Lifting the Sky

by Mackie d'Arge

  I turned on the faucet. As the tub filled, the room filled with steam.

  Later I’d remember the whole bathroom scene as if it had happened inside a gray thundercloud, and how the constant booming sound could’ve been rushing water, my heart pounding, or Pot’s shallow breathing. Somehow bloody bandages got taken off and the hair around the ugly gash clipped with Mam’s pair of nail scissors. “This won’t hurt,” I remember promising, and then Pot’s startled, hurt eyes telling me that I’d lied as I poured a full bottle of antiseptic on his wound and then gave him a supersized penicillin shot in the shoulder. I remember ripping and wrapping my T-shirt, crisscrossing it under a leg, around a shoulder and neck. I don’t remember stripping off my bloody clothes, but I do remember sinking into the tub, and how even with my eyes closed I could still picture the stiff bundle of bandaged-up doggie that lay on the bathroom floor. And I remember how I wondered if anything I’d done had helped, or if I’d done just the opposite of what one was supposed to do when your dog got bit by a wolf.

  What I don’t remember is why I decided to take Stew Pot upstairs after I’d finished my bath. I do remember lugging him up, and then the words I said.

  “I’ll keep you safe,” I promised. “I’ll sleep here beside you tonight.”

  It was one more promise I wouldn’t keep.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  I’d hardly settled Pot into his beanbag and covered him with my blanket when I heard Ol’ Yeller chug up the road to the house. Truck doors slammed. The front door banged. I held my breath for the sounds of the next two doors banging, but then I figured I’d left them open. I heard Mam’s gloves slapping down on the kitchen counter. Thanks to the hole in the floor I could hear everything. Thanks or no thanks…

  “I’m not asking you to stay.” Mam’s voice had a knife-sharp edge to it.

  “You’re still my wife,” came my dad’s quick reply, “and I was not saying I wanted to stay. It was a suggestion. An idea only. I could live here between jobs. Until I get the money to do that film I’m thinking of making. But you seem to think this is your own private territory.”

  There was a long pause. I crept to the hole and lay with my ear to the floor.

  “What I think is that it’s high time we got divorced. Legally. Desertion should be reason enough.”

  I heard the bam of the fridge door. Above its hum I could hear my dad snort. We should put up a sign, I thought.

  PLEASE, NO SLAMMING DOORS—

  FRIDGE WITH DELICATE NERVES!

  My dad had probably driven up not long after I’d left for the hill—had they been doing nothing but arguing the whole time? It was a good thing I was already flat on the floor because all of a sudden my tummy felt really icky. They have no idea I’m home, I thought, and that I can hear every word….

  “As if you hadn’t kept moving on,” my dad snorted again. “It was not my fault that I couldn’t find you. And my daughter. My only child. And I know that you got my letters because they never were returned to me.”

  Mam stalked out of the kitchen and my dad followed, his cowboy boots making angry hard sounds on the floor. If they’d looked up they’d have seen my face peeking down from behind the grate in the ceiling. I could’ve almost reached down and plucked my dad’s black cowboy hat off his head as he stomped by beneath me. Their lights turned the air jittery, like the way it is just before an electrical storm. My dad was like flashing lightning, while my mom held her lights close as if she were shielding herself from his strikes.

  Mam turned, fists on her hips, and leaned toward him. “How many letters?” she demanded. “One a year? No, I didn’t tell Blue when I got the last ones. You want to know why? Because each time you said you were planning to come back, and you didn’t. I didn’t tell her because I didn’t want to break her heart any more than it’d already been broken.”

  Up in my attic, I wondered how many times a heart could be broken, and if it would always show cracks, or if it was maybe self-mending. Somehow I had the gut feeling that soon I was going to find out.

  My dad whipped off his hat. I could see a grin on his face, the kind you get when you yell “Gotcha!” “So!” he said. “You admit you were running and hiding from me.”

  I wanted to pound on the floor and yell STOP! It’s me you’re playing your games with and I HATE hide-and-seek!

  “Well, this time you found out where we were. But then you waited a whole week to come out here. And then you turned around and left without letting Blue or me know if you had any intention of returning. You let her worry and wonder—”

  My dad broke in. “It is my business what I do. And I am back now. That should be enough.”

  Mam lifted her chin defiantly. “Well, it’s not,” she said.

  Upstairs, I rooted silently, Way to go, Mam! But what I heard next sucked the breath right out of me.

  “Well, what I really came back for is my guitar,” my dad said. His hand shot out and he squeezed my mom’s arm. “I was afraid you might slip away again, given your record. You still have it, no?”

  “No.” Mam pulled away and brushed at her shirt.

  The fridge quit its humming. The air inside the house turned heavy and still, as if the house itself was hunkering down before a big storm.

  “No?” my dad asked. Around him the air churned and turned dark as a thundercloud. “No? My guitar—you have any idea what it was worth?”

  “We needed the money,” Mam said, her voice deadly calm. “So I hocked it. And then there’s the matter of my saddle, the one with the silver trim….”

  I pressed my cheek to the floor and closed my eyes as I waited for the big clap of thunder I sensed was coming. I heard books and things clattering to the floor, glass shattering, and the fridge suddenly rumbling. Out of the slits of my eyes I stared at the dust bunnies under the bed, and at my just-in-case box and my dusty old suitcase. No wonder I’d hidden under the bed when I was little. No wonder I’d blanked out the fights….

  Downstairs, my dad muttered something I couldn’t make out, while my mom said something sharp back at him. I looked back down the peek hole. I could see my mom’s back as she crouched to pick up a book. She straightened and held the book to her chest, patting it as if it were alive, as if she were comforting it. She put the book on the pile she’d made on the couch. Around her I could see her lights spreading out as if she was now trying to shield and protect everything in the whole room.

  “This is a very big house for two people,” my dad said as he turned in a circle, looking about as if he’d just now noticed its size. “A very big house for someone who is just a hired hand.”

  My mom flipped her hair out of her face. I could see her chest puffing up. “I manage this ranch,” she said, putting a whole ton of weight on the word.

  Upstairs in my attic I sat up. My shoulders lifted. That’s what she was. My mom, the ranch manager. Really, that was quite a step up from just being a “hand.”

  I bent over the grate again.

  “And this room,” my dad went on as if he hadn’t heard what she’d said. “Why is there a ‘No Trespassing’ sign on the door?”

  Don’t you dare! I thought as he lifted the latch and pushed the door open. That’s my room! I wanted to yell down. How can you just come in and act like you can take over? And now you’re going to spoil everything—Mam’ll see my creations before everything’s ready, before the candles are lit, before Mr. Mac gets here tonight….

  I was about to jump up when the next thing Mam said stopped me cold.

  “Blue’s doing this as a surprise. She wanted Mac to come out….”

  Cripes! That had to be the very worst thing she could’ve possibly said!

  “So, Mac, is it?” My dad’s voice snaked up through the hole in the floor.

  Watch out, I wanted to yell down to my mom. He’s getting ready to strike….

  “She must think he’s quite a guy. You must think so too. Is that why you haven’t left before now?”

  Mam flashed him a
cold, steely look.

  “That’s it, isn’t it?”

  “I’ve stayed for my own reasons.” Mam lifted her chin and stared straight into his eyes. “And because I knew it was what Blue wanted….”

  My dad broke in. “And so she made this man some fancy-looking—what would you call this?—furniture.”

  I heard a loud cracking sound and my mom’s voice shouting, “NO!”

  I shot up, anger snatching my breath away. So what if we—both of us—liked Mr. Mac! So what if I’d made Mr. Mac some, what would you call this?—furniture!

  Stew Pot groaned, twisting about in the beanbag as he struggled to get to his feet. Gently, I pushed him back. “Sweet hero dog, don’t move a hair,” I said. “Don’t you dare try to go down those stairs, you understand? Stay!” I fluffed up the beanbag, settled it under his head, straightened the blanket, kissed my hand to his forehead, and tore down the stairs. At the bottom I stopped and gripped the wall as the thought sank into me.

  The reason my dad was being so horrid was because he was drunk.

  I stormed through the kitchen. Mam’s back was to me as she stood in the doorway to my room. She swirled in surprise and held out a hand as if to warn or to stop me. I brushed it away. Without a word, she moved aside.

  My dad stood in the middle of my room in a round of bright sunlight with a red willow branch in his hand. He squinted at me as if wondering how I’d suddenly appeared in the doorway. He looked down at the branch in his hand and then dropped it as if he’d been scorched.

  Sometimes it made me dizzy to see lights change so quickly, flashing out, then taming down in the blink of an eye. I held on to the doorway as my dad’s lights settled around him.

  Part of me stared at the tall stranger standing in the shaft of sunlight with his lights shifting around him, and another part looked beyond him at the toppled table and the chair that’d been on the receiving end of a really good kick. Some part of me noticed the broken bits of branches, tufts of birds’ nests and feathers and the two turquoise pillows that lay scattered across the wood floor, along with the books and the now-shattered vase I’d so carefully placed on my table—when was it, just a few hours ago?

  “I see you’re back,” I said. To my own ears my voice sounded hollow.

  I’d stormed down all set to scream out my anger. Now all I could feel was a huge emptiness growing inside me, in the place where my heart used to be. This is not who you are, I wanted to say to my dad. And we are not who we were just an hour ago. None of us will ever, ever be the same….

  Somewhere a ringing sound started up. Brinnnng! Brinnnng! It sounded far, far away. Mam squeezed my shoulder. “I left a message for Mac,” she whispered. “He must be calling back.” She disappeared into the kitchen.

  I concentrated hard on the circle of sunlight where my dad stood. I tried to block out the rest of the room.

  “Did you find the Nutella?” I asked. My tone was so polite it surprised even me. I could’ve been asking him to please come have a glass of ice tea. The effect might’ve been spoiled by the hiccups that suddenly came out of nowhere.

  “It must not exist in Wyoming,” my dad said. His face turned red, and I wondered if he only now remembered that he’d gone off to look for that chocolaty stuff.

  Somewhere far, far away, someone was calling, “Blue… Blue…”

  That’s my name, I thought, but I didn’t move. I was inside a bubble where nothing and no one could reach me, where nothing could ever hurt anymore. I could see my dad’s mouth moving, but the words didn’t make any sense. Inside my bubble the outside world didn’t exist.

  Mam’s hand shook my shoulder. “Blue. Blue. The phone call’s for you. Are you okay?”

  “No,” I said flatly.

  “It’s Clyde, down at the store.” My mom’s eyes poured into mine. “It’s about your friend….”

  I hiccupped my way through the kitchen and lifted the phone to my ear. I could hear a rumble of voices and what sounded like cups clattering on counters.

  “Hello?” I squeaked.

  “Blue, you there? You seen Shawn lately? He’s gone missing. Thought we’d better call up to Far Canyon, since it’s the nearest place to his grandma’s.”

  “No,” I said, and I hiccupped. “It’s been a while….”

  Above the background noise I could hear a gruff man’s voice counting up the days since he’d last seen Shawn, saying it’d been four days, no, maybe five, darn kid. He was hard to keep track of, what with the way he was always off helping some relative or the other or foolin’ around out there on those tribal lands….

  “Blue says she hasn’t seen hide nor hair of him, either,” Clyde said to the crowd in the store.

  “Clyde.” I gulped. “What happened?”

  “His horse came back without him. Showed up this afternoon at his grandma’s place. Minus his rider.”

  I held the phone out and frowned at it. Clyde’s voice came through. “Seems he told his grandma he was riding over to go help his uncle with the haying. Seems his uncle wasn’t aware he was coming, so no one worried when he didn’t show up. Well, thanks anyway, Blue. Don’t worry. We’re getting a search party together,” he said, and hung up.

  I just stood there opening and closing my mouth like a fish.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  I stared down at the strange object I held in my hand. Mam reached over and hung up the phone. She looked worriedly into my eyes. “Do you have any idea where he is?” she asked.

  I shook my head. But I did know. In the back of my mind I could see a black hole. The entrance to the underworld …

  I could just imagine calling Clyde back, saying, Wait a minute. Listen, I saw some fuzzy lines stretched out along the ground not too long ago, and I told Shawn about them, how they seemed to meet up in a star at a certain place in the mountains. He got all excited and I bet he’s gone off …

  Yeah, right.

  From somewhere outside my bubble I could hear my mom’s voice explaining what’d happened, and then my dad’s saying, “What is the big deal? Probably the kid did not tie up his horse. Why, I myself have had a horse run off. What you do then is you put one foot in front of the other. You walk home.”

  I tried hard to think through the fog that had taken the place of my brain. Shawn and I had talked about the ley lines on my birthday—when was that, a week ago? He could’ve taken off the next day, or soon afterward.

  And then, in spite of all the bad stuff that had happened that day, I felt a guilty little tingle of joy. Maybe that explained why he hadn’t been back to our tree…. And when exactly, I wondered, had I started thinking of it as our tree?

  Still, I couldn’t imagine Tivo just walking away, though I’d never seen Shawn tie him up. No. Something had to be terribly wrong. Maybe he was hurt. Maybe he couldn’t put one foot in front of the other. Maybe he couldn’t walk home….

  I tottered out of the kitchen as if I were sleepwalking and stumbled up to my attic.

  Numbly, I reached for the backpack that lay in its usual place by my bed. I dumped my colored pencils and journal onto the bed and checked to be sure I had water, matches, and my sack of trail mix. Then I stuck a hand under the pillow and grabbed Grub’s black button eye and stuffed it into my pocket. I pulled a long-sleeved shirt out of the closet and tucked it into my backpack. Stew Pot’s eyes followed my every move.

  I sank down by the beanbag. How could I possibly leave him? Honestly, all I wanted was to crawl in with him, close my eyes, and forget about wolves and wounded doggies and fathers who wrecked things. Forget about kids who’d gone missing. But how could I? It was my fault that Shawn had gotten himself into this fix, whatever it was. It was up to me to get him out of it.

  Through the hole in the floor I could hear my parents’ low, bickering voices. My dad said something about packing up. I sat up and leaned toward the hole.

  “The best thing would be for you to leave this desolate place,” he said. “Just pack things up—”

 
; “Don’t tell me what I should do,” my mom’s angry voice broke in.

  “You prefer to stay here when I am asking you to come with me? I still have very strong feelings for you.”

  “I think you’ve already shown me exactly how much you care,” Mam said, and I could imagine her lifting her chin and giving my dad one of her looks.

  Pot struggled to lift his head. “Don’t listen,” I whispered. He soaked up moods like a sponge, same as I did. How could I possibly work on Stew Pot with everything all stirred up like this? I took a breath.

  I’d have to hurry if I was going to find Shawn before dark.

  I felt as if I’d fallen apart and now had to gather up all the scattered pieces of myself. I closed my eyes and imagined I was outside soaking up the bright sunlight. I held my hands over Pot’s wound and opened my eyes and watched as the light slowly grew. I could see Pot’s lights growing brighter. I sat there with my hands over Pot’s wound until finally he relaxed. When he started to snore I took my hands away.

  Pot’s lights fluttered and grew dim.

  I sat still and tried not to cry. It all felt so hopeless. How could I possibly leave him? What I’d been doing just wasn’t enough. What had I been thinking? What if I’d been fooling myself all along? I stared at my hands. What a strange thing it was to even think they could heal. Maybe my dad was right. Maybe the best thing really would be to leave this desolate place. Maybe I’d gotten—what was the word?—“delusional.” I’d read about someone being that way and I’d looked the word up. It meant they’d had a false or mistaken belief or idea about something. That seemed to fit me to a tee.

  The attic suddenly grew dark as a cloud covered the sun. I sighed. It was getting late. I pushed myself out of the beanbag and looked down at my sweet hero dog. In his rip-wrapped bandages he looked like a furry black caterpillar shedding its skin. I imagined a chrysalis of light forming around him. “Heal inside your silvery cocoon, little butterfly,” I whispered. “Only please. Please. Don’t fly away while I’m gone….”