Sky Bridge

by Laura Pritchett

  “And so could Tess,” Kay says.

  “And so could Tess,” Baxter agrees. He’s watching Kay walk across the corral with a whip in her hand, ready to chase in the last cow that’s backed out of the chute and is standing by herself in a corner. Baxter’s amused because of what Kay’s mumbling, which is her usual rant about Baxter’s damn corral system and he’s such a cheapskate, it wouldn’t take much to fix it up so things could run smoothly for a change and why’s she always dealing with idiots? Everybody’s pulling her into stupid situations and what the hell did she do to deserve to be surrounded by people without a glimmer of sense?

  “Now, now,” Baxter says to me, “Now, now, now. Kay’s got it made and she knows it.” He means that his cows are downright famous for being so calm and that Kay is lucky to be working with such a herd. There’s nobody who loves his cows like Baxter. Everybody wonders why they’re so cooperative and easygoing, and Baxter says it’s an extension of his own calm disposition. That’s how I learned that word, disposition. He’s so darn proud of those cows, and even though he only rounds them up a few times each year he calls lots of them by name.

  Kay finally catches this rare ornery cow and she and Baxter prod it forward, through the alley, and Kay twists the cow’s tail and Baxter pounds her on the butt until she steps into the squeeze chute, where they catch her head. The cow stands pretty good after that, getting her shots and tags, though her eyes are rolling backward a bit and she looks not bitchy-mean, like Kay is saying, but downright scared.

  Now the cows are done and it’s time for the calves, and while I’m waiting for Baxter and Kay to bring them in, I try some quick sketches in the back of Baxter’s book. First the corral fences from far away, and then a close-up, one weathered fencepost, and I try to capture the way the wood looks with cross-hatching. Then I draw Baxter’s old white farmhouse, and then the eyes of a cow, and then Amber in her car seat, but none of these are good so I tear the pages out and crunch them up and jam them in the pocket of my jeans.

  Finally the calves are in, and, as Kay likes to say, calves are a different experience altogether. They twist and back out of the chute, their legs get stuck between bars, and they snort and bawl and scramble out of everyplace they get put. Plus they have to go through so much. Ear tagging isn’t so bad. But if they’re not polled, they got to be dehorned, and right as they’re coping with the pain of that, they’re getting their shots. Then comes the worst part for the young bulls that Baxter don’t want as bulls, and they’ve got some real thrashing to do.

  Quite a few of the calves are jammed in one of the corrals and most are pretty big, though a few look new and flimsy and teetery . Kay flicks the whip in the air above the whole mess of them, moving them into the alley. When she gets one group in, she jams a manure-stained fencepost behind the last one’s butt to keep them all from backing out. Then she pats the first one on the rump, trying to make it walk forward, but this bugger is going sideways and backward and Kay’s cussing and I duck my head to hide my smile because it’s nice to see Kay suffer now and then. Baxter’s not helping her either, he’s just leaning against the fence post and watching, a little amused too.

  “Libby,” he says. “You’re pretty quiet. You okay?”

  I shrug at that.

  “Though you never do. Talk much. Look at that baby. All yours! You lucky thing, Tess doesn’t know what she’s missing.”

  I’m thinking, I do talk. But I’ve just learned who it’s worth saying something to and who it’s not. And the truth is, anyway, that my mind is flipping back and forth between being dead and screaming at me because what was I thinking, anyway? And I think I better keep myself quiet because it seems like if I tried to say anything I’d just blow apart.

  “She’s waking up.” Baxter nods at Amber over the syringe he’s filling up from a brown bottle and then mumbles something about the right number of cc’s.

  “I’ll get her a bottle,” I say.

  “You will not,” Kay says. “Wait till she cries. You need to stretch out her feeding times. She could go three or four hours. This every half-hour in the middle of the night is ridiculous. Just let her be. And if you hold her every second, you’re never going to be able to put that kid down. I’m telling you, you’re spoiling her.”

  “She’s lonely.”

  “She’s not lonely. She’s figuring out the world. Leave her be.”

  Baxter clears his throat. “Libby, Libby, Libby. Listen here. You shouldn’t go and lose the first thing that makes you smile each day. You hear me? Don’t go and lose the first thing that makes you smile.”

  “Okay, Baxter. You’ve told me that a time or two.”

  “Which means, you got to pause and think about what it is that makes you smile.”

  “All right.”

  “I haven’t smiled yet today,” Kay says. “I don’t think I will. I guess I got nothing worth keeping. Are you going to help me here or what?”

  Baxter doesn’t move. He says to me in a real quiet voice, “Adeline’s what made me smile. When I woke, I was thinking of her and smiling.” I don’t say anything, but he says what’s on my mind for me. “But I went and lost her anyway, didn’t I?”

  I wish I had words for things. Other people do, probably. But I’ve never been able to tell Baxter how sorry I am that his wife died, that I miss her too, that she made the best frog’s-eye salad. Which scared me when I was a kid, till she told me it was made out of tiny pastas and whipped cream and no frogs were involved. When I was little, I used to wish that Adeline was my mom because she seemed warm and soft and calm, like she didn’t have that need to hurt anybody, but mostly, I guess, because she seemed to actually like me. I never said anything about this to Baxter, and I can’t now either. Stupid me, because this is my chance to say something if I only could think of it. Instead, I shrug and stare at Amber, who is staring at the air in front of her.

  “I’ve been thinking of selling this place,” Baxter says.

  I look up, surprised, and I see that he’s watching me, waiting for my reaction and nodding, like, Yeah, I knew that’d get her.

  “That decided it, though—remembering my ma saying, ‘Don’t go losing the first thing that makes you smile.’ This place makes me too happy. I lost too much already. I’ll stick it out for a bit longer. I’m getting old, though. I’m getting old.”

  “You’re not old, Baxter.”

  “Plus, a person’s just got to rise to the occasion.” He’s always saying that, but he especially started up with that particular phrase right after Adeline died. Kay’d been worried for a bit, because for a while none of the bills were getting paid and the place was starting to fall apart. Kay had said that everyone needs a wife, including wives, and when you don’t have that extra helper all hell breaks loose. But Baxter figured out how the bills got paid and the books got kept, and now it seems he’s adjusted to being alone and I guess he rose to the occasion after all. “You do that, too, Libby,” he says to me now. “Rise to the occasion.”

  “Sure,” I say.

  “And as long as I got Kay, this place’ll run for a bit longer.” He says it in a whisper, though, because Kay’s coming up the alley with a calf. He winks at me, like this is a secret we should keep, and that’s another thing about Baxter, he’s always trying to make something special or secret when it’s not.

  A calf bawls, wanting his mama. The mama bellows back. Flies are landing all over me and, Jesus, it’s like a million degrees out here.

  Amber’s staring up toward the sky. I should get her picture taken by a real photographer. Probably she needs a diaper change. I gotta move out of here. I gotta get some money. I wonder what Derek’s doing right now at the rig. I wonder where Tess is, because she sure didn’t tell me where she was heading when she drove off yesterday. I wonder if Amber is getting too much sun, because the doctor said no sunscreen till she’s six months and that I was going to have to work hard at keeping a baby out of the sun in eastern Colorado. I wonder when my heart is going to q
uit hurting for Tess, and I wonder when I’m going to start feeling wonderful for Amber. I wonder how, exactly, I ended up here, because not in a million daydreams did I ever imagine this.

  Last fall, Tess said to me, “Libby? You want to know something funny?” She was ready for school, in her Roper jeans and boots, with her hair curled and her dark eyes made up. It was one of her country-dress days. Other days she dressed up artsy, or scootery, as she called it, with her skirt with pleats at the bottom. She cared about that sort of thing and it drove her insane that I was pretty much a fan of jeans and baggy T-shirts. But anyway, this was one of her country days, and she said, “Lib, I have the funniest thing to tell you. You want to hear something really funny?”

  “Sure.” We were leaning against Kay’s truck, and I remember it being warm from the sun, even though the day was cold. The snow was falling in little lazy circles, but neither of us had put a coat on. We were hugging ourselves with sweatered arms, waiting for Kay to come out of the house so she could drive Tess to school and drop me off at the store.

  Tess was doing a little bounce number on her feet to get warm and she bounced up and down and she said, “I’m pregnant.”

  I think maybe I laughed, because she had said it was supposed to be funny, and also because it was surprising, and also because I didn’t believe her. Then I said, “What?”

  She pressed her lips together, blending in the pink lipstick. “I’m pregnant.”

  I looked from her face to her belly, where her sweater met the fabric of blue jeans. Her tummy was tiny, as always, and the sliver of it I could see was as tan and muscular as ever. “You’re not pregnant,” I said.

  “I am.”

  “That’s very funny.”

  She rubbed at her nose and looked away from me. “It’s true. We weren’t careful. Don’t freak out. It happens. You know, it just happens. I don’t want to ask him to drive me.”

  “Who?”

  “Simon. I don’t want him, I want you. To drive me to Denver. Or Pueblo, if they do them there. I’ve got the money, I’ll figure things out. But I want you to drive me.”

  “But Tess—”

  “I’ve already thought about everything.” She tipped her head up toward the sun and closed her eyes. “I wish I could go back in time. This is the first time I realized what people mean when they want to go back. You understand? I wish I could redo that instant. You remember what that health teacher always said? A moment of pleasure, a lifetime of pain. Only it wasn’t even a moment of pleasure.”

  “Tess?”

  “He wasn’t worth it. The sex wasn’t worth it. Of course it wasn’t. At least I’m eighteen now, because otherwise everything would be more complicated. How come you never warned me?”

  “What?”

  “Warned me that just a moment could fuck up so much?” She looked at me and smiled. “I’m just teasing, Libby. Don’t look so surprised. It wasn’t your job to warn me, even if you are my big sister and all. Just joking.”

  I was looking at the icicles hanging from the house. They were dripping, and the drips made little plops and dings as they hit the stuff below: a hubcap, an empty five-gallon bucket, the fallen-down birdbath. The ground was muddy and filled with our footprints. The cement pad outside the door had wedges of manure from when Kay scraped her boots on the edge before walking in.

  All of a sudden, the icicles quit dripping, like it had gotten cold enough to freeze them up again. I said, “Tess, are you sure?”

  “The line was blue, Libby . Both times.”

  “No, I mean, that you want an abortion?”

  “No, I mean, that you want an abortion?”

  “I don’t like that word so much. There needs to be a different word.” She looked at me sideways, squinting her eyes because of the flying snow, which was picking up. “Libby, please?”

  A few geese flew above us, honking. Pigs were slamming at their feeder. The phone was ringing inside, which meant Kay would be a bit longer.

  I asked her, “Please what?”

  She said, “Please help me.”

  The sky was an enormous arc of gray-white, like dull metal. White snow spun by and everything got blurry and silenced. The world was hushed, just like the way things quiet down before something big bursts into the air.

  TWO

  Miguel Mendoza is standing out in the middle of the highway, in front of his trailer, waving his arms for me to stop.

  “Miguel,” I say when I pull the car over. “I gotta get to work. I’m late.”

  “Libby, thank God I didn’t miss you. I got to get to work too. My car’s broke down.”

  “Where’s Juan?”

  “With his abuelita. I was driving him in this morning and my car just stops, just dies, right there on the highway, and I hiked the last two miles with him on my shoulders—fuck—and left him at his grandma’s and I called to have the car towed in and hitched back here, and now I’m very late for work. Gracias a diós.” When he’s settled in the car, he makes a sign of a cross. “Now I’m carless in the middle of nowhere, híjole, that’s just great. This is just not the right part of the world to be broke in. Good thing there’s you. I figured you’d be heading to work. Shit.” He rubs the sides of his face with his palms. “Fuck.”

  “I picked up a lady hitchhiking to Lamar last week. Her car was broke down too. Her daughter had just gone to the doctor for eating pennies.” I have to say this loud, because by now we’re going sixty and the windows are rolled down since it’s burning-hell hot even though it’s early June, and the wind is roaring around in the car, bouncing around and slamming into our eardrums. “The pennies were on the floor because her vacuum doesn’t work. She was working extra shifts to pay for the doctor. She was hitchhiking to work because of pennies, a vacuum, a doctor, a daughter, and because her car was broke down. Hitchhiking all the way to Lamar, that’s crazy. You smell like pot. Do you know anybody named Clark? Because that’s the name of the guy Tess took off with. I don’t know nothing about him. But Tess drove off with him yesterday and now I’m a little worried.”

  He looks down at his shirt and lifts it from his body a few times, like that will shake the pot smell away, and then stares up at the ceiling of my car and closes his eyes. “Tess left?”

  “Yeah. She just drove off with this guy. I’d met him before, but I didn’t really pay attention, because I didn’t think he mattered. Because I didn’t think he was going to drive off with her, you know.”

  “Who’s watching the kid?” He’s talking loud too and he leans way over to me so we don’t have to try so hard, which helps the noise situation quite a lot.

  “Right now? Kay. She’s going to watch her while I’m at work. I took care of her all last night, though. She’s mine now, I guess. Can you believe that? I have a baby.”

  I’m busy driving but I glance at him sideways in time to see his jaw, which is right next to me, tighten underneath his skin.

  “Did Tess tell you she was leaving?”

  I bite my lip. There’s a lot of answers to that question, and I don’t know which is most true. Yes. No. Maybe. She used to say she was leaving the minute she graduated high school. But sometimes, when I told her that maybe we could rent a place in Lamar together, she’d agree to that. When I said that maybe the two of us could move to Denver or something together, she’d agreed to that. And after she was pregnant, we talked through other ideas, too. People’ll do that to you, sometimes—agree to all sorts of scenarios, and I don’t think she meant to be confusing, it’s just that she didn’t know.

  “I’m un poquito pissed off at mothers who leave their babies right now,” he says after he realizes I’m not going to answer his question with anything other than a shrug. “And no, I don’t know any guy named Clark. He from around here? From Lamar?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What’d he look like?”

  “I don’t know. Tess told me yesterday, ‘Libby, this fine gentleman is going to take me on a bit of a vacation,’ and he sai
d, ‘Sure thing,’ and she said, ‘You know, I just got to get out of here for a while. I’ll write.’ He looked like a regular guy. He was big—not fat really, but big. He had black hair. They just drove off.”

  After a pause, Miguel says, “My abuelita always said that there’s two kinds of people in this world, warm people and cold people. Sometimes they trick you. You think they’re cold but you find out that underneath they’re actually warm. They got a heart after all, and it’s a heart that goes outside itself, into the world. Then you got the people who come across as warm, but underneath they’re so damn cold and empty that it’s just scary. It’s true, you know. The people who seem warm but are cold. That’s Shawny for you. That’s Tess. From now on I’m only gonna deal with people who have some heat inside them—do you know what I mean Libby? Me comprendes?”

  He’s caught me by surprise—Miguel’s not the sort to say something like this—so I say something dumb, which is, “I learned a trick, which is that you rub a baby’s lower lip with the nipple of the bottle and that’s how you get her to suck. Probably you already knew that.”

  “I can’t remember that far back.” He says it slowly, as if he’s thinking about it.

  “Do you remember how a baby takes that bottle like it’s the most serious thing, concentrating? Her eyes are always open, staring at my shirt, but it’s like she’s thinking of the milk, how it feels going down her throat. I think that’s amazing. She’s got the cutest toes. I can’t wait till she starts fitting into the outfits I bought her, especially this one with pastel bunny rabbits on it. I got that one at K-Mart. Kay said to me, ‘Lord, Libby, quit buying outfits because babies could care less what they wear,’ but I said, ‘That’s half the fun, Kay. You’re never wanting to have any fun,’ and Kay said, ‘Honey, it ain’t going to be fun like you think, this isn’t a baby doll to dress up. Save your money for stuff she needs.’”