Lifting the Sky

by Mackie d'Arge

  “We’ve had this forever,” she moaned, holding the broken pot to her chest like a kitten. “I was going to make some ice tea….”

  “I’ll … I’ll buy you a new one,” I said softly, though what I really wanted to say was Please, please don’t cry, ’cause then I’ll start crying too ….

  I watched her set the broken teapot on the counter, then carefully, slowly, scrape the pieces out of the sink. She placed them, sliver by sliver, next to the teapot. She gave a huge sigh and then scooped up the slivers and dropped them into the trash with the roses.

  “Never mind, Blue,” she said. “It’s all over and done with.”

  I sucked in my breath. Was she talking about the pot or my dad, or us being at the ranch? Cripes, how I hated those huge, heavy sighs and what almost always followed. It’s all over and done with…. Would she pack up and take off just to pay my dad back for what he’d done? Would she disappear? Would she do that to him? To me? To Mr. Mac?

  “After all these years,” Mam said, startling me, her voice as cold as ice. “Just like that he shows up.” She snapped her fingers. “And with no excuses whatsoever except that it was my fault for not leaving a forwarding address. Shows up with wine and red roses. Fireworks and fancy French food and a doll. Gets me thinking about how it was, and how it might be again. Gets me looking at a bottle of wine again as if it holds all the answers.” She opened the fridge, stared into it, and then slammed the door shut. The fridge hummed. She glared at it as if it’d talked back.

  “I’ve half a mind to pack up and be out of here before he comes back. If he comes back. Let him come back to an empty house.”

  I could’ve sworn my heart stopped beating.

  “I didn’t want you to get hurt. Not again, not ever again…” She slid a piece of china out of the sink and held it up on the tip of her finger.

  “Maybe we can glue it back together,” I said. The words came out raspy. “Or get a new one. Off with the old, on with the new, right?” I felt light-headed, crazy, as if everything had gotten all scrambled up and nothing made sense. Was I talking about the pot or our lives or my dad or Mr. Mac? Or all of the above? I mean, this was the way we lived, right? Here for a month or two and then gone in an instant. Why should things be different now?

  The sink gurgled, making a sucking sound as if something was stuck in the drain. I wanted to run over and stuff the plug into it. Because sure as sure, my whole world, everything I’d ever wanted, everything I’d dreamed about, was now headed straight down the drain.

  Without a word Mam started taking everything off the table. She pulled off the pretty tablecloth, took it onto the porch and shook it, and then folded it up and put it away again. It so reminded me of the time when the dishes had finally been cleared from the table, back when my dad left before. Neither of us said a word. Mam warmed up some leftovers and then sat with her chin cupped in her hand, staring at her book but not turning the pages. Me, I wanted my comfort food. I dribbled honey over a peanut butter sandwich, giving the bottle such a squeeze that a big glob oozed out. Ha, I thought as I took a huge bite. If my dad comes back this very minute carrying a whole box full of Nutella, I won’t even touch it. So there.

  Mam looked over at me. She better not dare say anything, I thought. I frowned down at my book. If she decides to pack up Ol’ Yeller, I’ll hop up in the truck and throw everything right back out. I’ll chain myself to the table. Or I’ll run away. That’d show her. She couldn’t leave without me, could she?

  What about those rosy-pink lights that always showed up when Mr. Mac came around? She had feelings for him. But she probably thought she wasn’t good enough—that she was just the hired hand, and she hadn’t finished high school—my mom was so full of old hurts. But she’d proven she was more than just a hired hand. The ranch had been in such poor shape and all on her own she’d turned it around. Maybe I’d helped a little. But she’d done it. She’d repaired all the fences and gotten those ditches running again. And just look at the house!

  I glanced at her out of the corner of my eyes. She hadn’t eaten a bite, hadn’t turned a page, and was sitting with her chin cupped in her hand, her eyes all faraway looking.

  “Just tell me one thing,” I said. “Did my dad say anything about—anything? Our future, what he wanted …?”

  “I wish I could tell you what you want to know,” Mam said, “but he never said what his plans were, and I didn’t ask. It seemed that all he could talk about was that darn film he wanted to make.”

  “I was sorry that he wasn’t doing anything with that gift of healing you’d said he used to have. I tried to find out about it, but he brushed it off as nothing.”

  Mam sighed. “All I can say, Blue, is that he didn’t value the things he had. Neither the gifts nor the people.”

  I pushed back my chair. I will not cry, I thought. “Think I’ll work on my room,” I managed to say. “A few touch-ups and it’ll be ready for the grand opening.”

  Mam looked at her untouched plate and then gave me a lopsided smile. “I can hardly wait. Secrets are hard to live with,” she said.

  If we were just two hairs from splitting this place, I’d at least get the room all tidied up and make it nice for Mr. Mac. And the room did look kind of pretty, with my funky creations with their feather and birds’ nest surprises. They were weird and definitely wobbly but quite fantastic, if I did say so myself. Maybe I should have a little ceremony. Ask Mam to call Mr. Mac to invite him to the grand opening. A two-in-one party, an opening and a closing at the same time …

  Maybe if Mr. Mac came, it’d make my mom change her mind.

  I swept and mopped and then raided the rest of the house. I grabbed some books from the bookshelf and arranged them on my table. I took two turquoise pillows from the kitchen and placed them in my chairs, and then I swiped four cobalt-blue bottles and three stubby candles and placed them on the wide windowsills. It was all just too pretty for words. Then I latched the door and straightened the sign. Soon I could tear it off.

  Mam’s door was closed. I wrote a note. Please call Mr. Mac to come out tonight to see what I’ve done with the room. I tucked it under the salt shaker. I doubted she’d call. It seemed even more unlikely that he’d come.

  I could’ve spent all afternoon with my bums, but time was running out. Why hasn’t Shawn come by to see me again? I wondered as I fed my bums and looked up at my hill. It was hot, and one bottle each wasn’t enough. They wanted more.

  “Hang on,” I said. “I’ll give you doubles this evening, I promise.”

  It was a promise I wouldn’t keep.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Clouds stacked up like cups and saucers on top of the Owl Creeks. In the Winds, soft gray clouds smothered the mountaintops. We could sure use some rain, I thought, but we’d probably just get dry lightning. From my hilltop I searched the landscape for—what? Dust swirling up the road behind a pickup? Tivo galloping over the hills? No such luck. I counted on my fingers the days since my dad had left. Six. And seven since Shawn and I had ridden into the mountains on Tivo.

  I wiped the sweat off my forehead. Beside me, Stew Pot lay panting. His black coat soaked up the sun.

  I don’t know what I’d expected—maybe to find Shawn sitting in the shadow of my tree, or to see him come galloping over the hills heading for our meeting place. Each day that went by I’d felt less sure about everything. He could’ve left a note by my tree. Thrown a rock at my window …

  I could run over to his grandma’s place. It couldn’t be more than three miles, though it might seem like more with all the gorges and hills in between. But how could I go panting up to his door, saying, “Excuse me, but why haven’t you come by to see me all week?”

  It was pretty obvious he didn’t share my feelings. Didn’t give a hoot that I even existed. For sure he was sorry now that he’d ever opened up to me, the nosy white girl. He didn’t want to see me again. That was all there was to it.

  Maybe it was a good thing Mam was about ready t
o pull out. At least now it wouldn’t be quite so hard….

  My chest heaved. I leaned my head against my tree and spread my arms around its thick shaggy trunk. The bright sun made the shiny stones and tiny white bones glisten. I remembered when I’d spied Shawn’s hand reaching up to touch the blue ribbon that now looped down by my cheek. I reached up and untwisted it from the branches. Tugged it out.

  What good had they done, all my prayers and wishes? What good at all?

  I stared out at the huge landscape. No dust billowed up. No horse came galloping over the hills. If this was the end of our stay at Far Canyon, I’d better find Lone One and Light of the Dawn to tell them goodbye.

  I let the ribbon flutter to the ground. “Come on, Stew Pot,” I said. “No use wasting what little time we have left….”

  Stew Pot followed behind me as I climbed down the back side of the hill. At the base, I checked one last time for signs that Tivo might’ve stood around waiting for Shawn. He hadn’t. I straightened my shoulders and held my head high and hiked on.

  No antelopes in the bowl-shaped valley.

  Often, at this time of day, the pronghorns would be taking it easy, the moms sitting around chewing their cuds, the young ones playing or sleeping. Lone One was a real loner, and I’d only once spotted her and her fawn with the herd. I wondered if Light of the Dawn got picked on because she was slower and limped.

  “Cripes, but it’s hot. One more hill, and if they aren’t there we’ll go back,” I promised Stew Pot. Poor panting doggie. I should’ve made him take a drink of water before we took off. Should’ve taken a drink myself.

  We’d barely climbed out of the valley and up to a rounded rim when we spotted her down in a shaded hollow below us. Lone One had heard us come clattering across the rocks and stood stiffly at alert, ruff up, her white rump flagging alarm. Stew Pot hunkered down. I froze. After a moment Lone One’s alarm system melted, her ruff and white flag lowered, and she turned her attention to scratching at the ground with her hoof. She tugged at something with her teeth, jerked her head back and forth, and yanked a root out of the ground. She ate it like I eat spaghetti.

  On the rounded hill above her, at the base of a rocky wall-like ridge, Light of the Dawn suddenly popped up. She shook her head furiously and scratched at an ear with one tiny black pointed hoof and then she sank quickly back down.

  I swatted at a fly. They bothered me too. Down in the hollow, Lone One folded up her front legs and then her back ones. She didn’t close her eyes, but they seemed to glaze over as she sat there and chewed on her cud.

  What good had it done to find the exact place I’d drawn, and someone there who was nice to me and my mom, and a boy who’d become more to me than a friend, and then to have my dad come back—what good had it done? None at all. It would’ve almost been better if none of what I’d wished for had ever happened. At least then it wouldn’t hurt nearly as much as now, when everything was crumbling away.

  I stared up at the sky. I wished I could just be swooped up there, become a little cloud, drift about, and then poof! Vanish. No hurts, no memories, nothing.

  It was the stillest, hottest afternoon ever. I closed my eyes. Beside me, Pot snored.

  None of us, not even Lone One, saw it or heard it.

  Stew Pot must’ve been the first to sense the wolf, the first to spy it slinking over the rocky ledge toward the fawn. Under my hand I felt the hairs on his back stiffen. I felt the growl in his throat before I heard it, and then felt him spring up, his growl ferocious as he sprang down the hillside toward the fawn. I jumped up and grabbed a chunk of dead sagebrush and bounded after him while the loudest scream ever screeched out of my throat. A small tan blur rushed past me and I was somehow aware of two antelopes dashing by as I flew, yelling and waving my stick, charging after Stew Pot toward what now was a whirlwind of ferocious snarls and deep growls. “NOOOOOOOOO! NOOOOOOOOO!” I screamed, and suddenly the wolf streaked back up and over the rim.

  The fight couldn’t have lasted more than five seconds.

  But on the hillside, a furry black mound lay still.

  “NOOOOOOOOO! STEW POT!” I cried as I crashed to my knees beside him. “DON’T … NO! YOU CAN’T!”

  My hands worked their way under the mound, under his head, and around the thick ruff on his neck. On the back of his neck I could feel a warm stickiness. I stared at my hands. Blood. A small puddle had already pooled on the ground.

  All shivers and jitters and prayers and pleas, I looked up at the sky and asked, “Please, please, what do I do? HOW?”

  In my head I heard, “Don’t panic, don’t freeze.”

  Already my hands must’ve been running on automatic, one clutching the front of his throat, the other pressing against the deep bloody gash on the back. “How could I live without my best friend?” I sobbed, and then I took a huge breath. I gulped down all the sunlight around me and then sent the light rushing into my hands. I heard high-pitched moans coming out of my mouth as I bent over my sweet hero dog.

  The light pouring out of my hands grew stronger.

  The tiniest mewing yelp slipped out of Pot’s throat. His eyes opened and then closed again.

  Somehow my hands kept going, tugging at my T-shirt, trying to rip it, then tearing it and leaving a ragged band that barely covered my chest.

  “The wound is closing up, it’s closing and sealing up,” I repeated over and over while my shaking hands wrapped and tucked the bandage around Stew Pot’s neck.

  A shadow floated over us. Two ravens circled. “Shoo! Go away,” I cried. The ravens flew higher but still slowly circled above us.

  “Sweet Pot, I need to run to get help,” I whispered as I looked wildly around. But how could I leave him? Those ravens would fly down and begin picking away at him as soon as I left. And what if the wolf came back? My chest heaved.

  “Oh, Stew Pot,” I wailed. “I can’t do it. I’ll never be able to carry you all the way home. But I can’t leave you, so what do I do?”

  Stew Pot’s tail swished once.

  I looked up at the ravens, and suddenly, out of nowhere, something popped into my head from a book my mom used to read to me after my dad left. Something Christopher Robin had said to Pooh Bear. “Remember this,” he’d said. “You’re braver than you believe. And stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.”

  I took a deep breath. Let my arms go limp, and tried lifting Stew Pot. “This won’t hurt,” I said, but it did, and he whimpered as I tried to lift him. I couldn’t do it. I took a deep breath and tried again.

  He wasn’t as heavy as I’d thought. I staggered to my feet.

  Each step down into the hollow where Lone One had dug up her root—when was that, fifteen, twenty minutes ago?—and then up and over the rim where Stew Pot and I had snoozed, and then down into the bowl-shaped valley and into the sheltered canyon where the fawns had been born… It was like the repeat of a horrible nightmare.

  Again I found myself trying as hard as I could to find the tiniest soft spot in my heart for the wolf. This one had been gray, and smaller than the black one that had taken Lone One’s other fawn. If it’d been the big black one it would’ve gotten Light of the Dawn for sure, and just as surely Stew Pot wouldn’t have survived the attack. I might not have even been able to scare him away with my shouts and my stick.

  “We’re lucky, really lucky,” I said into Stew Pot’s furry ruff. But in spite of the heat, I shivered.

  How many times I slumped down onto a rock to rest my arms and catch my breath, and how many times Pot squirmed so uncomfortably that I set him down on the ground, I don’t remember. But somehow we made it to the trail that led out of the canyon and then down to the fence. Somehow I eased Pot to the ground, slipped through the wires, then reached through it and pulled him to me.

  “Mam’ll be there,” I said into Pot’s furry ruff, “and she’ll rush us off to the vet in Dubois.”

  It wasn’t until I rounded the corner of the house that I saw the brown pickup. My heart did
a somersault in my chest. My dad had come back! I’d been wrong! He’d come back!

  It didn’t strike me right away that Ol’ Yeller was missing.

  “Somebody, help!” I yelled as I fumbled to open the front door, and then the next one into the dark hallway, and the one into the kitchen. “Help,” I said as I stumbled into the kitchen. No answer.

  I pressed my mouth against Stew Pot’s furry head at the sight of the empty wine bottle on the table. The two glasses, the plate with a few crackers and some slices of cheese in it. They’d been sitting there not long ago. Where were they now? Where were they ever when I needed them? My arms felt like mush. I hunched over, Stew Pot’s legs almost dragging the floor as I staggered across the kitchen and through the living room toward the bathroom. I thumped against the door with my shoulder and edged in.

  My breath was all short hollow puffs as I shifted Pot’s weight to keep from dumping him on the floor. My knees crumpled as I laid him down on the rug. I yanked the bath towels off the rack and settled his head on them. “Stay,” I wheezed.

  As if he could do anything but.

  Wiping the sweat off my forehead, I dashed back into the kitchen. What was I supposed to do now? Where were they? They’d probably gone off to the bunkhouse to find something for dinner. Maybe they’d gone to the barn? But Stew Pot needed help, and he needed it now.

  What did I need? Penicillin. Mam kept it stored in the fridge. I flung open the fridge door, swept milk and juice bottles aside, grabbed the bottle, stared at it blankly, then searched through the cupboard over the sink for the syringes and antiseptic. What else? Roll of bandages? I frantically searched through Mam’s stash of medical supplies. What? No bandages? The box clattered to the floor as I dashed up the stairs to my room and grabbed two T-shirts. I glanced at my blood-smeared self, grabbed a fistful of clothes, stumbled back down the stairs, swept the medicine onto my pile, and skidded into the bathroom.