by Susan Patron
My friends call me Stick.
15. murdock and tyson and all the others
Like a perfect, beautiful pebble in the palm of a giant’s hand, Hard Pan lay cupped in a high desert valley surrounded by hills and mountains. The sky, and there was a whole lot of it, gave the day a brilliant, beaming aspect—as if, Lucky thought, it was in a really good mood. It was exactly the right kind of day for towing a cabin from the plateau on the gouged-out, fenced-off, boarded-up hillside down into town and onto the foundation waiting for it at Brigitte’s Hard Pan Café.
Lucky sprang out of bed that morning and pulled on the dark green T-shirt and leggings, lighter green shorts, and black velvet-strap flip-flops that had arrived in yesterday’s mail from Mrs. Wellborne, Paloma’s mom; Paloma had a matching outfit that she would also be wearing. Lucky did not have a full-length mirror but she knew she looked sort of cool, and there was a glorious sensation and smell of newness and perfectly-fittingness of everything. The bottoms of her feet loved the feel of the flip-flops’ special Hawaiian sweat-absorbing straw soles. She hopped around outside for a while to let the shoes get used to her feet. It was a day that Lucky could hardly wait to plunge into, while at the same time she couldn’t bear the thought of it eventually being over. It was like the moment before you open a present, still hidden inside its box and wrappings; while you’re waiting to find out what it is, the eagerness and impatience and curiosity and anticipation grip you in an even stronger, more thrilling way than you feel after you find out what’s inside.
Lucky wasn’t the only excited person in Hard Pan. Most everyone turned out early for the occasion, a few to help with the labor, some to give warnings and advice, others to complain or to watch. Klincke Ken was chief director of operations. Dot had received permission to bring the crew onto the mine company’s property so they could, as she frequently repeated, get that worthless abandoned cabin down to a place where someone could finally put it to good use. Short Sammy put his Adopt-a-Highway volunteer litter-removal equipment to work. He organized official road cones and signs to stop traffic for the brief part of the operation when the cabin would be on a public road, in case there was any traffic, which was highly unlikely. All the residents were staying put for the duration of the event, and no tourists would be coming to Brigitte’s Hard Pan Café, which was temporarily closed.
Pete the geologist and three of his geologist friends had driven up from L.A. in work boots and hard hats; they arrived just as Justine showed up to help Brigitte with refreshments. With all the adults milling around outside, Lucky and HMS Beagle burst out of their canned-ham trailer, flung themselves down the steps, and jogged up the road. They met Lincoln at a midway point, between where the kitchen cabin was now, on the plateau by the old mine, and where it would end up, at the Café. This was the official observation station, a specially designated secure viewing area with chairs and a folding table, set up by Short Sammy on the side of the road behind a barrier of orange traffic cones.
While Lincoln and HMS Beagle, impatient for everything to get going, wandered off to investigate a flock of chukar birds, Lucky did a set of jumping jacks. She herself was perfectly calm, but her stomach was floppy; she was doing the jumping jacks to settle it. Finally Paloma and her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Wellborne, drove up. Smelling deliciously like flowers too delicate to thrive in the desert, Paloma’s mom took twenty-seven pictures of the two girls in their new twin outfits; then she delivered a great deal of advice, warnings, and rules. With matching solemn expressions on their faces, Paloma and Lucky agreed to everything and said they would be very careful and always use good judgment. But Lucky was really thinking that if she ever owned elegant weightless silk clothes like Mrs. Wellborne’s, she would really know how it felt to be a butterfly. And then, finally, Paloma’s parents drove up to the plateau to join the other adults.
Paloma had brought something for Lucky. It was a full-page ad from the Los Angeles Times showing row after row and column after column of sofas, each tiny photograph identified by a name underneath. Lucky figured it fell into the same funny-without-intending-to-be-funny category as the ad tacked to her door. That ad pictured a shirtless boy making swimming motions over a bucket of water with the caption, “Learn to Swim at Home. Only $39.95 for 6 Lessons,” and it had nearly made Paloma and Lucky die of severe and uncontrollable laughter on the day that they first met.
Lucky examined the dozens and dozens of sofas and shrugged, not quite getting it.
“Dorothy,” Paloma said.
Lucky frowned, shaking her head.
“It’s just that Dorothy looks more like a Sally to me,” Paloma explained, “which, just check out the legs. Little knobs, really. Not Dorothy legs at all.”
All at once, Lucky registered that the sofas had human names. Murdock and Tyson and Roger and Glenda and Bettina. She snort-laughed and then said in a serious voice, “What bothers me is that they’ve put Henry right between Kiki and Liz—the boy sofas and the girl sofas are all mixed together. You’d think these marketing experts would arrange them in separate sections to make it easier for customers to find what they want. For instance, some people only want the better, higher-end female sofas.”
“You have a profound grasp of sofa promotion,” Paloma said in an admiring, professional tone. “May I ask if you yourself have worked in the area of sofa retailing?”
Lucky nodded. “Indeed,” she said, and gazed down to the side modestly. “I’ve been honored by the Sofa Association of America. Lifetime Achievement Award.”
Lincoln and HMS Beagle jogged back to the designated viewing area at that moment, both of them panting, as Paloma opened her eyes wide. “Wait, wait,” she said. “I don’t believe this. It can’t be happening. Are you the world-famous sofa-namer, Lucky Trimble?”
“She’s pretty famous, that’s for sure,” Lincoln said, as HMS Beagle gazed with adoration at Paloma, wagging her tail enthusiastically. “With at least two principals. Hey, Paloma.”
“Hey, Lincoln, hey, Beag. Whoa, good dog. Yes, I am very glad to see you, too,” Paloma said, giving the dog a thorough rub on her rump. She turned a little to the side, facing a pretend camera, holding a pretend microphone to her mouth. “Here we are with a renowned expert who very rarely participates in media events. Quite a treat—but first, let’s ask this potential customer’s opinion.” Extending the pretend microphone to Lincoln, she said, “Now, would you mind telling our studio audience and the folks at home, in your own words: If you were shopping for a sofa, what would you want, a male or a female?”
Lincoln considered, then asked, “You mean for a sales-person?”
Both girls shrieked with laughter. Lincoln sighed, since he knew from experience that he wouldn’t be able to catch up with this conversation, and even if he did, he wouldn’t appreciate its humor in the same extreme way they did.
So then Lucky told Paloma more about the session in the principal’s office, which they had already e-mailed briefly about, while Lincoln and HMS Beagle stood by, the four of them hanging out (under strict instructions from Klincke Ken not to go anywhere else along the road where the cabin procession would take place). They were waiting for the crew up on the plateau to finish getting the cabin ready to be moved: They had to jack it up off the ground, using a whole bunch of car jacks, then jam telephone poles underneath to support the floor, then drive the dolly into loading position. They had to chain the cabin securely in place on the dolly, haul it down the dirt road, turn at the spot where the four waited, and finally unload it at the Café.
Paloma had also heard about the family tree punishment and the amazing discovery of Lucky’s father’s half sister. She asked, “So did that aunt tell you anything good?”
“First she sent me an e-mail with something like, ‘What is your interest in Tag Trimble?’ I was calling her Stick because her initials are STK, and that’s how she was acting, just like an old stick. But then it turned out that her friends really do call her Stick, and she’s kind of nice, I mean, the
last thing I expected was that she’d be really quite nice, but she is.”
“I so wish I had an aunt,” Paloma said. Both her parents were only children, as was Paloma herself. “I think of an aunt as almost like an older sister, except they’re always nice and you don’t have to fight over who gets the remote.”
“I’ve got eight aunts, counting my parents’ three sisters plus the wives of their five brothers,” Lincoln said. “They’re all great, but the downside is it means a zillion thank-you notes every birthday.” This was a definite disadvantage Lucky hadn’t considered before; a letter-writing burden like that would be torture. She decided her current three were a perfect amount of aunts to have. Suddenly she wondered if Ollie Martin was also discovering brand-new relatives.
As often happened, Lincoln read her mind. He said, “Mom said last night that Ollie already finished his maternal side. He’s got everyone back to the great-greats.”
Ollie’s progress on his family tree infuriated Lucky.
“I wish Stick lived closer. I’d go pound on her door and make her tell me ev-ree-thing she knows.”
Lincoln smiled and said, “Hey, if she doesn’t tell you ev-ree-thing, you could throw her your special jaw-breaker punch.” Lucky knew he was teasing her, since the whole point, the reason she was having to dredge up relatives, was that she’d socked Ollie Martin in the first place.
“What about Lucille and her parents?” Paloma asked.
“My maternal grands died when I was a baby. Lincoln’s mom showed me where to write to get copies of the death certificates, which will have the names of all their parents and where they were born. So then I’ll be done with that whole side of the tree.” Lucky said this the way you would talk about being done with the type of impossible math problem where if A dies when X = 8 and X = (A + C) + B, then what is the higher power of X? It made her brain feel a little tired and sad, so she was glad to move on from the maternals.
16. a french ado
The sudden appearance of a car at the crest of the paved highway where the road descended into Hard Pan made everyone look west, where their shadows pointed. Lucky and Lincoln recognized it immediately: Stu Burping in his official Inyo County Health Department vehicle. As he drove straight to where the little group was waiting, they saw that Ollie Martin was once again in the passenger seat.
“Oh, boy,” Lucky said, with a lot of irony in her voice. She and Paloma both had begun using a great deal of irony, which they explained to their mothers was an extremely sophisticated form of humor.
Paloma looked at her with an ironic expression. “Don’t tell me that’s the guy you got into a fight with, which, what’s he doing here?”
“He’s the county health inspector’s nephew,” Lincoln said.
Stu Burping drove up and got out of the car, smelling of V8 juice, adjusting his cap. “This is a great day for Hard Pan!” he proclaimed, adding, “I’ll be honest with you—I made Ollie come with me.” Ollie sat with his arm hanging out the window, staring straight ahead in a grim and resentful way. “Thought maybe you kids should get to know each other. Can you all handle it?”
This was another example, in Lucky’s opinion, of where adult thinking can be just plain screwy. “Right,” she said.
“Right,” Lincoln said.
“Right,” Paloma said.
Ollie lumbered out of the car, slamming the door. “Right,” he sighed, and lowered one end of his skateboard to the black-top, where his right foot took control, levering it in various directions. He was wearing a tight black T-shirt, cutoff jeans, knee pads, and elbow pads.
Despite her pain-in-the-neck family-tree punishment for having hit him, Lucky had an impulse to whap Ollie again. He had that same obnoxious way of showing off with his skateboard and all his gear, as if he were bored just by the fact of sharing the same planet as you.
It made her want to force him to lick ants off a rotten apple and swallow them.
“Hey, Ollie,” Lincoln said in a neutral, not unfriendly voice.
“Hey, Lincoln.” Ollie offered a little tilted-chin junior high type of guy-greeting. Lucky rolled her eyes at Paloma, who stood off to one side. Paloma winked back at her.
Lincoln said, “You might as well know we’ve been given our orders: All of us kids have to stay behind these refreshment tables. We’re under Klincke Ken’s command. He’ll stop the operation if he sees any of us budging from this spot.”
“Good plan,” Stu Burping said. His tired-looking old brown shoes made Lucky feel a little pity for his feet because they were probably tired too. “Ollie, you got that, right? Stay here until Klincke Ken gives the signal that it’s okay to disperse. I’m going up where the crew is with the cabin, see if they need any help. You”—he swept his official county supervisor eyes over each of them—“stay out of trouble.”
After he left, Brigitte and Justine drove up with a pizza; more refreshments were waiting at the end, but Brigitte said she thought some of the observers might like a little snack. You could smell it through the Jeep’s open windows, and even if you hadn’t been hungry before, you wanted a piece. But Lucky noticed that Ollie wasn’t looking at the food as Justine set it out on the folding table; he didn’t see her spinning the wheel of a pizza knife or tapping a rapid beat with it on the edge of the table. No, Ollie was gawking at Brigitte. He stared as she and Paloma hugged and gave each other kisses on both cheeks.
Then Brigitte smiled at him. Lucky couldn’t believe her eyes. She smiled at the enemy! Even knowing, because Lucky had told her, everything: how that jerk had insulted the Café, the lies he had told. And then to Lucky’s further disgust, Brigitte said, “Olivier?” like she was glad to see him. He nodded and blushed. Well, this wasn’t new—everyone who met Brigitte was dazzled by her beauty, how she always looked fresh and energetic, no matter how hot it was or how hard she worked. Lucky had gotten used to that. But how could her mother be nice to him?
“It is what I suspected,” Brigitte said, gazing into Ollie’s eyes while Lucky and Paloma gaped at her. “His mouth. Definitely.”
Paloma eyebrowed Lucky as a way of saying, What is she talking about? And Lucky eyebrowed back, saying, I haven’t got a clue!
Apparently Ollie didn’t get it either, and probably thought she was making fun of him, because he folded his arms and looked off toward the cabin on the plateau, where all the other grown-ups were clustered. Justine, frowning and squinting, also gazed in that direction.
“Olivier Martin,” Brigitte said. But it sounded as if she were speaking French, not English. She pronounced his last name Mar-TAN.
“No,” he said. “MAR-tin. Oliver MAR-tin.”
Brigitte shrugged and offered him a slice of pizza. Glancing sideways at Lucky, who narrowed her eyes to remind him of rat-burgers, he said, “Um, it’s cool. I’m not hungry.” But Lucky saw him wanting pizza, and she was glad.
“We know from your mouth,” Brigitte said, “because you have no lips, and from that large nose, that your ancestor was from France. You look just like a French ado.”
He sighed in an annoyed way, and Lucky knew it was because he couldn’t figure Brigitte out. She was acting really nice and interested in him, but she said stuff he didn’t get. And what about having no lips and a big nose? That seemed insulting, but she didn’t say it in an insulting way; she said it more like a compliment.
He was trapped, Lucky realized happily, because he wasn’t allowed up on the plateau, and he was forced by Stu Burping to hang out. There were no low walls he could try to bully people off of, no smooth sidewalk for tricks. He rocked on his skate-board, scowling.
“What’s an ado, Brigitte?” Paloma asked.
“An adolescent.” She pronounced it the French way, ad-o-less-ONT.
“Adolescent?” Ollie asked.
Brigitte raised her eyebrows. “It is what I just said.”
“Why don’t you say it in American, then?” Ollie asked.
Lucky snorted. “In English,” she corrected. “American isn
’t a language.”
Brigitte said, “But you understand me, the way I pronounce this word, Olivier, yes?” Ollie nodded. Lucky noticed that his ears had turned red.
“Brigitte,” Paloma wondered, “why do you call him Olivier instead of Oliver?”
“I tell you already. Because he is French. In France, Martin is a common family name, like Smith is here. We know a family of Martins when I am a girl.”
“I’m American. I’m the most American person here.”
Then Paloma did a weird thing. She strode over to stand directly in front of Ollie. She peered closely at his face. “Brigitte’s right, Lucky,” she said, as if he were a painting and she was an art historian. “He has no lips and quite a large nose.” She looked into his eyes. “Oh,” she said, “by the way, I’m Paloma Alta Wellborne.”
Ollie took a step back. “Like the Alta Wellborne Studios in Hollywood?”
Paloma glanced up toward where her father was showing off his new Cadillac Escalade hybrid SUV to some of the onlookers, and where her mother, silk scarf and dress fluttering in the breeze, was talking with Dot. She sighed. “Hollywood, New York, London, Toronto, and Sydney, yes. But that is not the point.” She stepped again very close to Ollie, her beautiful droopy eyes narrowed. “The point is, my ancestors are from England and Mexico, which, my mom’s a Mexican citizen and an American. The point is, I love Hard Pan. I love Brigitte and her Hard Pan Café. The point, Ollie, is that Miles and Lincoln are my friends and Lucky’s dog is my friend and Lucky herself”—she paused, took a breath—“is my best friend on earth.” She waited, looking him straight in the eyes. “Did you get all that?”
He nodded and stopped rocking on his skateboard. He was big and gangly, like his bones had grown too fast. He looked a little bit intimidated, as if Paloma scared him.
“Then have some pizza and shut up,” Paloma said, and Brigitte handed him a slice, laughing.