Lifting the Sky

by Mackie d'Arge

  Being careful not to wake my bum, I slipped off to the house. Mam had started keeping a supply of medical stuff in the cabinet above the sink. I grabbed a bundle of elastic bandages and tape and some disinfectant and hurried back to the pen.

  I’ve learned a lot in one week, I said in my head as I wrapped Wonder Baby’s leg and slipped on the makeshift cast again. But if I’m going to use this light …

  My head was swimming. This light. What I’d almost said was this power.

  My schoolwork would’ve been almost all done by now if I hadn’t had so much other stuff to do. I hadn’t even had a chance yet to go off and explore! Sure, I’d taken different routes down to the barn and the cookhouse, and hiked through the fields and along the edge of the woods by the creek, but I hadn’t yet climbed one single hill. A long, purplish hill ran along one side of the ranch. Steep cliffs rose up along another side. But the biggest, most climbable hill was behind the house on Indian land, just a short way from the fence line. I could hardly wait to get up it and check out the world from the top.

  That afternoon I scribbled a note. Gone for a hike. Be home before dark. Then I grabbed my backpack, whistled for Pot, and struck out.

  When we got to the fence I stopped. The sign near the road had said “Absolutely No Trespassing.” Mr. Mac had said not to. But obviously there was no one around to ask for permission….

  “I’ll tiptoe,” I whispered to Pot, “and no one will know I was there.”

  I trailed along the fence until I found a place where the wires had come loose. By the tracks and the hairs in the barbs I could tell it was where antelope slipped under and where deer, elk, and moose leaped over on their way down to the creek or back toward the mountains. I tugged up the top strand of barbed wire and squeezed through.

  Stew Pot loped ahead of me, sniffing under rocks for chipmunks and such. “We’re on sacred land,” I reminded him. “Behave. Sniffing is fine, but no chasing!” Not that Pot does—he’s a ranch dog and knows better.

  Halfway up I flopped on the ground to catch my breath—funny how a hill suddenly became so much steeper when you actually started to climb it. I took a detour over to a rocky ledge that dropped into a deep narrow canyon. “Whoo, whoo!” I yelled down to hear what the canyon would answer. The hills rang with echoing whoo-whoos as I turned and hiked the rest of the way up the hill.

  “Maybe this is why the top of a hill’s called a crown,” I wheezed when I caught up with Stew Pot. “It’s ’cause you feel like a queen—or a king, in your case—when you finally get there. And this”—I threw out my arms—“this will be my throne.”

  “This” was a juniper tree, a tree so big it fit the word “majestic.” Even before I got close to it I could feel it. A thick field of energy seemed to surround it, like what I’d been feeling around the bum calves. The field seemed much bigger than the actual tree. What I could see around the juniper was a fuzzy green haze.

  The juniper leaned over the rocky rim as if spying on the valley below. Its roots wrapped around boulders and dipped into and out of the ground as they clung to the rim for dear life. Gnarly branches looped to one side around a twisted trunk to form a shadowy cave. The tree was loaded with greenish blue berries. I grabbed a handful and munched. Tangy and bittersweet. Mam loved them. She said they tasted like gin.

  I kissed my finger. “I hereby dub you my very own special tree.” I reached down and picked up a small pink granite stone. “My wishing tree,” I said, and I closed my eyes and made my first wish.

  “My dad. Please let him find us. And then everything will be perfect.” I tucked the stone into a crook in a twisted branch of my tree. “Thank you,” I whispered.

  From the hill I could see my whole queendom. The ranch tucked in its valley, the house looking as small as a dollhouse and Ol’ Yeller like a toy truck parked beside a toy barn. The hills tumbling down to the badlands and far distant mountains. The mountains looming behind. And everything bursting with light, as if the land itself made its own sunlight.

  I sank to the ground, slipped off my backpack, and sat still as the tree, still as the rocks and the hill.

  First came a chipmunk, creeping across the rocky ground, sniffing at my toes, zipping over my leg as if it were just a bump in its path. A crow swooped down and, tipping its head to the side, took one peck at my jeans and then hopped away and flew off. Two magpies landed on the rocky rim behind me and fussed at each other, acting like I was just part of the landscape. Below me, a herd of antelope slowly munched their way across the hillside. Like the smaller creatures, they seemed to pay no attention to me.

  I dug out my journal and pencils. Page after page got filled with golden-brown blotches with long spindly legs. It took lots of practice before I got one that looked halfway like a pronghorn antelope.

  Soon I noticed I was drawing one particular antelope over and over. I could pick her out of the herd by the white markings on her neck, since their neck bands were all slightly different. For some reason the lights around her seemed brighter than the lights around the other antelopes. Her belly was big, like the rest of the older does. Soon she’d be having her fawns. I knew that pronghorns usually had twins because having two made it more likely that at least one would survive.

  I drew comic-book panels showing the antelope bowing her neck, kicking her heels up, and sprinting away from the herd. I sketched the big handsome buck that ran up onto a rocky mound and then stood there looking like he was the boss. And acting like it too, the way he huffed and puffed and snorted at her. Next I sketched her being chased by him. I drew her fluffing up her white rump as she ran, and I noticed how the reddish brown ruff on her neck stood straight up when she turned to confront him. I drew him edging her back into the herd. I drew her hop-hop-hopping away from him again, and then looking back and panting with her black tongue sticking out. “So there!” I wrote in the bubble over her head.

  I called my comic “The Adventures of Lone One.”

  By now the rest of the herd had scattered out of sight. I got up and stretched. The lone antelope stared up at me, cocking her head to the side. I mirrored her. I cocked my head. I sprinted and stotted around in a circle on top of the hill, and she was so incurably curious that she looked up and watched the whole show. When I stumbled over my feet and went splat, she sprinted off after the herd.

  I’d barely noticed the shadows creeping into the valley and filling it up to the rim with deep violet blue. Golden rays spiked up behind the mountains so that for a minute they looked as if they’d just been crowned. Down below, Ol’ Yeller was now parked by the house.

  I stuffed my things into my pack. “Race you,” I said to Stew Pot, and the two of us charged down the hill.

  Chapter Nine

  A few days later, Mam stomped into the kitchen, ripped off her gloves, and slapped them down on the table. “Mr. McCloud wasn’t kidding,” she said.

  “About what?” I looked up from the math problem I’d just solved and shoved my notebook aside. I’d had it with schoolwork.

  “Damn beaver dams.” She filled her teapot, switched on the stove, and banged the pot down on the burner.

  I cringed and peeked over my shoulder. The teapot was still in one piece. Sure, she’d been working too hard, but all in all everything had been going great. It was perfect, her not having a boss around and no one shouting orders at her. It was almost like having our very own place.

  “Yesterday I went to the ponds.” She drummed her fingers on the edge of the stove as she waited for the water to boil. “It’s a lot of work undoing those dams stick by stick. Today the ditch is bone dry—overnight, the rascals rebuilt their dams. No wonder the hands resorted to dynamiting the dams and setting out traps.”

  “But they have rights too,” I said, twirling my hair on a finger, not sure if I should stick my neck out by sticking up for the beavers. “They only dam up the water to make ponds for their lodges….”

  “Yeah, so they can have babies and make more dams. Well, the ranch’s got w
ater rights too,” Mam responded. “No water gets to the ditch that’s supposed to irrigate the whole west side of the ranch. It’ll be a full-time job undoing those dams. I’ll have to go up every other day.” She plopped her elbows on the table, propped her chin in her hands, and let out a big sigh. “Unless I try trapping them…”

  “I can help undo them,” I said. There I was. Volunteering again. Undoing the dams would be an excellent excuse. I could disappear to them when that dreaded time came around. Branding time …

  “It’s like magic, Blue,” Mam used to say, “the way you can make yourself disappear when you want to get out of branding….”

  My absolute total loathing of it started when I was six-going-on-seven. Mam had hired on at a dude ranch where the dudes sometimes helped out, but usually just got out their cameras and took pictures. I’d been happy showing off that morning, riding out to help round up the cattle. Then I’d sat on a corral with some kids and watched as the cowboys roped the calves and dragged them to the pairs of calf wrestlers. But as the hot branding iron sizzled the hide of the first calf, I leaped down. To my eyes it looked as if the calf had burst into flames. As usual, back then, when I saw lights that scared me, I took off like a banshee and hid.

  But as I jumped to the ground I’d heard my mom’s voice. “Blue can help.” And she waved me over. I hung back. She yelled my name and I had no choice. I shuffled over.

  “They’re short of hands, and it’s the easiest job,” she said, leaning down to pat me on the shoulder. “When the wrestlers call, you just carry over this bucket.” She put the pail in my hands, squeezed my fingers over the handle, and ran off to help rope calves.

  All the calves got a brand and some shots and maybe an ear tag or some dehorning paste spread on their budding horns. But the male calves got one more thing. I only got called to them.

  “Ball boy!” a wrestler would yell. No matter that I was a girl. I’d skitter off with the bucket thump-thumping against my legs. Holding the pail out as far as my little arms could reach, I’d crinkle up my nose and scrunch my eyes shut. But that didn’t help. Nothing smothered the smell of scorched hide and burned hair and smoke. Nothing drowned out the clamor of calves bawling and cows bellowing, or blanked out the dark reddish lights flashing up from the hurt calves. And even back then I knew what would be put in my bucket. Knew that a knife was slicing through soft tender skin and that a hand was reaching in, feeling for, and yanking out the calf’s little boy parts. I’d dash from one calf to the next and hold out my bucket until it was full.

  It wasn’t until I threw up in a full bucket that they let me quit. I drifted off to hide in an empty horse trailer, where the smell of manure almost blocked out the smells of the branding.

  Much later, when Mam found me sound asleep in the trailer, I wailed, “Why do they have to make the calves bawl and light up like that?”

  Mam stroked my head and dusted me off. “You’re just overly sensitive, Blue,” she said. “You’ll get over it. I should’ve had you out helping before now. And we do have to brand them. That’s how we know who the calves belong to, in case they wander off and get mixed in with a neighbor’s herd, or if somebody steals them. And if all those male calves grew up to be bulls we’d have a headbutting war on the ranch.”

  But I never did get desensitized. I still dreamed up things that just had to be done so I could disappear when branding time rolled around. Going off to the ponds to undo the dams every day or so—what a perfect excuse.

  Now Mam gave me one of those looks that said she saw clear through me.

  “Really,” I said before she could open her mouth. “I’m about ready to send off my lessons to get my final report card. Then I’ll have oodles of time.”

  She frowned at her cup as tea sloshed onto the table. She grabbed a napkin and mopped at the puddle as if she could scrub out the problem. “No,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s wilder than you might think back there in the woods by the ponds. Mountain lions. Bears. Moose. I’ll do it. I’m just going in circles right now, with so many things needing to be done. The ditch will have to stay dry until I find time to go back.” She gave a huge sigh. “And I need to get it cleaned out. Mr. Mac said they haven’t been burning ditches for a while, and the weeds have almost taken them over.”

  My insides did a flip-flop. She looked so tired. At this rate she wouldn’t last a month here, much less the whole summer. I had to think of something.

  I’d undo those dams myself. I’d slip away when she was down at the barn or off fixing fence. By the time she figured out what I was up to, she’d have to accept that I was actually old enough to do some things on my own.

  My chance came that afternoon when Mam took Stew Pot and drove off to fix the fence by the front entrance to the ranch. I pulled my rubber boots from my canvas boot bag and wiggled into them. A bit snug but, far as I could see, no holes—if they leaked they were hardly worth wearing.

  The beaver ponds got their water from a spring, and they spread from one level down to the next alongside of the creek. A snarl of river willows and wild rosebushes barred my way, but I twisted through them and spotted an animal trail. I could feel antennae sprouting out of my head as I threaded my way through the tangle. Lions and bears and moose, oh my. Not having Stew Pot beside me made me feel like a knight without armor. Out in the sunlight was one thing; in the deep woods things felt positively creepy. I held my breath, tiptoeing on soft moss and black dirt, tripping over rotted tree trunks, dodging spiderwebs and low branches. Somewhere a branch snapped with a crack! I froze. Water gurgled. An owl hooted. A squirrel screeched. Something huge glided through the dark fringe of brush.

  A scream tore its way up to my throat, but all that came out was a gasp.

  Velvety antlers spread from one side of the trail to the other. Not ten feet away stood a thousand pounds of bull moose.

  Later I’d remember thoughts flitting by about what a shame it was that I’d never get to see my dad again, and how anxious poor Mam and Stew Pot would be when I didn’t show up at suppertime. In the next instant all I could think was, wow—how incredibly awesome. Look at me, face-to-face with a moose!

  That was my oh-so-brave thought before the moose lumbered toward me. I blinked up at the huge face. Big brown eyes stared down at me. Wonder rubbed at my fear, nudging it aside as I stared at the soft greenish gold light radiating out of him, a light that mingled and mixed with the greenish blue light of the forest. For a long moment moose and I gaped at each other.

  Then I reached out and touched its brown nose.

  It couldn’t have cared less. I might’ve been a mouse or a butterfly. The creature took a step sideways. If a tree sprouted legs and could weave its way through its own forest, lifting and shifting its branches, that’s how the moose moved away.

  Some part of me felt like it’d flown up and was singing full throttle at the top of the trees. The other part of me danced in a circle on the path and shouted, “I just counted coup on a moose!” The thrill of it filled me to bursting.

  I wished I could tell the whole world. But there are things you don’t want your mom to hear, not even by way of an echo. A moose moment for sure topped that list.

  And then I was in a clearing and the sky was bright blue above me and tiny iridescent blue dragonflies glided around me. I scrambled over fallen tree trunks to the pond. It was bigger than I’d thought, but then again it was plumb full because of the heap of sticks crammed across one end of it. Humped in the middle of the pond was a beaver lodge. Toppled aspens lay scattered all over the clearing, their pointed stumps poking up like sharp skinny fingers.

  I stood there twisting my hair, picturing a whole crew of beavers scurrying about and gnawing down trees right and left. I could just see them eyeing the direction the trunks would fall, shouting “Timberrrrrrrr,” in beaver tongue and clapping their tails as trees crashed to the ground. What engineers they had to be—to topple the trees and then strip and drag the branches into the ponds and jam them together and
dam up the leaks with a plaster of moss, mud, and grasses.

  And then did they stand back and admire what they’d done?

  I did. Then I scrambled halfway across the dam, crouched down, and slithered into the pond. The icy cold water stung through my rubber boots as I waded past dragonflies and water bugs and green floating scum. I tugged at a stick. With a glop it came out of the icky black mud.

  “Sorry, beavers,” I said, “but it’s my job to undo what you’ve done.”

  It was there, with my feet sucked deep into mud and icy water up to the tops of my boots that I had my brainstorm. I stared at the black mud and moss.

  This was chink.

  Maybe I could make something like it to seal up cracks in the new log addition….

  My head buzzed. The unfinished log add-on was something I could really put my mark on. Washing windows and dusting and mopping didn’t make a huge difference, but this would. Already I could see it—the cracks chinked, the room livable … Why, maybe I could even make some furniture out of these nicely peeled beaver sticks and some willowy red-willow branches…. And maybe when I was all done we could have a party and invite Mr. Mac and he’d step into the house … I pictured it all, how he’d say, “Miss Blue! You did all this so you’d have a place to call home?” And how I’d nod and he’d grin happily and somewhere in the background my mom would be smiling too. But suddenly the picture got all confused. What would happen if—excuse me, when—my dad came back? I had to believe that he’d find us if only we stayed in one place long enough. That was step one.

  One step at a time, I said to myself. And then we’d just see what happened.

  Sometimes Mam says, “Anchor down to earth, Moon Child,” when I get all hyped up about something. I might never have started on this project if I’d thought any longer about it, but instead I threw sticks left and right and finished up and ran back through the woods to the house and threw my muddy clothes into the washer so Mam wouldn’t suspect that I’d been to the dams.