Lifting the Sky

by Mackie d'Arge

I’d be in my Blooming Room, twisting willows to nail onto beaver-gnawed sticks to make a chair—okay, a really strange-looking chair. And all the while I’d be wondering, What would it be like not to see the lights? Would night be as dark as black ink if you couldn’t see the light from your own body or the soft glow of the dog sleeping beside you?

  Do we all make up our minds about people based on the lights that surround them? What if you just saw a body and not the colors rippling and flashing around it?

  But how would people know to be wary if they couldn’t see warning signs like flashing red lights or dark clouds building up or yucky pea-soup green swirling around certain people? By intuition, I supposed … Though even I didn’t always act on what I saw. Like with that rancher Mam had worked for at her last job. I’d seen the way his lights reached out like tentacles to touch her as if he were an octopus and she a little fish. I knew I should’ve warned her about him, but I’d kept my mouth shut because she’d needed the job.

  I felt my face turn red. I’d also wanted to just stay put. I’d had more than one reason for keeping my mouth shut.

  I grabbed my hammer and pounded so hard that the willow sticks I was nailing together split right in two. I grabbed more sticks out of the pile beside me and, using the big garden cutters, cut them to size. I tossed the broken sticks into my trash heap and sat staring at the bits of willows and slivers of bark and sawdust and bent nails.

  I’d seen how I could change the colors of the light coming out of my hands, and how I could make the lights brighter. Or not. It amazed me, the lights I was now able to see. But it was scary, too. Bad thoughts seemed to reach out the same way that good ones did. If love reached out to touch a loved one, would hate do the same? And jealousy? Anger? Sadness?

  I thought of Mr. McCloud and his nice, bright rainbow lights. Some lights I was drawn to like a moth. Others I tried to steer clear of. Like that blustery man who’d blasted into the trading post.

  All of a sudden I remembered. A drawing. I couldn’t have been quite five when I’d done it.

  I dropped willow sticks and hammer—clunk—on the floor, then sprinted up to my attic. I reached under my bed and pushed my just-in-case box aside, making the cans in it rattle. I yanked out my suitcase. In a pocket inside the lid I kept my old journals—six packets of them, each tied with a blue ribbon. I grabbed the lot up and dumped them all on my bed. I picked up the packet holding the two most tattered journals.

  It’d been years since I’d untied the ribbon and leafed through them. I’d been hardly more than four when I first started drawing in a journal. Mam had encouraged me to keep at it, and I had. They were filled with squiggly drawings, with tattered leaves and crushed flowers and old rodeo tickets Scotch taped into them. I shuffled through the pages till I found what I’d been looking for—the memory that’d been hiding away in the back of my mind.

  The picture I’d been looking for showed a pair of cowboy boots with stars on their heels. For someone not quite five I’d put a lot of work into drawing the spurs and the fancy stitching on the sides of the boots and their sharp pointed toes. Near the top of the page, the boots were cut off by a long wavy line. On the floor beside the boots was a bottle turned on its side. Angry-looking black and red scribbles covered the rest of the page up to the wavy line and past it.

  “Oh no,” I whispered.

  It was the view I’d had from under the bed. The cowboy boots, partly hidden by the bedspread. The bottle pointing under the bed at four-year-old me hiding there.

  It all came back in a rush, as if the picture I’d drawn carried its own scary light. How I’d heard the bottle rolling across the wood floor and the boots stomping and my mom’s voice crying, “Don’t! Please don’t!” And even though I’d squeezed my eyes shut I’d still seen through closed eyelids the red flashes of light and it was all jumbled together with my mom’s soft crying as the boots stomped and the door banged with a whoosh of air that’d sent moth wings and dust bunnies flying.

  The thing about memories you’ve blanked out is that there must’ve been a really good reason why you’d done that. I almost didn’t want to turn any more pages. But I did, and I grinned when I saw what I’d drawn.

  A bed again. Another little me, but this time a smiley face peeking out of the covers, along with the round teddy-bear face of old Grub. A tall, sticklike man stood by the bed with his arms stretched up over his head. I’d drawn zigzags of blue coming out of his hands and his head was lit up like a bright yellow lightbulb.

  It was my dad telling me stories. I’d drawn this after the one he’d told about how I was so special that the whole country of France celebrated my birthday. On my birthday everyone danced in the streets and the night would be lit up with fireworks. Then he’d jump up and excitedly throw out his arms, shaking his fingers and dancing about to show firecrackers exploding up in the sky. I’d seen sparkly lights flicking out of his hands and I’d laughed at his magic.

  I flipped the page. A tall stick-figure man with a black hat stood with both hands held out toward a big red shape with four legs that must’ve been meant for a horse. I’d taken a green crayon and made the hands green, and scribbled green and yellow all around the man and the horse. I must have watched him work on a horse and seen light shooting out from his hands.

  I sat on my bed for the longest time feeling all soft and open, like a turtle that had suddenly lost its hard shell. Had I had any idea what I was drawing back then? Because it was only now, since the lights had come back so much more brilliantly, that the drawings made any sense.

  Somehow, almost every afternoon I found some excuse to climb up to my tree. Shawn never showed up. I always felt just a tiny bit disappointed.

  My tree bloomed, and not just with buds, though it was loaded with greenish blue berries. It bloomed with the feathers from a crow and a great horned owl and the tiny skull of a chipmunk. It blossomed with long blue ribbons and a tuft of antelope hair and a fossil shell found in the creek, and with some strange shiny oval-shaped stones that I’d found on the hill where I got the clay to make chink.

  Each time I climbed the hill as warily as if I had antennae poking out of my head feeling about for what might be lurking or hiding up there. No matter that Stew Pot always ran ahead. How could I depend on a dog who wouldn’t warn me if a certain someone was there?

  I could always feel the energy of the tree before I got to it. Then one late afternoon I felt something other. I crept up, keeping low to the ground.

  I saw a hand reach out of the dark shadows of the tree. The hand glowed. It touched a blue ribbon and then fell back into the shadows.

  Was Shawn purposely hiding to startle me? I scowled at Stew Pot, who sat panting in the shadows beside him.

  I stopped creeping around and marched over. Shawn didn’t say hello. He glanced at the ribbon and then at me. His silence only made me feel cranky. Pot’s sickly sweet grin didn’t help.

  Well, okay, and hello to you too, I thought.

  “So what is it?” I asked huffily, still out of breath from my climb. “You mad about me trespassing or sticking stuff in the tree, or what?”

  Shawn looked startled by my outburst, but he just blinked and lifted one shoulder like, “Take your pick.”

  I turned away and stared down at the ranch. Behind me I heard him say, “Maybe I just don’t like whi—” He stopped.

  I spun. “What is it you don’t like?” I asked, staring straight into his eyes. “Whining girls? Or white girls? White people?”

  Shawn looked me in the eyes too. “Maybe all three,” he said. “It’s a problem I’m working on.”

  “Well, maybe I don’t like Indian boys. I’ve never known one before, so I don’t really know,” I said.

  “I like your dog,” Shawn said, his voice very serious, as if this was important. He reached down to scratch Pot’s ears just as Pot stuck out his paw.

  “Well, my dog’s pretty particular. I can’t figure out why he likes you. Up till now I thought he was smart.”
>
  I blew the hair off my forehead. How was that for a great start? Well, he hadn’t exactly been friendly, but my own lousy humor hadn’t helped. And it was his turf I was trespassing on.

  Shawn stepped out of the shadows and, I couldn’t help it, I stared. He wore an electric-blue shirt and he glowed like he’d gulped down a star. I watched the show of bright yellow flashing in the colors dancing around him. He had lots of thoughts floating about.

  He took a few steps away from me toward the rim. For a moment I thought he was going to hop over and leave, but he turned back and cocked his head and looked at me as if I presented some kind of problem. He kicked a rock around with his boot, then picked it up and tossed it from one hand to the other.

  “You live in the big house,” he suddenly said. It wasn’t a question.

  “Yeah, I do,” I nodded. “The house hadn’t been lived in for several years.”

  “It’ll be three years come August. I know. My aunt used to live there. I did too, for a while.”

  My eyebrows shot up. He could’ve said he’d just come down from the moon and I wouldn’t have been more surprised. For once I didn’t know what to say. “Wi—with your aunt?” I stammered. “You did? Why?”

  Shawn grew very still. “Because she was married to Mr. McCloud,” he said.

  I shook my head to clear it. “But … why were you with your aunt instead of your mother?” I asked, mystified.

  Shawn clenched the rock in his fist. “I don’t usually talk about this kind of stuff. Don’t ever, actually.” He lowered his eyes and then looked straight at me. “But since you asked, my mom had problems. Still has. Drugs. Drinking too much. The usual. So she handed me over to her sister Rose soon after I was born. It’s the Indian way. Nothing unusual about that. And later, when my aunt married Mr. Mac and moved here, I came along too.”

  “So what happened?”

  “Nothing. One day she just left.”

  “Just left? Why? Where’d she go? She and Mr. Mac—were they…?”

  “I thought they were happy. I guess everyone did. At least till she took off with a sculptor from up on the Crow Reservation in Montana.”

  “Cripes,” I said. “A sculptor. What does he sculpt?” As if that mattered one bit, but I was so flustered I hardly knew what to say.

  Shawn shrugged. “Buffalos. Bears. Big stuff. Indian warriors on horseback. Bronzes. Museums are buying them up.”

  “It must’ve been really hard on Mr. Mac,” I managed to say. “No… no wonder he’s kind of abandoned the house.”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “And your dad? What about him?” I wanted to know.

  “I never knew him. He was in an accident before I was born.”

  “I… I’m sorry,” I said, feeling the words as I said them. At least I still had a dad, even if he wasn’t around. I thought a moment. “But why aren’t you with Rose now, up in Montana with the sculptor?” I asked.

  “Because,” he said, his voice husky, almost a whisper. “Not long after she married Mr. McCloud, well, my grandpa died. So she handed me over to my grandma. My grandma’s not well. I help her take care of her cows. And sometimes I go stay with my other grandma or my uncle at the fort or my relatives who ranch out by the Owl Creeks.”

  I plopped down on the ground and hugged my knees to my chest. Shawn crouched on his heels. I felt like I should give something back in return.

  “My dad took off, same as Rose,” I said, feeling my voice get all flat. “Only I don’t know the reason why he left. I was almost five. He sent a few letters saying he was coming back, but he never did. It’s been a long time now since we’ve heard from him. ’Course my mom hasn’t exactly made it easy. She changes jobs about every two months. And I know something about alcohol problems too. My dad’s got one, I think, or at least he used to, and my mom has to be really careful because if she takes one little drink she’s hooked….”

  My babbling trailed off. We sat there, two kids and a dog on a hill. Grown-ups could really complicate things. Mess up your life real good if you let them.

  I picked up a rock. Shawn did too. I sat staring at mine while he tossed his from one hand to the other and then lobbed it over the hill. Mine was pinkish white, sparkly, and way too pretty to throw. I tossed it to Shawn. He snatched it, examined it, and stuck it into his shirt pocket. Then he nodded at me and stood up.

  “That antelope fawn,” he said. “She okay?”

  I got up too, brushing off my jeans and pushing my hair out of my face. I tucked the wisps under my cap. “She and her mother are both fine,” I said. “I’m worried though. I don’t know if I should let the fawn out yet. Its leg doesn’t seem to have gotten much better. What about the wolves? They still around? Did they get any more of your grandma’s cows?”

  “They got one of her dogs. That’s what I came here to tell you. Watch out for your dog.” He reached out, gave Pot’s ear a tug, and walked to the ridge. Pot trotted after him. At the edge of the hill Shawn nodded at me and then put one hand on the rocky ledge and hopped over.

  I watched as he loped down the steep, rocky back side of the hill. He had a chunky way of running, his feet hitting the ground hard, not light-footed at all. Rocks tumbled down to where his horse waited. Again the horse trotted to meet him, and he climbed on. As they galloped off Shawn looked back over his shoulder.

  “Catch you next time,” he called.

  Mam was already eating, an encyclopedia on the table beside her. She barely looked up when Stew Pot and I burst through the door. The kitchen smelled suspiciously of onions and garlic and something else. I pinched my nose.

  “Stew’s on the stove. Elk meat. It was in the freezer down at the cookhouse. Don’t worry, it’s mostly potatoes and carrots,” she said, and bowed her head again over her book.

  “I made a friend, sort of,” I said, spooning the veggies into my bowl while trying to steer clear of the meat. “An Indian boy I bumped into up on the hill.”

  I didn’t mention that I’d run into him twice before and that he hadn’t exactly been friendly. Or that he didn’t like white girls, or whining girls, or white people, or whatever.

  “Oh? That’s good.” Mam put a finger on her place and looked up. “I’m glad you found a friend. I didn’t think there was anyone around here for miles. And miles and miles…” She smiled. “He live around here? What’s his name?”

  “Shawn, and I think he must live south or east of this place. His grandma has cows out on the tribal lands and he looks after them.”

  “Sounds like a nice kid,” she said. She stuck her nose back in her book

  I took a bite of stew and pushed a hunk of meat to one side of my mouth. I held the lump in my cheek. Pretended to swallow. Coughed and spit the lump into my napkin. It’s a trick that never works. Mam looked up and frowned.

  So without thinking I burst out with the news.

  “I also found out that Mr. Mac was married to Shawn’s aunt. Her name was Rose, and she used to live here in this house. They must’ve been fixing it up, painting and making the house bigger by adding on to it. You know what? I bet they were planning to have a baby, because that’s what that other bedroom with the half-finished mural and those paint cans in it would’ve been for. And then she just up and left him”—I snapped my fingers—“like that.”

  Mam put her hand to her head as if something heavy had fallen out of the sky and hit her. “How awful,” she said. “He must’ve been so…” She let the words trail away.

  Heartbroken, I thought. Of course she knew how Mr. Mac had felt. I remembered how, after my dad went away, the silence had grown until it filled the room and then our whole universe.

  “I don’t know …,” she said, staring up through the ceiling and out to someplace far beyond it.

  I stirred my bowl of stew, lifting a spoonful of the mush of brown potatoes and carrots, eyeing it suspiciously. I couldn’t think of any words to fill up the long silence without making things worse.

  “It hasn’t been e
asy, living here,” she finally said. “The worst part is that we’re so far off the road and, except for that boy you just met, you don’t have any friends. I wouldn’t want to just run out on Mr. McCloud, leave him in a fix, but I don’t know…. This place somehow just seems so… sad.”

  “But it’s been a long time,” I said, my words tumbling over each other now in their rush to get out. “Almost three years since the house had been lived in, that’s what Mr. Mac said.”

  “I don’t know …,” Mam said again. She put her elbows on the table and her face in her hands.

  “But I do,” I said. “I’m sure of it. I’m already fixing up the log addition. Next time Mr. Mac comes out, we’ll surprise him.” If only he’ll come in, I thought to myself.

  Another silence filled the room. My mom’s rough hands fiddled with the pages of her book—the old, out-of-date encyclopedia she studied so hard, trying to make up for the schooling she’d missed. A lump grew in my throat that had nothing to do with the stew.

  “We’ll stay till you finish what you’re doing. After that, I can’t promise. It all depends on…” She bit her lip. “Never mind,” she said.

  Depends on what? I wondered. Mr. McCloud? Her own loneliness? Or the possibility that my dad might miraculously find us? Or was it just that we’d about reached the end of her staying point, the time when she almost automatically started to think about moving on.

  I slipped my bowl under the table. Pot cleaned it up. I made me a peanut butter and banana and honey sandwich and took it up to my room. It was my favorite thing in the world. Comfort food, Mam always called it.

  Chapter Seventeen

  That night I woke to the sound of cows mooing and stirring about. I ran to the window to see what was disturbing them, but clouds hid the sliver of moon. Nothing howled, nothing cried out, so I slipped back into my dreams.

  I woke before sunrise and crept barefooted down to the kitchen. No Stew Pot, no Mam. I figured they’d already gone out. I grabbed my radio and headed for the log addon and turned on the light.

  Rising from the scraps of beaver-peeled sticks and river willows stood two rickety chairs and a small table. The table hardly wobbled if I propped it up in a corner. There’d been four chairs, but the first two had collapsed.