Lifting the Sky

by Mackie d'Arge

  Chapter Nineteen

  Soon as Mr. Mac drove off I wished I’d gone with him. I stumbled into the house feeling all prickly and raw. If anyone had even looked at me funny I think I’d have bawled. I grabbed a few slices of bread, opened a jar of peanut butter, and then stood staring into the jar as if it would magically jump onto my knife. One thought alone filled my head. My dad has been seen somewhere close by.

  My hands shook as I fixed my sandwich and the next thought—the terrible one—washed through me.

  And if he finds out we’re here, will that ruin everything?

  How could I even think those things? All I’d wanted for years was for my dad to come back. What on earth was the matter with me?

  No way would my sandwich go down. I slipped it under the table for Stew Pot. He followed me up to my attic, where the two of us curled up in his beanbag. I fell asleep with him licking my ears.

  It was midafternoon when I woke. From the window I noticed that the horse trailer that’d been parked by the barn was no longer there. I groaned. I should’ve gone down to have lunch with them. I should’ve asked Slim John more questions. Now I’d lost my one chance….

  Below me I could see the dark hole of the cabin doorway. I couldn’t put it off any longer. It was time to let the fawn go.

  As Stew Pot and I rounded the corner of the house Lone One came sprinting down from the hills. Without me saying a word, Stew Pot loped back and hunkered down beside the house. Lone One ignored him. He was something she’d gotten used to and wasn’t the least bit afraid of. That was how she usually acted toward me.

  But not this time. Her round eyes narrowed. Her neck ruff bristled. The white patch on her rump flared. She pawed the ground, lowered her head, and charged, slamming her head into my belly.

  “Hey,” I yelled as I skidded backward. “We’re in this together, remember?”

  Lone One tossed her head and butted again. Thank goodness the little black knobby horns on her head weren’t big enough to do any harm! I knew that she could rise up and stomp me with her sharp pointed hooves. I spread my legs, trying to hold my ground as I fended her off with my hands.

  Behind me I heard a low, rumbling growl. “No,” I said loudly without taking my eyes off the antelope—the last thing I wanted was for Stew Pot to attack her!

  Lone One took a step back.

  “Stop!” I held my hands up in front of my chest. “Lone One, it’s time. I’m letting your baby go.”

  The antelope gave a snort. She ducked her head, but this time her long slender black nose slid down my leg. She sniffed at my boots and then, with her nose going a zillion miles a minute with speedy quick huffs like a train chugging up a steep hill, she smelled her way back up my legs. Then she took a step back and studied me. I wondered what she saw: the faded, torn jeans, scuffed boots, and old T-shirt with the logo “Go Blue Jays.” My sad greenish brown eyes and my tangled dark reddish brown hair. She stopped her high-speed sniffing and crinkled her nose. Her eyes changed, softening, it seemed, and she spun, grunted loudly, and sprang into the cabin.

  My breath was coming in quick huffs too as I stepped to the doorway and watched the fawn nurse. I bit my lip. If only I’d had as much luck with the fawn’s leg as I’d had with the calf’s. Every day I’d stood by the window and imagined light healing her leg, but it hadn’t seemed to do any good. Maybe some things just were, and no matter how hard you tried, no matter what you did, you couldn’t change them.

  Slowly I slid the old battered door away from the entry. Lone One’s eyes hooked on to each movement.

  “It’s up to you to keep her safe now,” I said.

  I slipped over to wait beside Stew Pot. “You think of the fawn as one of your charges, don’t you?” I whispered. “Like with the calves, you’re Light of the Dawn’s protector, her guardian angel. And mine…” Pot stiffened, and I looked up.

  Lone One stood frozen in the doorway as if puzzled by the strange new hole.

  One thing I was learning about antelopes—they kept track. If one tiny thing was out of place, Lone One noticed it. If I added a fresh bunch of sagebrush to the fawn’s sleeping place, or if I’d left my cap or my gloves on the dirt floor, Lone One would freeze when she saw the new object. She’d stare for five or ten minutes before deciding if it was harmless. Sometimes it seemed as if she had the whole landscape memorized and stored up in her head.

  So it was a while before she took a hesitant step outside and then crooked her head up as a shadow swept over the ground. A hawk circled above us. She kept her eyes glued to it until finally the hawk flew out of sight. Only then did she honk for her fawn to follow her out of the cabin.

  Light of the Dawn blinked in the bright sun. She sniffed the ground and looked up at her mother as if asking a question. Suddenly she gave a stiff-legged leap into the air, but when she came down her leg wobbled and she almost fell. Her mother grunted and nudged her, the same way she had when she pushed her out of her birthing nest. Then Lone One took a few steps toward the hill. Light of the Dawn’s little white rump flared as she saw her mother leaving. She looked at the cabin, then over at Stew Pot and me, and then hobbled off after her mother.

  I watched the two antelopes walk slowly away. The fawn stuck close to her mother as they twisted their way through the sagebrush and up the hill toward the fence.

  “Stay safe! Watch out for the wolves! Come back and visit! I looovvvve you!” I wailed as they slipped under the fence. Like two bronze statues, they stood looking back. Then slowly they drifted toward the ledge of the canyon where the fawn had been born. I watched till the big lonely spaces swallowed them up.

  Stew Pot and I headed up to my hill. “You’ll see them again—don’t you dare cry,” I kept muttering to myself as I climbed. If I’d looked up instead of down at the ground I would’ve seen Shawn standing at the top waiting for me. At least this time he wasn’t sneaking about or hiding in the shadows of my tree.

  “See you branded today,” he said when I came up to him. He waved his hand toward the meadows. Even from up here you could tell, if you knew anything about cattle, that the calves weren’t exactly frisking about through the fields.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Mr. Mac came out with a crew.”

  “I would’ve helped out if I’d known.”

  “Gee, thanks,” I said, meaning it. “But I didn’t know ’bout it till this morning. I have this thing about brandings. The smell, the hurt-looking lights—” I broke off.

  “Guess that might be kinda scary. Or sad. Seein’ auras around calves at a branding.”

  “Uh-huh. Sometimes I wish I didn’t see so much….”

  Shawn grinned. “Here I’m wishin’ I saw more. Wanna trade?”

  I laughed. “Why don’t we share, half and half. Here,” I said. I held my hands out as if offering him an invisible platter.

  Bursts of bright yellows flashed around Shawn’s head while a burst of rosy pink showed up near his chest. But he didn’t move, and after a few seconds I dropped my hands. I turned my head so he wouldn’t see my eyes. The only sound was Stew Pot gnawing away at something that’d gotten stuck in his paw. I made a move toward Stew Pot, but Shawn beat me to it, kneeling and examining Pot’s paw and then pulling out a prickly cactus spine. It wasn’t till then that he spoke.

  “I’d take it,” he said, “if I could. I’m about to give up. I’ve looked everywhere for that place my great-grandma told me about.” He gave me a crooked, sad smile. “It was just a story, anyway. When I was little, I thought all stories were true. This one, that whoever found the rainbow etched in the cliffs would be able to see rainbows, I believed. I still do, sort of. But maybe it’s time I grew up and stopped believing that those stories were more than just something told to teach lessons.”

  “If I could help …,” I said lamely. “I mean, not that I know anything about any Indian places, or even what a place of the spirit might be.”

  I looked around at the huge space around us. I wouldn’t have any idea where to start if i
t was my search. Maybe I’d just follow the strange lines of light, the ones that’d seemed to meet up in a star. The ley lines.

  “Except,” I said, my mind racing now. “I did see some pretty weird lines…”

  Shawn broke in. “It’s my own thing, you know? I don’t ask for help, not even from my family or my uncle who’s a medicine man.”

  “Then I’ll just tell you what I saw. Take it or leave it. They were lines of light. They stretched from down there”—I pointed toward the badlands—“to up there, under that cliff, where they met in a big star.” I gestured toward the pink sandstone cliff in the mountains behind us. “And other lines went over the hills and it looked like all those met up in a valley because even though I couldn’t see where they joined, that star was incredibly bright.”

  Shawn sucked in his breath. “You’re kiddin’,” he said.

  I shook my head.

  “You’re right on, then. Both those are places of power. The one over there”—he pointed to the cliff—“we’d usually stay away from—there’s a big cave there. The other, I know what’s there, but it’s not a place you go unless you’re asking for a vision or preparing for the Sun Dance. I’ve been there with my uncle. It’s a place of very big medicine.”

  “Yeah, I could tell it was something really special,” I said.

  Shawn took a step back and looked at me. For some reason I thought of Lone One, the way she’d sniffed me all up and down and then stepped back and studied me. Like with her, I didn’t move.

  “The petroglyph I’m looking for,” he finally said, his voice so low I had to bend forward to hear, “maybe it’s so old it’s crumbled. Or maybe the weather wiped the rainbow away. Maybe it got chipped off by some artifact thieves. Whatever, I haven’t been able to find it.”

  “Yet,” I said.

  “Right. Yet. Though it seems as if I’ve been searching for it all my life. Like it’s all I ever wanted…”

  I just bobbed my head up and down. I mean, what could I say? I knew a little bit about searching and that feeling of wanting something you can’t quite put your finger on. That feeling you get in the middle of the night almost like when you’re really hungry, only a hundred times bigger than that, and there’s nothing, not a peanut butter sandwich or a hot fudge sundae or the biggest chocolate bar in the world that’ll fill up that big, empty feeling.

  As we stood on the hill the clouds seemed to blow through and around us. I shaded my eyes with my hand. Shawn’s eyes followed mine.

  “Your friend?” he asked.

  I nodded. “I just let her fawn go. It’s still lame. I hope the wolves don’t—” I couldn’t finish. Hoping was about all I could do now. Sometimes it seemed as if my life was just one big crossing of fingers.

  “Wolves haven’t bothered my grandma’s cows again. The fawn’ll be okay.”

  “Hope you’re right.”

  “Yeah,” Shawn said, “me too.” He bent down and scratched Stew Pot’s ears. I knew he’d stand and nod goodbye to me, and he did. Sometimes it seemed like we didn’t need words. When he got to the ledge he stopped and looked back.

  “I’ve got to go help my relatives for a while. Out there, by the Owl Creeks. Coupla weeks. But I’ll catch you when I get back.” He nodded again and hopped over the ledge.

  I stood there already missing him.

  Chapter Twenty

  It’s a wonder I got through the next three weeks without driving myself and Mam bonkers. Every time Stew Pot barked or the wind rattled the door, I jumped up to see if someone was coming. I don’t know quite what I expected—my dad to come merrily driving up to our front door? Knocking politely, tipping his cowboy hat, and saying, “Excuse me, do I have the right address?”

  But that wasn’t what happened.

  Nothing happened.

  I stuck a calendar on the wall by my bed. I crossed off the days since the ninth of May when we’d come to the ranch. Every day I searched for signs that Mam had come to the end of her stay-in-one-place rope.

  It staggered me how much she’d already done. The fences didn’t lean crazily and the wires weren’t all droopy and snagged, and the ditches all carried water—well, thanks a little to me and my beaver-dam project. We hadn’t lost one single cow or calf to illness or anything else, and the barn probably hadn’t been cleaner since the day it got built. And of course the house was now totally livable.

  So what now? Would my mom figure it was time to pack up? What would happen if I told her my dad had been spotted close by?

  No, I couldn’t chance it.

  Mam buzzed about full of her own private thoughts. I got more words out of Pot than her. At suppertime we turned the pages of our books and said “Please pass the salt” or “Would you like ketchup?”

  When I worry I always seem to drop back into old habits. I stashed away a sack of flour and ten cans of tuna fish and three jars of honey and two cans of jellied cranberries. Just in case.

  I searched through the bookshelves and carried piles of books up to my attic. There were so many I hadn’t yet had a chance to read, like the ones full of stuff I’d never been taught at school. The ones telling the other side of the story. The ones from the viewpoint of the Indians instead of the white men. At night I couldn’t turn off the movies running wild in my head.

  But some nights Shawn rode into my movies. Those were silent, like the olden-day films before sound. He’d show up out of nowhere and beckon to me, and I’d follow him into mysterious rocky landscapes where we searched day and night for a rainbow.

  The nights had turned almost as hot as the days. I tossed in bed, fanning myself with my sheet. I kept the windows at both ends of the room wide open.

  For three afternoons in a row, dark stormy clouds had built up over the badlands. In spite of the wild show of thunder and lightning, not one drop of rain touched the ground. Clyde the storekeeper had been right. Eight years of dry hadn’t disappeared with one snowstorm. It was hard now to imagine all the snow we’d had back on that wintry day. I wished we could’ve saved a bit for later and spread it out like butter on this dry, burned toast of land.

  Every afternoon Stew Pot and I sneaked through the fence. Each time I crossed my fingers, hoping that Shawn had returned from helping his relatives out by the Owl Creeks. But he hadn’t—or else he was avoiding me. Maybe, I thought, maybe he was sorry he’d let me in on his secret. Maybe he’d decided I was too nosy prying out secrets he’d kept to himself until I fished them out of him.

  I stuffed my tree full of wishes. Only my wishes were more like demands. Commands. Statements of fact. My dad is coming, I said. He’s on his way. I know he is. Thank you.

  On the thirteenth of July I crossed off the day on my calendar and hopped into bed. Tomorrow was the fourteenth of July. Tomorrow I’d be thirteen.

  I pulled my journal and box of colored pencils off the chest by my bed and sat twisting my hair into knots. I picked out Metallic Violet and wrote, To Papa. The tip broke. I chose Electric Blue and started writing. Halfway through my poem I smashed that tip into the page. I finished the rest with True Blue.

  Which was exactly how I felt. As if I was finally getting the truth out.

  To Papa

  I was four when you walked out the door.

  “I’m going to get mustard,” you said.

  Must’ve stuffed your chaps and lariat ropes

  Into the back of your truck, along with your spurs

  And the silver-tipped saddle that wasn’t yours; it was Mam’s.

  But you forgot your guitar,

  Forgot Stew Pot and me.

  Your lights that night, I remember them now

  As sparkly red arrows darting out of dark gray.

  I said, “Papa’s gone off in a dark thundercloud.”

  I remember you calling me “ma petit Bleu”

  And how I thought you said blur, like a smudge, a mistake.

  I remember the way you pinched my cheeks

  And said I was small as a mouse.

 
; You were tall as a house, and your silver belt buckle

  Shone like a star when I stood on your shoes and we danced

  And when I rode on your shoulders I lifted the sky.

  I was four when you walked out the door.

  What can I say? We were out of Dijon.

  But you forgot your guitar,

  Forgot Stew Pot, Mam, and me.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  The fourteenth of July I lay in bed fanning my sheet up and down. It was hot, even with the windows wide open. The morning sun struck the peachy walls and turned my attic to gold. Downstairs the radio belted out an Indian song about fry bread.

  “It’s my birthday,” I said. “I’m thirteen!” I shouted, expecting sloppy wet kisses. None came. I reached down to pat Stew Pot and stirred empty space. I’d been deserted. Mam had already gone out.

  Well, no matter. It was my day, and she’d promised to take care of my chores. I stretched, thinking about how my dad had made such a big deal about the fact that I was born on the French Fourth of July, as if that somehow made me more French or more his daughter. But I wasn’t going to think about him—no, today I’d just boot him out of my thoughts. I yawned. Maybe I’d stay in bed all day and catch up on my reading. Maybe I’d go sit on my hill and do nothing. Maybe I’d sleep in for once. I closed my eyes.

  Thrummmp! Something crashed onto the floor. I bolted straight up. A rock? I kicked off the sheets and flew to the window.

  There stood Shawn, looking up, aiming another rock at my window. “Wanna go lookin’ for rainbows?” he called up.

  I raked my fingers through my tangle of hair, grabbed the jeans and shirt I’d worn the day before, then tossed them aside and fumbled through the measly choice of clothes hanging in my closet. Suddenly I stopped. What was the matter with me? I’d never cared a hoot about what I wore. Was it because overnight I’d turned into a teenager? Or was it …?

  My heart did an actual cartwheel, as if it’d turned head over heels and dumped me in some curious, far-off place. I almost didn’t want to go down the stairs. I almost couldn’t wait….