The Higher Power of Lucky

by Susan Patron

  But the thing she remembered most strongly was that something bad to do with her mother had happened and she was at Short Sammy’s and her mother wasn’t there.

  “Did Lucky know you were her Guardian?” Miles asked, smoothing the plastic of his Buy-Mor-Store bag, as if soothing a cat.

  “No,” said Lucky. “She wasn’t, yet.”

  “I was going only to stay a short while,” Brigitte explained. “Just until Lucky can be placed in a foster home. I promise her father that. I tell him that I must go home to France after.” Brigitte fanned herself with a piece of the waxed cheese carton.

  Miles asked, “Was I born yet?”

  “Yes,” said Brigitte. “You were a fat little boy of three years old then, almost a wild child, running everywhere in the town. Your grandmother is always looking for you.” Brigitte shrugged. “I try to understand American customs, but they are so different from mine. And Lucky for a long time cannot sleep unless I am with her. She is of course very sad and missing her maman.”

  “Was I allowed to do anything I wanted?” asked Miles. He tucked the plastic sack tightly around his book.

  “I thought it was perhaps the way of all American children to be so free,” Brigitte said. “I wanted Lucky to have a good American foster family who is letting her be a little bit free and also giving her some discipline.”

  “Will Lucky have to go to a foster family where they make her take care of all the other little foster brothers and sisters?” Miles had asked Lucky about this before. It was something he had seen on a TV program.

  “For a long time we cannot find any foster family for Lucky. Then her father tells me all the paperwork for California will be easier if I become her Guardian, especially because Lucky and I, we have already the same last name of Trimble. I say okay.” Brigitte got up and continued to put the Government Surplus food away, frowning at the canned pork.

  Lucky was thinking that even though Brigitte said okay, she meant only until they did find a foster family. And if she had to take care of all the crying orphaned babies in her new foster family, that would mean leaving Hard Pan. Then the sign that still said POP. 43 would really be wrong.

  But what Lucky wanted most was for that sign to stay the same forever, with no subtracting allowed.

  7. Tarantula Hawk Wasp

  After Miles left, while Brigitte went through a stack of bills to take to the post office later, Lucky thought hard about how to keep from having to go away and live with a foster family. Maybe if Brigitte realized that one day Lucky would become a world-famous scientist like Charles Darwin, she would stop missing France all the time. She would have the extreme glory of being a world-famous scientist’s Guardian.

  Before she could become a world-famous scientist, Lucky needed to turn herself into a famous Hard Pan scientist, and the way to do that was to get lots of people to come to the Found Object Wind Chime Museum and Visitor Center. It was her job of cleaning its patio that had given Lucky a brilliant museum-improvement idea. The problem was that it wasn’t museumy enough. It was just glass cases against the walls with old mining equipment and old photos and a few old bugs, but not enough bugs or birds. Plus you couldn’t lean on the glass cases, which you needed to do in order to get a really good close look.

  Lucky’s idea was that, even before she became really famous, people in other countries, and especially in France, would hear about the museum’s amazing new scientific display—Lucky already envisioned the display exactly—and they could come for a visit. Brigitte could talk French to them and explain that it was actually her ward (meaning Lucky herself) who had made the display. All the French mothers would wish they had wards like Lucky.

  The timing to work on her secret museum-display idea was perfect, because at ten o’clock everyone in Hard Pan went to the post office for their mail. Since there was no market or restaurant or even a gas station in Hard Pan, people liked to stand around getting the latest news in town while they waited for the Captain to distribute the mail into each P.O. box. So Brigitte would be gone for at least half an hour, enough time for Lucky to get a good start on her display.

  She was in her canned-ham trailer gathering her specimens together when Brigitte called from the connecting kitchen trailer.

  “Did you put all your dirty clothes in the machine, Lucky? I am starting a wash.”

  “Yeah, everything.”

  “Can you listen for the end of the cycle and put the clothes in the dryer if I’m not back yet from the post office? I want these towels to have the California softness.”

  “Okay.” California softness was Brigitte’s way of saying fluffy, dried-in-the-dryer towels, as opposed to straight, crispy, hung-on-the-clothesline towels.

  “Do not forget, please, Lucky. I have to do the sheets after.”

  “’Kay.”

  After Lucky heard the screen door slam and the Jeep start, she carried everything for her project to the Formica table in the kitchen. She wasn’t supposed to work on her specimens at the table, but she needed to spread out. And anyway, she’d be done by the time Brigitte got back.

  The collection of specimens, taken out of their Altoid boxes and lined up in a row, was magnificent. She had a hoverfly (waspy looking), two craneflies (mosquitoey looking), a giant tarantula hawk wasp, and a delicate baby scorpion.

  Lucky measured the wasp specimen head to tail. It was almost an inch long, a beauty with big, orange wings. The first time you see one may be alarming when it zooms around diving-bombing at you. Brigitte was afraid of them, even though Lucky had explained that they mostly wouldn’t hurt people. All they wanted was a nice fat tarantula.

  Lucky began writing the description that would be put in the museum case. It needed to be both dramatic and scientific. She wrote:

  The Story of Tarantula Hawk Wasps

  and Their Victems the Tarantulas

  DO NOT READ ALOUD TO VERY YOUNG CHILDREN

  1. The main job of the TARANTULA HAWK WASP is to find a tarantula and sting it between its legs. By the way even though these wasps are pretty big and scary looking, don’t worry. Human beings are a total waste of their time.

  2. Finally the TARANTULA HAWK WASP finds a tarantula. This is pretty easy in the fall, when all the tarantulas walk across the main road

  Lucky stopped to think about this for a moment. She had not yet discovered why the tarantulas were all traveling southwest in the fall, and she thought it would be interesting to include this information. She thought the museum visitors who came from around the world would want the complete story. Later she would ask Short Sammy, but for now she wrote:

  but no one knows why, unfortunately.

  3. Then there is a big fight! The tarantula tries hard to get away. The wasp wins the fight, she is happy because now she can lay her egg which is her most important duty.

  WARNING: THE NEXT PART IS GRUSOME

  4. The TARANTULA HAWK WASP stings the tarantula, who becomes paralized but not dead. Then the TARANTULA HAWK WASP digs a hole, a GRAVE for the tarantula, and lays her egg inside the tarantula’s actual STILL ALIVE body. When the egg hatches, it isn’t a flying wasp yet. It is only a grub. But it is very hungry and guess what it eats? The tarantula!

  Lucky was very pleased with the story, which was thrilling and horrid. The tourists and visitors to the Visitor Center would say, “That little town of Hard Pan has quite a wonderful museum. I wonder who made that interesting exhibit?” And they’d say, “I sure never thought I’d feel sorry for a tarantula!” Lucky was picturing large groups of them gathered around the bugs’ dusty glass case, peering excitedly at the tarantula hawk wasp, when Brigitte pulled open the screen door.

  8. Snake

  Too late to hide the specimens. Lucky scooped them into their boxes, which you have to be very careful about or their legs or wings break off, but Brigitte had already seen. Instead of acting mad and making Lucky scrub the entire table with Ajax—not just the little place where the specimens had actually touched it—Brigitte went to the sin
k and leaned on it, gazing out the window.

  “Oh, Lucky,” she said, “bugs again on the table.”

  Lucky noticed that the envelope in Brigitte’s hand was from her own father. She had recognized his handwriting. Every month he sent a check, but never a letter, even though every month Lucky still thought he might. She said, “Did my father send a letter to me?”

  Brigitte sighed. She kept on staring out the window. “No, only the little check that is never enough.” She looked like a beautiful daytime TV lady doctor in her pale green hospital scrubs from the Sierra City Thrift Store.

  “I have twelve dollars and fifty-six cents saved from my job at the Found Object Wind Chime Museum,” Lucky offered. “We can add that to the money he sent.”

  Brigitte answered by lifting a shoulder and poofing air, her way of saying, “Forget it.”

  The phone rang just as Lucky realized she hadn’t put the wet clothes in the dryer. It was Lincoln.

  “Hold on,” Lucky told him. Then to Brigitte, “I forgot about the laundry. I’ll do it in a sec.”

  “No,” said Brigitte in a faraway voice, a voice that was thinking of other things. She slid a cassette into the tape player, the one with the French songs that Brigitte knew every word of by heart. “It does not matter,” she said. “I do it.”

  “What’s up?” Lucky said into the phone.

  “Nothing. Why?” Lincoln was not a good conversationalist.

  “Lincoln, you called me.”

  “Oh! Right. It’s commodities day.”

  “I know. We already got ours. There’s some weird orange cheese this time.” Lucky could hear Lincoln adjusting the phone. She knew he was tying a knot.

  Lincoln said, “Want to meet up at Short Sammy’s in a while?” Lucky and Lincoln liked to see how Sammy cooked the free Government food. He had a very unique way of cooking, and he liked having company.

  “Okay. First I have to scrub the table because of the scorpion, flies, and tarantula hawk wasp that I—” She broke off just as Brigitte screamed and slammed the dryer door shut.

  “Hang on, Lincoln,” Lucky said and dropped the phone. In a second Brigitte flew by, grabbing Lucky’s hand. She ran outside, pulling Lucky after her. HMS Beagle followed excitedly.

  “What happened?” Lucky asked.

  Brigitte’s eyes were huge and her face was red. She seemed to be sending off waves of heat in the bright sunlight.

  “What happened,” Brigitte said breathlessly, “is that a snake”—she said the word “snake” like most people would say “rotting dead pus-filled rat”—“a snake is in the dryer.” Brigitte pointed dramatically toward the laundry area at the end of the kitchen trailer.

  In a very calm and relaxed way, to show Brigitte that snakes were actually clean and not repulsive, Lucky said, “I see, a snake’s in the dryer.” She said it like snakes in dryers were not a very big deal. She leaned casually against the aluminum side of the trailer. “What kind of snake?”

  Brigitte pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes. “A giant snake!” she said.

  Brigitte didn’t even like to see pictures of snakes, which was really, really silly as far as Lucky was concerned, because a picture couldn’t hurt anyone. But Lucky knew that to Brigitte an actual snake in the dryer was a quadruple gazillion times worse than a picture.

  Lucky ran back inside, with Brigitte behind her.

  “Do not open the door of the dryer!” Brigitte shouted. “She is in there!”

  “Who?”

  “The viper! I think she snuck inside the trailer and climbed up into the dryer!” Brigitte’s hand and arm showed a snake slithering toward the dryer. “We have to seal it so she cannot escape. Quick—get that sticky gray tape.”

  “Well, what kind of snake is it?” Lucky asked again.

  “I am sure she is a viper—a rattlesnake! Imagine to live in a place where just by doing the laundry you can be killed!”

  Privately, Lucky admired snakes because they were very, very highly adapted to their habitat. One amazing true fact she had read was that snakes actually started out as creatures with legs but evolved to not having legs because they could move around better without them. In fact, Lucky figured the average person went around thinking, Those poor snakes sure have been waiting a long time to evolve some legs. She would never have guessed not having legs would be better than having them.

  But she doubted that Brigitte knew enough about snakes to tell whether it was a rattlesnake or some harmless kind.

  Lucky said, “Brigitte, what does it look like? What color?”

  Brigitte shrugged and looked insulted, as if the question had a completely obvious answer. She said, “She is the color of a snake.”

  Lucky sighed. “What shape is its head?”

  A lot of times when Brigitte didn’t know the answer to something, either she acted like it was a dumb question, or she pretended to know the answer, or else she veered around with an answer that wasn’t really an answer at all. “Lucky, we will look at the shape of her head after she has died—when it is safe.”

  “You mean when it dies of old age?” Lucky couldn’t believe how weird that plan was. “That could probably take years. We’ll have to hang up the wet laundry outside and the towels won’t have California softness.”

  “Lucky,” said Brigitte, crossing her arms in front of her chest. “Please go get that gray sticky tape right now.”

  “Wait—yikes. I left Lincoln on the phone. Be right back.”

  Lucky picked up the phone. “There’s a snake in the dryer,” she said.

  “Miles’s grandmother had one in her dryer once. It came in through the vent going to the outside of the mobile home.”

  “What did she do?”

  “Thirty minutes on ‘normal cycle.’”

  “You’re kidding!”

  There was a little silence on Lincoln’s end. “No,” he said. “That’s what she did. Her dryer doesn’t have a see-through door. Does yours?”

  “No, it’s just pure metal. So what?”

  “She couldn’t be sure it wasn’t a rattler, so she killed it.”

  “Brigitte wants to duct-tape the dryer door shut and wait till the snake dies of old age. After that she’ll probably want to duct-tape the whole entire outside of the trailers.”

  Lincoln said, “We could catch a mouse and use it as bait to lure the snake out.”

  All of Lincoln’s plans were both simple and complicated. They were tempting, but at the same time they made you feel doubtful before you even got started. But Lucky now had her own idea. “I’ll meet you at Short Sammy’s in about half an hour,” she said, and hung up. She went back to the laundry area with the duct tape and a pair of scissors and gave them to Brigitte.

  Brigitte stuck the end of the duct tape on one edge of the dryer, pressing it hard, peeling off more tape and pressing it against the metal, until she had the door very securely fixed. No creature inside the dryer could get out through that door.

  Lucky climbed up on top of the dryer, where she could peer out a tiny window.

  “What are you doing, Lucky?” Brigitte asked. She was wearing a don’t-you-dare-touch-the-duct-

  tape-on-the-dryer-door look.

  “Wait a sec,” said Lucky. Still peering out the window, she stomped the heel of her shoe on the dryer. She braced herself against the wall and banged her shoe on the front and the sides of the dryer. Brigitte watched, but one of the good things about her was that she didn’t act like she was the total boss of everything. Especially when it came to the way things worked in Hard Pan versus the way things worked in France, Brigitte was willing to listen to what Lucky had to say.

  Pretty soon, through the dusty window, Lucky could see the snake gliding away from the trailer. “It’s gone!” she said. She jumped down and dashed outside in time to see its long, thin, reddish, legless, rattle-less body disappear in the dry wash. It was a beauty—about five feet long, thin as a hose. Lucky thought it was a red racer, the kind of snake that
eats rats and even fights rattlesnakes.

  Lucky felt very wonderful about her Heroic Deed of figuring out how to chase the snake away without killing it in a gruesome way or waiting for it to die of old age. Plus, if it had been a rattlesnake, nobody got bitten. She went inside, thinking she had to figure out some kind of screen to put on the vent to keep the snake from coming back. At that moment Lucky knew she was a highly evolved human being.

  But Brigitte was at the bathroom cupboard, rummaging through the aspirin and Q-tips and hair conditioner. “Now I cannot find the fingernail polish remover! It is the only way to get off that sticky mess of duct tape!” she said. “It is wrong to have snakes in dryers! This is not something that would ever happen in France. California is not a civilized country!”

  Lucky didn’t say a word. It was too hopeless and disappointing. Brigitte hated bugs and she hated snakes and she thought California was a country. Plus the checks from her father were too small.

  The sad and beautiful French songs played on and on, the sound drifting out the window and into the dry desert air. Lucky didn’t know what the words meant, but she understood that Hard Pan was pushing Brigitte away, and France was calling her home.

  9. Short Sammy’s

  You could smell Short Sammy’s water tank house before you got there, because whatever he cooked in his big black cast-iron pan, he cooked in grease. Beans, pancakes, lettuce, apples—always cooked in grease, bacon grease being his most favorite. The smell of the water tank house activated Lucky’s hunger gland.