Scumble

by Ingrid Law

  “Always build campfires away from dry grass and leaves, Uncle Autry!”

  “Do we have enough water handy?”

  “What about a shovel?”

  “It’s all good, Fe,” Autry laughed. My uncle was in a good mood. That morning, he’d received another over-night delivery box, this one filled with butterfly chrysalides. He’d spent all day inside the Bug House, as happy as me when I got my first Transforminator toy on my sixth birthday.

  Grandpa Bomba dozed in his armchair, holding his helmet full of golden jar lids. According to Gypsy, Samson was never far from Grandpa, even when Marisol and Mesquite lifted him in that chair and gently sent him wherever he wanted to go. Already, I’d seen Grandpa sitting in the shade of the big cottonwood by the river, out in the meadow, and in a clearing high on the north ridge, where he swore he could see all the way to the massive stone columns of Devil’s Tower.

  “I always dreamed of moving that monument closer to the ranch,” Grandpa had chuckled when I found him there. “But now I couldn’t budge that rock more than an inch or two—not even with help.”

  While Grandpa napped comfortably in his soft chair by the fire, the rest of us sat on sawn-off stumps, spearing tofu dogs on the ends of sticks and roasting them black over the fire. Fingers licked clean, Marisol and Mesquite cleared everyone’s dishes without getting up, floating plates and cups up and over the fire, stacking the dirty dishes on the picnic table. It killed me to watch the twins control their talents so easily. I had to remind myself that they’d started levitating things before they’d learned to read. But their skills still made me stew. Not only was their control perfect, their talents were useful.

  To distract myself from the twins’ excess of awesome and my total lack of it, I concentrated on the pages of Sarah Jane’s notebook, straining to read by the light of the fire.

  “What’s that you got, Ledge?” asked Marisol. I lifted my head. Everyone was looking at me. I closed Sarah Jane’s notebook fast.

  “Are you keeping a diary these days?” asked Mesquite. “Or writing love letters to some unfortunate girl in Indiana?”

  My face burned as I tried to cram the notebook back into my pocket, but the thing jerked and tugged in my hand as the twins tried to levitate it away from me. The girls managed to free the cover, tearing it from the spiral binding.

  “The Sundance Scuttlebutt?” Marisol howled as she read what was written there, the name of Sarah Jane’s newspaper acid in her eye. “How did you get this?”

  “Traitor!” Mesquite shot a pinecone at me, bristling. “Sarah Jane Cabot’s the enemy, you big dolt!”

  “Sarah Jane’s nosy!” said Marisol. “And her dad is wrecking everything! He’s already threatening to—”

  “Girls, that’s enough,” Autry cut in. “Sarah Jane’s not our enemy. But Ledger knows to steer clear of the Cabots now. He’ll be careful. Right, Ledge?”

  Everyone was still staring at me—everyone but Rocket. Rocket sat prodding the embers of the fire with a stick, pulling on his beard as he scared orange sparks into the night and watched them disappear.

  “Yeah, yeah. I know the rule,” I answered with a shrug, batting away a white moth before it could land on me. More moths began to flit around the fire. Gypsy watched them with a contented sigh.

  “Your thirteenth birthday must have been a doozy, Uncle Autry,” she said, mercifully shifting the group’s attention away from me as she got up and twirled among the insects like a dancer inside a snow globe. “What was it like to find out that your savvy was all buggy?”

  “Oh, Papi had no clue what he was in for that day!” Mesquite announced before Autry’s mouth was halfway open. Eager to tell the story, Mesquite tossed the cover of Sarah Jane’s notebook into the fire, not even pausing to watch it burn.

  “When Papi awoke on his thirteenth birthday, he felt one hundred tiny legs crawling across his wrist.”

  Autry chuckled, but he scratched his wrist like he could still remember the feeling of all those legs.

  “It was a centipede!” Marisol took up the story, stretching her arms wide enough to measure something closer to the size of a Bassett hound than a bug. “A big one,” she added. “And it wiggled right up Papi’s arm like a chain of hula dancers.”

  I shuddered and scratched my own arm. Rocket tossed his stick into the fire, shaking his head at the twins; he’d obviously heard this story before.

  “By lunchtime,” Mesquite continued, “spiders were plucking the ‘Happy Birthday’ song on webs in every corner of Grandpa and Grandma’s house.” Gypsy and Fedora both laughed. The sound woke Grandpa Bomba with a start.

  “After that,” Marisol pressed on, “termites ate the back door clean gone and an army of ants carried the refrigerator out of the house on their backs!”

  Grandpa looked as though he’d been pulled from the wool of a yarn-spinning dream, but his eyes were bright in the firelight as he caught up with the story.

  “That’s right!” he wheezed. “By noon that day, your pop had his first flea circus up and running. By supper-time, he was racing horseflies in the backyard, taking bets from all the neighbor kids.”

  While the others laughed louder, I slumped on my stump, turning thirteen-shades-of-envy green. Sure, Uncle Autry’s birthday had started out a house of horrors, but it had ended like a day at Coney Island. Why couldn’t my birthday have ended so well?

  “Is that what really happened?” I asked as the girls went on giggling.

  Still chuckling, Autry looked at me. Then his gaze grew serious.

  “Not exactly, Ledge,” he offered, scratching his wrist again. “But, these days, it’s close enough. It’s not like I was the first person to have a savvy birthday.”

  Abruptly, Fe stopped laughing, her eyes as round as the rising moon. “Who was the first person, Uncle Autry?”

  “Yeah,” Mesquite and Marisol said together. “Who was it?”

  “Was it you, Grandpa?” Gypsy swiveled her face toward Grandpa Bomba.

  “The first person with a savvy?” Grandpa’s voice rumbled, an old engine sputtering to life, revving up for a journey down a well-worn road. “Have you children never heard the story of Eva Mae El Dorado Two-Birds Ransom?”

  “Eva Mae who?” Fe’s face shone with excitement. Marisol and Mesquite looked at each other, then turned accusing eyes on their dad as if he’d neglected their home-school education by withholding important stories.

  Autry lifted his coffee mug and grinned at Grandpa. “Go ahead, Dad. Share a tale if you’re feeling up to it.”

  The chance to tell a story gave Grandpa a bit of strength. He sat up straighter in his chair as he began . . .

  “Very few people know the story of Eva Mae, children. She was the great-great-great- and even-greater-than-that-grandmother to half our kin and the very first person under these spacious skies to call her talent a savvy.” Grandpa tipped his head back and looked at the starlit sky.

  “When Eva Mae was just a young girl traveling west across this land with three older, burlier brothers, in the hopes of finding an all-new way in an all-new place, she fell into the Missouri River on the morning of her thirteenth birthday and never saw her brothers again.”

  A shadow shifted next to Grandpa and, for the second time since coming to the ranch, I thought I saw Samson. But as soon as I blinked he was gone. I thought about asking the others if they’d seen him, but I didn’t want anyone to think I was going crazier. Still, I wondered if turning invisible for the first time had felt anything like falling into a river and getting washed away.

  “Young Eva Mae bumped and tumbled down the Big Muddy for a good long time,” Grandpa went on. “Back then, that river was still free-flowing and flooded, and full of the magic of a flawless, untamed land. As Eva Mae trundled through the currents, gold dust covered her, bonnet to boots. When she stepped out of those waters, she was a vision to behold. And forever after, that girl could charm gold from wherever it lay hidden.”

  Now, that was a savvy, I t
hought to myself. If I’d gotten a savvy like Eva Mae’s, no way would Mom and Dad have left me at the ranch. We’d be rich! So rich, my parents wouldn’t have to work. I could make my dad his own gold medals. I could buy Big Mouth Brody’s house back for him and his family—maybe even put in a pool.

  “Eva Mae knew she had a power like no other,” Grandpa continued. “And it wasn’t long before others knew it too. Men-folk flocked to her like crows to a shimmering thing. And as Eva Mae married one after the next—a trapper, a trader, an explorer, a baker, a mighty Sioux warrior, a farmer, a painter—each one found his own early death. After a time, Eva Mae began to fear that she was ill-fated.”

  “Hmph. I know all about ill-fated,” I muttered.

  “Tell me about it.” Rocket’s voice was sharp enough to tear a hole in the night sky. I shrank down on my seat as blue sparks crackled at his fingertips.

  “Shh!” All four girls shushed us loudly as Grandpa sucked in a breath and barreled forward, his voice beginning to shake from the effort.

  “As Eva Mae’s family grew, she found herself on the run from every outlaw, banker, and ne’er-do-well who caught wind of her savvy and wanted to use her gift for gain. So she fled west into the wilds with her young’uns in tow, determined to make her talents secret and let the gold sleep where it lay. But folks say she left a treasure behind—”

  “Treasure?” Marisol and Mesquite blurted together, interrupting Grandpa Bomba. “Eva Mae left behind a treasure?”

  “Was it gold?” Fe asked.

  “Of course it was gold, Fedora,” Marisol snapped.

  “What else would it be? Barbeque sauce?” Mesquite snickered.

  “But where did Eva Mae leave her treasure?” Fe wanted to know.

  Grandpa looked around, letting his gaze linger on each of us in turn. “Why, right here, Fedora.”

  “Here in Wyoming?” I asked, surprised. The girls exchanged excited, wide-eyed looks. I looked to Autry for confirmation, but my uncle only shrugged.

  “You don’t mean . . . here on the ranch?” I asked, not sure what to believe.

  “This land has been in our family for a really long time,” whispered Marisol.

  “That’s right! It has!” Mesquite grabbed her sister’s hand. “Is it possible Eva Mae lived right here?”

  “You should know by now that anything is possible, children.” Grandpa nodded in his chair. “Anything.”

  “Hold up, Ledge.” Before I could trudge up the east ridge in the dark, Autry stopped me, letting the others go on to bed. Watching a small spider construct a midnight web between us, I sat back down next to my uncle.

  “I have to say something, Ledger,” Autry began.

  I held my breath, wondering if I was finally going to be punished for all the trouble I’d caused since coming to Wyoming.

  “The others made the story of my thirteenth birthday sound pretty funny,” he said, adding a quick, wry smile that was more grimace than grin. “And, like any good story, that one’s grown a pinch over the years. But there’s something about that day I’ve never told anyone. Not even the girls.”

  I waited for Autry to continue, steeling myself for some fantastical epilogue to his birthday story that would make me feel even worse. But when Autry continued, his words threw me a curveball.

  “I think you should know, Ledge, that when I was a kid, I hated bugs. Haaated them!” Autry pulled a face as he drew out the word. “It’s true!” he laughed, seeing my surprise. “Insects raised my hackles, and spiders made me all colors and flavors of fearful. That centipede that woke me on my birthday nearly sent me over a cliff in my pajamas.”

  “So, what changed?” I asked, remembering the flea circuses and horsefly races Grandpa had told about. “When did you stop being scared?”

  Autry reached down, allowing the small spider between us to crawl onto his hand. “Who says I ever stopped?”

  “What?” Now I was really confused. “You can’t be scared of spiders anymore. Don’t you have one the size of a bulldog living in the Bug House?”

  “No, no. Not a bulldog . . .” Autry chuckled. “A Chihuahua , maybe.”

  I couldn’t tell if he was being serious.

  “Some fears can be conquered, Ledge,” he went on after a lengthy silence. “Others have a way of coming back around. Sometimes at the moment you least expect. Often with the very worst possible timing. Fear makes it hard to think. And when you can’t think, it’s hard to figure out your choices. When you can’t see all your options, all you can do is react.” Autry whispered something to the spider and it leaped away, disappearing into the night to find some other place to build a web.

  “I don’t react,” I grumbled. “My savvy does. I can’t control it.”

  “Pay attention to what scares you, Ledge,” my uncle concluded, brushing his hands together. “Then you’ll be able to start controlling your savvy instead of letting your savvy control you. That’s when you’ll really learn to scumble.”

  I filed Autry’s advice in the dusty tumbleweed corners of my brain. It wasn’t helpful. I wanted paint-by-numbers. Step-by-step. I needed The Clueless Boy’s Guide to Scumbling a Savvy Fast. Or a brochure detailing The Ten Things to Know About Being Dangerously Different, not all this clear-as-mud talk about choices and fear.

  I already knew what scared me. But I wasn’t about to tell my uncle.

  Chapter 15

  “WE’VE DECIDED TO TEACH LEDGER HOW to scumble,” Marisol and Mesquite announced at the picnic table the following morning.

  This was news to me. News that made me choke on my oatmeal.

  “Oh?” Autry answered, not looking up from the Lepidoptera journal—the scientific butterfly magazine—open on the table in front of him.

  “We need to do a good deed,” Mesquite explained.

  “To improve our karma,” Marisol added. “You know—make our luck better.” Autry raised an eyebrow, still studying the journal.

  “Your karma’s fine, I’m sure,” he replied. “But it might be more difficult than you think to—”

  “Oh, Papi! Helping Ledge learn to scumble will be simple!” Marisol waved away her dad’s concern. “No one else here’s been scumbling since they were five.”

  “Yeah! It’s not like we’re amateurs, Papi. Teaching Ledge will be easy-breezy!” added Mesquite.

  “Or it’ll be like trying to nail jelly to a tree,” Rocket muttered into his orange juice as he flipped through his own magazine—one with pictures of custom choppers that looked more like Uncle Autry’s insects than motorcycles. Rocket would’ve loved the Knucklehead I’d wrecked.

  I pushed my half-finished oatmeal away. I couldn’t eat another bite—I didn’t have time. I was too busy playing a pick-up game of Whac-A-Mole with the table, using my thumb to push nails back into the wood as fast as they popped up.

  “I don’t suppose it would hurt for you girls to give Ledge a few pointers.” Autry okayed his daughters’ plans, still too immersed in his magazine to notice my mute indignation.

  Gypsy leaned forward to look closer at the title of the article that had Uncle Autry so engrossed.

  “ ‘ The Flight and Plight of the Queen Alexandra’s Birdwing’?” Gypsy’s eyes grew round and bright, absorbing the iridescent blues and greens that lit the brown wings of the butterflies in the pictures. Her lips formed a small O, and when she spoke again, her voice was a wonder-filled whisper.

  “Is that what came in the box you got yesterday, Uncle Autry? Queen Alexandra’s Birdwings?”

  “Yes! I think so.” Autry looked up at last, his face alight. “Can you believe it? The world’s largest butterflies.” He stabbed a photograph with his finger. “As big as dinner plates—and we have twelve of them! Twelve! Or we will, as soon as they emerge from their chrysalides.”

  “Why do you have to read about them?” I asked, glancing at the journal before attacking three more protruding nails. “Shouldn’t you just, you know . . . know?”

  Autry smiled. “Just because someon
e’s got a knack for something, doesn’t mean he can’t learn more, right? And if I’m correct about these chrysalides and they are the Alexandras, then I need to learn everything I can. They’re endangered, you know, and not from around here—not by a long shot.”

  I know what you mean, I thought, feeling far from home and—thinking of the twins and their lessons—fearing I might be endangered soon too.

  “What’re crystal lids?” Fedora asked, smacking a protruding nail down with her spoon.

  “Cris-uh-lids, Fe.” Autry sounded out the word. “Some people call them cocoons,” he explained. “But that’s not quite right. Moths make cocoons, not butterflies. Wildlife agents took these chrysalides off some crooks—butterfly smugglers—who were trying to sell them illegally for big bucks. No one could identify them, so they sent them here to me. If all goes well, I may be able to get more work. Work that pays me in real money, not just in snickerdoodles and canned peaches.”

  The twins both nodded.

  “Yeah, Papi. Mrs. Witzel’s pies are delicious . . .” Marisol began.

  “But they don’t pay the mortgage,” Mesquite finished, frowning. “You need to charge people cash to get rid of their ants.”

  “And their termites.”

  “And their wasps.”

  Sarah Jane’s account of Autry climbing a ladder to remove a wasp nest from her window came back to me. I imagined Mr. Cabot paying my uncle with a gourd shaped like George Washington. It had to cost a lot of money to keep a place like the Flying Cattleheart up and running. I doubted that the ladybug business was making my uncle all that rich. Maybe that was what Autry had meant when he’d talked about sinking the ranch.

  As soon as Autry closed the glossy journal in front of him, Gypsy swept it toward her. Enthralled with the newest inhabitants of the Bug House, she began whispering excitedly to the empty space where Samson sat next to her. But whatever Samson thought about the butterflies, he didn’t share it with the group.