Lifting the Sky (7 page)

But as I jumped to the ground I'd heard my mom's voice. “Blue can help.” And she waved me over. I hung back. She yelled my name and I had no choice. I shuffled over.

“They're short of hands, and it's the easiest job,” she said, leaning down to pat me on the shoulder. “When the wrestlers call, you just carry over this bucket.” She put the pail in my hands, squeezed my fingers over the handle, and ran off to help rope calves.

All the calves got a brand and some shots and maybe an ear tag or some dehorning paste spread on their budding horns. But the male calves got one more thing. I only got called to them.

“Ball boy!” a wrestler would yell. No matter that I was a girl. I'd skitter off with the bucket thump-thumping against my legs. Holding the pail out as far as my little arms could reach, I'd crinkle up my nose and scrunch my eyes shut. But that didn't help. Nothing smothered the smell of scorched hide and burned hair and smoke. Nothing drowned out the clamor of calves bawling and cows bellowing, or blanked out the dark reddish lights flashing up from the hurt calves. And even back then I knew what would be put in my bucket. Knew that a knife was slicing through soft tender skin and that a hand was reaching in,
feeling for, and yanking out the calf's little boy parts. I'd dash from one calf to the next and hold out my bucket until it was full.

It wasn't until I threw up in a full bucket that they let me quit. I drifted off to hide in an empty horse trailer, where the smell of manure almost blocked out the smells of the branding.

Much later, when Mam found me sound asleep in the trailer, I wailed, “Why do they have to make the calves bawl and light up like that?”

Mam stroked my head and dusted me off. “You're just overly sensitive, Blue,” she said. “You'll get over it. I should've had you out helping before now. And we do have to brand them. That's how we know who the calves belong to, in case they wander off and get mixed in with a neighbor's herd, or if somebody steals them. And if all those male calves grew up to be bulls we'd have a headbutting war on the ranch.”

But I never did get desensitized. I still dreamed up things that just
had
to be done so I could disappear when branding time rolled around. Going off to the ponds to undo the dams every day or so—what a
perfect
excuse.

Now Mam gave me one of those looks that said she saw clear through me.

“Really,” I said before she could open her mouth. “I'm about ready to send off my lessons to get my final report card. Then I'll have oodles of time.”

She frowned at her cup as tea sloshed onto the table. She grabbed a napkin and mopped at the puddle as if she
could scrub out the problem. “No,” she said, shaking her head. “It's wilder than you might think back there in the woods by the ponds. Mountain lions. Bears. Moose. I'll do it. I'm just going in circles right now, with so many things needing to be done. The ditch will have to stay dry until I find time to go back.” She gave a huge sigh. “And I need to get it cleaned out. Mr. Mac said they haven't been burning ditches for a while, and the weeds have almost taken them over.”

My insides did a flip-flop. She looked so tired. At this rate she wouldn't last a month here, much less the whole summer. I had to think of something.

I'd undo those dams myself. I'd slip away when she was down at the barn or off fixing fence. By the time she figured out what I was up to, she'd have to accept that I was actually old enough to do some things on my own.

My chance came that afternoon when Mam took Stew Pot and drove off to fix the fence by the front entrance to the ranch. I pulled my rubber boots from my canvas boot bag and wiggled into them. A bit snug but, far as I could see, no holes—if they leaked they were hardly worth wearing.

The beaver ponds got their water from a spring, and they spread from one level down to the next alongside of the creek. A snarl of river willows and wild rosebushes barred my way, but I twisted through them and spotted an animal trail. I could feel antennae sprouting out of my head as I threaded my way through the tangle. Lions and
bears and moose, oh my. Not having Stew Pot beside me made me feel like a knight without armor. Out in the sunlight was one thing; in the deep woods things felt positively creepy. I held my breath, tiptoeing on soft moss and black dirt, tripping over rotted tree trunks, dodging spiderwebs and low branches. Somewhere a branch snapped with a
crack!
I froze. Water gurgled. An owl hooted. A squirrel screeched. Something huge glided through the dark fringe of brush.

A scream tore its way up to my throat, but all that came out was a gasp.

Velvety antlers spread from one side of the trail to the other. Not ten feet away stood a thousand pounds of bull moose.

Later I'd remember thoughts flitting by about what a shame it was that I'd never get to see my dad again, and how anxious poor Mam and Stew Pot would be when I didn't show up at suppertime. In the next instant all I could think was, wow—how incredibly awesome. Look at me, face-to-face with a moose!

That was my oh-so-brave thought before the moose lumbered toward me. I blinked up at the huge face. Big brown eyes stared down at me. Wonder rubbed at my fear, nudging it aside as I stared at the soft greenish gold light radiating out of him, a light that mingled and mixed with the greenish blue light of the forest. For a long moment moose and I gaped at each other.

Then I reached out and touched its brown nose.

It couldn't have cared less. I might've been a mouse
or a butterfly. The creature took a step sideways. If a tree sprouted legs and could weave its way through its own forest, lifting and shifting its branches, that's how the moose moved away.

Some part of me felt like it'd flown up and was singing full throttle at the top of the trees. The other part of me danced in a circle on the path and shouted, “I just counted coup on a moose!” The thrill of it filled me to bursting.

I wished I could tell the whole world. But there are things you don't want your mom to hear, not even by way of an echo. A moose moment for sure topped that list.

And then I was in a clearing and the sky was bright blue above me and tiny iridescent blue dragonflies glided around me. I scrambled over fallen tree trunks to the pond. It was bigger than I'd thought, but then again it was plumb full because of the heap of sticks crammed across one end of it. Humped in the middle of the pond was a beaver lodge. Toppled aspens lay scattered all over the clearing, their pointed stumps poking up like sharp skinny fingers.

I stood there twisting my hair, picturing a whole crew of beavers scurrying about and gnawing down trees right and left. I could just see them eyeing the direction the trunks would fall, shouting “Timberrrrrrrr,” in beaver tongue and clapping their tails as trees crashed to the ground. What engineers they had to be—to topple the trees and then strip and drag the branches into the ponds and jam them together and dam up the leaks with a plaster of moss, mud, and grasses.

And then did they stand back and admire what they'd done?

I did. Then I scrambled halfway across the dam, crouched down, and slithered into the pond. The icy cold water stung through my rubber boots as I waded past dragonflies and water bugs and green floating scum. I tugged at a stick. With a glop it came out of the icky black mud.

“Sorry, beavers,” I said, “but it's my job to undo what you've done.”

It was there, with my feet sucked deep into mud and icy water up to the tops of my boots that I had my brainstorm. I stared at the black mud and moss.

This was
chink.

Maybe I could make something like it to seal up cracks in the new log addition….

My head buzzed. The unfinished log add-on was something I could
really
put my mark on. Washing windows and dusting and mopping didn't make a huge difference, but
this
would. Already I could see it—the cracks chinked, the room livable … Why, maybe I could even make some furniture out of these nicely peeled beaver sticks and some willowy red-willow branches…. And maybe when I was all done we could have a party and invite Mr. Mac and he'd step into the house … I pictured it all, how he'd say, “Miss Blue! You did all this so you'd have a place to call home?” And how I'd nod and he'd grin happily and somewhere in the background my mom would be smiling too. But suddenly the picture got all confused. What would happen if—excuse me,
when
—
my dad came back? I had to believe that he'd find us if only we stayed in one place long enough. That was step one.

One step at a time, I said to myself. And then we'd just see what happened.

Sometimes Mam says, “Anchor down to earth, Moon Child,” when I get all hyped up about something. I might never have started on this project if I'd thought any longer about it, but instead I threw sticks left and right and finished up and ran back through the woods to the house and threw my muddy clothes into the washer so Mam wouldn't suspect that I'd been to the dams.

I put on some fresh clothes and rushed to check out the rundown homestead cabin next to the house. Sure enough, it'd been chinked the old-fashioned way. I pried between the logs to see what they'd used back in the old days. Crumpled-up newspapers had been crammed into the spaces between the big cracks. The chink looked like it'd been made out of clay mixed with straw. I rubbed a piece of the chink between my fingers. It was the same color as the hillside not far from the house.

I grabbed a bucket from the kitchen and skipped off to the purple hill. Sure enough, it was the kind of dirt that turned into nice gluey clay. I scooped up a bunch and then buzzed about rounding up straw and old newspapers. I hauled my stash through the kitchen and plopped it on the floor in the add-on.

I made me a sign.

BLOOMING ROOM
PRIVATE! NO PEEKING!

I tacked it onto the door and closed it behind me so Mam wouldn't come in and ask questions. I was ready to start my new project. A gust of wind blasted between the cracks, lifting dust, bits of hay, and newspapers. The wind died down, and I started stuffing the cracks.

I couldn't believe it. “No way,” I muttered as I felt Wonder Baby's leg once again. No lump. No bump. No airy spike poking my hand. And her lights looking almost
normal.

“Not even
possible
,” I said as I let the calf go and watched as she chased after her twin to the end of the pen.

I wrinkled my forehead, feeling really confused. Maybe Wonder Baby's leg hadn't really been broken. Maybe I had just imagined the bumps. Was it just wishful thinking?

In my head I did a little figuring. Today was the twenty-fourth. We'd hired on at the ranch on May ninth and the bums had been born the next day. So two weeks. A broken bone couldn't possibly heal in two weeks. But if it
had
, then something amazing had happened.

The rest of the morning passed in a daze. How I got the last of my schoolwork done I don't know. What I put down on my tests is a mystery. But I finished up and got everything stuffed into a big envelope and ready to mail
back to my school, and then I sat at the table drumming my fingers.

“Something made the bone heal …,” I said out loud to the room and the broom and the lightbulb.

“What'd you say?” Mam's words pulled me out of my haze.

“I said I need a hike up the hill.” I could feel my face getting red. I couldn't just blurt it out, could I?
Wonder Baby's broken leg healed!
Right. In two weeks? Frankly, I hardly believed it myself—how could I expect someone else to?

“Well, you're done! You deserve a break,” Mam said as she picked up the envelope and weighed it in her hands. “We'll go get this mailed off tomorrow. And guess what? We've got a full ditch of water! The beavers are getting lazy, I think. I've actually got a bit of spare time on my hands.” She grunted as she lifted her latest, biggest, fattest encyclopedia, the M. “Think I'll grab me a cuppa tea, go curl up with this giant, and see what he can teach me.”

A cool breeze made me roll down my sleeves as Stew Pot and I slipped through the fence. I hurried straight up to my tree, shrugged out of my pack, and settled back against the trunk. Stew Pot curled up beside me.

I stared out at the blue-forever sky and listened to the sound of the wind and the creek. Sometimes I felt so full of sky I could burst.
What was happening to me?
I wondered. I seemed to have entered into a whole different dimension from the moment I stepped into this place. Were all the
lights brighter here, or was it something inside me that had changed? Had Wonder Baby's leg really healed? Was it something I'd done? Sure, I'd read about miracles happening, but they all seemed to have happened long ago. Which, of course, didn't mean that they hadn't happened … But still. I scrunched up my face something terrible just thinking about it all.

I was thinking so hard that I didn't even notice the herd of pronghorns gathering on the hillside below me.
“Shhh,”
I whispered to Pot. I snapped my fingers and pointed to the ground, which was the sign for him to stay low and stay put. Which, being a good ranch doggie, he did. He hunkered right down and lay with his head on his paws, looking straight ahead as if he were pretending the antelope didn't exist.

I reached for my pack and pulled out my journal and pencils. I picked out the antelope I'd named Lone One and drew her staring up at me while the rest of the herd calmly grazed. Then I rummaged through my pencils for the gold one and shaded in the fuzzy light that shone out of her and out of the others. I studied them some more and added a rosy pink to the light around the fat-bellied does.

I squinted. Something else was going on here—something I hadn't noticed before. I could see silvery-blue lines linking each antelope to the next one. And to the next and the next … I studied the lines for the longest time and then drew what I saw. It looked like golden antelopes caught in a silvery web.