The Higher Power of Lucky (13 page)

They struggled down the sandy road that led across the desert to some abandoned mines in the distant hills. Lucky knew it was important to stay on the rutted road to keep from getting lost. She kept a tight grip on her plastic sack, which twisted and strained to fly away. Her dishtowel flapped and made it hard to see, but was cool and kept some of the swirling sand out of her hair. Uprooted plants and old junk whipped past.

After about twenty minutes Lucky needed to pee. She went off to the side, watching for snakes and scorpions and nasty types of cactus, and squatted, pulling her underpants down and the silk dress up to her waist. She planted one shoe on the handles of the plastic sack to keep it from flapping away.

It was hard keeping her balance with the backpack on, but she didn’t want to take the thing off and then have to put it on again with no chair or counter to back up to. She realized that the toilet paper was wrapped up in the towel inside the sack, and undoing everything to get it would be impossible. Right now for peeing it was okay—you just stayed squatting and the wind dried everything in a quick minute. But later on Lucky would need to organize her stuff better, with the toilet paper on top.

As she lurched to her feet and pulled her underpants up at the same time, the whole weight of the backpack seemed to shift and she lost her balance and fell backward. Stuff in her backpack crunched and something mashed into her spine. It made her feel discouraged, like if you took the word apart into two sections of
dis
and
couraged
. It was getting harder and harder to stay couraged.

She rolled over onto her hands and knees and stayed that way for a while, panting into her mask. Hard little rocks pressed against her knees through the silk and nipped her palms. Not a soul in the world knew where she was, or cared. She was nothing but a speck on the surface of the Earth. Lucky almost didn’t have the strength to stand up again, but then HMS Beagle went bounding away down the road.

Even my dog abandons me,
thought Lucky, but she heaved herself up, clutching the plastic bag, and plowed on.

Lucky stole her technique of keeping going from the anonymous twelve-step people, whose slogan is “One Day at a Time.” If you think of undoing a big habit day after day for the entire rest of your life, you can’t bear it because it’s too overwhelming and hard, so you give up. But if you think only of getting through this one day, and don’t worry about later, you can do it. Lucky used the “One Day at a Time” idea by putting one foot in front of the other without thinking about what would happen later. She knew she could do one step and then another step and then another step and then another step as long as she thought “One Step at a Time.”

But the wind was a terribly strong enemy. Sometimes it pushed her so hard from behind that she thought it would knock her over. Once a huge thing that turned out to be most of a washing machine hurtled past her, and she saw a sheet and pillowcase—probably ripped by the wind from someone’s clothesline—sailing out to the desert.

When HMS Beagle suddenly veered across the path to sniff at a pile of old rags, Lucky did not pause. She pressed on, believing the dugouts must be close now, though she couldn’t see very far in any direction. The dugouts would give shelter from the wind. After a while, she looked back through the blast of dust. HMS Beagle was sitting by the rags.

“HMS Beagle, come!” she said, but her words were whooshed away by the wind. Lucky gestured with her whole arm for the dog to come. HMS Beagle sat.

Lucky grimly turned away and went on. Of course HMS Beagle was going to leave her all by herself! What worse thing could happen?

When the road curved around a low hill, Lucky suddenly couldn’t get her bearings. Was this some fork she’d forgotten about? She didn’t remember the road curving like that, which made her heart pump out waves of panic. The project was to run away, not to get
lost
. She looked behind her: nothing but the thick blanket of brown dust. But the hill on her right provided a buffer, so instead of turning back she pulled the dishcloth away from her face so she could peer around.

Halfway up the hill was a level shelf, and behind the shelf—the dugouts! Five uneven door-size holes leading to shallow caves in the hill. She’d gone much farther than she’d realized. Seeing the dugouts made Lucky feel almost like she’d come home.

Lucky staggered up to the first dugout, a cave about the size of her canned-ham trailer. In that protected spot, the roar and powerful force of the wind let go its grip, and Lucky shrugged off her backpack at last. At the cave entrance, she unrolled the towel and laid it out like a picnic blanket, weighting the corners with stones.

It was an excellent choice that she was wearing a beautiful silk French dress as her running-away outfit, although it was now covered with grit and dust. She arranged herself on the towel in a beauty-queen way. If Lincoln had been there, she would have asked him to teach her how to make a knot so strong it would never come undone.

Lucky rerolled the stuff from the towel into her jacket. She stripped off her mask and took a big swig of Gatorade. The dishcloth was completely dry now, and when she shook it out, she found her hair and ears, the corners of her eyes, her eyelashes and eyebrows were all full of sand.

She began to worry about HMS Beagle.

“HMS Beagle!” she shouted. “Beag!” She pictured her dog meeting a sidewinder on the road. Or maybe she got conked by a flying lawn chair. What if HMS Beagle was in trouble? Why
else
wouldn’t she have finally caught up?

Lucky was bone weary and couldn’t bear the thought of going back into the windstorm, but she was also lonely and worried, and the worried part was strongest. Leaving the backpack, leaving the plastic bag, Lucky ran down the road to find her dog.

Heading
into
the wind turned out to be way, way harder, even without her backpack and supply sack. Lucky had to scuttle along doubled over, like an old woman, keeping her squinted eyes on the road. Without the mask or the dishcloth her face was completely exposed. She couldn’t see more than a few feet ahead.

She almost tripped over HMS Beagle, who trotted up to her with her head low to the ground, her ears whipping forward. She touched Lucky with her nose and then abruptly turned and bounded back toward the town. Maybe HMS Beagle was right and they should go home. Lucky stopped.

“Hey, Beag!” she yelled. Then, faintly, she heard a cat or some other animal crying, and saw that HMS Beagle was nudging that pile of rags.

Very carefully Lucky approached the thing, which was huddled in a tight ball. It looked like the thing was rolled up in an old tablecloth or sheet. Sticking out of the roll was a small sneaker with a toe poking through a hole in the side.

He pressed his face, streaked with tears, snot, and dirt, into Lucky’s front and gripped his arms around her neck. “I was waiting for Chesterfield to find me,” he sobbed, “but a coyote came and snuffled me.”

“That was only HMS Beagle,” Lucky said. “The dugouts aren’t far—let’s go, quick.”

“I can’t. I have a cactus in my foot. It hurts!” Miles started crying again.

It was a cholla burr the size of a golf ball, a dozen of its needles stuck deep into Miles’s heel. Lucky didn’t touch it. She knew very well from the time
she
had stepped on one that you could
not
pull it out with your fingers. Plus she knew that it burned like fire underneath your skin.

“Where’s your shoe?” she said into his ear. He hadn’t loosened his grip on her neck.

“I don’t know! I lost it.”

“Okay, look. I’m going to carry you piggyback. You have to help by letting go and then climbing on me.”

“Please don’t trick me and leave me here, Lucky!”

“I promise I won’t, Miles. Come on.”

Even though she’d had a lot of practice lugging her survival kit backpack all the time, Lucky was surprised at how heavy a five-year-old boy could feel. She staggered back up the hill to the dugout, feeling as if the day had been going on for weeks.

Her worst thought was that she didn’t have pliers to grip the cholla burr and pull it out. Even if she made a very clumsy glove by folding the dishcloth over and over on itself, the cholla’s steel-hard needles would plunge right through the cloth and get stuck in her hand.

Miles sat on the towel with his bare foot propped on his other leg to keep anything from touching the burr and making it hurt worse. He gulped Gatorade, finishing the bottle. HMS Beagle spent a long time lapping water.

“I already tried to get it out,” he said, “but it hurts your fingers to touch it.”

“I know,” Lucky said. She rummaged through her supplies and survival kit. She’d seen Short Sammy dislodge a burr stuck in a boot by slipping a fork between the needles and the leather and
f lipping
it out, instead of trying to pull it out.

But Lucky didn’t have a fork or even a comb, which also might have worked. She needed something
toothed
. But the toothbrush bristles were way too soft.