Susan Patron - The Higher Power of Lucky

Lucky heard a radio announcer’s smooth radio voice plus Sammy’s growly one as she followed HMS Beagle inside.

“Man, I tried melting it. Wouldn’t melt. Tried grating it. Turns into dough. It must be some kind of secret weapon,” Short Sammy was saying. In the center of the room, at a rough wooden table that had once been a spool for coiling electrical wire, Lincoln leaned over a small bag of Fritos, eating out of it with a spoon. Nearby on the table was a length of cord with knots in it.

“Sammy’s been experimenting with the Government Surplus cheese,” Lincoln explained to Lucky. The radio announcer was telling about traffic tie-ups.

“So far, nobody can figure out what to do with it to make it something you’d want to eat ,” Sammy said. He pushed back the brim of his cowboy hat and frowned at the cheese. “The chili’s good, though. Made it with U.S. Government Surplus canned pork. Help yourself.”

Quite a lot of people, especially Brigitte, had a strong opinion that Short Sammy used too much grease in his cooking. Brigitte insisted that Lucky should very politely say she wasn’t hungry if he offered her anything to eat.

“Okay, yes, please,” she said. Sammy opened another snack-size bag of Fritos and gave it to Lucky with a tin spoon.

“Pan’s outside. Lid’s hot.”

Lucky lifted the lid with a rag, set it on a rock, and spooned beans and pork into the small bag of Fritos. She replaced the lid.

“…a fender bender,” said the radio announcer, “on the 101 South into downtown L.A. Slow going on the 10 East due to an oil spill in the car-pool lane. Better take the 60 if you can. That three-car pileup on the Pasadena Freeway near the four level has been cleared….”

Short Sammy poured hot water over coffee grounds in a sock filter and shook his head. “That L.A. traffic is terrible,” he said, sounding pleased. The traffic report always cheered him up. “Today’s Saturday, and it’s as bad as Monday rush hour.” He poured dark black coffee into a tin mug.

“So what happened with the snake?” Lincoln asked, digging out the last of his chili-and-Fritos and licking the spoon.

“I scared it away.” Lucky plopped into a chair. “It was a red racer.” Short Sammy’s recipe was a perfect meal because it was extremely delicious, plus no dishes to wash except your spoon and the pan once it was empty.

Short Sammy turned off the radio even though the traffic report wasn’t over. “Red racers are good people, man,” he said. “They get rid of the rattlers and sidewinders.”

“I know ,” Lucky said. “But Brigitte hates them. This chili is good.”

Sammy waved at flies with his mug. Then he said a strange thing. “Brigitte’s all right. She just needs something to do. She’s bored.”

Lucky’s opinion was that Brigitte’s job of being her Guardian was totally already something to do. How could she be bored with that? Plus, except for Lucky’s own work at the Found Object Wind Chime Museum and Visitor Center, the Captain’s mail-sorting job, and Dot’s Baubles ’n’ Beauty Salon, there were no jobs in Hard Pan no matter how much you wanted one.

“Too bad she can’t open a restaurant or something,” said Lincoln, who loved Brigitte’s French way of making an apple pie. “I bet people would come from Talc Town and all over, plus the caravans of geologists from L.A. and regular tourists.” As Lucky watched, he picked up his cord from the table, then pulled the two ends apart and a whole row of knots came magically undone. Right away he started tying new ones.

Lucky imagined a restaurant where the menu had things like tongue and sweetbreads, which are really some kind of glands , and oysters and snails and rabbits—things she was pretty sure French people sat around eating morning, noon, and night. She doubted there would be any customers for a restaurant like that in Hard Pan.

Short Sammy squatted by HMS Beagle, scratching her behind the ears. HMS Beagle loved Short Sammy’s house because the rock floor was very cool to lie on, and because Short Sammy was her best friend after Lucky, ever since he pulled fifteen cactus spines out of her muzzle with his pliers when she was a puppy. “I wonder what they make that cheese out of,” Sammy said.

Suddenly Lucky got a picture in her mind of the magazines Brigitte’s mother sent from France, with pictures of beautiful castles and houses. “Sammy,” she said, “have you ever been to France?”

“Sure,” said Short Sammy, “but that was a lifetime ago.”

Lucky knew he meant before he hit rock bottom, back when he still drank rum and homemade wine.

“There’s a very famous museum in France,” Lincoln said.

“Yeah, the Louvre. I remember a café near there,” said Short Sammy.

“So would you rather live in France or Hard Pan?”

Short Sammy gave HMS Beagle a final scratch on her belly and squinted up at Lucky from under the brim of his cowboy hat. He stood, knees popping like when you pop your knuckles, and pivoted on the heel of his pointy-toed boot. “Look, man,” he said, and went to a window, which was a large square cut out of the tin wall at exactly the right level to make a frame for Lucky’s face. Short Sammy and Lucky were the same height, except the boots and hat gave him some extra. “Look at that,” he said.

Lucky looked out at the jumble of trailers, sheds, outhouses, shacks, and rusty vehicles below. Dot was in her backyard hanging small white towels on a clothesline. At the edge of town Lucky’s canned-ham bedroom trailer curled in a half circle with the other trailers it was connected to. “What?” she said, looking for the thing Short Sammy wanted her to see.

Lincoln came to the open doorway to look out in the same direction.

“Just Hard Pan,” Short Sammy said. “HP, pop. 43. And everything that isn’t Hard Pan. Look.” Lucky did.

Past the town the desert rolled out and out like a pale green ocean, as far as you could see, to the Coso foothills, then behind them, the huge black Coso Range like the broken edge of a giant cup that held tiny Hard Pan at its bottom. The sky arched up forever, nothing but a sheet of blue, hiding zillions of stars and planets and galaxies that were up there all the time, even when you couldn’t see them. It was kind of peaceful and so gigantic it made your brain feel rested. It made you feel like you could become anything you wanted, like you were filled up with nothing but hope.

HP, she was thinking. HP stood for Hard Pan, but, she realized, it could also stand for Higher Power. Maybe Hard Pan was Short Sammy’s Higher Power because of its slowness and peacefulness and sweet-smellingness, even though it was old and junky and out in the middle of nowhere. Lucky wondered if she could ever get Brigitte to love Hard Pan as much as she loved France.

Sammy’s corrugated roof made tiny pinging sounds, almost like raindrops, as it expanded in the sun.

“The museum I meant,” said Lincoln, “is, I don’t know how you pronounce it, Le Musée Mondial du Nœud. It’s a knot museum. I found out about it in Knot News .”

Lucky sighed. Her brain was clogged up with questions, and she didn’t even know exactly what they were.

Short Sammy had gone back to frown at the block of cheese on his table. “The only thing left, man, is to fry this thing in bacon grease,” he said.

10. The Urn