first one. She had to go almost all the way around before she could pry the spiky lid back.
“Okay, here’s how the old miners do,” Lucky said at last. She tore off a corner of a ketchup packet, dipped the spoon in the can, poured a little ketchup on top, and ate the beans. “Yum,” she said enthusiastically, to show Miles the one and only response she wanted to hear from him. She passed him the spoon and his own ketchup packet.
Miles dipped the spoon and squeezed a large dollop of ketchup on his hand, missing the spoon completely. Trying to lick it off his hand, he dumped the spoonful of beans on the towel. “Don’t the old miners have a plate?” he asked.
“Too much trouble to wash up,” Lucky said. She considered Plan B. “What you do,” she said, “is you squirt ketchup straight on your tongue, then you eat a spoon of beans and it all swaps together in your mouth. Try it.”
Miles did. By the time they slurped the last bean juice, taking turns, Miles had beans and ketchup
in his hair and all over his T-shirt, but he hadn’t cut himself on the lid and he hadn’t complained. He told Lucky she knew how to cook almost as good as Short Sammy.
As HMS Beagle finished her kibble and searched the ground for extra fallen morsels, Lucky was thinking that, considering the horrendous windstorm, the bother and trouble of Miles showing up, the cholla burr, and the lack of a can opener, still, all in all, it was a pretty successful Running-Away. She felt full and in charge. She looked grown up and maybe even pretty in Brigitte’s dress.
It was then that Lucky felt a little fluttering in her ear and automatically slapped at it. She was not thinking about specimens because the sensation of something in your ear makes you forget all about Charles Darwin.
The bug in her ear went deeper. She tried to gouge it out with her finger but couldn’t reach it. It got to a very deep place inside and sent a shooting, piercing pain into her head. She screamed and leaped to her feet, holding her head sideways. “Something crawled in my ear!” she screamed. “It’s biting me!”
20. A Good Book
Lucky had always worried, in a far back corner of her mind that wasn’t a scientific corner, about a bug crawling into her ear. This was partly why she had a garden-hedge perm. At night, if she remembered, she arranged a clump of hair over her ear, so any bug would come along and say, “Whoa, too hard to go through that thicket of hair,” and find some other thing to do.
The main reason she had mineral oil in her survival kit was to smooth some on her eyebrows for glistening. But another use she knew for the oil was to drown bugs.
“I can get it out like you got my cactus out!” shouted Miles. “Let me try!”
“No! Get me the plastic bottle of oil, quick!” Lucky kept her head to the side in case the bug might fall out because of gravity, but instead it dug around deeper inside. Lucky never knew you could feel that much pain.
She had an urgent, tremendous bad scary feeling and a crazed panic, with that bug moving around and biting tender, sensitive places that should never be touched ever by anything. Its scrabbling and scritching noises filled up her entire head, and those noises drummed out other, regular noises. She grabbed the bottle from Miles, got down on the towel on her side, and aimed for her ear. A large glop spilled onto her hair and neck and Lucky started crying because she thought she’d used it all up and wasted it. But there was still a little oil left that she carefully poured, knowing more by feel, now, where the opening to her ear was.
Lucky tried to soothe herself out of the panicky feeling by remembering that the bug would drown sooner or later without danger of the mineral oil seeping into her brain. You have to be patient. The main thing is if the bug is injured instead of being killed, it will never come out and you will have to go to the hospital where the doctor will use a special, horrible tool to reach in—and Lucky did not want to think about that special tool and what it would feel like.
Miles made some machine-gun noises and limped off down the hill, kicking sand with his one shoe. Lucky did not move. It’s important to wait until the bug fully dies in the oil. She didn’t know if it was working, because the bug still fluttered and crashed around.
“I’m going back now, Lucky,” Miles called from the foot of the little hill. “I’ll bring help so you don’t die from the bug in your brain.”
Lucky fought to keep from crying. “Miles, no! I’m okay! I won’t die! Don’t you want to see the bug come out?”
“No!”
“Don’t you want a Fig Newton?”
A pause. Miles was probably thinking this over. “I better get help first,” he said.
“But I need you, Miles! I need you to help me!”
“Help you do what?”
There were many more seconds now between bug movements. “Help me wait. I can’t move, but I’m very bored. I brought a good book. Could you please read it to me?”
“I don’t know how to read enough words yet.”
“Miles, I know you can read this one. Come on, get it out of that plastic sack.”
Lucky knew Miles thought she was trying to trick him. Slowly he limped back up to the camp. She heard him rummaging in the sack. The bug moved, but only a little.
“‘A mother bird sat on her egg,’” Miles read, and sighed deeply, his voice full of wonder.
By the time Miles finished reading Are You My Mother? Lucky decided she could safely turn onto her other side and drain her ear.
“Will blood come out?” Miles asked.
“I doubt it,” said Lucky, but she wondered too.
The storm seemed to have blown itself out, and the sun was moving toward the rim of the far-off mountains. Lucky closed her eyes.
“Why is my mother in jail?” Miles asked suddenly.
“She made a mistake, Miles.”
“So she’s really not taking care of her friend in Florida?”
“No.” Lucky felt a whoosh as a glug of oil spilled out. She shook her head in case there was more.
“It’s better that she’s in jail,” said Miles, “because that means she’s not staying away from me on purpose.”
Lucky did not know what to say.
“She’ll come back when she’s finished being in jail,” Miles continued, “but if I tell her about running away, will she be mad?”
“I’ll tell her how brave you were about the cholla burr and how you read to me and everything,” said Lucky.
She lifted her head and examined the towel. A tiny white moth, smaller than a housefly, lay there. Lucky had expected a gigantic beetle. She smiled, the pain completely gone, and sat up. “She’ll be proud of you,” she said.
“Guess what, Lucky! Here comes Chesterfield!”
They both heard steps approaching in the calm silence. But it wasn’t a burro who came around the side of the hill. It was Lincoln.
21. Amazing Grace
The sky was smeared with red as the sun dipped down behind the Coso Mountains.
“Hey,” said Lincoln, “what’s up?”
“Nothing much,” said Lucky, arranging the skirt of Brigitte’s dress attractively, as if this were a usual, boring day. She felt her hair. It was full of sand, mineral oil, and twigs.
Lincoln got out a string and began tying it into a knot.
“We are living like the old miners! We ran away!” yelled Miles.
“I know,” said Lincoln. “So does everyone else. They searched everywhere in town and figured out you must be here. I’m sure they’ll be here sooner or later.”
“Are they very mad?”
“Pretty worried, I guess. Short Sammy kept telling Brigitte about all the times he ran away and how he turned out okay anyway. He was trying to calm her down, but I think he made it worse.”
Miles asked, “How do they know we’re out here?”
Lincoln shrugged. “Mrs. Prender said you were always talking about some burro named Chesterfield that lived in the dugouts,” he said.
Lucky sighed. “Want an egg?” she said.
“Only if it’s hard-boiled.”
Lucky thought how strange it was that some small things turned out just right, which was rare for big important things to do. As the sunset faded and faded and the sky darkened, she and Lincoln ate eggs, Miles got a Fig Newton, and HMS Beagle polished off a carrot. The feel of the air, soft and nearly still, was something you usually wouldn’t even notice. But now, after the dust storm, it felt like a kindness, a special thoughtful anonymous gift.
After a while, the full moon roared up into the sky behind their hill. Lucky thought that the people on Earth were very, very lucky to have their exact moon. They could have gotten a little puny moon like some of the other planets, and that would have totally messed up the oceans and the tides. Or their moon could have been too close or too far away. Or they could have had two moons or even more, and everything about their life would have been different. Lucky was sure, both as a scientist and as a girl-speck looking for her Higher Power, that it wouldn’t have been as good.
&nb
sp; She was thinking how most people didn’t appreciate the moon enough at all, how they really didn’t give it much serious thought, when Lincoln said, “Well, here they come.”
There were many vehicles bumping along the dirt road: Short Sammy’s old Cadillac and Brigitte’s Jeep and Dot’s pickup and Mrs. Prender’s VW and the Captain’s van, and more following in their dust. They drove slowly, shouting “Lucky! Miles! Lucky! Miles!” out of the windows.
“We could hide,” said Lincoln.
But Lucky didn’t want to hide, and anyway Miles was already lurching down to the road, as excited as if they had won a game of hide-and-seek. She sat on a rock and gazed out at the desert. Maybe they would think she’d kidnapped Miles, and send her to a special school in L.A. for bad kids, and if they did she would become a bad kid. She saw herself in a room full of beds like in a jail, each bed with a bad kid in it. They would take away her specimen boxes and her survival kit. Instead of being a ward with her own private personal Guardian, she would become a Ward of the State. And you can’t sit on the State’s lap and the State doesn’t hug you before bed. Probably she would die of sadness, Lucky thought, seeing herself under a gray sheet, her face turned to the wall.
Car doors were slamming and dozens of people were getting out and shouting and laboring up to their camp. The air was so warm and the moon was so bright it was almost like daylight, except more mysterious. Lucky got something out of her plastic bag and ducked into the shadows of the dugout where she could watch.
She had something important to do before she surrendered.
HMS Beagle ran joyfully around greeting each arrival, including several other dogs. Everyone was talking at once, asking questions and hugging Miles. From inside the dugout it sounded like the whole town was there. When Brigitte called her name from nearby, Lucky stepped out into the moonlight and, looking down, saw that the silky dress and the urn both reflected its light.
