Under a Painted Sky

by Stacey Lee

  A tree with a fallen branch blocks our path. West sets a hand on the branch, then hops over in one easy motion, barely pulling his chambray shirt out from his trousers. I scale it with a lot more effort, then scamper after him.

  We hike through a wooded area tinted violet. The humidity has lifted, and the cool breeze feels as lovely as a fresh sheet against my cheek.

  West looks up. “This is the best time to hunt, when the animals are out looking for their suppers. ’Course, with a painted sky, light’s not always good.”

  I never heard anyone call the sky painted before, but it’s the perfect word. Clouds outlined in gold streak across the firmament, casting uneven shadows over the landscape.

  “My father said that artists see the world differently than normal people. I see a tree where you might see a collection of lines, shapes, and shadows.”

  “I see a tree, too.”

  “So it’s not true?”

  “It ain’t true that I’m an artist.”

  An unladylike honk bursts from my nose. “I’ve seen—” I halt, wondering if I should be admitting that I peek at his pictures when he draws.

  His eyes slide to me. “Drawing’s my way of keeping a diary. It don’t mean anything else.” His voice is gruff, almost defensive.

  “If you say so. But artists don’t really have a choice in the matter. They create because they have to.”

  He grunts. “Ain’t a proper way to make a living.”

  “Tell that to Michelangelo. He got more than three thousand ducats for painting the Sistine Chapel in Italy. That’s about twenty thousand U.S. dollars.”

  West blinks as if splashed by water, but doesn’t lose his stride.

  “The Tudor monarchs would hire a royal painter to follow them around, drawing pictures of them. Sometimes the king’s painter was given a fancy title like Baron or Viscount.”

  Leaves crunch, though I realize I am the only one stepping on them. West carefully avoids the tree litter without even looking at the ground.

  “Of course,” I prattle on, “the king’s minstrel was given a fancy title and a pretty wife.”

  To my surprise, he chuckles, a strangely intimate sound that makes my heart flutter. “So I shoulda taken up the harmonica after all.” Stopping, he rests his hands loosely on his hips and sweeps his gaze around me. Then his amusement gives way to something more serious. “That stuff you said about not having a choice. Is it the same way with your music?”

  “Yes. My father said I was born with a song in my fingers. I don’t know who I’d be if I didn’t make music. It’s the only thing I ever wanted to do.”

  “Besides gold rushing.”

  “Of—of course . . . besides that,” I stammer. Then I shut my mouth, hoping I have not inadvertently given myself away.

  Thankfully, he does not seem to notice my discomfort. His gaze drifts upward where a hat-shaped cloud is slowly stretching apart. “We best get started.”

  We park on a bald spot of ground. He tugs the bandanna off his neck and spreads it between us. All we need is a basket and a bottle of wine. As I entertain my picnic fantasy, I don’t notice him hoisting his eyebrows at me until he reaches over and lifts the Colt out of my belt. I have been struck stupid.

  “How many times you fire this?” He lays the gun on the bandanna.

  “Once.” I wish I still had hair to hide behind.

  “So you didn’t shoot a ‘moosh’?”

  I grimace and shake my head.

  Suppressing his amusement, he draws a pouch and two tins from his pockets and lays them next to the gun. His sleeve pulls back to reveal the first two scars on his arm, like two white fingerprints on the back of his wrist. The marks are not raised, like Andy’s scar, but they share a neatness of form, as if they were made deliberately. I quickly look away before he notices me studying them, and add Yorkshire’s powder horn to the assembly.

  He opens the chamber of the Colt and starts filling the five slots with the objects on the bandanna. “First, pour the powder, then wad, bullet, ram it, grease, caps.”

  I fill the last three slots. My hands shake, though I’m not sure what makes me more nervous, his close scrutiny of my fingers, or the possibility that I could kill us by mishandling the gunpowder. Finally, he takes the gun from me and puts it on full cock.

  A mourning dove flutters about a bur oak forty paces to our left. He lifts the gun and sights.

  “Don’t shoot the bird!” I cry.

  “Don’t shoot the bird?” he repeats in disbelief, lowering the gun.

  Somewhere in the distance, Andy fires Cay’s gun, scaring off the dove. West drops his head back and closes his eyes.

  “I’m sorry. I favor doves,” I babble, wincing at how girly that sounds.

  He shakes his head. “Sammy.” Then he gives me the gun and pushes my hands toward a tree.

  “What?”

  “You favor trees?” he mocks.

  I suck up my stammering and summon my gruffest voice. “Which leaf?”

  “Start with that knot.” He points to a depression, wide as my hand, in the same bur oak.

  The first shot goes wide and the second goes wider in the other direction. But now I have a feel for the iron, and by the third shot, I hit the knot right in the middle. Shots four and five follow right on its heels.

  As long as I don’t have to kill anything with a pulse, my hand is steady.

  West squints at the tree and then at me.

  I blow out the smoke that rises from the barrel. “What do you know? It works.”

  • • •

  Second night of cowboy training: riding.

  Through a grove of sugar maples, Peety shows us how to turn on a half-dime, and how to handle a horse that bucks.

  “Pull head up and move forward. It also helping if you give her compliment before you get on. Tell her she got nice smile, something like that.”

  “You’s kidding me?” says Andy. She draws her arms across her chest, then thinks better of it and drops them to her sides.

  “Trust him, no horse ever threw Peety,” says Cay.

  My mule loves to gambol even after a day of travel and an evening of riding exercises. After I tie her to a pink dogwood, she pulls the whole tree out of the ground chasing a butterfly.

  While I spend my time trying to keep Paloma out of trouble, Andy works on overcoming her nerves with Princesa.

  “Come on, ya horse, giddap already, can’t you feel me kicking?” pleads Andy, giving Princesa another tap with her heels. Princesa drifts to one side, chewing the bluegrass near where Paloma and I are practicing our turns.

  Peety wags his finger. “No begging. Order her to giddap.”

  “I am ordering her,” says Andy.

  “You are conquistador marching into battle, is that how you command your troops? Horse needs strong leader to feel safe.” He bats his hand at Andy and says in a girlish voice, “Please, if you do not mind me asking, let us go now.”

  Andy’s mouth falls open.

  “I am just a little girl, so scared of my pony,” continues Peety in his high voice, pinching the sides of his imaginary skirt and tippy-toeing around. Princesa throws back her head and screams, a scream that sounds uncannily like a shriek of laughter.

  That does it. Eyes bulging, Andy pulls back her shoulders. “I said, giddap!” She stabs in her heels.

  Princesa cocks an ear. A moment later, she gits.

  Peety drops his act and nods once. “Exactamente.”

  After more drilling, Andy and I walk our mounts to cool them down. Peety strolls beside us. “Princesa came to rancho one day after her owner no want her. Says too much horse for him, too wild. But he’s wrong. She’s not wild, she’s spirited. ‘Wild’ means ‘I no care about what I do.’ But ‘spirited’ means, ‘I love what I do.’ Big difference.”

  �
� • •

  Third night of cowboy training: roping.

  We settle at the top of a grassy embankment, with basswood trees to our backs, and the trail below us. A ring of wagons lies on the other side of the trail, their oxen mowing down the scenery all around them.

  Andy and I hunker side by side on the grass and watch Cay jump rope in front of us. Peety and West sit five paces away, playing poker and half watching Cay. West fans his cards with one hand, then refolds them by knocking them against his knee.

  Cay stops jumping and ties a lariat. “Ropes come in all sizes but cowboy lengths are twenty or thirty feet.” The lariat makes a musical whipping sound as it spins.

  Cay handles his rope as skillfully as if it were a lady, spinning it with either hand, even crawling through it without letting it touch the ground. After he finishes playing to the gallery, he shows Andy and me how to make six kinds of knots, including a sweetheart knot, which is strong enough to connect two ropes together as if they were one.

  “When do you use that?” I ask.

  “When you need an extra length, like when you need to catch a wild horse. Or a sparrow.” He wiggles his eyebrows.

  Finally, he demonstrates how to make a honda by tying an eye splice. Weaving the thin strands of hemp soothes my mind.

  “C’mon, Sam, let’s throw already.” Andy nudges me with the toe of her boot to hurry me up.

  “Almost done.” I keep my eye on my rope so I don’t mix up the strands. This reminds me of how I used to braid my hair. If we had not cut it, I could have spliced my hair around my head as practice.

  I get to my feet and dangle my eye splice in front of Cay.

  “Not bad. Now, kids, hold the coils in your left, twisting half a turn for each coil so things don’t get kinky. Lariat in your right.”

  We do it. Cay stands between Andy and me with his own rope.

  “Since we don’t have any good stumps, West will be yours,” Cay tells me. Then he turns to Andy. “And you do Peety.”

  “What?” Andy exclaims.

  West and Peety look up from their card game.

  “I can’t do that,” I gasp, taking a step back. “I might strangle my stump.”

  West dares me with his eyes. “Catching me ain’t as easy as it looks.”

  “Yeah, it is,” says Cay. “Pretend he’s a mute post, which ain’t far from the truth.”

  He winds up and casts his lariat over West. West shrugs out of it and tosses it back.

  Cay hands it back to me. “Your turn. Let’s see if Chinamen can do more than bow.”

  I narrow my eyes. “You offend me.”

  “Oh-fend? You mean like rile you up? I thought Chinamen never get mad.”

  Steam trickles out of my ears. That fox wants me to prove him wrong, but I won’t play his game. I unclench my jaw and toss my nose in the air.

  “Could my stump turn around? He’s making me nervous,” I say, as coolly as I can.

  West throws down his cards and turns around. Stretching out his legs, he leans back on his hands and mutters, “Good luck.”

  That’s it. I will show those hot shots just what Chinamen can do. I crank up my arm, sure someone tied lead weights to my rope given how much it drags.

  “You call that an arm? I call that spaghetti,” Cay yells. “Put some game into it—you’re throwing like a girl.”

  “I ain’t a girl,” I growl, stomping the ground a few times to prove it.

  “Why you got spaghetti arms, then?”

  “At least I don’t have spaghetti brains.” My eyes catch on one of the blond locks that springs out from behind his ear. Even his curls are mocking me. I stop winding to glower. “We Chinese like our spaghetti arms, which allow us to balance better when we, er, cross bridges.”

  I apologize to Chinese men everywhere, most of whom don’t even know what spaghetti is. Andy pulls the brim of her hat over her ears. With a grimace, I throw as hard as I can, watching in horror as my loop heads toward our blaze, many miles from West. It lands in the nest of flames. Cay jerks back my burning lariat as I pray for a twister to suck me up.

  Cay stamps out the rope. “Uh, Sammy, you noodled the fire.”

  The stumps are shaking with laughter. Even Andy.

  I suck in my gut, then cuss and spit a few times. “Why must I learn this?”

  Cay flinches like I slapped him. “Don’t say that. How you gonna catch anything if you don’t know how to rope?”

  “Charm. My spiderweb.” I chafe, stewing in my own juices. But as the laughter continues, I deflate.

  Cay pushes my hat down over my eyes. “No one does it on the first try. Andy’s turn.”

  Gladly, I step aside.

  “Hit me with your best shot,” Peety says. When Andy winds up, he starts heckling her. “Hey, Andito bandito, I know you wish you can touch this Mayan pyramid, this buffalo body of músculo—”

  She casts. Her rope does not spin but whips Peety on the side of the head.

  “Ow, chico.”

  One glance at Andy’s shocked face sets me off. I fall to my knees and let my laughter tumble out.

  • • •

  Each night after cowboy lessons, I drill the boys and Andy on language. I use pages from West’s journal to write out Chinese characters for them to memorize, and give them throat and tongue exercises so they can push out the French r. Cay likes to turn phrases like “Nice to meet you” into “Nice to meet your lips,” but I don’t mind as long as he remembers the vocabulary.

  The boys take turns requesting songs from the Lady Tin-Yin, and she is always happy to comply, the show-off. Then we lie in our line, surrounded by rope. Most nights, I fall asleep last. The stars are too irresistible, and I don’t want to close my eyes. Every time I do, fears start racing through my mind, led by a couple of Scots driving a rabid posse against me.

  Eventually, though, I convince myself the MacMartins do not suspect us. Then there’s only Father to consume my thoughts. I try not to dwell too much on what he suffered in the fire. That will set off girly tears for certain, and I have not cried since our first day on the Trail.

  A hand touches my shoulder one night, and I wake with a confused gasp.

  “Sammy.”

  I am curled in a tight ball, and my face is wet. I gulp and wipe my eyes with my sleeve. West hangs over me.

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper, unfurling myself.

  “Don’t be,” he says, his voice compassionate.

  The stars fade in that exquisite time between night and day, when neither the sun nor the moon shows its face. He settles back down beside me as I grab at the wisps of my dream. I don’t remember it now.

  “Something happen to you?” he asks.

  I long to answer him. But I can’t. “Why are you going to California?” I ask instead.

  “Cay wants to go there.” He takes his time. “He fooled around with the ranch owner’s daughter. She said he got her pregnant. He was going to marry her, but then he found out she wasn’t with child.” He pauses to rub his neck. “Ranch owner wanted him to take his daughter anyway, but Cay didn’t love her. So we cut out after we finished the last drive. Won’t be going back to Texas for a long time.”

  “You left your home for him.”

  “He’s family, just like Peety. Can’t just give up on family, even when they act like fools.”

  “What about your parents? Brothers and sisters?”

  “I’m an only child. Mama died when I was seven. With any luck, pa’s in the ground, too.” His voice cools, and I regret bringing them up.

  I glance at his triangular earlobes, the telltale signs of a troubled life. “I’m sorry,” I murmur once again.

  He shrugs. “Ain’t the first to have a mean daddy.”

  I get a pang in my heart, both at his suffering and at the reminder of my fortune in having had a
kind father. “Every child deserves his father’s love.”

  He sighs, then doesn’t speak for at least thirty watermelons. I think he’s fallen back asleep, but then he says in a quiet voice, “This one time, he cuffed me for painting the fence too slow. Blood got into the paint and turned it pink. No matter how much I tried mixing in more white, it still looked pink to me. I finished the fence, but I knew it was no good, even though people couldn’t see it. There were certain things about me I could never change, no matter how I tried.”

  My breath stops short. Somewhere along the way, the subject changed from paint to himself. What things could he not change? A mean temperament? I have known West for less than a month, but I have not seen an ounce of spite in him.

  “My father pointed out once that the violets with the deepest color grew from the dung heap.” As soon as the words are out, I realize I have equated him with dung. “I mean, er—”

  A puff of air curls out of his mouth, giving way to a reluctant smile and even a chuckle. “Sammy,” he says in that way I’ve come to know as part exasperated, part resigned.

  I regard his profile, his lips parted slightly, and his perfect eyebrows beginning to knit. It both scares and thrills me to admire his beauty from so close, like I am breaking some law against staring. My gaze wanders to the tiny cleft in his stubbly chin, like a fingernail mark. I clench my fist to stop my fingers from touching it.

  He turns to me, but instead of looking away like he usually does, he lingers. Our eyes lock, mine still wet, his tortured, and I glimpse his soul.

  They say time freezes, but I’ve never experienced it until now. I stay like that, lost in his eyes for that eternal moment, and then the dawn breaks, and we are Sammy and West again, boys on the trail.

  19

  BY THE TIME WE REACH THE HOMESTRETCH TO Fort Kearny, I’ve roped my stump half a dozen times, and Andy rides Princesa like a Nubian queen floating on a mahogany boat. Peety rewards Andy’s improvement by giving her his kid riding gloves, fleece-lined, too.