Susan Patron - The Higher Power of Lucky

On Sunday morning Lucky woke up wanting to ask Lincoln something important. She phoned him, and they decided to meet right after breakfast up at the post office, since it was closed and nobody would be around.

Lucky wanted to talk to Lincoln about an urn she had. Not everyone who dies gets buried in the ground. Some people are cremated, which Lucky had not known about until her mother died. She found out that being cremated is where they take the dead person to a place called a crematory and put them in a box like a casket. The box goes through a special process—Short Sammy explained this—and afterward all that is left are little particles and ashes.

Then they put the particles and ashes into something called an urn.

If you never saw an urn before you would probably think it was a shiny metal vase for flowers, except it has a hinged lid with a latch to keep it solidly closed so nothing can spill out if it gets accidentally knocked over.

Two days after Brigitte had arrived in Hard Pan with her little suitcase, a strange man in sunglasses and a suit came and gave the urn to Lucky. She had thought that was a mistake, because she was only eight at the time and didn’t know what she was supposed to do with it. So she tried to give it back.

The strange man had said to her, “These are your mother’s remains. There will be a memorial service where you can fling them to the wind.”

Lucky had stared at the man. She did not understand what he was talking about.

That was two years ago. But still now, every so often—and today was one of those times, while she and HMS Beagle trotted to the post office to meet Lincoln—Lucky worried about the urn.

Seen from a little distance, Lincoln looked better, in Lucky’s opinion—you could imagine how he’d look when he grew into his ears. Like, as he got older his head wouldn’t look as big and his neck would definitely look less scrawny. So far he didn’t look like a president, which was what his mother was hoping and which was why she named him Lincoln Clinton Carter Kennedy. Lucky knew he’d rather be president of the International Guild of Knot Tyers. Mothers have their good sides, their bad sides, and their wacky sides, but Lucky figured Lincoln’s mother had no way of knowing at the time he was born that he would turn out to be so dedicated about knots.

“Lincoln,” Lucky said, squatting down to look at the lines he’d drawn in the dirt, “do you remember when my mother died?”

“I don’t remember her very well, but I do remember the…what do you call it. Not the funeral but the—”

“Memorial.”

“Yeah. Don’t you remember it?” Lincoln scratched HMS Beagle’s soft chest.

“Kind of.” It was almost exactly two years ago. Lucky did remember most of it strongly, but she wanted to know what Lincoln would say. “What do you remember about it?”

Lincoln squinted at her and went back to his sand drawing, which turned out to be some kind of hitch. Even when Lincoln glanced at something for only a tiny second, it was a piercing and thorough glance, like with X-ray eyes. “Everyone in the whole town went,” he said. “All the cars and trucks in a slow line, some dogs following along. It was at the old abandoned dugouts, on the open desert outside town, so there wasn’t any shade. But the sun was going down and it was cooling off and people stood around and Short Sammy played the guitar. He played ‘Amazing Grace’ and everybody sang along and it was really sad and beautiful.” Lincoln frowned at the ground. “I remember how, especially out overlooking the whole desert, there was that special smell from after it—” Lincoln’s cheeks and the tips of his ears suddenly got red.

Lucky finished what Lincoln was going to say. “After it rains. I know, okay? That smell reminds me, too. You don’t have to completely never mention rain. It wasn’t like it was the rain’s fault that it happened.”

“Okay,” he said, gouging his lines in the sand more deeply.

“I was supposed to spread her ashes in the wind,” Lucky said. “Because I was the next of kin.”

“Why didn’t you?”

Lucky didn’t answer right away. She was remembering that during a secret time in her bedroom, just before the memorial, she had opened the urn to look inside. The particles were like different sizes of whitish sand. But when she looked closely she could tell that they were little pieces of bone.

Lucky’s hand fit inside the opening at the top of the urn. She had reached in. She was scared and excited, as if doing this was both right and wrong at the same time. Her fingers felt some dry, feathery stuff, and a lot of light, brittle bits.

They were the remains. The remains of her mother. She had very carefully closed and latched the lid of the urn and put it on her bed. She lay down on her side and curled herself around it.

At first she lay with one hand touching the urn. But after a while she put her arms all the way around it, like a child hugs a doll or a mother holds a child. Then she sat up and opened the lid again and let some of her tears fall inside. She wanted to mix her tears with the remains of her mother. She didn’t know if this was allowed, so she did it very privately and quietly without telling anyone.

“Because they were the remains of my mother ,” Lucky finally explained.

Lincoln nodded. “People kept trying to get you to pop the cork off that vase,” he said, “and they kept saying there was such a nice gentle breeze to carry the ashes out into the desert. Everyone wanted to convince you—”

“Urn,” said Lucky. “It’s called an urn. There was a little group of burros watching us.” There were four of them, standing in profile on the crest of one of the hills by the dugouts, looking down at the people from the sides of their faces.

Up until then, Lucky hadn’t known about scattering the ashes of a person who died. Someone had explained that people like to give the ashes back to the earth, that it was a way for her mother to become part of the desert and always be near Lucky.

But that made no sense. If you fling something away, like the remains of your own mother, if you throw those remains out into the desert, how does that make her near to you? Lucky had clutched the urn to her chest and stared at the burros and tried to know what to do.

Lucky remembered Brigitte’s hand on her shoulder, the type of firm grip you would have if you were trying to keep a puppy from running away. She’d said it was time to go back, and that Lucky could bring the urn and she could keep it. But then all of a sudden Lucky didn’t want it. She shoved it at Brigitte, as if it were only a vase for flowers after all, and ran to sit on Dot’s tailgate so she could ride home backward, watching the burros on the hill until she couldn’t see them anymore.

“It was your father,” said Lincoln, “who made everyone leave you alone. He said the decision was yours, and whatever it was it would be the right one.”

“My father ? My father wasn’t even there ! I’ve never even met him!”

Lincoln’s ears turned red again. “Don’t you remember the tall guy with sunglasses? He was the only one wearing a suit in the heat.”

“That was the crematory man,” said Lucky, but she could feel something squeezing her heart in her chest. “What do you mean, my father ?”

“I just remember people saying he was Brigitte’s former husband, from before, and I thought that was weird,” said Lincoln. “But then Dot was telling people, ‘Lucky’s father made all the arrangements,’ and pointing to him with her chin like she does.” He stood up and took a few steps back, like he was afraid of what Lucky would do.