Lifting the Sky

by Mackie d'Arge

  Chapter Four

  “This house has surely been enchanted,” I said as I stepped inside. “Like in a fairy tale where the spell’s only broken when the maiden gets smooched by the prince.” I smirked.

  “Don’t go getting smart,” Mam said.

  But my skin got all goose bumpy as I got my first look. I’d pictured much of the outside, but somehow I’d never imagined the inside. The mudroom was stuffy and cold and spiderwebs draped the small panes of the windows. I reached out to latch the open doors of a hutch that was crammed with cans of screws and nails and all sorts of tools and fencing supplies. An old pair of cowboy boots sagged in a corner beside a low table. It was a typical mudroom. I turned to Mam and gave her a big smile.

  “Smells musty,” Mam said, pinching her nose. “Mr. McCloud was right. We might be better off in the bunkhouse.”

  It suddenly struck me—what if the picture I’d drawn had only been my special place? What if it wasn’t my mom’s?

  Silently we moved our gear from the windy porch into the mudroom. We looked at each other, and then Mam creaked open a door that led into a little dark hallway. There we found three other doors. Mam opened one. It led down to a cellar. She opened another. It led up a steep, narrow stairway to what looked like a sunshiny attic.

  “A house of doorways,” Mam muttered as she opened the next door and stepped in.

  “Entrances and exits and portals,” I said from behind her in my deepest, most mysterious voice. “And when new doorways open, leap!” And I bounded into the kitchen and stopped.

  The kitchen was like a piece of fallen sky—all the shades of noon and dusk and morning. The cabinets and an old threadbare sofa and braided rug and the lamp that hung over the table were all different hues of blue. Cobalt-blue bottles stood on the counters and lined the windowsills.

  “It’s a blue room made for me ’cause I’m blue too,” I said, and I whirled around the table and crashed into a chair that then tumbled and crashed into another. “Shhhh,” I whispered to Stew Pot, who was used to getting blamed for things I did. “You’ll wake the house.”

  During the time the house was abandoned, a blanket of dust had covered everything. I sneezed at least twenty-six times as I tiptoed across the wood floor and peeked into the next room.

  It was a living room. A messy one. Everything had been pushed to one end of the room and piled up, with a trunk tucked under a table and a chair on top of that and a rolled-up rug on top of a couch that was pushed up against two worn leather chairs. Behind the jumble, on either side of a long narrow window, stood two built-in bookcases just loaded with books.

  I scrambled over, yelling, “We’ve got books!” Never mind waking the house. I trailed my fingers along the dusty shelves, calling out, “Paperback Westerns. Mysteries. Romances. Books about Indian history and lore … old schoolbooks … and what looks like a whole set of old encyclopedias!”

  “Mam’ll gobble those up,” I said in a low voice to Pot. She was always trying to read and get smarter on account of not finishing high school.

  With the furniture all jammed over on one end, there was a pathway to a latched double door. It squeaked as I pushed it open. The unfinished log addition was empty except for a wood stove in one corner and a ladder. The logs hadn’t been chinked and wind blew through the spaces between them. I quickly snapped the door closed.

  Another door off the living room led to a hallway with a room at each end. A tiny bathroom squeezed itself in between them. A hammer, some screwdrivers, and a can of screws lay on the bathroom floor, along with a set of towel racks still in their wrappers.

  “We’ve got a job to do, but not one we can’t handle,” I called back to Mam, and opened the door at one end of the hall.

  On a snow-white floor stood a bed made of aspen, its posts rising up to clouds in a blue painted-sky ceiling. Everything—walls, dresser, chair, and table—sported coats of white paint. Not a scuff mark anywhere to be seen. The room looked as if it had been freshly painted and then barely touched. I twirled into it and plunked down on the quilted bedspread. Dust rose like clouds in the afternoon light.

  Poking her head in from the doorway off the kitchen, my mom’s mouth dropped open. She stood there blinking at all the whiteness.

  I started to shout Dibs!, but the word stuck like a frog in my throat. “Dib—adubadu,” I croaked instead. “It’s perfect. For you.”

  Oh please, please let her like it, I prayed.

  “We’d be better off in the bunkhouse” was what my mom said. “This house is too fancy for me. You take this room. I’ll put my bedroll on the couch.”

  “Put it on top of the bed, then,” I sniffed. “It’s not like Mr. Mac didn’t tell us to settle in. And anyway, there must be another room down the hall.”

  And there was, but it was empty, with not a stick of furniture in it. Some cans of paint and a roller and brushes were set out on a canvas floor cloth. A mural of mountains and cliffs had been sketched across all four walls— around the window and door even—but only one small patch of the mural had been painted.

  “No bed in here, so I guess that leaves us the attic,” I said, rolling my eyes at Stew Pot as we headed back to the hallway by the kitchen.

  Please don’t let it be a big empty room, I prayed, as I made my way up the steep stairs. I closed my eyes and didn’t open them until I got to the top.

  Imagine walls the color of sunrise. Slanted ceilings the same peachy color, and beds—count them, one, two, three—each covered by a yellow, green, or blue blanket. I trailed through the long, narrow room, touching each bed as I passed. Maybe it’d been the kids’ dorm, I thought, back when Mr. Mac was a child. A chest of drawers stood next to each bed. A soft-looking chair and a vanity table with an oval-shaped mirror faced the three beds. The mirror was cracked as if someone had thrown something at it.

  At each end of the room was a window. Mountains and canyons filled one. The tin roof of the old homestead cabin sparkled in the afternoon sunlight through the other. Beyond the cabin, the meadows rolled down to the barn.

  A hole gaped near the foot of one bed. Good thing an iron grating covered it. I peered into it. Directly below, in the living room, was a bigger grate, obviously above the furnace down in the basement. Somewhere downstairs my mom sneezed. Ha! I had me a secret hear hole as well as a peek hole.

  I sat on each bed in turn and bounced, making dust fly and the brass headboards rattle. The bed nearest the stairs with the blue blanket on it was perfect.

  I raced down to the cellar and stoked up the furnace while Mam switched on the electricity. The house hummed to life. Upstairs in the kitchen the old fridge gurgled and buzzed, its vibrations warning the mice and spiders and bugs that things soon would be changing. Even Mam seemed to be feeling a bit better about the big house. We pounded on the cushions and then gagged and coughed from the puffs of dust that rose up. We swept and mopped and cleaned mouse nests from the drawers and shook the rugs and blankets and moved things back into place. In a trunk we found sheets and towels and blankets all layered with sage and sprinkled with the dried, faded petals of roses. We stripped and made the beds. In the bathroom we even screwed in the towel racks.

  Then I plugged in my radio and the two of us sat in the kitchen too tired to even think about going down to the bunkhouse to check out the provisions there. We hauled out my just-in-case box. Mam chose chili while I globbed peanut butter on crackers and topped them with rounds of dill pickles. Stew Pot stuck up his nose and pouted when Mam offered him his choice of chili or pickled herring. He would’ve much preferred oatmeal or asparagus or carrots. He’s pretty much a vegetarian—like me, though Pot will eat stew and I won’t. But he loves scrambled eggs and toast. Luckily I’d saved some from breakfast.

  It was way dark when I yawned my way up to the attic. I unpacked my colored pencils and pens and placed them neatly on the chest by my bed. I got out my journal and opened it to a fresh page.

  May 9—Day One, I wrote. Far Canyon Ranch, somewhe
re over the rainbow …

  I yawned. I was way too tired to write more. I fluffed up Pot’s beanbag, gave him the biggest hug ever, and crawled into bed. My old teddy bear Grub’s black button eye I tucked under my pillow.

  Chapter Five

  The next morning, I lay in bed and watched as the sun rose and light streamed through the window, turning the peachy walls to pure gold. Then I hopped out of bed, threw on some clothes, and tore down the stairs.

  Mam and Stew Pot were already gone, though the sun had only just now come up. My blue-for-me kitchen throbbed to the loud hum of the fridge and the dum-dumming of Indian drums on the radio. My schoolbooks had been laid out on the table. On the stove was the pot of leftover chili. The packets of jam from yesterday’s restaurant were piled on the table, along with the peanut butter and pickles and the box of crackers from my just-in-case box.

  The sad truth is I snitch things. I’ve stolen from every ranch kitchen we’ve ever set foot in. Sometimes the loot won’t all fit into my just-in-case box and gets left behind, stuffed in some closet or piled under my bed. I can imagine the puzzled look on the cook’s face at the last place when he discovered three jars of pickled beets he’d been missing. Not to mention those six cans of mandarin oranges, four boxes of fish fry, five cans of sardines, and a whole bag of self-rising flour…

  I tried to tackle a few pages of schoolwork, but I was way too stirred up, so I soon gave it up. I was stuffing my feet into my boots in the mudroom, about to head out to explore, when I heard Ol’ Yeller roar up the road.

  “Glad to see you’re finally up,” Mam called from the window of the truck. “We could use you down at the barn.” She turned the pickup around as I grabbed my jacket and gloves.

  “Been down there since four,” she said as we bumped down the road. “I’m going to saddle up to bring in two heifers that are about ready to calve. Stew Pot’s helping me. You go help Mr. McCloud.”

  Mr. Mac had sure gotten himself an early-rising self-starter. As for me, I was no cowgirl like my mom. I was okay on a horse and pretty good at helping to round up the cattle or to check on the cows and calves, and I could even fix fences if they didn’t need to be stretched. But there were some things, like branding, that I absolutely, totally hated. I shied away when it came time for weaning the calves and sending them away from their mamas. Mam always said I was overly sensitive and I should just get over it. Easy for her to say. Sometimes I figured being overly sensitive was the worst possible trait one could have. Especially if you lived on a ranch.

  The cattle on this place were mostly older cows, I’d noticed—a small herd of Black Baldies and Angus and Herefords. The older cows needed little or no help having their babies. But there were also some first-time heifers, and those had to be watched night and day. With heifers there was always the chance of something going dreadfully wrong. A calf might be too large or turned around the wrong way, or it might get stuck in the middle of trying to be born.

  “Mornin’, Miss Blue,” Mr. Mac said when I met him by a stall near the back of the barn. “We’ve got a sorry situation here. These little twins were born last night out in the willows near the creek. Your mom and I found them at dawn.” He crouched on his heels beside two tiny black calves bedded down in some straw.

  “They’re preemies,” he went on, pulling at his neck scarf and scratching the stubble on his chin. “And they’re plumb tuckered out by their difficult birth. They’re too weak to stand up and nurse. Not that they’ve got a mother to nurse them—she didn’t make it, I’m sorry to say.”

  I tried not to picture the scene. “Poor little bums,” I said—bums are what they call little orphans. I squatted beside them. Their matted black fur was still wet.

  I squinted. It was shadowy dark in the back of the barn, but I could have sworn there was a foggy light around the bums. And as Mr. Mac stroked them, pale streamers of bluish light seemed to flow out of his fingers. Each time he touched the calves, the foggy lights around them got a little brighter. When he took his hands away, their lights grew dim again.

  I looked down at my own hands and sure as anything, I wiggled my fingers and watched lights flickering out of them.

  One thing was certain: I was seeing more light than ever before.

  Suddenly one of the calves stretched, and a sparkle of dark reddish light streaked out of its lower front leg.

  I frowned. What did that mean? I took a spur-of-the-moment guess.

  “Bum’s got a broken leg,” I said, startling myself by how certain I was of what I was seeing.

  Mr. Mac’s mouth dropped open. “Words stolen right out of my mouth,” he said. Gentle light flowed from his fingers as he reached down and touched the calf’s leg. Then it was my turn to stand there with my jaw hanging loose as I watched the light growing brighter as he caringly examined the break.

  “The mother cow must’ve stepped on it not long after it was born. It’s a wonder either of these critters survived. They’ll need a whole lot of good care and nursing if they’re going to make it.” He paused. “Your mom says you’re real good with animals. Want to take on these critters for me?”

  “Sh-sure,” I said, bobbing my head up and down before I had time to think, but to tell the truth I wasn’t one bit sure at all. I’d helped my mom feed bum lambs and calves plenty of times, but two tiny preemies had never been handed over to me just like that—nor had one with a leg that was broken.

  Still, my grand list-making mind jumped right into action.

  “We’ll have to make a splint and get something to wrap the leg with,” I said, counting off on my fingers. “And they’ll have to be cleaned up, and we’ll need some straw or hay to make a bed. A good place would be in that shed in the pen up by the house—that way I can keep good track of them. And we have to have two calf bottles and a bunch of nipples, ’cause I know how calves always chew through them.” I thought for a second. “And of course some dry milk starter. And a drain tube to start them off with a drenching, ’cause, like you said, they’re way too weak to suck and they’ll need some milk in their bellies straight off. Plus we might need a can or two of beef consommé on hand just in case they get the runs.”

  I took a deep breath. Sometimes I talk as if my brain’s overeaten.

  Mr. Mac’s lights got even brighter as he rocked back on the heels of his worn cowboy boots and laughed. “You’re somethin’ else, Miss Blue,” he said, smacking his knee. “I’ve got some pipe that would work as a splint.” His voice was all smiley as he headed to the tack room in the back of the barn. He came back with a plastic pipe he’d split down the middle and some duct tape and a piece of clean gauze. Then he pulled off one boot and handed me a warm sock. “We’ll cut the toe off and slip it over the splint,” he said as he did a little dance, tugging his boot back onto his bare foot.

  I pulled out my handy pocketknife and held up the sock. “Eeew … !” I said as I sliced off the toe.

  He grabbed the sock. “What? Smells like daffodils,” he said, and handed it back.

  Between giggles we somehow got the leg splinted and wrapped, being careful not to get it too tight.

  “I’ll get some hay to bed them down in,” Mr. Mac said. “The rest of your list you should find in the tack room. Except for the soup. I’ll have to check in the cookhouse for that.”

  Sunlight streamed through a high window in the tack room, glinting off the saddle racks with their blankets folded over them, striking the bridles and reins and silver-starred spurs hanging along the walls, along with branding irons with the ranch brand of 2M. The shelves were stocked with purple horse tincture and hoof cream and leather cream and calf nipples and milk bottles and shot needles and all kinds of pills and cow medicine. I scratched about and found everything I needed and stashed it in a cardboard box and hauled it out to the truck.

  Mr. McCloud had already bundled the calves onto the floor of the cab in his big diesel truck. “Hop in,” he said, and I did. We drove around to the side of the house and I jumped out and op
ened the gate to the pen. Mr. Mac helped me fix up a sweet-smelling nest of hay in the back of the lean-to shed, and then he gathered up the calves one at a time and settled them into it. I fussed over my new babies while he unloaded our stuff. He grabbed the sack of dry milk starter and took it over to the porch and set it there.

  “Better keep the starter in the mudroom,” he said when he returned. “You get settled in all right? Is the house okay?”

  “It’s perfect,” I said. “Picture perfect.”

  He flung me a look like, “You’ve gotta be kidding.” “It was a mess,” he said, his voice full of apologies.

  I nodded like I understood. Honestly, we’d lived in places that’d been in a whole lot worse shape, but no matter where we ended up it always took time to make a place feel like we actually lived there.

  Grabbing the bottles, I scampered off to the kitchen to mix up the starter. When I came back Mr. Mac was mending a hole in the chicken-wire fence that surrounded the pen. “Don’t want some critter comin’ by looking for a free supper,” he said. “And you’ll be on your own after tomorrow. The last of the heifers should be calved out by then, and I’ll be heading back to the main ranch.”

  I could feel my insides clench up. What? So soon? You can’t, I wanted to say.

  But already Mr. Mac was explaining how to tube feed a calf that was too weak to suck, and showing me how to figure out the right length of the tube by measuring the distance from the tip of the calf’s nose to the point of the knee on its front leg. And how to make sure the tube got put in just right so it didn’t end up in the calf’s lungs instead of its stomach. And then we got too busy even for words, me holding on to a calf while Mr. Mac drained the milk through the tube and down into its starved little tummy, and then the two of us switching, with him holding a calf and me pouring.

  “I don’t know, Miss Blue,” Mr. Mac said as we settled the calves back into their nest. “It’ll be mighty tricky. They’re even weaker than I’d thought. You check on that leg and put a fresh wrap on it as the calf grows. It’ll take quite a while for this leg to set.” He hesitated. “I’m putting a big load on you. Sure you’ll be able to deal with all this?”